Helene P. @helenepertl - Tumblr Blog

Bath Times

I started a tinyletter about bath memories. You can subscribe here: tinyletter.com/helenepertl

There are nine parts, one sent out every week for the next couple of months. (ps. it’s safe for work, in case that’s a concern)

Waves

We were out swimming in Cornwall where she was visiting me in college. The water was cold and we hadn't planned to swim but she said ok and embraced the sea with an energy typical of her with high shouts and whoops 'hoo! hoo!' she jumped around in the water and then went under, swimming breast stroke up and down with the waves as they rippled the length of the long beach. My parents tell me that when I was born I immediately opened my eyes and looked around. I was her third home birth, and this time the midwife was delayed and didn't show up in time for the birth so it was just the three of us. She told me that day that the contractions were like big waves coming toward her. She saw them coming, took a breath and dove underneath before they could drag her under. It went quickly and I was born there in the bed in a tangle of white sheets. The past few years I am afraid of swimming with waves. I see them coming and retreat back to the shallow water. On a holiday recently Pierce goes into the water and lets the waves crash into him. He swims beyond them and calls to me but I can't go out there. I am eighteen and on a holiday in Barcelona after finishing secondary school. We wade into the water only up to our waists but somehow a wave grabs me and drags me under along the tiny stones of the waterbed. I proudly walk the beach in my bikini to find a lifeguard, blood running down the length of my right leg. I am not afraid of waves after that. In Cornwall I run into the sea choppy with waves that are taller than any I have seen. I'm in my underwear with my friends. Our heads bob up with the swell of them. Afterwards we learn how to crochet in a pub. We often drive up the coast and stop wherever we see a good beach. We go in to swim no matter how high the waves are. I run towards them. In Dingle we swim at Wine Strand where the waves come in at an angle. It is usually a sheltered cove - the waves don't know what to do in here, they slosh into all of the corners and the slope into the sea is too steep. I can see a wave coming towards us, it seems to be endlessly building momentum, dragging the water away from my legs towards itself and growing higher. It pulls me under and I tumble with the seaweed. I can't get out. It doesn't feel like a normal wave - it is dragging the water back into the sea and is taking me with it. My mouth and ears fill with sand. I cough it out as I claw my way back to the beach. Three people have set up chairs on one side by the rocks and watch us as we make our way back to the car. I wave at them and smile to let them know I'm ok but I'm not so sure. They don't seem concerned. My hair is matted with sand and I can feel it lodged at the back of my throat and nose. I hope that someday I will just click back into being ok with waves again. I want to use the method - seeing them and taking a breath, confidently diving underneath and emerging on the other side to breathe in again. Increasingly I feel close to panic about things that have never felt bad or difficult. I think about being inside an elevator and lean against the door with panic in my hands and a tight chest. Recently I was changing in a bathroom cubicle before yoga and was unable to unlock the door. I started panicking and hyperventilating. I banged on the door and shouted for someone to come. Finally I calmed enough to try the door again and opened it, my whole body covered in sweat and shaking. A yoga session had been going on just next door and I'm sure they had heard the banging. Someone would probably have come eventually. I don't think I've ever been in danger in an enclosed space or in the sea. I'm not sure what it is about these things specifically that make me panic. Maybe there is something unstoppable coming towards me. Maybe I am somewhere that I might not be able to get out of. I am afraid of dying - it is inevitable and makes me claustrophobic. Someday I will be enclosed and unable to get out. Someday a wave will drag me under and I will not come up on the other side. One day I was born and I opened my eyes immediately and looked.

Hilltops has been redesigned!

There are more panoramas to explore, new navigation tools, descriptions of the hilltops, a hidden sunset panorama looking west, and loads of other new things that I’ve forgotten because we’ve been working on this for about a year now. Pierce did most of the work, while I sipped coffee and made a few loading gifs, and he has done a really really nice job. We hope you like it.

Visit here >>>>> H I L L T O P S

My mother made this piece of sculpture when she was a student. She formed it around the shape of her hand. Holding it is the memory of holding her hand walking down the street. My younger brother held her other hand. Whoever got the hand with the ring on it was the lucky one that day. feels like the only thing worth holding in the world. It is so calming. opens a way to the past. My mother as a young student carving the wood, and her mother helping to sand the edges smooth. reminds me of how we are connected and how we are different. is a physical experience of the shape of a body - a small part giving an idea of the whole. If I were alone it would be the closest thing to human touch.

Helene wanted to open the door in the basement. She went upstairs to ask her grandmother. ‘Who locked that door? What’s in there?’

Pierce wrote me this really nice story for my birthday.

