HIGH UP IN THE TREES

Good company.

{They were all of them sure never to be lonely for long. (Thanks once more, Kristi.)}

Much to own bemusement, it strikes me, I have a great many animals, and each morning, as the business of feeding them is shared and undertaken, I feel this keenly. The time the household rises is not one set by me; the time is one set by the animals, wholly. All seem to rise at same time, in keeping with the regular pattern of day-to-day, and demand, usually quietly, all things considered, to be fed. First Omar and Olive, then Silla, the Chinchilla Persian lodging permanently temporarily with us. And so it continues, until the birds, Agatha and Claude, are uncovered from night’s shawl, their water changed too.

 

I had not meant to amass so many animal companions so early in life, but, as those who know me even only slenderly will point out, this is not very surprising a fact. My animal menagerie I love for their very animalness. They are not my children, even though I indulge in tremendous amount of pandering and cooing. They are my animal companions. I love them for their domesticity bred into them and the wildness that remains fixed (though the catching of pigeons and rats as cat’s sport or answer to boredom disturbs me still).

I like how they communicate with me. How they trust me. How, in some sense, they elect to share their life with me. All in return for affection, food, and a place that is safe to slumber both day and night. I like to sit in a room with them and read, or work at the computer with one rested near my bare feet. I like the contented sounds of the fish, Hercule and Arthur, bobbing to the surface, two fish perpetually like a pair of giant-bellied Labrador Retrievers never sated. I feed them more than I responsibly should and their water inevitably becomes cloudy, but I cannot resist their fishy ways of demanding food be issued. Fish can demand, if only in silent open-mouthed ways. They, like many, plead. Their bowl sits atop a large glass cabinet in a room I am frequently to be found in and they follow me about the room with their eyes. I am sure of it. Softhearted in the extreme, I am also.

She sits in her armchair, and, one by one, she defleas her cats. … She combs the fleas from their necks, stroking against the lie of the fur, and then she does the flanks and haunches. She fluffs up the fur of the long-haired ones, and gives them whimsical hairstyles which she then pats flat again, so as not to compromise their dignity. … Miss Feakes keeps all the fur from her combings, and puts it in carrier bags, because one day she is intending to have it spun, and then she can knit herself the softest and most personal cardigan in the history of the world.

(Notwithstanding, Louis de Berniéres)

Follow on.

{Three images one atop the other. One gleaned from a film (can you tell which?), the other two from a recent collaged book of mine, Primary transport for the dispelling of fallacious beliefs. Six pages in length, it features collage across the pages of a small book of ship models from the Museum of Applied Science, Victoria.}

From Hila, late November last, an open tag issued in passing. Why not, I thought. Why not reply to each of the questions posed (below) with only one word. A challenge for me, perhaps for you too, play along, if you will, and let us see if our answers are as closely twined as mine are to Hila’s.

 
Where is your phone? Bookshelf

Your hair? Loose

Your Mother? Inventive

Your Father? Lateral

Your favourite food? Shared

Your dream last night? Sea

Your favourite drink? Coffee

Your dream/goal? Near

What room are you in? Brightest

Your hobby? Changeable

Your fear? Attention

Where do you want to be in six years? Here

Where were you last night? Cinema

Something that you're not? Forward

Muffins? Heavy

Wish list item? Experience

Where did you grow up? Seaside

Last thing you did? Read

What are you wearing? Little

Your TV? Off

Your pets? Constant

Friends? Dear

Your life? Unpredictable

Your mood? Reflective

Missing someone? Often

Vehicle? Imagination

Something you're not wearing? Jewellery

Your favourite store? Bookstore

Your favourite colour? Green

When was the last time you laughed? Before

The last time you cried? Release

Your best friend? Quiet

One place that I go to over and over? Bed

Facebook? Curious

Favourite place to eat? Home

(I spy Maria, too, has taken part in this tag, and following Chinese Whispers principle, she has a few different questions to the above.)

On the page and in the mind.

