postaday - Sounds like wish

30 June, 2013

Ailsa's photo challenge: Sculpture

For a couple of hours every afternoon in the sculpture garden at the National Gallery of Australia, an artistic mist drifts over a pond, hiding the water and reeds and reflections and ducks and sixty-six sculpted heads.

Heads from the North and duck, Sculpture Garden, National Gallery of Australia (NGA)

When the mist clears it’s an uncomfortable experience to circle the pond, looking at the heads facing in many directions.

Dadang Christanto, an Indonesian-born sculptor now living in Australia, created Heads from the North in 2004 as a memorial to an Indonesian military coup in which his father died.

Beside the pond there’s a restaurant in a marquis. I couldn’t eat there.

Sculpture Garden restaurant, National Gallery of Australia — Sculpture Garden restaurant, NGA

Though I frequent the sculpture garden, I have, until today, always skipped quickly past this pond and over to the sculptures I understand, those I would have in my own garden (if I could), like Rodin’s Burghers of Calais. But this afternoon I twisted my own arm and stopped to look into the eyes of these drowning men. Now I see, in a small way, what a task it must have been for Dadang Christanto to create this work of art to honour his father.

Ailsa came up with this great theme of Sculpture. Take a look at her photos here.

23 June, 201327 August, 2018

Ailsa’s travel photo challenge: Ripples

Ailsa is looking for photos of ripples.

Yesterday I was on Hyams Beach in Jervis Bay, NSW, when I was taken aback by this rippling rock erosion that resembles skulls:

And the ripples led to a flow, crossing Hyams Beach, one of the whitest beaches in the world; its fine white grains are mostly composed of quartz. In the distance that’s my husband again, as he was in my last post:

And this morning in the icy atmosphere of a highland reserve, I saw the rippling Yarrunga Creek rushing through heavy fog towards Fitzroy Falls:

Again, the ripples led to a flow and then a plummet a short distance further on where the water tumbled over the edge; there was just enough visibility around the waterfall to take this photo. The rest of the space was white, like standing in cloud.

I remembered seeing a recent photo of these falls on another blog, where Christopher captured the water in sunlight. : http://christopheryardin.com/2013/06/17/travel-theme-flow/

It’s worth a look!

17 June, 2013

Ailsa's travel photo challenge: Flow

I have this photo which is entirely suitable for Ailsa’s challenge this week. She asks us to open the floodgates and let the creativity flow. Well, this photo is not a product of my creativity but of my treasure-hunting. I found it in my father’s WWII album, where it’s entitled ‘Weir in Nile’. The water is certainly flowing!

Often when I want to identify a location in one of these old photos, I can search the web for similar photos, which usually is a sure way of finding details about my image. This time, however, I’ve been unsuccessful. I’ve researched the dams,weirs and barrages on the Nile River in Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia and not found any image that resembles mine. It’s possible that this dam has been rebuilt since the 1940s and now looks completely different. Click twice to enlarge the image.

If anyone out there is an expert on old Nile dams, and if you know what this one was called, please tell me. I’ll be very grateful!

13 June, 2013

54 great opening lines: 54!!!

No eggs! No eggs!! Thousand thunders, man, what do you mean by no eggs?

Saint Joan, Bernard Shaw

*****

My edition of this play has a 41-page preface written in 1924 by Ayot St Lawrence which also has a great first line:
“Joan of Arc, a village girl from the Vosges, was born about 1412; burnt for heresy, witchcraft and sorcery in 1431; rehabilitated after a fashion in 1456; designated Venerable in 1904; declared Blessed in 1908; and finally canonized in 1920.”

What a great résumé.

*****

Thank you to all of you who’ve read any of these 54 opening lines. Perhaps you’ve been encouraged to write the first line of your own novel, poem or play. As a bonus, I can’t help adding the line that many of us think of immediately when asked for a great opener:

It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents – except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.

Paul Clifford, Edward Bulwer-Lytton

12 June, 2013

54 great opening lines: 53

Under certain circumstances there are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea.

The Portrait of a Lady, Henry James

*****

A book I’ve begun but not yet finished. However, since this is about opening lines, I submit this one as a favourite. I recently tried to describe ‘afternoon tea’ to an older French woman who thought eating mid-afternoon was an odd thing. When I turned up at her apartment the next afternoon with pastries and asking for her to put the kettle on, she chose not to eat or drink anything and simply sat watching me enjoy what Henry James and I call an agreeable hour.

