mirandaaaaaa

 

Let's go to Hanging Rock again soon, before it gets too deliriously hot to walk around.

little battler

Cats and blogs don't work, unless you're Jessica Lucas. But my cat's diabetes is getting worse, her arthritis is making her front legs shake, there is a possibility that she has dementia and the vet had me fearing the worst this week so I'm celebrating her fighting spirit - our crazy-making, co-dependent, dysfunctional life together continues. Which is a good thing.

Drašnice

From Brac I went to Makarska where my relatives had arranged for a taxi driver they knew to take me to Drašnice to see where my grandfather had lived. His house is in old Drašnice up in the foothills of the mountain. After the earthquake in 1962 everyone moved down to the water. My grandfather was long gone by then, growing grapes in Middle Swan in Perth.

Pucisca stone

A couple of years ago I went to Brac in Croatia. I wanted to see my great grandmother's house in Pucisca. The first photo is the view from the path behind my distant cousins house. He introduced me to a local artist who was building his house in the hillside just below this. It was almost Gaudi-like, the walls curving around organically. I was then taken to the stonemasons school. Brac stone is a dazzling white, it was like being in a room full of never-melting snow. It has softened and darkened in the photos. The students here leave regular high school to learn the centuries old trade of stonemasonry. Later that evening my relative told me that he ran into the man he introduced me to who was sitting with some old ladies in the town square. The artist asked who I was and when told I was a relative and my age the old ladies said emphatically "God has sent her to you!". There was talk of my being his future wife but unfortunately for the old ladies God had arranged for me to leave the next day.

Peanuts

I started collecting old postcards in primary school and used to have hundreds. I'll scan them in when I get the time. She's my first, a sad little Peanuts character.

windowsill plants

home

Nathan Gray and Olivia on the mantlepiece

Sedmikrásky on the windowsill

Guitar playing bottle opener on the speaker

Ieuan Weinman in the kitchen

Anonymous

Image courtesy of the Carl Hammer Gallery

S.L. Jones

 Images courtesy of the Carl Hammer Gallery

Not THAT Nick Cave

  

 

Shake it.

Images courtesy of various blogs...
http://theartblog.org/
http://todojustthis.blogspot.com/

Nana

My grandmother at her father's grave wearing mourning dress

On the vineyard in Perth

 

Dressed as a man in Croatian national dress

Visiting Kitty

  

Kitty's kitchen in her dark cocoon like 70s house

Rob & I visited Kitty and she told us stories of living in Papua New Guinea where she and her husband had a peanut farm in the days before independence. Her house is an oasis, very dark and earthy, and you sit surrounded by tribal masks and shields.

From the city of shadows

Saw this book yesterday, a follow up to City of Shadows. This one tells the stories behind those amazing photographs of thieves, pickpockets, prostitutes and runaways. City of Shadows had some crime scene photos that were tough going and I always balked at buying it. I get nervous sometimes about books like that being in my house - as if the violence will seep out of the pages and invade my dreams. But this book I can happily live with.