Margaret A & oranges

A is for Atwood. (She's currently traveling the world promoting her latest marvel, Year of the Flood.)

Things have been absurdly full-on lately. 

If we were to describe life as a theatre and us as players, well... suffice to say that just about everyone I know is having a challenging time of it right now. It feels as though we're being repeatedly asked to strip ourselves bare, to question our value systems, inspect old adages and safety nets. At times like this, human impulse can lead us to run for the dressing-up box or the attic room. Or perhaps to dig for answers in the garden. (I've done a bit of each lately.) While this description is in no way adequate for what's happening for people on both an intimate and grand scale right now, it's a tiny indication as to where my head and heart have been lately. (And might explain why my blog posting's been a bit thin on the ground...) 

Last night I stayed up later than I should have, re-re-re-reading Eating Fire. (This is one of several volumes of poetry that live beside my bed. I pull 'Margaret' into bed with me often. She inspires me both to want to write more and to stop writing altogether. Both effects are catalyzing.) 

On a prosaic note, last weekend I made Caramelized Oranges for a birthday banquet (recipe follows at end of post) and mid-mouthful, remembered Margaret's poem Against Still Life. Here it is for your pleasure -

Against Still Life

Orange in the middle of a table:

It isn't enough

to walk around it

at a distance, saying

it's an orange:

nothing to do

with us, nothing

else: leave it alone

I want to pick it up

in my hand

I want to peel the

skin off; I want

more to be said to me

than just Orange:

want to be told

everything it has to say

And you, sitting across

the table, at a distance, with

your smile contained, and like the orange

in the sun: silent:

Your silence

isn't enough for me

now, no matter with what

contentment you fold

your hands together; I want

anything you can say

in the sunlight:

stories of your various

childhoods, aimless journeyings,

your loves; your articulate

skeleton; your posturings; your lies.

These orange silences

(sunlight and hidden smile)

make me want to

wrench you into saying;

now I'd crack your skull

like a walnut, split it like a pumpkin

to make you talk, or get

a look inside

But quietly:

if I take the orange

with care enough and hold it

gently

I may find

an egg

a sun

an orange moon

perhaps a skull; center

of all energy 

resting in my hand

can change it to

whatever I desire

it to be

and you, man, orange afternoon

lover, wherever

you sit across from me

(tables, trains, buses)

if I watch 

quietly enough

and long enough

at last, you will say

(maybe without speaking)

(there are mountains

inside your skull

garden and chaos, ocean

and hurricane; certain 

corners of rooms, portraits

of great-grandmothers, curtains

of a particular shade;

your deserts; your private

dinosaurs; the first

woman)

all I need to know:

tell me

everything

just as it was

from the beginning.

From Selected Poems I: Poems Selected and New 1965-1975 by Margaret Atwood. Copyright © 1987 by Margaret Atwood. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. 

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What can one possibly add to that - except, perhaps, a bowlful of bright, syrupy circles...

Here then is the recipe... these last for days in the fridge and are best accompanied by loved ones, jazz and thick Greek yoghurt.

Caramelized Oranges 

8 medium juicy oranges

225gm castor sugar

2 Tblspns Cointreau (or whisky or brandy - alcohol optional) 

* Thinly pare the rind from half the oranges and cut into very thin julienne strips.  

* Place in a small saucepan and cover with water. 

* Cook till tender (5 mins or so). Drain and rinse under cold water.

*  Cut away pith from the oranges, slice into thin rounds and arrange in a serving dish (reserve any juice). 

 

* Place sugar and 300ml water in a heavy-based saucepan. Heat gently till the sugar has dissolved. Bring to the boil and boil till caramel-coloured. (Watch it carefully at this stage as the syrup can change from caramelized to burnt very quickly)

* Remove the pan from the heat, add 3 Tblspns water (there will be much joyous  sputtering). 

* Scatter rind over the oranges and drizzle the caramel syrup into the dish. 

* Chill overnight, or at least for a few hours. 

