2015 in 15: Nothing Remarkable

January 9, 2016 by Merryn 9 Comments

Looking back at 2015 I decided I’d done nothing.

While this was not strictly true I thought it would be interesting to attempt to capture the sense of nothingness in a retrospective piece. Sorry if this seems a little wallowing and indulgent, but it’s January, I’m allowed to wallow. So following the format I used for 2014 and 2013 here’s this year’s shot at a little recap of 2015 in 15 sentences with 15 photos I’ve taken* during the course of the year. If you click on the first image you can read the text alongside the pictures as you scroll through if you prefer.

I began 2015 with a wintery stomp on an unseasonably warm but predictably dull day where the river below Trelissick was a swampy teal under a pewter sky: nothing remarkable, a fitting start, I suppose, for a year in which looking back I thought I did nothing.

Then, coming out of the supermarket in the morning one day before work I caught a sound which cast my glance skyward as I filtered from the sounds of the everyday something to make me look up: two ravens cronking high high up above Mabe.

The extraordinary above the mundane, the something in the nothing.

Whilst reading The Neverending Story in my lunchbreaks I remembered how of all the movie villains of childhood – the witches, the bad kings, the Emperor, the skeksis – none was more to be feared than The Nothing; even as a child I knew who the real enemy was.

We had summer in spring.

I saw deer with new antlers still in velveteen, in the dappled shade of trees hemmed with the green of April’s bud.

I saw the floating ghosts of two barn owls hunting back and forth over a field on a summer’s night, near invisible but for the moonlight reflecting off their wings.

You can see ‘nothing’ at night for the dark, after all.

I saw damsels and dragons in the September sun: living jewellery whose fragile aerial lives last days, weeks.

I saw a heron at the beach like he was on holiday for the day.

I saw goldfinches fiddling in the undergrowth opposite the railway platform whilst I’m doing nothing waiting for a train.

And I saw black headed gulls in winter plumage squealing on Holy Brook, a City Centre sound misplaced from a winter’s low tide back home.

A thinnest sickle moon in the morning sky of the new year; the next night its notable absence another remarkable nothing.

The sun sets.

And the sun rises.

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I began 2015 with a wintery stomp on an unseasonably warm but predictably dull day where the river below Trelissick was a swampy teal under a pewter sky: nothing remarkable, a fitting start, I suppose, for a year in which looking back I thought I did nothing.

Then, coming out of the supermarket in the morning one day before work I caught a sound which cast my glance skyward as I filtered from the sounds of the everyday something to make me look up: two ravens cronking high high up above Mabe.

The extraordinary above the mundane, the something in the nothing.

Whilst reading The Neverending Story in my lunchbreaks I remembered how of all the movie villains of childhood – the witches, the bad kings, the Emperor, the skeksis – none was more to be feared than The Nothing; even as a child I knew who the real enemy was.

We had summer in spring.

I saw deer with new antlers still in velveteen, in the dappled shade of trees hemmed with the green of April’s bud.

I saw the floating ghosts of two barn owls hunting back and forth over a field on a summer’s night, near invisible but for the moonlight reflecting off their wings.

You can see ‘nothing’ at night for the dark, after all.

I saw damsels and dragons in the September sun: living jewellery whose fragile aerial lives last days, weeks.

I saw a heron at the beach like he was on holiday for the day.

I saw goldfinches fiddling in the undergrowth opposite the railway platform whilst I was nothing waiting for a train.

And I saw black headed gulls in winter plumage squealing on Holy Brook, a City Centre sound misplaced from a winter’s low tide back home.

A thinnest sickle moon hung in the morning sky of the new year; the next night its notable absence was another remarkable nothing.

The sun sets.

And the sun rises.

 

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*All images taken during 2015 by myself in Cornwall, Berkshire and Dorset, UK – except the shot of the cave at Holywell which taken by Dave Nobab (that’s me walking in the middle)

 

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