Darling Dowling Chameleon Christmas Tree

This lately constructed Christmas tree borrows heavily from the local landscape. In a response to the heavily loaded tinsellated furbelowed, gew-gaws of the season, I am hoping to find a balance between the local ambiance with its elegantly minimal palette ( thanks to Winifred Belmont's wonderful art work) and idea of rubbing two sticks together while spending no more than $15 and 20 minutes. The Mexican mulberry paper lights were lurking in the cupboard. Long live the cable tie I say.

But then, Things develop, a lovely Banbury Cross moment arrives and there are frocks, pomegranates and green horses.Why not?


 

Tell All Walls

An old house, abandoned on Maria Island, paper walls peeled off to show the lucid frugality of re-used wooden boxes, the Vavarsium Oil, that must have lit a thousand melancholy scenes of abstemiousness.  Still that fresh pink and patterning of the wood suggests a vivacity, annd adaptability, a waste-not-want-not-ness, a handbrake on consumption that behoves. 

Dark Dark Lily

This dark velvety lily has bloomed in the fern section. The smell hovers between musk and death, the flower is quick to wither and hugs the ground. The leaves are heart shaped, last winter it disappeared altogether, as it if was on a trip downstairs. I’ve gone out to inspect it twice already today,  it might be the Lorelei.

Sole- Edarity

Yellow  takes on different looks in Sol De Wit's wheels and stripes of solid blocks of colour.  This is from the Art Gallery Of  NSW a while back but seems feasibly seasonal, or at least in the five flavour LifeSaver mood.

Three Beer Three D Printer Here

Or make that hear, hear. Or make that Ho Ho.  Of course despite this printer's ability to print beer bottles, something has obviously malfunctioned as these are empties. Perhaps it was out of dr-ink.

Return of the Lime Spiders

Like verde Fu Manchu moustache, like a new type of sklent exclamation mark, like a green wind suddenly solidified, the orchids set out early December to beguile. I count stalks fondly, enumerate blooms and new shoots. Heady days.

Birds Singing in the Peony Tree

In an impulse to catch the sudden gorgeousness of peonies, their French fripperies of soft petals, soft fading, not yet falling, not yet momentarily floating petals, I see our set of fine finches, plum throat, fire tail, pictorella and double-barred, out of focus, in that 'in-the-woods' way, from the more than admirable artist Sine MacPherson have set the tone. Bravo New World.

Frond Moments of Cycadian Curliculation

Last year  this Macrozamia, one of two that can be relied upon to do their best by Fibonacci, sending up fronds that can be counted on,  went off like an emphatic italicized exclamation mark. This year it seemed to be cued to curlicues, setting up this neat world of whorls.  Kudos to these  tender unfurlings of cycadian life.

Time as Granite

The south end of Maria Island is lichen, granite, a vast view of Haunted Bay and an overwhelming sense of wonder, not the least of which is the ponderable question as to how the Little Penguins, one or two might be glimpsed tucked into their burrows on the track down here, manage the trip between the water and their nests.

Not All My Own Work

 

 Very pleased to have my own edit of the redoubtable Cordite up and out there. You can proceed straight to the 52nd issue  and Loiter with Intent at Toil.

Floraliphilia - Back Petalling into Spring

A set of tulips and an ellipse, the photo nearly accidentally becomes a study of texture and form. A part of my ongoing but somewhat sporadic quest to photograph every vase of flowers in the house.  This one has long since dropped its petals on the flower. 

Tropical Benchmarking

Though this tableau of plastic palms is not without its charms, a second look suggests it presages what the tropics will be - synthetic and sans sand, _ if we don't get a a wriggle on and clean up our act.  That the whole process was prompted by the need to clean and revamp the search party, sadly permanently on look out for the lost Bart Brassica on Home on the Range  seems apt.

Come in Double Spinner

It seems that the left-handed spinner, running against its stable mate ( but how can a kite be stable you say?) wins the heart. Or is all this just a frame up?The Festival of the Winds 2015 was a humdinger, while the big kites from the Mightie Kities  from home - the Australian Kiteflyers Association , and abroad, the clever visitors,  the best bit was the sheer cheer factor of about 2,000 families putting hope on a string.  Higher, Faster, Fancier. 

Bags of Style

My friend J's apartment is a paragon of style, with not a trace of blandeur, but on my last visit there I found this new collection of vintage reticules hanging out on her vintage Eames coat rack. How could not snap this up for  The Treasure ? . Always wittily Christmas here. Thanks J.

Period Details in Havanna - So Much To Tell

Many buildings in Havana may be on the brink, but if these are crumbs, give me  crumbling any day. A close inspection of the effusive and elaborate details might keep you busy for a century. There is some kind of largesse here that might be the result of benign neglect, or a the bravado of getting it right in the first place, most likely both. Go directly to Havana, before it vanishes.

Hedge Fun

Checks are the go-to pattern for upmarket hedges this year, here we see a pair cosy in a diagonal drape, showing a bit of leave, but still nothing beats chilly nights sleeping out than a warm wool blanket.

Mexico Folklorico - a Costumeria in Oaxaca

 Oaxaca, or at least for the four days I spent there, seemed a dreamy parade of folkloric costume, no doubt the Spring Festival bought out these group assemblages of colour and embroidery, but I like to think the place is always like this.  I have a dim memory of going to the Showground in Randwick when I was five or six, and seeing something called Mexico Folklorico, and the place was packed with people eager to get a glimpse of another culture, a bring-it-to-you  practice that was a substitute for actual travel.

Toil, Toil, Boil Bubble - Submit to Cordite!