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For those wondering why I've not been corresponding at my usual rate or via my usual media... All is well; I'll be back in that particular saddle soon. 

There is a place

There is a place 

between uphill

and down, on the edge 

of dread

and dance. 

Don't be fooled. 

There are many ways 

to make things 

and people appear

and disappear

truths we cannot know

of the curious shape 

of hills, the fading 

yellow light.

There is, it seems

an uncertain time 

of day when the sea 

is in the sky

and the moon 

can be heard listening 

in the belly

of the local stone. 

CB 2007

The Muse (Re)turns - charcoal & conte on paper, CB 2009

Constellation

Samoa - collection point in Dunedin

Here’s a small way in which we can help.  A group of  Samoan students at Otago Uni have offered their flat as a collection point for goods to be sent to Samoa. Light clothing (for hot temps), sheets, towels, pots, utensils, plates, etc... would be much appreciated. 

Pacific Blue is flying whatever is given to Samoa free of charge; once in Samoa, it will be distributed by the Red Cross. 

 

If you have anything that you are able to pass on to this community, please drop it off at 33 Hyde St, Dunedin - the earlier, the better as the plane is scheduled to fly at the end of this week (16th). 

Thanks +++. 

Wondering

When in doubt, opt for the astonishing?

Conference for Humanity

~~~ CONFERENCE FOR HUMANITY 2009 ~~~

Christchurch Arts Centre, Worcester Road, Chch. 

& 

Christ College School of Trans-Himalayan Wisdom

Long Bay Road, Banks Peninsula. 

Friday 9 - Monday 12 October 2009

Meditation temple - Christ College for Trans-Himalayan Wisdom, Banks Peninsula

Photograph: Lawson Bracewell 2009

Topics for discussion include:  

Harmlessness: A Social Organization Principle (Dr. Dorothy Riddle)

A Working Model for Public Health (Dr. Ruth Richard)

The Soul as Magician (Lawson Bracewell)

How Maori Wisdom Shapes the Future (Rev. Maurice Gray)

Co-operative Business Models (Margo Lips-Wiersma)

Questions of Balance (Claire Beynon)

 A L L    W E L C O M E

Reverberations

I'm contemplating a major change in lifestyle for 2010. Everything seems to be pointing towards this, confirming the thought at least as a sensible one. On some level, there's a note of urgency about this, while on another, it feels like a straightforward and inevitable thing, a simple matter of seeing and accepting certain realities as they are. Change comes when and because it must. Meantime, I'm doing what I can to hold life and its infinite possibilities in light hands. One thing is certain - the signposts for simpler, quieter living have been there for quite some time. I can no longer ignore them or walk on past. 

My three offspring are sources of inspiration to me at the moment - each one for quite different reasons. There are definitely times when our children are our best teachers.  

My middle son is traveling solo through India at the moment and last week crossed the Rohtang Pass on the back of an old motorbike - an Enfield classic. He sent me this stunning photograph last night along with a description of the distinctive textures and characteristics of rain and thunder in India. 'It's just started raining as it can only do in India! Very dramatic. Huge, hot drops. I'll have to wait for it to stop before catching a rickshaw into town to use the ATM. We get some pretty epic thunder here; because of the mountains, it reverberates up to eight times, back and forth... I love it. Immensely.' 

Nubra Valley -  Daniel van Ammers 2009

I, too, love thunder. It reminds me of my childhood in Africa, conjures images of jacarandas and jackals, scorched veld and indigo skies, tok-tokkie beetles and flying ants. The slightest rumble always leaves me hungry for more. 

Daniel said the forms and tonalities of the Nubra Valley remind him of some of my earlier land-based paintings. I was touched that he should make the association and even more so by the fact he apparently carries an archive of my images in his head. His photograph sent me rummaging through my NZ and Antarctica folders to find a pair of pics I thought would resonate with his (it occurs to me as I write this that it's just short of a year since my last trip to the ice - it was the 2008 season that prompted me to take up blog-writing and here I am, 111 blog posts later. What a multi-stranded year this has been). 

Explorers Cove, Antarctica 2008

These landscapes could hardly be further apart, neither could they be more different in terms of temperature, temperament and timbre. And yet, how kindred they are, too - each one carrying a familiar handprint.

