Ten

Ten out of Ten is a group exhibition celebrating the 10th anniversary of The Diversion Gallery at Grove Mill Winery, Marlborough. It opens at 2.00PM today. 

Images aren't up on the gallery website yet, but should be soon.  

Meet Murray

This is him as an adolescent, hard at his English lessons. 

I miss this bird. 

Dangerous spontaneity

Hmmm. Well, nothing may come of this morning's unanticipated madness, but I seized the moment and submitted abstracts to two conferences - the first goes under the heading Antarctic Visions: Cultural Perspectives on the Southern Continent and takes place in Tasmania at the end of June. The second (this is the one that's really taken me by surprise) is Oslo's International Polar Year (IPY) Science Conference (from what I can see, the design of the host building is based on the anatomy of icebergs and is quite beautiful).  

The submission date for Oslo was 20 January (yesterday's date) and - as seems so often to happen with me - I only found out about it at 10.00 this morning. 

The fact the globe is round is incredibly helpful at times like these. In this instance, it meant that 10.00AM on 21st in NZ was still hours before midnight the day before in Norway. It's all quite weird, really. Anyway, I rolled up my sleeves and pulled out the stops and when I finally pushed the Send key on my lapdog*, it was 12.20AM in Oslo (twenty minutes post-deadline). I was pleasantly surprised when the forgiving conference computer responded within seconds with a very polite Thank You for your submission followed by an email with the reassurance, Your abstract is in our system. Whew. I might just have made it...  

Being 'in the system' doesn't necessarily mean anything in terms of whether or not you actually end up going, of course. I'm not attached to any particular outcome but will admit that my fingers and toes are loosely crossed. Programme headings for both conferences are enticing and there are many reasons why I'd really love to participate.  

Invest wholeheartedly. Detach fully. This seems to be the only way to approach things these days. 

As a poet friend once suggested 'it's not difficult but it's not easy either.'   

*Thanks for the pet name, Pen

Ascend - descend - transcend

CB - from Hidden Depths series - Oil & liquin on paper, 2010  (detail)

The drawings and paintings I'm working on at the moment are explorations of perception and memory; contemplations on the ephemeral-yet-enduring nature of it all. Do we need to descend in order to ascend and - ultimately - transcend? 

><

"Men are admitted into Heaven not because they have curbed or governed their passions, or have no passions, but because they have cultivated their understandings" wrote William Blake 

Oh, Haiti

Light a candle.

Light many candles... 

Relief donations:

NZ

USA

South Africa 

UK

Australia

Canada

Also

Impact your world

Give a little

 

&

Wendy Smith's 'How your small donations can change our world' 

Washed up

yelp |yelp|

noun

a short sharp cry, esp. of pain or alarm : she uttered a yelp as she bumped into a table.*

kelp |kelp|

noun

a large brown seaweed that typically has a long, tough stalk with a broad frond divided into strips. Some kinds grow to a very large size and form underwater “forests” that support a large population of animals. 

><
* I've been 'bumping into tables' lately. 
Ouch. Sometimes it helps to stand on the sand and yelp to kelp.   

It depends how you look at it

Inside the stone the world is round.  A woman wears jeans and a clean white T-shirt.  There’s a canvas hammock in the garden, strung between the magnolia and a flaming red maple.  Her family’s washing hangs on the line, snapping its way towards freshness. A taste of summer.

 

Inside the stone the world is beige.  Flat. Bland. Pale.  The sun’s light is tepid, the sea runs a pale wet tongue across the beach leaving behind a faint tea stain.  The sand is a crushed malt biscuit.

Inside the stone the world is an apricot.  Wind loosens the ripe scent of sex and soft fruit, of wet and round and orange.  Men and women peel off their clothes, step out of their shoes.  They stride past work on cool, bare feet.

  

Inside the stone the world is a puzzle, a thousand pieces strewn across a landscape. A man is gathering them up, constructing a scene from the inside out.  They remain out of focus until he picks them up, transforming at once from flat and grey, to monumental, three-dimensional structures; his dream of a different life keeps him captive.

 

Inside the stone puddles are pewter ovals, sleeping.

 

Inside the stone is a black world, a place with neither windows nor doors. The woman searches for a trapdoor, any means by which she might escape the darkness.  But there are only concrete walls and wooden floorboards that threaten to split.  She can smell the sticky stench of bitumen, the singe of a hot, high fire.

 

Inside the stone is a soft wax world.  Children know the silent slide of honey.  They walk with candles; lights tilted to flatter the forest, they highlight moss and lichen, outline fallen pine needles with a subtle edge of gold. 

