Moppy at Golden Dawn, and Waywin

Love is the Drug playing between

 

bands

at The Golden Dawn Friday night

classic time travel

Long Island Iced Tea for Gen

G & T for me

Nooves in Viv Westwood shoes and poetry lipstick

Moppy in the best tux style council get-up evah

Kanooa has a pirate French look going on

we wait for Sans on red cast iron chairs

she wants some notebooks

crush bang yeeaah

dit dit dit

&&&@@@^^^

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Moppy's MP3 for free here  

http://www.undertheradar.co.nz/utr/artists/A/1303/N/Moppy.utr

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Also, this Sunday Waywin is at Kraftbomb

 http://www.kraftbomb.com/

http://waywincraft.blogspot.co.nz/

These are new Lyrical Brooches, and Waywin also has some new Tiny Titles. These are only available from Kraftbomb or if you know Waywin personally, at present. The articles need to be seen, held and admired, Waywin thinks, and talking with the crafter really does enrich the whole experience.

Leaving the Place of a Thousand Lovers Tamaki Makaurau

the apocalypse is subtle

grey new territory where she's no idea what could happen

next - interior travel like wakeful dreaming

'smile at fear' a famous artist quoted in a magazine

queen city Auckland where she dance moves

a play blue car turns the southern motorway sci-fi

alone laughing getaway with her latest imaginary friend

(been inventing company for good since Amrka)

a New York City kite last spring

but now she's chanting local landscape to inhabit

loneliness a traditional past-time and grand craft
silence could fog the place - bring the sky too down

spring birds dart the road crossing top speed traffic

she sees him in the back seat like a privileged wayward child

fluffy clouds ahead stacked in order of importance

startling blue above as clear as an idiot's conscience

he asks a question cheek-innocent - where are we now?

o this is where stud farm daughters sip through polo

and woolsheds sell soy latte decaf cappuccino

nearing Manurewa the turn off to Clevedon

subtle shades of wealth attempt camouflage

but for extraordinarily well-kept fences

intense green naivety could blush not owning

they're somewhere between ocean and eggplant

rolling pasture with white fence battens nailed

horses require visible height and limits - doesn't any sensitive?

a hush of knowing how noisy loss becomes otherwise

these lullaby streets and their cradle names

leading to bare masted ships moored near the horizon

forgetting asphalt with Kawakawa Bay

loose mollusc bone banks of cockle shells

rain cups pastel skitter and underfoot grind

where is he now in her rescue of make-believe?

invented stories to save air-fares and shock

but could they crunch about this pale streaked beach

discuss Russian authors in their strange recognition?

her imagination, his charm and impossible numbers

veils of thought their purdah and choreography

reinventing who they are daily like a newspaper

distance self-defense against artist ninjas

anyone who wishes may believe they're here

while she curls this car lone into fern and more dense green

the hill road follows a snaky tarred route

foothills and farmland and fir

snaps black creosoted house and barn so definite

an occasional theatre of lilies and pasture

some seasons the stones here talk of fires

forgetting their tumble under ancient glaciers

people may also prefer to disremember icier days

mists and breezes go on for hours regardless

sensory organ rivers to our inner seas

spear-headed pine-tops are waiting for what?

the braid edge road ribbon

a series of lush green garments

the body of land spring-dressed

calm and pleasant which may continue

 
shell-shocked or frantic players welcome here

subside while rounded grey stones persevere

imagine joy could turn them into wings

acceptance of best and worst a relief map

 
these shores are the emotions between

a gentle firth where water rests and laps

before the hot springs past the bird sanctuary

a plan of experience includes steam

new Kopu Bridge bulge before the Thames road

(how fearfully the old bridge shook

bump bump bump a language we didn't want to learn)

technology as smooth as a con-artist 

Thames built on gold rush and shipping

some of these quaint houses could sing once

their voices raised into the night with strikes

a clang upon fortune's occasional cast iron proof

then a long dark tunnel of dead camera battery later

the curly highway to Whangamata and Whitianga

destination gate swing to a gravel drive curve

sleepy cats, old friends and a black corrugated iron barn

where do years go and all this talking?

we hope our children also wonder

raise eyes skyward when birds call from the valley

talk in the spa pool at night and rescue moths

cheese makers further south

cafe attached for travellers to believe again

journeys also operate over a table

every conversation turned a giant key

recently she moved into a new mind

where these trips occur and agreement

the strangeness of harmony after wilderness

who ever knew goodness could feel extreme?

 inside an arched blue room rebuilding

the subconscious mind vaulted and velvety

friends keepsake others in messages

now and then a touch to believe we're real

before she slept her friends flew close to hold

spoke through darkness their muffled hopes alight

let some tears go safe from drowning

laughed their buoyancy's return and rafts

oared or waved towards bridges

believed this is what always matters most

coming together to clasp and let go

flawed and repaired our beautiful nonsense

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At Miranda Hot Springs I noticed a welcome change to their brochure, visitors can sponsor a native tree. I will be buying trees to cover the carbon cost of this trip, shall keep you posted.

