They say it's greed that does it

Others say that some things have to be deleted so that more will grow. I’m chewing on society’s tongue for the moment, listening into the masticating taste all that is around me, on the eve of what some people say is a new year, but there’s no science to prove it, just a belief in a certain counting system.

I had a pet steer called Bobby at the commune, when I was a tacker. He had to be cut up and eaten, because he was considered useless. But I liked him. He was a cute boofy ginger friend. Bobby’s stomach was buried under the passion-fruit vine and that thing grew huge and full of fruit. Then one day a pompous gardener said that passionfruit vines need to be pruned. So, we pruned it and the mammoth plant died.

It’s an old story. Guess I’ll bury it now. And let the parallels grow.

They also say that you shouldn’t give yourself away. That you shouldn’t give too much. And that you should recycle your piss and shit. But I live in the city now and my neighbours wouldn’t appreciate a humanure compost in our small amount of yard.
I crossed the path as a car wanted to come out of the drive-way fast. I heard the driver yell, “Should’ve ran you over.”

I said, “Thanks.”

Then I thought of all the reasons why people might want to run over me. There are always reasons if I want to believe them. But the most effective of all was this: I’m useless. But then I thought of all that is out there and argued the use of all that. Then, I realised I was tasting someone else’s tongue. And using it to draw on the thoughts of another mind I possibly didn’t want to understand.

What I do understand is that there are people in my area who are friendly enough to let me live and dream. And even though I’m some sort of “other” that doesn’t have a church or a belief system that forms a group, they don’t mind. Prior to meeting them I was given the understanding that all organised religion was despotic. Now I know that’s not true. Without them I’d be dead.

(image removed from IFN blog) Rejection from places you like. They say it’s greed that does it, but I think it’s the pointy ears.

Back to the blackboard

When the non-dominate dominates

Trawl

I have a no paint water down the drain policy and a no pharmaceutical medicine in my piss policy, for quite a few selfish reasons… but mostly because I like to eat fish. I don’t eat them very often, maybe once or twice a month, maybe less. When I start to feel really, really sad I know I have to go out and gobble a fish’s soul. And if it wasn’t for the fish I’ve consumed in my lifetime, I’d probably be totally soulless. The fish flesh tells me tales. It becomes part of who I am. I end up creating visuals that scuba divers recognise, but I’ve never seen. (Sea tubas apparently) The fish I gobbled recently was that big-eyed beauty also called blue-eye or blue-nose. I think it is the most gorgeous fish imaginable. And there it was in the shop, a precious rare catch. The shop attendant held it gently in his hands, remembering what the creature looked like before it was a slice of translucent almost ready to devour. It is so hard to know which fish when so much is wasted in by-catch. No one would waste blue-eye though, unless they had no taste or eyes, but in netting a prize fish other creatures get caught as well, some of which are protected species that people are legally not allowed to catch and eat.

But yes, I’m an absorber of creatures that live in my time-zone, but breathe a different state. They sustain me: barramundi, blue-eye cod, hoki, bream, mullet or snapper. No flake, the time of taking a bite out of the man-eater is gone. Shark gobble no more. It won’t make me feel better. http://overfishing.org/pages/guide_to_good_fish.php

Tinsycat meets Goldi

Sometimes little kittens find themselves in strange places.

Dragons well now, that’s a whole drifting story. They’re many and I think they vary more than kittens. And some are like kittens. For there are tinsy dragons too. But this one’s big Goldi. The creature is mostly into eating fruitcake and manicuring nails.

Tinsycat hadn’t even opened her eyes when she first made friends with this wingless dragon named Goldi.

But since that first meeting Tinsycat has decided she would one day like to be a big dragon too.

Goldi doesn’t know how to explain to Tinsy that kittens never grow up to be dragons.

Thought bubblings

Been working on connecting visual components with English. To me they’ve always been separate things. And no question, the visual comes first; I could always draw, just as I knew sound-sense. But English I had to learn. It’s an imposed communication skill. So, I’ve been thinking about what senses drive the words and how the thoughts are being triggered… Or if the external factors are actually more important than the body’s sensory equipment.
Then, questioning the reality of a situation when reality is a spit pocus.

And given that not every one hears voices, that is words inside or outside their head. Some might instead think in symbols.

And then some things, I don’t think really need words.

