Transported by a plush French cafe......

Was it the purple upholstery or the gold painted furniture? Was it the light streaming in from the early morning Sydney streets? Was it the perfectly coiffed French waitress, all the way from Brittany? 

Whatever it was, the shadowy interior of this cafe transported me to where the coffee was perfect, the home made marshmallow "incroyable" and the city life fantasy complete. 

Just one cup of coffee in the right light in a plush French cafe. 

The eyes behind the lens

Far from familiar meandering lanes, I am here in the midst of the dramatic lines of Sydney. Strong diagonals on the Bridge, soaring curves on the Opera House, tiny human forms a reminder of our presence.

A woman tied to a harness sets out on the climb. It will take three hours and 189 dollars to complete a walk to the top of the bridge and back. I savour planet earth, sit back and soak it up, from below. I didn't understand it before, why so many of our young people live, work, settle here? But Australia is beautiful and I am beginning to get it.

Although moved by the effort and imagination, I am intimidated by the height of the Coat Hanger Bridge and go into frozen denial even on the lower pathway. The camera is a distraction which soon works it's magic and I get lost in the moment.

From nothing they made this place and dreamed large. I study old photographs of the 1400 men who worked on the Bridge with their bare hands. 16 of them died on the job. The white hot rivets of steel made their lives a misery and sparks shredded their overalls within days. No safety harnesses, no hard hats.

But it's the invisible photographer who I remember now. The one who carried that primitive equipment all the way up here to capture their faces, the see for the first time the view of the harbour, to marvel at the engineering and craftsmanship.

I think of the eyes behind that lens and in this moment I share the passion of so many who walked the path before me.

Wish you were here ........a few postcards from Sydney.....

Wish you were here, the surf's up.......

Wish you were here, life on the ocean wave.......

Wish you were here, tis a dreamy view......

Wish you were here, the flowers are so exotic......

Wish you were here, although it's autumn and the shadows are long it's still 23 degrees......

Wish you were here, you would never tire of looking at this.....

Wish you were here, cos just for no reason they have fireworks over Cockle Bay......

~ Mementos ~

I'm in Micky Macs place. It's been disturbed by party goers, doors open to the yard, a gentle sea breeze blowing through windows, cracked and broken. I once visited him here in his smokey room, walls blackened from the wood fire. I sat on a settle bed in a wollen blanket while he sat on that once pink arm chair with a once yellow cushion.

Even on the beach where he used to sit on summer evenings, he wore the whole kit; a long great coat, a flat cap and black boots. Surrounded by picnics and bathing families he stayed shyly at the edge, chatting to anyone who lingered.

His neighbour, used to wave down cars by standing in the middle of the road. A tousled head would peer through the window, asking mysterious questions;

"Have ye any cigarettes?"
"No we don't smoke"
"Well have ye any kittens?"

They are both gone now as are most of the older generation of my own family. Flimsy remains of curtains and occasional memories all that's left.

A way of life is dying out too. Small farms are being swallowed up and old walls, lanes and streams, absorbed into lawns for horses and feed for herds. No more cattle roaming freely along roadside verges, grazing the long acre.

At the top of the lane is another collapsing cottage. There's an eery emptiness there, a tweed jacket on a hanger in the bedroom, a candle on the kitchen table. The next neighbours, three stoic older siblings, recently lost their fine thatched cottage in a horrible blaze that took all they had. Everything seems vulnerable.

My Dad used to talk about the old days around here and return in his mind to the lanes of Kilkenny where he grew up. He could still feel the hunger experienced through the War. He remembered feet crossing the footpath windows above his grandmother's basement kitchen. The smell of laughing gas from his Father's primitive dental surgery. I have some audio of him singing every word of Run Rabbit Run which he learned as a small boy. Precious mementos.

Today I step into Micky Macs little house, falling down and forlorn without him. My strange ambition to become even more eccentric isn't any wonder, because for a lifetime I have studied the elders. I have loved them, admired their depth, questioned their mysteries, witnessed their fading. And I know that as they disappear I am an elder apprentice, creating my own mementos as I go.


