Wishing you....

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Happy New Year to you.....
May the strength of your intuition be alive and bright in 2012!


Image source via

play time

del kathryn barton

"The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives." Einstein

It's play time, rest time, re-arrange the furntiture time, a few vain attempts to work out tech-issues-with-blogger time (my posts aren't getting updated in readers/email - hmph!), a touch of drink-and-be-merry time and even a bit of sleep time in these parts!

What kind of time are you spending in these last few moments of 2011?

Thank you!

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We're heading to the hills tonight - for festivities and play and rest...

Taking a break from the computer until next week - as I am sure many of you are.

When I return I've decided to host a bit-of-a-giveaway.... In celebration of the time of year - and because I've just posted my Treasure and it felt pretty good!! - but mostly because this little breathing space of mine, this refuge and hiding place, this voice - has just turned exactly 4 months and 5 days old... what better reason huh!
Thank you so much for visiting me - sharing your thoughts - supporting - and teaching me that there are so many different ways to connect. I feel that with some of you I could easily sit down over a glass of wine and talk and share and laugh and find comfort..... and I haven't even heard your voices - such a fine thing that is!
A wonderful christmas, solstice, holiday and new year to you all!

Mika x

Rainy day with rodrigo y gabriela

It's raining here - hard!
I was really hoping to go to our local sunday market to get a few of the final bits 'n pieces needed before we head to the hills for Christmas.....
Instead - we're stuck inside. Plenty of things to do and organise and make and pack.... for sure - but we're needing a little help to pick up the tempo. So we're listening to Rodrigo y Gabriela to help us along.
Put it on full screen and turn up the volume:
just Try not to dance!

Murmuration

If you get a moment - please watch this.

I don't have the words....

the countdown calendar and a creative community

The countdown calendar got done! Phew!

I am personally looking forward to the 5th day before Christmas - it reads:

"paint mama & papa's toenails any colour, everyone get Dress-Up-Box dressed for a pancake & popcorn dinner!"

If you're interested in the painting above the fireplace - it's by local artist Marcia King. We bought it from a wonderful shop called can't think straight - just around the corner from us.

When I saw it - it immediately left a very deep imprint. I couldn't let it go. Some people find it very dark and then they look at it a little longer - a little harder - and see that it is quite the opposite. 

To me it says... 'we're all just feeling our way'.

I live in a small town full of creativity. I am reminded of it in the corners of my home.

That beautiful bird painting was created for us by our friend and artist Josh as a gift for a bit-of-a-celebration we had back in February (i'll write about it soon... it was insanely fun!). 

She's special that bird, don't you think? She Knows things! 

You can read more on Josh here and here.

The mortar and pestle were also gifted to us In Celebration by a group of very thoughtful women who know that I am quite taken by the works of local ceramicist Bridget Bodenham. The majority of her work is exquisitely fine - smooth - personal somehow. If you follow the link and see her spoons, you'll see that they have no place in a home that is shared with a 21 month old.... no way!

And the plates on the lower shelf - again gifted - and again by another very talented local ceramic artisan who forms a part of  Clayspace - Daylesford Region Ceramics Co-operative. If you're ever in the area - please visit them. Their very inspiring, beautiful space sits looking over this lake:

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Yep - not a bad place to live at all....
~
Visiting: Kootoyoo's creative spaces

better late....

It's late I know - but I'm on the job to get this made As Soon As Possible!
It's time to stop putting it all off and embrace the spirit of it!
Also - finding a whole lot of inspiration here - and wishing I could get my knitting fingers to dance....
Oh - and if you recall me ranting about this bloke - you'll know I'm a fair bit fond of him!
We SAW him perform on Friday night at the Corner Hotel - He absolutely did not disappoint!
Nor did the surprise Melbourne getaway - nor the Greek feast - nor the very fun company of 'me man'...

Silence

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Silence

There’s a viciousness in silence

It can lead the mind to overact

Plump it up with

Toxic imaginings

Embroider it with after shocks

Starve it of its’ fluids

Ungentle it with a cold rip

Don’t offer your quiet

When they have asked you for sound

Or text or image or touch

Lull that thunderous blow

It will only take a moment

To move the sharpness of it

Into a soft humid still

Be generous

All of those who surround you

Are calling for it.

as long as i live

I watched Small Town Murder Songs on dvd the other night.
The opening scene was thrown out at me with the power of this song.

It is a tremendous, stabbing, alluring opening sequence.

It's the music - definitely - and the slow movement of the camera panning across the shocked expression of a woman's reaction to something that has just happened, that drew me in.

Slow Motion. 

I Love slow motion - particularly when it's lifted and highlighted and intensified with the very direct and pounding gaze of the right Music!

That's how Jane Campion's The Piano got to me.
All the vessels from my heart got vacuumed into every detail of that film.

Small Town Murder Songs, for me, is a film lifted by the soundtrack.
The content lost me a little - but not in a bad way - in a way that a dream does when its focus keeps shifting. You know those dreams that leave you with a strong sense of colour and feeling, faces and moments but leave you unable to describe it.
That's how I experienced this film. I could tell you what it is about but my re-telling would be without conviction or certainty.
I could absolutely tell you how it feels....
And it smells - like this:

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lies behind the text

'....she wraps parts of her photos with floral ornamentation and others with cited calligraphy taken from Biblical texts. They are almost abstract and enigmatic, arousing the viewer's curiosity to discover what are the photographed objects, what meanings lies behind the texts..'

ronit bigal

image and word via

Loie Fuller - Danse Serpentine by Lumière Brother

Today The Girl dances.

party!

