I can not remember ever having been so void of thoughts as I am at the moment. All I can think of is what shall I cook for dinner to feed the troops and I desperately need to clean the house, it’s spring. But absolutely no thoughts beyond the chores. This sort of freaks me out. Particularly as I normally don’t think about daily stuff at all, it just seems to happen on the fly. For a week now my head is packed tightly into cotton wool. I wonder when the cloud will lift.
There comes a time, when one has to admit defeat: It might come as a surprise, but I am not Super woman! :)
It’s strange how life goes in waves. When you are on a high, you seem to be invincible. Everything runs smoothly and is exciting. Then all of a sudden one area turns to shit, then another one and another. Before you know it you are in an avalanche and you can’t do anything about it. In slow motion you see your head approaching the concrete floor.
The beauty about getting older is that you know you will be getting up from the floor again. You only have to bide your time! Though it doesn’t make it any easier while you are on the floor, does it?
Ah, well, at the moment I am well below par, the stress of recent weeks has well and truly finished me off for now. But I have made some plans. The weekend after next I have an appointment with my puppets. I feel a lot of new characters coming on.
I just came back from the Pah Homestead, where I set up my installation for judging. The artwork is finally out of the house on to the next stage. Now, it’s two weeks of nail-biting until the winners are announced on the 3rd of September. In the meantime I have so much catching up to do, not just with my blog. I feel like a Pukeko (that’s the bird shown in the image). They try to fly, but they can only go a short distance and they look even more awkward when they are running…. Very lanky.
First of all I would like to have a good night sleep.
I didn’t get around to writing yesterday. I am in a bit of a shambles at the moment.
In New Zealand there is this ad on TV against high speed driving, which has the punch line: “The faster you go, the bigger the mess”.
I am currently well past my comfortable speed and, yes I can confirm, the mess is getting bigger. There is only one way out… slowing down and working through the pile.
I am sitting here before I have my breakfast trying to figure out what to write today. The sun is a pale disc behind a thick layer of clouds again, but at least one has the notion of its existence and… the rain has stopped. Last night it was pouring down again and I wondered if we will need to use the ark we have parked in our front yard some time soon. It’s not quite ready yet for the water though.
First I wanted to put up an image of a snowed-under barn in Germany, but then I thought over there it’s summer now and they don’t want to be reminded that they are slowly sliding towards the cold part of the year. It’s better to find a more inspiring image reminding me that next summer will come for certain.
So here is my little sign of spring I took last weekend. I think the little ones must have done something naughty: Papa Swan scratches his beak and Mama Swan looks at them very disapprovingly. (I just can’t stop interpreting animal expressions as human. Sorry!)
Oh, this winter is starting to get to me. It is raining, raining, raining. Alright, this is not quite true. In the morning when I make breakfast it looks like a really nice day, but by the time I’ve finished the clouds are back and it is raining again. The light is dull and grey.
I come from a cold winter country, with thick layers of snow, but I was never this cold in Germany. The houses there are well insulated. In New Zealand insulation is just starting to become more widespread. Old men walk down the road in the middle of winter in shorts and gum boots. Okay, the temperatures are generally above freezing point in Auckland, but they must be measuring it in wind-still corners. There is nothing between here and Antarctica and blasts from the South can freeze the proverbial off a brass monkey.
Thankfully the worst of winter lasts only a month or so. So it should be over soon. My magnolia tree already has buds, the first sign of spring. Hurrah.
I find it difficult to capture the essence of the thermal fields. Disappointingly, the resulting images look like proof of a very careless industrial site. Something you could take to the environment court to get the place shut down. But it is all natural and just a reminder that we are only here as guests. Nature has its own mind!
Places like this must have inspired all the stories about the Devil being smelly and appearing in a cloud of smoke. It is very eerie. I am sure he lives somewhere around here.
We went down to Rotorua last weekend to show our visitor the geysers and mudpools. It is definitely a “must see” place on the New Zealand agenda. It smells like rotten egg and bubbles and steams everywhere. And no, this image is not photoshopped! This is the colour of the lake, which is called Devil’s bath. The colour stems from it’s richness in minerals, particularly sulphur. However, it can change colour depending on the ambient lighting. We were lucky, we experienced the water looking this poisonous lime green.
The area was already a “tourist” destination in the 1800’s. Travellers made the trip from Europe to New Zealand to see the Pink and White Terraces, one of the natural wonders of the world. The journey took several months, so in those days it certainly wasn’t a mass destination. Even coming down from Auckland, now a 3.5 hour drive, was a week long adventure. Starting with a steam boat and then through relatively inaccessible terrain, by horse, dinghy and on foot.
They terraces were destroyed by a volcano eruption in 1886, buried under a thick layer of debris.
In and around Rotorua one is constantly reminded that the earth is still active. A little bit further down the country, sixty-odd kilometers away from where we were, Mt Tongariro had a little spew on Monday night. The volcano is visible in the distance in the image below. Nobody really knows what’s going to happen next. Yesterday I heard on the radio, Mt Tongariro could do three things: Either nothing else, or it could continue similar volcanic activity of the same strength, or it could explode big time.
Mmmhm, I could have made this prediction myself.
Writing is one of those procrastinating tasks. When I don’t do it on a regular basis, it will fall by the wayside. Nevertheless, I will give it a break over the weekend. My visual Chinese Whispers has come to an end and I will go out and take new photographs. I am pretty sure I will pick up writing on Monday again. I certainly hope I will have captured some images that are worth showing :).
The connection to yesterday’s image are the wings, otherwise they have nothing in common. I could easily write a twenty page essay about the meaning of this photograph, which is called Fly shit on the world, but don’t worry, I won’t. It is obvious that there are many different layers to it.
It is another example of the images I thought would only appeal to me as the artist. I was surprised the other day when I had it up on my screen at work and a friend walked in and said to me: “Print this on A1 and I’ll hang it up.” Before I could be flattered he added “What is it?” I guess he must have been attracted to the colours in the first instance. I couldn’t enter into a discussion with him, he was gone as quickly as he had come and along the way lost his chance to get a print-out of this one. I am happy to give him another one of my images though, one that is more easily understood.
dedepuppets 