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cornelia f prior

writer, editor, swimmer, gardener

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Posted on 21/03/2019

‘a confrontational space’ substrand: a profile of Jayisha Patel

Posted on 21/03/2019

’37 women and six of them were Henry the VIII’s wives’ substrand: a profile of Libby Heaney

Posted on 06/02/201907/02/2019

‘a dark mood?’ substrand: an interview with manu luksch

Posted on 06/02/2019

‘finding conviction is difficult in 2018’ somerset house’s substrand: a profile of florence peake

Posted on 29/10/201829/10/2018

tending to…: for nell

Posted on 01/10/201801/10/2018

tending to…: out of place

Posted on 27/03/201827/03/2018

tate modern: suzanne lacy’s silver action

Posted on 27/03/201816/04/2018

pylot: interview with akram khan

Posted on 03/03/201827/03/2018

preview: a handful of dust at whitechapel gallery

Posted on 03/03/201827/03/2018

preview: ceramics and the sea at tate st ives

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Patrick Staff @serpentineuk acid rain; a subtext of carcereal violence, planetary death, and crumbling states made explicit, made sur-; the seemingly permanent mass delirium and misinformation around trans folk; carnal commodities, images of animals peeled like oranges in industrial agriculture, the pharmaceutical (and other) entanglements of human and nonhuman animal bodies. Go go go.

my usual post-therapy thames stroll this week was interrupted by a low, loud helicopter of the kind I've seen everywhere of late and which are presumably something to do with the XR and/or brexit protests. in that session I'd discussed for the first time (without any attempts to diminish or make light of the fact) my feelings about having been so close to the attacks in paris that myself and all the other patrons of the wonderful, sadly now closed, Le Kitch had to turn out the lights and lie on the floor in silence (bar a highly amusing, momentarily diffusing discussion with my sister, priya and amy who'd called, half cut, from the loo of a nightclub) for what felt like hours until the gendarmes or whatever the french equivalent of a SWAT team is ordered us to leave and "run" which we did, directionlessly, encountering terrified people everywhere we went. I remembered that my partner at the time and I were not able to return to the apartment we'd booked because it was cordoned off and a friend booked us the last hotel room in paris and we were not able to get into until two hours before breakfast began because it too was on a road that had been targeted in some way. I tried to access help when I returned because I am nothing if not perenially armed with research and didn't want stress to bloom into something bigger, but unfortunately none was forthcoming and I couldn't afford to pay. so although I dont remember fear breaking through the veneer of Practical Geography Field Trip Dad on the night itself, I am now sometimes thrown back or caught again in that fear, unable to wriggle out. As that date drawers nearer and police presence in london is or _looks_ heavier and as the nights draw in, the lie feeling of a foreshortened future can loom a little large. But I've sunk crocuses, tulips, english bluebells, fritillaries, and irises into the balcony pots and not so long from now, with a little patience and care, they'll start to beckon in the light, the spring.

make Burgess park lake a swimming pond you cowards.

this week has been a high watermark in my year: marika (the vision in fig. 1) came to stay and brought with her as she always does the best and weirdest stories from the bible and just The Best Lqqks of All, I made enlugh apple butter from my surrogate family's apple delivery to last the winter three times over, I made some if I do say so exquisite loaves of bread, and I went to Ella's house and made her watch only the most homosexual of music videos and in so doing realised that perfume genius and christine and the queens are surely spiritual siblings. I long by next year to be the kind of king who can don a leather harness beneath a three piece suit and wear with aplomb extraordinarily provocative plain black leather gloves. Liberté, égalité, homosexualité.

