HIGH UP IN THE TREES

A string of hot days.

The house is inside an oven, cooking on high. It must be. It feels as though it is. I open the front door upon mission of necessity to collect the post and bring onto veranda the rubbish bins now empty, and it is dangerously hot, as a friend in my ear declared it to be. My recently washed hair dries in but an instant, the hot wind rendering it poker straight. Neighbourhood cats lie spread out maximising surface area, in what little shade there is, and I take a little grey water in a watering can out to dampen their makeshift beds under the mock-orange blossom tree. They head at once to the ground now slightly damp and lay belly stretched long across it.

+ A Colony of Rats. The Fox and the Hare reappears once more and with it come a horde of rat brothers and sisters. I do hope you enjoying meeting them.


{Paris Exposition: ship, Paris, France, 1900. Magic lantern slide.}


{Egypt: Mosque of Amr, Old Cairo. Magic lantern slide.}


{World's Columbian Exposition: Agricultural Building, Chicago, United States, 1893. Magic lantern slide.}


{Egypt: The Nile, near Assiut. Magic lantern slide.}

Hello. Hello. Hello.

Sometimes the very act of getting to one’s front door proves slow. Coming home from yoga the other day was one such occasion. Greeted by ginger felines, they enjoy a little affection and I get to practice my forward bends to the view of all.

In profile.

{Like so? Photographic collage, 2008.}

I had gone into the department store with only the intention of purchasing a few small items needed. A little pot of this for the cheeks and a little pot of that for the eyes, and I ended up seated on a tall white seat near to a mirror. Artfully, bronzer was applied liberally to my temples and cheekbones and jaw line, drawing a figure three on my face in profile. As she blended and stroked my face with the brush, wielding it like a purple wand, I told her, when asked, that I favoured the Dadaists. She thought I was a very smiley person and I felt momentarily like Sally Hawkins in Happy Go Lucky minus those high-heeled boots that so enrage her driving instructor. It is funny hearing how other people see you, other people whom you’ve only just met. From my wallet with its zip that runs around three of its four square sides, she deemed me a neat person.

Such encounters thrill me for they are wholly unexpected. I left with my intended purchases and a gently sun-kissed complexion. Sound and complimentary parting advice received: those with blue eyes should wear a little pink blush on their cheeks in order to enhance the colour of their eyes.  Advice I shall implement.



+ Another film I have rented recently on dvd, the beautiful Since Otar Left (a first feature by French director Julie Bertuccelli) set in the city of Tbilisi, Georgia. Three women, Eka (grandmother), Marina (mother) and Ada (daughter), live in one apartment, surrounded by leather-bound volumes of Rousseau and letters received from France from Eka’s son, Otar; it is a film about maternal love, loss and deception, and the music throughout is wonderful.

What have you seen of late, film or otherwise?

Today I dance tomorrow I travel.

{Building a makeshift tipi by Vermillian Lake. Postcard collage, 2008.}

{Feeling weightless agreed with me. Postcard collage, 2008.}

Harder and harder it has been to be roused from sleep these past summer days for I don’t seem to be sleeping much at all. To bed late, fitful slumber, stuffy room, such things do not make an early riser no matter how hard I try. I don’t rise with the sun. If anything, its very arrival makes me sleepy. I appear to peek when night descends and lest this new January timetable of mine changes, it feels unlikely I’ll be able to achieve very much this year, nor see anyone either.

I am in tune with the nocturnal animals when I should be with eyes closed and dreaming. My pattern of late is to work on the computer or read the papers or novel till my eyes feel too heavy to continue or a headache looms. I dine late, enjoying slices of watermelon and pineapple. Outside, the ringtail possum with his white-tipped tail feasts on the seed and bread crumbs overlooked earlier in the day by the plump and silly pigeons and doves. It seems a shame to put stop to these night time adventures and natural leanings but if I am ever to get anything to the post office on time the following day or arrive at a meeting before 11am with ease and dry hair, I’ll have to change my ways.

('Today I dance tomorrow I travel' is a line shouted by Rumpelstilzchen in the fairy tale of the same name. I have borrowed my Mum’s small blue book of Six Fairy Tales with original etchings by David Hockney. The works he created to illustrate the tale of The Little Sea Hare are particularly beautiful.)

(On January 15th of this year, this blog turned three. Can you believe it? I can’t.)

Summertime: And the livin' is easy, just as Ella & Louis sang.

{Bringing the good things back with me for safe keeping. (detail) A watercolour work by Louise which features in our new zine.}

Seems fitting that a new 16 page zine about summer days should be both penned and made during a hot January spell, and these past few days, Louise and I have been doing just that. Made especially for Shari and Sheri of this joy+ride, one of us wrote a few words and the other drew, a collaborative response to an invitation issued to share a taste of summer in the southern hemisphere.

Today you will find me and Louise on this joy+ride. (Thanks for having us, S + S, and for laying such a merry project to toy with at our feet.)

+ See and read our handy work at this joy+ride, issue nine, 2009.

+ Find out about our new Summertime: And the livin' is easy, just as Ella & Louis sang zine.

+ Purchase our new zine Summertime: And the livin’ is easy, just as Ella & Louis sang through our online store.
It is an edition of 50 and the first ten orders receive a little something extra.
(Please accept my apologies in advance, for it is not a summer hamper of fruit and other delights that I promise you).