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These photographs and more shall be posted on my facebook with captions eventually, however they were each taken during a road trip from Auckland NZ to Miranda (Hauraki) Hot Springs via Clevedon and the coast road, then to Thames and at last, into the Coromandel Peninsular, October 2012 - thanks to Annie and Terry for a lovely visit. They make stunning furniture and homewares, amongst many other activities. The fireplace is not theirs, (the image finishes this blog post) but it gives you a good idea of their style, the trugs and picture blocks are theirs, below.  http://www.livingimagesdesign.co.nz/

The cheese factory and cafe we visited is here  http://www.matatokicheese.co.nz/

Arohanui tatou katoa - great love to us all and our families, friends and communities on this planet Earth our only home x

wonder

Sins and Virtues by Trixie Delicious - if you google her website please be aware it has adult content

The nature of a tree is different to the nature of a human being, but we may use the image of a tree to illustrate some people's behaviour, or appearance. A young woman in her early twenties may be said to look like a spring peach in blossom, slender, pretty and full of promise. The muscular ropes of supplejack looped around trees in the dense bushland of New Zealand could represent the complicated links we have with others, relaxed between friends but strong nevertheless, and dense with meaning. More extreme or abstract behaviour like sadistic tendencies, or greed and selfishness, or prudence and charity for that matter, are harder to illustrate in  the world of flora. What tree or plant pretends to be attracted to someone else, then proceeds to create arguments and trouble in order to feel some kind of pleasure? Lush greenery refuses, in my mind, to represent the more difficult actions and motives of people, but when we've been hurt or disappointed then it could be a positive action to plant a tree to do something to change life for the better, and for a long time to come.

A tree is a long-term symbol of growth, health, goodness and investment in the future.

Imagine if in every case, when we are let down or put upon by someone else, when we believe we've been caught up in the manipulations of people who are unable to truly care for others, and they've hurt us, we plant a tree to show we're determined to stay positive. How often would a tree be planted on Earth? We could replace the missing half of present trees taken away since homo sapiens appeared, in no time.

                           http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bloedel_Reserve_Willow_Tree.jpg


Planting trees can only be a positive action however, realistically, if we've made sure the tree is planted correctly, in a place where it is allowed to flourish for decades or even centuries. Check before planting any tree or other plant the position is best for it, and also there are no wires or pipes below where you are digging. In New Zealand the contact is on the link below to ask about wires underground. There are also some handy tips, like always digging by hand. Please google your own country's safety organisation, google - 'underground wires digging safety name of country here'

For underground pipes you need to check your property's plan or ask your landlord.

http://www.chorus.co.nz/safer_digging

I never cease to wonder at how many ways there are to make our actions on Earth for the best, and this is a new one for me.  Lately, life has been extremely difficult and it's a welcome challenge to find ways to stay happy, healthy and working in a decent frame of mind. Therapy every week has assisted me a great deal to find ways to stay well, along with my own work, learning to focus on fruitful ways to live and behave. 

Trees have stood for benefiting the family, loving nature, determination, investment and beauty in my family. When my father's grandfather sailed over here from England on a sailing ship, in the late 19th century with his wife and six children they landed in Wellington. He then rode a horse north, for days, weeks, and looked for some good land, found some near Cambridge and they all moved there. The oaks they planted are now enormous. It is called The Oaks, that property and another family live there lately.

When one of his daughters, a painter, (her friends called her Gyp, because she was so like a gypsy riding her horse into the wilderness and so on), married my grandfather and later moved to Hamilton on a high property overlooking the Waikato River, she planted trees all down the long, narrow, private road the people on the corner had made for easier access. Ma, as we called her, also planted trees on their property and across the road near where my parents eventually lived.

At the back of the property behind the house my father built on weekends, (with friends and family wielding a hammer sometimes too), there was a pussy willow tree I admired, which Ma had planted. My mother explained Ma loved nature. I could imagine Ma chose this tree for its soft buds. This variety of willow has silky buds like cat's fur. I liked to think she could imagine me picking the stems and arranging them indoors once a year, to remember her. She died when I was two.

Then my father planted various fruit trees at the back of the old property when we moved over there after my grandfather died, and my Aunty who inherited the place had married and moved to the country. Already a guava tree and feijoa stood there, then later we had peaches, pears, apples, with a Kiwifruit vine, (male and female) around the side of the garage. It grew on a huge metal frame Dad made, (he was a welder and owned a business making farm machinery). The quiet behind the garage and those mysterious, brown hairy fruit which were Chinese Gooseberries in those days, all held on a galvanised steel, grey frame, the whole arrangement somehow as strange as something from outer space.

My mother had a green thumb and kept a flourishing, beautiful garden. Her ancestor, my great-great grandfather Francois Leleivre took cuttings from Napolean's grave when he sailed to New Zealand from France in 1840.  The willows along the Avon River in Christchurch are from Napolean's grave and they're enormous today. My ancestor planted those willows there.

I imagine Francois on board ship with his weeping willow cuttings wrapped in sacking or kept in soil, in pots perhaps. He'd water them with precious water every day or so, I suppose. It took three months to sail over here, they took French navy ships, he was on the Comte de Paris. Francois worked as a merchant seaman to get here and then became a schoolteacher. His cottage is still at the historic village of Akaroa, just outside Christchurch.

I plan to go there one day and stay a week or so, to see where my ancestor who loved trees, (and Napoleon) lived with his wife from Malmanche, Justine Rose, in Akaroa.

http://www.akaroa.com/node/285






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Anyone in Tamaki Makaurau Auckland, New Zealand who'd like a kowhai tree around the middle of next year to replant from a pot, by the way, please let me know. I have a number of seedlings here. They have to be replanted in the middle of the year around April.