..And so this is Christmas...

Today i learned a very valuable lesson regarding tyres. i learned that revolting old back tyres do not necessarily follow beautiful sexy new front tyres out of corners, after it has just rained, if you are accelerating hard and still turning at the same time, apparently..
i think. i wasn't really analyzing it as well as i should have been perhaps, at the time.. ha.

today especially, i am so grateful to be able to be able to dance through Waikumete..
and that there was no one coming the other way when i was learning about tyres...
now i'm listening to the owls and 'Antony and the Johnsons  - I Am a Bird Now', a great album for this minute in time.

my friend with the ankle bracelet who is trapped for now and has nothing but time to think, says he sounds like Nina Simone (which is strange for a boy...)..
i agree.

and so already,
this Christmas looks like it's shaping up to be another stunner..

take it easy y'all. it's never just you who suffers when silliness occurs..

live today like it's your last.

happy today.

who knows about tomorrow.

oh, so lovely! my new fernery.

since the bath tub doesn't actually function as a bath tub should, ie; enable a person to have hot relaxing baths, thought i might as well "prettify" the bathroom, and enhance my positive feng shui at the same time, by filling it with ferns from the bush.
fingers crossed they survive...
i'm not exactly miss green thumbs.

where is the real you?

you lie so easily it makes me cringe.
two people in one mind.
it's killing me.
i have to be almost done with you.

i am

i don't like that
i am
a human being.
only
i don't know
what there is
to do
about it.

in love.

i hope i never get over this feeling of awe i have over being in paris.
there are so few things in life that bring me this much joy.
every time i have come i have been acutely aware that i am,
In. Paris.
i feel like a kid on christmas morn..

when i am rich i will have an apartment here.
i will come every summer,
i will fall in love and bring my children here and every time it will feel like christmas morn..
even in the middle of summer.
maybe we will stay til the leaves turn red and brown and orange
and fall from the trees.
maybe we will stay for christmas.

but one is faded,

such is life

these two photos caused me to be distracted enough to leave my overnight things in my grampa's car. which was a terrible thing, but not in the way you'd think.

in sunlight.

i love this one. on the empty bus.

Oh Margaret.

my dear beautiful gramma, Margaret
who thought she was never pretty and actually winced when she saw this shot.
she's with her sister Helen (centre), and my great gramma grumpypants Martha, who just died recently at one hundred and four.
when they were young, gramma was very skinny and gangly legged, which wasn't in fashion, and had glassses, whereas Helen was a bit curvier and didn't.
everyone always raved about how pretty Helen was...
but not gramma.
it makes me so sad.
gramma was always at the top of her class in high school. she says her school principal yelled at her in front of everyone when she said she wasn't going to university.
she couldn't go to uni because her dad wanted her to get a job and give the family (him, Helen, grumpypants) TEN DOLLARS a week.  they needed it.
her dad worked in the bleach factory for not enough pay and before that he'd been a miner. he proceeded to die too young and leave my gramma with only Helen and grumpypants for company. it's all a little bit Cinderella.
i think this is even gramma's wedding day (her first marriage, not to grampa, story for another day),
and she is standing off to one side and Helen is in the middle.
and gramma made her own dress while Helen's was bought for her by her parents.
such deliberate neglect.
also,
gramma made herself a violin when she was a teenager that her music teacher played and said had a lovely sound. it got burnt up in a house fire which started with faulty wiring in the corner where the violin sat.
i always wished i could have heard it sing.

Victor Douglas Harwood (my grampa)

My dear grandfather.
I love you so much...

While i've been in Canada i've been learning more about grampa's life before he met my gramma, and also random scientific facts..
For instance, did you know, most plants are made up of three things, cellulose, hemi-cellulose, and lignin?
Grampa has a phD in science, but when he talks to me he tells me baby facts and says things very slowly, emphasizing the syllables in words he thinks i might not know.
Lig-NIN.
i'm twenty-eight now. i love him to bits. he is a crotchety old stickler at times, but as kind as god.
i speak slowly to him because his ears do not hear so well since his heart attack a few years back.
i love the face he's making in the shot above.
he walks much more slowly now then i remember and he is more hunched.
he has had every terrible thing imaginable happen to his physical body in the five years since i last saw him.
but his mind is fine.
he remembers paying eleven hundred dollars for an Austin car in 1952 because his friend had one, and he had let him drive it...
lol. boys.
apparently his income at that point was about thirty five hundred a year but living expenses were low.
at that particular time in his life he was working for a company where his job was to analyse how much DDT residue was left on fruit when it reached the consumer.
hardly any, he says.

tiny joy

My gramma's 8mm camera. It was purchased in 1963 on a cruise when they had only four of the seven children. gramma says she had a very basic one before this.
the cruise cost $500 for four kids (leanne, my mum, john and billy) and my grandparents.
the Zeiss cost $100.
wowee.

happiness is a warm bun.

'we'll entertain them with little bunny shadows on the wall..' Hawkeye Pierce - M*A*S*H

Extraordinary times.

First there was Walter.
Then Yesterday when i was driving the long tree lined path out of here there was a different Woodpigeon (Kereru) having a conversation with a young rabbit. they were only feet away from one another. i didn't mean to interrupt but engines are loud and wild animals timid. Today my Paka gave me a tiny baby rabbit. Break my heart. First he accidentally cut the baby's stomach. he couldn't help it. baby rabbits are very soft and he has big teeth. i saw him carry it and he was trying to be gentle. i could see him trying. i'm leaving in twelve days. what is there to do?
it's all because i drew this horrible picture.
i won't draw things like this anymore.