The Maniototo Range - Central Otago, NZ 2008

Ice(cream) sandwich, New Harbor, Antarctica 2008

Reminder

Stop this hustling about. 

Take a small boat 

down the river. Fish

in the rain, cherish 

the green moss, love 

the waters that offer us 

their purity.

Love the waters.

     CB 2008

Trio

Spring is well and truly here; the morning light is eyeing the studio from a different angle. The studio's showing signs of approval. These trees are on the verge of green (they're the same trio that dropped leaves into my autumn frame some months ago.) The cycles keep cycling. 'Tis good, yes?

Yes. 'Tis good.

 

Speaking of cycles... I'm thinking of getting one.

Changing to stay the same

I'm chewing on a piece of non-fiction writing at the moment. It's reached the 'happy shambles' stage; hence my breaking away for a quick blog. 

The background research for this essay/memoir has taken me on a journey into worlds populated by such thrilling concepts as noosphere* and autopoiesis.** 

Amongst the books on my pile are Labyrinth by Peter Pesic, Ernst Haeckel's magnificent Art Forms from the Ocean (his exquisitely observed and rendered drawings - from 1862 - are enough to make a gal heady) and 'What is Life?' by Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan.

 from Ernst Haeckel's Art Forms of the Ocean 

Whilst roaming the internet, I happened upon an inspirational site; Anita Bruce is a UK-based artist whose work is largely prompted by Haeckel's biology atlas; using fine natural thread, she creates complex colonies of plankton, coral and starfish. Thematically, this links in with a global movement of people currently working with textiles in related ways, almost all of them drawing our attention to pressing environmental questions.   

Going back to Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan's book, here are two brief excerpts to tantalize...

"So, what is life? Life is a material process, sifting and surfing over matter like a strange, slow wave. It is a controlled, artistic chaos, a set of chemical reactions so staggeringly complex that more than eighty million years ago it produced the mammalian brain that now, in human form, composes love letters and uses silicon computers to calculate the temperature of matter at the origin of the universe. Life, moreover, appears to be on the verge of perceiving for the first time its strange but true place in an inexorably evolving cosmos..."

and

"... So, what is life? Life is evolutionary exuberance; it is what happens when expanding populations of sensing, active organisms knock up against each other and work things out. Life is animals at play. It is a marvel of inventions for cooling and warming, collecting and dispersing, eating and evading, wooing and deceiving. Life is awareness and responsiveness; it is consciousness and even self-consciousness. Life, historical contingency and wily curiosity, is the flapping fin and soaring wing of animal ingenuity, the avant-garde of the connected biosphere epitomized by Kingdom Animalia... "

Expansive, optimistic, boundary-pushing stuff. 

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* For Teilhard, the noosphere is best described as a sort of 'collective consciousness' of human-beings. It emerges through and is constituted by the interaction of human minds. The noosphere has grown in step with the organization of the human mass in relation to itself as it populates the earth. As mankind organizes itself in more complex social networks, the higher the noosphere will grow in awareness. This is an extension of Teilhard's Law of Complexity/Consciousness, the law describing the nature of evolution in the universe. Teilhard argued that the noosphere is growing towards an even greater integration and unification, culminating in the Omega point, which he saw as the goal of history. The goal of history, then, is an apex of thought/consciousness. 

** the essence of which means 'changing to stay the same.' Autopoiesis is a term that applies as much to the single cell as to the biosphere. Applied to species, it leads to evolution.

Mirror image

Still time

It is with gratitude (and, yes, a little reluctance) that I leave Kenepuru Sound and begin the journey home...

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See what happens when water and air lie perfectly still, the one beside the other. It's as if in those rare moments of surrender and repose, some greater spirit is free to rise up between them - even when they find themselves unexpectedly tipped onto their heads... 

Froth and other fancies

