Dennis Argall - creative site

and back, sadly, to strategy

2012-01-16T10:17:00.003+11:00

I despair of the direction of western strategic thinking, not least of the difficulty in democratic systems, of being honest about war. The news this week of US marines in Afghanistan pissing on those they had killed was sad, but it was the simple-minded indignation of political comment that is tragic. I offered this comment on a story by Robert Fisk in The Independent.

Dennis ArgallCollapse: found the greatest horror in listening to the sanctimonious secretary of state mouthing her horror of how contrary this was to the principles these boys are supposed to have. (Thank you Andy Williams for stating the problem clearly.)
Surely some humility and some insight into the soul destruction of the implementation of strategic policy to achieve ego sustenance by righteous violence would be constructive.
It's not what you say, Madame Secretary, it's what you do. Basil Liddell-Hart (greatest British strategic thinker of the twentieth century) in his last book attributed the horrors of the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) to the way the peninsular war with Napoleon (a mere six years, to 1814, wherein the word guerrilla entered the language of war) was conducted; he also ( in 1970) attributed the resurgence then of Middle East terrorism to Laurence of Arabia.
For how long into the future will the planet's life be poisoned by the 'what you do' of such moral leadership as we in the 'enlightened and principled' world now have?

It's a bit odd, adding to discussion on the web, it is greatly disappointing to find so many people using pseudonyms. Change only comes when people use their own names in commenting on the serious, not just in the twitteration of life. Why are the young not out, in their own names?

from foreign policy back to the chooks

2011-12-22T11:15:00.005+11:00

I have put up this page on how to manage a small number of chooks (Australian English generic and gender free term to cover roosters, hens, chickens, chicks) in a suburban environment, relatively disease free and withou also raising hoards of sparrows, pigeons and less mentionable birds.

I have placed our place near Bodalla on the market, info here ... too hard to get there these days, sob.

I have been inhibited writing because of problems with my right arm, have now acquired some speech recognition software, hopefully will return to the writing, but perhaps via painting first... meanwhile, it is a very busy time with a food garden gone mad in this season of alternating rain and heat. Here some photos from back garden.

CLICK ON PICS TO ENLARGE.

First, this is the view north from my office window,
this damp frog-rattly morning 22 December 2011.

'Lawn' of chamomile and parsley, bush basil and rocket in seed,

bangalow palm growing;

rose climbing below and peach leafing over window

- all this was grass and concrete path to clothes line three years ago.
Yesterday a blue wren sat for some time on that tall post (cypress, not yet sculpted)
behind the young palm,
bouncing, as wrens do, landing to face 90º away each time,
a slightly apprehensive rotating lord of all he surveyed.

... looking northeast down the path from veranda, across the previous view:

rose, peach, banana, fig, rosemary, potatoes, more...

tamarillo tree with huge crop developing, droopy leaves right side...

in a permaculture garden you seek to develop mulch from what grows

and you take more interest in harvest from the cubic metre

than from the heavily fed individual plant.

In time, the objective is to close the system, minimising inputs from outside,

collecting seeds and cuttings, roof water; kitchen scraps and fresh pick for the chooks,

chook poo back to the compost and garden.

Compost, youngberries, mosaic - always combine art and nature!

Always expect a photo to include limbs of parsley gone to see!

floral and food-al;

two callistemon (bottle brush) bushes in company with sweet potato, pumpkin, mandarin;

marjoram and lotus leaves poking their heads into the bottom left of picture.

Here lived chooks before

— the well manured run now planted densely to asparagus, dill, strawberries, yacón, marjoram, mint, comfrey and more, including two white cedar trees

(two white cedars being allowed to grow, many suckers being pulled up!)

I look around and see so many suburban gardens

where the owners seem to try to impose a permanent look from the beginning,

a recipe for mowing, snipping and reflecting a need to control nature.

But nature evolves, ecologies change and they offer us opportunities to marvel at them.

This northern and eastern back garden in pictures above

has growing palms and deciduous trees

It will turn into a great shade area in time, in summer, more open for light in the winter.

Already the eastern garden (below), around the corner of the house,

which had two large established deciduous trees when I arrived ini 2008,

is heavily shaded in summer, open in winter.

Work continues, to make this a rainforest room, with earthy women,

ponds and a stile to enter and exit the bedroom.

Source of cool breezes through the house later in the summer day;

leaves off and warm early sun in the window in winter.

Where on earth do we think we are going in strategic policy?

2011-11-17T18:04:00.002+11:00

You can find here text of 1500 words I wrote today on the Australian-American alliance. I have offered it to a media outlet, but there is such a deluge of royal visit euphoria with the excellent President Obama here. We can see that both the United States and Australian strategic policies are being pulled by the tail of military options and military interests.

It used not to be thus as my text at link narrates.

The rot begun, or made terminal, by the invasion of Iraq, see my comments at the time here, has sadly set in brainlessness-droughted mud now we have what ought to be more thoughtful and more radical governments in Canberra and Washington.

I am now at a point where I have to say the next generations must look after themselves, if they'd bloody well come out of their creepy comforts and sullen retreats and address the issues.

Nick's wedding

2011-11-16T14:46:00.000+11:00

I wrote in August about uses of the web and devices of. I have just put up some photos I took last weekend at my son Nick's wedding. Easier, more permanent too, to have them within my own html designed pages.

You can take a look here.

whither the blog

2011-08-31T11:34:00.003+10:00

I guess as time passes the act of blogging diminishes in significance. It was useful when we travelled to Italy in 2010 and 2011 to have the blogs unmese (one month) and duemesi (Italian for two months) - valuable for keeping in touch with family and friends at the time, also of great value in supporting later recollection.

I had earlier 'blogged' before there were resources on the web for doing it easily, this remains my best record from those earlier times.

I had begun recording life via the web when it was important in 2000-2001 to keep people informed of my wife Margaret's wellbeing when she was being overwhelmed by a brain tumour. That experience led on to my hosting site 'aplaceof.info' hosting this collection of brain tumour resources I wrote several years ago.

I have used that hosting site, located at www.ipower.com, for a variety of other community projects some far away. I have also used subfolders of aplaceof.info to express some views, such as these. And it remains useful to build web pages for particular needs.

Along the way, it became clear that a web presence for community needed several vectors:

a web site, which at best should be a static, easily encompassed calling card with background information. Web sites are not simple to conceive and design, and it becomes very mucky when you change them a lot. They are not the best means for recording news. Research has shown that people 'like' or 'dislike' web sites in fractions of a second, so in a fraction of a second you must grab the reader.
a blog, now so easy with this blogger technology and others, which lends itself to the writing of the record as it happens. This record becomes of accumulated value over time IF you put good labels on every substantive entry, so you can track not only the chronological record, but mention of issues, places and people over time.
An email group, for private exchanges between members of a community, with email group hosts like yahoo and gmail offering huge free resources for holding files and photos, etc. This email group has been a very valuable group for hundreds, since I set it up in 2000.

Much has changed in the very recent past, however, with the emergence of Facebook and Twitter, where a whole new world of social interaction has begun and continues to evolve. I don't go there, however, as I value my privacy more than seems relevant to Facebook or Twitter, and I prefer reflective communication to brief passing utterances. I don't have time, if I am to paint, photograph and get the novel back on the rails. My apprehension is that those social media may tend to diminish individual creativity. The blog remains a different form of expression. Yes, there are trite blogs out there but it is inherent in this format that one write some substance. As it is inherent in the putting of labels on a blog entry that one gets to consider if one has said anything at all.

For the moment, I go back to the garden in spring. I must provide photos of my approach to edible landscaping, in a permaculture design.

Permaculture as a design system deals primarily with the ... need to establish plant systems for our own use on the least amount of land we can use for our existence.

My own view is that this can be done with a high degree of aesthetic concern and content, to build surroundings which are fun and uplifting, amusing and comfortable, personally reassuring. It is remarkable how, as we take a relatively small space and build within it smaller spaces, with passage from one to the next as surprise, how much larger and attractive all the space becomes... we can bring personal landscape to a scale where we can speak quietly and interact warmly with each other and our surrounds.

life drawing

2011-07-04T22:37:00.007+10:00

One of the riddles for me about life drawing is that while there is much to be achieved in drawing the nude form, and much beauty to portray - in anyone - the hands and feet, the head and face are critically important. I find that I don't get it, don't begin to draw the person well, without coming to terms with their character as revealed in their face or the excruciating difficulty of drawing a person's hands or feet.

I have been copping out, in a way, by using conté crayons, much like charcoal but less mess on the floor, allowing you to fuzz up and erase. Last week I could not find my box of tricky drawing stuff so I went out with paper and B4 pencil and discovered that I could find lines and could show light and shade and also, I think, mood.

The model was young and appropriately apprehensive, modelling for the first time. I could not quite catch the broad softness (and underlying strength) of a young face but I did catch her mood, I think. Her eyes - deep, dark, large - were almost constantly on the move and she chewed the inside of her lip, a full lower lip with a ring in it. How to represent the restless energy and emotion of such movement?

I am also trying not just to draw known features but light and shade, to approach minimalism.

Huh! When I edit this blog entry, Google (as it does with gmail) displays ads like "How to draw eyes." I remain happily uninstructed. I am attending a life drawing group, not a class. There is a freedom in being uninstructed. I do not know how I draw what I draw. I am constantly surprised at things that appear in front of me. If the artist does not know what he is doing (as Fellini maintained and I agree) do I want someone to tell me her/his ideas of what I am or should be doing? Much of the value, for me, in drawing, is in the struggle to produce: the birthing process, as well as the surprising baby. So exciting to discover this emerging on the page...

This is one of four drawings from a 15 minute pose. 15 minutes is a huge length of time when you look for the essence... and it's a huge time if you want to muck something up, not knowing when to stop.

update

2011-06-30T12:47:00.001+10:00

The kitchen bench was finished.

The writing remains on hold, physical problems writing/typing.

Some valuable life drawing, very meditative experience and pleased with these my first results, improving, wanting to work also on details and abstraction of light and shade after assuring myself of basic drawing skill. See below.

First, though, the kitchen bench with stove working well, bench constructed from ancient timber slab washed up by flood, also some paulownia slab, rot gaps filled with water-based putty coloured with red pigment, seven coats Estapol gloss varnish finish, some acrylic metallic colours added along the way. Painted (irises) bread maker behind.

Life drawing sketches, with conté on paper

26 May 2011

16 June 2011

9 June 2011

16 June 2011, trying especially to deal with strong shadows

the discriminatory attitudes of the mighty who stand in judgement

2011-06-02T09:53:00.001+10:00

There is a matter before the state parliament now as to whether it will ratify a decision by the judicial tribunal to sack a magistrate because of what would seem to be the risk that if he failed to take his medication for his bipolar disease, he might make an ass of himself.

One suspects that some mighty judges would think this magistrate had already made an ass of himself by his plain language and common decency in this advice to a young (and as it turned out, undeserving, as the gutter bottom of the Murdoch press hastened to crow) offender.

What is it that leads strong men to fear for their own manhood or whatever, when someone close to them has a mental illness. Hard to fathom, except in the simplest way in which societies now as then, engage in witch hunts and strike down those who remove certainty from their global self-importance.

The magistrates in their decency as more common folk, are up in arms.

The Anti-Discrimination Commissioner is concerned. That link reveals to me that there are two magistrates in trouble, something I did not realise when I wrote on 1 June 2011 to the Premier and others, also revealing something of myself.

Here tis:

Dear Premier Farrell and Attorney General Smith

I am writing with concern about the proposed removal of Magistrate Maloney, which I understand to be before the parliament now.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/mps-to-rule-on-sacking-of-mentally-ill-magistrate/story-e6frg6nf-1226062259731

I write as a person who in the 1980s was dealt with somewhat in the same high-handed 'tip him overboard' manner while in a very senior position in the foreign service, as ambassador to China, because of illness at the time. I became significantly more sick as a result of the chuck-out, hostility towards disability (and simple fear of disability) resulting in further problems over years. Spurned as if possessed. I remind you that the last person burned at the stake in England for being strange was deemed fit for burning because he was a Baptist (Edward Wightman 1612).

I was, years later, pleased by the passage of the federal Disability Discrimination Act in 1992. My treatment in 1985 would have been illegal had it occurred after passage of the DDA; there would have been greater benefit to my employer and less cost to the public purse were I properly treated and supported in work.

