in place

Last month I quite suddenly found myself sliding down a slippery slope...from a year filled with workshops and exhibitions to... nix.

Thanks to the invisible scourge (our planet doing a bit of housekeeping) I now have a small fortune in flight credits (that I suspect may never be used) and all the time in the whirled to spend with my grand-daughter.

I'm very lucky that my self-isolation takes place on 500 acres ( "don't fence me in" was always my theme song ) and also that I quite like a solitary lifetstyle (I've spent nearly thirty years as a sole parent). I know others are not quite so fortunate, so I created an online gathering I have called "in place", that offers small daily classes, readings and prompts to help people get through the days of isolation.

"in place" began as a 23 day course, but has now been extended for as long as we endure the Great Pause. Together we are sailing our armchairs around the village well.

I've committed to keep posting a little something every day. Participants are stitching on used tea-towels to create work for what was intended as an online exhibition but has also now blossomed into an actual exhibition to be held at Fabrik Arts + Heritage, in the old Onkaparinga Woollen Mill complex at Lobethal in South Australia some time next year.

We have been drawing, stitching, writing.
Presently we are dabbling in a little indigo.
We are also making a small film together (clips are coming in from all over the whirled).

There's still time to join us if you like...the Great Pause doesn't look like finishing any time soon.

For an investment of $353 Australian dollars (or you can choose a 3 to 6 month payment plan) you'll have lifetime access to the course. The Aussie shekel is at an all time low at present (last time I looked it was worth 60 US cents) and so far 24 dailies have been uploaded.

I'll keep going until the Great Pause is over (meaning we can all go dance in the streets again) or the Beast knocks me off my feet. I hope it doesn't...I very much like the idea of continuing to sail my armchair (dog willing and with a fair wind).

Want to know more?  this link will take you there.  

september one, lived twice

the journey begins oddly

filled with portents and signs

all too curious to mention

and best not taken seriously

(but they'll be in my novel)

even the man whose eyes tear up

because i remind him of his mother 

which i think may just have been

the effect of too much inflight firewater

otherwise it makes me old

and possibly also dead

after thirteen or so hours aloft

we reach the California coast

blanketed in fog except for

one significant hill above Pescadero

the sight of which always kicks my heart into gear

leaving SFO the taxi driver asks me if i have had any

terrifying experiences in the air

nothing too awful i say

which is his cue to launch into a litany

of gut-wrenching near disasters   

negotiating my release i 

take my encumbrances to the welcome center

where for a financial consideration they 

relieve me of my physical burdens for the day

outside the pavements swell and

roll under my feet - fortunately it is

not the earth, quaking, but my body

set to vibrate mode by the hours of fettered 

rumbling, strapped to a seat

in the flying sardine can

i have things to collect today

some materials for class

a large bag of unruly thoughts 

a ring, and some made-to-measure workboots.

the latter have turned out rather too small

or maybe it is just me, too big for my boots

which could be another sign.
maybe next time cos
good things take time

further up the same street at Macchiarini's

the doorbell won't ring, no pun intended 

but the ring i have come to receive

is truly beautiful with a moonstone

like a drop of Bay water balancing on

a beaten band that looks as though it has been 

pulled from the rubble of a burning building

and so is exactly what i had hoped for.

i do the usual round of favourite places

get my coffee at Trieste, sit awhile on Russian Hill

wander to the park above Fort Mason

snack on cheese under the gum trees there

then walk back to collect my luggage

and drag it across town, giggling inwardly at

the comments that passers-by feel entitled to articulate,

of which the loudest and most critical, oddly enough,

are made by those who share my first language.

they have no idea they are so generously

giving me laughter therapy

and i resist the temptation to say

"schönen Tag, noch!" 

train stations are no longer the romantic places

depicted in Brief Encounter

or in films about Anna Karenina

the temporary transBay terminal is a holding room

for souls desperate to be elsewhere and

the station at Emeryville even more so

where the vending machines make wild promises

but will only sullenly disgorge diet pepsi

filthy stuff that is strictly for cleaning copper

though, once used for that purpose, has impressive 

mordant qualities

i find a tourist map and mark my day on it in thick black pencil

eventually the train pulls in and we fall aboard

i tip myself gratefully into my tiny sleeping closet 

and give myself up to Morpheus for what seems like days

though only a few hours later i awake as we are 

passing through mist-covered desert spiked with piñon and juniper

and wonder if i'm in the right state

then water on which sunlight flashes and blinks

perhaps the merpeople have forgotten to turn their twinkle lights off

somewhere else a broken umbrella hangs batlike

from a bush on the side of a cutting

in Portland i look up and down river as we cross the Willamette

looking for the iron bridge...then realise we are on it

except for the garbled announcements over the tannoy

(there is a special training centre for railway announcers,

run by somebody who teaches them how to 

make announcements in a Turkish accent. 

