I've never won a Beauty Contest before! And more things for Magic4Terri!

WELL!  THIS was the news that greeted me on Saturday!  How wonderful, I'm amazed and excited and jumpy-up-and-downy!  It seems this little chap will be making his way down-under, to find a new home in the attic (well, actually, more likely the hallway or the lounge room, I wouldn't want to hide him away!)

 Thank you so much to Jackie Morris, I'm humbled and chuffed by her wonderful comments.  She understands my 'Beauty' completely.

And speaking of 'Beauty', I've had several people asking about larger prints of her, so I've been experimenting trying to get an A3 print that I'm happy with quality-wise.  I thought I'd offer the first one to the Magic4Terri auction, so pop over and put a bid on, I've set an opening bid of $20 and I'll pay for postage, or $35 and I pay postage as a 'Buy It Now' option (only available on the first bid).  These will be $40 normal price I think, plus postage of course, so get in early to get a bargain, and help Terri out.  And my earlier offering is sitting at $30 now, for the 4 A4 prints of the winner's choice, so still a bargain too (normally would be $80 total, plus postage for 4 prints).

Some rough music (as opposed to 'rough magic') for Beauty, and a Beauty contest!

I know you've all seen this before, but there IS something new, honestly...I just wanted to keep all the bits together in one post.  I've been wanting to set 'Beauty Remembers' to music for a while, but I'm always better with a deadline (otherwise I can go on faffing about forever) and I wanted to record something in time for Jackie Morris' 'Contest of Beauty' (though her NEW blog can be found HERE).  I did a VERY rushed version this morning, while Beloved was dropping the girls off at school.  My window of opportunity was small, about 15 minutes before he was back and needing to get onto the computer (he is FLAT OUT with work at the moment!).  So this is me sitting slightly squashed in at the computer desk, reading the words off the computer as I sing into the dodgy little mic on it.  So there are more than likely a few 'ambient' sound effects in the mix, like cars, planes...Flynn going off at something (she's a strange dog, she prefers to bark at nothing!).  Warning, it is VERY rough...even scratchier than my previous attempts, but oh well, it's done...for now.  I will probably try and recored a better version sometime in the future, but of course, it won't sound quite the same, because it's not a 'song' as such, more me playing around and making it up as I go along, so difficult to repeat myself, and anyway, I would always want to 'improve'.  Hope you can hear through the dodgyness something that is actually not bad!

And the poem is HERE (though I have added, or rather added back in) a line for the painting and the song.

Note: Edited 25 October 2016, to add a Soundcloud link, because Divshare seems to have swallowed all my old recordings! :(

Magic4Terri...a very quick post!

Just to let you know that there is an online auction happening HERE to raise funds for writer, editor, artist and faery godmother to countless up and coming fantasy writers and artists, Terri Windling.  She is going through a very difficult time at the moment, and the fantasy world (yes, it does exist) is pulling together to help her out.  There is some AMAZING stuff up for auction, like original Froud and Lee works, so pop over and have a look.  My own humble offering is  the winning bidder's choice of any 4 of my A4 prints (normally $20 each) and I've set the bidding to start at $10.  Or you can 'buy now' for $70, and get $10 off the normal price, plus I'll pay postage.  You've seen him before, but I'm rather fond of him, so here's one of the prints on offer.

'Photo Essay'...or, why I haven't been blogging lately!

Hmmm, it's been a month since my last post, oh dear.  I find that the longer there is between posts, the harder it is to write anything.  There's so much I've got lined up I want to talk about, it just gets to be TOO much and it all becomes too hard and I give up and go and watch something dumb on TV instead...a bad habit I really must give the flick to!  So just so you know I have been doing something while I haven't been waxing lyrical (aka waffling pompously!) in the attic...here's a list of stuff I've done.  Which I've decided to give the very undeserved, but terribly professional sounding, name of 'photo essay'.

Sooooooo...during the school holidays, munchkins and I made a 'spring goddess' scarecrow for the vegie garden out the front.

Her head has seen a LOT of history!  An old polystyrene foam wig/hat stand, which I swiped from the wardrobe department in the theatre at uni about 14 years ago (well, ok, I asked first), and used for a life-size (and very basic) puppet 'Miranda' for the one act reworking of "The Tempest" that I wrote and directed there.  Hands were courtesy of Beloved who made them for me back then.  She's been knocking around in old boxes and upside down in crates since then, so I decided it was time to give her a new lease of life.  So munchkins were given one side of her face each to paint, on strict instructions that there would be NO FIGHTING OR MUMMY WILL DO IT!

