HIGH UP IN THE TREES

Marched.

{The Westgarth cinema bookended.}

I am enjoying the cooler nights of autumn and finding them more conducive to working and reading. Everyone knows that autumn is ideal for harvesting what summer has yielded. This is true of how I work too. I am harvesting, and it is both busy and relaxing. The seemingly long month of March has brought with it many highlights. I have dipped one half of my very self in the black and white elegantly stylised world of Coco and Igor and the other in the art nouveau landscape of the Australian Ballet’s The Silver Rose (based upon Richard Strauss’ opera Der Rosenkavalier). In one, I saw an interpretation of The Rite of Spring. In the other a Klimt painting known, again a style familiar, replete with gold and silver, came to life before my eyes. Both spoke and sometimes whispered in beautiful motion of love and its subsequent and inevitable loss. Now I am wondering what April could possibly have in store for me. Will in also find me combing the history books.

+ Bathing Beauty, sesame magazine
+ lisää postia (You are most welcome, Ritva)
+ UPPERCASE magazine fox preview

Can you fashion for me a penguin made from scrap metal?

{Putting a cap on a perfect day. (Especially for Penguin's recent celebrations.)}

If you like cats, you will like Josiane Balasko’s The Hedgehog (Le Hérisson). If you enjoyed the book on which this is loosely based, I expect you will like the film too. Not always is this the case. Some books are best left alone. Some books do not translate well to the medium of recorded movement. However, some, some are improved and some are on a par. For me, the film looked that rare thing: pretty much as I had visualised it when first I read it, from the characters to their homes, from their manner to their personal peculiarities. Seeing this late one afternoon, after having spent the better part of the day at the computer working, I was ready to allow the self to be transported to Paris. That it tugs and plucks and whacks like a double bass at the heartstrings freely, I said yes. From the beautiful strains of the cello to the drawings that make you want to pick up brush and toy with ink, I enjoyed immensely this afternoon detour. I hanker now to reread Anna Karenina and to call my next cat Levin. (A sensation further heightened by Michael Hoffman's The Last Station.)

 

I have been seeing a few films of late, screening as part of the French Film Festival (and otherwise) and I have not been disappointed. I have allowed myself to be swept along with the scene unfurling before my eyes, sometimes perhaps all too readily and I am caught with a lump in my throat and wet eyes when the lights come on as credits roll. March finds me seeking out beautiful things and, to take nothing away from the films I have seen, in a mood easily pleased and relatively carefree.

 

I long to be as bendy as Elastic Girl’s name suggests in Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s new film Micmacs (Micmacs à tire-larigot) and to one day meet someone who feels as though from this film perhaps they have stepped, tipping hat at Buster Keaton. Upon leaving the cinema, this almost came true. The eye sort out the different, the particular. Not whimsical, just slightly, very slightly different. The one-armed man of rounded proportions with his braces making a cross across his back walking before me, the couple dressed in complementary colours standing side-by-side; surely I saw them only moments ago assisting in the airport scene. They wore expressions upon their faces that tell me I am right. Didn’t they? Will they lead me to the metal cave constructed from refuse? Will I be able to meet one of Tiny Pete’s automated sculptures and machines made from that which is salvaged?

The pleasure is only worth something if I can share it with the audience.

(Jean-Pierre Jeunet)

Collected.

{A moment to hold close to the chest.}

I like the smell of candles recently blown out, be it atop a cake or in a votive small. I like the sounds my fish make as they eat the feed floating on the water’s surface. I like the notion of hanging onto a $5 note found forgotten in a pocket, storing it for a treat particular and unknown yet. And I like these, several lines I recently underlined with my fingernail as I read. I will store them away, marked for future reference for the scene painted or sound the sentences form when silently read.

 

This house, surrounded by bare trees and dark-green, almost black yew foliage, is evocative of the last rock of a submerged archipelago.