However superior the NSW court and parliament may feel it is to this federal law, however in some manner it is deemed that magistrates are not human or should not demonstrate human depths, I remain of the view that the removal of Magistrate Maloney on the grounds reported is not only an uncouth and antediluvian proposal from the court, but also contrary to the DDA, by the simplest test of the meaning of Section 5. Don't say that this section says if you'd sack him for what he did if he had no illness, so you can sack him. That's to miss the point of the illness and its correct-ability. If the brakes had failed on his car (through no fault or failure to perform on the part of the driver) and had caused an accident, what would the situation be then?

If the case against the magistrate is no more than as reported in The Australian (and if it is something else then deal publicly with that) then you have a splendid opportunity to make clear to the courts that they are not above the principles of law (however some state law may seem to stand on the matter) and that even - even - a magistrate is deserving of decent treatment by his employers. In doing so with coherent and positive explanation you would enhance the standing of the parliament, perhaps also eventually of the courts and certainly of people coping with disability, in the general public eye. The distance between justice and compassion should not be astronomical.

For ease of reference, here is section 5 of the DDA.

I have copied this to members of the parliament in my region who know me: The Speaker, Acting Speaker Ward, Mr Green, Mr Park.

Hoping for sensible action, I am

Dennis Argall

benchtop, first varnish after putty

2011-05-23T16:11:00.000+10:00

I am pleased with the general artistic effect. Difficult (for me) to photograph without excessive reflection from fresh varnish. There remain two major requirements, apart from additional coats of varnish for the varnish's sake:
[1] food safety, to close off all holes and runnels; some of this perhaps with additional putty or perhaps an epoxy clear filler, or whatever colour (blue, green, red, gold) filaments and dots of putty.
[2] kitchen tool and device-proof. This may mean just seeking a thumbs-up for tough varnish surface, may mean putting some tiles in place as trivets.

Anyway, here is the result of this afternoon's first coat. I do not want to lose the rough-hewn texture, this to be balanced by making food-safe. You will note there is a lot of putty filling gaps. It would be nice to have had all the wood texture, but there were many crevices and large holes. Pleased to do this today after night and morning of fibromyalgic miseries from carrying the beast yesterday, dammit!

life drives art

2011-05-22T20:58:00.004+10:00

We are currently doing projects at Helen's house and my house - which to be worth doing must be art, have beauty.

I have had to replace an oven which led me to begin the replacement of cooktop with gas in my kitchen — requiring a much larger bench-top. This I have been building from three pieces of a slab from this ancient of the forest delivered to our Bodalla bush block in last year's flood:

Full of cracks and rot and irregularity I have coloured a water based hard putty with red pigment (used otherwise in painting in house) and worked it into the various grooves and gaps. I've levelled the bench (having made a terrible mess outside today with ground wood and red powder from hard putty) and brought the benchtop, with its angled hole for gas cooktop, back into the kitchen. The pale timber at the back, fourth slab is a piece of Paulownia.

[photos can be seen full size by clicking; press the back button to return]

You will see from dribbles on the Paulownia that I applied varnish before the first putty treatment, to help keep the putty in cracks and avoid it seeping into timber generally. Some way to go, tidying and varnishing... and still the horror of not knowing if it will work, if it will look right, bright, exciting — or if I'll have to chuck it out and start again. I think it looks a bit better than the photo, but that may be a parent's view of a messy child. The clear gloss should darken timber and in particular bring the grind-paled putty back towards a blood colour. And look spectacular... :-)

The practicality is in having the cook not entirely facing the wall but with bench at an angle towards oven and convection microwave to the left, room under the front, outside cupboard and under bench, for an extra trolley. Lots of space now on the bench to crowd with stuff, rattle pots and pans. The stove bench now 1800 long x 600 to 950 deep, you can see the front of the old bench in the new cooktop hole.

----

Speaking of Paulownia, I had a moment of excitement during the week with an interest in buying the three (Paulownia) panel screen that I put in an exhibition in Huskisson last year... but after a flurry of emails, the interest went away, so here the screen is, as photographed last week, available to you! :-)

Here was the earlier life and death of the Paulownia, the first photo showing cutting of a Paulownia log smashed down by the big Eucalypt 15 months ago; second photo shows slab cutting. I have not been fit or well enough since mid-2010 to spend enough time at Bodalla working on that situation or retrieving and using lumber; very happily we have a family living in the cottage now, they got to experience the flood of March 2011, when the Tuross River downstream rose from 2 metres to 12 metres in several hours.

[1] Home from Rome [2] Regarding the recent history of cameras

2011-05-11T08:28:00.004+10:00

It has been a bit difficult to readjust to life at home. Almost a month now. In part plagued by continuing antibiotics for something acquired in Seattle. In part having difficulty finding things put in safe places by me before departure or by houseminder or cleaner in my absence.

First preoccupation has been collapse of kitchen electrics while we were away, which means I am working on four large wood slabs to make new kitchen cook bench for new cooktop, etc. Not confident to show photos till the job is done!!

The novel remains on hold, not sure where or how to resume. No use jumping on the toothpaste tube to force it out.

Beginning to review the travel photo collection. Far too many of the photos from the Fuji S3 are marred by dust on the CCD, dark muck on images.

Detail of one of the Naiads in the fountain at Piazza del Popolo, Rome.

See the spot above her right shoulder (left as you look), generated by dust speck on CCD,
another larger blur to the left of that.

Easily smudged away in Photoshop where the sky is so even but some images impossible to correct that way.

Never again will I take an arm-breaking DSLR on the road with me. My right arm complained a lot (personal weak-side probem). In over-compensation I've bought one of these from ebay. I have also been reviewing merits of the Fuji F810 and Minolta A2 which I already have. The F810 close to the S3 in the look of its images, the A2 a bit big for pocket, though much lighter than the S3 and producing what I now recognise to be startling images.

The problem with mini-cameras is that somewhere back around that 8 megapixel size of the A2, they reached a point where there was no value in adding more pixels because the small CCD receptor of light in the camera gets very crowded. There were increasing problems of colour fringing (chroma) and noise (luminance) at any but slowest ISO speed. Yet the market and the marketing departments continued to declare the merits of more pixels. Moreover, the digital SLR (DSLR) cameras became cheaper — and of course it looked more manly or professional to use a DSLR than a compact camera, hello Dr Freud. The DSLRs had bigger receivers, CCD or CMOS, note please that quality (lenses, general performance and ease of use) depends still on money and many who will never use the quality still will shell out as much as $2000 or more for the evidence of doing best. The DSLRs had and still have, a problem of dust particles getting in, no matter how well one went about changing lenses. This has meant development of devices and actions inside the camera to wipe the chip or shake it to get specks off; mechanical complexity only partly solving a problem and eventually prone to breakdown. The compact cameras have by definition fixed lenses, dust does not enter. Psychologically interesting, at eBay, that people wanting to sell better compact cameras are prone to list them as DSLR rather than compact, for snooty reasons.

The A2 and the other cameras mentioned in that review were a wonderful last stand by the compact manufacturers competing to solve the problem of chip limitations and standing against the onslaught of the DSLR half a decade ago. The A2 was Konica-Minolta's last stand, immensely complex and capable, but too expensive for a market preoccupied by "good enough". Do your own search for the term 'good enough technology' or get the gist here. Konica-Minolta bailed out and sold its camera technology to Sony.

For this reason the better quality technology cameras of the mid-noughties, six to eight megapixel cameras with manual controls, are now wonderful value via eBay. I'm not going to tell you which! :-)

There are some new compact camera developments, a resurgence in the last several years. About which a blather of commentary. This, the DMC-LX3 from Panasonic, was the earliest. Re-badged by Leica with some modifications as the Leica D-Lux 4 and sold for hundreds of dollars more (the incensed Leica traditionalists shouting "but it's not a Leica!").. The graph on this page I interpret as reflecting a stampede of D-Lux 4 users to D-Lux 5. Here are Flickr photos from LX3 and LX5. There may be a majority at the top end of the pocketable camera market wanting 'good enough' but always there will be a number wanting best, and the Leica badge rather than common Panasonic captures some of them, with some finicky comparisons out there of the differences — do your own search to compare the cameras. I've just bought a second hand LX3 from eBay. I suppose this means 'good enough' for me is buying last year's best or five year's ago's best, prices discounted.

The one strikingly different recent breakthrough in chip technology is in Sigma's DP1 and DP2 producing wonderful images from a much larger chip, but with 10 seconds saving an image before you can take another. Here's a positive review.

My affection remains warmly towards Fuji, for the general Fujifilm look the digital images have. Helen, while we were away, became besotted with photography for the first time, using her E900, though on review now the default processing in the camera may include some excessive sharpening. Photoshop is sorting this reasonably well. I was on this trip trying to learn my antique S3, an impractical course on a holiday. I borrowed Helen's camera for the modest quality films at our travel blog. (The Panasonic DMC-LX3 in the mail to me produces base quality HD film: sunrise and sunset examples.) Fuji since the mid-noughties have abandoned DSLR and run with the crowd to produce long-long zoom cameras producing high definition movies - but with such monster zoom lens quality is surely compromised and for the most part fully automatic cameras (looking at the credits of movies you will see the extent of Fuji dominance of the film market, a company dedicated to colour quality, this colour sense comes through in the digital offerings, colours historically different from Kodak). Now Fuji have produced a truly swoon-worthy high-quality handsome higher pixel compact camera, the X100. I will await their next generation, or at least price drop via ebay. The basset hounds of the market will eventually run on elsewhere and sell off their x100s - or by not selling define the X100 as worth buying new.

Interestingly these new, higher pixel compacts for the most part depart from the popular expectation that compacts have zoom lenses (some as high as 30X). The Panasonic-Leica DMC-LX3 has a 2.5 zoom lenses, very fast aperture F2 to 2.8, which gives some prospect of managing depth of field, see this film clip. Fuji x100 is fixed, ditto Sigma DP 1 and DP2. Ricoh GR-Digital 3 also has a fixed lens. There is an argument emerging that with the image quality [IQ] and acceptability of higher ISO images (less of the chroma and noise, see discussion of such in most decent reviews of cameras) the photographer can return attention to composition, using, as some describe it, the 'two-legged zoom'. The higher pixel count enables cropping of detail with better prospect of printable image - depending on lens quality. See this page with 100% crops from Leica D-LUX 4 (based on Panasonic D-Lux 3). ("100% crop" means what a small portion of a huge image looks like when brought up from the usual reduced size on a monitor or print to 100% of what the camera recorded.)

This is Wikipedia's take on the Foveon chip in the Sigma camera. See the comparison of chip size down this Amazon page. Apart from Sigma, the other high end manufacturers are working with slightly enlarged conventional smaller chips with enhanced processing.

Well, these are my thoughts on the current state of quality compact camera development.

I am driven away from DSLR both because of the practical difficulty for anyone of handling big cameras discreetly and because my right arm is troublesome.

I have endeavoured in the above to link the reader to most of the best review places (see also Steve's). You will see different styles of review on a range from those who go into the lab to measure this and that to those who may disparage that approach and go into the field to try to make good photos. Both dimensions have merit, though the latter is most important and often at variance with the lab opinions. Emotions are more evident in the field, emotions are important, see this discussion.

POSTSCRIPT:
I HAVE THE PANASONIC DMC-LX3 NOW: it is a world apart and on from those older cameras of which I have spoken fondly. But it's a bit like a classy dame.. moving up to having an LCD on the back with 440,000 pixels really is something, but what you see on the back is not the whole story in making good photos. I am thrust into a new world of some kind, new explorations... new brain stretches..

War in Libya

2011-03-22T21:43:00.000+11:00

I have offered this comment on a New York Times editorial wondering about the new war in Libya:

Your Submitted Comment
Display Name
Dennis Argall
Location
Rome, Italy

Comment

Forty-some years ago as a young Australian diplomat immersed in southeast Asia and the then preoccupation with the Vietnam war I was transferred to our Rome embassy. Surrounded by the events of Europe in 1968 and at real distance I secured new and critical perspective to our (and US) conduct of the Vietnam war. Curiously I now find myself again living in Italy for a time, retired, as a new war of alliance against wickedness breaks out in Libya.

This discussion thread has at its most constructive been focused (appropriately) on the legality and practical feasibility of the US going to war.

