Sometimes writing is like looking for a marshmallow in a desert

Sometimes writing is a long, dry, hard trek to the mountain pass

You have to remember to rest along the way

and carry on even when the path seems to lead nowhere

 There will always be a great view (if you remember to look)

and a waterhole or two (if you know where to find them)

Before long the path starts to look promising

and you have the feeling you are not alone

that someone may be watching over you 

I

Beauty rises up

The swishing grass begins to sing

The muse lands on your shoulder

You know it won't be long

before you find

the marshmallow rocks

you were searching for.


Desert Writers, Ormiston Pound walk, West Macdonnell Ranges, NT, June 2012.

What is it about those islands?

What is it about those islands off Vancouver, CA? because now all these years later my dear friend and muse, Simone, who I met in '74 Eugene, Oregon...

 (yes the same counter culture capital of the world I spoke of earlier, or will speak of later depending on the order you read this disembodied memoir)...

when I was planting trees with the Hoedads, a legendary collective of feral hippies who replanted logged mountainsides with tiny conifers we carried on our backs in yellow bags, perfectly matching the yellow rain jacket and yellow rain pants we always wore, as you could only plant when it was raining because otherwise the ground was too hard and you couldn't plant when it was snowing either, as the ground was frozen, and so we would be holed up in our black plastic tee pee, way up in the woods, sittin' round the fire, cookin' soup and singin' old country pickin' songs that were popular at the time...

so that same Simone I mentioned at the beginning of this sentence, the very same one who is still my dear friend and muse today, even though she lives on a far away island  just off Vancouver CA, and must ride the very same ferries I rode in '78 with the renegade B ( I don't want to say her real name in case now she is a respectable upstanding member of society and sadly no longer an outlaw), the same ferries that my dear Tibetan friend Tenzing Tsewang rode before he died at his mailbox on Saltspring Island...

that same Simone is the friend who spoke the words (quoted elsewhere in this dismembered memoir) which offered me such great comfort - 'he has ridden on ahead'

she is the one, yes the very same one, who once sent her poetic art missives across the oceans in painted envelopes heavy with stamps, to land in my letter box so I could reply in a similar tone, long before it was fashionable, long before it was co-opted into artsy fartsy blogs like this one, long before people just didn't send letters anymore...

that same girl/woman/artist/poet, now simply and affectionately known as Mon (who paints designs on silk scarves and sends her missives now by ether, not post), lives on one of those islands off Vanvouver CA...

and I am thinking I really must go there one day soon for tea...

Made In Cambodia

I took this photo of a Sallyanne Morgan sculpture (called Made In Cambodia) at an exhibition at Java Cafe, Phnom Penh, earlier in 2012. It's my favorite photo of the year so far.

Irish Sculptor Sallyanne Morgan’s meditative, life-size, sculptures explore the tension between the perceived and the real, combining an observation of current lives and past traditions with an underlying uncertainty for what may yet come.

In the exhibition at there are three different series, all of them with a polished white surface. One features the life-like figures of a woman, a child and a man, each with protective tattoos engraved on them, offering a more literal and private narrative. The second series shows abstracted female torsos with a moving sphere in the middle that suggests a deeper more internal conversation. Finally, the third series of small figures balancing in various positions around a central rod, a metaphoric gesture about adaptation to change.

Sallyanne Morgan studied sculpture at Colaiste Conghaile in Dublin in 1995. She exhibited in Dublin and Cork and worked as a Community Artist around the country. This is her first exhibition in Cambodia.

Ben Thynal’s “My Selfish Family” and Sallyanne Morgan’s “The Illusion of Permanence” opened at Java Gallery and Café (56 Sihanouk Bvd.) on the 10th of January 2012.

This is part of the regular series of exhibitions, launching two at time every 6-7 weeks at Java Café & Gallery. Since 2000, this not-for-profit platform form contemporary visual arts in Cambodia, has hosted over 100 exhibitions and performances, including international collaborations and forums.

Excerpts from a post 6/1/12 by totallyrandomman at:
http://www.expat-advisory.com/articles/southeast-asia/cambodia/reality-clashes-illusion-java-gallery

Wind burial

Last month I had the good fortune to meet Korea's renowned poet Hwang Tong Gyu at a Red Room round table event at the Rocks in Sydney. He was introduced by the wonderful Sydney (Singapore) poet Eileen Chong who also read his poems in English.

Hwang spoke about the process of writing the seventy poems over fourteen years that make up his collection Wind Burial (1995), and how at the end of that time he was no longer afraid of death. 'The poems are linked by the motif of wind burial ... the folk tradition of leaving the corpse out in the open and allowing it to decompose and disappear gradually through exposure to the elements.'

Below are the lines from his poem 'wind burial 27' with images I collected in Newcastle.

 When I leave the world

I'll carry my two hands, two feet and mouth.

 I'll take my dim eyes too, carefully covering them with lids.

But I'd rather leave my ears,
ears keen to catch the sound of the late night rain
as it gives its arm to autumn's shoulder.

Ears that can guess the name of the autumn tree

standing in the rain only by listening
will be left.

My small heart

If I could shine a light from my small heart

 bright  enough

to fill 

a house 

or  two

 or           three             or             four                                            

  maybe then

 I wouldn't be

 quite

 so afraid

to invite you in





Sparkes St Lantern Party, Newcastle, Sept, 2011
Lanterns made by the residents.
An initiative of Caroline McKay
Road closure supervised by Brian Joyce

Leaving Behind

Leaving behind

 my comfy four star (so it said in the brochure) bed

my windy coconut palm Mission Beach view
(it had been calm and sunny the day before)

 and the hurricane stripped, scrawny chicken neck, post Yasi, d-tree-d landscape

I enter the green tree frog, banana leaf, sugar cane town

 of Tully                   (wettest town in the whole dang country they reckon)

Where I'd been told  I was sure to encounter some

 strange characters

and great old buildings

in dire need of repair

(Pause)









(Imagine a photo or two of acres of blue bagged banana trees, cute sugar cane trains, toothpick chewing stop-sign-holding-walky-talky road workers,  windy roads leading up and up to the rolling hill, misty, Milla Milla wonderland, that flattens out into some not-quite-how-I-imagined-the Tablelands-to-be, paddocks and arrives in the middle of the town of Atherton)






where









I came across a sign

no, not this one

not this one either




it was a pretty boring looking sign that said -



 
China town - turn left

 and there it was ...

this fabulous Glen Murcutt, ripple iron, woolshed of a joss house temple

with its ornate carving

Chinese lettering

  frescoed walls

exquisite door handles

and out-the-back-rooms

This part intrigued me more than anything

I peered through a weatherboard crack

 and caught a glimpse of

 a yesterday

 left behind

North Qld, August, 2011
Black and white photos of signs at Houwang Temple, Atherton, North Qld.
http://www.houwang.org.au/