 

Inside the stone the world is populated by flocks of primordial birds.  They burrow their way out of the dark soil in our gardens and look us straight in the eye.  Their skin is damp and pink as a Desiree potato.  They carry the dirt of the world on their backs, feed on mass nouns and ripe plums.

 

Inside the stone the world is a bulletin board. Sharp corners stab and cut. People and events are paper cut-outs, underlined, trimmed, pinned to its surface with cold stainless steel pins.  Disturb the layers to see what lies behind or beneath and everything will turn to dust. Take heed. The printers’ pigments will leave telltale stains on your fingers.

 

Inside the stone is a trapped storm.

 

Inside the stone a spill of full-cream milk spreads across a linoleum kitchen floor, splashes down the back doorstep and out into the garden.  It flows down the slope, past the exuberant yellow peonies and flowering cherries, gathering speed and doubling in volume as it travels. By the time it has crossed the neighbourhood boundaries, it is a wide white river; the children and untethered lambs of the suburbs run along its banks sploshing, stretching and bending, drinking their fill.

 

Inside the stone a miniature narcissus threatens to pull up its roots.  It shakes its head, catapults its scent across the sprawling grey of the city.  Perfume drizzles down street lamps, drips onto sidewalks, sticks to the dusty flanks of buildings.  Industry blushes and for a moment steps out of the shadows.

 

There is a universe inside a stone.

CB 2007 

Stone poems

2010 & an old mud house looking to take on something new

Naseby is a tiny historic gold-mining village that grew up in the 1860s during NZ's gold-rush days. It's about an hour and forty minutes North West of Dunedin, in the Maniototo region of Central Otago - a landscape of dramatic temperament, few people and high, wide skies. 

I've just spent a night up there, seeing friends and checking up on the old mud house. I had big dreams for this place when we first met. It looked its age - how could it not after a hundred and forty seven years - but stood its ground with spark and attitude. Fixing it up would require a lot of hours and elbow grease, but none of it felt un-doable. There'd be something thrilling about bringing the old place back to life. (And the shabby, dilapidated courtyard was calling out for clematis and grape vines, espaliered pear and olive trees, a great big banquet table, benches, lanterns, a brazier - company...) 

 

The mud house was the town's apothecary in its early days and has since played the role of draper's store, stationery shop and South Island farmer's holiday home. I was reminded again this visit of my first-love intention to set it up as a creative exchange space; a retreat where I and others could meet away from our usual pulls, for the purpose of writing, painting, talking, brainstorming, or being silent. I still visualize it serving the wider community as a kind of atelier or meeting place, whose primary purpose would be to foster interdisciplinary, inter-continental collaboration, research, discovery, conversation. 

I've drawn these ideas up and spoken of them before, but not here... The concept is both embryonic and pretty much fully-formed. I wonder - does this come across as audacious or fanciful? It might. But is that a reason not to speak? 

Is persistent, heartfelt intention enough of a foundation to build on? What responsibilities would a communal space like this bring with it? What challenges? What far-reaching connections and joys? (If you'd like to have a wander through the mud house, you can visit it here. I'd be really keen to dialogue about this potential, should the concept of such a space resonate with others out there?) 

Interestingly, during this brief overnight visit, I was reading through the Guest Book and came across an entry from a recent visitor. She'd written 'Great place! Ever thought of turning it into an artists' retreat?' 

The world works in mysterious ways. 

><  

Here's to a year that's '2000ft above worry level.' 

If and when worries come along (as they are wont to do), may you find all the tent pegs, can openers, mosquito screens, books, antihistamines, Russian fudge, picnic cutlery, fishing rods, swimming togs, friends, flags, golf balls and starched white bowling outfits you need to navigate your way through. 

Green

On Christmas day, I drove out to Aramoana - 'gateway to the sea' - and was surprised to find a green beach, waves foaming like hot spinach soup. 

Each time I go walking out there, I know I'm in for a different experience; this time, the sea had delivered up a surreal and extravagant carpet of frilly green seaweed. A solitary oyster catcher was having a feast, his red-pencil beak dipping in and out of the spongy squelch, his small black head thrown back every now and then to gulp and swallow. (What bird can equal an oyster catcher in earnestness and attitude?) 

I walked the length of the beach several times, soaking up the smelly pleasures of salt and kelp and slowly rising heat, my bare feet coming to grips with a whole new vocabulary of sound and texture.  

Forty-eight Christmases

... that's how many (or how few, depending on how one looks at it) Christmases I've been around for; add this year and we're looking at a total of forty-nine. Forty-nine's a fine number - I like the frank shape, red sound and nuts-and-bolts reality of it. Seven times seven. This, too, has a lively ring, redolent of promise. A tree that age has roots that reach a fair way down, respectably weathered bark, a crown capable of holding its shape in a headwind. 