From here, I find that the greatest impression is the precipitate muddle of action.
There has been a breathtaking reaction in many places, including in the nations involved, to the very wide and imaginative interpretation of 'no-fly-zone'. This has placed at risk, perhaps permanently fractured, the massive international support for the action. And already there is reckless public bickering over what it means among leaders of the action itself, notably whether it allows decapitation of the Libyan Government. The evident value of surprise on the part of the enemy may have been overtaken by this loss of strategic coherence and support.

The action takes place at a moment when Italy has been reoccupied by 150th anniversary celebrations and the difficult process of securing regime change from the Ten Billion Dollar Man Berlusconi. From resistance to military action Italy has been squeezed into a role, with sense of rivalry with France. Moreover, the left has now taken a vanguard position in articulation of action. Advocacy of a 'risorgimento also in the Arab world' (the 'resurgence' which brought Italy to nationhood 150 years ago, overturning Spain, Austria and the Papal States) has brought huge popular response for President Napolitano, life long member of the now defunct Communist Party. The leader of the Democratic Party, Bersani, Prime Minister-in-Waiting if egos can bring unity for change, has said that the constitution forbids military action for war, allows it for human rights... this is the leader of the party heir to the former socialist and communist parties. So with the complicity in action of the British Liberal Democrats we have a curious vanguard of 'leftish' or socially-sensitive leaders gunning for what is unmistakably a war.

It is a very long time (65 years) since J. K Galbraith and others in the assessment of strategic bombing of Europe in WWII concluded that the strategic bombing campaign was a 'disastrous failure' that "at most... eased somewhat the task of ground troops."
The precipitate nature of western action, from which notably China, with its sense of how long history takes to happen, distances itself, reflects the infancy inculcation of our leaders with the speed of action of Sesame Street and the expectation of outcomes in computer games.

The 150th Anniversary celebration in Italy includes celebration of Garibaldi and others in enabling an infant Rome Republic against French forces invited by the Pope to hold a hill in Rome for some months in 1849 - twelve years before the 150 years ago completion of occupation of all Italy by the Kingdom of Savoy; 21 years before the actual constitutional emergence of an Italian State, over 80 years before settlement of territory and status with the Pope... And as the Times main article on Italy begins: \"Encyclopedia Britannica describes Italy as"less a single nation than a collection of culturally related points in an uncommonly pleasing setting."

It is time we began scaling and shaping military interventions, as and when conceivably appropriate, by realistic awareness of the time it takes to achieve any kind of outcome in the real world and the very different strategies we need to adopt in the real world. There is a huge element in this war decision not so much of interest in oil but pellmell response to public opinion and adoption of domestically politically advantageous postures: it is frankly bizarre for the Italian left to be advocating for war in the Arab world and Libya in particular — but for the need to get advantage over the Billion Dollar Man who had become a dollar-dealing mate of Gaddafi, resistant to war against him.

Considering the business in Libya we might paraphrase that last quote about Italy to say that Libya is: "less a single nation than a confusion of culturally diverse points in an uncommonly challenging setting."

now in another world

2011-02-08T06:16:00.004+11:00

early February: This note is written from the Seattle-Vancouver BC train. We have been visiting Liz and Mike in Seattle, today heading for Rome. Writing at duemesi.blogspot.com... see you there!

UPDATE: NOW IN ROME IN MARCH, AFTER A MONTH IN SOUTHERN ITALY.
Living here for a time, not running as a tourist.

The difference between life here and life in Australia is challenging, broadening, demanding review of what we do at home in many ways. To begin, however, creative processes seem to come to a halt as we learn openly and allow the stresses of past work etc, to filter down out of the system.

There are nightmares (literally) - you cannot disengage from things and be in a free space without the subconscious running in all directions for structure, it seems.

I am somewhat unnerved to find that my Italian returns better than was 40 years ago. Treated as speaking properly in Rome (asked about it in a friendly and welcoming manner) though regarded by many, in the outpost places we have been in, as something from the imperial court or worse.

There are political issues of great heat, as always but perhaps of greater consequence, with unconstitutional 'reforms' pressed forward by the world's wealthiest head of government concerned mainly with his own good time (an aspiration which links him to a huge spread of the population), while the opposition, so articulate on so many matters, cannot evolve itself into anything or anyone as an alternative government.

There is an historical moment, with celebrations this week of the 150th anniversary of the conquest of the rest of Italy by the Kingdom of Savoy and establishment of a Kingdom of Italy, something that happened somewhat contrary to the wishes of many involved and still resented by many. Italy remains, as the New York Times quotes Encyclopedia Britannica: "less a single nation than a collection of culturally related points in an uncommonly pleasing setting."

There are things of great beauty in so many places, with thousands of years of history piled on itself, the weaving together of buildings so different in age itself a matter of magic. There are disturbing things, as with the church in Naples on the Street of the Tribunes (15% of the street seeming to be churches) founded in the height of the counter-reformation, in 1600, a brass skull and cross-bones on its entry rail, an enquiry desk handled by a beautiful young woman, a church committed to saving those in purgatory, diminishing their time there, at one time with sixty masses a day... Such a fortune in churches where people have often till very recently starved and street-begging still present.

We are also here so close to what has been happening in Tunisia and Libya. While the internet also brings close the events in Japan... This uprooting and transplantation to Rome has the same kind of effect as it had on me 40 years ago, of shifting me out of local and petty preoccupations and perspectives back in Australia. Not that there are not millions of petty and local perspectives around me here... but it is the vast difference that doubles the perspective coming here.

the story of the end of apartheid on the south coast

2011-01-26T14:05:00.000+11:00

I have finally mastered how to move a voice recording from my iPhone. Easy when you stumble on how to do it...

So I have moved recordings I made of Fred Moore, recounting the Aboriginal advancement movement from the 1960s, onto a little web page here. Good to have this up on Australia Day too!

bedroom mural: "Escape from Jervis Bay"

2010-12-22T12:34:00.001+11:00

I wrote on 9 November that I had gone into a bedroom to consider what colour to paint the walls but had strangely carried with me not any colour samples or pots of colour but a piece of charcoal. I had duly reported to Helen abashedly saying here, I did this but I'll paint over it. To which she replied no you will not paint over it you will finish the job.

So I have finished Escape from Jervis Bay in charcoal and 'natural paint'. Taken some courage, actually. The theatre-screen-ish drapes are from a Lebanese home via eBay, the accompanying drop curtains have gone to charity shop. Interesting to find that the heavily-flower-patterned Moygashel Irish linen main curtains work very well with the strength of this painted wall. It's not just been a need for courage to put the figures so boldly onto the wall, but also the challenge of the strength of this paint job relative to the rest of the room. Interestingly with this strong treatment of two walls a large nude photo of Margaret from 1977 looks now very isolated on the opposite wall. Must add to that wall, photos not mural. (I have accumulated dozens of picture frames from charity shops and the A3 colour laser machine is producing lovely images.

Art by the Sea

2010-12-17T02:14:00.001+11:00

I have four paintings and the three panelled screen in the Art by the Sea group show at the Lady Denman Museum in Huskisson, 18 December-16 January. In a note hung with the screen, I said I had put a catalogue of other work at aplaceof.info - So I've done an artist's statement with some works for sale, here.

There is a great variety of work in the exhibition, wonderfully arranged on the walls at the Denman art space by Judy and John Brown. This a smudgy iphone photo from the opening by Helen Nugent.

This photo taken at home shows how the screen is set up in boudoir mode...

Liz - short work

2010-12-01T11:07:00.002+11:00

Click to see at Daily Science Fiction!

Begins thus:

Dear Ms. Moon

by Liz Argall

Dear Mr. Moon Man or Ms. Moon Lady,

I would like very much for gravity to continue to suck or pull or whatever it does, but if you could do so with just a bit more nuance I would be very grateful.

Writing - Wikileaks

2010-12-01T10:48:00.006+11:00

I was pleased to see the New York Times selected a quick little comment of mine as the highlight among 892 comments first day or so of publication by them of extracts from the Wikileaks revealed US diplomatic cables.

In case that link goes astray, here is my comment (I have corrected spelling of Harlod to Harold here):

HIGHLIGHT (what's this?)

Dennis Argall

Australia

November 29th, 2010

5:31 pm

As a former Australian foreign service officer, accustomed in the past to working closely with US foreign service officers, often sharing each other's cables, I have enjoyed reading cables you released on 28 November. While my government has been doing the obligatory tut-tut, as a private citizen now I believe that the exposure of these texts in this way will redound to US benefit.

It will not hurt those mentioned to hear what is thought of them, especially when State is not guilty of saying it publicly. It will not hurt others to know your officials are hard to fool.

It will be to the general good for the public, including journalists and academics, to see the quality and insight of diplomatic traffic. There is a serious problem in academic as well as media discussion in that so much of it is divined and theorised from inadequate peripheral information. Now it is possible to see how officials build policy and strategy layer by layer, in dialogue with their own government and officials of others.

Do be conscious, in reading it all, though, of the observation of the late Sir Harold Nicholson, doyen of the UK foreign service and writer on diplomacy, that in all the foreign ministry documents in all the world that he had seen, he had never seen a record of conversation in which the person taking the record did not win.

Be open at the Times to fresh perspectives on US power - you suggest the US has lined up Arab states on Iran but it is possible also to see a USA being played like a trout by very powerful and smart Arabs.

If this information elevates debate on the issues, if there is any increased respect for the business of diplomacy, that will be good, for the US and the rest of us. The role of the US in the world is not being 'challenged' so much as being changed and reduced, quite rapidly. More than ever before, it is not possible for the US to say 'this is my role' any more than it is possible to retreat to isolation and indignation. There are real jobs to be done, which cannot be done by people drunk on tea.

three panel wood screen

2010-11-22T17:47:00.005+11:00

I have carved relief images on one side of three panels and fitted the panels together with brass hinges. The other side without images, still rough-sawn with some sanding and polishing. My own sense at this moment is taken up entirely by the difficulty of working the Paulownia, which is a bit like carving the inside of a pineapple skin, with some cheddar on the sides. Sort of, not entirely but... Anyway, not time yet to judge whether the screen is merchantable, it should do for hanging photos at the December-January exhibition at the Denman.

If placed as an item for sale, I will put an oval gilt mirror on the centre panel of the blank side (see third photo), also offer a photo shoot and framed photo portrait to decorate it.

Here are two photos of relief-carved side of panels, one of the plain side. Yes, there is a small brassy decoration on that hand, a string of beady things on a top corner. Note that the sides of the heavier, higher central panel have been trimmed straight and vertical, while the side panels (legs on the left, Labrador on right) have not been trimmed at all, the hinges are slightly away from the margin.

the blurry photo

2010-11-22T17:32:00.001+11:00

While there is much effort given to the pursuit of the perfect image, there is also much pleasure (even if scary) in the blurry image - here of George, not Jaws, the Labrador, aged 10, taunted by love.

panels for exhibition

2010-11-16T15:50:00.004+11:00

As mentioned earlier I wanted to make wood panels to add space to the Denman exhibition over Christmas.

I may in fact have a screen at marketable quality. From paulownia, which I planted in 1993.

I plan three panels for the screen, in zig-zag, at this stage lesser panels (170cm) on either side, a large 2 metre panel in the middle.

The centre panel's sides have been cut to a straight edge. The side panels retain natural tree trunk edge. Hinges will be fitted to the sides of the centre panel and a couple of inches in from an edge of each of the side panels. Foldable, portable, like this \/\ but right angles to stand in the room.

While sanding the major central panel I found there were three knots in the wood, immediately suggestive of a form (the third was going to be a navel but an arm got in the way so it appears to be a stigmata). Click on images to enlarge, 'back' to return.

So here is the roughed out panel centre panel and the yet to be thought about properly side panels. The leg form of the side panels was determined by stress cracks in the slabs. As art works will hang on these side panels they will not be ornate, may simply be polished as is.

other preoccupations

2010-11-15T14:58:00.002+11:00

During the last federal election campaign I worked with others to organise and then chaired a community forum on mental health in the electorate of Gilmore. Five speakers from the mental health community spoke, five candidates responded and there was open discussion.

After the elections, I drafted and secured agreement to letters to the successful and unsuccessful candidates, from the Shoalhaven Mental Health Fellowship. Also to the state member for the South Coast Shelley Hancock. And now can report that in addition to a speech in the federal parliament by Joanna Gash MP, Shelley Hancock has used the correspondence as briefing for a major campaign on the issues, including speaking in the parliament.

