28.5.13

Solace

The mess that I alluded to last post is still not resolved. It's unlikely to be resolved for some time probably. Messes generally aren't.  I liken it to a ball of wool that's been played with by a kitten (or a toddler, as the case may be). It takes time, patience and a couple of episodes of Game of Thrones to untangle the mess. But eventually you do get there. And we will too.  

I start a new job next week and I'm quietly optimistic that it will be good. It will be different at any rate and at the moment different is good. 


If you're curious about the photos - I took them as part of my latest photography assignment - the Yarra River by night.  Despite owning a tripod, I've been quite lax in using it and have almost never ventured out after dark with photography as the main objective. The Yarra takes on a split personality at night - all sexy on the south bank with a quiet, slightly seedy undertow on the north. I found myself drawn to exploring the industrial lines and the solitude of the north side which somehow perfectly captured the sentiment of the river on a cold, wet night in May. 

10.5.13

Mess



I keep dipping in and out of this space.  I want to be here but I’m not quite sure how. It seemed much easier before. Life seemed much easier, in general. Before Melbourne. Before Canberra. Before I decided to uproot up our little family halfway around the world and demand that we call it ‘home’. 

Life is a bit messy at the moment. It’s messy and I’m a little reluctant to write about it for fear of sounding a little self-absorbed and pitiful. Perhaps the hardest thing about writing about ‘the now’ is the admission that 18 months into our Australian adventure it still doesn’t feel like home. There are so many reasons why - some of them have to do with us - but many of them are about Australia. I love this country. I dragged M and E here because I thought we could love it. Perhaps not immediately but I really, honestly thought that we could grow to love this place and that Australia would love us back. But it hasn’t. And we don’t.  I feel guilty for that, and somehow responsible too, even though conceptually I realise that there is nothing I can do.

There’s other stuff too.  An unfulfilling job, the anger of time spent away from E in an unfulfilling job, the push and pull of motherhood, of career, of tending to friendships and relationship, of finding time for ‘me’ only to realise it means less time for them. It’s normal stuff mostly but there seems to be a lot of it at the moment and it’s messy and a bit ugly and when you’re not feeling entirely peachy about your own life you don’t exactly feel like writing about it. You definitely can’t imagine anyone else wanting to read about it.

But today a friend posted this on her facebook page. And then I read this. And then this. I also listened to all of Patti Smith's interview here. She's cool. Actually all of these ladies are cool.  They made me  realise that maybe I might have something to say after all. I'm particularly smitten with Dear Olive, she might just be a new blog crush of mine.

3.5.13

Cranbourne

I went on a school excursion to Cranbourne Botanical Gardens a few weeks ago. I was a little sceptical at first - Cranbourne doesn't exactly spring to mind when you think about beauty or adventures of a photography kind - but it turned out to be wonderful. The gardens are new, the last section was only opened last year, and they still have a bit of growing to do before becoming properly established but even now they showcase Australian flora in a way that I haven't seen before and it it's really quite wonderful. 

The structures of the garden are supposed to take you on a journey from the outback to the coastal inlets and out to the sea. Personally I didn't really buy into all that, I just enjoyed wandering around and discovering what was around the next corner.  All of the plants have been carefully selected to represent the different parts of Australia and yet none (none!) have the ability to seed at become weeds in the surround bush. This in itself is an amazing ecological feet.  If you're Melbourne based, the gardens really aren't so very far away and they're well worth a visit. I'm already looking forward to my next trip back when the trees have grown just that little bit more.