Two Guardians
Carved statue at Orakei Marae and Rangitoto Island are twin guardians, as a sea fog rests on the waters of Auckland’s Waitemata Harbour during the week.
Fairy Lights In The Woods
Stardust on the trees – equally good for complete fantasists and the hopelessly lost.
World Weird Web
For you – when words fail and the world prevails , stuck in your own weird tales – only you know the intracacies, the silken finesse of your web and, having built it,only you can find your way through it all.
For more arachno-themed posts, check out:
A House Repurposed
The house below is architecturally gorgeous, and a favourite local destination of mine, but I am equally intrigued by its history of change.
Built as the showpiece mansion of a prominent merchant in the mid to late 19th century, it has subsequently become a Catholic noviate school , an orphanage, housing for the homeless and now, in public hands, a cutting edge art gallery.
So, big money built it and religion, charity and culture have all lived there since.
The building hasn’t really changed but it has been drastically repurposed from time to time.
The truth it speaks to me is that while we may appear as the same person we have always been (maybe our facade deteriorates over the years!), we are constantly being repurposed in ways we would never have foreseen.
What new thing will occur in our rooms? Who will visit the mansion next?
On The Straight And Narrow
I am not generally an advocate for the straight and narrow in everything, because it can be boring as f**k, but there are those times in life when sticking to that path is a necessity to avoid sinking into, or further down, into the surrounding mire.
The tricky bit ,I suppose,is working out when you are in that place.
If you are,accept the strictures of the boardwalk over the mud and tide for awhile. Safety is, trust me,way better than self-destruction .
And if you have been on that path the whole time, maybe you need to jump off and get a little soaked and dirty…
So Many Books…
“So many books, so little time.”
– Frank Zappa
I really find it hard to imagine Zappa actually sitting down with a book given his massive, sprawling musical career, but he must have – how else to explain the inspirations behind the often surreal songs? Or maybe he was lamenting the fact that his creative endeavours meant he couldn’t read everything he wanted to.
I know the feeling – my bedside table has a stack of half-read tomes and the shelves have many others I have been meaning to read or re-read. Frustrating!
Last night watched an episode of the new series “Catch-22” and realized that it was over thirty years ago that I read the amazing book by Joseph Heller (I bet Zappa read it too), and I had always meant to pick it up again. Time flying by…
Yet I know that the time and energy spent reading a book that miraculously seems meant for me, is a luxury that a time-poor person finds rewarded .Even if it takes a while for me to get to the end, the journey of exploration through others’ words and worlds on the way there is nothing short of amazing.
I could extend that to blogs as well. So inspiring to see other writers and bloggers frame things I may not even have heard or thought of and give of themselves in the process.
Find time…
Sunrise Or Sunset
“Your choice between sunrise or sunset depends on your attitude “
– Ibn Jeem
You can decide which it is…
The Boat House
A shot of a boat house sitting serenely over water near my Auckland home.
I am not a boatie or sailor by any stretch of the imagination ,but I admire those who cast off from shore,voyaging ,for adventure on the sea.
So this place appeals to me.
It is by appearance a simple,linear design,with utilitarian function.Boats are stored inside and launched from it.
But it is also the departing place for courage and dreams and happiness, and that makes it magical.
Rekindled
” In everyone’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should be thankful for those people who rekindle our inner spirit”
-Albert Schweitzer
Big House
A friend of mine who lives in Atlanta(who incidentally inadvertantly became the model for the picture in the previous post Your Nemesis, sorry mate) was kind enough to take me to this place, Big House in Macon,Georgia a couple of years ago.
It was the home and musical base for Southern Rock royalty The Allman Brothers band and their hangers on in the early 1970s and a must see for a fan like me – a totally cool shrine to them, rendered more immediate by the lots of their mundane everyday stuff – couches, beds and stereo etc. being still there ,as well as the expected guitars and gold records. A weird time warp experience.
