Tasty Little Morsels

Dehydrated mouse brains*

are not my favourite snack.

Not my type

of party food

I’m likely to

turn up my nose

and swiftly give them back.

Even if they’re salted

I cannot stand the taste

so giving me these tidbits

will only be a waste

The fact that they’ve

been extricated

from a rodent’s head

only makes them worse

you see

to know a mouse is dead

in order to provide me

with this morsel

of good health.

I’ll never touch them,

No not me

I’ll use my meagre wealth

to dine on things

deemed more nutritious

and definitely

less suspicious

than these bitter,

bumpy, crunchy lumps

which I’ll leave behind

for other chumps.

If inadvertently devoured

one’s mouth is

permanently soured.

But worse than that

I’ve come to find

these little brains

seep into yours

and infiltrate your

point of view and

unsuspecting mind.

If you don’t believe me

try if you dare

for I know you’ll succumb

to a terrible scare

when you waken

after a turbulent night

to see cats and cheese

in a whole new light.

*aka…walnuts!

Remembrance Day

Struggling to make headway writing anything other than indecipherable scribble in my journal on the bus trip to Hobart yesterday due to the constant bumping and thumping, I decided to have a break and take in the scenery instead. It was a rather opportune moment, as the bus had just pulled off the highway to let a passenger off in Ross. Not until we headed off again did I realise what the time was, so on this day when the faithful had taken time out to remember those who had left this little country town and not returned, I couldn’t let the moment pass.

Remembrance Day

No minute’s silence

as the bus passes

the handful gathered

with bowed heads

at the cenotaph

in the heart of town.

No respect

for those long dead.

No time

to spare a thought.

No pause

in the race from

here to there.

Disregarding

all but the schedule.

The passenger

had walked the aisle

at two minutes to eleven,

stepped off

and just as quickly

the bus sucked in its door,

cocooning us

at one minute to,

pulled away from the kerb

and dared to disturb

the reverence

as it brushed past the diggers

with medalled chests

right on eleven.

No minute’s silence

No respect

for those long dead

No pause

in the race

from here to there.

The Grinning Mountain

Don’t you just love the quirkiness of Nature? I’m sure there are moments when Nature conspires to take us by surprise when we’re least expecting it. Put up the blind this morning after a yucky rainy day yesterday to see the mountain covered in snow. Hadn’t realised it was that cold, I mean we are into the last month of Spring after all, but then again this is Tasmania, so with camera in hand thought I’d head out to see if I could get a decent shot.

Didn’t have to go far. Heading for the bush, there staring down at me, taking me completely off guard, was the biggest, craziest grin. Cracked me up. I was tossing up whether the mountain was laughing at us mere mortals below who’ve been wondering when Spring would really show itself and give us a bit more warmth, or whether it was beckoning us to come and play.

By the sound of the steady stream of cars heading up the mountain, I think many must have forsaken their normal routine and responded to the call, a good choice I reckon.

Whether an untimely fall of snow, spectacular sunrise or sunset, invigorating bushwalk, cascading waterfall, the beautiful aroma as I mow under the lemon scented eucalypt, the greeting of a blue wren on my window sill while having my morning cuppa, an echidna who’s ventured far off course and is exploring my backyard, these things and countless more bring a smile to my face.

They take me out of my rigid little world of seemingly important things that insist on being done, and remind me there is a crazy creator out there who delights in giving us pleasure, who wants us to relate to him, and if he has to smile down at me from the mountain to get my attention, well, I guess that’s just the way he’s going to do it.

Picking up the Rhythm

 It’s amazing what a plastic barrel, rusting table frame, metal and plastic pipes, odd shaped pieces of metal and a few bits of wire can produce when seen in a new context. Discarded objects can become ‘found’ objects, and many such items have worked their way into installation art pieces over the years, sometimes to the bemusement of onlookers, but also with great appreciation by others.

 This assortment of unrelated objects, fashioned at one time or another for a specific purpose, had since outlived their usefulness, but instead of heading for landfill were given the chance to become something entirely different in a fifteen minute pop up performance just before sunset in the centre of our village.

Assembled in a few minutes, and looking nothing like a musical instrument, that’s what it became. Brandishing a collection of sticks picked up off the ground the construction came to life as percussionists aplenty let loose. From toddlers to sixty somethings, inhibitions were quickly set aside as the tapping, banging, and scraping gathered momentum and a syncopated rhythm took hold from what started as a seemingly meaningless noise.

The inevitable foot tapping, jigging, dancing and running couldn’t be denied as the somewhat primal activity built to a crescendo and ended with a cheer. It really doesn’t take much to create a moment which has the possibility to build community within a group of people, no matter how diverse. Too often we forget how to have fun and simply enjoy each other’s company.