The go to address for all hard working poets this month is Cordite, I will be the Guest Editor ( yes, with that Fancy Uppercase) for the Toil issue.  And here I am,  just to show you how committed I am to  blood (okay it's cochineal), sweat ( midday in Oaxaca late April it's compulsory) and tears ( maybe later, no point in being melodramatic). So, see you soon!
  http://cordite.org.au/guncotton/jenkins-toil/
 The Kind of Poems for Toil:
I’m looking to meet the lone toiler, the staff, whole professions, whole guilds.
What I want for TOIL are energetic and intelligent takes and insight into people at work, singularly and collectively; the jokes of the mathematician; the travails of plumbers; trade secrets and tricks; the mastery of crafts; the dance of deduction for detectives in all forms and the plied threading of making.
I’m looking for toil in its broadest sense, the quotidian tasks both paid and unpaid. I’m looking for poems that explore the fabric of working via wit and lucidity, and please consider yourself invited to make the most of that diphthong in toil, and whatever it rhymes with.
As to form, be my guest as to what that is. Set out hop-scotches of ideas that skip to it, send scintillating sestinas, quatrains, haiku, sonnets or be that agent of free-verse. I’d like to see landays and crazy coherencies of rhyme and rhetoric.
Work can be microscopic up to panoramic. Put that work toad to use.

Bicycle Business Models -Cuba and Mexico

While in the West the bicycle's lycra-ised  peleton  is the new golf, in Mexcio and Cuba it is the prevailing substrate of the micro business, the workaday work horse, the vendor's aid and conveyer of piles of pineapples, plaits of onions, mounds of mangoes,  pecks of peppers,  swathes of sweet treats and loads of loaves. 

Transformative Paste-Ups in Oaxaca, Mexico

 There is a lot art-wise in Oaxaca's galleries and museums, but the streets have their own offerings, and one theme is the transformation of the colonial tropes by indigenous forces, or perhaps in the third example, where a Conquistador type has melded with a variant on Chewbacca - the universe.

Puebla's Biblioteca Palafoxiana - First Public Library in the Americas

 Now there is something to sing, or read about. One might spend a decade in this jewel box library in Puebla, reading such gems as Gallen, and Pliny. The collection was donated to the Church here by the Bishop Juan de Palafox y Mendoza, who thought it a good idea if everyone had access to books. This, in 1646 was a radical idea. We were told this was the first public library in the Americas, and as you can see there is still a queue of eager readers.

Return of the Giants in Technicolour

 Four days in Oaxaca and every one  turned out a parade for their Spring Festival, this one with its Monos De Calendarios was a riot of good humoured colour, celebrating the anniversary of a local school. I suspect these pair of giant dancing puppets satirized some beloved teachers. Each day bought another set of fabulous costumes. 

Three Lamps in the North

 You might blame it on Elliot 'Preludes' locating that lamp in such a melancholy street, but street lamps illuminate a lot about a city. The Spanish colonial flourish in the top set, in Puebla, Mexico  are nearly insectival in their curlicues, the gryphon set that lights up Orizaba,Mexico, just outside their Belgium imported caste iron palace, a kind of over-sized predecessor of Mecano are firmly European. Not so the lovely Art Deco number in Havana, an unexpected piece of chinosiere on an art deco gem, it would seem churlish not to give you a glimpse of as well.

Cuban Cars - Film Noir in Colour

Window screens like this are hard to find

Just add Lauren Bacall

Taxi Rank in Havana- NB Horse and Cart on the righ

Why every second driver needs to a be a mechanic - the ubiquitious break downs

The start of a random snap-a-thon in front of the Teatro Nacional de Cuba

About five seconds later -

It's hard to stop feeling surprised by Cuba's car fleet,   the feeling is you've walked into a colourised movie set from the 1950's, slightly anachronistic as all the walk-ons are wearing fluoro lyrca, and while some of the cars are decked out in shiny candy coloured paint jobs, others are complete bombs, broken lights, puttied up panels, coughing out  grey smoke or, frequently, breaking down.  One taxi driver told us he got 10kms to the litre of petrol, and it might have been my Spanish but the words 'unleaded' and 'catalytic converter' seemed meaningless.

Las Palitinas or Is that a Baked Bean Ice-cream Midde Row 8th from the Left?

Puebla, Mexico, at first peek looks like a Spain town with a seriously upscale paint job, and it's not just the buildings, which are confections of pink, orange and blue, a spectrum of mid-tone pastels and hot tones but the food. This collection of paletinas demonstrate not only how inventive this ice-cream maker makes up her trove of paddle pops but their graphic effect. Aside from that luridly blue one, and perhaps its four down  neighbour that looks but cant possibly be baked beans, they all are tempting.  To try however may not solve their mysteries, I had the pink speckled pop, top left, and was none the wiser as to its inclusions.

Diego Rivera's portrait of Frida Kahlo in the MInistry of Education

While  Mondays in Mexico City mostly find one on the outside of most major museums, the Ministry of Education building, just on the north side of the Zocalo, as a working office, is a Monday to Friday, 9 to 5, thing. The building itself with its cool courtyard and generous cloisters would be a pleasant enough destination by the series of murals for Diego Rivera make it a compelling documentation of socialist history and art. For me the depiction of Frida Kahlo, centre stage in this arms-fest softens the heavy polemical content, though the ambivalence of placing her dead-centre, with a load of bayonets cradled like the baby she did not have in her arm, and then to have a gun pointed directly at her head says much about Rivera's ambivalent attitude towards her.

The other satiric murals on capitalists, wittier in their acidic take and parody seem more interesting than the solid blocky forms of the many worthy comrade and worker murals, though I am sure my view on this would be not popular.