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.

Glad.

Above all, just grateful.

Enchanted forest.

today i took the dogs for a lovely walk down in our jungley yard. it's so beautiful but it's a case of 'four legs good two legs bad...'
they gallop blithely; i try to boing but it's usually more like a thud.
ha.
yesterday discovered
what a person does with a 70-210 zoom lens.
apparently they're for creating enchanted forests from scraggly manuka.

jai guru deva, om

Perverse.

as i am going through a bit of a dark patch and am completely mental,
it seems like i say and do the opposite of what will make me happy.
for instance. i've just cut years of my life away.
and i've been trying to grow it long, like a proper girl.
see? perverse.
the bright side of this (lol), is that the middle shot is, i reckon, my best self portrait ever.
except for that blown out hair wing thing!
a bit dorky.
:)

And now for something completely different... Music Video Bonanza!

ten minutes of silly distractions for those that need it...


the sea is a silver sliver, the moon is near full, and casting shadows bright as day outside. hopeless for sleeping..

first. sigur ros. wish i'd made this video..
i know how ridiculously pathetic that sounds, believe me.
it's just it's so dreamily beautifully shot (as with their one with the doll.. they obviously have genius directors of photogaphy in iceland.)
and the story is simple and pure joy to behold... yes folks, they're old, they're rebels and they're having a war... (in the cemetery!!)
enjoy
and watch this! (sorry, couldn't figure out how to link these prop'ly so i just photographed them off the laptop...)
but aren't those jeep shots just killer? the song is also, but it takes a few listens.
it's has this exciting and dangerous bassline that drops in and out of it, and when you're expecting it, it becomes a real release. along with the plaintive repetition of a cry for peace to come; a brilliant and subtly nuanced track from those old gizzards,
depeche mode.
when i was driving home and i had it up real loud, i thought, i could die right now. it would be alright. but that thought scared me, so i slowed down. and changed the song to a more quiet introspective one...
lol.

Lost

i was trying to wait a suitable amount of time for my beautiful intelligent politically minded friend to say something about this because i don't know enough to make educated comments and also because i'm a shitty coward who doesn't like to get their hands dirty.. but i think she's distracted with wildlife at present.. ,
anyway,

it seems to me it is unacceptable when a person is executed for their thoughts. to be lost for words.

for Natalya.

Red Blooms by Calexico -

When the fists of winter fly
Driving bones into the snow
Blackened frostbitten nights
Vodka running dry

The statues cloaked in white
Migrants from museums
Losing all the feeling
Now that sunrise is outlawed

Strangers plant themselves
Down in the cold hard ground
Later when the harvest thaws
Snow drops will be in bloom again

Crossed out on city maps
Prospekt Mira reveals
Shadows drinking antifreeze
'Neath the underpass

Ordered once a gulag's march
Now cities send the call
Falling from the rooftops fast
And frozen against the wall

Where strangers plant themselves
Dead souls of the underground
When February thaws
Snow drops will be in bloom again.

Angel of Pauanui

Here are my wings when they were still intact.
Three years ago when my lovely friend Hannibal turned 30 she borrowed a studio and photographed 30 of her friends (on film). i was lucky enough to be one of them. we were told to style ourselves.

she's the other one in the photo of my bad side. :)



I have 5 (maybe 6) very close friends who are Pisces. Hannibal is one of them. none of them are communicating at the moment. wonder what is up with Pisces? does anyone know?

Have the feeling Hannibal has taken off to Pauanui owing to her dead mobile phone. Hannibal generally takes off to Pauanui when she is having hurricanes in her personal life or needs some space in her head..

I hope all is well my dearest fishy friends...

Paris.

On the same trip (as below) i went to Paris for the first time, to visit my aunt. Lot of time spent wandering. The little girls washing their hands are in Pere Lachaise cemetery, one of the very best places to stroll amongst the very best dead: Handel, Isadora Duncan, Oscar Wilde (who had his grave made over in 1987 i think by an anonymous female "admirer" dunno what it was like before but now it's a block of towering concrete with scary angels..), "Jim"...

The statue of the embracing couple i'd like to say is Jardin du Luxembourg, but have a feeling it's this random park i found while on the way to somewhere else... that statue has haunted me for years.
Wish i had wings. Been watching the birds today..

London.

When i was a young pup i saved up all my money i had made working as a (fully clothed) waitress in a strip club where you could get quite insane tips.
and occasionally drunken gropes,
:(
and i went off on my way, searching for adventure.
Ended up here.
This is stoke newington cemetery, a short walk from islington, where my grandparents are half the year.
It's one of my favourite cemeteries any oldwhere. one side has these gates (pictured) and as you go through from there it gets more and more ramshackle til you finally come out by a tiny brown brick church and a park with a stream and a bridge, and if memory serves, deer grazing, well this was ten years ago, so...
anyway, of course i had run out of film by then, not knowing what was to come..
had a nice chat with a bum, for ages, about pigeons. we were both pro pigeon.
Lot of old angels in stoke newington cemetery.