Out of the frying pan...

It's probably not fair to call NZ a cooking utensil, a cooking utensil, however hot, can't produce the likes of Lorde, after all. But crossing the Ditch to my home town (Sydney) is always a little fraught for me...



The Aussies and the Kiwis are not exactly close cousins, and fireworks of a metaphoric sort have been known to go off when this ex-pat trans-Tasman traitor attempts to return to the lucky country of her birth.
But tomorrow, when I cross this sparky gauntlet it will feel like I'm leaving behind the security of a controlled heat (aka a frying pan, turned down reeeal low) to an out of control, all out rampaging FIRE turned up full bore! Not to make light of the very real dangers of the Sydney fires, of course. So please be kind and cross your fingers for me as I make my crossing, and for all those other people, my family included, who've been living in this shit for a week already. The forecast for tomorrow is pure crap.      

Blocked

The queue stretching the length of the street, maybe (consults husband) 500 metres?

Our street at 9am this morning - Sunday!!! Talk about Sunday, busy Sunday. They were also here yesterday, presumably different people, though they looked exactly the same, and all queueing up for the chance of catching a glimpse of me in my natural habitat!

No. Not exactly. This is the TV3's Block NZ hosting its open-home weekend, for which it commandeers our road, closing it to public access with residents having to use a permit and drive reeeaaaal slow on account of the foot traffic on the other side of the road that seems to have forgotten it is still a road. And this, all in the name of selling cheap, but not cheap enough, building supplies.

All in a good cause, though, right?  I guess that depends on your perspective. The worst of it for me was being woken by the set-up crew at 7am this morning. Now normally I wouldn't mind being woken by crashing and banging for an hour right outside the bedroom window on a Sunday morning. But I'm presently detoxing, and that means no quick coffee recovery or alcohol hang-over to fuzz the edges and distract my frustrations onto my aching head.

I know; this has a First World problem ring to it. My brother and family are presently having to run from the Blue Mountain bush fires in Sydney, so I really mustn't grumble. Plus I watch the darn show (there's an H-word for that).

Queueing across our driveway. Is that a Bon Jovi T-shirt?
Some people do have mixed tastes; perhaps she's on commission for the band.

Two of the show's 'stars' let loose (unblocked)

Blocked

http://www.stuff.co.nz/auckland/9306861/Open-homes-at-The-Block

Go Kiwi (gals), go!

Lorde - let the winning begin!
(Also famous for attending the same high school as my kids)

Eleanor Catton: Booker Prize winner, 2013
Only 27! (I am NOT jealous)

Lorde: http://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/music/9287071/Lorde-wins-at-Silver-Scrolls

Eleanor: http://tvnz.co.nz/national-news/kiwi-eleanor-catton-wins-man-booker-prize-5649796

Watercraft

Three metres of sea to see from here
Two trees the foreground to frame    
Canoes criss-cross the surreal scene
Lines passing on the page

Shallow waters shifting right
Lean-legged people left
A couple stand in close embrace
The pivot of no regret

A swimmer black of elbow, back
Thrashes against the grain
A Loch Ness monster lookalike
Pretender to the name

Cutting through the brilliant blue
A sail in bloated white
Fifteen seconds of fleeting fame
Now blows out of sight

Dogs play dogs and waves play waves
Joggers make their mark
From where I sit back looking on
The picture moves like art

Swords of the stars

A catalogue of costumes hauled          
All the way from Middle Earth

Fifteen years in the collecting
Swords of the stars included

Hundreds of items to be auctioned off
Paper, scissors, rock

Cut cut cut -
Going, going, gone...

A young man sells his prized collection
For his father, dying of a brain tumour.

Night Feelers

Night has its own shadows
did you know?            

I walk in the black
down the stairs,
clinging to the shadow

A reluctant foot sends out a
grubby toe or two

Forward like feelers, blind
to the edge and over

Reporting back to the foot;
feelers of the foot

Night is naughty:
Here, a pin cushion masquerading as a pillow

Night is noisy:
Here, a refrigerator humming memories on full volume

Night is now:
Here, I am a tourist, feeling my ten tourist toes forward.