(The Earth and Sky of Jacques Dorme, Andrei Makine)

The wind beat against the windows and roof. There was a whistling noise and the hobgoblin in the stove sang its song, plaintively, mournfully. It was past midnight. Everyone in the house had gone to bed, but no one slept and Nadya fancied she could hear someone playing the violin downstairs. Then there was a sharp bang — a shutter must have been torn off its hinges. A minute later Nina Ivanovna entered in her nightdresss, with a candle.
(The Bride from The Lady with the Little Dog and Other Stories, 1896–1904, Anton Chekhov)

It was white nights, the pale blue of midnight. No moon, no stars, just a few clouds still straggling along. My father had once written to me saying that the stars were deeper than their darkness, and I had stayed out for an hour pondering that line when a figure finally broke the shadow of the archway.
(Dancer, Colum McCann)

Enmeshed in smoke and the fumes of plum-brandy with paprika pods sizzling on the charcoal, they were hiccupping festive dactyls to each other and unsteadily clinking their tenth thimblefuls of palinka: vigorous, angular-faced, dark-clad and dark-glanced men with black moustaches tipped down at the corners if their mouths.
(A Time of Gifts, Patrick Leigh Fermor)

+ Things that made my day...
+ From Egyptian ruins...
+ From the collection of the Macleay Museum...

Flickering visions.

{On film. Long ago.}

Various overseas trips lie documented in a series of large red cloth-covered albums. Adhered to the page in grid formation oft out of sequence and different to how I had remembered it. Looking at them reminds me of where I have been. Looking at them I realise I have learnt a lot and that I still have a lot to learn. Leafing through the pages, I see the streets I have walked in Berlin, Vienna, New Orleans, Budapest, London; I see places from Portugal, Switzerland, New Zealand, France, Italy, Spain, and I want to see more. I still wish to see more.

If a man could pass through Paradise in a dream, and have a flower presented to him as a pledge that his soul had really been there, and if he found that flower in his hand when he awoke,—Ay!—and what then?
(Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1772–1834)

To Paris, to Bombay.

I watched Yuri Mamin’s Window to Paris (Окно в Париж) yesterday. With black humour and surreal touch, the film toys with aspects of culture, national identity and stereotypes, with a nod to the shift from communism to capitalism and reference to personal idiosyncrasies and the Pied Piper too. From crowded apartment in St Petersburg there is a window to Paris, to warmth, light and liberties, consumer produce in abundance and sacred buildings—"Such churches, and they don’t even believe in God". There is money found through impersonation of an organ grinder and there are Citroëns and motorbikes for the taking. Watching this, and with future travel plans on my mind, I wonder what city I would like to find a magical window to. Would I, too, pick Paris? How about you? Where does your window lead? Rome? Lima? London? Bombay?

 

Should you pick Bombay (Mumbai, formally called Bombay), I can help with that.

 

Through purgatory passed, and then there was Bombay is a recent artists' book of mine, twenty-four pages in length.

{Turning the pages. Collage and pencil scenes across twenty-four photogravure views of Bombay, with more to follow.}

+ Views in my pocket, on the wall

A little fable.

{And no one came.}

No words of my own today, the week has claimed them all. Instead, I offer words by someone else.

A LITTLE FABLE

"Alas," said the mouse, "the world is growing smaller every day. At the beginning it was so big that I was afraid, I kept running and running, and I was glad when at last I saw walls far away to the right and left, but these long walls have narrowed so quickly that I am in the last chamber already, and there in the corner stands the trap that I must run into."

"You only need to change your direction," said the cat, and ate it up.
(Franz Kafka, 1883–1924)

Downpour.

{They had all the appearance of large steppingstones.}


{A fortunate leap.}

Grey clouds loomed overhead heralding storm’s imminent arrival and from weekend vantage point indoors on the couch pushed up to the window, I thought it must be later than the afternoon. It seemed like early evening to my non watch-wearing self. I bid farewell to my companions in the German beer hall I found myself in as I put down my borrowed copy of Patrick Leigh Fermor’s A Time of Gifts and headed to the front door. Outside giant hailstones were falling, and they were “the size of lemons” some later said. The rain poured steadily, rapidly, and poor Frank, the neighbourhood cat, howled in fear from his soggy, ill-considered spot beneath a parked car. In a puddle, wet and distressed, crying like a child, Frank cut a sorry figure. Louise and a neighbour tried their best to coax him out and finally succeeded in scooping him to the safety of a drier place. Our neighbour took him inside, tucked under her wing, a towel slung across her shoulder. Inside I imagined her drying off Frank and her other wet cats caught, it would seem, unawares. The gutters filled quickly and the streetlights came on, an autumn downpour (in the extreme) to awaken me from familiar state of Saturday drowsiness. A scene painted to match the elements of Mother Nature conjured in my current read.