And yes, I really should try and save on paper more, but I really do love having a sketch book I can use anytime anywhere. It doesn’t bite into my eyes like the computer scream. And, I haven’t yet adjusted to the tablet… that and it being called a tablet.

Observations and excess

Listened to the thunder rumbling, cracking, barking a double-bass drum of sardonic laughter in a summer storm that hit my central senses like the best played electric instrument in total surround sound.

Then there was Kaki King. Top fret playing, atmospheric dreaming.

Saw a magic sunset and a four-leaf clover. Didn’t think enough to take a picture.

Then, found my block surrounded by trolleys and got my camera out. They’re not usually there. Maybe I’m imagining things. But they’re not usually there, I’m fairly sure. And while none of them spoke to me, I could see they were up to things. Don’t want to encourage them any further, but here they are, up to trouble, looking for trouble trolls hanging round the block.

People think you’re crazy person now. Don’t talk to crazy person. Poor crazxy person. Keep distance fro m cxzy person. Feel sorry for crxy crank. Poor poor. You look troubled…
You know what the trouble with you is…
I don’t want any trouble but, you get what’s coming.
I won’t trouble you anymore
Don’t trouble yourself.
The trouble is your troubles.
Double trouble, triple trouble, quadruple trouble…
These are troubled times
You’re just trouble aren’t you?
I don’t go looking for trouble
I think I’ve got into enough trouble all ready, I don’t want more.
Trouble follows you everywhere
Life is good. It’s never been so perfect. Trouble must be around the corner… waiting…

Don't worry, I'm not in trouble.

You're not in trouble are you?

Well, stop playing it. This is a blag spot about my blart.

Trolley’s last words

This is all my fault of course. If I’d got up a little earlier and headed in the right direction. If I’d eaten breakfast. If I had stopped thinking about shit and criticising it, then, I would’ve known what was going to happen to this poor creature and I would’ve made sure I got it to safety…
No, get it right, I don’t support industries that have financial links with petroleum based organisations, if I can help it. Their trolleys can all die. Ha ha ha. Um… unless it is really late and I’m desperate for food and there’s no other shop open.
Actually, I’m not sure what to think about this one. But I’m certainly not going to carry the troll home like it was demanding. Fck that. Let it rot in the gutter. Serve it right for being born to be a slave to a company that supports GM and nanotech food products. So what if it is helpless and chained into service. So what I say. It should find some way to fight if it really wants to be free, (unless it’s into the whole masochist thing).
Oh, maybe that was it. This poor trolley was trying to escape and that’s when it happened… ah. Oh dear well, poor thing. Hmm. Too bad huh. Anyway, I’m not a trolley and I don’t use them, so I don’t have to concern myself with why some vehicle crushed the thing in the gutter. End of story.

http://www.mindfreedom.org/shield/introduction-to-mindfreedom-shield
http://www.kqed.org/w/hope/involuntarytreatment.html#

Minimalism

A friend recently said to me, “Your paintings are too detailed. People can’t be bothered looking at details.”

The want to institutionalise art like it is a mad thing that needs to be tamed, like a garden that is “over grown”, making it like something that is already known. Art is something that can be shown, but to make it taut and tense, to me, just doesn’t make sense. The age of minimalism has had its daze, let our gardens grow wild and let’s get lost in paintings which have – like the (now forbidden) campfire, that – forever gaze.

Well, it’s good to have an aim. Very recent painting, (working title: Visitors from the sea) still wet and probably needs a bit more detailing, I think. And, while I don’t want people to look directly at my exterior for too long, it gives me pleasure to have others scrutinize my artwork. So please get lost:)

