Archibald, Arnold and some wizards at last…

Total randomness today.

This morning I went to an inspiring and fabulous art exhibition. The Archibald Prize for portraiture is Australia’s biggest and best known art prize. Everyone in Australia knows about it and it makes the news every year. Usually the winner is a highly controversial choice. The exhibition never leaves Sydney – except this year it has come to an art gallery in a town near to me. There was no way I was going to miss seeing this one. Of course it wouldn’t be right for me to post pictures of it here on my blog (wish I could have taken photos) so if anyone’s interested in seeing the works of art you can see them at the Archibald Prize 2007 website. Of course these pictures don’t come anywhere near close to showing what the paintings are really like. These works of art are typically massive … over 10 feet high, some as big as my kitchen wall. They’d have needed ladders to paint them.

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Never To Be

Yesterday I lost my Rackham Fairy locks and left the hairdresser feeling more like Sensuous Goddess Rock Chick with a return to my deep chocolate red wispiness and even some bangs. Today, I’m writing poetry. Ah me. Such are the vagaries of my existence on the earthly plane.


Moonbeams – Peter Mardon

Never To Be

Ah Muse, elusive drug of my desire
intoxicate
frustrate
cast your sensuous spell
Tease me, let me taste but then
coldly withdraw
just out of fingertips reach
And I …
finally …
come to know this …
“Never to be”.

Once I was a Hope
but now a mere side trip
on ramp/off ramp
you smile blithely “nice to meet you
but I now have newer faces better places to be
can we remain friends?”
But your lips aren’t moving.
Visitor to my soul
You left your rare illumined touch
embossed
in the depths of my being
as none have done before.
And oh how I grieve.
Never to be

My gates are closed to other fickle tourists
They will rust and gather dust and yet
I will drift forevermore
catch glimpses of me
within moonbeams
wisps of dreams and whispers of sound
if you but care to seek
I am there to be found
in the infinite astral
forever solitary
eternal melancholy.
In this life …
mere wraith to you
transient ephemeral
de peu d’régard
and yet I dare to Muse with wistful wish
Will you seek me in another existence?
Or will I remain in your disdain unworthy?
Never to be.

désolé

“sorry, we don’t have any” is de rigeur here

I am seriously pissed off.

I initially told myself that I would not read the latest Harry Potter book until I had actually read all of the books I am halfway through right now. But today I read one too many blogs that mentioned the bloody thing and I caved. Well. I intended to cave. I got myself excited over the prospect thinking “oh well, it will only take me a couple of days to read the thing…” (going via previous experience with the other books) “so what the hell”. Proudly announced to a couple of girlfriends via email that I was going to get the book today and joked “I bet any amounts of money that they won’t have it in stock here anyway” (again – going by previous experience …).

There are no bookshops in the town where I live. If I won Lotto, I’d open my own little independent bookshop here, with lounges to snuggle up and read on, and an espresso coffee machine, and it wouldn’t make any more here but oh wouldn’t it be nice??

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de rien

dandelion

De Rien

A book laid by …
left open at the page where you last were reading,
face down.
A story that started so promisingly
but now, gathering dust,
neglected until the time when
there is nothing more to amuse;
until boredom causes you to reach for it
when you casually remember it is there,
unfinished
but like a faithful lover,
it waits.

Does it care
that you are no longer entranced by the riches it holds?
That the pleasure it once gave now bores you?
That you no longer have the lust to discover its secrets?
And
what of its beauty you once found so bewitching?
You have gazed on it long enough that it is now commonplace
to you.

Ah, how it longs for you to pick it up and once again partake
If you would but give of yourself time and curiosity
You would be reminded of what passed before
And find still innumerable pleasures
to soothe delight arouse beguile
and make you smile.
Instead, how patient it must be
awaiting tedium to take hold of you,
returning on your terms only
so you might feign interest,
giving it a cursory glance
for a minute or two.
Nothing of consequence.

Like the dandelion …
ephemeral fluff
awaiting your breath
to denude it

copyright 2007

I feel the distance of creeping cold seeping into my bones …

It is winter here in the Land of Oz, and a colder winter than it has been in many a mild year. But it is not the cold of winter, in a physical sense, of which I speak here. Yet … “now is the winter of my discontent”.

I’ve not really been my usual self for a while. I’ve been blogging about mythology, movies, music; I’ve been pasting poetry, prose, old posts … anything to distract me. A friend said to me in an email … “you seem pretty quiet about your life lately”. And so I have been. And hadn’t really realised it totally until she said it.

I have been feeling restless for a while now. Not angsty in a despairing writhing kind of way … but a trifle melancholy none the less. Uneasy. Remember me saying a while back that I felt fragile and translucent, like one of Laura’s glass animals in The Glass Menagerie? Well a friend, the same friend, shared something with me that totally defined the feeling. Better than I ever could have. From a Suzanne Vega song:

Today I am
a small blue thing
made of china
made of glass

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A day redeemed

I did, of course, end up having a fabulous day yesterday, in complete disregard of my initial pissiness. I just let people irritate me too much and take things way too personally. Slights, imagined or otherwise, are always made into a less-than-flattering reflection of how people feel about me … yeah, I take them too personally. And then there’s that whole “age” thing which you might have guessed from my choice of Sylvia’s poems yesterday. Each year is a heavier version of “ah shit, not another one”. They are bound to be maudlin days in a way and each year I swear I don’t want another one – quoth the Julia “nevermore”.

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Reptiles, Ballets Russe, and Victorian poets at bargain basement prices…

Sigh – the blogmonster ate my blog. And I was nearly done. Here we go again.

I’ve got nothing important or deep to write tonight Just chatter about my day and lovelies to share…

Today was pretty … bright sun, crystal clear blue skies … but with a nippy enough wind to keep me inside in the warmth of my house. Not so Liam and Poppydog – who both wanted to go outside and kick an orange around. Poppy is obsessed with balls in the truest sense of the word ‘obsessive’. In an attempt to cut her off from her obsession, she is ball deprived. Not that she knows. She thinks she is living in heaven because she has two orange trees at her disposal. At least we think they are orange trees but she knows they are in fact trees that are there to provide her with balls. Not any normal balls either, but balls that she likes to eat after she has done playing with them. The entire bottom half of each tree is denuded of oranges thanks to Poppydog’s OCD. She picks them.

Anyway. No sooner had I let them outside to play footorange than they both came running back in, Liam with big round eyes and excitedly crying “mummy mummy come look mummy”.

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