The experience got me thinking about breathing new life into the old, not in terms of recycling man made materials, but in terms of my own purpose. My interpretation of the purpose for my existence on this planet has determined the direction I’ve taken, and the decisions I’ve made as to how to care for my body, soul and spirit, and how to use the things within my control to achieve that purpose.

As the decades pass you can tend to spend more time looking back than looking forward, assessing your life and whether you’ve done the best with whatever you had at your disposal. We all go through many stages where we fulfil different roles. In my adult life I’ve been a teacher, a wife and mother, as well as taken on several different jobs, and as those roles have changed I’ve learned to put aside parts of who I am as a new me has evolved.

Not that those things have lost their usefulness, they’ve simply become part of the fabric of who I am, to be drawn on when needed, maybe not in the way they once were, but in new ways in new situations, making room for new possibilities. The years might be passing, too quickly it feels at times, but to consider there is still much to look forward to if I apply my life experiences creatively to the next lot of changes or challenges in store, gives me hope.

The future doesn’t have to be constantly reinvented, no matter how much what we once did has been replaced or superceded by the newer, better, brighter. Even if no one else likes the fact I prefer writing things down with a pen on paper instead of an ipad, doesn’t mean I’m past my use by date. And despite the fact I’m part of the technologically challenged generation which was dragged kicking and screaming into the 21^st century, bamboozled by electronic gizmos, believe it or not, I can still be useful.

I might not be fulfilling the purpose I had in the past, but my life still has purpose. It might be at a slower pace, but hey, if the tune and the rhythm are unfamiliar, it could just be the start of something new.

Fire and Ice

Interesting that at a time when I’m attempting and producing very little writing, my mind is actually in a much more creative space than usual. I seem to be heading down a different road at the moment though. For years I’ve been taking my camera with me almost everywhere I go, clicking away at images which capture my attention or imagination, but as they mount up in their files on the computer, and the occasional one turns itself into a framed enlargement, I still wonder what to do with them all.

Gone are the days of filling photo albums, and my snaps are not good enough to turn into a photography career, but there seems to be little point in accumulating them ad infinitum, other than going back to look at them, reminding myself of that moment when I stood in wonder at what was before me. Actually, I guess that is the point.

Such was a morning last month, definitely not one during August as we’ve broken all rainfall records here and seen very few sunny days. I woke just a little later than I would have liked, to the most brilliant sunrise. It was a freezing winter morning, but as soon as I dragged myself out of bed I was kicking myself for not doing so about ten minutes earlier. The sky was on fire, every shade of orange you could think of, but of course in the few minutes it took me to get dressed and race out of the house to my usual sunrise photo taking spot, all had changed. The sun was already peeping over the horizon, the brilliance had dissipated and the moment was gone, so I trekked off on my usual morning walk.

 

All was not lost though, for as I headed through the centre of the village I was treated with a rare sight. Our massive gnarly old Village Green tree made up for what I had missed by turning on its own light show, bathed in the vibrant morning sun. The sheer beauty of it stopped me in my tracks, I’ve lived here more than eighteen years and I’ve never witnessed it before, but its transformation blew me away.

Not to be outdone, my early morning walk also offered up a mob of deer leisurely wandering along the street before heading back into the bush for the day, and then another surprise, one befitting the freezing temperature. I came across a couple of frozen puddles, one with ice so thick it was almost white. Like a molten glass sculpture, it just begged to be noticed. It never ceases to amaze me how the most simple and unassuming things, especially in nature, can provide images so stunning that you can’t help but stand in awe. Well, I can’t anyway.

 

And it is this more visual journey I find myself on of late, wondering how to combine my growing collection of photos with my writing in some sort of creative way. Still working that one out, but having the brain ticking over thinking of possible projects is an enjoyable process.

I’m forever fluctuating between my own fire and ice moments, times when I’m fired up, my imagination is engaged and I’m actually producing something, and those long drawn out bleak periods when it feels like another creative thought is never going to emerge from the recesses of my brain.

What I can do in those moments though, is to continue observing, absorbing, and reflecting on the world around me, capturing moments with the camera if necessary, for in doing so I’m storing up a wealth of images, memories and emotional responses which will simply have to find expression in some form or other. 

A Heck of a Wend!

Well, where do I even begin to debrief the past week. After looking on from the sidelines for some seventeen years as friends and visiting artists of diverse varieties gathered here for Faith and the Arts summer schools, and for the past few years for the mid year Artists Retreats, my time had finally come. From Friday evening through the next four days, affectionately dubbed our ‘wend’ for want of a better name as it was a longer than long weekend, a bunch of dancers, painters, drawers, poets, writers, singers, musos, weavers, performers brushed up against each other, bounced off each other, embraced each other, encouraged, collaborated, cheered, cried and laughed together.

