Silver shimmer

Walking down by the inlet the last few days the water has been a gentle reflection of the pale cloudy sky.

The water birds are making the most of the still shallow waters - easy fishing and feeding on the water weeds in the shallows.

A flotilla sails by.

Spoonbills taking time out from feeding.

An ibis comes in to land.

The lichen covered rocks glow in the late afternoon light.

A wolf on the wall

Last trip to Perth I caught the train into town with Mum to have a look at some of the Art in the City organised by Form. Painted over nine days, by forty five artists, Australian and international, on thirty walls. All photos taken on my phone. These are just a sample of the works to be discovered.

This was one of my favourites in Wolf Lane. Mining meets Dr Who meets gaming.

Pilbara Destruction by Pixel Pancho.

The squished car is due to photomerging images.

Child wolf in Wolf Lane by H?

Productive Construction by Heavy Projects

Cheeky Sparrow 2013, 

probably not one of the Form ones but I like it - in the outdoor eating space of the Cheeky Sparrow eatery.

Maya Hayuk on curved wall, floating ladies and dresses by ?

Alexis Diaz

Hand detail - Alexis Diaz

Anya Brock and Hurben

GAIA in a car park in Murray St.

Stormie Mills

Rollin 

Last Chance

detail - Last Chance

Roa - six stories high

 

Phlegm - this work is extraordinary full of amazing detail

Over all very interesting - humorous, fun, cheeky, colourful, serious. Next trip I hope to check out the ones we missed. And yes - Mum loved it too.

Dog gravity

I was in Perth a week ago. It was hot. I stayed with a friend. We walked down the beach with her old dog. Slowly.

 The beach was crowded with dogs and people, all shapes and sizes and colours. Mostly walking. Dogs playing and splashing in the shadows. The calm water was nearly empty of people. 

Surprising. 

We watched big brown dogs collect together, then a group of small pale dogs sniffed as their humans chatted. They agglomerated then dispersed. A special dog gravity.

We walked around a lake in the evening, and watched birds feed in the receding summer shallows. Muddy edges closed in as the hot dry weather continued.

We stayed to watch the evening colours change. 

I loved the last light catching the tips of the pines. 

Awakenings

Yesterday it drizzled on and off under cloudy-ish skies. Out walking the dogs in the afternoon I was surrounded by the rubbery cricks of tiny frogs that live in the karri forest. Only three millimetres of rain but just enough to wake the frogs. Almost autumn.

In the afternoon I and many others witnessed the sand mandala dissolution ceremony performed by the monks that had been working on the mandala since Tuesday.

The Tibetan monks hail from the Tashi Lhunpo Monastery in India and were accompanied by the Tibetan, Tenzin Choegyal, a singer, songwriter and musician. While in town they created the mandala over five days, gave workshops and guided meditations, and performed in a concert on Friday night.  Tenzin Choegyal has the most amazing voice and the monks were surprising.

They had an instrument that looked like a flared didgeridoo and had a deep and resonant sound reminiscent of throat singing. It was a Tibetan horn or dungchen. It was used in accompaniment to their chanting and throat singing. Parts of their ritual would wake any slumbering spirit. It must have been quite amazing to hear in the mountains of Tibet.

The mandala was 'dissolved' then collected up and we all walked to the river. For the finale of the ceremony the sand and petals were poured into the river after a final series of chants.

all hover and hammer

And I was alive in the blizzard of the blossoming pear,

Myself I stood in the storm of the bird-cherry tree.

It was all leaf-life and star-shower, unerring, self shattering power,

And it was all aimed at me.

What is this dire delight flowering fleeing always earth?

What is being? What is truth?

Blossoms rupture and rapture the air,

All  hover and hammer,

Time intensified and time intolerable, sweetness raveling rot.

It is now. It is not.

Written on May 4 1937, from Stolen Air, a book of poems by the Russian, Mandelstam, selected and translated by Christian Wiman, 2012. This was one of the last poems written by Mandelstam.

Through his poetry  and essays Mandelstam was increasingly critical of the Stalin government. He wrote and conducted private readings of his poem 'Stalin Epigram' during 1933.  This led to his arrest in 1934 by Stalin's henchmen. He was sent into internal exile with his wife.
After a suicide attempt by Mandelstam his exile was modified to ban only the big cities so they settled in Voronezh. By 1937 his work was being discredited again and he was arrested in May 1938. This time he was sentenced to five years in a correction camp and sent to a camp near Vladivostok. He died on December 27 1938 and was buried in an unmarked grave.
In 1956 he was partially exonerated, and in 1987 he was fully exonerated of all charges against him by the Gorbachev government. 