Sarah Raskey

This week is feeling light despite the grey.
There are festivities afoot... celebrations of completion and achievement - a party!
There are birthdays.
Milestone purchases.
Conversation.
The closing in of a year - and the emerging whispers of a new one.
Do we celebrate the end of one - or the start of a new one?
 - or do we bring their hands together and say:
"you two! you know, you're not all that different... you should hang out more!"

Yes - today there is colour?
Is there for you?

blackout poetry

I was visiting artistic odyssey a few weeks back and came across a post on blackout poetry featuring the work of Tyler Knott.

It encouraged me to search for more ....

And when I did - i discovered Austin Kleon

I have to say...... there's something about blackout poetry. 

I love it!

It ignites curiosity - maybe a bit of intrigue - bit of cloak 'n dagger - revelation of code....

You know those movies where you get access to an underworld. 

Where you're driven through dark empty roads lined with very tall ominous trees. Usually you're in a limousine driven by someone who is very still, very silent and very faceless. 

There's music - it's unsettling.

And then you're driven up a very long driveway and at the end there's nearly always a mansion. All lit up and powerful against the dark. They're beautiful those mansions - just like the Siren's song.

But usually you're not really getting all this because you are - of course - blindfolded.

You're taken (by the faceless silent) through those towering doors - you're blindfold is removed.

And there it is - (you can fill this space with you're own imagery....)

For me, it's the thought:

"So! That's what's been going on behind these doors..... so that's what's Really been happening"

Blackout feels the same. 

Like you've been let in on a secret.

"So that's what's Really been going on behind those words! And all this time I though it was saying something entirely different"

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And what a wonderful way to write horoscopes!

I think this process of creating poetry would be great for kids. Mine can't read yet - but just getting them to circle words then colour in the rest of the page..... well - it would be so interesting to see what they reveal.

Treasure

I am Gathering. 

finding. sourcing. collecting. making..... thinking on

Small Things. 

Just a few - but enough - to make up a parcel to send to an as-yet unknown address. 

To a person I have never met, 

nor spoken to, 

nor know anything about.

It is a very wonderful thing!

It's a give and receive project in celebration of the festive season. 

For me it is also a celebration of the delights of Slow Mail - of the handwritten - of the journey over the seas that patterns a parcel not only with what it contains and the thoughts of its creator - but in the time it takes and the places it has moved through. 

In this one idea - many more are conjured. 

Thoughts on the process and feeling of giving to a stranger. Thoughts on connecting. 

We do connect very differently with the the handwritten envelope, don't we? - than the typed one - than the sounding of an sms - the number on the email inbox.

That pen mark speaks volumes. It warms.

Do you agree?

Visit Wandering the North Pole to find out more.

Images here, here, here and here

heart-space

“They sang the words in unison, yet somehow created a web of sounds with their voices. It was like hearing a piece of fabric woven with all the colors of a rainbow. I did not know that such beauty could be formed by the human mouth. I had never heard harmony before.” 
― Anita Diamant, The Red Tent

Images: here, here, here and here

I Could Die Looking at You

Listen to this man....
He sounds like Sunday.
He sounds like our place right now - where there's a three year old who turns four tomorrow.

There's a whole lot to celebrate in that Four!
For her and for us.
For us - well - this three-nearly-four-year-old took quite some time in the making.
It got hard.
It's not an uncommon story is it - but a story non-the-less....

And I'll share it with you one day -

But for now I'll say - when a kind stranger said to us "read This Book" - she changed our lives.
I wish I could tell her that.
I'll tell you instead.

why i adore the night

This week I have been so fortunate to have the opportunity to contribute to Hila's 'why i adore the night' project. Hila's blog le projet d'amour is a regular source of inspiration to me - her discussion and aesthetic is rich and beautiful.
If you get the opportunity please visit "why i adore the night' and experience how others have expressed their experience and relationship with Night!
Read more here about Hila's inspiration and idea to explore the subject - beginning from her reading of Jeanette Winterson's article of the same name in The Guardian in 2009.

image source: via

for lachy

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you are not alone

Are you familiar with PostSecret?

An ongoing global community project, it draws people together in the sharing of their secrets.

It un-lonlies them - us - all.

Millions of people have sent one man their secrets anonymously on the back of homemade postcards. He publishes them in books, exhibits them, blogs them and has created an archive of them to be visited by the millions (over 485 million and climbing).

Reading people's secrets should feel voyeuristic - but it doesn't. 

It feels like relief.

Relief for those who have unburdened their heaviness, shared shame and desire and longing, shared quirks and kindness and loss, shared where they haven't before and by doing so given so much to themselves and to those who read them.

A PostSecret book weighs heavy with it's sadness and so light with it's offering: 

You Are Not Alone it sings.

You are not alone in your loneliness, in your craving, in your shame, cruelty, fear, selfishness, distrust, compassion, strangeness..... in your humanity.

And reading here shows that the secrets of a stranger can create change in the life of another.

Reading here - about the beginnings of PostSecret - I was struck by this:

'first find the value in a thoughtful question'

There is so much value isn't there? And perhaps there needs to be more learning in this - so that we are not just comforted in the community of a shared secret but by those who sit in the same room with us.

Has someone asked you a thoughtful question recently?

your weight in their hands...

“They encouraged you to put some of your weight in their hands and soon as you felt how light and lovely it was, they studied your scars and tribulations...” 

― Toni Morrison, Beloved

Image source: here and here

More on Toni Morrison here