Yurt life but just for the weekend...

I finished work Friday afternoon in London, got on a bus and landed somewhere near Exeter.

To catch up with my friend Sammy aka #bigpotdog.  

This is the street I found the film in.

Check out the headpiece. 

Put the bananas in the window. The bananas will sell.

live everything. yes pls.

cute humans looking through junk. #classic

Taking a walk.

bw life.

So thankful for my Sammy friend.

a charity shop treasure.

Big Pot Dog #bpd

That time i broke stuff.
He asked about the dead trees but i was alive and wanted the all care he had for the dead trees.

Making friends

views and gates.

The horse that bites.

Sammy and his boys.

Yurt life for sure.

This is 2018

all the beauty somewhere out there. 

the way things fit...

only black outline,

colour me in sweet dreamer.

rugged sky

cherry pie

you laying by my side.

the end has no end

in you and i...

tell me all the beauty you see,

capture my heart as days drift by.

never set it free.

do you know?

do you know me now?

then fall again,

into my arms.

= 35 mm film, mt eden, new zealand =

#hisnamewasfrank...

There so much history here for me and there is something very beautiful about coming back to this place; that feeling of home. Open air, old things, old humans and familiar love.

=this is the view from #nannaandfranks backyard= 

If there's one thing i know about family- it's that it's complicated.

Different personalities connected through blood, excepted to love one another. We can't always get it right. My parents couldn't keep it together, although they may have tried. My father- his affair with his secretary, when i was fifteen. My mum- her Nigerian scam fake lover situation. i needed an example and Frank was it. Although i didn't realise it until the night before he died.

=#nannaandfrank out the front of franks shed=

Nanna and frank had six daughters and when the first grandchild came to earth he thought he was too young to be called grandfather so we always called him Frank...he was grand.

Frank grew up in one house, he never left this place. He never went overseas; in fact he never left Victoria. He said "If you want to see the best view in the world, you just need to stand on mt blowhard and look north." Frank died two years ago now, and i know he'll be remembered for what he did rather than what he never did. 

=the old fire station across the road from #nannaandfranks house=

Nanna and Frank taught me that relationships take dedication and forgiveness and hope. 

Frank made jam, from berries he grew. He was a skilled blacksmith; made his daughters a swing, that i still use when i visit. He was never too busy to spend time with a friend or help in any way he could. The post office run out of their house for years, they taught ballroom dancing classes together. Frank volunteered for the local five service and a helpline for people suffering depression. He could re-sight the great Australian poets and serviced all the windmills in his district. When we were little ladies he would pick roses from his garden, rap them up in tinfoil and hand us a little bouquet when we would visit. Every year without fail, he would personally deliver a real christmas tree to our house. In my young mind he became the smell of pine.

 =the truck in their backyard=

 He never talked about all the things he did, never boosted about how much he knew. He was content to sit with his family, while we ate the soup he'd just made and waited patiently for his famous jelly slice. i loved that stuff.

 =Frank's father invented a type of rubber used on the wheels of a horse and cart, one of his family's cart's is on exhibition at Sovereign Hill, in Ballarat.=

Frank was all deaf toward the end but was still altogether in the head. I was thankful for that because that night, as he lay dying, i said "thank you for being a wonderful grandfather Frank" and he still knew who i was. I took a cloth and run it under the tap and gently wiped the sweat off his forehead. Afterwards Nanna said that was the very best thing i could do for him. 

=They still chop wood because they can't cook if they don't have fire.=

The next morning i was waiting for mum to fly in, my aunties has left and i was the only one at the hospital, in the room, alone with the body of Frank. It was the strangest thing, the light coming in through the window and i swear i saw him breathe. But i didn't... i'd never seen so many people at one funeral before. He had influenced so many, loved so many. Frank is the greatest human i have known. And i am thankful for him, for family. 

"Strange, isn't it? Each man's life touches so many other lives. When he isn't around he leaves an awful hole, doesn't he?" 'It's a Wonderful Life'

i see this as a rich heritage and i hope my cousins and i can always come back to this place for that familiar love.

 inanystillmoment@gmail.com

photos by mish on hasselbald

#zinedream...

i started a zine 3 years ago... im going to finish it 

#almost...

to stay...