Ecological necessities are not votable

I used to watch the whales from my grandmother’s upstairs window. Trying to focus her huge binoculars in my hands to see amongst the red-herrings of sea-weed, if there were any big moving bodies of energy about. We like them being there, even though we don’t watch them daily anymore. To kill them… it’s like flattening an island, sinking a ship full of people, tearing down a mountain, cutting out a rainforest, blowing up my neighbour’s home…
Humans cannot live without anything else to sustain them. Even lead boxes let things in and humans have pores that sieve the air and great big blow holes taking in and expiring. We interact with the earth and its creatures, we even interact with the energy of far distant singularities. Interconnection cannot be denied. I’ve tried thinking about a way a human could sustain itself without anything else and I came up with the idea of humans feeding off humans. It wasn’t a utopia and it still didn’t quite make sense.
So I reckon we’re not actually destroying the earth, we’re destroying our habitat. The earth will live on, it’s bigger than us. Humans will die off. And I like humans. It’s just that some of their systems tend to run backwards, or take way too much time to catch on, making human survival doubtful.
As I voted today (incidentally in a polling booth which is normally an army barracks) I thought, is there satisfaction is killing when it is not for hunger? Or are people doing as they are told because someone else says the only choice they have is this? And why indeed is it that only a couple of parties really get to have a say; when one is prepared to pulp Tasmania’s forests, and the other is stuck in the raciest and dirty industries of the 1950s? And neither would be prepared to protect the big visiting locals who travel the sea.
When people are forced off their land they own, with guns to their head so that companies can mine it… I just find Australia a little strange. But at least there are some organisations out there prepared to body-guard the whales.
http://www.seashepherd.org/
http://www.greenpeace.org/international/

Threads and buttons and leather looks

I’m very minimalist in what I wear. I tend to get paint on everything anyway. Besides, I’m not sure if I want to have garments that make people look at me, because I’m not quite sure what the point of that is.



There was a woman sitting across from me, on the tram. I noticed intricate patterns on her skirt. They were like nothing I’d seen before… but my mind started reminiscing about lace-work my nana made and that long, long dead relative that was a court embroider. The tiny delicate stitches. They were gold against the black and swirling. I was wondering who made it. I forgot it was a skirt... I forgot there was a woman wearing it, until I reached her shoe and looked up.

Her face was like a snarl that had been hit by a shovel as she looked at my plain shabby clothes splattered with paint. Okay, she didn’t get the same treat when she looked at my gear, so I guess it was rude to look upon the beauty and wealth of her material.

I told my friend Buddy about this. He said, “You just don’t want to look at women’s skirts, in general.”
“But it was so pretty.”
“Even more reason to not look apparently.”
“Why do they wear things that are so attractive if they don’t want people to look? She was just a middle-aged woman. I wasn’t eying her off, even if I was into that stuff.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ve been in trouble for it too.”

I get recycled clothes, this has to do with what I call “ethical economy”. My priority is for pockets. Also, Melbourne’s weather changes in a snap and I’m out for a sunny day and then the rain and wind comes in.
This happened recently, but I was lucky enough to be passing by a shop. And they had a nice red coat for me. Unfortunately this came with unknown problems… I found that my keys disappeared, for there was a hole in the pocket and my keys were jangling around in the lining of the coat.
Then, on the way home I was about to get off the tram when a nice young chap tapped me on the shoulder.
“You’re losing your buttons,” he said handing me one of my little cherry-red things.
“Thanks,” I said. Thinking about how he would feel if someone came up to him and said he’d lost his leather… coat. Yes he might just be as red as my button in some places.
Look, I was cold and hungry, and at the point of wanting to feast on some poor little fish or anything else that I could find. Clearly I was losing my buttons in more than one way.

Scent trail

I was walking through the local gardens and got a whiff of this sharp biting scent. I remember the smell from bushland when I was nine or so, I found a chrysalis and wanted to take it with me, but thought better of it. I have no idea what the creature hiding inside the opaque brown thumb-sized hibernation was; but there were many of these cocoons and they had that strong acidic smell which only seemed to be present during the early evening.
Just small little black flies in the air. The dragonflies had their wild day in our city garden. Probably should do a painting of them. Made such a motorised buzz of noise when they zoomed past or rammed me in the nose. So I was thinking the smell was either cicadas, or wasps.
If I could digitally record and map the particle wave patterns from this scent, load it into Google, then get an instant answer it would stop bugging me… This sort of thinking waffled through my mind as I created Scent trail. It's not really how things look, so much as the picture a scent creates in my mind that drives my hands to explore on the canvas.

Sketchbook characters and developing story

Getting a few of these hundreds of original characters in my sketch book happening into stories. Here’s two of them: Ange and Grumble.