PS To honour Micky Mac a plaque was erected by his friends right on the wall at Garrarus beach where he used to sit.




The Bealtaine Festival celebrating creativity as we age

Also posted today on Vision and Verb a global gathering of creative women sharing words and images.

~ Purple ~

~ Passionate today about intoxicating PURPLE  that's all~

~ How to be a photographer ~

At first light, let the sounds and colours of the morning enter you. Rise when the animals take breakfast. Over coffee keep a steady hand on a long lens, chaffinches might be dropping by. Or go out into the frosty dawn, well wrapped up and remember your key this time!

At the peak of the day open the kitchen door and watch gulls rinsing their salty feathers in the pure lake waters. After a rain shower study bulging drops on twigs. Smell the sweet damp soil. Listen to the hail, how it hops off the gravel path. Wash the mud off your hands if you can't resist handling those wet stones.

Towards evening time let the fading light distract you from work, cooking or company and draw you yet again to the window or the roof top. During the darkest night sense the moon or the constellations. Is it going to be frosty or warm tomorrow? Keep some shoes close to the bed for emergency exits.

In winter follow the sun as it sets over the forest. In summer watch it move into the true west and sink behind the mountains. Track it, while monitoring the movements of the earth. Ponder her speed, flying through the universe.

Know the way light streams into the house at angles. Sit with the cat snoozing in each ray, following her from lap to sill. When the light catches a glass or the shadow of a chair falls on the rug, pay attention. Get close.

If there's a lemon in a bowl or a blue teapot, put it with a pink geranium on a green table cloth and snap it then and there. Cake is good but colour is even better and will sweeten your soul.

Most of all listen to the land. How it swells and ebbs throughout the days. How it warms and cools or sometimes rumbles in the night. How it questions you while holding everything still.

Photograph where you live and what you see. Your own trip, every day, every year, throughout your life. Be there with that camera in your hands.

Because this is the beginning of what I am learning about how to be a photographer and every other thing in life.......

~You will find us here~

You will find us here.

Watching him as he watches the world. 

The early sun sparkles on our turned field,

radiating a murky greenish light.

 Dewy grass emerges,

spreading from the east with morning,

but be assured

none of it is growing under our feet.

~Tending to a nest amongst the pinkest fritillaries~

While meditating on dewy daffodils and the pinkest fritillaries underfoot, I see her swooping in. Even with a dozen or so humans chatting beneath her nest, she carries on incessantly. Over and back, a short stop on the fence post and one final dive under a window ledge.

Carrying more than she can easily manage (enthusiasm and necessity) she keeps going until there is more than enough material. She will have to select and hone later.

The writers with me scribble notes and I crawl through the wet grass doting on spring flowers. Still in the distance I see her labouring on. Those precision flights with the sharpest focus on her destination.

Today uploading these photos, sifting and selecting from spring treasures, tending my own nest with all the deft skill and patience it takes, she still fills me with inspiration.

~Just a moment on the road to the mountain~

I wandered off the route and instead drove towards the Comeraghs. Now I was going to be late. But at least I was living dangerously!

On the boreen I caught a glimpse of the mountain through a gate. The bright morning drew me up through the rise of the land and the cloud skimming the ridge. The occasional grinding mechanism of the lens and my own breathing behind the camera gradually settled my racing mind.

While focussing on the willow hedgerows woven with catkins, I heard her. The song began in bursts with pauses in between. We both waited in the stillness, and every thought of time wasting or even of strategies for change and improvement, abandoned me.

A mate joined her and the blurring began. Just a moment on the road to the mountain and I was back on the right road.

~Myths, ransom and limits~

There's a bit of a warrior queen in me that wants to protect my creative space. If I could make a moat of distance between me and the world I would do it. Barricading myself into a turret room and staying there for as long as it took or until I was thoroughly weary of it.

I also know that no sooner had I closed the door, than I would weep for the loss of my life and I would tear my hair out for loneliness. Because I understand the curse of having all the time in the world and no excuses left to fall back on. But for now I rest in this confusion, leave the door ajar and continue to juggle.

