‘Panic In The World’
The Truth And The Facts
“The truth and the facts aren’t necessarily the same thing. Telling the truth is the object of all art; facts are what the unimaginative have instead of ideas.”
– A.A Gill
I Had Too Much To Dream Last Night
It has been a week of vivid and bizarre dreams for me, some nightmarish.
Perhaps coming off antidepressant medication has something to do with it , as that is an apparent side effect.
At any rate, the surreal shit of my dreamland continues apace.
You couldn’t make it up and you certainly can’t control it.
I’ll wake up from one weird episode and then plunge straight into another one, and so it continues till the dawn.
Deep REM sleep is supposed to be beneficial; maybe, but it is bemusing also.
I don’t even try to analyse the nocturnal art house cinema I am being served up involuntarily on a nightly basis.
What would be the point, really?
But I do have the ideal soundtrack to it all:
The Electric Prunes’s “I Had Too Much To Dream Last Night”. A thoroughly groovy 1960’s garage/psychedelic rock classic.
YouTube link below. Stick this in your pipe dream and smoke it, good people!
“I’m not ready to face the light…I had too much to dream last night”
Trio
Red Hibiscus, Summer Fading
‘Red Hibiscus, Summer Fading’
Papering Over The Cracks
Vintage embossed wallpaper in a country pub just south of Auckland, spotted last weekend.
Complicated!
Sumptuous and symmetrical.
It is art in its own very repetitive and expansive way.
Wallpaper performs a decorative function, but of course hides what lies behind it.
God knows, I have papered over my own cracks at times, working feverishly like “a one-armed paper hanger”, to borrow a phrase.
Most of the time the people in the room had no earthly idea of the unsightly mess beneath…
Blue Guitar
Through The Trees
‘Through The Trees’ Hanmer Springs, NZ. July 2013
wooden shafts
shafts of light and air
run parallel
then merge
in memories
Birdland
This very evocative wood carving/ painting got me thinking of some favourite bird things….
My Avian Awards
- My Lucky Bird – Kingfisher
- Best Song/Call – Tui (NZ endemic)/Magpie =
- “I Rule” Strut – Magpie
- Coolest in Flight – Hawk/ Swallow =
- Beadiest Eye – Seagull
- Bird my cat fears – Pukeko (NZ endemic)
- Best Song with a bird theme – ‘Birdland’,Weather Report (listen below)/’Fly like An Eagle’,Steve Miller Band =
A modern jazz classic!
Agapanthus
The Track
We cannot mistake the track for the journey.
A track, like the one pictured, can be arid and stony, hard and winding.
When winter comes, it will become soft and muddy, difficult and at times seemingly impassable.
Varied conditions for sure but whatever they look and feel like, tracks are purely functional.
They take you where you need to go.
We obsess about tracks – upward and downward trajectories, paths to success, shortcuts – while missing the point that the journey is everything, and that having reached whatever lies on the horizon we see now, another, different, horizon presents itself to us.
Whatever track we are on is just the necessary means by which the journey of ourselves unfolds.
‘Braemar’: Survivor
‘Braemar’
Apparently ‘Braemar’ is the sole late-Victorian period house in Auckland’s central city area still in use as a residence.
Despite its blackened exterior, this is one of my favourite local buildings, with its gothic exterior architrave; the name proud above the arch; wrought iron fence; lace curtains; and the glow of a welcoming light within.
Believe me, there’s been an awful lot of crappy, inconsequential stuff erected around this baby since it was built.
It is a tenacious, grimy survivor and that is something I always admire – in people, and in anything that outlasts the others of its ilk.
Laugh Again
” Stop your snivelling creek bed;
come rain hail & flood-water
laugh again “
– Hone Tuwhare ,‘ Haiku (1)’
This great New Zealand poem, inscribed on a carved wooden gateway in Auckland’s Aotea Square, is an inspiration to Ebb Then Flood (for hopefully obvious reasons!)
On The Beach
‘On The Beach’
“Now I’m livin’
out here on the beach,
but those seagulls are
still out of reach
… I follow the road,
though I don’t know
where it ends.
Get out of town, get out of town,
think I’ll get out of town.”
‘On The Beach’, Neil Young (1974)
Listen here:
Dark Promontory
‘Dark Promontory’
On Arriving And Departing
Barcelona Estacio de Franco October 2019
Numbered platforms, nameless people.
Coming and going as they please, or as they must.
For every departure, an arrival.
Many journeys.
From a short distance I observe those on the platforms coming and going.
I am a stranger here, but am a fellow journey maker, so there is a momentary affinity of sorts.
Even the sweeping ironwork of the grand station roof speaks of the lines and curves of travel.
There is wonderment in such a place, but always anticipation of the next destination.
For we must keep moving…
Beached And Bleached
Wenderholm, NZ. March 2020
Washed up and trapped on the rocks below a cliff, beneath the hot sun, a bleached out log speaks of the netherworld.
Between stages.
Defying the elements.
Light, wind and water may continue to shape that which has no longer any cause to be concerned by it.
Where it grew, what it sheltered – none of that matters now.
Lying in state; in a state of transition.
From expansion to deterioration.
And back again…
(see Beach And Bleached for more glimpses of the place between)
Sandwritten Love
Complicated
Calton Hill, Edinburgh October 2019
This hotchpotch building, with its quiltwork of bricks and windows caught my eye in Scotland late last year.
Quirkily fascinating.
And complicated…
It’s as if there was more than one hand in the plans, or perhaps the cash ran dry at some point and they started up again later, with whatever was around at the time.
Much is made of having a focused “design for life”.
In reality though, most of our somewhat random lives resemble this sort of thing, more so than any sleek, linear design!
A Place Beyond Belief
Given that a belief is just that, and not a fact or certainty, what does that place beyond belief look like ?
Asked another way, what is the substance of your faith and hope?
And, if you get to that place or find that thing, would you actually realise that you are there or what it was ?
None of which questions I can answer but I have the nagging feeling (not a belief, mind) that I have actually arrived at some of those places beyond belief , only for those beliefs to change, and so too, the destination.
All clear then?
Oh, and I will let you know when and if I get there….
ebb then flood 