Encouraged by our trip to Noosaville last month, we are now actively watering the poor man’s cruciform orchids (epidendrum) in the front and back gardens.
The blooming bottle brush tree next to our covered patio plays host to rainbow lorikeets.
Wispy old man’s beard hanging from the same bottlebrush tree.
I have found doodling is a successful catalyst when seeking inspiration. I can generally come up with concepts, it’s at the execution phase when where my inner voice/critic stymies my creativity. ‘Not good enough!’ is the most frequent thought.
Last Friday, I set out to to draw a witch for Halloween. Using the Freeform app on my phone, I scribbled a predictable silhouette of a witch in profile riding a broom in front of a full moon.
Grabbing a Winsor & Newton A4 visual diary, next I sketched out an imagined witch’s face with an oversized mouth.
Drawing on memories from reading Anne Rice novels, the second witch iteration became a glamorous vampire in front of a crescent moon. I paid attention to the lips and eye, inspired by the BBC One reality tv series, Glow Up: Britain’s next make up star.
After taking a photograph of the pencil coloured pictures, I applied filters in Google Snapseed, removed the backgrounds, and added black backdrops and text.
I imagined a heavily accented, Greta Garbo speaking the title of the vampire witch portrait as Fampyre Vitch.
My husband said, the initial sketch was scarier than the final one so I have included both. What do you think?
The El Niño weather pattern is making itself felt in Queensland, Australia’s self proclaimed sunshine state. Long periods of dry weather have resulted in a crisp brown lawn juxtaposed with our backyard jacaranda tree in full Spring bloom.
We are experiencing the seasons of this first year in our new home through a garden lens. We are thrilled to see clumps of amaryllis.
One of the frangipanis is flowering before the leaves have emerged.
The Winter planted tomatoes are fruiting.
Buoyantly supine quiescent
Indolently inhaling
Exhaling
Heartbeats slowly strum eardrums
Muffled glugs and gurgles murmur
Sun’s sparkles glimmer
Traced out onto umbrella’s canopy
Stasis
Water and air embraces
Nine years awaiting this moment
Complete serenity at almost sixty
On Saturday, we drove about one and a half hours north from home to arrive at our holiday destination, Noosa River Retreat. This was our self catering, home away from home for the next five days. We previously checked out the accommodation in June.
Noosa River Retreat is conveniently located less than 15 minutes walking distance from shops, cafés, restaurants, bars, and the Noosa river.
We were joined by family and friends for a festival of my 60th birthday. The line up of dining experiences include, Bandita Mexican restaurant and bar, Frenchies brasserie, Seasons restaurant and bar, Mr Jones and Me restaurant, and Whiskey Boy bar and grill.
Being the centre of attention of a group of fifteen has been an exhilarating experience. I count myself fortunate to be surrounded by so much love and feel thoroughly coddled and cosseted.
Apart from yellow, I prefer secondary colours over the primaries. This plant brings me joy, showcasing both green and purple.
When we moved into our new house in March, it had a few velvety leaves that appeared to be being eaten, my husband sprayed it to curb the ‘pests’. Gradually, new leaves appeared, unimpeded.
Over weeks, sprays of buds appeared at the centre of each shoot. Eventually they swelled, bursting open to reveal many many daisy like blooms.
Last weekend we spent two nights in Brisbane staying at the Inchcolm Hotel.
On Saturday night we were thrilled and entertained by Bite Club: Second Serve, a collaborative performance with Australian singer songwriter, Sahara Beck and Briefs Factory, “a down-and-dirty mixture of drag, boylesque, street politics and circus skills, all delivered with a smirk and a big sloppy kiss” at the newly renovated Princess Theatre, constructed in 1888.
On Thursday, in a small meeting room at work, windows blanked out with sheets of brown paper, I stripped down to my underwear. Time for my annual check up so that my moles could be checked for abnormalities that may indicate skin cancer. This picture from the right side of my face was taken through a dermatoscope that will result in a non urgent trip to the GP.
It appears the poetry muse is back
Oh woe is me, obese me!
I know, it’s just a wobble.
This grizzling grown woe he,
I groan, I moan, I hobble.
Stiff soreness, new aches, new pains,
Too overweight; I gobble.
Energy waxes and wanes,
‘Not enough’ brain’s at the core;
All good intent to nobble.
I groan and drone on some more.
Drag my ragbag ailments out.
Spring air’s chilly for my toes
Is this a symptom of gout?
Need socks with thongs to warm those,
Believed ne’er the twain shall meet.
Once airs and graces to show
Now putting right on’s a feat.
Sat while ironing clothes today,
Stand to shower, shave’s too long
First time for all, so they say.
Spirit’s lifted. Quite enough
Of this meandering verse
Boring readers, they could puff
And drop dead, call the hearse!
