Up, up & away

I'm heading away for a day or two, making a short road trip with my three adult offspring. My youngest son is leaving New Zealand very soon and is likely to be away for a good many years. . . Post-grad. study in the UK is calling him; philosophy, alternative currencies and co-operative financial structures are calling him; engagement with the wider world is calling him. I will write more about this - what it means for him, what it means for me - in the next wee while. I will also write the story of the small boy Tomas with his passion for garden sprinklers and hovercrafts, and his nighttime travels on the back of a magic moss. 

Here now, it's time to finish packing the picnic basket and hunt out my wind-sheeter, camera batteries and sunblock. . . We'll be revisiting some of my trio's childhood spots around the Caitlins coastal native forest reserve. The weather report is fine; the tide will be low at noon. We're planning to make our way over, under, around and through Tautuku's timber orienteering course (first tackled fifteen years ago), will picnic on the beach at Cathedral Caves then meander through lush coastal forest to McLeans Falls. . . Supper will be early at a quaint little place called 'The Whistling Frog.'

It'll be good to get away, to soften a few rough edges. Have yourselves a fine few days, too. . .

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Clock is an enigmatic photographic image (archival pigment ink on hand-coated silver gelatin emulsion; 100% rag paper) gifted to the MANY AS ONE Christchurch appeal by Cape Town artist and friend, Stephen Inggs. Many thanks, Stephen - Big Ben's a beauty.  

VII

Clock - Stephen Inggs (South Africa)

 Archival pigment ink on hand-coated silver gelatin emulsion; 100% rag paper

200 x 200mm

Several new artworks are on their way and will be posted on the MaO page when I return from the Caitlins (Thursday or Friday). 

We and many other animals

". . . We and many other animals sleep and wake in cycles that repeat every twenty-four hours. Some ocean protists, dinomastigotes, luminesce when dusk comes, ceasing two hours later. So hooked are they into the cosmic rhythm of Earth that even back in the laboratory, away from the sea, they know the sun has set. Many similar examples abound because living matter is not an island but part of the cosmic matter around it, dancing to the beat of the universe.

Life is a material phenomenon so finely tuned and nuanced to its cosmic domicile that the relatively minor shift of angle and temperature change as the tilted Earth moves in its course around the sun is enough to alter life’s mood, to bring on or silence the song of bird, bullfrog, cricket and circada. But the steady background beat of Earth turning and orbiting in its cosmic environment provides more than a metronome for daily and seasonal lives. Larger rhythms, more difficult to discern, can also be heard. . . "

from What is Life?

Lynn Margulis & Dorion Sagan

Pg. 240 & 241

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Speaking of rhythms, I'm stepping outside my usual ones tomorrow and flying up to Wellington to celebrate my daughter's 25th birthday. . . Joy! I'll stay up there for a week and hope there may be an opportunity to meet one or two of our fellow bloggers (Mary? Tim?) while I'm pottering about in their city.

Alisaundre was all curiosity, knowing and dark, smoky blue eyes when she was born. It's incredible to me that she's turning twenty-five; so much life lived and so much yet to unfold... I was her age when she was born! On Tuesday I'll post a photograph and a poem I wrote for her when she was seven years old and "heaven had a lime-green sky."

XO