Then we decorated!

They seem pretty pleased with their work!

Munchkins in the foyer of the Spare Parts Puppet Theatre, after the two day puppet-making workshop. Smallest made a 3-eyed alien, and biggest made a dragonfly (with a touch of Dame Edna Everage I think).  I was volunteering, and had a great time and learnt lots.  Particularly the wonder that is the HOT GLUE GUN, which I have never used before...I now own my very own.

Can you tell which are their favourite t-shirts?  And hats for that matter!

I bought THIS book (re-worked for the Australian market), and tried out the simple cheese recipe.  And it worked!  Even munchkins declared the fresh herb cheese to be yum

Equipment laid out.

All that it required was supermarket bought full-cream milk, and some lemon juice!  

Lemon juice added to the hot milk.

Curds put into the muslin to strain.

Knotted up and left to drip overnight.

This was my actually second attempt.  The first went so well, I made a double batch this time because I wanted to see if I could make a 'baked ricotta' style as well.  So half was mixed up with some salt and fresh herbs from the garden, and the other half mixed just with salt, and put into the muslin lined mould (the middle of a yoghurt container with top and bottom cut off) and weighed down with a can (which very conveniently fitted perfectly into said yoghurt container!), and left to drain overnight again.

Very carefully wrapped in baking paper and popped into the oven.

Crikey!  It actually worked.  And it tasted alright too!

A cuppa out under the apricot, which now is in full leaf (and is covered in apricots...we've already started 'jamming').  Me looking slightly rumpled (ok, it's how I usually look!), with my painting apron on...well, it's a painting apron now!

The garden looking at about its best I think, everything blooming and green and lovely!

The Lavender and those lovely poppies.

Some small feral creature spotted on the back lawn.

And California poppies too!

On the last weekend of the October school holidays, we went camping up in the hills, in the Darling Ranges out past Gidgegannup to the Avon National Park.  And trying out our new Pentax DSLR.  Looking north westish.

Fairly impressed with the zoom!

Sunrise on the granite outcrops that overlook the valley below.

Looking back over to the north west, to see the moon going down.

The way the granite splits naturally fascinated me, it looks for all the world like some ancient human cut monument, old standing stones perhaps, that have fallen in the aeons since they were built.

Munchkins in matching hats scarpering over the escarpment!

Dinner on the Barbie.  Grandad cooks!  Our tent in the background.

Ahhh, now you could have knocked me down with a feather when beloved said "you know, we need something to hang up here, some kind of a family decoration or hanging, something we can put up every time we go camping."  Because, well, I'M the hippy, tree-hugging, rainbow-kombi-wishing member of the family, and beloved...well, he likes motorbikes...and stuff like that.  So, after I picked myself up out of the dust, I suggested some prayer flags.  And because I just happened to have brought my little green handy sewing case with various scraps of fabric with me...I set about making some straightaway.  And here they are!

View from the big rock which munchkins insisted on climbing without PG!

 Then back to school, and I put my hand up to help out in biggest munchkin's art class again.  They're looking at mythical creatures this term, so this was my idea for an art project, junk monsters.  This was the first prototype to show the teacher to see what she thought.  Of course, I was only half an hour into it and I realised that this one was perhaps a bit complicated for 2 adults to supervise 27 small children to make, so I made a simpler version as well.  But I had so much fun making this (adults really should do stuff like this more often, pure silly fun is so good for you), I decided to finish it and show the class anyway.  They were pretty excited, and I've seen some lovely monsters being created in the last three weeks since they started working on them.

And so, back to the garden!  This is what the vegie garden is looking like now.  

The triffid on the right was once a Cos lettuce.  The triffid on the left is a Beetroot.  I have never seen beetroot run up to seed before! And spring isn't even over yet!

And this is my cherished Elder plant.  Well, that's what it says in the label.  And it looks like the pictures I've seen.  But aren't Elder flowers supposed to have a lovely scent?  And aren't they tasty enough to actually make fritters out of?  These, however, have no smell that I can discern, and after having a nibble on a couple of blossoms, no taste either.  Anyone know what's up with it?  I had utterly implausible romantic dreams of making my own Elderflower wine and Elderberry cordial, and they have been dashed to pieces by the utter inodorousness of my Elder plant...sigh!