7 June, 2013

Same subject, different time: East of Málaga's photo challenge

Marianne of East of Málaga had the idea of finding a subject worthy of an impressionist painter’s interest. For me it’s this view, one I reckon Monet would have painted if he had been on my balcony. And he could very well have stood on it – the building has been there for a century or two!

Two views from the same spot; different days, different hours:

Marianne proposes we recommend two blogs worth commenting on. I found these two which show amazing wedding photography though neither of the bloggers is a professional photographer (yet); have a look at what’s possible when you love what you do:

Ramblings: http://monahoward.com/2013/05/31/a-story-of-love-and-courage/

therebeccapapers: http://therebeccapapers.wordpress.com/2013/05/20/texture-and-light/

5 June, 2013

54 great opening lines: 50

I am to break into the conversation
With a word that tastes like snow to say;
I am to interrupt the contemplation
Of the familiar headlines of the day –
Horses, divorces, politics, murders –
With a word cold to hear or look at,
Colder to speak.

The Fire on the Snow, Douglas Stewart

*****

A play written for radio: the story of Captain Robert Scott’s expedition to the South Pole, reaching it only to find that Amundsen had beaten him.

4 June, 2013

54 great opening lines: 49

Following the tragic events of February, 1937, when the Stinson Airliner VH-UHH crashed in the McPherson Range, I have received many oft-repeated and apparently sincere requests to write the story of that memorable rescue in which it was my good fortune to play the principal part.

Green Mountains, Bernard O’Reilly

*****

A rescue story that has to be read to be believed. Ten days after their plane had crashed into rainforest in a cyclone, two men were still alive. Bernard O’Reilly was their rescuer, and fortunately for us he was a great writer. He was also renowned in south-east Queensland, Australia, as part of the first generation of the family that built O’Reilly’s Guesthouse in 1926 in the Lamington National Park, now run by the third generation.

3 June, 2013

54 great opening lines: 48

Wine talks. Everyone knows that. Look around you.

Blackberry Wine, Joanne Harris

*****

I bought this book at a charity shop just before leaving for France, and read it during the first three weeks. I was staying in a small untouristy village and when I found the story turning on another small French village and its future – draw tourists or perish – I started to live in the book, unable to put it down. I finished it at 4am on the morning of my last day, reading it to the end to cure my insomnia. (It didn’t.) My bag was already packed, already too full, so I placed the book on the shelves with several other English language novels; it seems this flat is only ever let to English speakers.

I liked Harris’s tricky point of view – it’s the bottle of wine that narrates the story.

25 May, 2013

Ailsa's travel photography challenge: Pathways

I’ve walked a million miles in the past few weeks, many of them on sealed surfaces and others on dirt paths. The following photos were taken on two difficult climbs. The first two show the path up to the Abbey of St Martin of Canigou in France; I walked up the 3 kms and down again which was steep but not TOO harsh because the path is sealed. But some older people in our group took the optional jeep ride which apparently is not always better; some said they had vertigo looking at the edges.

Jeep doing 3-point turn on a hairpin bend; straight drop down at the edge. — Jeep doing 3-point turn on a hairpin bend; at the edge, straight drop down!

Abbey of St Martin of Canigou at the top of the 3 km path — L’Abbaye de Saint Martin du Canigou at the top of the 3 km path (check out the cloud!)

This next photo was taken from half-way up a steep dirt track on my way to Cap Béar, though I never got there. When I reached this point my heart was pounding and I was breathing heavily, absolutely alone and a wee bit scared, so I made the decision to descend. The track is grazed out of the hillside and sometimes supported by improvised stone steps. Very steep but not frightening for genuine hikers. And on the subject of pathways, from up on the hill there’s a great view of the pathway to the lighthouse, that is, the jetty.

Half way up the hill on the path to Cap Béar, France; looking over the jetty and lighthouse — Half-way up the hill on the path to Cap Béar, France; looking over the jetty and lighthouse

This post was inspired by Ailsa’s Pathways: have a look at the awesome paths she has trod.