+ Steal a look at additional watercolour drawings by Louise that feature in the zine.






{The closest I'll get to the Caribbean this summer. (Wall splatters not my handiwork.)}






{Photographing the new zine, Omar decides, once more, to interrupt. Look at those long claws.}

With a can of paint, I scurried up the ladder.

{Brush, brush, brush. Nearly there. Nearly there. One more coat to go.}

Warm days prove ideal for the painting of garden walls and the eating of fruit. As sun prepares to now tuck itself away and the moon take up watch, a wall no more than 4 square metres of once exposed brick now gives impressions of Tuscany.

Tuscany with a hint of copper is the colour that now graces a brick wall in my parents backgarden. Neighbours are in process of having their house extended to accommodate a need for light and a third as yet unborn child, and my parents have a new, shared wall between them. Workman style cottages are not renowned for their light and the neighbourhood in which my parents live is now awash with grey and boxy renovations and newly fabricated glass walls.






{Mangoes, watermelon, blueberries... don't wait on my account. Enjoy!}

The promise of a lunch of blueberries, warm homemade bread, a little pesto and lettuce snipped from the garden proved one few could resist. Our spread looked worthy of royalty.

Lunch enjoyed, wall complete, day done, now, on with the night. Did I mention, I have homemade cherry plum jam on the shelf? It is red and tastes tart and is ideal on a slice of seed bread?

(Later this week, a new zine comes your way. I hope you will like it.)

Domestic felicity (one more day of).

There can be no denying it any longer; the year has indeed started regardless of my readiness or lack thereof. Still with head-in-clouds as my preferred state of January being, I have managed to do little this first week save for reading, eating, lolling and sleeping. Needless to say, it has agreed immensely with both my mind and body, and my imagination is jumping hurdles and performing tremendous acrobatic leaps. Free of constraint, invention and ideas soar. 

At present, my favourite routine, upon waking, is to stay in bed and read and ponder. Window open, coffee plunger and coffee mug resting atop makeshift table of yesterday’s news, cats snoozing post breakfast, and the house quiet, all as it should be. This new and more relaxed routine Olive and Omar have accepted with alacrity. Olive favours a spot near to the window enabling her to receive news of the outside world and Omar a spot near to my knees or armpit, depending upon my position.

Reading and working in bed, surrounded by pillows, rugs, and clad in an outfit I am happy few can see (horizontal stripes frequently meet with vertical and much colour) there is little better. It is cosy. It is summer. It is somewhat lazy, I wager, and it is addictive, completely. I’ve made no New Year resolutions, I rarely do, but perhaps it would be nice to continue this pattern for as long as I can. Waking, rising briefly and promptly returning back to bed with book, paper, notebook or macbook tucked under wing.

A very small part of the year is spent by choice; scarcely any thing is done when it is intended, or obtained when it is desired. Life is continually ravaged by invaders; one steals away an hour, and another a day; one conceals the robbery by hurrying us into business, another by lulling us with amusement; the depredation is continued through a thousand vicissitudes of tumult and tranquillity till, having lost all, we can lose no more.

Samuel Johnson, The Idler #14 (July 15, 1758)

{Olive. In her spot... and then the lady she vanishes.}

(Post New Year’s Eve laneway celebrations, I have found several modern day artefacts in my backgarden. To date, discovered whilst watering the garden with grey water from shower, I have found one blue lighter, two corks, one rogue cigarette butt, and one rubber cricket ball. The objects themselves are not odd nor are they surprising; what is surprising is the fact that they managed to sail through the air and make their way through the green jungle canopy. Possums must have been called to assist. Perhaps these remnants belong to said possums… hmm, another little quiet mystery.)

Let up, slow down.

{Cheese to the New Year.}

Golden and serene have these late December early January days been. I have been the master of my own languidness and in the profession of lolling. I have been relaxed, at ease, at peace, call it what you will, and I am in no hurry to set to anything in particular. Summer days are for loafing about, and sometimes they are for stretching the legs. They are for reading many books, for taking in many films, for dreaming, just a little, and planning, hmm, maybe later. They are for spontaneous trips to the family log cabin of friends, for swinging in a tyre strung from the branch of a taller than tall tree, catching sight of chesty kookaburras and seeing a wedge-tailed eagle soar. They are for continued feasting, and they are even for long walks, or so I am told.






{All things green and red in Warburton.}

How it looks. How it looked.

{Preserved for cooler days.}

The things I enjoyed this Christmas Day past are the things I enjoyed last Christmas and the one before that and the one, no doubt, I expect, before that. In good company and with contented grin upon face, I feasted well and my feet were bare for the most of the day and all of the night. Savouring berries in season in both pavlova and smothered in ice-cream accompaniment with the sun a-shining over our heads, red-flowering geraniums and lavender in bloom and herbs to fragrance the air, favourite songs played and the ribbons which previously wrapped parcels of love and warm sentiment left fluttering in the breeze, strung up underneath the spine of a yellow sun umbrella… there is no other way I would rather celebrate the day.

Before it seems closer to Christmas 2009, here is a little of how the day looked.

Bon appétit!