The central concern as expressed by the community is that while political parties compete to invent new mental health services it is critical that they sustain and enhance existing services. The most serious underlying issue is of staffing: staffing is so thin on the ground (starting at the top, there is no psychiatrist resident on the NSW coast south of the Shellharbour Hospital) that new programs rob old programs of staff and the most important core community programs are seriously stressed.

You may read the correspondence here.

------------------

As to something completely different, my strength/s or otherwise at 67 mean I have to let go a rural paradise owned (or which has owned me) for twenty years. To see it, click on the photo I took yesterday, at the entry to our own rainforest (or the rainforest that has owned us).

These years have shown me that the most recent thinking about entropy is right. Regardless of our greater or lesser hand on the tiller (or tractor) nature is imposing its order; our place is inside nature. Read Masanobu Fu kuoka, understand that all agriculture (all culture perhaps) is attempt to distort the purpose of nature. Conventional agriculture swipes the plate clean, turns it into a level playing field of sorts, imposes its will and poisons whatever gets in the way. Conventional organic farming swaps the industrial chemicals for 'natural' ones. Fukuoka's mahayana-like farming style works within nature.

It has been a major impact on my brain to spend time in that place, further down the coast, now a bit too far. But even this weekend was so rewarding, entranced inside nature, in the house I built to be beautiful and express personality, to command for a moment some equipment, to revisit the complexity of systems for water and power and growing on a farm. Some nice people came to see; it is really a bit overwhelming, in every sense. There is also the problem that land values have shifted the ownership of such a place from the realm of modest hobby. I may have to offer low price, select on merit, hold an exam!

I brought back more slabs to carve or build with. Pelting rain, no photo now...

Having driven 180km home late yesterday through storm, I collapsed as one does before a screen. Some time later, raising my hand with the remote control in it, there on my top knuckle was the tiniest sweetest leech, about 25mm x 1 to 2mm, waving at me. Were I a more patient soul, less given to impulse, I would not have done what I did before taking a photo: alas you have only my word that it was there. Today I have the notion of a tick here, a leech there, but they are fantasy itches, fortunately.

Anyway, click on the photo to see beauty (and buy it, do you dare buy beauty? Perhaps it would be placing yourself in a position to be possessed by, to support, rather than prostitution...)

Mural: Escape from Jervis Bay

2010-11-09T17:00:00.004+11:00

I had over several weeks painted two bedrooms in the house using natural paints, achieving pleasing textures.

I then wandered into the front bedroom to consider what colour it should be. I said to Helen later, "Look, I was carrying a charcoal with me when I went to think about painting that room." She told me I would have to proceed with the mural and forget about a pretty coloured wall. Which led me to pondering the complexity and difficulty of painting it and perhaps using mosaic tiles, etc.

I have not shown it to all, but visitors from Canberra liked it last week, and Amanda, coming to do her usual fortnightly organisational support work (as she prefers I speak of cleaning), said: "I like the charcoal, charcoal's great, it's great, leave it like that."

So I spent several more hours finishing the charcoal. I find I am a bit startled with myself... this kind of work just flows. Here's a photo, of wall area approx 2.1 x 2.1 metres. Click to enlarge, 'back' to return.

photos, wood panels

2010-11-06T19:23:00.000+11:00

I asked Jervis Bay and Basin Arts if I could submit a bunch of photos for December-January exhibition and they said thanks for checking early, we can't accommodate that many. So I said what if I provided a wood panel to put them on in the middle of the gallery. And we have agreed on some such ... So gosh I have to work on a screen of three panels, zigzag form such as famous theatrical beauties used to change behind in their dressing rooms before people began undressing in front of the camera.

No photos of the photos in question, nor the beauties mentioned, nor photos of the wood panels, but they will be from 20mm x 1700mm x 4-500mm slices of Paulownia, as in photo.

Brain calibration

2010-10-23T11:36:00.006+11:00

I have been very busy discovering the powers of my new (used, from eBay) HP 5500DN A3 colour laser printer. I had been told its capability with photos would be modest, but I am finding it is extraordinary, when I re-calibrate my brain to understand its capabilities. My new printer seems to spend half its life calibrating itself, so should I!

First, though, I had to get this printer to connect to my computers. It had a network plug and professed networkability in its control panel but could not be found. I got a serial to USB connector and it connected fine - BUT. The but was that it could not be driven by the laptop running Mac OSX 10.6. Nor did it run on the PowerMac G4 1.25 dual running OSX 10.5. So back to eBay, I got a PowerMac G4 733mhz with OSX 10.4 installed. The printer like a breeze attached to that computer and also accepts print jobs from the G4 with 10.5 via network cable to the 10.4 machine. The 733 machine cost $30, a 15 inch Apple Studio display cost $30; the latter has no back leg so I have mounted it on a corner of the architect's drawing board. Where it can be used for drawing-painting from photos/drawings.

It is also a duplexing printer, so, going to Melbourne last week for Nick's birthday/engagement, I took a draft of his novel, sent several months ago, formatted it for 6 inch x 9 inch paperback, printed it and perfect-bound it with a cover made using a photo of a graffito in Melbourne taken last year. The perfect binding machine worked well. First big use too for super-guillotine, trimmed the book edges very sharply, no problem with 100 pages.

I have not yet figured out how to bring back to the computer the almost watercolour beauty of some of the images I am getting from the printer. Pictures below to make a different point, not printed files.

I have also begun painting the interior of the house and some furniture items using Bio Paints natural wall paint and adding pigments myself. Also getting interesting effects by not mixing the pigments evenly. These paints produce colours with texture much as you see on walls in Rome, Soriano, and other towns in Lazio, with the sense of colour and abandon, the eye for naturalness and alteration. I mean like these in photo taken in February, extracted from our travel blog unmese.blogspot.com.

And that painting is coming back into the framing of photos. I have managed over time to accumulate a number of frames in various conditions and am enjoying using the Bio Paint and acrylics to refurbish frames and make interesting mats.

I now have a mat cutter, to make those 45 degree cuts on the edge of mats around pictures. The hunt for good things to use as mats is on!

Lots of new things for the brain to adapt to!

Sutra: Shaolin Monks

2010-09-22T14:40:00.009+10:00

As a remarkable counterpoint to the Southside Festival on 18 September, on Sunday 19th we went at the encouragement of Patrick Pang, the Australian director of the Shaolin Temple to the Opera House in Sydney to see Sutra, about which I later wrote to Liz to say:

See in the short clip below that the Belgian-Moroccan choreographer is 'choreographing' or conducting the swordsman while the boy watches. The choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui spent three months with the Shaolin three years ago, has developed this project with them since. He remarked on how with a Belgian Flemish mother and Moroccan father he was always aware of being an individual, observing people 'living in their boxes', unaware. He had found that the Shaolin were, monks in a communist country, so much more open to new ideas and with a sense of freedom than many affluent, 'free', isolated, unhappy people in Europe. When the impresarios came and asked him "was this checked out by the government in China" he would answer "What is it that you think you are doing?" You see the use of boxes (by a sculptor) on the stage, for stunning effects as well as the sense in the choreographer's thoughts on life. The string group is behind the diaphanous backdrop. Wonderful music, the whole thing hypnotic, for about 70 minutes. Endorsement also of a life doing many things not in boxes ... :-)

Christine Anu at the Southside Festival

2010-09-21T15:16:00.003+10:00

The Southside Festival on 18 September (see preceding post) concluded with a wonderful concert by Christine Anu. Click down below the photo to watch the movie! Please remember that it's bootleg recorded/photographed with available (negligible to glaring) light, with my iPhone only. And [oops] I missed the first several bars, my finger, chilled by a softdrink bottle, making no impression on the heat-sensitive record button. Oh yes, and next time I'll stand further away from the speakers to record!

The Southside Festival at Coomaditchie Aboriginal community

2010-09-20T16:53:00.001+10:00

The Southside Festival brings together the southern suburbs of Wollongong. Coomaditchie is an Aboriginal community, with also a cultural centre, in a place hitherto a bottom swamp land to which Aboriginal people in the region were shoved by white settlers.

The Festival on 18 September was a wonderfully warm and happy event, with two major events - a drama with circus elements and a concert by Christine Anu. Christine Anu's description of the event is here - copied below:

On Saturday 18^th September 2010 from 5pm to 9pm the Cowper street side of Coomaditchie lagoon will become an open air theatre to a spectacular event. Local artists and performers will tell an ancient dreaming story through a combination of narration, song, large scale puppetry, live percussion, stilt walking, fire sculpture, dance, screen projections and aerial performance.

Cumbangi– The Queen of the Reeds who featured in the 2007 Southside Festival will be returning to Coomaditchie to check on the health of the lagoon. While she is there she will tell the story of how the black swans got their feathers. As is traditional at the Southside Festival the Wadi Wadi Mixed Tribe dancers will dance on specially prepared sand stage.

The theme of year’s festival is ‘home’ . So in addition to the Black Swan dreaming story – we will all focus on the value of home. Many of the local community members have been working for the last few years to clean up Coomadichie Lagoon so that the black swans (and other species) can return home. An integral part of the performance will be a giant nest – to represent home. Audience members will have had the opportunity to write and draw thoughts and messages of home onto calico banners in the weeks prior to and also on the day of the event and as part of the performance they will be called upon to “help build the nest”.

After the performance by local artists widely acclaimed singer songwriter Christine Anu, will be performing.

The Southside Festival is a FREE event with entertainment for the whole family. The festival celebrates culture and place. “We focus on the richness of cultural diversity and the beauty of the local environment. “ says Sue Leppan one of the festival organisers. The festival has been hosted at Coomaditchie Lagoon by local community organisations every second year since 2003.

Here are photos of the site, the Cumbangi play, and the concert. Also an MP3 recording of last two songs, regrettably the first song has the beginning chopped off!

The photos are with iPhone in the natural and eventually negligible light

– enjoy the impressions!

first a view down over the entertainment space, down to the lagoon

Helen with Sue, MC on the night and an organiser

The apparatus for trapeze artist later

performers prepare

Here is the full meaning of multiculturalism

NRMA sponsorship, Salvation Army organised,

absolutely straight dinki-di Halal sausage sandwich coming up

and the show begins

concert in next post!

sunset road photos

2010-09-17T12:16:00.002+10:00

I cursed myself Wednesday, travelling to Wollongong, for once in the passenger seat, that I was passing amazing sunset scenes and had again left the camera at home. Then - doh - I remembered the trusty iPhone, which with its simple small lens and slow exposures does some marvellous things in moments like this. Click photos to enlarge, use back button to return.

Photos of Helen

2010-09-17T12:09:00.002+10:00

We went on Wednesday to a dinner for Jennie George, retiring from parliament. Before we left, I had a moment to take photos of Helen with the iPhone. Pleased with results.

This second photo is with a painting Helen bought at the NAIDOC week exhibition in Nowra,

painting by Aboriginal elder Auntie Marie Stewart, entitled Doonooch - local Aboriginal name for owl

— the owl having also for Aborigines the reputation of wisdom

wood carving

2010-08-19T14:42:00.003+10:00

I have become aware of some excellent items around the house where I can built experience with wood carving.

Two years ago I had a large cypress cut down in the front yard. There is a big stump still out there for me to carve when a little more experienced (entirely in the public eye). There is, from the same tree, a post in ground in the back yard, which I put there with a view to carving one day. And there are two benches, sliced halves of that cypress, in the back garden. Today, brain fagged with a virus and restless, I was able to go and work on one of those logs, part done a figurative carving, practice for the big vertical items. Here below is a progress report in photos. As I worked I was thinking of the Etruscan woman whose tomb we saw in Viterbo, photo here. The tools I am using are the Pro-4 Woodcarver and the Mini Grinder from Arbortec. The burn marks, which I may leave for effect (ears, eyes, hair, breast), are caused by using the Mini Grinder with the cutter getting blunt.

Enough done for today, nice to be able to go look and think about where to go next. Already been interesting, you shape it then you realise as a novice that it still looks like a block of wood more than anything else, and cut more and more and more. I came to the view that for the artistic form the minimum amount of remaining wood is probably the ideal and also most real or moving... but that is to be balanced with the practical need to sit on her...