Part one: The drought of Faeryland
Ange wanted to do something. She could see how her land had become parched. Even the oracle tree looked sapped of strength this year. Hardly produced fruit. And the river was barely enough for the fish to swim in.
The faeries were developing ways of making water. It was not real water, but it would do almost the same trick as water.
But Ange wanted to feel the rain on her skin. She wanted to put up a nasturtium umbrella and watch the droplets fall around her. Little lovely crystals splashing around. And it was because of this desire for rains she had not seen for so long, that she started working on a spell. A wishing spell. She would call to a raincloud. Why not? Faeries have made the dead rise again. Surely a raincloud could not be that hard. They probably all just superstitious, Ange thought.
But it was very clear, calling rainclouds was forbidden by faery lore. Ange reasoned that if she called a small cloud secretly, to just rain near one place, enough to create a bit of green, she could then convince the faeries to ban together and call a bigger cloud up and then they could all dance together under the rain. It would be so lovely! She closed her eyes and dreamed. Then she started singing. “Bring in the rain…”
Her body smoothly moved about, as if in a trance. “The rain is coming now. Bring in the rain…”
And then it came, the thing that the faeries had said was impossible. First a little drop on her cheek. She went to touch it, thinking it might just be a falling leaf or a little creature, but no, it was damp and dissolved with her touch. Her heart beat to the rhythm of falling, falling droplets everywhere around her. So beautiful so wonderful. She sung and danced more vigorously and watched little flowers spring up at her feet.
Then after quite a soaking, the rain stopped. But she could still hear the cloud rumbling above her. She looked up and there it was above her head. It seemed to be trying to get away but was stuck there above her, like a halo of grumbling energy.
“If you wish to go, I suppose you can now,” said Ange. “This was just an experiment. Thankyou. Now I know we really can call a raincloud.”
“I’d leave if I could,” the raincloud called Grumble said. “But some little faery cast a spell on me, didn’t she? Can’t get away now back to my family. Can’t even think of making snow! Errhhhhhhr erhr…”
Rain started falling again, lots of it. Bitter cold rain.
Ange shivered. “Go away rain come back another day.”
“That’s too much of a cliché,” Grumble stopped crying. “Clichés don’t work as spells, because their original magic has been worn thin.”
“But I did get you to stop raining on me.”
“I want to go home!”
“I know. I know. I’ll think of a way Mr Raincloud.”
“Grumble. They called me that when I was born. What do they call you? Twitterbug faery?”
“Ange. I’m an seraph faery. Look, I’m sorry Grumble. It’s just that we had a drought and I thought you might be able to help us.”
Grumble started crying again, “I want to go home. I don’t like being so low to the earth. People will think I’m some kind of fog, but I’m not and I don’t want to be.”
Ange picked a leaf from a nearby tree to try and shelter herself, “Don’t worry Grumble I’ll find a way. If I had the powers to call you here, surely I have the powers to set you free.”
“Easier said than done.”
But, time passed and Ange was not able to set Grumble free. She could no longer fly, for her wings were always wet. And all the faeries wanted nothing to do with her, because she had broken the lore.
It seemed like life couldn’t get worse. Ange couldn’t even complain, because Grumble already did that for her, she couldn’t dwell in her misery because Grumble was better at that than her and she certainly couldn’t grumble.

Another kind of wheel

Hidden paintings

Finding the four-leaf clover hex

There is a hex of four-leaf clovers glued to this painting. 24 leaves in total, which incidently was the age I began finding them. For about a year, every time I looked into a patch I saw one.
I had a sudden change around that time. The fifth dimension of electro-magnetics opened up and I became very conscious of this sense. And the gateway, or the first instances of this, was finding four-leaf clovers. There was even a point where I found a mound with five-leaf clovers. Although I somehow lost those.
When I returned from travelling around Australia there were only these six clovers in my big dictionary my family kept for me, the others had somehow fallen out.
This painting has evolved around these picked-up unusuals. Though, I have not seen a four-leaf clover since. And if I do, I will not pick it. But, I still look out for them, just to see that twinkle and spark that the earth once made so obvious.

When describing living adream, people want to attribute this experience to narcotics or illness. (And I subscribe to neither.) I do understand though, accepting my way of seeing might mean people have to go through the trials of paranoia possibilities, until they are free to accept that interconnection is possible.
And it is possible, just not reliable. Is there anything in the universe that is truly reliable? If there is please let me know!
Anyhow, finding four-leaf clovers is just something a person can sense out without knowing how they do it. Possibly because the reasons they find them has to do with the vast complexities within the earth giving such insight. And through this and many other experiences I know interconnection exists as more than just coincidence, it is now a sense I’m fairly conscious of. Not like ESP or prescience, more like stumbling upon the Welcome Stranger, or the Hand of Faith. But see the earth so far has not given me gold, but things like freaking four-leaf clovers!