Our dear friend Chrissie, whose triumphant memorial service was yesterday, was quaintly eccentric about her age. She was well-read, not least in matters numerological and esoteric so her evasiveness/discomfort/playfulness about her age has been a tad mystifying. We discovered yesterday that she'd given herself poetic license to be between one and ten years younger than she was. Good on her. We share a writer friend, who could be in her early sixties but is in fact in her mid-seventies, and who gives newspapers and literary journals a different age every time they interview her and want to know how old she is. 'What's it got to do with them?', she says, 'It's up to me how old I am. I tell them whatever I feel like telling them on the day... ' Last time there was an article about her in The Oddity (the Otago Daily Times - our local rag), she'd boldly claimed the number sixty-four.        

I'd intended to post a few Christmas recipes today since I've been cooking all day, but here I am talking about numbers and defying age. If time allows it, I'll write up a couple of recipes tomorrow or the next day. Christmas is virtually upon us - I'm still running to catch up with the calendar. I did have the happiest time in the kitchen today, however, baking up a storm with my two sons (both in their early twenties) in celebration of friends and in anticipation of their older sister's return home from the North Island. It's a joy to have all three offspring back in Dunedin for the holidays.  

D, T & I cycled through reggae, Bob Dylan, Ray LaMontagne, Preisner and Iron & Wine whilst making roast capsicum & olive compote (delicious - with anchovies, garlic, fresh mint, thyme & basil), a rhubarb & raspberry compote, dark chocolate & guinness cake, boterkoek (Dutch recipe - a family tradition), spicy roast nuts & pretzels... now this is a heavenly mix. (I made my way to David Lebovitz's recipe from Miriam Levine's blog - thank you Miriam. Thank you, David.). This is the kind of treat you'll want to munch your way through in large quantities and at immodest speed.)... What else did we make? Oh, I know - a dark chocolate and whisky fruit cake. 

I was up with the bellbirds this morning - they wake at around 5 these solstice days - and the last of the light has just dissolved the edges of the peninsula hills. It's bedtime for me, too. 

Earlier this evening, while I was filling the birds' coconut chalice with sugar water, I found my thoughts turning to those of you who live in the Northern hemisphere where the nights are long and the ground is now thick with snow. How very different our Christmases will be. I send warm wishes your way. 

Warm thanks to all of you who pop in & engage in conversation here. 

~<   Wishing you a peaceful, joy-filled Christmas   >~

Candles & french fries, boston terriers & choral music, angels and cornflower blue...

To know and to love: the same thing - Theodore Roethke

 

C h r i s s i e   E l l e n   M a h o n e y

- - - 9 August 1953 - 17 December 2009 - - -

Harnessing the power of the unfinished

As Christmas approaches with its welcome invitation to don my stained old kitchen apron and start rustling up the family's festive favourites, I take special pleasure in the annual tradition of climbing the ladder and stringing the lights. Each year, I braid my studio's 'spine' with tiny blue and white LEDs. It lights up more like a tall, skinny lighthouse or a mast on a boat than a Christmas tree, but that's part of its charm and I love it.

For some time now, I've had an urge to bring the sea into the studio and 'therein to dwell.' This is not a new impulse. An appreciation of water - whether fresh or salty - references a number of different things, amongst these the near-absence of this element in my natal chart, a simple love for  the ocean and an as-yet unfulfilled wish to dive in it - and I don't mean the bobbing, snorkeling kind. I'm lucky enough to have done my fair share of that. I mean the kind that requires dry suits and tanks and breath-taking plunges into deep, dark waters. (This is a metaphor, of course, and yes, life is letting me know there's work to be done before this year is up.)

An oversized painting (10 X 10ft) has been sloshing about in me for some time and wants out. Chances are it could be a messy process but we all know that squalls inevitably make way for calm. Like the ocean or psyche, the environment of a painting is tidal. Certainly, it is my hope that this one's water will ebb and flow, the spaces and particles in it opening and closing, linking up and separating, drifting in close where appropriate and otherwise cutting the ties that bind in favour of risking a ride on a different current... I'd like it to be an environment that can embrace its own rhythm, one in which heavy objects find their buoyancy and float instead of sink. Darkness and light will visit, ruffling the surfaces without clouding the depths. There will be rest and rebellion, a piece at peace with sometimes spilling over its own edges. 

This work will no doubt present me with a few challenges. If it brings me to my knees, so be it. It may never reach completion, depending on what completion means. Right now, though, I feel energized at the thought of spending the coming year in conversation with whatever tussle and magic's resident in this stable-yet-mutable universe - oops, I mean, painting. My hunch is it has things to teach me that will require me to stick at it, to stay close at hand. 