Bottom and legs not yet begun. Some detail and refinement in the upper body needed. Having worked from above, seeking satisfaction looking at it from above or obliquely close up, when I walked to the house and turned around to look from a distance, she looks a bit dim and half faced. I will have to lie down to complete shaping the face, including the lower side.

wood carving

2010-08-08T22:02:00.002+10:00

I have been carving a burl cut from this great log

and realised just now, in the evening, talking to a friend and trying to describe it, that I have been so preoccupied with the carving that I have failed to photograph it. As burls go it is very big, about 50cm x 80cm, and 25cm deep. Old, complex, dark swirls from fire and - in the swirls - traps of black amber, surely the product of the baking of sap in bushfires. I am endeavouring not to carve out a bowl form but a landcape. The tree washed into our place by violent flood. The burl reveals now, as I carve, shapes which evince the rugged landscape where the tree grew. So I am calling it Forest Escarpment. The form evolves, not defined in advance, shaped by its own natural swirls.

This is a primitive flash photo, I need to use daylight to effect to show the carving, which is up to 10cm deep now, in basins and ravines. This is a pretty poor way to display this, I will do better next day or so.

... and as to quality in the carving of burls, here is some extraordinary work, albeit with very different wood from the type and character of the wood I am working on... it encourages me to seek refinement...

nude while listening to Liberal candidate

2010-08-04T11:33:00.001+10:00

Title sounds a bit exciting...

I had been listening to local ABC radio, waiting to hear if they gave time to Matt Sproule, talking about our community forum on mental health, tomorrow, with election candidates

... instead of Matt, I listened to Joanna Gash, seeking reelection to parliament,

... and and and, I just kept working with charcoals on this figure, 120 x 75cm , charcoal pencils on black gesso on masonite. I think she looks better on the board than on the screen, but the harsh impact of the photo is educational for reviewing where to go next with the drawing. And of course, with nudes or whatever, the biggest question is knowing when to stop...

don't forget that to see the rest of the blog,

you click on the blog title at the top

Family photo - Cat

2010-08-04T09:05:00.001+10:00

I just discovered on the iPhone this photo of Cat serving crepes with strawberry sauce last month. Tasted as good as looks. "You brought us up as food snobs Dad," she said many years ago.

Strange photos

2010-08-02T18:21:00.005+10:00

I had been concentrating on design of The Back House Press and then suddenly, or eventually, there arose the opportunity to take these photos...

I will reveal what they are in a few days.

Guesses welcome - use comment box!

setting up for multiple creative directions!!!

2010-07-29T15:06:00.006+10:00

For our books, including a new one sent to Blurb last night, we have a new blog here.

The new book conbines some photos with extracts from novel in progress, scenes which were inspired in part by a storm photographed. A sudden shock to the photographed past - a 1000gb external hard disk has stopped responding. So much for safely placing raw photos in an external brick!! But a fresh start is good and sometime maybe can unlock the mystery of the not-spinning disk... it may only be the power supply, of course...

I have been caught up by some political activity for a moment,

...though also setting up the devices in the house to make it easier to draw and paint (a huge Italian architects drawing board 1500x1000mm, $100 from eBay)

and a new (old - Mac G4) computer, to do the novel (portrait screen) and manage photos (landscape screen, second monitor) taken with a new (old) camera, a Fujifilm S3, which has best reputation for dynamic range (keeping the detail of the very bright, seeing into the dark at the same time).

Also we have acquired a timber jig to cut lumber of which we have huge new quantities at Bodalla (see two posts back)

.. and an (old and monstrous) radial arm saw from eBay to make furniture and studio, etc.... to make art from great pieces of wood, I hope. Two interacting things have this week triggered off impulses to design with wood. First, in making some garage space, finding a bin of children's wooden blocks. Second, watching a documentary about I.M Pei "Learning from Light". ... which gave new meaning to spilled children's wood blocks. At Bodalla we have great chunks of dark Eucalypt and other native timber and also lots of pale Paulownia. The precision of the radial arm saw may enable us to combine these in interesting ways, for different practical or aesthetic purposes.

The hammer will show the size of this log below, washed in in February flood

Equal pay for work of comparable value

2010-06-11T08:28:00.012+10:00

With Helen, I went to Sydney yesterday for what is being described as the 'biggest action since the 1970s' in support of equal pay. 3,000 people at a meeting in the Sydney Town Hall - the best organised, most positive and effective public meeting I have ever attended. Helen's close collaborator on many issues Narelle Clay, president of the Australian Services Union in charge.

What distinguishes this case is that it is not simply equal pay for same work (hard enough historically) but seeking equal pay for comparable work. With significant support from Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard.

Here Narelle and Helen at Wollongong before setting out, after they addressed those travelling north, along with Jennie George, first woman president of the ACTU and Arthur Rorris, head of the Labor Council.

A tribute to heroes of equal pay over the years.

There was a march, with some really cute horses.

It was a sunny winter day for a march, Helen in her element.

I was very pleased with this photo below, enlarge (by clicking on image) to see the broil of energy...

This spotless Men-in-Black machine seemed a creature deserving caricature, were it not entirely serious — and surely, in any serious situation, a provocative magnet not just to mature people who think it an object of fun but others who might be inflamed.

Helen's daughter Corina was there, on left below with other organisers of a hugely successful intergenerational feminist conference earlier in the year.

Destruction, deconstruction, making use of..

2010-06-02T17:10:00.010+10:00

I think I previously included in this blog our other preoccupation, dealing with aftermath of floods at our place Mount Eurobodalla but have not shown what we have been doing since, see below little movie...

It has become a stimulating and inspiring process, not a burdensome clean-up. I have been very fortunate in finding an artist with a chain saw, David, and we have not only been cleaning up but making new building materials...

I've had a turn, but am mainly accessory. It's good to work with someone who is focused on at least three things at a time, and to be in agreement that the precise use of this material, is something to be determined when we have the products, of which these some samples...we begin with these slabs from paulownia, heading next for the eucalypt that knocked this tree down, see the movie. Below the fork in the big gum tree in that movie there and in photo below, showing trench being dug to get at it, is at least 8.5 metres of straight timber, and above the fork a great deal more. There is another carried-in log of immense whorling complexity, we need courage to decide how to work on it, as slabs lengthwise or across. This paulownia is very simple to decide about!

Fun to re-use: the ancient little caravan, with which we began here 20 years ago, now serving as a timber jinker and as rough support for tarpaulins to cover cut lumber.

This is the big eucalypt referred to above, which we get at next... the not-long-enough wooden rail on top is 7.2 metres.

I had shared a view with a neighbour, in April: we both thought there would be another flood in June. Well, in the first week of June another five inches of rain, following five in the last week of May, and a cyclone in between, so maybe flood at any moment.

The lumber I made safe before the cyclone, but the shed could not be safe when wind lifts the top off a tree and throws it at the shed... So another task ahead in fixing/replacing the shed. Fortunately not the house.

In the picture below, the water is just run-off, not flood. While I was taking this picture below, two very large trees fell fifty metres away, at a time when, 7.30am, there was neither wind nor rain, see my story of it here, if you missed the link the other day!! :-)

I like this way of living in a creative mindset in very direct engagement with natural reality, where you are not in charge, there are other forces, metaphorically comparable to the way the novel runs away from me, stories take charge, characters take charge.

portrait and discovery of other life in Huskisson

2010-06-02T17:04:00.004+10:00

I had gone to the Lady Denman Gallery at Huskisson to take a decent photo of my portrait of Murray Peters, if it had not been rejected as substandard by this no-standards exhibition's curator... and there it was! If this doesn't look a wonderful work of art, please blame the iPhone, not the painter.

... and there, see below, as a result of recent road work, I found, emerging from the ground, evidence of early life in Huskisson, or maybe it's future life emergent - Blue Metal Man?

a drop of writing from 24 busy hours

2010-05-30T17:45:00.004+10:00

I have been trying, after all the other bedlam, to get back to writing and particularly to the novel.

I have just written this account of the last 24 hours.

I wrote this in part at midnight, in part just now.

In passing it on to my writers' group I said

I submit this as being something that seems to help me find my way back into writing mode. I found myself entering a story that told itself to me as I had to do things. I think I had advantage of some attendant drama, hard to imaging how it was, sitting back here now, but I think something like this can be written almost about anything we do, if we are open sensually and visually and to rhythm and temperature and stress, all things we tend to muzzle or deny. And I am pleased to say I then sat another few minutes at midnight and have, I think, a way forward with the snagged novel, starting in a different part of the story. Next to find out how hard it is to move chapters in Scrivener, hopefully not hard at all... but not now... time to veg out!

Slurping the blog

2010-05-30T16:58:00.003+10:00

Apparently to slurp is to download the content of a blog and convert it into a book, which we have now done, still awaiting the delivery of the first book (fret, fret) to check that the printers handle the dark colours well. Dark colours which look good on a monitor may look far too dark on a page.

The second book of our travels has an entirely different air to the first, you can preview it here:

unmese: the blog by Helen Backhouse and Dennis Argall | Make Your Own Book

entry for the Little Archies

2010-05-30T16:52:00.004+10:00

My portrait is in for the Little Archies. I think I had vegemite on the lens when I tried to photograph it at midnight before carting it off to Huskisson, better pic later....

I wrote this note that night:

My subject is a very interesting man who interviews every state minister and politician and has said no to more of them more often than any other radio jock, including major stand-up's with you know who, to you know who's fury. Background in driving taxis in Sydney in 70s and 80s and radio in Griffith NSW so probably knows lots of things I don't want to know. Also time spent in the early 70s in the upper reaches of Kashmir. I had photographed him at work in the studio, where, it not being the ABC, he has to do everything to keep the thing on the road for 4 hours a day, 20 hours a week, with management jittering behind him. Without his taking over that slot, there would have been no fair elections, no change of government in Shoalhaven in 2008.

Then I had afternoon tea with Murray and Rosie and sons one afternoon on their semi-rural block, and there was this innocence and amiable generous family aspirational side that came out and somehow they have to be put together.

So I've tried to do that, with it all unfolding (unravelling) on the square metre of canvas (linen, actually, courtesy of the retirement village fete in Gerringong).. and I've just taken the worst and blurriest photo ever taken, which is herewith and no plan at midnight to replace it.

You see it began on the right in bucolia, all the icons of the Shoalhaven. Then he had to be portrayed also with four arms at least, frantic in the studio, There was a gun on the desk it's not there any more. The dark got painted in after other work; I had painted dark forces, including the dinosaur, bottom left, and then changed my mind, covered them with black gesso then changed my mind again, quickly enough, and they came back rather interestingly with a cloth applied to the gesso. The beach and the desk became one, a decision on coupling which was not really mine, which creates a jumble of people on the beach (and the highway) and the desk things. There is a second microphone in the studio, of course, a seductive thing in my experience, which suddenly yesterday turned into a woman with the figure of Jessica, Roger Rabbit's girlfriend (who can forget the unforgettable line "I'm not bad, I'm just drawn that way.") and her head replaced by lips and speech bubble says "Talk to me." And so on... it's been fun. And you may all pass by on the day and say "Fun, yes, fun, Dennis. But is it art?" I'm working on the riposte....

Muz likes the figure on the left, looks like Rod Stewart, he says. Is that me too, he asked at lunchtime today...

Having gotten the photobook out of the way...

2010-05-09T17:21:00.007+10:00

I got to sketch out my one metre square portrait of M.P. today, not sure if I can pull it off yet, but will know by the end of this week, for which it is the priority. Meanwhile, Helen asked for me help with her garden. We have collected bird cages and she is making an eccentric collection of birds from garage sales, plaster, metal etc... these cages to hang in some fruit trees to apply traction and shape them. She also has metal screen door frame, mirror, to begin decoration of a secluded corner.

ALSO for that, a shop dummy found at the Marrickville Community Centre's Reverse Garbage shop.

She asked if I would paint it? — it was a dull light absorbing grey-white.

"Abstract?" I asked.

"No," she said, "natural, skin, nipples, so she can have lace hung upon her."

I was not sure if I could do this. But it proved a useful and fun warm up for the portrait design work. And as usual (though I had forgotten) it was necessary in the end to paint the skin with wet hands.

Not showing you the design for portrait, will report end of week. Must be submitted, if at all, by 27 May.

I also have a short novel-beginning text from Liz and a giant manuscript of Lindsay Sharp's to read. And the food garden and chooks are looking great, nice exercise in between.

