Cave Hill Rescue

Cave Hill Rescue, originally uploaded by peripathetic.

My feet hurt. Giles was out of breath. So we stepped to the side of the steep path, through the soft, springy mixture of soil and dry leaves and wild garlic.

The helicopter, which had been hovering over this area since we had set out from Giles's front door, made it troublesome to hear sounds at a distance, and it soon emerged that the woman who appeared to sit in the gentle valley below the path was yelling for our attention. She had fallen from far above; she needed help; she had called for the helicopter; could we help?

Giles got his phone out and wandered uphill to call mountain rescue. I stayed close to the woman and waved and waved, with big sweeping gestures, at the helicopter, which moved more closely overhead.

Soon Giles was back, with a policeman in tow. And what was her name? Louise, she said. She was very sorry - she had been beaten black and blue since she was six - she needed a light - were we going to arrest her? She had fallen. Honest. Not a one of them cared. Not a one. She was serving her suspended sentence, too, and being good. She couldn't walk. She needed help.

And the policeman and I helped her up, his radio burbled for a while below his tired sunlit face, and he helped her away as the helicopter, above, gradually moved downhill.

We gradually moved uphill towards the summit.

Niigata and light

House of light open sky, originally uploaded by yukito inoue.

Wow. A house of light. Beautiful idea.

Storm - Dark - LIGHT - Storm - Dark

Pigeon Point Lighthouse, originally uploaded by MumbleyJoe.

Lighthouses! Lots of them! Original impetus here, and a big database here, another here, and a mystery here. Just so you know.

Roni Horn

IMG_1679, originally uploaded by Caraes.

Following: a post I made to metafilter, just because.

In the early 1980s, Roni Horn travelled to Iceland and lived alone for a few months in the (supposedly haunted) lighthouse at Dyrhólaey. While there, she made rocky, earthy drawings. They formed the first volume of a currently incomplete, abstract encyclopedia of the country which has now progressed to include beautiful photographs of hot pools, glaciers, lava and rivers. A river's surface has appeared in different guises within a university. She has even made a library of water in a little Icelandic town. However, those currently in or near London can visit an exhibition in Tate Modern.

The stars of Horn's work are water and its surfaces, time, memory - and all the echoes thereof. The overall flavour is of purity and simplicity of form. There are deeply fascinating studies of the surface of the river Thames in London, and fascinatingly deep pieces of cast, annealed optical glass.

As we cannot step into the same river twice, so it is obvious that one beautiful face may not look the same if photographed a few seconds or days later. And just as we are usually very good at recognising anything familiar, time can blur our perception, and there is a chance that it may not be the same thing at all. Pairs of photos and objects explore this strange relationship between surface and substance, whether the photos are of a hot spring or a bird's head.

Horn also achieves beautiful effects by cutting together similar drawings onto a single large surface, further blurring the boundaries between one thing and another. And she is very good at causing you to doubt your perception of single objects. This, for example.