when the aliens arrive

my gym speaks to me. just me.

so i haven't been for a couple of weeks. i admit it.

i live practically right next door. they know my... interests, my weaknesses.

this on the telegraph pole outside my house today.

almost as good as being abducted. you don't get this at fitness first.

see you at my gym next week. really.

glass half empty

mitsu: the dark witch and the dream wilderness

meet mitsu: the dark witch and the dream wilderness. mitsu is pictured above being caressed by the witch as she guides mitsu through the dark spaces of her imagination far beyond the endless deviations of the sandman in search of her kidnapped mother.

mitsu is the self-funded brainchild of my favourite sydney songstress rosie catalano who i'm proud to call friend & sometime collaborator. this amazing book with hauntingly beautiful illustrations by her equally talented sister nikki catalano launched at the end of winter this year. i was lucky enough to be there & be part of the celebratory fray.

cafe yuga kept the wine and delicious food coming.  the artwork [excerpts of the illustrated pages] captivated the crowd, young and old, with their mesmerising beauty & many sold. the talented catalano sisters were delightfully humble as their hard work shone in their stead.

 

and i was lucky enough to received a signed copy...

an almost before...after

i took this photo in july 2010 after finishing phase one of the no-dig mandala beds. clare and alex had come down on a few weekends and lent their combined energy as we happily toiled together in the dirt. this was the weekend that clare & i integrated wool from our lovely organic neighbours into the mix. as seen the pond at this stage is a hand-carved hole in the clay [for future ponds a machine will probably be employed].

these three beds which sit in a semi-circle around the pond are closely based on linda woodrow's permaculture system. they still need to go a lot higher and are built like a terrine with newspaper, sheep's wool, water, pea straw, lucerne, mushroom compost, compost and NASAA certified organic soil mix. 

soon the chook tractor will be activated, but first the hens need to be built a secure straw bale/mud brick home in what will be an adjacent anti-aviary filled with berries & currants suitable for growing in this rugged technically cool temperate climate [it freezes in winter & dry boils in winter].  i'm so excited about hens. and bees which will come late summer after my refresher bee-keeping course].

all material was brought in from outside, except for rocks. expensive and tediously slow process weekend by weekend weighing down my little suzuki vitara. although long term purchase will be a mulcher to utilise all the wonderful surrounding eucalypts.

before then however, the next project is a grey water reed bed which will be built up closer to the cabin where it will work in sync with a mechanical filtration system where all grey water including kitchen will be twice processed & filtered before being used to irrigate the garden. although it's been really hard to find a system which integrates solar. we are completely off the grid so rely on unpowered alternatives. 

a lot of systems divert kitchen waste in with black water [stuff from your toilet] but because this is a vegetarian and sometimes seafood cabin with mostly organic waste i figure the oil breakdown shouldn't be as heavy as most kitchens. 

obviously any cleaning products or agents have to be seriously vetted before being used within the system and anything containing sulfates is being phased out. white vinegar, lemon juice and baking soda can actually take car eof most cleaning needs. lots of cleaning products are loaded with phosphates which can be positively converted to fertiliser for the soil. health soil is a healthy garden.

when i manage to collate my disparate photo collection i will post some very before images from when i first bought the property.  they provide an excellent illustration of how very far we have come.

fired-up story telling

it's august in condo. sydney is a distant eastern imprint on now dust sullied tyres.

the locals here hate the slight suggestion of cold. people panic attack if the needle slides down below 30. indoors air con is pumped to almost 40 degrees celcius, outside fires burn. sometimes on street corners which attract a huddled few. it's practically spring but i'm sweating like a pig in a bikini with the abattoir in sight. condobolin does not do winter.

bank, my student/town guide has taken me to the local pub [the impy] after our first day of filmmaking class. she insists that this is the rough one and looks a little dubious i'm not up for the task. her protective instinct is adorable but her concern is misplaced. despite being the outsider, i'm worried for them. i take off the bikini & straighten my swine mask.

most people don't know, but i was spawned from the asshole of the universe in a tiny town [invercargill] at the bottom of new zealand. at least that's where i grew up. way back then in the era of right wing conservative rednecks & skinheads it wasn't particularly smooth. especially for misfits. the flavours might be slightly different but our infant feet have been dipped in the same unfiltered bath water.

i told her previously of my obsession for stories & the ongoing search of perfect characters. she gets it and this is her hood. we're documentary whores. the magical textured fabric of the truth always stranger & much more compelling than fiction. we find who we're looking for outside. introductions are made & within a few rounds boundaries are blurred and i'm practically one of them. i channel harmony kormine meets douglas coupland. this is the shit.