{I saw him there above the city and felt a pang of envy. (The fourth postcard, one of many, sent to me for purpose of collage by Kristi.)}

To the much understandable envy of several people I hold close to my heart, my summer holidays have been, and continue to be, devoted to reading and little else. When not cutting path to market for vegetables and fruits and herbs or embarking upon a road trip in any direction but that of the city, when not hanging linen to dry on the line or changing the water in the large fish bowl indoors, when not responding to email or taking parcels to the post office. When not doing any of these things, I am reading. Caught up in other worlds sometimes similar to my own, sometimes not, worlds swirling before my eyes, swimming in my mind, tightly wrapped around my chest, all senses enmeshed.

From Istanbul, set during what would have been my early childhood years, the mid 1970s, I lurched myself forward, just a little, in time to a period during the height of Nicolae Ceauşescu’s reign. I leapt from Turkey to Romania with ease. I closed one book with a smile and, from comfortable reading spot underneath the window stretched supine on the couch, picked up Herta Müller’s The Land of Green Plums. Fortunate enough to devote hours uninterrupted to it, I read it in three sittings, breaking only for a bite to eat and sleep in the early morning hours. Reading in this way, I never lost the rhythm of the words translated. Its circular pattern, its repetition, its looping back and forth, symbols reoccurring, all remained largely unbroken and by time I closed the book I knew what was meant, the first line of the book the same as the last. “When we don’t speak, said Edgar, we become unbearable, and when we do, we make fools of ourselves.” I knew what was meant by the visual drawn of the belt, the window, the nut and the rope. I knew more of the singing grandmother who “outlives her own reason by six years”, no longer recognizing anyone in the house, recalling only her folk songs. I knew that she forewent sleep at night.

 

Descriptions of such people have stayed with me, of a man’s cheekbones that gave appearance of climbing “up under his little eyes” as he sipped from his cup, of hands feeling too small upon a moment reunited. Visuals remain of blood guzzlers in the slaughterhouse sitting atop a calf, of a child seeing herself “crying in triplicate” before a dressing-table mirror left out in the courtyard, a dressing-table with wings you can open and shut. Of a sun without legs to stand in the sky. I can see a landscape I have never been to.

Now that I have read it, I want to read more of her work and I cannot seem to settle into a new book (of which I have many). My head, my heart, all interest, it has stayed in that beautiful bleak book. I have tried Lady Chatterley’s Lover written with knowledge of black days ahead, of war looming, but somehow I am foolishly put off by Lawrence’s known cruel treatment of animals, of broody hens hung upside down to ‘cool off’. Restless I am, until I can settle into a new book.

What are you reading?

A state of restfulness.

{All present felt as though something exciting was about to happen. (A third postcard received in original state from Kristi.)}

In the silent house, I sit on the floor, laptop before me and I click clack at the keys in a tempo all of own making. A Siamese cat snoozes behind me, occasionally shifting position, but only occasionally, it should be noted. Omar has slept all day long, on the couch, on the kitchen counter, in a chair in the full sun, on a patch of carpet free, he sleeps anywhere. Coiled in tight ball or stretched out long, he sleeps, he can sleep, anywhere. Olive laps gently at the water’s surface of the fishbowl before me, and the fish bob to the surface to meet her nose. All is quiet and calm, the light still bright in the sky and the sun still hot. The day has been a long one, pleasantly so. The day has been a good one to make new collage works and to think loosely of future things. Soon it will be time to curl about book, to loose mind in the words of my selected guide. Tonight I return to the streets of Istanbul, to be shown through a museum by its guide, to read The Museum of Innocence.

