A WORK IN PROGRESS

This week I am painting white azaleas.  It’s a work in progress. I am trying to record their images in watercolour before they are gone for another year. I am a slow painter and I notice that the flowers don’t sit frozen in time while I work. They move, they turn their faces to the light, they expand, they wilt…they are ever changing. As the day progresses, the light moves around the room and the shadows on the flowers change position.

I work to capture an impression, not to replicate a photograph.

This is my work in progress. In a week or so, this painting will be finished, and will remain a reminder of the joy of spring 2015.

YOU and I also are works in progress. I am not the person I was twenty years ago. Or even a month ago. Are you?  It's mind boggling to list all the changes we have embraced, sometimes resisted, since 1980.
Have you ever met someone after a long separation and been greeted with the words, You haven't changed a bit? That's a bit of a worry, do you agree?  I wouldn't like to be the person I was at twenty, I wouldn't agree today with the opinions I held then.

The world, society and our community is a work in progress, in a state of perpetual change and growth and we don't see it happening minute to minute. Most of the time we change and grow with it and we always have, even though we sometimes loudly protest  about change. I know I do.

Twenty years ago I spent a lot of time writing letters to friends living elsewhere, postage stamps were always on my shopping list.  Now, I rarely write or receive letters because those friends are no longer with us. Friendship is always a work in progress.

It's rather nice to be 'a work in progress'...it means we have endless possibilities for change, for reinvention, and reparation.

Azaleas from my garden. The garden is a work in progress.

YOU AND I ARE MORE THAN THE FRAME

I have been watching DVD lectures on Fiction Writing presented by author and Professor James Hynes.    

In one lecture, he said that the difference between fictional characters and real people is our ability to access the fictional person’s innermost thoughts, but we can never access the innermost thoughts of a real person, however how well we think we know that person.  I thought, yes, I know more about The Little Prince, Jonathon Livingstone Seagull and Georgia Lane, the protagonist in Storm Warning, my novel in progress, than I know about many of the people who inhabit my life.

Perhaps we wouldn’t want anyone to know us as well as we know our favourite fictional characters, and most of us prefer not to have intimate details of our lives advertised on social media.

But surely when the time comes for someone to write your eulogy, you’d hope that person would be able to present a picture of the unique person you are, rather than describe the frame around your life, built of dates times and places. 

To quote a friend, when speaking at a loved one’s funeral; he was much more than the frame. 

If you were asked to write a eulogy for a friend or relative could you present a word picture of that person that was much more than the frame?

I attended a friend's funeral this week. Our shared interest was writing.We met for lunch once a month until she became ill. But it was the first time I had heard her play the piano; a recording of a duet played with her daughter. It was the first time I had seen a photo of her as a lovely young woman.  How little I knew of her.

Perhaps we should interview the people in our lives in a bid to know more than what the surface reveals or attempt to write a two-page biography about them omitting the ‘frame’.

Think of a person you know well, and from memory make a list of twelve of their favourite things.Then make a list of your favourite things and give it to someone you love.

Picture from Pinterest  The Little Prince...novel by Antoine St Exupery

IMPERMANENCE AND PLUM BLOSSOMS

Today I am aware of the impermanence of things. My lovely plum blossoms, which I had been enjoying immensely, are now battered from the pounding rain yesterday. The petals are a thick carpet on the paths and everything beneath the tree is coated in pink. Petals drift on the breeze like confetti, and the tree, although still a mass of pink, has lost its first magic.

 It made me think of the comparison between and young budgie, fluffy feathers, bright big eyes, and an old one, the eyes are small and while still a delight, looks slightly battered by life.

Too often we forget about the impermanence of people. We think our friends and family are indestructible. We imagine that they will always be there waiting for us to check in with them when we have nothing more important to do.

Kahlil Gibran wrote on friendship-…for what is your friend that you should seek him with hours to kill? Seek him with hours to live….

The impermanence  of life reminds us  to avoid  leaving things undone, words unsaid. 

I wonder if I would be so enraptured by the plum blossoms if they were always there.

FIRES--WHOSE FAULT?

More fires! Hundreds of homes lost. Pets and wildlife killed. Treasured memories lost. Firefighters risking their lives.  Whose fault?  Weather, freak accidents ?  It seems to me it is mainly the fault of people who don't care how their actions impact on others.
Some people are still tossing burning cigarette ends, mindless of where they land. Kids arrested this week for lighting fires.
 Smokers, take a look at your actions. Parents supervise your children. 
The next home to burn down might be yours. 
This  blog doesn't need a picture. I am sure we have all seen the damage. 
In the interest of a safe and caring society, please send this to all your friends.

ST ALBANS AND THE FORGOTTEN VALLEY

Settlers Arm Hotel St Albans

St Albans Book Feₐst,  It kicks off at 10am on October 5 with a full program of things bookish, historical, musical and culinary.  Children are catered for and you can meet favourite authors and bag one of their books in the lucky dip. Kate Grenville will be there as will Traci Harding, Jo Mitchell and Laurie Forth. Cocktails and Conversation follows at sundown and those still left with stamina after the fun filled day can repair to the Settlers Arms  for dinner, but book to ensure a place. .  Email kayeremington@gmail.com for information

St Albans is just seventy five minutes drive from Windsor NSW and a million miles from stress. You can sit in the garden of The Settlers Arms and eat real old-fashioned food, delicious.  Follow with home-made lamingtons and relaxation! The atmosphere of this historic pub was worth the time it took to get there, the country side is an artist/photographer’s paradise, wild in places but with pastoral vistas stretching out to mountains rising above.

ARSON IS NOT A RELIEF FOR BOREDOM

In the sky there was smoke, in the garden was hope 

This week I watched the black smoke billowing just a few streets from my house as bush fires, driven by a north westerly wind burned out properties and a nearby nature reserve and threatened to destroy many homes. For one man, thirty years of work was lost in an afternoon. Helicopter pilots and hundreds of fire fighters risked their lives to put out the blaze which they believe was lit by someone who thought arson was fun. Rather than show the arsonists the images of their mischief I send this bouquet of flowers to the firefighters, the pilots and the people who lost property or had their lives disrupted.   

In this country and in other places, fire caused by weather is an ever present danger in summer, but what this country doesn't want is lives lost and property consumed by fires lit by people hardwired to destruction. Let us not promote them by sharing pictures of their work.

Are Google Passwords Invented to Annoy Writers?

You may wonder why I don't blog very often or maybe you don't care, after all you have your own problems. Is is only me, or do you also find that whenever you try to sign in to your blog, Google refuses your password?
 I have changed my password so often I am running out of 'words'. The same happens on Facebook. The result is that I tend to ignore both, because jumping through Google's hoops takes up too much time- my writing time. Today, I spent about thirty minutes trying to convince tGoogle that this was my blog and we have yet another password. I have used the name of an 'ex'. Now, I can't forget that but maybe Google will.  I will let you know how long it takes for the locks to be changed yet again. Please Google, stop complicating what was a perfectly friendly site.

On a happier note, if you are looking for a good read , try Kate Atkinson's "Behind the Scenes at the Museum".