Anyway, here is the glistening nude as painted for Helen. She is standing leglessly on our mosaic making table (haven't reported on that!) in front of earlier nude painting on tabletop. I have sought/allowed some imperfections, it's an interesting task to be warmly real and approach the task coolly (in sense of not hotted up, revved up) at the same time. I think my doubt about being able to do this paint job was in concern about that balance...

photobook of travels in Italy

2010-05-09T11:33:00.005+10:00

We have just sent to be printed our photobook of travels in Italy in February-March 2010, you can preview it here:

Un Mese in Italia: Febbraio-Marzo 2010 by Dennis Argall |

Click the title to see how to buy this book, how to make your own book.

Click the little device and words 'FULL SCREEN' to see it larger.

other side of life

2010-04-05T01:08:00.002+10:00

We went for two nights at easter to see what had happened at the farm at Bodalla, as a result of the floods in February.

I've put a stack of little movies to record the situation in the orchard at YouTube

pardon the sleepy voice in the beginning of the first film... it does get better! There is also a short film about how or why Oscar repeatedly rolls in wombat poo.

The place has long been for me a lesson in living with rather than controlling nature. It would have been more than exciting to have been there to see the massive tree trunks flying through and some getting stuck, though it probably would have been unnerving to see fifty foot trees ripped from the bank.

Little Archies

2010-03-31T07:40:00.005+11:00

For the Little Archies, a local portrait competition, I am wanting to make a painting of Murray Peters. Muz is a well known local, who works impossible hours with six arms and at least three brains steering the local commercial radio station through the morning. Yesterday, being in attendance at the studio to talk about China justice system and Stern Hu, I took some photos. How to get from these photos to a painting, or should it be something other than a painting? Not just a photo...

Scrivener, more value of, and Spotlight on the Mac

2010-03-25T19:23:00.003+11:00

In working my way through the structure of the novel in Scrivener today, I realised I had lost an important chapter, a thousand words or so on the history of the protagonist's father in China from the 1930s to 1957. I knew it was important, important in informing my head about the weight of direction of the story, whether it was to stay in the story or not. Somewhere it had dropped from an earlier cobbled draft.

I could not find it by looking in all the sensible places. I found it when I realised I could use Spotlight on the Mac to search for key words not mentioned in other places. I remembered that his patron had been the general who had become mayor of Beijing in 1949, so a search for Mayor of Beijing produced the text, the name of General Nie Rongzhen and all the history which I have now been able to improve with fresher mind and seeing where it is able to fit in the structure of the novel, thanks to Scrivener. Yes, I'm pleased to have an application that works for me, helps me organise, rather than shapes me to its own designs.

Mosaic and paintings

2010-03-24T19:43:00.004+11:00

I don't think the writing will flow easily, however, until I get the painting going well again. I have some large items to paint, one to finish. We have been to another mosaic-ing day with Dora. See the report on Dora and Marcus's home page. This was a great way to clear the brain a week after getting off the plane! And we have now a considerable accumulation of tiles and the rest of the necessaries to get more mosaics done on our own. I must work now to produce a painting for SeeChange.

Also from Liz, an introduction to Scrivener.

2010-03-24T19:10:00.007+11:00

It is wonderful to use Skype to communicate around the world and I have now discovered the great value of sharing desktops with Skype. That is, in explaining the writing application Scrivener, Liz was able to show me her computer desktop and how she was using Scrivener.
And so I am pleased to report that I have today begun a 30 day trial use of Scrivener. I am not good at making general notes, or actual cards with concepts for what chapters will do. but in several hours I have placed the text of my novel so far into Scrivener and been able to produce in the appropriate space on screen, a note on what each chapter is supposed to do... and sketch out some next chapters.

I have added labels, to indicate the kind of voice and point of view each chapter has, and this means order of a kind I have wanted, and a way to make notes and actually push the text in possible directions. You can click on the first thumbnail image for it to enlarge so you can see a screenshot of the situation after just a beginning. It is the order I need to go forward. The second screenshot shows what happens when I press on the 'corkboard' button... maybe, maybe, the corkboard, but more to the point the main work setup is a great start. The corkboard does display with clarity the colours which denote different voices, so I can get a sense of the balance of that easily with it.

This is a Mac application only, there is a link in the bottom right of the home page of Scrivener to a suggestion for Windows users.

Bill Piggott produced for the meeting of our Berry Writers Group last week a report on his visit to the Adelaide Writers Festival, in which he quoted this very comforting, exciting and reassuring (if you look at it the right way) perspective of Tom Keneally:

The novel, he [Keneally] says, is the big game, the great discourse and you don’t know where it will take you. There is in our subconscious an unseen and unexplored river in a winding valley which is where we go when writing a novel. Writing one is like being a South Seas navigator of old who sets out from one island with the supposition that there is another island out there somewhere, not knowing what they will meet on the way. He [Bill writes] described himself as an ageing writer “fretfully trying to attack ragged windmills with a white-anted lance on a dying horse.”

from Bill Piggott, Bill Goes to Writers Week, March 2010

Back from Italy and resuming course[s]!

2010-03-24T18:58:00.004+11:00

We have returned from Italy determined not only to save to go back but also to apply in our lives the sense of living and colour and connection that a month in Italy gave us.

I had taken the novel as was with me, never opened it. Too much to learn and absorb and grow with, as recorded very lightly in the blog.

A lot to do to catch up with practical life. The back yard food garden deserves a blog itself, it has had quite a bit of work now with run for chooks and tomorrow hopefully some Peking bantams installed. The objective of converting a boring grass space into a food jungle is going well. Complexity achieved, its own order coming.

Liz sent a link to a presentation on writer's block that she has given in Portland. This is, in Nick's words, "awesome, solid content wonderfully presented". Indeed, and lots of fun too... But an excellent message about the ordinariness of the struggle in writing.

Let's embed Liz's performance here:

currently in another place!

2010-02-25T10:49:00.002+11:00

Here!

Season's Greetings

2009-12-23T21:01:00.003+11:00

It's been a difficult few weeks for me, with some health problems now getting clarification and while pain has robbed me of concentration, it is now established that there is no life-threatening situation (aside from being 66!). I am taking a break to allow the creative processes to resolve and clarify.

I have three art works in the summer exhibition of Jervis Bay and Basin Arts.

Copenhagen has sharply reminded us all of climate issues. It seems that we have a long way to go to recognise that the shape of world politics is shifting very very quickly. There is no longer a capacity for the US and Western Europe and others (such as ourselves, in Australia) to imagine we can determine the shape of things. China has most of the capacity to finance seemingly limitless US inclination to deficit spending, China has most of the world's manufacturing. We assert that we need to be consuming so much carbon because it is efficient to produce aluminium and (a little) steel here. But it remains that we, like but ahead of the rest of the developed world, produce four times the amount of CO2 compared with China. It is a fantasy to expect China (or developing countries generally) to accept major limitations on their development while we seem incapable of making adjustments ourselves. There really is a life or death quality to the underlying questions of mutual understanding and capacity for dialogue which confront the real world, which makes writing fiction difficult for me right now.

On a lighter note...

Our Christmas card, above, is based on the unexpected guest (a pelican) at lunch as we sat in the car by Lake Illawarra several month ago.

You can read a new piece of writing by Liz here. :-)

see you next year... may it be full of warm surprises for us all.

best wishes

Dennis

Mosaic in place!

2009-11-16T12:42:00.003+11:00

Well, we went to Dora's workshop and you can find photos of the wonderful event here: happy crowd, day-long industry, great food, anxieties about what it would look like before we grouted, the fun of messy grouting after exacting work on the tiles, elation at products. Thank you Dora, Marcus, Thor and Billie, for the privilege and delight.

I have my mosaic element of coffee table in place, glued to the table, the dark grout and the intensity of the colours mean that the painting will have to be strong and dark. I have sketched in something that may work, including with the light from the lighthouse on Point Perpendicular illuminating god. Integral Energy will be chuffed, I am sure.

can I do this with mosaic?

2009-11-13T19:19:00.007+11:00

Helen and I go a mosaicing workshop with Dora http://madcowstudio.com/ tomorrow.

We may do pavers for Helen's garden, but I hanker to do something a bit different. I have another old coffee table to paint and want to try to put mosaic on PART only of the top.

In the charcoal sketch (on cardboard, sitting on the table) of Jervis Bay (see colour photo of actuality) God (female, naked, dark-skinned, recumbent in clouds over Governor Head) is reaching down (over Bowen Island) after the manner of the 'Creation of Adam' Sistine Chapel item.

God is saying to the dolphins "Hey beauties, they may give this place a funny name and argue over how to pronounce it but it really has no name: no labels, no control, just enjoy. As for that species on two legs, I give up on getting them to love each other, but I bet they'll fall in love with you if they can stop admiring their own shadows and look around."

And the dog says "Woof woof" and God says "Oh, someone throw the dog a bone. Yes, Dog, you are loved too."

This is only implausible as the title of a painting if you reject the notions [a] that it is actually a coffee table and [b] that God is a woman.

Please go with my absurdism: two visits to hospital this week, more next week, the absurd seems real.

location, appropriateness, style

2009-11-10T07:49:00.006+11:00

Yesterday while three hours at the hospital in the Accident and Emergency waiting area, a forest of signs.

At the admissions clerk's window, almost entirely out of sight, the sign saying "please tell someone if you decide not to wait". Hidden behind many pamphlets. While I was there four people were called and were not present, which did not help me get through much more quickly as the practitioner went away for a long time to ruminate over who to pick next.
high on a notice board, almost out of sight, a sign asking that children be supervised if using the play table and chairs.
Above the play table and chairs, the sign about the television (above, you can enlarge and give to your mother, she may thank you). The television itself was way out of reach, suspended from the roof on a mounting, tipped towards potential viewers, sun on its screen. It thus breached at least two points in the safety instructions. Surely the safety instructions should have been placed on the device itself. Helen said: "It should say 'In case of earthquake danger, do not stand under the television'."

Somebody has to deal with these things, but the state of the waiting room with 50 notices seemed to reflect the self-absorption of the organisation, rather than presentation to the world. May I please be able to pull my novel together better! :-)

May I praise the doctor I eventually saw: born in Bangladesh, commuted yesterday to work here from Sydney, seven years experience from 1985 in the Hamadan hospital on the Iran side of the Iran-Iraq border, a hospital frequently bombed, two wars, the one with the Americans supporting Saddam, then the other one; his wife also a doctor, his greatest daily fear for his young son then; his gastric practice experience not just from sadly gastric-diseased Bangladesh but also from treating many small children in Iran who unlike their parents did not peel watermelon seeds before eating them. Such a gracious, modest, warm and helpful doctor... may you be granted such a wonderful and experienced person to help when and if you have any digestive problem. Thank you Karim.

can you hear a photo?

2009-11-09T14:51:00.005+11:00

I spent time today drafting some work ideas for Helen, then in attending to emails, somehow looked back to web pages I have designed in the past, with words and pictures.

This one I can hear. Maybe you can't, you were not there? Or maybe it is close enough to your experience to hear it.

This one I can feel. The rip of water around me, as well as the advanced-tinnitus-like constant roar of the sea risen and gone wild in the night, captured on camera, standing in the water's edge at dawn. I've written that scene into the novel, here's a bit, can you feel it, can you feel the shell under your feet, can you hear the roar? Look at that link at the top of this para before reading.

There was nothing like it, the utter fresh after rain, the continued drift of sea air and surf spray; the organic edge from churned sea life. He found his way to the top of the dune in the threads of light from the half obscured three-quarter moon behind his back. It surprised him that the sea seemed now so far away, down the dune and across this beach, when it had seemed to fill his ears and mind when inside the canvas. He set off down the beach towards the water, over sand hammered hard by overnight rain. His step uneven over pockmarks of old footprints rendered unyielding by rain pelt.

The storm continued in the body of the sea. As he approached there was little else but white churn visible in the scant light, way way out in wave after wave, close waves fought up together in the turbulence of the storm. Eddies of froth and wreckage of sea life blew on the beach, lodged in heaps, surged on the front of scarcely visible waves.

He stood still. How far he now was from times past, from masses of people, pedantries of protocol, nuances of speech and inflection, slights and power plays, postures and pretensions, egos on the run, timetables and conferences.

He rolled his track pants up, stepped into the shallow rush of water. Icing his toes, chilling his calves for several minutes before his circulation adjusted and he sensed the warmth of the whole ocean reaching for him. A higher wave caught the edge of his jacket in the gloom, wet the folded bottom of his track suit. He grinned, hoisting his camera high, looked around at this wild nameless company. A worn shell-edge pressed the sole of his foot; he stood still and absorbed all the sensations around him.