And finally (this must surely be the most photos I've ever put in one blog post), I was asked by the school if I would run a little art club on Friday afternoons for Years 4-7.  And for reasons unfathomable to shy and never-taught-anything-to-anybody me, I said yes.  I decided to make some simple hangers with the kids, and here is a sample of finished work after the first 4 week block.

They're rather lovely, aren't they!

Phew!  So, I haven't been spending ALL that time watching Big Bang Theory!

Descending into the underworld, the labyrinth, the abyss...

I'm not right now (thankfully)...but it's something that many of us struggle with, it seems, many times in our lives.  Reading Terri Windling's series of blog posts 'On Creative Burn-out', it seems that creative people of all types struggle with this strange circular journey.  Round we go, heading up and up, feeling on fire and full of creatives sparks, then suddenly we find ourselves over the top and heading down the other side...down into doubt, melancholy, greyness, lack of inspiration, lack of motivation.  Deep into some dark place that we're sure we'll never climb out of, we'll never find the key, we'll never find that magic spark again.

Although many of us realise we're not very good at dealing with it, it seems to me that artists and musicians, writers and pretty much anyone who lives a creative life, at least has some understanding of this cycle.  Many of us know deep down that sometimes we need to stop and refill the well of inspiration, go off by ourselves perhaps, and give ourselves time.  Not always easy of course, in a world dedicated to deadlines and 24/7 and better, bigger, faster, NOW.  And we may fight it, ignore it, deny it, try and push it aside, but most of us know that sooner or later, we'll have to give in and let it run its course.  And we also know (though it's often hard to remember) that quite often, we will discover something new, a new direction, a different way of seeing, a solution to a problem, in that very darkness we've been trying to avoid.  That usually, if we don't dig our heels in and refuse to go, kicking and screaming all the way, then the journey, though painful, might actually be worth it.

But I don't believe this cycle is peculiar to artists.  I think it is a HUMAN cycle.  And I think it is a human cycle that for too long the modern world has been trying to pretend doesn't exist, and that it does so at great risk.  Because I suspect it may be one of the reasons that, despite living in absolute luxury and abundance compared with so many in the world, we seem to be in the middle of an epidemic of depression.

Now perhaps I should say right now, that I am not a psychologist or a doctor.  And I don't for a moment believe that every case of clinical depression can be cured by someone patting your hand and saying "it's OK, you'll be fine, there's nothing to be afraid of, it's just going to get dark for a while".  That would be ludicrous.  So what you have here is simply the musings of someone who has suffered from grief, depression (PND to be specific), and also has spent a fair bit of time on the ups and downs of the creative ferris wheel.

In 2000, a week or two after I lost my little girl (story here for those who haven't stopped by before), I remember sitting in my doctor's surgery sobbing my heart out.  As you might expect.  And she offered me anti-depressants.  She said it wouldn't take away the pain, but it would take the edge off my grief.  I was floored by this.  Why on earth did I need to 'take the edge off my grief'?  Why would I want to take away the pain?  I believed I was feeling exactly what I SHOULD be feeling given the circumstances.  And more important, exactly what I NEEDED to feel in order to mourn properly, to walk the journey that can not, must not, be avoided, to heal and to come out the other side stronger, with peace and acceptance in my heart.  But it seems there was something unacceptable about my grief, about a woman sitting sobbing her eyes out.  Visible grief is just not acceptable in polite society.

A few months after the birth of my last little one in 2004, I could feel something was not quite right, but it took the visiting health sister to pinpoint it.  She very gently suggested to me that I might be suffering something more than just 'baby blues'.  And I'm very grateful that she pointed me in the direction of a women's health clinic with a counselling and group therapy service.  With all due respect to overworked GPs, I think it's pretty likely if I'd visited my local medical service, I would have been given a prescription for anti-depressants after a short consultation.  I know people who have.