Walter.

today is an extraordinary day.


it's very difficult to photograph a bird when he's sitting on your arm..

Idyll.

tonight i'm writing my short story about pigs so here is something from almost
a long time ago now..








silly times...
the magazines i photographed were remix and one i can't remember, which is a shame.
i used to love polaroids but it wasn't really my medium.
i ate that tamarillo right after the shoot when i didn't need him anymore...
he was the shiniest one.

Hunter.

my godson.
he is a very lovely little person. i am very glad my friends made him..

smart too. he found it highly amusing watching the shutter through the lens. that's what he's pointing at in the bottom pic. but the thing he has always liked the most about me i think is my owl ring.

he has the same birthday as my dad (september 29th. they didn't even know when they made me his godmother!) so this year
i'm going to miss his second birthday ever..
:(

i'm as bad as the bad nasty hairy worty toothless godmother in sleeping beauty.
i had better bring him back a super cool present. maybe a rocket ship?

today i found out..

0nce again that i am so stupid.
i almost lost everything, and everyone i care about (except william), in one fell swoop. the house should have burned down but didn't for some miraculous reason. i left the animals inside cos it was such a horrible day and went next door for a coffee. i was gone for two hours in the end. the dogs managed to throw a cushion onto the radiant heater some 2.5-3metres away and the cushion just gradually cooked and smoked and the heater cooked and smoked and melted and when i got home the house was filled with plastic smoke to the floor, but the fabric never ignited for some reason. the cushion became like a big piece of charcoal, or a giant piece of burnt toast. the heater is destroyed. it went through two layers of carpet, underlay, down to the particle board beneath, but didn't ignite. i think i came home just in time.
they could have been all burned up by the time anyone noticed.
nightmares.
my house smells like burnt and i can't close the windows and doors even tho the weather's storming away outside. i have wrecked the landlord's carpet. i have potentially harmed my animals.
i'm not going to describe how i'm feeling right now because it would be too depressing for anyone to read.
:(
(pics of will and mia by sam)



oh AND, the topper: the thing i am most unrealistically phobic about, the Weta (evil giant native cricket from hell), cos i think to myself, after all that, i'm just gonna make myself a nice cup of dandelion tea. and there's a fucking weta hiding in my kettle. haha. satan poos on my head yet again.
so just wanted to issue an invitation to the universe to fuck with me some more. like, i'm still breathing. what else? bring it.
going to have a glass of malbec instead and try to think up some dinner, and make a fire (lol.. yeah on purpose this time:)
perhaps a post later when i am less not okay.

later...
*strange parallels*
i just read my friend Jessica's post for today about fires!!
unbelievable.
this is the first time i personally ever have had a close call with fire(or lack thereof), and my friend is posting about fire.
her tale is more tragic than mine. i am so very grateful my fire story ended where it did. i guess we can always find blessings if we look hard enough.

the price of freedom.

i'm furiously writing, smoking ciggies and eating whittakers 72% cocoa dark chocolate. it's like speed, dark chocolate, once your tastebuds even sense it in the mouth they quiver with joy and it makes you want to keep eating and eating it..
dear me.

i'm trying to write this short story.
i've got an idea but it's still gelling in my brain
but it's about the consequence of chaos, or the price of freedom.
in this particular story they are the same.
it's set in a pig farm.
stay tuned!
although, i don't know how to link a short story to my blog so...
?

today a piwakawaka (fantail) came and sat on the little bamboo fence around the garden about ten feet away from where i was sitting and peeped at me. i mean, that's the noise they make peeep...
they are the sweetest dearest birds.
although Maori (our native people here in dreamland) believe if one flies in your house it means death. they have many names for the fantail, which is unusual. they have given the fantail more names than all the other birds it seems..
i think they love them most, even though they know what they herald..

today i saw the biggest, most awesomest (in the grandest sense of the word) hawk. it was the size of a little dragon. it flew up when i reached it. i watched it's wings pulling on the air to gain height, i was flying myself at the time, in the car down the straight. we both felt weightless for a moment and then i was pulled back down to earth, holding the wheel; the hawk lifted above the treeline and was gone.
i pray for them. the birds. they are so guileless, vulnerable; their skin is delicate; they break so easily.
we are similar.

i didn't do anything with photos today so i'm putting up two of my favourite pics ever, they're of the place where the piwakawaka sat.
i like these photos so much because they remind me of John Steinbeck and the 1940's
but there's no way i could properly explain that to anyone..

Important things i need to remember.

the end of that sentence which runs onto the next page is,
'it is clear that we must try to free all sentient beings from suffering.'
that's the point.

it's meaning for being alive and i had forgotten it for a while there..
i put this up so it reminds me of what i should be pursuing, putting my energy into, in this lifetime
and any others if i am lucky enough to have any others.

today there was no sea, just unending sky and haze beyond the mountains. i watched for a long time.

the words are the Dalai Lama's as edited by Nicholas Vreeland.
the Dalai Lama must think Nicholas understands him very well, he's had him edit many of his texts.
i think Nicholas is very blessed to get to spend time listening to the Dalai Lama and hearing pearls.