the same school also supplies the people for 

the Flinders Street Station in Melbourne, Australia)

the Seattle train station is like stepping through 

a time machine into another era

or like stepping deep inside an angel-food cake 

for a white wedding with all the trimmings

i choose the easy way out

and though a braver woman might have 

tackled further public transport

rain is imminent and so i take a taxi.

the driver is old-fashioned and reassures himself 

as to our destination by the simple means of leafing 

through an actual street directory, though i have explained that 

i am heading for a helltell overlooking the ferry dock just

across from Whidbey Island. kindly (and perhaps unusually)

he only switches on the meter after he has closed his book

72 hours give or take a quarter after leaving home 

i enter a room that is not moving and discover to my delight 

that not only does it overlook water, but the doors can actually

be opened wide to the whirled outside

i drift off to the crash of waves and wake at dawn to flat calm

in the distance a ferry hovers in a silver cloud

seabirds stitch their songs across the place where the sealine might be

if it were clear

it's only September 3 but i feel as though i have lived a week 

since the month began

had September 1 twice

and will lose the equinox to the international dateline

but that

will be another story

because now i am here

re-reading a marvellous book i bought at Shakerag in 2010

and soon i shall be 'being (t)here'

but on Whidbey Island, and with slightly longer hair

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if you've managed to reach the bottom of the page and would like to read something more important

then you could go here

here and there and everywhere

it's funny how the zeitgeist thing goes.

scanning the interpixies to see "who is doing what" these days reveals that 

P L A C E

is the current favourite workshop flavour.

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i think it's always been mine.

i have fond memories of my wonderful class teacher at Shelford Girls School in grade 5, who sent us outside to randomly choose a foot square patch of ground and then

after we had made our choice

explained that we were to study it closely

map it

draw it

write about it

count the insects walking across it

imagine ourselves to be their size

see the grass as a forest

make rubbings of it with pencil and paper

i'm pretty sure that Mrs Pownall has long gone to the dogs above

but i don't think i will ever forget her

the classroom was always filled with flowers and seeds 

and bones and other assorted found things

a couple of years later my love of language was nurtured by the redoubtable Mrs Williams, a flame-haired and passionate Scot who read us poetry and made history come alive.

my father instilled in me a love of maps and wandering

while my mother had me drawing plants almost from when i could hold a pencil

 i have been trying to remember the first time i offered a class that brought all these things together and i think it must have been 'mapping country' at the Kapiti Summer School of 2009

which evolved in various ways, stepping sideways into fieldwork

and eventually blossoming as being (t)here or being t(here)

it works either way.

 similar workshop titles are sprouting around the whirled

"where is here" and "you are here" are two that i found this morning

both with subtitles about mapping place

for me it's less about mapping, these days

and more the practice of

paying attention to where we are

finding beauty in sometimes surprising places

considering the poetics of place, even in the parking lot

and each time i offer this class

whether it's in the heart of a city

or deep in a wilderness

or somew(here) in between

i find my life wonderfully enriched by the people who join me.

T H A N K    Y O U

all of you who have been on the journey with me.

i'm so grateful that you give me work.

work that i love.

blooming at the Poet's Ode

it's been such fun this week
preparing for my first Australian pop up
at the Poet's Ode this coming weekend

each piece is 'one of a kind'

Alia (the one who creates the magic that is the Poet's Ode)
let me play in the front window.

when i grow up,

i would like a studio with a window like that

in which i could construct installations

and then watch the whirled go by

while i work behind

(although i would still need to keep a studio out on the paddocks

where i can potter about in blissful solitude)

making another delivery yesterday i met a client

who usually lives in San Francisco and

who had purchased the dress i showed in an exhibition

held in South Australia two years ago.

it was a bit of a thrill to serendipitously meet!

and now i think i might like to become a window dresser

especially if i am allowed to write poems on the glass

with a finger dipped in clay

i'll be present at Poet's Ode all day Saturday March 5

and teaching a class in their inner sanctum on March 6

i hope some of you will swing by?

wander cards for wayfaring wonderers

It's been a long hot summer, but I have put it to good use.

Some years ago I pondered a small publishing project that wasn't going to be a book, more of a periodical that would have suggestions for things to do as well as beautiful images. 

I let it brew for a while (a couple of years, actually) and this is what happened. Not quite what I was dreaming of, but (I think) much, much better.

I've called them 'Wander cards for Wonderers' and they are a limited edition, printed in vegetable ink on recycled stock, winging their way around the whirled from February 29. There are four sets of 25 in the pack...three of them labeled (in the field / in the armchair / in the mind) and the fourth blank. The idea is that you can pull a card at random as an inspiration for an afternoon's exploration. 

