HIGH UP IN THE TREES

Give.

{A day unlike the previous.}
 

For our friends and family, our nearest and dearest, for those who comment on this blog and those who prefer to read, for the curious and the lonely, for those who like the wind in their hair and those who do not, for you, for all of you, we offer this, an image recently assembled. Print it out and pin to a wall. It is our Christmas gift from us to you (should you celebrate it). It is our New Year’s treat for those of you seeking to usher in a brand new year of harmony and peace. It is for all of you, whatever the reason. Enjoy!

Image and printing details
A day unlike the previous.
Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison
2009

To print on an A5 (210X148mm) piece of paper (or larger, if desired).
(Please sing out should any difficulties arise.)

++ Download print (1.5MB) ++

G & L xo

(Having spent my yesterday in a blue-sky day picking berries, I will return to this space soon with images bright and lips stained still red. It may be this side of Christmas, it may be the other, it may even be next year, but it will be soon. Until then, be well, chin up, and take care.)

A collection of wild animals.

{Up above or down below, it all looks swell to me.}

Watching the enjoyment of animals at the zoo was a good start to Sunday. The seals returned but to new improved enclosure, the little penguins too, seeing them revel in the larger bluer space, bobbing in the manmade current, made the heart beat a little bit faster. In blue waters, they frolicked as only those with flippers truly can, or sat motionless on giant grey rocks, catching breath, oblivious to the crush of families pressed against the glass barrier. Looking at such underwater acrobatics, from underground observatory, I longed to swim, with them or alone. Engaged in the art of beholding something wonderful and nibbling on hot chips, the rush of Christmas seemed world away for a moment.

{I think I know where I would rather be. Fooling about in the water.}

(Today my parents have been married 40 years. xo)

The first fruit.

{Small but brilliant.}

As crops go, it was a small harvest. One not really worth the effort of sliding on a pair of old shoes and heading out into the garden, had it not been the first tomato of the season grown. A singular tomato picked and rosy red and tiny, but how best to enjoy it? As yet I am not inclined to test my new tooth’s biting abilities, preferring instead to cut up pieces of watermelon, cantaloupe and apple into bite size pieces. Grapes, for this reason, and cherry plums too, are favoured for their size. I toss them back and let my molars set to easy task.

 

There are few culinary pleasures I rate higher in summer than stone fruits. Plum, apricot, cherry, peach, and mango, especially mango, its large stone perfect to gnaw upon, if eating at home in privacy. I hold it much like a squirrel with a prized nut, and chew and suck all the goodness from the stone, chin covered in stickiness and yellow flesh. It is, as I mentioned, not an act to be done in a lunch hall or seated on the state library steps. The very act reminds me of a scene drawn in Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cranford concerning oranges and their eating.

When oranges came in, a curious proceeding was gone through. Miss Jenkyns did not like to cut the fruit; for, as she observed, the juice all ran out nobody knew where; sucking (only I think she used some more recondite word) was in fact the only way of enjoying oranges; but then there was the unpleasant association with a ceremony frequently gone through by little babies; and so, after dessert, in orange season, Miss Jenkyns and Miss Matty used to rise up, possess themselves each of an orange in silence, and withdraw to the privacy of their own rooms, to indulge in sucking oranges.

(Cranford, Elizabeth Gaskell)

{Cilla and my Mum get along just swell. My Mum cannot get over the shape of her face having never known a Persian cat.}

+ Our zines arrive in dear Ritva's hands.

+ Our zines arrive in dear Thereza's hands.

(Photos of our zines in the hands of dear friends never ceases to draw a smile to my face and a little more rose to my cheeks. Thank you for sharing these photos.)

+ An expected gift arrives by post from the folk at the Australian Ballet. 2010 covered, one month at a time, in the form of a brand new calendar. Why, I am feeling more organised at the sight of it. Thank you.

Crowned.

{Years ago now, with my mum and my cousin. My talent for roller skating apparent.}

I have a crown of modern day making and it could not make me happier. A river of gold reinforces it and it matches its companions perfectly. So perfectly, in fact, that it is not possible to detect which is porcelain veneer and which is actual tooth. It is of course my front tooth and the crown I speak of is a crown for a tooth not a crown for the head of a ruler or pageant winner. It is not a crown pulled from Christmas cracker and made of coloured paper; it is made of far sterner stuff. It is circular like that of a monarch’s headdress but it is not ornamental; with it, I shall be able to chomp and chew and grin my loonish best. It encircles a tooth broken and held together by large pin and today, several hours after final procedure I am enamoured of it. Made from dental impression two weeks ago now, it is living up to its name; it is an emblem of victory. Having broken my front tooth clean in half in my final Primary School years, I have now covered any reference to daredevil past. One roller skating stunt involving self, a ramp and a concrete wall at the finish line, now effectively put to rest.