(The birds above were clamorous, keenly feasting on the nectar rich flowers.) 

I saw a tree

Incurable and unbelieving

in any truth but the truth of grieving,

I saw a tree inside a tree

rise kaleidoscopically

as if the leaves had livelier ghosts.

I pressed my face as close

to the pane as I could get

to watch that fitful, fluent spirit

that seemed a single being undefined

or countless beings of one mind

haul its strange cohesion

beyond the limits of my vision

over the house heavenwards.

Of course I knew those leaves were birds.

Of course that old tree stood

exactly as it had and would

(but why should it seem fuller now?)

and though a man's might now endow

even a tree with some excess

of life to which a man seems witness,

that life is not the life of men.

And that is where the joy came in.

by Christian Wiman, from Every Riven Thing 

Early dance stories

I remember as a young girl, bending and stretching, in black leotard and mended tights, the running stitches looking like haphazard little black caterpillars. With my awkward arms and gangly legs, I was never going to be a graceful black swan. We filled the small hall, learning the rudiments of ballet and tap dance. I can still do the 'shuffle hop step, da da da da' though goodness knows what else went with it. At one end of year show, The Wizard of Oz, I was a munchkin in an icky pale green outfit with fabric daisies stuck on it. What an awful delight; a bunch of little girls in daisy suits. Perhaps we sang a munchkin song? I was more excited that Toto was played by a real dog. Small and white and fluffy. And it didn't pee on the stage.

This gives you an idea of our costumes. The photo was taken by Dad in 1966. I am in the second row, central in a red 'highland dance' costume. My sister is in the front row in a pale bluey green costume with the frilly hat. Delightful .... hmmmm.

Fast forward a few years and we were in Papua New Guinea. Dance there meant being part of colourful sing sings. All the villagers from miles around were involved. The costumes were magnificent; extravagant headdresses, arm and leg bands, grass skirts, painted tapa cloths, hibiscus flowers and colourful feathers. A world away from the dance hall in Mundaring. The dancers moved to a simple chant and drums while nearby a huge feast was prepared. We learnt the simple steps that made our grass skirts swing backwards and forwards to the beat.

This photo was taken at a Sing Sing at Kokoda in September 1970. 

And the Papuans could sing. Singing from the 'cradle', or in their case the bilum, their voices were clear, confident and harmonious. It was a revelation and I loved that freedom of expression so apparent there and in boarding school. At boarding school we sang all the time. On the bus too and from school, everyday in the chapel, at choir practice and we just sang for the pure pleasure of it. I had the shock of my life when four years later we came back to WA and people just didn't break into song because they felt like it.

It was at boarding school some Port Moresby girls taught me a more complicated rolling of the feet dance movement. It was rather like tracing a circle on the ground with each foot. Your bent knees and hips followed your feet, swaying in circles. Add in some pretty arm movements, a skirt and some frangipani leis and you had a Papuan hula. But we were in an arid gold mining town, surrounded by mulloch heaps, chinky apples and a town nearby whose claim to fame was a gallows in the main street (morbidly fascinating to teenagers). So no frangipanis, just a few hardy hibiscus to put in our hair.

Sharon on the left was one of the girls who taught me the Papuan hula moves. It was 1972 let it all hang out peace man. Just for the record the red spot behind Sharon is an hibiscus flower.

Later on it was bush dances with the Mucky Duck Bush Band on Saturday nights. On the weekends when we weren't dancing we were in the bush camping and caving. Those were the days of cheap fuel. I think it cost about ten dollars for a weekend down south. Outside of work we lived for being in the bush, getting grotty, then swimming in a river or the ocean or trogging through an underground stream - or just staying grotty.

It was a big step from my early experiences to being part of the Songlines project last year, a community performance of Joey Williams' songlines from the Stirlings to Denmark.  As part of our rehearsal process we had a morning down by the river swimming and dancing. We learnt about Joey's family stories that we were performing, a variety of types of fire, sparks, and smoke. Performing on stage was initially confronting but the nerves disappeared when concentrating on the dance. I am still not fluid but happy in being brave enough to have a go and I have learnt  about the arts of concentration and transformation of ideas into movement. But the best part is a shared experience with other members of the community and having fun in the process.