Life cycle

2014 leaves springing in October, 2013

An elegant hand

Post-pruning, to keep tree from wires

The same tree of 'Ode to Autumn' back in May

Sand

The sea must have orange bones
I have white - as far as I know

A sand-coloured tail wags all the way out
dog-paddling to its toy

Brings it back to the sand;
looks up to see what it says

The sand, like tweed,
like apricot cereal, says sand.

Dancing in the Dark (Nightingale IV)

My last Nightingale blog, I must get back on my medication (seriously). I will find a neat Night image then write my last Night post about it.




Night Dancing, or

Dancing in the Dark

A Girl, a Guy and a Tree

Dance, Black and Blue

Spinning the night!


I like this picture. Lately, I can't get enough of dancing. It's all I want.

To DANCE

It's very simple, really.

Except when I get up in the night, I don't tend to want to Dance. Dance should be capitalised, like Time.

Nightingale III

Newsflash!!! The sky is now pink!

I can't find my camera, otherwise I'd take the dawn with my lens. Seize the lens I would.  But I can't find it.

So I will have to describe it to you, nothing for it...

The sky is now blue and white and peach and flesh coloured with trees sketched in black. Branches criss-cross my window of blue, white and peach sky so that I know it is dawn. No other time has this undressing feel, but the dawn. Exactly as if it were taking things off, exactly an undressing; a getting lighter.

I am drinking milky tea from The Beatles mug. It's a big and bulky mug befitting not one but four boys, no less. It's not mine. I am surrounded by Beatles fans in this house. At least husband M and daughter B are avid fans, two out of five.

I should get back to bed, it's Saturday! (6.39).

6.28 now. How Time flies. I like the idea of capitalising momentous things, like Time. I have been writing lately about Fate. I use a capital for Fate. Night too, and Day. Love should be capitalised, and possibly even Friend.

I don't like how Time flies, because I am human. No other species knows its own mortality, it's quite the heavy load, when you think about it. Kind of explains depression. Life means death, sorry Death, it's kind of a bum wrap.

O to be a cat!



Now the sky is pinky-grey with blue with orange and white melded in, only my eyes - plus Sammy's and Simone's - can appreciate that! It is still dark; my keys still need to be externally lit, the screen is not sufficient. The keys are black. Bad black keys. I need to be able to see you. I need nice white keys. Nothing racist here. Nothing to see here...

Nightingale II

Sky!    

Light makes sky
Like flour added to cake mix

Feels like an undressing
Like Day is white-skinned

Sky is blue and fawn-coloured
So far

It's the very start of today's sky!

Nightingale

 

Hi

I’m writing this from the night. 

I never check the time, but the birds are up. Some of the birds. The darkness is not yet worn thin. It’s still thick in parts. So I’m thinking it’s maybe 4.30am and those are the extra-keen birds I am hearing.

I have written from the night before. One piece was titled “Night Garden”. This piece I have not yet named. You’ll be the first to know when I do.

There.

But I dare not look at the clock and know for certain what time it is. One of the things about the Night that I love is its slippery time. The day is so precise, let the night be loose. So I dare not look.

When I first came down it was  a case of Don’t step on the black cat in the night scenario. We have two cats and they seem to both want to be with me at every moment, especially at night. So downstairs with me they came. Like I said, I don’t know the actual time but guess about four thirty. Most of the birds have stopped talking now, except for one persistent one you reckon was probably awake all night anyway.

I have just checked the time (on the computer, for the first time this morning, and it is 5.50am. So when I was earlier speculating about the time it was probably 5.30 instead of 4.30. Quite close. But I'd rather not know the precise time.

When I came downstairs earlier in the total dark, not yet five o'clock and Daylight Saving, so dark in the morning. The cats came with me and I feared I would trip. I also managed to scare myself, which is kind of embarrassing. But coming downstairs in the total darkness with two dark cats is kind of scary. I could hear the scary music in my head. 

I went to the doctor's yesterday so I have this wound on my back for which the anaesthetic has just worn off and I can't see. Pain makes it scarier, somehow.

Somehow I get downstairs. I reach into the plate cupboard for the automatic sensor switch, switch that on. The cupboard light goes on and I can see! One cat at my foot, the other close by. It's alright for them, they don't even know it's night. I'm on high night alert, on account of the fact that I cannot SEE! The automatic sensor is on, the cats set it off now. I can see. The candle of the night!

Night is busy with itself in a way that Day isn't. Day just is, Night arrives and leaves and stays, and so on. 