In my late primary school years, I performed for own amusement and small audience a stunt on roller skates ill considered namely in regard to conclusion. It involved a fine start and rollicking middle but the end found me headed at top speed in direction of a concrete barrier. Down I concrete ramp I rolled, speed mounting until it dawned upon me in singular horrific moment, though not fully, that the red toe stop on my white boots was not going to serve as significant brake. Momentum gathering, the theory of relativity came into play and I had no way of stopping self from hitting wall. My knee bore the brunt and then to great misfortune I bit the wall, splintering my tooth in half. My dear friend K, who my mum to this day thanks for her foresight, collected the tiny pieces from the wall much as you would shells on the beach. My tongue explored the damage inside its domain, and it recoiled at the pain of the exposed nerve endings encountered, though little else I recall. There was the saltiness of blood. There was blood, my blood, on the wall. Someone’s lounge room as we waited, the horrible realisation dawning and the irresistible urge for tongue to feel the nerve endings once more, but all this was years ago now and today all reminders of this event of childhood foolishness are tucked snug inside their crown.

{A parcel of recently made white penguins especially for Craft Victoria's White Christmas.}

+ Thelma's white stuffies recently made.
+ Snail mail arrives from Camilla.
+ The past (January 2009), as viewed through Sandra's camera lens.
+ Thanks for the mention, Amy.

Disentangle.

{Views of København altered slightly. For some it may be very familiar.}

Sorting through stuff unsuccessfully so seems what I do best. I don’t seek order but I do set out with hope of eliminating that which I have glut of. The problem I have with the sorting of all my accumulated stuff is that I am forever distracted by what I find. I sit and pour over the treasure and things I cannot fathom the keeping of. Unable to decide what I should pass on or toss out, I pack it all up, somewhat neater than before (a small concession) and call it done. A hidden store of boxed rubbish and boxed riches.

Today I have photos of yet another collaged book of mine to share. Today I am taking you to Copenhagen. Many tiny potentialities is twelve pages in length and it features collaged star formations and new occupants throughout.
















{Many tiny potentialities had less distance to travel to its new owner.}

Pore over.

This summer I am not going away. I will be spending it in Melbourne for the main, nose buried in a book. I hope to make my way at leisurely pace through a pile of novels that for too long have languished on my list of intended reads. My tower of intentions needs seeing to. Upon my list, earmarked for discovery is The Cat Inside by William S. Burroughs, The Man Who Fell to Earth by Walter Tevis, The Road to San Giovanni by Italo Calvino, Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, The Infinities by John Banville, The Disappeared by Kim Echlin, The Boat by Nam Le. All by way of a little Ellroy, Colum McCann’s Let The Great World Spin, Dostoevsky's The Idiot, and P.G.Wodehouse, any. I plan to read Pamuk’s The Museum of Innocence, a little Keats, a little Plath, Carey’s Parrot and Olivier in America, Atwood’s The Year of the Flood, and I will start with Barbara Kingsolver’s The Lacuna.

Do you have any recommendations for me? Or better still care to join me?

On subject of books, here is a detailed look at one of mine recently exhibited.

{A view gleaned through looking-glass. This is a twelve page book of mine featuring collage and pencil on the pages of a London postcard views of note (2009). Exhibited recently, it is now winging way to new owner in Tasmania.}

The imperfection in the Persian rug.

{With room for one more.}

A Persian rug must have a flaw if it is to be deemed, according to old proverb, perfectly imperfect and precisely imprecise. An intentional and slight imperfection (derived from religious belief that God is the only perfect being), such Persian irregularities have been on my mind of late. This week I carried home one Chinchilla Persian cat in need of love, the very feline embodiment of this idea. She is an adorable peppermint-green eyed lady who rolls over onto her back and paws at the sky with glee. With crinkled whiskers and a loud motor, she is in dire need of affection and care. Recently surrendered by a nearby neighbour focused on renovations, too busy to care for a nuisance cat, she comes to us all matted fur, blackened feet, and fleas. A cat from the Iranian plateau, she is in possession of my heart, pulling at the strings as though I were a ball of wool.

Having made a home for her temporarily in the bathroom (until the fleas are under control and she has been to the vets for her shots medical), I am hoping Omar and Olive take kindly to her lest I need find her new home.

(As soon as she is all patched up I will post a photo of her.)

+ "...a cheek-flushing rush of inspiration followed by a little soul-crushing jealousy", we pop up on The Jealous Curator.

Sailing away in pea green and beautiful boat.

Our show took but two leisurely hours to dismantle, to take apart what took two lengthy days to hang. It has been wonderful to have the opportunity to exhibit in gallery two of Craft Victoria and for so long a stretch as to make self a regular page-turning fixture. Sorry to have taken it down, I am looking forward to picking up where I left off and seeing what comes of it. Let us see if I can find the reins of momentum once more and give chase imagination and idea both. Before you tire of all reference to it, here are a few photos of the show installed and subsequent take down.

{How it looked...}


{...before it all came down.}


{Drawings and prints on the gallery wall...}


{...in the Sunday afternoon light.}

{This evening, however, I am thinking of things past ready to be folded away.}

{Twenty-one collaged books ready to be released from confines of book support and stored flat once more.}

{Thirty postcard collages waiting to be unpinned one at a time.}

{All memory of that night shone before fading ready to be wrapped and tucked under wing.}

{Louise's Especially for you, a collection housed, ready to slide inside balsa wood casing and rest for a spell.}

{Until all that remains is the signage in Times New Roman, removed one letter at a time.}

Thanks for taking part in this with me, for visiting the gallery and leaving message. It means a great deal.