+ Foxes are coming. Look to issue 5 of UPPERCASE magazine.

Beautiful.

{Unsteady footing.}

(Penned sometime in the last weeks of summer, this post seems to have languished in drafts mistakenly. On this cool autumn morn, here it is, a brief summer moment recalled.)

The man was drunk, and declared himself so as he climbed onto the tram assisted by several companions more sure of foot. He slurred as he solemnly proclaimed all the women he encountered to be beautiful and his breath, from a distance, was stale and hot. He sang their praises aloud, as if making official announcement, he in black coat and clutching his VB tinnie. He’d drained the last drop but held onto it still. “You’re beautiful,” he garbled, and lurched forward with trams jerked movement. I offered brief thanks. In truth, I was thankful more to my sunglasses as mask to avoid further conversation.

“You’re beautiful,” he said to the girl in the floral sundress. “I’ve had a row wiff the wife. Not violent. Jus’ verbal,” he said as he sat down next to her. “She told me to piss off, so I ’av.” From his seat by large ticket vending machine, he crowned the next woman his eyes fell upon  “a woman in black” and beautiful too, of course. “You look jus’ like Suzie Quatro.” Her thin-lipped smile seemed to say I appreciate neither your drunkenness nor compliment.

 

And so it continued, drunken praise offered loudly, and compliments, of sorts, accepted with grimace for a smile or awkwardness followed by a keen interest in the view out the window. Some scuttled as far away as possible from the man overdressed for such a hot day and hoped there would be no trouble. Others appeared visibly cross with themselves for not having listened to own gut instinct to hop on at the other end of the tram. All accept one and for her lip given freely, he declared her not beautiful but a woman with hairy armpits. “That’s some vision you’ve got there, to be able to see through my top. As a matter of fact, I do have hairy armpits,” she said. He’d tried to give her an insult; she was not beautiful like the full tram load of twenty-odd women previously sung to, she was hairy in the wrong places. Such are the joys of summer in the city in the middle of the day.

Treat yourself.

{Closing my eyes, it is possible to imagine myself anywhere but where I am (I) is the last in line. There, now you have met them all, all seven of the new zines.}

Small rewards and treats, I thrive off them (though such incentive is by no means unique). Knowing this, I have booked several tickets to various films screening as part of the annual French Film Festival. On any given day at any given hour, I could be at the cinema, senses all transported to Parisian street or somewhere in Lyon or Nice or Nantes. This will see March off to grand start. Here is to a new month. Here is to a new season.

The retreat has started; autumn heralds early nightfall. As the days grow shorter, autumn is symbolised by a woman carrying her harvest, by the hare, by the colours red and orange, and three days in, I am enjoying its arrival. I have not long finished reading The Earth and Sky of Jacques Dorme by Andreï Makine. Reading a book for a second time allows things new to appear before the eyes. I wonder how it was that I missed that. How did I never see that the first time round? Like a mirror, they say, it serves as a mirror. Yes, that’s right. When next, if next, what will I see?

To autumn!

+ Closing my eyes, it is possible to imagine myself anywhere but where I am (I), is a colour zine with a five page concertina insert which mirrors that of a souvenir postcard foldout booklet of yesteryear. This particular zine features original postcards all recently sent from Marieke (front cover), Camilla and Kristi to be given collage twist. It features the recent collages Still in elusive pursuit; Never quite managing to see the whole picture; They were all of them sure never to be lonely for long; Quickly done; and Held in glorious moment.