Seeing what the process had released in others in the past in terms of their inner creative journey, and the expression and output that had produced, the fidgeting on my office chair reached a point where the urge to take the plunge into the creative pool just had to be obeyed. With no specific plan in mind of what I wanted to achieve with my writing, the possibilities were both non existent and limitless.

What I wasn’t expecting, was that the sharing from other artists of their own stories set off something inside me, evoking responses which took on poetic form of a style I hadn’t played with much before. The somewhat misguided desire when writing is to say something big and profound and so meaningful that everyone will hang off your every word and proclaim you to be the genius you always knew you were (slight delusion but we can all dream!). What resonates with me though as I read and is so obvious anyway, the most profound images whether visual, written in prose, poetry or song, are usually the most simple, those drawn from our own everyday experiences.

Taking those everyday images and situations, seeing them from a different angle, presenting them in a way maybe not considered before, highlighting the little details, that’s when they have the potential to take on new meaning and the power to affect us deeply.

One poem produced during the retreat came out of what one artist shared of how we tend to compartmentalise our lives, seeing each part separate and to be dealt with in isolation, rather than allowing all the parts to interact and influence each other in a more holistic way. Entitled Boxed it ended up turning into a 3 metre long poem installation utilizing boxes of various shapes and sizes, something I would never have contemplated before, other than simply presenting poetry in written or spoken form. It's a bit hard to read in picture form, so you'll have to make do with just the verse.

Life of many

disparate parts

each one a part of

each one apart from

the whole.

Separated

Four walls

a top and bottom

neat and tidy.

A box for work

and family

and one that says

I get my way

with home and kids

and TV box

school box, tool box

car and let’s go far box

on our frantic holiday

In that teeny tiny box

left over just for play.

Kick aside the sick box

with its soggy

cardboard sides.

Hide it behind the well box

with the faith box

and the doubt box

and the money box

which empties out

far quicker

than it should.

The reject box

looms large

but the friends box

settles in the midst

to remind us

life is good.

Boxes lined up

row on row

easy to handle

one by one

but hard to carry

stacked one

on one on one on one.

Buried under heavy boxes

cracking under pressure boxes

really isn’t very wise

try not to

Compartmentalise.

Lift the lid

and you might find

your opened boxes

spill their guts

and dare

to even open up

your mind.

Intertwine

Let the parts combine

Let tentacles

reach out

to places where they’ve never been

Let them touch

forbidden territory

Seek out

hidden truths

Discover waiting sights

as yet unseen.

Take apart the boxes

those rigid

separate boxes

and let their

tangled contents

make you whole.

Look the Other Way

I’ve lived in two old houses with pink and grey bathrooms, not the greatest interior decorating statement, and I wondered at the time what inspired such a colour combination to be foisted on countless tenants over the decades who had to groan daily at being surrounded by such a drab décor.

My answer arrived one day some years later. I don’t know why I hadn’t noticed it before, and I saw it again this morning. Those exact shades of pink and grey can be found in many a sunrise or sunset. In the sky they are beautiful. In a bathroom they are not.

I have copious amounts of sunrise and sunset photos, those forays at the start and end of the day trying to capture the quintessential moment of the sky in all its glory. The attraction is natural. We are drawn to these short lived spectacles of beauty, some bold and awe inspiring, others diffused in subdued pastels which greet the day or say goodnight softly and gently.

Today was such a morning. Not a breath of wind, the only sound the chirping of birds and the occasional vehicle heading up or down the mountain on the main road. With a complete cover of grey cloud the only evidence of the sun’s appearance was the faintest sliver of molten gold and pink. Heading away from the sun on my walk the grey clouds were tinged with the palest pink, a deft touch but enough to soften and warm the steely grey.

This morning’s sunrise may have been soft and mellow, but yesterday’s revealed another gem when I took the time to look in the opposite direction. The usually dark mountain range was awash with coloured light, even the stately gum’s mottled trunk was picking up the reflected light to great effect.

Which turned my thoughts to another moment captured last week as I headed home just as the sun was setting. The western sky was aglow, but what grabbed my attention was the colour reflected in the eastern sky, highlighting the remnant of a rainbow on the horizon. I was fascinated. Rarely had I seen such a beautiful sight when looking away from the main attraction.

It was a reminder to me that sometimes the source of light, both physical and metaphorical, as attractive as it might be, is not all there is to see. Focus on it alone and you can find yourself stumbling blindly along as the details around you are lost. Instead, see it as a way of illuminating your surroundings and the response can be very different. Suddenly you can see where you’re going.