I received an email this morning to say that the Questions of Balance interview that was broadcast last Saturday morning has just been made available as a podcast - here's a link to the Plains FM website, and this one will take you directly to the interview (with Canterbury writer, Helen Lowe.). 

I'm still in the Sounds - what a heavenly time this has been. I will be reluctant to leave when the time comes... such terrific people, and being so close to water for these unhurried days has been deeply replenishing. I've found myself coming face-to-face with a few tricky thoughts, wonderings, realizations and imaginings during this time - some to do with the old, some with the new. And I've been struck (initially 'down') by the crazy back-to-backness that's characterized my life in recent times. Mind you, it's not just 'recent times' - this has been the pattern for a fairly prolonged time, despite my aspirations to shape things differently. 

Being here has reinforced what I've always held true but have found challenging to implement. A healthy life is underpinned by rhythms not routines, by mindfulness not busyness. By space, not clutter. And, of course there's lots more to say on this subject, but for now, I'll keep it plain. 

Here are some of the pics I've taken on my walks around the Kenepuru Sound coastline... there have been times when nature has had me laughing out loud. Such ebullience. Such in-your-face-humour and sauciness (a word my marvelous maternal grandmother Gladys would use)...

  

Froth 

(don't you love the way this word sounds as it tastes? I'm thinking here of the froth on the head of a good guinness)  

The collaborative artistry of water, wood and huhu grubs (they can't help themselves, can they?)

A solitary jelly-fish appreciates the local rock art. 

Is it just me, or are these young pines giving the sky the finger (Pardon?!)?

Ponga cellos hide their bellies but expose their elegant necks high above the forest canopy - what sounds they make when played by hail, wind, rain...

 

A pair of metal birds converse on the pier whilst waiting for a sign it's okay to take off.  

Wharfside questions

and a boat hull worn into wood 

or is it a chalice? 

Inclement Weather

It's been great to come across work by friends/fellow painters who have also stayed here...  This poem is for them and for Alison in appreciation of her wonderful hospitality.

INCLEMENT WEATHER 

- The Portage, Marlborough Sounds

 

Ah Wayne, your vintage bottles 

and vigorous Torea Bay paintings! I’m not surprised 

to find you’re very present 

here.  As are you, Don, with your rollicking 

clouds and delicate pencil

islands. (I’m pleased to know 

you found the one you’d lost; errant pencil 

and island, both. I see now how their similarly worn 

and whittled shapes might slip easily through

the cracks of the Sounds, your Kowhai

balcony decking.)

 

And John - of course, you and the shimmer 

of your songs hang in the air here, too. 

My private desires notwithstanding, everything is 

exactly as it should be.

 

I sleep and eat and write

alone

yet am not without companionship, 

conversation or colour.

 

Of today’s inclement weather, Alison said

“Would you believe we look

onto lilac water some days lit

by sudden shafts of sunlight. But this! 

This is grey. Hard, cold 

grey and dirty green… And two

walkers still out in it. Best light

the fire, Mark. They’ll need flames

and food by the time they find us,

welcome strokes the minute

they get in.”

 

Sunday, 30 August 2009 

Nature's hand-writing

I'm writing this from misty, moody Marlborough Sounds - in front of me, deep, dark water, hectares of dense native bush, baches clinging to hills that rise above an intricately curving coastline. We really do live in paradise. 

My Q of B exhibition is up and open and doing what it must at this stage - enjoying being in the company and custodianship of The Arthouse team, finding its own voice and communicating independently of me. The days around the hanging and opening were rich and connected and it's time now to trust in the new conversations that will arise out of this chapter. Some time in the next wee, a podcast of writer Helen Lowe's post-opening interview with me will be posted on Plains FM's website (this was broadcast on yesterday morning's Women on Air.). 

I've been offered the treat of a creative residency (oh, so perfectly timed) out at The Portage, miles away from my usual, familiar things; it's a welcome chance to rest, breathe deeply, recharge my battery and sink into some of the writing that's been waiting patiently in my incubation basket this past while. By the end of next week, I hope to have fine-tuned a bunch of still-somewhat-tatty poems, completed a Residency submission and laid down the bones of an ArtScience essay. Yum. It's a rare experience this, being able to shape my days around writing, reading, resting, a daily walk in the forest (we're right on the edge of the Queen Charlotte track... ). 

