pastpresentfuture

this year I was invited to participate in an exhibition being held for the Latvian Cultural Festival that has been held around Australia between Christmas and New Year since 1951 

the exhibition title "past present future" prompted me to create this autobiographical piece.

loosely based on traditional Latvian costume it includes an apron, a striped wool skirt, a wool blanket, a found antique linen blouse and rather a lot of bones. 

the stitched text translates poetically as "I'm walking and wondering why I leave no footprints"  and is borrowed from a poem by Janis Elsbergs 

(the literal translation is somewhat more specific)

dyed with eucalyptus, local colour infusing into something from elsewhere, from the ground up. 

the apron was reconstructed from a linen shirt and other items sourced during a trip to Latvia in August this year. 

thank you Lufthansa for the nice cotton napkin you left in my lap, which somehow became attached as well and which serendipitously made sense, as my background is Latvian and German.

the pockets full of whitewashed bones represent the cell memories we each carry within us and which I am convinced are handed down from one generation to the next.

I was born in the late 50s, and raised as a "European in exile", a child of two displaced persons from two different cultures.  

but the Australian landscape got under my skin.

I installed the work yesterday.

it was the last piece to go in, the rest of the exhibition had already been  hung.

frankly my work looks rather 'out of place' compared to the rest...everything else is precisely formed/woven/wrought/cut/stitched/shaped...I think it sticks out like the proverbial bull terrier's testicles.
but
I guess that's the truth as well.
and if it isn't true, it isn't worth doing.

music to my ears

two trees entwined

moss hat

sweet meadow

one of the 490 varieties of hypericum

beautiful Austria

campanulas

on the way from Scotland to France i spent almost exactly 90 hours immersed in my first language and emerged somewhat astonished at how very much being surrounded by the sounds of my childhood/adolescence/family life affected me (in a good way).

don't get me wrong. i was born in Australia and love it dearly but when push comes to shove there is no denying that all of my DNA (including the dash of Kazakh that gave me my brown skin) is northern in origin.

so when the steward on the Lufthansa flight to Paris asked me whether i was German or American (darf ich fragen, sind Sie Deutsche oder Amerikanerin) it was with a wee chuckle that i replied "weder, noch" (neither)

i rather like being a citizen of the whirled and being able to meld into various cultures as required (even if only as a walking replica of the local compost heap). whether my rusty French will allow me to do so for the next week or so is a matter for speculation.

guess i'll report in due course.

homeward bound

on the way to the Jewish cemetery in Prenzlauer Berg

[where i needed to go because on Saturday, Shabbat, i heard someone

singing prayers in the dark as i passed by the walls in the night]

there are two men playing Bach at the Alex

Bach pierces the heart when found accidentally like this

much more so than when sitting among the stuffed shirts at a formal concert

in the cemetery all is quiet

here and there a stone rests on a bigger one

- a sign that someone has visited

the graveyard dates back to the 1700s, i think

the Nazis vandalised it 

more recently, others have too

i don't understand why 

on a lighter note

here is a treasure i found at one of the fleamarkets

[it's destined for a friend]

when you hold it up to the light

there's a face at the bottom of the cup

fingers crossed it survives the baggage handlers...

Berlin

in Berlin you can buy a day ticket for the U-bahn

that will be valid until 3am the next day

there are lots of trees

and for some reason the public parks grow long

meadows in the middle of the city

cost cutting as opposed to lawn cutting, perhaps

it looks beautiful

and attracts the bees

but perhaps not these ones

they are Napoleon's particular passion

and you can find them in the Museum der Deutschen Geschichte

where we cram 1500 years into an hour

on the way to a quiet moment at what is left of the wall

and the monument created so that we won't forget

daisies bloom on this part of the Wall

elsewhere there are aprons

both in the stores

and

in the museum [mentioned above]

in Berlin you can take your dog to the public house

to a shop

and on the underground

and below some paper sculpture spotted in the window

of the smallspace gallery

[closed for Sunday, fair enough]

exhibition "knots and facets"

Jens Risch & Michael Hansmeyer

in the shadow of the wall

10 hours of Very Fast Train later
and we're in Berlin
after having to think carefully every time i open my mouth
in the Francophile regions
it's good to be in a country where the words come easily

tomorrow i have a special errand
taking photos for a Berliner back home
whose travelling days are behind her

die Verwandlung [or back through the looking glass]

i have departed the land of mountain rainbows

and swirling snowflakes

where at certain times of the year it is possible to walk on water

[irrespective of when your birthday is]

and returned to Oz

to shrug off my mantle of European-ness

and hide it in the loft like a selkie-skin

back

to daily life in my second language

Frankfurt airport dusted with icing sugar snow

felt like an exit from a faerietale

blood is thicker than water...

whatever my feelings about world history

the fact remains that a smallish university town

in Niedersachsen, Germany

is critical to mine

some of my great-grandparents

and great-great grandparents

are buried here

my grandparents met

at afternoon coffee

in the house of a mathematics professor here

coincidentally

it is also the house in which i am staying

my father was born here

and

for a very short time

i attended school here

my feet know the way around the town

where the market is

the nice walks along the old town wall

the path up into the forest

and the way to the botanic garden

[to which my great-great grandmother had a private key to a small gate hidden in the town wall]

the pond where i sailed paper boats

aged ten

still ripples in the park

sadly great-great grandfather's house

along with beautiful rose garden and enormous Linden tree

was demolished by the University in the early sixties

it seems they urgently needed the space

for a carpark.