I don't know if it's the pressure or menstrual pain or that I've not had therapy in two weeks or what but all weekend I've been feeling like an elastic band pulled taught, one misread intonation/stubbed toe/mystery missing tumbledryer sock from snapping. That said, I've also been thinking about something my good pal merle and I sometimes chat about which is that nothing more accurately reflects your mood than your sourdough. I remember saying a couple months into therapy that just as I missed appreciating idk the particular way light sometimes fell through my bedroom window into my room I also really missed feeling irritated by e.g. how annoying people who speak on the phone at full volume in a confined space like say a bus or a bus stop which was obviously less that I missed feeling irritated and more that one is supposed to sometimes feel irritated or feel something just generally and I felt like I'd been robbed in the way that all depressed people probably feel like they've been robbed. But this wasn't hue of depression I was in any way familiar with and my main feeling, along with nothing, (actually it wasnt so much a feeling as it was a question) was why the hell is my bread so SHIT??? Every time? but I just kept making bread anyway because it's a thing that I do once but more often twice a week and sure it wasnt bringing me any particular joy but nor was anything else and it also wasnt bringing me anything else, either so I just carried on making my shit bread and giving my loaves of bread that rivalled Toni Collette in About A Boy's dead duck bread to phoebe and karl. But two weeks ago as the northern hemisphere continued to get darker in its big way and *emotionally* things for me got brighter in a small way, I texted my surrogate mum and invited her round for tea at the beacon and the night before last, having had a wonderful, exciting meeting with one of the five 3 of Cups, I went to an event which was in honour of the inimitable Silver Press—at whose party two years ago Klaus and I first stood near each other and felt some sort of current pass between us which I now know was probably an electrical current but not in the romantic way just [cont.]

the light in our flat is outrageous as is klaus in her new coat and breton miki cap and I (in my complementary red cap) am full of plans for the autumn and winter, including but not limited to apple crumble, an adult gymnastics class, choir, some obstacle course or another, laser tag, a book, and a bop.

this weekend ive enjoyed the vast skies of north norfolk as well as its museums and their frankly dubious curatorial strategies. it's been a strange long summer that hasn't felt quite as heady as they normally do, due no doubt to the worry and uncertainty that's pulsated through it like the stripes of car lights on a bedroom ceiling. klaus and I have begun to watch for their ikeda-like consistency before we sleep. it's so secluded up here that there are no passing cars by the house, no street lights (no street, really). to be sure it's big sky country but it's also dark sky country: all those meticulous pinkprick constellations. I haven't spent much time up here these past months—which is just as well because the beach is, as well it should be, dominated by children and dogs and teenagers carousing in the dunes. —and I'd forgotten how much I like it and how much I miss it. I usually dread the bend away from the sun, but this year I'm bending towards it: visiting friends across the country, a new idea of the future to work towards, big skies to visit here and in tas. feels good, like I'm putting down the roots that will help me blossom.

The thing that's most heartbreaking about having had my bike stolen in the early hours of this morning is not that I only got to ride it once (though that is unfortunately true) and not that I feel like a fool for trusting that the place I chose to store it would be as safe as the place's copy purported it to be (although I do) and it's not that I feel embarrassed to have been so enthusiastic when telling my pals last night about our planned ride for the next morning (although I really do) and it's also our plans to go somewhere (inaccessible by foot or by train) that i've long wanted to visit were scuppered by the theft (though they really were) and it isn't that Klaus and I spent the entire portion of what would have been our cycle to see my mum for lunch speaking to various people who ought to have taken some level of responsibility or at the very least provide us with unambiguous answers to our questions instead of throwing their hands up and sending us on an ever maddening, goose chase of automated, buggy web-forms and interactive voice recognition menus... but it's that I had, after a long, extremely difficult and frankly quite troubling period (for me and loved ones alike) of not having had the capacity for excitement or enthusiasm of any sort finally received some ('recieved', without wanting to sound too ecclesiastical, because I didn't have to muster it or rummage anywhere to find it or manoeuvre anything out the way to accommodate it). With it, I booked and planned a nice weekend which held the promise of friendship and conviviality amongst the dahlias followed the next day by a long, quiet cycle through a sliver of the fens. It's that I have been feeling a bit better these last few days and today's events made me feel like a dolt, like I was being punished for my daring.

the thing about returning to a place as part of a couple onlookers perceive, for the most part, as lesbian (and that you yourself dont really think in those or any terms) is that you realise how implicitly heterosexual and cis so much of your life was before you realised what you realised. part of what you then realise is that your conviction that you oughn't be _there_ is no less or more artificial that everyone else's conviction that they ought to be there. • grande / gauffre (heavenly breakfast) / Heavenly Breakfast (samuel delaney) / bar mahogany / I work to earth my heart / marie / marine

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