I saw a sign in the sky

Sufijan Stevens last night at the Opera house was probably the best concert I have ever seen. Sun Ra transfigured, blues, cacophony, mystical love. I don't really want to describe the details, I need to hold them in still. He mostly played form The Age of Adz and All delighted people. At the end balloons where released from the roof. I just wanted to carry home some of that delightful magic. Below due to Haico's shutter timing, I am accidentally doing the dance moves from Vesuvius.

MONA moonrise

So much to write about the MONA opening- a weekend full of beauty, horror and doubt. But the 1st chapter is getting very close to first draft stage so I am going to push on and try and give you the odd thought bubble later.

Here are some pictures form the concert on the first night. An almost full moonrise during The Cruel Sea. I have to say they played a little flat that night, and the sinking temperature was the thing keeping me up front in the crowd rather than scamming more booze down the back. But they where better the next night.

The Wire that played before The Cruel Sea: they where fan-tas-tic! I was too busy dancing to take pictures.

one year

of this blog.

I started with a story about mess, or the lack of it and posted photos as a comparison during the clean up. 'Mess' has been a fairly consisted tag, appearing times 7 times, as many times as 'art' and 'ginger cats'.

On the day which was the one year from the day that I arrived in Japan, the anniversary of my first Fuji sighting, I was cleaning up my studio as I was going to have visitors. By the way I consider the photo above of one corner of my studio, while not 'clean' it's certainly 'ordered'- for me! by comparison!
Somehow that process of cleaning finally brought me home, or perhaps it was sense of the floating freedom of 2010 had finally come to an end. It could also have been because I was preparing the various channels of "Feeders" for viewing, I had a chance to reflect on all the work I had done recently and to see myself as a artist rather than PhD student. For whatever reason my old-self drew down my floating-self and I finally felt 'back'.

For the last 3months I have been avoiding being in my studio- and it had a lot to do with appalling mess I had created there while making many props and editing two multiple channel video works. But I think it was also about accepting that I am home and I need to get back onto working on driving my writing and studio forward.

As I took this photo to I wondered how I ever had room for my cat on this desk. The sign in the corner says "This is not the life my mother wanted for me" and comes from this work.

I haven't always posted as much as I wanted or intended to- there are plenty of half finished posts. I'm not even sure who I am writing for. Although I know Sarah and Caren are reading it because they often comments- your tops ladies!

unexpected visitor

My parents came round for lunch and while I was listen to a long story my father was telling me, my mother ducked outside to wander around our yard and check the growth of the plants.

"Do you know that you have a chicken in your yard?" !! It was scratching around our tumble-weed.

I knocked on various houses asking people if they where missing a young white chicken. They all said no and when I got back he had gone.

heat and humidity

 

Every morning a new stand of fungi appears in our garden. Haico has done a lot of work on the garden this year which has included bringing in enriched soil and bark mulch resulting in a large diversity of mushrooms appearing.

Mid week chilled cucumber soup

Back at work.

Cucumber seedlings given to me by my neighbour. I'll be saving seeds off this beauty.

Collective blue

What's the collective noun for Blue-bottles? I was thinking that it might be swarm or flotilla.

Various sites list the collective noun for Jellyfish as Smack, smuth or brood and in addition to these wikipedia also lists Bloom and fluther . Bloom is probably the only one I have heard used- and in particular to this bloom of jellyfish in the Sea of Japan (video here at Lateline's small story).

But after reading the wiki entry linked above, I now know that Blue-bottles are not jellyfish and as much of the common language names for the organism and anglicisation of its Latin name (Portuguese Man-o-war) is to do with ships, perhaps flotilla is a good name. But flotilla and even swarm, with it's connotation of out of control bees, does not capture the menace of encountering a stack of the bastards in the water and at the water line on the beach.

After our New Years Eve trip to the deserted and idyllic Era Beach, with a strong North-easterly blowing a massive amount of bluies onto shore, I kind of think that the correct collective noun should be *cluster-fuck*.

Kon Karapanagiotidis quote

I have decided its time to refresh the "causes" or "activism" section on the right hand side of my blog. I want to keep this section active but not brow beat people who come here to visit. I guess I am still working out what the tone or purpose of my blog is, and also as being an activist or involved citizen is part of who I am so having this section tells visitors something about me. So for the archive here is Kon Karapanagiotidis quote and link will go here. Needless to say with the last months events at Christmas Island, Australia's on going reluctance to act humanely and generously towards refugees has again created a tragedy that will affect so many people for a long time, those on board, thier relatives, Christmas Islanders, Navy personnel and the AFP police who are now investigating.


Founder of the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, Kon Karapanagiotidis, blogging at the Wheeler Centre:

In the past, I have naively thought the facts would bring an end to the fearmongering – by explaining to people that we receive just a few thousand asylum seekers each year, and that they pose no threat to our way of life or sustainability. I want to explain that 99.99% of people who entered Australia last year did so by plane; that Australia takes just 0.03% of the world’s refugees and displaced people; and that there are 76 countries that take more refugees than we do, based on wealth.

These days, I talk about a much simpler truth: the moral responsibilities that come with living in a free and democratic country, and what it means to be an Australian. This means we have a moral duty to act and show compassion to vulnerable, innocent people who are fleeing for their lives.

Being Australian should count for something greater than pandering to baseless fears.