Artworks in Apollo Bay

Fern Rainbow took some of my ceramics, found object sculptures and paintings for a ride with her punnets of plants to Apollo Bay. These artworks will be on sale at her Shiatsu practice, where you can also get a treatment for what ails you. Or, for all things permaculture Fern is there. Apparently I can grow dragon fruit in Melbourne. She’s promised me one. (Dragon fruit I love to look at as much as I love to eat, but they’re usually more expensive than a punnet of blueberries! )
Fern’s page: http://www.communitygarden.org.au/

Faceted beings

Trouble

just some dialogue I had with my computer

“How much more of this do you want to play. Could get you into trouble huh? Well, no matter.”
“Trouble is a game apparently.”
“I heard some rich bitch called her pet pooch that and Trouble inherited most of her wealth.”
“Yes, but I prefer to think about the game.”
“What kind of game is it?”
“The only kind of game.”
“There’s lots of kinds of games. Think you’re going to have to be a bit more specific.”
“A game where you can get into lots of trouble.”
“Oi, tell me what I have to do.”
“It very much depends on the circumstance.”
“Right. Doesn’t sound much like a very well set out game to me. Let me give you a few rules.”
“There are no rules. For it is when you make rules that you get into trouble.”
“So you’re not meant to get into trouble.”
“Not if it goes against your rules. And if it is trouble then it would, see. People have automatic rules that they make up. Trouble seeks to work out the boundaries of the taboo.”
“Like a who dares wins game.”
“Winning is an abstract concept.”
“Oh boy, see you later, if the game doesn’t have any rules and no one wins except abstractly, where the hell is the game but in the limbo of someone’s butt. You’ve got to have more than an umbilical cord to play with, otherwise the game will just get bloody and mind-numbingly introspective.”
“Well, that’s your limitations.”
“Can’t get into much trouble then, can I? So, do I win?”
“You’ve got to do more than you usually do to feel like you’ve got anywhere in the game. You have to at least get close to trouble to be considering that you’re playing it. But it is only when you’re in trouble that you can be for absolutely certain that the game is on.”
“Okay. But I find it a bit hard to do much without some sort of set of instructions… some sort of guide of how-to play.”
“You think about it. The more you think about Trouble, the more you get into it.”
“Don’t know if I want to.”
“Then I guess you won’t play it. But it is better to know you’re playing it, than haphazardly follow someone else who is and be right into the game without having a clue what you’re doing because you’d prefer not to taint your pretty little mind with it.”
“Now that’s asking for trouble.”
“Ah ha.”
“Okay whatever. Interesting, but, really…? I mean where do I go from there?”
“Up to you and those who affect you.”

Bit of history: Painting in teen years

I was given my great-grandfather’s oil paints when I was twelve. They were the most amazing pigments. Windsor and Newton, but early last century when paints were made with such beauty. Of course, they were really toxic too… but that was back then when people were spraying their hair daily with CFC propelled glue.

Anyhow, it was the best. When I painted I could get things out of my head and onto the canvas. Things that cluttered in there and I wasn’t allowed to talk about without seeming ridiculous, or things that just didn’t make sense to me. Painting these

thoughts, it was a meditation where I could reach inside myself and put a label to what didn’t make sense to me.

While I haven’t got pictures of all my artwork, here are the canvases have been kept by my parents. These are more than half a lifetime ago teen years, painting in the most extravagant oil pigments, not even knowing how I would never be able to buy the like again.

Dumpster diving on planet 20
Environmental art: Finding bits of scrap wood to cut and make a frame, but it’s actually much easier to find a frame lying around the street or a dirty old print on a nice bit of dead tree. And thinks me, hmm… let’s stretch a canvas on it and paint.
The water I use in my paints I can then use in paper mash to put on scraps of other things. And those plastics are water proof so they’re good for keeping paint in, also we make them into “excavation vases” incorporating all those intriguing wires and chips that go into computers.

I who may well be...: Hundreds on Hunger Strike in Immigration Detention

I who may well be...: Hundreds on Hunger Strike in Immigration Detention

Monument roles