I've been reading an ancient myth about Demeter and Persephone. Persephone must taste first the sweet and then the bitter juice of the pomegranate seeds which she could not resist eating in the wintry underworld. The up and down side of every decision. Her deal with Hades was that she would always return to his dark place for a third of each year. For the rest of the time she would be liberated and reunited with her beautiful mother nature, Demeter. 

These seeds and the ransoms women pay are on my mind.

Which deal must I make now? Either the one to close the door or the one to return to the light? There is always some price and even though I know that winter always returns, I want to deny it. So how do I get the balance right? 

By coincidence (or not) I met a writer on the road and I told her the story. Do you know what she said? "But it's only for one third of the year that Persephone had to endure the underworld. Is that not a pretty good deal?"

And I laughed, because yes, our lives are a big improvement on enslavement or going down the mines, and this is the same argument I use myself, all the time. I am always grateful. But if women's own creative soul had never been denied to us, if patriarchy had never dominated the world, if we were permitted to dream, would we be satisfied with any bargain that did not offer us FULL power?

Studying this myth is a rich source for delving into these questions. It is  challenging the limitations that always draw me back into the service of others and away from a personal path.......

If you are interested you can read more here Myth of Persephone

Also posted here on Vision and Verb a global gathering of women

~ And suddenly all bets are off~

At first it's tentative. One foot in, one foot out. The icy winds don't help. The community has retreated. Keeping their heads down.

Winter is steadfast in it's stagnation.

Then suddenly all bets are off. We start to re-emerge, stand on corners and chat, bend down and pull a few weeds from the path, smell the primroses. Spring has arrived with buds, catkins, new leaves and birdsong.

Meanwhile the lower field has been cleared of every messy thing that I loved. They are making it pristine for planting the greenest of grass. This is all they want now, progress and pasture. My increasingly wild couple of acres are becoming a blot on the landscape of "lawns" for horses. This garden the last bastion of cover and wilderness, briars and gorse, seed heads and sceachs.

Where is the sense in wilderness anyway? No sense that can be explained maybe. But wouldn't we all thrive better if we could live and let live? Disturb as little as possible. Permit, with all our big headed power, the tiny mouse to shuffle aimlessly through the undergrowth, even though when we meet her head on we might shudder......

Basking in a golden blaze of colour

It fills the rocky hill outside the window. Where there has been such little growth so far, a smoldering blaze of flowers all contained in frightening thorny branches.

The sun warms the flowers so that their sweetest coconut scent fills the fields. For the first time in weeks there is promise and hope of spring. It restores and revives.

And I bask in it!







(Thanks to all of you who correctly proposed coconut instead of almond!!)

Dublin, time to forgive and forget.......

Dublin, a series of small villages linked by canals, bridges and some tree lined Dublin suburbs. Downhill into town, uphill home in the evenings. From here, the Dublin Mountains are a snowy backdrop behind the clock tower and the glistening dome of the church in Rathmines. From here a few minutes by bike in either direction and I am there.

This week I am assisting on a creative project in Portobello. Busy, exciting, exhausting. Every evening, crashed out in this room, my eyes are drawn to the view and memories of that daily cycle. Up past the pub on the corner, still the same, around the fancy speciality tea shop, a new addition.

This old cinema is where I saw Elvis Costello and the Attractions play. The first photographic project I did for college was a portrait of some old windows in the side streets behind the church. My dreamy efforts at sketching trees took place along these banks. Then all I wanted to do was get away, always associating this city with the pain of growing up, blaming it all on dirty Dublin.

The wild lanes of Ireland will clear the cobwebs from your brain. They will connect you to the beauty and simplicity of the seasons always turning. They will open you to the magic of the small and the hardy in nature. Grounding and soothing.

But here in the capital, people interact and create sparks of energy and magic. Light dances on the water and the twinkling windows where people eat dinner in public expose the wonders of human daily ritual.

Time to forgive and forget. As winter lingers I am warming to the glow of these streets again. Encountering the ghosts of other Dubliners, their voices of confidence and cocky optimism. I am drinking it in. Storing it up for the return journey to the lakeshore. Reclaiming Dublin as my city too and even seeing the beauty in it......




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