The gnarly, black-rock-and-kelp coast road leading up to Kaikoura is one my favourite drives on the South Island. As you can see, the sky was in playful mood when I drove up yesterday - like a boisterous child getting up to a few last-minute tricks before bedtime. 

Level with me

QUESTIONS OF BALANCE                                                                

26 August – 13 September 2009

Exhibition statement

Claire Beynon has long been preoccupied with the relationship between apparent opposites. Ever since her first solo show in Johannesburg in 1985, one of her central motivations has been to articulate the creative dynamics between order and spontaneity, reason and intuition, the masculine and feminine, the material and the spiritual… 

 

“Today’s world is increasingly characterized by chaos, clamour and conflict. It seems to me that in our bid to make ourselves heard, we’re forgetting how to listen. There is much reason to protest, but I believe the way forward calls for a subtler approach; contemplation, poetry and pause are becoming widely appreciated as effective methods of engagement in world issues, rather than the old knee-jerk responses of fear and aggression. History has proven time and again that violence, negativity and neglect only attract more of the same; we have to find other ways to say what needs to be said. One thing is certain: it behoves us as artists – and as human beings - to respond. We cannot ignore the world’s lament.”

 

Questions of Balance is a visual/poetic response to our planet’s environmental, spiritual, political and ideological imbalances. It uses the dialectic between the builder’s level (with its enigmatic and ethereal spirit bubbles*) and the plumb bob (all weight and materiality) to evoke a dialogue between our physical and metaphysical worlds and to bring current global questions out into the open.

“The metaphorical implications of these tools are fairly obvious; the spirit level and plumb bob are essential instruments in every builder’s toolbox; without them, sound structures are unattainable, dependent as they are on right relationship between the absolute vertical and absolute horizontal. Truth might be relative, complex and multi-faceted, but there can be no arguing with the simple pronouncements of these two fundamentally reliable tools of measurement. For this reason, there is something inherently comforting about them.

 

I have always had an interest in the sacredness of everyday objects. My intention in this work is to highlight the symbolic potency of the builder’s level and plumb bob and to invite others to consider them in a wider context as metaphorical tools of change and as a means of re-dressing balance in our 21^stCentury. Attributing these humble objects with both intimacy and monumentality gives them a new, larger-than-life presence.  

 

Elusive as it is, balance is an ideal most of us aspire towards. It is an active, dynamic state, redolent with potential, story and meaning.

Dunedin, 15 August 2009

 

*The glass spirit vials incorporated in these sculptural pieces were manufactured by Geier & Bluhm, NY. In 2008, during my second research season in Antarctica, a selection of these – and other - vials were frozen into ice before being transported eighty feet below the Explorers Cove sea ice. The primary motivation behind sending them on an underwater journey was (i) to test their resilience in that extreme environment, (ii) to add a layer of history to what would otherwise remain plain, industrialized objects and (iii) to imbue them with metaphorical potency that would ultimately add ballast to this, and future series of sculptures.

Level Best - CB 2009 

Kwila, stainless steel, glass spirit vials, stainless steel cable & bison wax - 1801 x 91 x 91MM (level) and 471 x 579MM (bob)

Sincere thanks to the terrific men without whose input and practical nous I would not have been able to actualize these 3D pieces --- especially Michael Salmon, Peter Leith, Graham Burgess, Alan Stocker and Robin Nyhof. 

Special thanks, too, to Pete at Nevill Framer's, TDC for Leveling conversations & support, Russell Knowles for keeping an eye out for plumb bobs and builders' levels for me (over a period of months, if not years - bless you, Russell!) and Peter Nicholls & Darryl Daniels for saying 'yes' to me living with your precious plumb bobs for all these months. 

Without community, where would we be?