This morning, whilst doing my blog read-around, I came across a marvelous site I'd not encountered before. What a remarkable community this is. There's so much good will and generosity out there... When you get a chance, do visit Edward Byrne whom I thank warmly for his introduction to Louise Glück in the following piece from her collection, Proofs and Theories: Essays on Poetry (Ecco, 1994) ---   

“... I do not think that more information always makes a richer poem. I am attracted to ellipsis, to the unsaid, to suggestion, to eloquent, deliberate silence. The unsaid, for me, exerts great power: often I wish an entire poem could be made in this vocabulary. It is analogous to the unseen; for example, to the power of ruins, to works of art either damaged or incomplete. Such works inevitably allude to larger contexts; they haunt because they are not whole, though wholeness is implied: another time, a world in which they were whole, or were to have been whole, is implied. There is no moment in which their first home is felt to be the museum. A few years ago, I saw a show of Holbein drawings; most astonishing were those still in progress. Parts were entirely finished. And parts were sketched, a fluent line indicating arm or hand or hair, but the forms were not filled in. Holbein had made notes to himself: this sleeve blue, hair, auburn. The terms were other—not the color in the world, but the color in paint or chalk. What these unfinished drawings generated was a vivid sense of Holbein at work, at the sitting; to see them was to have a sense of being back in time, back in the middle of something. Certain works of art become artifacts. By works of art, I mean works of any medium. And certain works of art do not. It seems to me that what is wanted, in art, is to harness the power of the unfinished. All earthly experience is partial. Not simply because it is subjective, but because that which we do not know, of the universe, of mortality, is so much more vast than that which we do know. What is unfinished or has been destroyed participates in these mysteries. The problem is to make a whole that does not forfeit this power.”

The tender cursive of waves

NOTHING

from EATING FIRE 

by Margaret Atwood

Nothing like love to put blood

back in the language,

the difference between the beach and its

discrete rocks & shards, a hard

cuneiform, and the tender cursive

of waves; bone & liquid fishegg, desert

& saltmarsh, a green push

out of death. The vowels plump

again like lips or soaked fingers; and the fingers

themselves move around these

softening pebbles as around skin. The sky's

not vacant and over there but close

against your eyes, molten, so near

you can taste it. It tastes of 

salt. What touches

you is what you touch.

Gooseberry jewels

Fun in the kitchen with G while D's away with the birds; he and his camera are happily ensconced on a chair a foot or two from the feeder...

'If you never did

you should. 

These things are fun 

and fun is good' 

... wrote the insightful Dr.Seuss. 

Visit his exuberant site... with or without your children; there's enough fun 'n' stuff there to keep everyone entertained for ages. 

Thanks for the goosegems, Pen x

For the birds

My parents - G & D - are out from the UK at the moment; here for another ten days or so. Earlier this week, my SA cousin's daughter P surprised us with a text from her Magic Bus to say she'd be arriving in Dunedin on Wednesday and would love a bed for a night or three - or five? Yes. Yes, I said. Life's calling for wriggle-room and spontaneity these days. My eccentric old house is bulging at the seams and enjoying every minute of it.

And the birds have never had it so good; dear Father (a bird nut if ever there was one, bless him) tops up their drinking chalice with sugar water twice a day, pounds raw peanuts to a pulp for the small-beaked wax-eyes and finches, talks to the hoardes from the front steps, whistles their little riffs back at them... 

The tuis brush our shoulders when they come down to feed these days and the wax-eyes stay right where they are on the bird-feeder when we decide it's time for a top-up. 

The garden footpath's taking a bit of a hammering with all this activity - sunflower seed husks and no-holds-barred guano attesting to the birds' delight. It's fast becoming a hazard patch of exuberant black and white. 

Bring it on, I say. Bring it on.

; )

  

Hidden Depths

HIDDEN DEPTHS

A Caselberg Trust fund-raising event at Portobello Aquarium - 7.00PM, Thursday 3 December (tomorrow).

I'll be talking about art, science, Euclidian geometry, porcelain bell vessels, ice, music, invisible tides, katabatic winds, uni-cellular aquatic organisms and a red polar haven (amongst other things). I'm not the world's funniest person, but I am passionate about Antarctica and hope that by the end of the hour you'll be feeling that way, too. 

The Caselberg Trust does terrific work in support of New Zealand's artists and writers. Please come along - the more the merrier. 

An admission fee of $20.00 includes wine and seafood nibbles. (Door sales - or you can book ahead of time by phoning the NZ Marine Studies Centre on 479 5826)