Or choose three (a bit like a Tarot reading except happily there aren't any grim reapers) and see what they might suggest together. 

The fourth set is for you to add notes and ideas of your own. 

I announced them on the FB 'workshops and wanderings' group early yesterday and have been totally delighted that they seem to be finding homes quite quickly. 

 For which I am very grateful.

I'm having splendid fun sorting them into packs, sticking paper bands around them and dyeing the silk to wrap them in (and the silk scarves for those making a more serious commitment). I've also been folding wee booklets to accompany them.

Initially I had wild ideas of sending them out in little wooden boxes with treasures from my studio tucked around them but I soon discovered that little wooden boxes need little wooden box certifications in order to be able to cross borders, and then the postmistress reminded me that I would be filling out countless customs forms and having to remember what was in each box so that idea went zooming out the window.

Here's the simpler solution I came up with.

The cardboard mailing boxes are beautifully sturdy and can be salvaged and embellished and made into permanent homes for the cards. The cards themselves can be dyed (or coloured using hapazome)...work on the blank ones first and give the printed ones a month or two to cure before bundling them (the ink needs a bit of time to settle). If you've signed on for the Yellow Ferry adventure you'll receive a set anyway. If you haven't...now's your chance.

and that long hot summer? Last night it finally rained...so today I was literally scooping up dye from the driveway. Bliss.

the solace of the arid lands

last week i took some time away from the whirled 

and headed northward to the Observatory

where a most satisfactory collection is slowly on the increase

 encompassing contributions from the UK, the USA, Denmark and Spain

as well as from across the length and breadth of the wide brown land

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there's still time to join in the solace project 

or

if you prefer, create your own. i'm happy to share the idea.

grateful to those who have sent pieces, thank you.

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people have been enquiring whether they may come and assist with the installation. 

the short answer is simply, no. 

the Observatory can only accommodate two persons, 

has no electricity or running water (meaning no showers or food cooling either)

cooking is done with an old wood stove

sparingly burning twigs to heat the kettle for tea

and while there is a pit toilet, it is not available to the public as 

when it fills i shall have to dig a fresh one and 

that's not a thought that fills me with delight. 

solace will be installed at the southern mid-winter solstice 

and (i hope) be available for viewing from June 23

it will remain in place indefinitely. 

i will document it photographically through various weathers and as promised, collate the images (together with the poem formed from all of your words) into a book.

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the sunrises and sunsets here are equally beautiful

the view of the stars at night is unequalled 

(and nigh on impossible to capture with a batfone)

the arid lands are a perfect place for clearing thoughts

(the Dog decided that my clearing needed further intervention)

it's good to travel with a friend.

on the way home we stopped at the Arid Lands Botanic Gardens

to see how 'elegy' was faring

after which certain wee dog washed the dust of the desert off

with a swim at the top end of Spencer Gulf

rhapsodies in blue

it was easy planning my clothes for this trip

all i had to do was throw anything blue into the suitcase

and then at the other end

take a daily lucky dip and wriggle into it

[too hot and steamy for boots]

packing the materials was another thing

handstitching indigo-dyed ecoprint bags

and stuffing them with selections from my cloth collection

was fun

[though i will say counting beads can be confusing for a bear]

and happily the baggage-mishandlers did not play football with my suitcase

because the blue-and-white teacups that were to stop the beads rolling off the tables all happily arrived intact.

Roz and i both brought fabrics from our homes and had a glorious time decorating the workroom on the afternoon before class

our wonderful host Tarla had grown all sorts of indigo-bearing plants

as well as madder [which is most useful in reducing an organic vat]

 you could almost think you were in Japan, with such fields

Tarla and her daughters prepared delicious food for us

with fresh ingredients sourced from the garden

where a Satin Bower Bird had busily gathered blues

from the surrounding district

 we looked at ways in which we could bring our blues together

sharing stories about the meaning of this beautiful colour

reading a little poetry

considering what the colour meant to us as individuals

 we stitched, experimented with fresh indigo

worked with the metals that Roz had brought

made string

and at the very end

overdyed the finished pieces in the gloriously rich vat

that Tarla had prepared earlier

thank you, all of you, for making it such a splendid three days

not yet saturated with the blues?

here are more stories

Roz's version

and

a few more links via our shared blue bower

(still) in place

am delighted to say that

though the Arid Lands Botanic Garden Sculpture exhibition has now concluded

my work

'elegy'

will be staying there indefinitely

'elegy' is a poem written in bones

so far wind and weather and passing animals

have not effected any great change

i'll stop in from time to time

to give it a reassuring pat

read it a story

and

document how it is responding

to being there

in place