[Click on maps to view clearer images]

20 km²

Loneliness lies in the centre of the Kara Sea in the northern Arctic Ocean. This island is worthy of its name; it is cold and barren, trapped in pack ice all winter, with an average annual temperature of -16 degrees; at the height of summer the temperature sometimes rises to just over freezing. No one lives here. A former polar observatory has sunk into the snow and abandoned buildings doze in the belly of the bay, facing the narrow spit of land beyond the frozen marsh. A prehistoric dragon’s skeleton was found here. Some years later, a German submarine fired grenades at the weather station, destroying the barracks and killing the garrison. Firing at Lonely Island was one of the final manoeuvres of the German navy’s ‘Operation Wunderland’ in the Second World War. The observatory – one of Soviet Union’s largest – was rebuilt during the Cold War.

*Here is where I get interested*

The name that the Norwegian captain from Tromsø had given the island was forgotten – in Russian, Lonely Island became Solitude Island. The visitor to the island was now not a prisoner but a hermit, sitting out the years in an icy wasteland until he could return to the mainland a saint. The provisions that have been left behind are in deep freeze in the green wooden barracks, all crusted with ice, as are the instruments once used to measure air pressure, temperature, the direction of the wind, the height of the clouds and the radiation from the skies. The rain gauge lies buried in the snow. A photograph of a goateed Lenin hangs against palm-patterned wallpaper. The logbook contains precise records of the chief mechanic’s maintenance work: the levels of oil and petrol in every machine.

The final entry in red felt-tip spills over the confines of the columns: 23 November 1996. The evacuation order came today. Pouring the water out. Turned off diesel generator. The station is … The final word is illegible. Welcome to Lonely Island.

Text taken from Atlas of Remote Islands, Judith Schalansky
Pictures I edit from Google Maps

BACK. IN. THE. STORE. We. Are.

Stevie is closed until Thursday 16th day of June.

Finer things await.

Did you see the joy in their eyes?

One more is not in the photo, not yet born.

Do you have a family photo as evocative? Time does not wait, the heart however willing.

Time > Heart.

this warm spring morning,

the strand a blur of sandy light,

and the square white

of the lighthouse–separated from us

by the bay’s ultramarine

as if it were nowhere

we could ever go–gleams

like a tower’s ghost, hazing

into the rinsed blue of March,

our last outpost in the huge

indetermination of sea.

It seems cheerful enough,

in the strengthening sunlight,

fixed point accompanying our walk

along the shore. Sometimes I think

it’s the where-we-will-be,

only not yet, like some visible outcropping

of the afterlife. In the dark

its deeper invitations emerge:

green witness at night’s end,

flickering margin of horizon,

marker of safety and limit.

But limitless, the way it calls us,

and where it seems to want us

to come. And so I invite it

into the poem, to speak,

and the lighthouse says:

Here is the world you asked for,

gorgeous and opportune,

here is nine o’clock, harbor-wide,

and a glinting code: promise and warning.

The morning’s the size of heaven.

What will you do with it?

- Mark Doty

I am posting this poem to remember a rather idyllic state of mind, one that does not come quite often, when one grows wearier by the moment, requiring the weary to understand the moment, and yet hating the weariness. So much like this poem, you can get wearier by the moment, but then the moment comes, what with you do with it?

Stevie will be closed until 24th February, Thursday. See you very soon.

I’ve always had the vision of HY and I running an old store like the one above. If we had a more permanent place I would work taller and heavier shelves into the store and contain/collect more crap than what we currently have in the store. But I refrain from this now as we’ve moved our business from place to place many times and I know how that hurts. But look at those big, ancient shelves. Look at them glass and dust. Look at them define permanence and immovability. Presence that will not move is like the land you cannot leave.

General stores are becoming a thing of the past. Not Stevie!

I will finally share some of my antique lace collection, now that I’ve convinced HY I need another *old*cabinet just to hold and display them. This is currently my favorite cabinet in the store. They’re not much but they make a hell of a difference to the dream garment you have in your head. Or the DIY/craft project you’re keen to try. Or if you know how to cheat your way into weaving a little bit of history from creating your own. These antique lace come from France and Switzerland and some from Germany… I do feel as if antique lace worldwide has gone on a scavenger hunt with me…  I’m not sure who’s going to want to buy them in the way I do, but there’s no way the laces in the market today can compare.

So I obsess.

It almost seems like waiting is not for us humans. It can be exalted, it can be timed and it can be watched.

It is not for us humans. Unless we turn it into an art.

How much can you really tell of a person by the photos s/he takes?

We have one photo of food from the entire trip. One, and it was from a Chinese takeaway. I do not know why, apart from apparent conclusions of disinterest. But surely we have more than disinterest in what we put in our mouths…? I like taking photographs of buildings but not people. I like narrow roads and generally all kinds of roads. I like grasslands but not pastorals, they should have some wires in them. We both love dogs and cats obviously, especially care-less ones and boy are they all! I love light and dark in a small space. I love romance and try to avoid romanticism. I do not like asking passer-bys to help with a photo. For that I wait and wait for a need.

I also love the moment!

This is me.

And this is HY singing her gun song and shooting, ‘take my guns out of my holster’. Later after this she will always blow the smoke off her guns and tug them in her side pockets. Pistol-toting HY.