Goodbye Tower Gardens

Where I come from

Where I'm going

What's leading me there

What in hell

a downward pull that won't allow time

for anything that doesn't try to know itself.

Ian gave me a home for my life and my art.

It would rain here and a gamelan would commence. I'd be peaceful, making tea and looking out into Ian's beautiful woodland garden. The pan would sometimes look obsidian. And of course moths that myths are made of in the summertime.

A verdant dance. The magick twisted willow which loved to be climbed. Her neighbour, the acer and the bird's foot ivy joined in the swathe. In the summer we'd get peonies and irises. A naughty buddleia with it's gorgeous purple pyramids carefully obscured the blue orbs of ceanothus. You were to barely notice the bay tree by the back wall. I remember when Tarka shat on that beautiful mossy stone and actually killed it. Poor scorched chloroplasts. Took years to heal. But this was where the healing took place. For many a sick heart. 

Pile of Wires by the loo. The flush, an awkward chain, designed for awkwardness. Geoff's dragon on the unused cistern. The box above the black bath was a lens into a kingdom of flowers in refraction. Ian's world was forever convex.

This angle hurts the most. As it was so often where he would sit. Watching any old crap on his laptop or reading or resting or wearing a funny hat. There were the most mesmerising paperweights on that window ledge. 

All that Coil stuff, preserved in formaldehyde and cider vinegar. A great love, a great abundance and in the end a great big dead albatross.

The best thing to do when daddy was out jaunting in the woods was to fawn over his menagerie of power amulets and avatars. Ivory clowns and black rubber eggs, big brass cocks and swastikas reclaimed.

Jumpy Zos, always leaping off that wall was he.

A silver plinth to elevate the boney equine legs of the leg cutter. The engraved details on the sides of this thing are astonishing. He was a great maker of things. His eyes would dig for the truth behind every surface.

Mr. Todd was a disco diva. Hips like a lubricated potter's wheel and the nose of a fox in season.

At the top of the stairs lived Geoff's mixing palette beneath an odd painting by Orlando Greenwood who lived till he was a hundred and two.

As mentioned. Appear to have had a bit of a tiff.

He prepared himself with such humility. You were too big for your body really. You kissed the water and felt it's ubiquity. I never knew anyone capable of such a love. The love of a flower. The love of the soil. Extended towards all sentient life-forms. You planted your exquisite clematis outside your cabana on top of the mountain and there it still grows. We live in the Virgo supercluster, my moon and your star. 

Time to dance. 

Time to crochet.

I miss you Ian.