Sydney Harbour Bridge

For someone who had no interest in Sydney, I have to admit, I really fell in love with the place… It’s a no matter where you turn there is something interesting, amusing, slightly shocking, cute, awful, amazing… it’s just that kind of place. I’ve heard a few people compare it unfavourably to New York… That does both cities a grave injustice…

Leaving Sydney

A perfect summer night.
Perfect for leaving.
Perfect for staying.
Perfect for seeing friends
or making love
or eating chocolate.
A perfect night for dancing
or dreaming
or praying
or playing.
A perfect summer night.
You can never have enough.

The tale of the monster hideout

This is the wharf area in downtown Auckland on a Saturday night. And that blue light below street level – I have not coloured or enhanced that, other than opening the aperture up to let as much light in as possible. But there really are blue lights down there, so below the street where people are drinking and eating and doing the sorts of things one does when one is out on the town, below the ‘normal’ place,there is the dark, blue place. And all the people up above – they just pretend it isn’t there.

Hello! That’s where monsters live! It’s where they wait. They don’t creep out until 3 or 4 in the morning, when all the sane people have wandered home and the late night crazies are roaming around, staggering a bit, holding onto each other, or to the railing. Leaning over the railing, gulping a bit more air. And the monsters leap up and grab them, pull them into the water, into the icy blue dungeon below the street. If those unfortunates have their wits about them and have the strength, they might be able to swim to the ladder and climb out. But of course the monsters can, too. If they want to. But if they don’t… they might never be heard from again.

Three teenage boys with expensive cameras wandered down there while I was watching, so I joined them. I figure if the monsters are hungry, they’d rather have one of them than me. They didn’t speak English, but I could see by their nods of recognition, they were looking for the monsters, wanted to get photos of them. It was deep and dark and their laughter echoed hollow on the dungeon walls. I think the barnacles creaked and there was a bit of splashing in the darkest depths. But no sign of monsters. Not tonight. Maybe next time…

 

Drydock at Dusk

I’m not a boatie. I love boats, being on them especially, but by the time I got to the point where I could consider owning one, I realised I was nowhere’s near inclined to the kind of work they required – all that barnacle scraping and swabbing and painting. Out shooting the skyline tonight, I noticed these little yachts up in drydock. It was quite dark by the time I took this, but there is an elevated motorway immediately to the right, which illuminated them quite well…

At the Airport

Went to the airport tonight
to watch the planes take off.
I wasn’t on a single one of them
but I wish I was.

MInding My Own Business

My poor mother – you’d think from listening to some of her children, that she’d got EVERYthing wrong, not most things or some things, but the whole lot. Hmmm… she definitely got some things right – but there’s not much percentage in telling folks about how right and normal and ordinary your childhood was (not that I had more than ten minutes of a right, normal and ordinary childhood.)

But even when my mother did try to get it right, I think we pretty much just ignored her. And I can speak for the four of us on this, as I was the oldest and the ‘good’ one, so if I was ever bad, the other three were three times badder, or nine times badder because I am pretty sure the badness of bad kids inbad families is exponential, not linear – especially when you belonged to one of those families on the wrong side of the tracks, down past the swamp. With too many dogs. And fighting. And loud music. The neighbours still complained – and we lived 12 miles out of town on a dirt road.

I had multiple personalities then, rather like a properly insane person might have, except mine all had a specific function and were basically under some semblance of self-control. There was the McLaughlin kid, which meant there was fighting, screaming and all the things being simply savage involved – totally in the moment stuff. Heart stoppingly exciting and fun, except for the fat lips and bruises. But running through the woods in the dark, while being chased by someone who might have a gun, sure gets the adrenalin pumping. Then there was the weird, quiet girl – the one reading Dostoevsky and listening to music and dreaming of escape to someplace, anyplace that didn’t have all that crazy business. Sometimes she’d despair and do things she still doesn’t admit to because you weren’t allowed to talk about them – not then, and still, not now. Well, you could, but some people would feel sorry for you which is just yuck, and some would try to help, which is ick, and others would say it’s time to get over it, which is ugh. BTW, she IS over it and so am I, so talking about it would just make other people react. Oh and the last one was Little Miss Perfect. She got straight As and her teachers loved her and she had a great future ahead of her. She even got to be pretty in high school. But she wasn’t totally perfect because the other two would leap out from time to time (always an inappropriate time) and spoil things.

It occurs to me now the most tumultuous years were the ones when I first went out on my own, trying to integrate those three mini-mes into one regular all-purpose me. It’s still a work in progress, of course and what I wouldn’t give to have a wee chat with those girls I used to be. Mostly I’d just let them know it would all turn out great, but there’d be some crap to deal with and some dark days too, but they were practicing for that now. But I’d tell them to get in a little more mischief, misbehave a little more. And for Little Miss Perfect to stop thinking she was the boss.

Hansel & Gretel

There’s a thing or two I’ve always found a bit fishy with that tale. I’m pretty sure the Grimms were biased… could Hansel and Gretel still been angelic little darlings if they had run off on their own? But I think it’s fairly likely. What would you do if you were eight years old and couldn’t sleep because your belly was churning with hunger and you could hear your hated stepmother talking about how to kill you???

There’s more to this story, I tell you – the shocking TRUE story of Hansel and Gretel…

Snapped this photo at the gypsy fair down the road this afternoon. I suspect the fair’s authenticity, but the children were real.