You will know who this is...

I am she tonight!

Chuck Dick

Chuck Dick at work creating his
phenomenally REAL characters
We almost share a birthday
Almost (one day different, plus a few years)

Believe it or not...      

Chuck Dick

Is the name

Given to the great writer of Hard Times (etc)

By a present-day rapper (on TV)


Suffice to say, my Dickens does not rap
Though his finger is placed
Quite precisely upon the pulse

In 2013 Dickens is my new-found hero
I'm not even kidding

Just read my father's Dux winning prize copy of

Nicholas Nickelby (962 pages short)
Leather-bound, 1934, inscribed in the fancy school logo

1934 Dad Dux (age 14)

Now reading A Tale of Two Cities

Before that Great Expectations, a copy bought, per chance, in a second-hand bookshop up in the Blue Mountains on a visit to my brother's family. That purchase kicked off my Dickens phase. I am so pleased to have at last discovered Chuck Dick. I love his women, I loooooove his men. I love his characters, full stop, even his villains. Anon I might move on to another author. But right now, no one beats Dickens. 

No one beats Chuck Dick.

Blog binge

I am currently on a blog binge... at least that's what I've decided to call this period of blog creativity:

A blog binge  

 

I have been a binge consumer since a preschooler, one thing or another. So now I binge blog...

Last month I only managed six or so posts (September) but I'm already passed that number for October and it's only the third of the month, I call that a blog binge. Today I'm going to write about blogging, specifically blog binging, as I'm doing right now, as we speak, so to speak...



Spring has got me out with my camera and that has led to one thing and another. I blame Spring! I have also just finished drafting the main story I'm working on right now.

So more time to ad-lib.

More time to blog.

It is a bit of a time-suck, blogging. I found that when I first started blogging on Public Address. If you wanted people to comment on your post then you needed to comment on theirs. You were also curious. All writers are curious creatures. But it was a lot of reading, a lot of writing.

This year, with my own blog, I've managed my time better, if I do say so myself. Even if I do feel time poor, I have written over 40,000 words in four weeks (beyond the blog!). That's a lot of writing time NOT spent blogging and the reason why September has so few blogs.

I'm having a break now from that project before finishing the draft. Reading it to M. You have to take breaks from the work from time to time, to get Distance, as if you were on some real-life road journey and needed breaks to sleep and wash-up. That's a bit like writing a book.

I'm going to sign off to write a poem about Dickens! (maybe)

Ciao Bella, I'll be back

Sacha

Spring already!

Spring smile

Enough already with Spring!

My new line
The first month is done
Enough already with the celebrating

Spring is here            
Let us cheer
Now we're done
Back to work
Everyone

Just remember your spring smile

A different season

I am in Spring  -
Writing about Winter      

Rain                
Wet
Cold
Fire
Close
Grey
Talk
Roast
Gravy
Sleep
Cold
Wet
Rain

But my camera has more to say about Spring (Go green!)

Spring III!

Nature's Fashion 

Colour  texture  growth...

Bonus bird!

Spring is Nature's fashion show. Everybody likes fashion in the springtime!

A pointy plane

Impregnates
A perfect sky        

Redirects traffic
At right-angles
to the steeple

A pointy plane points

'This way folks:
we changed our minds'
The pointy plane, like a finger,
Reminds -

Going to Spain
Going to Greece
Going away
To find my release

Not going there
At any rate

A pointy plane says Hey!

Re-directing traffic
Across a perfect sky

A steeple...

Makes the cross

Spring II!

Listening to the view

Music that matches the                    
Weather

Close to my heart (just now)

Hard
Soft
Silver
Rain

A symphonic sound of old
Strings and brass breathe

Hard
Soft
Silver
Rain

The windows cry now, as if along to the symphony

Leaves applaud

Trees wave

Flowers bow down, as if preparing to sing

Rain wets all
No under-rock untouched

A choir
A regiment
An orchestra

Yet
Organised by Nature

A white-bibbed cat completes the picture

I look on from my walls of glass, listening to the view

Spring!

Fire still

Old Oak across the road, begins again!

Life cycle!
The tree featured  on blog in 'Ode to Autumn',
now somewhat pruned, as well as denuded,
begins the Life cycle again.

Nature and Nurture