Far out there now, an edge of light, of approaching dawn, showed below clouds. He stood still, allowing maximum absorption of this new sense. He had spent the night with the sound of the sea and the slight rocking of his sturdy mini-truck by the storm; the pent of rain now torn inland, to the highlands. At the beginning of the storm, round by the rock pool, sheltering under a ledge, he had seen a woman arrive, tear off her dress then be followed to the pool by a man. He had not stayed, had not sought to invade their privacy, had slipped away, he hoped unnoticed. Nobody could notice anything in such sudden wild storm. Now he watched light increase from near nil.

Now there was light sufficient for him to begin to use the camera. A handful of gulls squalled past, demanding answers of each other, none from him. Even the gulls had company. He had come to this place seeking company but company was eluding him, while life chased others with vigour, or a vigour that gripped them but to him seemed flimsy, slight.

Aki Kaurismäki

2009-11-08T08:27:00.007+11:00

For years I have had stuck in my head the most memorable line in any film (forget the "Play it again Sam" misquote), from Kaurismäki's I Hired a Contract Killer (the film in which there is an assignation at the hamburger stand by Karl Marx's grave in Hampstead Cemetery). The protagonist, a modest and shy man, has decided he must end it all, and seeks advice on where to find a contract killer to kill himself. He is directed to a bar, the camera follow him down smoky stairs, into gloom, the piano stops, men with grim faces swivel and frown. The protagonist speaks: "Where I come from, we eat places like this for breakfast." (For the record, and it's scarcely a spoiler, he hires the killer, tells the killer to surprise him, promptly falls in love and ... (I won't spoil the rest).

This weekend we have also watched Kaurismäki's Mies vailla menneisyyttä [The Man Without a Past], which is sort of Jesus's parable of the Good Samaritan but explores the life after bashing rather more extensively. It is a film about very ordinary very decent people told in a beautifully paced and theatrical manner. It is full of lessons in photography, in precision, in fine detail, wryness, avoidance of the obvious, tight construction and simple complexity. The heart warms. Kathryn Heyman urged me at her master class in May: "the reader must know what the protagonist wants and yearn for its achievement." This film is a master class in that. It won the 2003 Grand Prix at Cannes and was nominated for best foreign film for the Oscars. The director boycotted the latter. In a letter to the president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, he wrote that the United States was “preparing a crime against humanity for the purpose of shameless economic interests”.

Kaurismäki had been invited to the New York Film Festival in 2002, but stayed away..."in protest of the U.S. failure to grant Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami a visa to attend the festival. A letter to the festival director read, in part:

“Under the circumstances, I, too, am forced to cancel my participation – for if the government of the United States does not want an Iranian, it will hardly have any use for a Finn. We do not even have the oil. But I would like to invite the American secretary of defense [Donald Rumsfeld] to see me in Finland. We could take a walk in the woods and pick mushrooms*. That might calm him down.”

[quoted from first link above]

* There is a mushroom-picking walk in the woods in The Man without a Past

Almodóvar's "Hable con Ella" [Talk to Her]

2009-11-08T08:05:00.004+11:00

If you want beautiful deliberate straight-line film, see Bertolucci's work, among which I rate Il Conformista [The Conformist] and Besieged especially highly for their deliberate process combined with mystery... and sheer beauty.

Almodóvar's films have often been straight-line, but last night we watched something else: his extraordinary Hable Con Ella [Talk to Her]. I know I saw it once before, in a film festival, but privately on wide screen at home it was easier to absorb properly. And as I am in the midst of endeavour to weave the novel backwards and forwards in time, and deal sensitively with and present complex issues clearly but not smugly or obviously, on the evidence and not in judgemental terms, the majesty of the achievement of this film sets it apart as an example of how one might hope one day to be able to present a story thus. Oh, bloody hell, don't ask me to tell the story, just please watch it. And don't read any blurbs before you watch it, please.

John Banville

2009-11-08T07:18:00.005+11:00

John Banville's prose was a considerable influence early this year, in its intensity. Beginning with Eclipse and The Sea, then reading into The Revolutions Trilogy, books on Copernicus, Kepler and Newton. I confess I have not yet finished Doctor Copernicus, but it has had especial influence. It shares with other Banville work his 'literariness'; his visual, visceral, emotional tugging; the precision, clarity and obscurity:

Waterborne he comes, at dead of night, sliding sleek on the river's gleaming back, snout lifted, sniffing, under the drawbridge, the portcullis, past the drowsing sentry. Brief scrabble of claws on the slimed steps below the wall, brief glint of a bared tooth. In the darkness for an instant an intimation of agony and anguish, and the night flinches. Now he scales the wall, creeps under the window, grinning. In the shadow of the tower he squats, wrapped in a black cloak, waiting for dawn. Comes the knocking, the pinched voice, the sly step on the stair, and how is it that I alone can hear the water dripping at his heels?

One that would speak with you, Canon.

No, no keep him hence...

John Banville, Doctor Copernicus, in The Revolutions Trilogy, Picador Edition 2001, page 107

Welcome to the fever-wracked world of Canon Koppernigk in the misery of the Baltic states 500 years ago.

These points:

if you don't love language, read someone else
if you need to understand everything or think you do or should, or expect a story unravelling in chronological order, then what kind of reality do you live in? Give me mystery or give me death :-)
key things in Doctor Copernicus for me were:

the portrayal of the pain and conflict of genius and the possession of new ideas
the presentation of a reality in which the genius with the new ideas has to do a whole lot of other things, like, in this case, governing and doctoring and churching and being mortal and physical variously
the beauty of story driving itself along in its own smoking rhythm
oh yeah, ok, ok, also its complexity, I do love the complexity, though it makes it hard to finish when you are reading half a dozen books at a time, or part-time.

Jervis Bay Arts Silent Auction

2009-11-07T07:48:00.005+11:00

Woo hoo, someone has bid already on my entry in the Silent Auction, see Loose Woman.

It looks pretty good in the gallery under a spectacular photo by Richard Morecroft (click on the image of Fire Trail to get a better glimpse.)

Bidding continues till 28 November. You can bid online.

Joni Mitchell

2009-11-01T06:25:00.005+11:00

I caught part of this lovely program with and about Joni Mitchell, inspiration, in my mind, of much of what is poetry and clarity in modern music.

Three things to note:

JM spoke of the demands on the performing artist, versus the painter. Nobody, she said, ever called out to van Gogh, "hey Vincent, do x again for us!" True. But then the painter in general suffers a different angst (I have begun to understand in recent times), that of creating children who then are sold to strangers, or at the least to people who do not really understand their birth. With one painting away to the slave market... I only just know this directly. When does one pass to factory mode of thinking? Perhaps the writer has it easiest, of not needing to let go...
JM spoke of how she resisted demands of the industry to stay within genre, stay with her fans, not develop what she wanted to say. So important, if you want to be other than a factory;
JM spoke of her concept of 'crop rotation' - of her need to move between painting and poetry and back again, for her brain's sake. This I understand very well, and I alsoinclude the permaculture garden in the backyard in the rotation in my head, a garden in which profuse nature is allowed a fairly free rein, providing many lessons and opportunities for observation, discovery; gasping with delight and amusement.

view from my studio workspace, into very young garden, including Helen's chocolate labrador, George, dozing in parsley sunshine

part 2 of novel

2009-10-30T07:18:00.005+11:00

After recovering from a Menieres Disease/fibromyalgia attack yesterday, last night I did an extensive rewrite of the beginning of part 2 - 2300 words. In a documentary style, covering Lucy's father's life to 1957. And this morning, after distraction of central focus to reading a couple of other things, including the Calvino but starting lighter, the way forward from 1957 suddenly appeared in my fringe vision... a flash back from 1975 in her mother's voice, mother telling story to daughter.

I know I am in good shape when I wake with a fresh idea, not a dark idea...

impressionistic writing, evocation

2009-10-30T06:37:00.006+11:00

In Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino* presents cities as described, with great difficulty, over barriers of language and culture and credulity, by Marco Polo to Kublai Khan.

It is a book that can be read at multiple levels. According to Wikipedia, it has been an inspiration to architects seeking ways of seeing places in their essences. In my reading, focused on my writing, what Calvino writes about a city could well be a way of seeing a book, or seeing life, or looking at life generally. The first city described by Marco to KK is 'Diomira'. The description is three sentences long. This is the third sentence:

"But the special quality of this city for the man who arrives here on a September evening, when the days are growing shorter, and the multicoloured lamps are lighted all at once at the doors of the food stalls and from a terrace a woman cries ooh!, is that he feels envy toward those who now believe they have once before lived an evening identical to this and who think they were happy, that time."

Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities, 1972, translated by William Weaver 1974, Harvest Edition, p 7

Replace the word 'city' with the word 'book'. Yearn to write it. At the same time, see why Calvino had no more to say, needed to say no more, before passing on to describe the second city.

Or consider this as a metaphorical way of describing a novel structure:

"This is the foundation of the city [of Octavia]: a net which serves as passage and support. All the rest, instead of rising up, is hung below: rope ladders, hammocks, houses made like sacks, clothes hangers, terraces like gondolas, skins of water, gas jets, spits, baskets of strings, dumb-waiters, showers, trapezes and rings for children's games, cable cars, chandeliers, pots with trailing plants."

ibid, p 7

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*I am going to provide links like that to Better World Books, no income for me, a better deal for you - rather than attach myself to other bookselling sites on the web which encourage a little pyramid selling)

Vladimir Propp

2009-10-29T16:56:00.003+11:00

Going back through my notes from Kathryn Heyman's masterclass, which I attended in May, I realised I had not followed up her recommendation to read Vladimir Propp's Morphology of the Folk Tale, published in Russia in 1928. Copies are hard to find, check at Better World Books.

Meanwhile the Wikipedia entry on Propp is very helpful and provocative.

item for silent auction to support Jervis Bay Arts

2009-10-28T13:19:00.005+11:00

Jervis Bay Arts are holding a silent auction at Huskisson Picture Framing 1- 28 November, as a fundraiser for next years SeeChange Festival.

Click here for information.

I have loosely lined the drawers of the Loose Woman and am entering her in the auction.

AND when I delivered it, they said, oh wow, she looks much better in the flesh!

Happy bidding! :-)

Novel - sent part one to Nalo

2009-10-26T22:39:00.005+11:00

I have (ahead of 1 November deadline) sent forty pages of the draft novel to my mentor, Nalo Hopkinson, essentially my intended part 1, this introduces the two main characters in scenes in 1975, 1968, 1998 and the present. I have also provided a scoping paper, outlining how I see the story developing (rather than a firm structure). Now to work on next sections!

Image is of a possible cover with working title.

‘Sensuous’ and ‘intersection’ — at the close-in person-to-person level as well as in the broader Australian to Chinese and indigenous to non indigenous connection levels. The difficulty of life intersection at any sensitive level.

Street art in Melbourne

2009-10-26T22:28:00.008+11:00

Helen and I went to Melbourne at the weekend for Nick's birthday. I have placed some photos of street art on two web pages, YOU CAN SEE MUCH MORE BY CLICKING HERE.

Some earlier photos of mine (Western Australia trip 2006) are here.

2005 Northern Territory trip here.

Those pages predated blogging as a mass activity. The internet offers opportunities to weave art and information. The Ngukurr school mosaic garden covered in the 2005 photos was also covered by a story on ABC RN Bush Telegraph, for which I also offered this spoken commentary, also designing art teacher Simon Normand's web site.

using the second person, finding perspectives

2009-10-15T09:21:00.007+11:00

In text quoted below I am using the second person ["you"] rather than first [I] or third [She] or more abstract ["It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..."]

I do not intend to use the second person through the whole book. Nikki Gemmell fiercely uses the second person throughout The Bride Stripped Bare, an extraordinary and difficult piece of writing, teetering in places, needing to be read as a whole, not hunting for saucy bits as some may. The 'you' works, the book to be taken very seriously. Maybe easier to start with Cleave, published in the US as Alice Springs: Gemmell's raw, chafed, hunting, hunted rhythm and style there have been a big influence on me.

I was very pleased when a member of my local writers group, reading my opening second person chapter (see last entry and 'writing fiction', a couple of entries below that) told me he found it very confronting. Excellent, I said, I am delighted that you found it uncomfortable to be inside of the head of an 18 year old young woman on her way back to Beijing from political imprisonment in 1975.

