An introvert abroad - day 7

Day 7.

The Mountain.

Remember when service station attendants used to fill your car with fuel for you? Yeah, seems they do that here. I didn't know what to do with myself while he did, so I ended up buying a drink I didn't really need. Not sure if it's good old-fashioned service or clever sales tactics. Maybe both.

I climbed a small area of Mount Taranaki. About 3 hours of walking altogether. If I had more time and fitness, I'd have stayed longer and done the "goblin forest" walk too (isn't it magical that is actually a thing, not just a figment of the imagination).

So, so beautiful. It seems strange to call something natural "amazing", when it's there all the time. Creatures and plants and animals and fungi and bacteria and precipitation and sunlight all doing their thing. We cityfolk just forget about it, surround ourselves with things, landscapes modified beyond recognition.

At lunch I met a rooster named Grandfather, in a homely barn converted to a country restaurant. I ate a Prutje dutch pancake (well, half of it. It was a calzone-style filled pancake that was possibly bigger than my head).

On the way back, I stopped randomly in a little town and found the memento I've been looking for (one that eluded me in the tourist gift shops and bigger centres). A hand carved stone pendant in the symbol manaia: "(Guardian Angel) The manaia symbolizes a mythical being with a bird’s head a human body and fish tail. The invisible light surrounding a person."

Has it really been a week already? It seems like much less and much more time simultaneously.

Mount Taranaki with his head in the the clouds

Tethered to the sky

An introvert abroad - day 4

Day 4.

Magic.

Hamilton Gardens and Hobbiton.

A visit to the Chinese Friendship Gardens

Morning light/self portrait

Sunset on an ordinary Tuesday

Letting go

It's as easy as an autumn leaf falling
She intones from the front of the room
And all I can think of is the whomping willow
Tossing its branches like a head of hair

I spread my arms like a stumpy tree
And imagine shedding golden leaves
Each one is a word, a shame, a memory
Awaiting some celestial broom or breeze

But we've already started the next
I must be slow at this letting go thing
Maybe, like a regular tree, I need time
To sever connections, ease the flow of sap

Poetry persists

They say that it doesn't pay
I've been told it does not profit
to write in this fracturous way
it's done just for the love of it

Still it's the choice of adolescents
(Though generally squirreled away)
It's best for us life-convalescents
For the serious mind this is play

For me it's too hard to resist
I'm a hoarder, a herder of words
What I know is that poetry persists
Like the flight of migrating birds

Poem: Sun rise

I can tell you when I last fed
my ever-begging belly;
How many hours of sleep I
foraged in the wee hours;
How many decades I've notched
into the headboard of time;
That the years have lapped me
like cars on a tyre-worn circuit
since I last crashed into love.

But I don't remember, couldn't
say when I stopped writing
letters; or held onto a joke long
enough just to tell it; flew a kite,
rode a bike, made mansions of
chairs and blankets; or watched
the sun cleave from the horizon.

My voice - my real voice, the one
with nightingale ambitions - creaks
with disuse. I have chased the
tumbleweeds of language into a
desert with no light. But I am still
here, hidden in the dark. All I need
is a hum and a whisper, a suggestion
of dawn, to sing into the sun's rising.

Falling water

Existence, filtered

Self-titled art installation by Ian Burn, NSW Art Gallery.

Sensory delights from a lunchtime walk

I went for a walk yesterday in my lunchbreak. Just a short stroll around the block. I took my camera phone with me just in case I found an irresistible shot, and ended up documenting the sensory delights that awaited me.

Made for touch (1)

Wall: improved

The delights of colour (1)

Light and shadow

Everyone has the same fence (1)

Everyone has the same fence (2)

Made for touch (2)

The delights of colour (2)

Personality in pictures #1

I was baking apple crumble the other day, and realised that I always try to peel the apples in one piece. I cultivated the skill in childhood, and now it's something I do without even thinking. But for someone who doesn't know me, it might be considered a 'quirk'. So I'm starting a list, because I'm proud of who I am, quirks and all.

And I'm not alone. Minerva likes to peel oranges in one piece too.

between seasons

It's true.

rain/firsts/returning

I love the rain. The way the breeze smells as the clouds arrive; the way it sounds falling on a roof and gurgling in the gutters; the way the air looks so clean afterwards.

I can't believe it's been 2 months since my last post. We have to move house against our will, one of the many perils of being a tenant in this country. We've been looking for weeks on end, and haven't found a new home yet. It has taken over everything, put all my plans on hold, filled me with vague, hovering anxieties.

But a new year is upon us, and I think this one will be filled with firsts for me. There may be nothing new under the sun, but there are always firsts. First kisses and the first time you notice the colour of someone's eyes. First times for seeing yourself differently, for waking up to the beauty in the world.

May your 2011 be full of lovely firsts.

sailing into the sunset