no OH&S here... a fire fueled on petrochemicals blazes in the back courtyard of the pub as a handful of peeps who appear to have been drinking what goes on the fire engage in typical bush swaggering drunken tall tale telling. occasionally in the breaks more rocket fuel is thrown into the re-purposed tractor shovel which serves as the incendiary base. noone bats an eyelid, even those with third degree burn scars. the flames burn hard and high as the stories rise in a simultaneous and unbelievable crescendo as everyone around me sips back on midis.  

i realise my mistake as i gaze down at my oversized schooner, when questioned what my next drink will be in a disapproving manner. they drinks midis out here? the logic is simple really. urban legend has it that the beer is dosed with extra preservatives to get to the bush which increases the alcohol percentage. so they drink smaller glasses.... my witty observations are received like a lead balloon and i gracefully err to the status quo, and start drinking midis. wow that exercise to the bar twice as frequently really burns the alcohol off...

the moral temporarily escapes me. but flawed logic does not. face glowing, i settle in next to the searing flames, footloose & fancy free to uncover the essence, the soul of this town. 

the best stories are always shared around a fire.

raen rabbit, raen rabbit

...raen, raen, raen

[the end of the birthday [dinner]]

monk on king

i've been everywhere man...

my gnarled limbs

i've had a crush on this tree forever. i've always planned to make a film featuring it & am terrified by the time i get around to it, it will be dead. well, more dead. 

it's a casuarina, a genus native to australia. once when i was studying at an indigenous bushfoods workshop years ago now, the aboriginal elder told us that the old people tell their children if they ever get lost to find these knotted twisted trees. for wherever they are so is the water table. 

this one grows alongside the river on my little monkish mountain hideaway.

forest foragers

whilst clare & i collected rocks and filmed on the river over long weekend we came across a plethora of life. or evidence of where it had once [recently] been...

playing cards

your concept of an honest loving supportive relationship is somewhat different to mine. but you do win originality points for your reconciliation approach, perhaps not for taste. but then it's such a personal thing is it not?

thanks for disappearing once more last night to "look after your mates". i see their care was in excellent hands. the boys club lives on. i get the picture. all four of them.

less is more

my life is a bit like this at the moment. which is just wrong. i've barely had time to think, to write my blog, which is crap because there's so much to share. 


they say when you die one never wishes one worked more, or saw family/friends less, or unstroked the cat, or continued to neglect grooming one's claw like toenails...


organisation & thereby the manifested lack of it is all consuming. even though i love what i do it's all i do. which makes me question what do i want to do that i don't? but there's a whole universe to love in and out there.


as soon as your head never has time to meet your tail, it's time to rethink the program. there are only 24 hours in the day after all & some of them are meant for chilling. some people need to do less, not more. including me.

skipping down the garden path

i know some amazing women. they're so incredible they constantly blow me away & i can't believe there are so many of them. in some ways it really is a man's world. no wonder they all look so smug. i'm lucky enough to call some of these goddesses my friends, even though often i'm unsure whether i'm particularly deserving. 

whilst i struggle with my own existence, the meaning of it and whether it ought to be continued, i end up coming back to the women of the inner sanctum in my life: raen, claire, clare, serena, sonja, marianne, kate, ang, ky, gina, monica, cat, jess, kathleen, karina, shell &  sometimes conrad. the keepers of the secrets. there are men too but they number fewer even though typically i always liked men. sometimes it was mutual.

this is claire: the minx. the pragmatist. the comic. in my wildest fantasies i imagine us in our decrepit old age on balcony chairs gazing out together into the ether with vibrant blue rinses & cackles which soar to match. i am happy then.

but the thing is, which has been blatantly & painfully illustrated in my most recent love relationship is that there can be no future without a present. you can plan all you want but there's no point picking out the wallpaper & obsessively researching it if the foundations & roof aren't built. noone likes soggy walls. which invariably collapse.

one may as well just skip blindly down the unformed garden path back into the emotional wasteland from which we come from.

the cat with two bowls

conFICTION - THE CAT WITH TWO BOWLS

[140 char. bite-sized film <5mins]

with conFICTION KINO regular, punk monk propaganda's victoria waghorn delivers random slices of life from around the world around her. much like the characterisation of any short film.

extract from KSZ #03 [kino sydney zine]

sketchy the cat gazed happily out into the golden hour from his balcony vantage point atop the world summit [at least in his reality].

his unprecedented arrival disturbed the swooping cockatoos who squawked their disapproval as they flew off to meet the rising sun.

leaving more than footprints, spent seed shells rattled on the balcony rails in their wake.