Other voices will be used, to provide different viewpoints and more documentary passages.

the nature of writing, thinking, existing

2009-10-15T08:16:00.012+11:00

I was struck by reading this quote, several years ago, when organising a photo diary.

We saw that Life did not narrate, but made impressions on our brains. We, in turn, if we wished to produce on you an effect of life, must not narrate but render impressions.
Ford Madox Ford, writing to Joseph Conrad

It helped me understand what I was doing, organising an impressionistic photodiary with written content... before the rise of Web2 technologies, using the beauty of old html.

The statement also impacts my writing. There is a strange tendency in reading, for many if not most to want a clear story, when in most of our lives, stories around us are far from clear, the inside of our heads are not clear. So one objective in my writing is to stay inside this 'disclarity' or reality, not make it all too easy. It is valuable to read about the unreality of reality to keep balance in all this. Start here perhaps.

This however brings the writer into the arena of consideration of 'tacit knowledge'. We all have things in our head, local, personal, family knowledge that shapes what we say and how we say it and how we interpret what others say. The difficulty in being too impressionistic is the extent to which the writer may fail to make clear the tacit background, without which the impression is meaningless.

As a first step, the impression obligation is to describe rather than put a value on the object. Too easy to poison a text with own values, not just in saying "he was ugly" rather than that "he stood in the shadow and seemed part of the shadow, dark, short, eyes fixed on me, mouth open as if about to damn me." That's pretty obvious, but in writing I am trying to step right away back from judgement; the characters have feelings, that's for them, they are articulate, but their credibility depends also on depth of reader empathy, which means the reader needs to be able to understand why their feelings are thus and be willing to share that. I am now committed (after several other starts) to the opening in my entry below "Writing fiction" (12 October, my time) but it has seemed too mysterious, so I have added this current day reverie ahead of it:

Slow Steam Train, Xining to Beijing, March 1975

You sit on the top of this hill and look to the sea, alone with this view this early morning. You are alone; it is hard every day to connect, hard to connect also with your own life so much of which seems so far away. People around you seem to have lives they regard as complex, they look at you as nothing, as outsider, some as unwelcome; or, some of them, as foreign trophy. You must be, it seems, the refugee who can’t really be a refugee because she doesn’t seem to have anything wrong with her. Wrong with you? What these days is right? What has been right when? You look back to when you were eighteen, to one of the many hinge points of your existence, etched with acid on you at the other side of the earth. Your mind drifts to sharp recall, always you can recall that time. You sit in warming sun and drowse and jerking through your sleep you can recall it all, the cold of the Qinghai plateau north of Tibet, the comfort of routine in the prison farm, the fear of travelling back from there…

Mentorship - my great good fortune

2009-10-13T15:47:00.009+11:00

I am delighted to have been accepted by Nalo Hopkinson for mentoring of my novel. Nalo works mainly in science fiction and fantasy, but the energy and directness, the humour and raw honesty of her writing should make this very valuable. As will Nalo's cross-cultural and social issues perspectives.

I have to have 40 to 60 pages to her by 1 November ditto 1 December and 1 January, have already been at work revising and developing existing text, lots to build, lots to chuck, I did a typo in my acceptance email saying I still needed an ending of a dynamic kink, meant kind, but kink will do better...

Here are pages regarding Nalo:

Wikipedia entry

Nalo's web site

My daughter Liz (see also here) drew my attention to this opportunity last week, thanks Liz.

... and thanks indeed Nalo :-)

Writing fiction

2009-10-12T14:55:00.006+11:00

There are a number of links in this entry. Click to go there, use the back button to come back.

I am endeavouring to construct a novel located around where I live but also (as one of the characters advised me in June) in China.

Here is a piece I wrote in January, as the drawing and painting transformed my writing.

Here a fragment written in March, beginning to build a voice and rhythm and style.

-- noting Italo Calvino's insight:

The novella is like a horse, a means of transport with its own pace, a trot or a gallop according to the distance and ground it has to travel over; but the speed Boccaccio [in text he just quoted] is talking about is a mental speed. The listed [by Boccaccio] defects of the clumsy storyteller are above all offenses against rhythm, as well as being defects of style, because he does not use the expressions appropriate either to the characters or to the events. In other words, even correctness of style is a question of quick adjustment, of agility of both thought and expression.

Italo Calvino, Six Lessons for the Next Millenium, Vintage edition 1988, p 39.

You see how I went looking for rhythm on that train (not horse) - link above.

Here is the current (October 2009) opening chapter, placing the reader in the head of an 18 year old returning to Beijing with her mother from a labour prison in 1975, late in the Cultural Revolution.

And here is an excerpt from a later turning-point in the book (which will not all be in second person)

... getting away from old areas of writing, like this. There is also the challenge in fiction that, unlike a speech, the novel writer must not preach, must not teach, must find other means to express ideas and make minds go tick tick boing

Photo taken Eyre Peninsula, 2006, life has risks, follow the sign...

Full energy

2009-10-12T14:15:00.008+11:00

I had the tabletop [90 x 148cm] with "Winter Dreaming" on it.

I needed to hang it outside in my studio space, under cover, so you could see the big garden vision from the door, distance of about 8 metres.

I needed to paint on the other side of the table, a more indoors vision, a summer vision.

So here she is, life sized, enticingly through the lattice:

"No, don't feel you have to keep your shirt on."

That is the view in from my one year old suburban food garden,

where this new arrival has some company, in fact:

a gifted scarecrow, gift from Banjo

and a semi-buried hitchhiker.

The hitchhiker I picked up last year, lying in a somewhat disarrayed

(and incomplete) state, beside a road near Sydney.

Interesting psychological experience to stuff her in the boot and bury her in the garden.

Police helicopters fly by but so far no sudden interest!

When I was planting the Yarrow in broken crevices of the torso I was unaware

that the foliage of this herb Achillea Millefolium is technically described

as hairy pubescent

So here below is

"No, Don't Feel You Have to Keep Your Shirt On"

without the lattice in the way.

charcoal on acrylic on particle board table top

90 x 146cm

I knew very soon after this quick sketch - soon, that it, after I had sprayed the fixative and it was unalterable, that there were things that could have been done better...

but I am pleased my drawing is becoming more free and confident.

and it's really good to draw on a solid surface and life-size

back to table size

2009-10-12T13:59:00.010+11:00

I had been trying to understand how to combine light and dark and also physiology and form in painting with acrylic, back mid year. There is an image here showing a photo from the internet and small charcoal drawing [A4] and washy attempt at rendering it with acrylic. I hung this up for some weeks as a lesson to myself, to study, repent, revise... but rather than revise the same - I was getting bored with the look of it anyway - I took this door (120cm x 78cm) back to rough white acrylic undercoat (interior house paint, the base of everything I do) and last Tuesday, while awaiting the arrival of my local Berry Writers' Group, I painted "Waiting for the Rain on Tuesday 6 October 2009". Violent rain and thunder and lightning arrived as I finished. Very pleased with the listless calm and preoccupation in the picture. You will see a slight Caribbean influence, I had been reading the web site of Nalo Hopkinson. It looks like my work will have one continuing factor, of being done very quickly. This may define media I use. There is a current preoccupation with the female form, the highest form of geography in my opinion. It is also a form that it seems one must paint, must acquire competence to paint, or nothing. Later maybe who knows what... but also sensuality will be a constant, I expect.

work above experiment in understanding light and dark and form

painted over as below

acrylic above,

charcoal on acrylic on 120cm x 78cm plywood

click image to enlarge, use the back button to return

small dark tabletop phase

2009-10-11T21:17:00.001+11:00

I found myself with a curious little three legged phone table and another rectangular coffee table, which may have been a TV stand - in days when television sets were smaller - with a 'lazy susan' top, that swivels around.

The first become Violet, the "Loose Woman" [acrylic on wood]... who lent herself to a label for marmalade made from grapefruit given to us by two women with a remarkable sustainable property not far from here. The purpose of making marmalade is the design of labels (in case you were not aware of this).

The second one, the one that turns around, became a much more complex work, with many layers of charcoal and acrylic... "The hands that Turn the Table."

Rotate the computer to get the full picture here!

Many hands and handsfull, bent on turning the tables.

from furniture to structure

2009-10-11T18:15:00.002+11:00

I had made a start on pieces of furniture, had other items gathered to work on, scratching my head while walking past them... but meanwhile I had had some found at recycle nineteenth century windows and french doors installed to divide the house in two. I needed to paint around the new work, but painting the frame of the door got out of hand immediately and then.. and then I began reverse painting on glass.

Reverse painting a person on glass is interesting, interesting technical challenge, also interesting psychologically as you have to begin with the make-up, the superficial... and then move onto the skin and in to the deeper tissue. I had, I confess, developed the image of "Greeter" before coming to terms with the need that she needed more on the back than what was on the glass... there had to be a whole person. And it was evident that such a wild spirit needed the support of her Alter Ego - behind the wilder side of each of us, maybe, maybe, is a sterner, assertive, perhaps still precocious Alter Ego.

They have had their impact on the house....

evolutions

2009-10-11T18:05:00.001+11:00

I do expect my work to continue to change.

Here I had gone in a short space from general drawing to landscape in which female forms instantly became evident, to placing the nude in the landscape.. then the landscape disappeared and the business of human form took over, largely with charcoal. With charcoal or acrylic, I might make the all-important line with the instrument, but develop texture and shading with the hand, the primary organ of engagement with human form. In this case another modest back view (the line as pure as possible, this a one minute sketch) and a table painted as "Fallen Woman"

large, larger!

2009-10-11T18:00:00.001+11:00

Picking up items from kerbside chuck-out.... And here I found myself with two tables. These presented challenge because of their sheer size, what to do... Here is the evolution of one table, into a painting called "Winter Dreamer". Took months... walking past daily, hiding it away and getting it out again, doing smaller items in between.

no more classes, no more canvas

2009-10-11T17:54:00.001+11:00

I have always had a difficulty with boundaries. And always tended in galleries to look at the interesting practical devices (temperature controllers, bugle head screws, fire extinguishers) more than the contrivances of so-called installations.

I began gathering bits of furniture from the tip and painting on them. Here are two works from early 09:

"Mind your Toes" - on a small stool

"Serving Wench" - on a wheeled trolley

modestly drawing from marble image

2009-10-11T17:49:00.003+11:00

In January 2009 Clare Vivian had taken me for a walk around the Abbotsford Convent in Melbourne, where we spent some time admiring the Venus de Milo-like figure of Rosina, in the nunnery courtyard... one could speculate on the role of such a figure in such a place in former times, with generations of nuns passing by... it was an opportunity to photograph and sketch. Light and shade and more difficulty with face than else. As with the writing, one thing to tell a story, another to define and build characters.

art class

2009-10-11T17:42:00.002+11:00

I enrolled for an art class in early 09, attended several classes but found it had more emphasis on rules than tools, I got enough tools and left.

We were to do landscape, I found myself seeing human forms in landscape, they seemed to take over... and you can see the influence of my attendance at Joan Miro's workshop at the golf course :-)

To Drawing Group

2009-10-11T17:35:00.002+11:00

I spent a little time late 2008 in a drawing group, getting some basics of charcoal and conte crayon, teaching myself largely, in the company of others.

drawing, painting, writing

2009-10-11T17:25:00.006+11:00

I had come to realise that the gap between my non-fiction writing and fiction writing – I was edging across the gap here in this web site of mine – required something of a jump from a cliff as required in drawing and painting. A world of difference between developing and editing a text and placing marks on a surface, which seem to develop a life of their own. I had been framing images in the camera for a long time, in 2008 these images became a little abstract, no, that's not the right word, I was pulling the emotion and intensity from the situation, as in these photos taken in the edge of surf at dawn, Coledale beach, June 2008, after a wild storm. More pictures of that are here.

But this is child's play, camera play, using a whole device for capturing an image, not the same as story writing or painting from nothing. Well, maybe not child's play, but a whole different business, the eye and brain with little reliance on the hands. Some earlier photos of mine, in a format more complex than simple blog, are here.

Thanks to Ruth for looking at these images and others from that day and saying: "You have to paint."

to begin at the beginning

2009-10-11T17:13:00.002+11:00

Drawing at Crams Road with Ruth, December 2008. Looking down at Ruth drawing, when two teenage boys hastened by to dive into the river, one after the other.