All pain

All joy

All sorrow

All rough

And

Regeared

Life

Cut open

Bloody

Exposed

Healing

Through

Your

Knife

What’s left?

What lasts?

What’s important

Until the end day

To overcome

To face what’s

Broken

Hungry like the grave

And try

And learn

And know

What it really means to stay

#mish

#tuesday...

The name of the day was Tuesday

When sorrow flooded my veins

By the yarra alone

Looking out toward the city

And the sky

Always looking out

Waiting for you

Always

Without seeing you

Loving you all the time

I know you were there

The winter air

The light in winter

The weight on my bones lifted

I was reminded that there’s

Nothing more I have to be…

In all this

Black

Red

Blue

Green

And

Grey

I forget that im enough…

me

#camplife

I walked to the closest café, my spine won’t take me far; I feel slow in all ways, since august, if im honest. I know it’ll pass, these things do, it’ll just take time. Time being something I always have plenty of and not enough simultaneously. And I remember writing “I’ve been trying to push the days out the window; to make them jump. I feel like the quicker they come and go, the closer we’ll get to each other” #time

While my sign school class took holidays, I took to Phillip Island, working two weeks on camp. Camp is a complex beast; something hard and beautiful and worth it. I don’t want to over think it but must always find a way to process the experience by the end or I don’t know how I’d go back again.

In some ways normal; cabins, a lake, canoes, a giant swing, coffee, laser tag, calling the police on a kid, watching the blue penguins come to shore for the evening, sunrises, sunsets, coffee, a butter knife thrown at my face, camp food, orange t-shirts, a long drive and questions…so many questions.

Why do you have a boy hair cut?

How long until we’re there?

Why can’t we go to the Melbourne show this year?

What’s ‘will you be my girlfriend’ in sign language?

What’s ‘you’re a dump ****’ in sign language? 

You taught us the colours, why won’t you teach me that!?

How many penguins are in Australia?

Why is the ocean blue and why do the waves do that?

Is that the time coming in?

Where are they going?

Can I take one home?

Do I have to do home?

How may sleeps until camp again?

Who started the world?

If I wanted to go to heaven, whats the best way to get there?

Why don't you have a boyfriend?

Why doesn’t my dad love me?

And so many more. And I find I’m naturally very honest about how much I do or don’t understand. Kids respond to honesty. These kids do.

I have been doing this for over 2 years now and I would say this camp was the toughest yet, and yes, having a knife thrown at me was terrible experience and calling the police in wasn’t great either. It moves me every time and I have a heat patch on my spin and tears fall from my eyes sitting here, at this café from all kinds of pain but I will keep going back as long as I can because when im with those kids, I feel I am really living. If I can give them a glimpse of hope that suggests they can grow into a decent human, a positive contributor to society and someone they can look at in the mirror and think ‘today I like you’; then in my mind that’s worth it.

The reality is these kids come from very difficult situations and they’re not in some distance, far away place; they are in our backyard.

My housemate said it “might be time to look for another less dangerous holiday job” and the physio said “you’ve been accepted for the 12 month health plan, usually I only have people with obesity or lung problems; normally heavy smokers- so that must be some kind of pain you’re in.” to which I replied “it’s not the worst pain I have...”

It’s only a small window of time I get to spend with these kids and I believe that hope is so important and I see unique potential in each child I interact with and I’m so far from not caring. When it comes to camp I think “I can’t just do nothing about it, when I can do something about it.”

And so I’ve decided I’m willing to take whatever life throws at me… literally.

I woke before sunrise one morning, while everything on the island was still new and unfamiliar. I found my way to the beach to watch the sunrise. Upon reflecting on that morning, I wrote the poem below, in case my writing is illegible, here it is:

“Remember early when your colours called my name.

Breaking into dawn, 

spilt in, 

old from new. 

Darkness before me; I walked the field. 

Dew and grass and mud on boots, I didn’t mind- 

in fact the opposite.

All the sounds of children, even in my sleep, never ceasing and

I climbed the restless night wide in thought. 

Now with one simple step in front of another; I anticipate your next move.

Chasing down your mystery with a ‘why’

and many

and always seeking.

Content but never satisfied until I know. 

And I see you in the water, in the sky, in the eyes of others. 

If a howl,

if a whisper 

or in the silence breaking through; 

your colours always calling me, drawing me to you.”