Clearly, I did not have as bad a case of PND as some women suffer from. I managed to function OK (mostly, though there were times when I just curled up on the kitchen floor and sobbed), I looked after my girls and I did not actually have a problem bonding with my littlest.  I just felt as if I was disappearing, fading away into nothing, that everything I'd ever been, everything I'd ever done or created, everything I'd imagined or built, was gone and would never be back.  I loved my girls so fiercely it hurt, and yet there was resentment too, a truly horrible twin-sided coin.  And yet, meeting with other mums (who also looked normal on the outside) going through it too, talking and having a good cry in the one on one sessions with the counsellor, got me through.  As well as, it MUST be said, with huge support from my family, who understand the need for a good cry and a good talk, and my poor Beloved, who had been through so much with me, and somehow trusted that I'd get through this too if I was allowed to find my own way.

But I also know mums who were given anti-depressants and years later were still on them, afraid that if they give them up, those feelings might come back.  I've met people who mentioned to their GP that they've been feeling down lately, and were given prescriptions.  It seems that we are afraid of being sad, or melancholy, or down.  Even that society demands that we must not be.  And yet, aren't these emotions all perfectly normal?  

On the Beyond Blue website, there is THIS checklist.  If you have more than 3 of the symptoms for more than two weeks, you probably have a depressive illness.  I just tried it, ticking all the boxes that equate to how I feel when I'm in a creative funk and can't muster the energy or the motivation to even pick up a pencil.  I scored 11.  Most of the time, I don't go for a whole two weeks feeling like that, but there have been times when I have.  Or I've had some of the symptoms for that long (or longer) but not all.  I've had ups and downs most of my life, and even as a kid I had my 'melancholy' times.  The PND WAS scary, it lasted a long time, but generally, I don't panic when I'm feeling down because I KNOW this feeling. I know it will be a pain, and I hate being there, but I know it will go, and it might even leave behind something useful.  It's kind of normal.

But what if I didn't know?  What if I hadn't really felt this before?  What if no-one around me could tell me about it, what if I'd never seen anyone else deal with it?  It would scare the hell out of me I think.  And I wonder, I really wonder, whether we set ourselves up for a bad dose of it by allowing ourselves to run to the point of empty, because we don't know we shouldn't?  We don't allow ourselves 'downtime' until it becomes 'DOWN time'.  We are part of the natural world, and without any exceptions I can think of off the top of my head, it works in cycles: action/inaction, growth/rest, flow/ebb.  In order to flower in spring, the almond must sleep through winter.  This is what I said in comment to Terri's 2nd post:

The need for fallow time. Everything else in the natural world works in cycles of activity and inactivity, fallow and productive. Why should we humans think we are any different? And yet we push ourselves, or allow others (clients, deadlines, family and so on) to push us to keep going, not stop (or feel guilty if we dare to), and keep producing. No wonder the well gets empty, the creative flowering grows weaker and less beautiful. But it's not just in the arts, it's everywhere. I just noticed a headline yesterday, that Australian workers are working longer than ever hours, and yet are more inefficient than ever before...hmmmm, I wonder why?!

A few years ago, I attended a workshop led by Wendy Rule, an amazing singer/songwriter.  As a pagan/wiccan, she's interested in myths and archetypes, and is endlessly inspired by the myth of Persephone and her underworld journey, the cycle of descent and ascent.  And she said something that stuck in my mind.  That this descent into the underworld is a necessary journey, it's a chance to 'cleanse', to slough off the unneeded bits of our psyche that have outlived their use, to 'lose the baggage' we've been carrying around.  And without this voluntary going down, going within, this withdrawing and retreat time, we end up carrying around all these dead bits of ourselves, parts that rot like bits of old meat, more than likely making us sick in the process.  That might sound a bit 'out there' but if you think of people who have worked so hard for so long that they burn-out or suffer from a break-down, then that's pretty much the same thing, just in less colourful language.

So I wonder...if there were elders (who had journeyed there before) to tell us 'it is not an abyss, it is a tunnel with a light at the end of it', would we be less scared?  If we regularly allowed ourselves time to be truly 'fallow' would the journey be shorter and easier than if we fight it all the way?  I wonder too, if we medicate at the first sign of the downward journey (instead of waiting to be sure it's something more than that and needs more than just time and retreat), are we in danger of precariously balancing ourselves forever on the edge of what looks like a terrifying bottomless black pit?  When if we allowed ourselves to step down gently into the dark, we might find a well trodden path that is not so dark or terrible, and we might find we have things to leave there, and new things to bring back into the light.  

Because it's in the dark that old things compost down into rich new soil.  And it's in the dark that the seeds that become the trees that provide the oxygen we breathe, germinate.