a solitary chair basked under the warming rays forcing the last stubborn shards of frost to run. noone rushed to sit, it was still too cold.

metal flowers rose like ancient stonehenge dancers to salute the backlit séance of the moon. invisible bees humming to their ghostly beat.

under the water tank overflow into a recycled tub teeming with slo mo mosquito juveniles a slimy hose impersonating a broken tap, dripped.

meanwhile the feline breakfast bar lay uncharacteristically neglected. that fat cat was having way too much fun soaking up the view.

spider bite - twelve days on

so my pins aren't exactly looking their best these days. i've developed a cankle this week leaving a mismatched effect in boots & most footwear for that matter. not to mention the limp. this is what lies beneath. 

the question is: is it getting better or worse? it actually feels like my flesh is being eaten but perhaps that's just my overfertile imagination. it hurts. fear of hospital & medical intervention with fantasies of a future path in amputee devotism shake me somewhat although there is macarbe entertainment in the contemplation. 

so i'm not sure the standard wound care with additional hypericum or rosehip oil is really cutting it. my leg is now rather swollen with purple mottling which is indicative of necrosis according to the interwebs. like every other sucker i've managed to self-diagnose myself into a state of rabid fear. this is what rabbits feel like in front of approaching headlights.

i am weak & would probably kill myself if my leg had to be sawed off. not that vanity could in anyway be justified from these unlikely shots. marilyn monroe would be horrified.

wild ruminations of a visit to hospital don't focus in the same fun way i often consider self-checking into a sanitorium for the weak-minded & fellow misfits. there's no finger painting in the flesh eating disease wing.

if this were a CYOA and you had a similarly justified suspicion of the medical/pharmaceutical industry knowing their statistics for medical misadventure armed with lashings of hastily researched knowledge. what would you do? does it involve alcohol... or finishing the film you've shot to be exhibited in three days. you can still make films with no legs right?

attractive leg accessory

first off a disclaimer -- let me just say that usually my leg looks slightly more attractive sans swelling & blister which has mutated into a somewhat necrotized lesion. if i had've known i'd be blogging this, i would have also moisturised prior.

this is not the result of a strange midnight encounter [as i originally thought] with a hot water bottle but an unconscious liaison with a brown recluse spider AKA fiddleback [my second this year] in my sleep. 

moral of story: if you want a good night's sleep throw away the pills and hunt down your local spider for a DIY tranquilizer kit. oh and insure your legs before, not after.

you cut me deep shrek, you cut me deep

we met dan on the beach at sunrise. he brought a large bag. we strung up his naked body then we cut him. we cut him good. note the puncture wound on the lower right. right after making him shave off his beard & hair. then ruining his clothes. all for art's sake.

the results can be seen very soon as usual suspect punk monk propaganda art collaborators AKA alex papasavvas, clare devlin-mahoney & yours truly stampede artriot as part of the sydney fringe.

opens

18:00, september 11

upstairs annandale hotel

17 paramatta road

annandale, NSW 2038

the greener screen [now in black & white]

the greener screen... everyone's pimping their eco warez these days & film being an incredibly wasteful industry is a prime candidate for a major production overhaul. emerging trend spotters & pioneers of issues to champion, NSW prime film educator/facilitator, metroscreen, was in on the act this week running a series of proactive green screen workshops from their always humming beehive hub.

the greener screen is all about sustainable practice in the creative screen industries & goes far beyond the mandatory lip service corporates often deliver whilst mincing words between other contradictory indulgences.

from the reduce, reuse & recycle mentality emerges practical working solutions from pre pre-production, through to the marketing & distribution of the final project. people are starting to become not just interested so they can stick another logo on their credits and pat themselves on the back whilst crossing boxes but actually genuinely make a difference & minimise cost/waste simultaneously, ID inefficiency and produce both a film and modify impact ecologically in the long term. it is possible. i was there, on the fringe. there were others. we ate delicious vegetarian finger food together.

punk monk propaganda were the invited installation artists for the metroscreen event which we snapped up since it has a little bit of everything we love all at once. in association with the bower we created an art work from entirely salvaged items to enhance a cooperative eco-interaction environment. clare & alex conceived & shopped. 

on the day, alex diligently demonstrated that being a scout has excellent rope work advantages later in life & together we made this mutant incarnation... we considered calling it something obscure & typically wanky but "why run when you can barely balance" seems to have stuck & seems strangely appropriate.  

green screens don't just have to be for bad mashups or CGI laden films. if you reduce saturation they can be B & W. is that a bastardisation of eco i wonder?

for further future forward metroscreen events contact kate taylor, network co-ordinator.