Cats on a treadmill and other miscellany from modern life.

It's not really the right season, but I crocheted another scarf. I am quite addicted. Next I want to make a hat.

I have been spending quite a bit of time on Design Observer site lately. It's such a great blog. This is a really interesting article on Stan Brakhage's journals.

We went to see the GERDA STEINER & JÖRG LENZLINGER show at ACCA on Sunday.
It was such a fantastic show.
A desalination plant for tears, gleaned from the stuff of Footscray.
I can't tell you how much I love stories in art. Narratives. Fantasy.
And crystals.

These are our new neighbours, Frank and Shirley. Frank's a bit of a show off. Especially when Shirl's around.

A feather landed in my beer. I am hoping for good luck. And maybe money too...

Currently looking for a little light relief. Things have got a bit serious around here of late.

I read the Jonathan Lethem interview with Paul Auster today in the Believer book of Writers Talking to Writers. Paul Auster said some very interesting things about writing and art:

What's beautiful about art is that it circumscribes a space, a physical and mental space. If you try to put the entire world into every page, you turn out chaos. Art is about eliminating almost everything in order to focus on the thing that you need to talk about.

Almost the same as meditation, it is an idea that makes me think about this great blog. Auster's idea describes a kind of minimalism I suppose, a kind of intellectual opposite to the Henry Darger's of the world. Sometimes I think that while I ascribe or aspire to this kind of restricted creative universe, my impulse or greatest desire would be to record everything in proustian detail. I guess I might be getting my recording mixed up with my creating (though are they really any different?), and that in reality the proustian detail is not so different to what Auster is talking about. Perhaps the limitation lies in what you allow people to see rather than what or how much you choose to record.

He also said:
It's all coming out of the deepest feelings, out of dreams, out of the unconcious. And yet what I am constantly striving for in my prose is clarity. So that, ideally, the writing will become so transparent that the reader will forget that the medium of communication is language. So that the reader is simply inside the voice, inside the story, inside what is happening.

I like this idea a lot.

Beautiful light at 7.30 this morning.
I have been a bit absent of late, struck by a bout of malaise. Currently looking for inspiration.

My new years resolution this year was to have a routine. Where I get up at the same time each day. And do the same things. Every single day. It hasn't happened yet. I am beginning to think that I am not such a routine kind of person. I like to wake up early but I get distracted and don't eat breakfast until 11.30. I spend three hours faffing around on the internet and then end up working into the night. I prefer to work in the mornings. And some mornings I am up with the birds and have done several hours of work by lunchtime. So, I worry that my quest for a routine is actually stopping me from getting things done. I worry that I am turning in to an incredibly boring person.

Writing this has got me thinking that maybe my approach to the routine has been all wrong. Perhaps, I am filling my mornings up with stuff, like yoga, french practice and elaborate breakfasts when really I should just be writing.

So many people died over the weekend in the bushfires. It is hard to imagine. I feel so sad for all the people who lost their homes, the people they love and their neighbours. It was such a horrible day, and all last week it felt as though disaster was in the air. I guess it was.

46 degrees celsius. The hottest day ever recorded.

I was tagged by Gracia. And here it is, the 6th photo from the 6th folder. It brings back funny memories. This is a photo of Mark. He used to work in the jean shop next door and he spent an awful lot of time not in the jean shop but in our bookshop, preening, dancing and checking out the cute, "intellectual" boys. He was very entertaining. I tag melindatrees.

Delicious summer bounty: the nectarines from our lovely old Italian neighbours across the road and the tomatoes grown by me. Little but tasty.
Note fantastic red Margarethe bowl. It was a birthday present ;)

My favourite french word so far is hibou.

43 degrees again tomorrow, the premier reckons it's going to be "the worst day in history". Great!

Ages ago Brinja tagged me to show my desk, and then Kindra and I am ashamed to say that it has taken me this long to do it because I wanted to tidy up my desk first. So here it is. Without the cascading piles of paper and junk. If you look closely in the second and third photo you can see my favourite picture, Edie Beale standing outside her house. The image is taken from Grey Gardens.

I have been in the strangest mood all week. I keep waking up with a sore jaw from clenching my teeth but I can't imagine what it is that is actually bothering me. I think perhaps all the talk of crisis and the world coming to an end is actually starting to get to me. Luckily I have Fleetwood Mac and Bonnie 'Prince' Billy to keep me almost sane, that and Azita with her strange angular voice.

more wedding photos!~

Over the weekend we went to the most beautiful wedding. Ever! It was lovely, and even relatively cool under the ancient oak tree in the garden.

These are some of the last photos taken on my trip to Tasmania. I wanted to include the top photo as it was taken on the way to the beautiful and World Heritage listed Liffey Falls National Park, perhaps not a kilometre away from the boundary (and with a nasty irony, very close to Bob Brown's house). How can they get away with it? Australia's environment is so fragile and it feels so close to being completely destroyed. Living through extreme temperatures like last week, with four days in a row above 43 degrees celsius, it terrifies me that they continue to allow the destruction of such a beautiful, and until relatively recently, untouched place as Tasmania. It blows me away that they can continue to destroy native, old growth forest while Tasmania continues to suffer through a drought (like most of east coast Australia, it has been in drought for nearly a decade).
Almost as horrendous as the clear felling were the weeds. All along the sides of the roads and up into the bush were Foxgloves (Digitalis). So while the loggers had stopped at the boundary to the national park, their destructive and insidious arms had stretched into the bush regardless.