Were I to think of my collections and keepsakes as a museum, I would guide you through the various rooms, through childhood through to present day. In my suitcase still there is a map of the road travelled recently to Canberra. It is cut in odd shape so as to reveal only the roads travelled. It is like a broken arrow, straight until a point. I would show you the gallery Pass Out on thick orange card, and perhaps I would present on the wall a photo captured quickly. It would bear little resemblance to Max Ernst’s collection housed within the NGA but it would follow premise similar. Here lies a collection of the things I like. Here lies a collection of things that mean something to me. Seeds collected from a family lunch outdoors, from the flower commonly referred to as Love-in-the-Mist. “Scatter them wherever it is you do not want them to grow for that invariably will be what happens.” And I have done so, intrigued by the name and the curious shape of the dried flower heads that hold tiny black seeds no bigger than that of a sesame. The very same save hue. I would show you a tower of books earmarked for summer reading. They serve as my calendar for the month of January. When one is read a new home for it is found until there is nothing left. Well, that is my intention, at least. Thus far I have read The Disappeared, a novel set also in the period of the mid seventies, and been taken willingly to a country I have yet to travel to in person. I am part way through The Bedside Book of Beasts too and I am discovering a world of facts and mythology I never knew. January is for dreaming it all to be possible.

January is for a slow start. For quiet and calm. For painting toenails rose-red and slicing into the skin of a mango expectantly. It is for ideas and light. And it should allow space for silliness to grow.

+ According to the language of flowers, Love-in-the-Mist (Nigella damascena) is for Delicacy and Perplexity.

As I see it.

{Quickly done. (A second original postcard received from Kristi.)}

Seven hours and thirty-six minutes was the Google maps prediction though of course it took a little longer than that to drive from our door to Canberra, ACT. Following the Hume in snake’s path upward before hooking back to Kingston, to our final destination, we drove past white bleached grass and crops, past fire-blackened trees sporting new growth like green legwarmers or furry jumper sleeves on long limbs, their green shoots giving curious impression. Past black cows with their velvety hides, sheep grazing and camouflaged in part, and horses surveying their pocket of the earth, we made for the capital to see the Post Impressionists borrowed from the Musée d’Orsay. To see Bonnard’s Intimacy (Portrait of Monsieur and Madame Claude Terrasse), Villard’s Sleep, Hammershøi’s Rest, Gauguin’s Breton village in the snow, Pissaro’s Hoarfrost, peasant girl making a fire, and van Gogh’s Caravans, gypsy camp near Arles before sitting at Cézane’s Kitchen table (Still-life with basket) with its red, green and yellow fruit. Barefoot and seated in the back of the car, my legs tucked up underneath me, eyes straining to drink in the imagery flashing past, we left not long after morning broke, at 6:15, our spirits high. A road trip, as any film or book or own experience will tell, is good for many things, but best of all, best of all it is good for putting things in perspective and seeing things anew.

{Quickly captured moments from there and back again.}

Extremely happy.

{Held in glorious moment. (Original postcard sent to me by dear Kristi of asphalt and air. Thanks Kristi.)}

Summer holidays and Christmas Day forever linked, these days that gently roll into weeks have seen pleasure reign. Friends and family to natter with and see, cinemas dark and inviting, books to crack open, light days followed by long warm and sometimes stormy nights, a cheerful succession, a cheerful possession, the pattern is a familiar one and one I relish each year. The New Year but one week old, roll on, summer, roll on.

{In garden green, we feasted and lolled in the sun. We turned the pages of new reads, and we shut our eyes and let the light filter through. We ate exceedingly well all Christmas long and we sat barefoot for the main. A Birthday was marked and the cake was good. The cake was very good.}

From where it is growing.

{Good scenes from December.}

In the curious yellow light of a storm approaching on the first evening of the New Year, I remember berry picking in the sunshine. Berry picking is something akin to an annual tradition of ours, and so it was one day late in December we found ourselves picking cherries and blackberries and raspberries for the Christmas table. A few hours in the hills, bucket in hand, hat atop head and smile drawn across berry-stained lips. In the late afternoon, having lolled for sufficient time under the shade of a tree at the foot of a neat row of cherry trees, boughs still laden, we made for home with all we required. Car boot packed with tasty red fruit, bellies full too.

{May January be filled with such simple adventure light too.}

Here's to a New Year bright and full of promise. To a new decade. To 2010!