The Luas

The green line of the Luas, our tram service, was interrupted yesterday due to a power failure. According to the news it could have been caused by the lightning gracing our skies since lunchtime. I heard the thunder from my office, a windowless room in the interior of the building, followed by long showers of hailstones that shattered across our industrial roof. The sky had cleared by 5pm and the air was fresh and bright with a few heavy blustering clouds. The Luas journey is the first stretch of my commute; the second is a perilous cycle from town to home. I love cycling, but cycling in traffic is something else. I will the cars not to kill me and feel grateful for my life.

When we heard the Luas announcement, my co-worker and I decided to risk the weather and walk the 8km into town. We filtered down onto the tracks along with hundreds of others, stepped over the rails into the centre and started walking towards the vanishing point. In some places the tracks were enclosed by walls of green. The trees glistened after the day’s rain. We slowly passed by each stop that I’ve come to know from the window. It felt eerie, apocalyptic. Some people walked towards us from the other direction. Strange to pass each other like this. They had been where we were going.

As we got closer to town the tracks opened up onto the streets. We walked between waiting cars, traffic lights changing for the non-existent tram, and reached the last stop just in time for an announcement that the line was now restored to normal service. I got on the bike and cycled home on quiet streets.

There was another power failure this morning, just in time for my commute in the other direction. Alone, I walked towards the bus, cutting through Stephen’s Green, the trees unbelievable, everything in splendid growth. I stood at the bus stop for half an hour with twenty or so others. Five buses passed us and wouldn’t stop, full to the brim with commuters. After 9am now, I walked back through the park the way I had come, deciding to try my luck at an earlier stop. I called Pierce to tell him about the trees and picked up a coffee. There were fewer people waiting now. I stood for twenty minutes and got on the first bus that stopped, making it into the office to cheers from my co-workers. It had been on the news, an adventure for commuters.

It took me two and a half hours to get home yesterday, and two and a half hours to get in this morning. Inconvenient, lucky detours.

itsnobiggie

helenepertl

Where I want to be, but they’re all beautiful.

Hurry up Pierce.

Emo Court environs.

kinobites

Inherent Vice

Paul Thomas Anderson, 2014

Returned home and drank a tall cold glass of orange juice. There are films and then there are films, 9/10

helenepertl

This just came out in Ireland, so most people of the world may have already seen it or it might be out of the cinema, but if it's still on the big screen, don't miss it! It's so great, full of humour and heart and weirdness. We caught it on 35mm, which was extra lovely. The flashy colours, those warbling Pynchon names, shiny end credits, deadly acting from everyone. I immediately wanted to go again.

I started keeping a record of the films that I watch, along with very short opinionated reviews. I watched 16 films in January alone - is that a lot? Follow along if you want!

Kino Bites

Is this swimming? We call it swimming.

#sloe works #four times swimming

Cover Letter and Reply

Dear Sir, I am writing in application for the position. My extensive experience My keen interest Make me an ideal candidate for the position.

I have interpersonal skills Communication skills I am highly focussed Highly motivated A passion To apply my knowledge. I am fluent.

Confident

Excited

Very committed

More than willing Dear Helene,

If it suits you Without interview I will pay you.

Also

I have a house It stands empty Consider it yours.

It was built by my ancestors. He polished the wooden floors She made the bathroom tiles out of the clay from the riverbed On the banks of the river, willows

An overgrown orchard And an old horse that grazes in the fields.

I will not visit you there

You will never hear from me again

Sincerely, Your Boss

We have a new website >>> Sloe Works

The making of this is entangled with a winding drive across Ireland back up to Dublin after a week in the west, a list of names tossed into the air and written on an envelope, drinking a weekly coffee before our weekly meetings in Il Tavolo Verde, across the road and around the corner from our apartment in Madrid, eating geometric cakes while making notes in a geometric notebook, scorching autumn transitioning into warm winter, wearing sandals in November, excitedly sending and receiving emails from Pierce downstairs or upstairs in our apartment, bouncing my niece in front of the many mirrors of the apartment to make her laugh hysterically, Damhnait’s nursery songs on eternal loop, dreaming of the south west, of walking in the mountains or in a forest or just seeing vast expanses of green, thinking about all of the compound words that are made with the letters S and W and how well they fit, saltwater, stopwatch, southwesterly, spiralling stairways, windswept, getting obsessed, learning about the colours of the last few years by taking the eye dropper tool through countless photographs, the colours on a bright day, the colours on a dark muddy day, leaving it open. The old website has been quiet for awhile. Our jobs and living situation took us away from the print projects we had planned to do. In the meantime we made some online projects, and worked on small physical things, nothing has been for sale. Our aim for this year is to set up a studio space again - it has been missed. We have things ready and new projects to come. In the meantime, please take a look at the website that we made. It was a pleasure to put together and we’re quite proud of it.

Visit Sloe Works

#sloe works

We went to see about a house.

Happy 2015!

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