I’m putting this up because I have been on a bit of a southern music trip of late and ,very sadly, New Orleans music great Dr. John died overnight .He was a blues/r’n’b/funk and pianist/singer legend with an unmistakable sound. This photo is about as close as I can manage in homage to him right now,but as with the Allmans ,the music will live on.
RIP Mac Rebennack.
Your Nemesis
Do you have a nemesis?
The word nemesis has a couple of dictionary meanings: “the inescapable agent of someone’s or something’s downfall” or ” a longstanding rival;an arch enemy”.
I think we probably all have that inescapable person or thing that dogs us in life.
The thing that dogged Sir Winston Churchill he actually called his “black dog” – depression.
Churchill’s daughter Mary said of him: “He himself talks of his black dog, and he did have times of depression…..Of course, if you have a black dog it lurks somewhere in your nature and you never quite banish it, but I never saw him disarmed by depression”.
Which sort of sums up a nemesis – always there or thereabouts, never gotten rid of and returning from time to time to haunt us – but I like the optimism in the final words of the quote, “never disarmed.”
Just because your nemesis remains ,it does not mean you have to lead a defeated life because of it.
Portrait : The Cowboy
“Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys”
This is not a real cowboy .
Sorry to disappoint ( but I have a feeling you may have guessed it anyway).
He is however my genuinely 21 year old today son ,pictured recently before a fancy dress party.
Congratulations! Go lasso some stars kiddo…
Light At The End Of The Tunnel (Was A Train Coming The Other Way) – Song by Richard Hawley
In my last post Not An Oncoming Train ,I touched briefly on the themes of despair and hope.
Today’s post offers up the soundtrack to my musings.
Ex-Pulp member Richard Hawley has, since leaving that band, carved a sweet career niche in noir-ish vintage music styles that sound like they were recorded pre-1960 .
This track is no exception.
However, his theme is all despair and zero hope.
There’s even train sounds at the end to reinforce the sense of grim destiny (spoiler alert!)
But impending doom has never sounded so sweet…
Not An Oncoming Train
“The light at the end of the tunnel is an oncoming train”
You’ve probably heard this saying before; amusing yes, cynical definitely!
The problem though, is that if you are trapped in a never ending tunnel, figuratively speaking, you do not expect to see light again, and even faint hope can look like something that will betray and smash you to pieces.
But what if it is not a train?
What if it really is the end of darkness?
The belief that the light is real and is not in fact a threat is called HOPE .
Looking Over Achilles Point: A Simple Luxury
Achilles Point is one of Auckland’s many cool vantage points and one of the places I go just to look out over the rocks ,reefs ,waves ,islands,and the constantly changing horizon.
Beautiful.
Soulful.
A simple luxury ,if that is not a contradiction in terms.
Doom Foreshadowed
Sometimes you just know it won’t end well…
Prickly Bastards
Cacti.
You either love them or hate them.
I find them beautiful.
Maybe because the danger factor makes them more alluring.
Perhaps because I can be a prickly bastard too…
So I May Know Where I Stand
Just behind Bastion Point in Auckland ,and up the hill by the marae, sits a trig station.
One of thousands over the country ,on often high vantage points ,acting as geodetic reference points. Once, and sometimes still used by surveyors for precise bearings of latitude and longitude.
It caught my eye this morning, with its stark black and white markings against the cobalt blue sky.
As a child I thought they were totally cool and somewhat mysterious. Maybe aliens had planted them there.To ascend to the top of a hill and then clamber up the trig was to be lord of all you surveyed(excuse the pun).
A symbol, a signifier, a marker. Like a compass, objectively true.
Sometimes its enough to know exactly where you stand…
Mere Anarchy Loosed
The next line of the W.B. Yeats poem featured in the previous post The Widening Gyre goes like this:
“Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world”.
This tropical themed garden features tigerish striped bromeliads, some with sharp points and serrations and is altogether an explosion of chaotic shapes and colours in every direction; botanic flares and shrapnel, an anarchic sprawl.
No neat flowerbeds planted in rows – here there is the sense of the wild and uncontrolled world that Yeats was on about .
ebb then flood 