It is less than a month until family members arrive from the UK for a five weeks holiday. I’m taking a month off from work to coincide with our relatives’ arrival. Both were postponed due to COVID.
My husband has repainted most of the interior of the house and is busy reinventing the covered patio. Fingers crossed, the insulated ceiling panels will have been installed to help shield us from the heat of the Queensland sun in Spring, Summer, and Autumn. Spring officially sprang in Australia on 1 September.
Winter is tax time. Usually a time of extreme procrastination, we knocked off one lot last weekend, it’s now with the accountant. Just the personal returns to complete next weekend.
My enthusiasm for things, like the phases of the moon waxes and wanes. The poet authoring part of my brain has already downed tools. It may make a grab for them again soon, one never knows. With this in mind, I’m taking a break from podcasting and creating audio files.
I aim to continue weekly blogging with the odd picture thrown in for good measure. This week’s is a cloud self portrait sketch.
In my haste to leave the house for work on Thursday, I left my phone at home. The 50 minutes commute in quiet contemplation went surprisingly quickly.
The return journey was spent squeezed between the sharpest armrest and a person who couldn’t seem to get comfortable in a seat with barely enough room for one person let alone sharing it with me and my portly stature.
Prior to sitting, they asked if I was saving the part seat next to me for someone. Could they sit down? I was flustered being in the middle of retrieving things I had spilled on the floor from my back pack. Hurriedly, I said of course, of course!
They seemed to be on a mission to call every person in their contacts with the same questions: What are you doing? What did you do last weekend? What are you doing this weekend?
Somehow, I managed to sketch ideas for variations on a self portrait I’m planning to paint in watercolour. The break from the phone provided space for inspiration to move me forward.
In keeping with last week’s water theme, the following is a poem entitled, More Precious than Diamonds. I wrote it ten years ago, against a background of drought.
Delicious drops of dew glisten in the
Cool light of dawn, slowly, slowly, dripping
From leaf from bud from twig. Clouds speed above,
Drizzle foreshadows a downpour, to drench
Landscape wide. Streams and brooks rush, swell, rise, run
Into rivers, flooding deltas, breaking
Free, flowing out to sea to oceans deep.
Dive into life giving blue, cleanse body
And spirit, swim west to sway with undines.
Grasp the chalice of aitch two oh. Deeply
Drink to link with Druids of old and new.
Oft’ used for scrying by many a seer
To reflect and look from seen to unseen.
More precious than diamonds, worth guarding well!
Below is a recording of me reciting this post including the poem.
When I write poetry, an idea seeds, lines sprout, grow forth and, bloom as if in shadow. At this point, I often haven’t decided on the form the poem will take.
During the 50 minutes’ commute to and from work, two to three days per week, I tap away with two thumbs on my iPhone 6 keyboard, typing into the Simplenote app.
Frenetically, refining, rewriting, and rearranging. Persistence and revisiting are key in wrangling with each word. The fingers of my right hand tap out the rhythm and count of each line on my right leg.
Reflecting on my writing is a strange experience as I’m no longer in the author head space. As a spectator, I often wonder how I managed to get the creation into the form it’s in.
Currently, I’m wrestling with unexpectedly challenging, auto biographical poems from before and after Fort Royal Fakery. In the mean time, this poem is one of my favourites. I like the way the words describe speed, force, and momentum of water.
Being born in the year of the Chinese water rabbit, with a Myers Briggs’ introverted feeling personality type, bodies of water calm, enliven, and sustain me.
When I saw the 1995 movie, Waterworld, it struck me that this dystopian future was a little too close to reality for comfort. It portrays the impact on humanity after the Earth’s polar ice has melted.
Whilst I have an affinity with water, I prefer to observe or swim in it rather than sail upon it.
You can read more about my creative journey on my blog theINFP.com.
The following poem, composed in 2019 is entitled
Pouring down, hitting ground; transmutating.
Seeps slowly underground, no abating.
Gradually following gravity’s pull,
Channelled torrents churn to violently mull.
Cascading courses entwine, clashing. This
Roaring deluge crashes with a hiss.
Omnidirectional mist, high and low.
Fleetingly dancing, riding to and fro,
On gentle cavern’s zephyr, in the dark;
No living creature to watch or to hark.
Droplets traverse the void of chasm, old.
Catching hold, dingle dangle, dripping cold.
Rivulets forming, trickling, finding pass,
Slowly towards the edge, achieving mass.
Flowing from upon high to splash below.
Tinkling then momentary ripples show,
Moving across slow ebbing surface, creep.
Joining still amorphic pool, running deep.
Below is a recording of my recitation of the poem, comments will be gratefully received.
theINFP 