noir

   “Turn off the light, switch on a starry night…”

Noir, as November might predict. And if winter makes us reflect upon the dead, it is a time for us, living, to remember light in darkness. 

Under that category, the world could feel a frozen garden. Whereas sleet, hail and snow batter the island in a horizontal manner, people fall, cry, fight wherever human bestiality strikes. The horrors of terrorism bear so many faces & masks.   

Humanity feels in a state of emergency. 

Our planet, our homeworld, our cradle of life, will turn our grave. This is Noir, without fiction. 

Have we forgotten who we are, and where we live?   

Are we missing the boat? Are we too shackled to money to risk such perilous gambling? On reading the French press, we are heading towards our end. 

Noir,

Le Point.fr – COP21 : les lignes rouges des pays-clés dans les négociations.

Tour d’horizon des points de blocage pour chacun des pays les plus influents pour la conclusion d’un accord sur le climat à Paris.

Le Point newspaper reads noir. As if we were doomed like the lost civilisations who were incapable to save themselves in ancient times. It tastes rotten deep in my heart. Maybe a handful of humans are solely blindly driven by greed and are prepared to take that road. Gosh,  how selfish and masochistic. Do they know there is no way back, and nowhere else to go? This alone would feel a crime against humanity.

   

Talking of crime, Shetland hosted its first literary Noir Festival in November, as part of Iceland Noir.

   For a weekend, selected authors gathered at Mareel, and shared with the public. Helmed by friend & fellow Westside Writer Marsali Taylor, we grabbed the oar and added a rivet to clinker by launching our unique noir anthology, as part of a book launch event shared with Marsali’s latest crime fiction opus. On a more personal note, and with the Beyrout & Paris shootings in the backdrop, it felt a very strange weekend.  

Noir as man’s brilliance & blindness. 

Noir is a path I do not like by nature. It feels sordid and dangerous.

When I think Noir, movies like Sir Ridley Scott’s Bladerunner & Luc Besson’s (satyrical) Fifth Element come to my mind. 

I can only hope we are not heading into total blackness. 

Hello, Earth 

Five Photos, Five Stories – Day 2

From the lightness of being, to the darkness of despair… Or, is it?

For tonight’s second attempt, I chose a “raw” image – not gore, but dark within lightness. That carcass of life on white sand. Mortality as the finality of life.

 
The poem that accompanies the image is called Bird on Your Shoulder –

and goes like this:

 So many feathers 

outside cage.
Long,

black, broken,

creased, keratin –

inside my book of elements,

jinxes & spells,

blend in

swift’s

tongue with

snapdragon and

asphodel –

tell me

you can dream 

on the wing,

share an

apple

with

a

waxwing,

high on a roof

     with a blackbird.
Chose si belle,
above spring waves,

with storm petrels

that avian

urge to

reach

your

home,

and
lose your way across 

the sea.
© Nat Hall 2015

Sulphuric Dream

 Our place on Earth

Strange day, Thursday.  

My northern sky looks and smells weird.  As if norse gods made an omelette with rotten eggs… Oblivious to the wheel of news we’re spoon-fed on each breakfast show, I sense differences in my world.

We’re caught in it! The land of ice is shooting ash high in the blueness of our atmosphere – everything is clutching at straws…

And in this maniac media rat race, the western world admits stand still at terminals. Air travelling merely postponed in the name of life! For once, wisdom has won the day instead of cash.

update on Icelandic ash cloud

And my senses record it all.

Sulphuric Dream

That earthly plume,

invisible above our heads.

April, 15, 2010.

700 miles off my Shetland Box,

brand new steam column on the rise. And wind carries volcanic ash

like a long ship across a sky turned buttercup…

Dressing roof slates, wir triv an bruck,

with strange clingfilm;

I didn’t want to believe it,

particles of Icelandic world

found on the edge of my windscreen.

Sulphuric dream filled Egil’s eyes.

Poet’s note:

wir triv an bruck (Shetlan): our bits and pieces

© Nat Hall 2010