Diabolical Clay

When I first put my ceramic sculpture proposal to the trustees of the Chauncy Vale wildlife sanctuary I was warned that some of my eggs might go missing. I replied that I was fine with that because I really didn’t think that someone would bother to pinch the eggs. I also assumed that the eggs would only go missing if I left them down there for longer than a few days and then it would be my own silly fault.

As usual I am writing in circles.

Last Sunday the 6th of Feb was the annual ChauncyVale family day. I have been making large and small ceramic eggs over the course of the last year in readiness for this one day in the bush.

I wanted to have some nests of largish ceramic eggs about the size of emu eggs in the bush just off the side of the track that people could either see or not see, depending on how observant they are. Over the course of the year as I worked through my grief from the early death of my mother, the proposal morphed and changed so that I also had some quite large eggs and egg-like sculptures.

On Saturday the 5th I placed the eggs in situ and (this is the important bit) didn’t bother to take any photos.

Sunday morning I went down to check that I was still happy with the placement of the eggs and set up for the busy day ahead and all was well.

I had a bit of car trouble, stupid car, and when I finally turned up at Chauncy Vale an hour before opening time, everyone was already there setting up their various stalls. I got completely sidetracked and again did not take any photos of my work in situ.

From the moment the first visitors arrived I was flatstick busy. Constantly surrounded by an ever changing sea of children and also some adventurous adults we all made ceramic eggs and had heaps of fun playing in the mud together.

I honestly was that flat out I barely had time to scratch myself.

At the end of the day I packed up the car and decided that photographing the eggs could wait until the next day. I drove home totally and completely knackered but also very happy with the days effort. People had liked my work and we had made and decorated over 40 ceramic eggs, one ashtray and a snake.

I drove back down to Chauncy Vale yesterday morning to photograph the eggs and bugger me dead, heaps of them were missing. HEAPS.

Some bastard had pinched the eggs.

I was gobsmacked.

I expected some to go missing if I left them down in the bush for longer than a few days but I certainly didn’t expect the thieves to be that bloody quick. I also didn’t expect the larger eggs to be stolen because they were bloody heavy.

I made a few phone calls and the general consensus seems to be that the eggs were all there when everyone had left for the night.

I tweeted that some of the eggs were missing and luckily the gorgeous norfickchick had taken photos.

Norfick chick also blogs as sleepy dwarf and these photos are all hers that she emailed to me last night.

This next photo shows a very depleted nest. I had placed about nine eggs in this nest and by the time that  sleepy dwarf had photographed them there were only 5 in the nest. I had expected that the children would move them around and that I would find them scattered all about the place. Or that children would come up to me holding eggs saying look what they had found. I didn’t expect to go back less than 24 hours after the event closed to find ALL of the eggs missing.

All of these eggs have been taken.

The Spouse and I looked in the creek because these would make a very satisfying splash but no luck.

The list of missing eggs grew longer the further up the track I walked. Both these eggs were taken.

As was the green egg on the right in this photo. These dragon eggs are quite large, about 18 inches or so high and they are quite heavy. They also have my name and the date 2010 inscribed into the bottom of them.

The little egg here next to the sculpture was also taken. I really liked this little egg as it was my prototype for a series I am developing. If you shake this little egg it makes a nice clink because there is a ceramic bead inside it.

So, all up three large eggs and about ten smaller eggs were taken.

It was a very bitter encore to what had been a fantastic day out.

Today for Sunday Selections I am going to post two images of my work. The photo of the dragon eggs was taken by a friend of mine, talented Tasmanian photographer Robin Roberts, The photo of the sculpture was taken by me here at home.

The reason I am showing you these two works is because I will be displaying these down at ChauncyVale wildlife sanctuary today. Well displaying them is too formal a word, I have plonked them in the bush just off the track and I forgot to take photos yesterday. I will take photos today.

I will also be on hand all day today at ChauncyVale if anyone wants to have a go at making a dragon egg themself. The family day is from 12 noon onwards and it sounds like a great  day in the Tasmanian bush.

So I wont be about online to reply to comments and visit your blogs until this evening and then I will probably be too knackered.

Anyone can join in with this Photo Meme Sunday Selections but I do ask that you only add your link if you are joining in with Sunday Selections.  Also be careful when you are adding your URL as the Mr Linky will remember your old URL and we will click onto an old post.

Here is the weekly blurb.

I take a lot of photos and most of them are just sitting around in folders on my desktop not doing anything. I thought that a dedicated post once a week would be a good way to share some of these photos that  otherwise wouldn’t be seen by anyone other than me.

I am also remarkably absent minded and I put photos into folders and think  that I will publish them later on and then then I never do.

So I  have started a photo meme that anyone can join in and play as well. The rules are so simple as to be virtually non existent.

Just add your name and URL to the Mr Linky.

Publish your photos on your blog using the “Sunday Selection” title.

Link back here to me.

Easy Peasy.

It is always a mixed bag here at frog ponds rock.

My son read the post I published yesterday about his friend X’s suicide attempt. I was a bit nervous about David’s reaction as it was a very personal post. David laughed at the description of him clomping through the house searching for food and he cried at the old woman’s prediction, then he sent the link to his friend X. I will find out X’s reaction later on today.

I think that the question I posed in the opening paragraphs yesterdays post needs deeper consideration

I wonder if one of the reasons for the reluctance to talk to our young people about suicide is the mistaken belief that we might give them ideas. As if by starting a conversation about suicide we might inadvertently plant the seed of death in their heads.

So moving on from extreme fragility to extreme resilience I want to talk about my very good friend Tiff.

I have known and blogged with Tiff  for over three years now and I am consistently in awe of the power of the woman’s words, humbled by her quiet dignity under extreme pressure and proud to call her my friend.

Tiff has been nominated in the Best Australian and New Zealand Category of the 2011 Bloggies and I know that Tiff is far too self effacing to do much more than mention this in passing. (But I will be putting pressure on her to write a post herself)

Tiff is mother to eight children, that alone is worthy of an award in itself because My God the noise those children must make and The Mess and can you imagine the washing up, ACK it would be like washing up after a dinner party three times a freaking day. Yep, Tiff needs buckets of awards.

Tiff’s youngest child Ivy is also not a well bunny and Ivy and Tiff  seem to spend more time in hospital than they do at home. But instead of feeling sorry for herself Tiff decides to raise money for the hospital ward she calls her second home. Through all of Ivy’s medical issues and treatments, Tiff writes out her heart ache and her self doubt, her anger and her grief on her blog, My Three Ring Circus. A lot of her posts make me want to cry or shake Ivy’s paediatrician but mostly they make me marvel at the quiet strength of my friend.

And if all of the above isn’t enough to make you vote for My Three Ring Circus, Tiff  takes a wicked photo.

So can you please go and vote for her here at the 2100 bloggies

Consider it a birthday gift to me.

Yep. Today is my birthday. Happy birthday to me. To use an “Amyism” my number is now 45 and my number adds up to 9.

Lucky me.

I wonder if one of the reasons for the reluctance to talk to our young people about suicide is the mistaken belief that we might give them ideas. As if by starting a conversation about suicide we might inadvertently plant the seed of death in their heads.

On Monday evening I went to bed early as it had been a long week and I was knackered but there is never any true rest in my house whilst my teenager is awake as he bangs doors, clatters dishes and clomps about the house late at night in an eternal quest for food and facebook.

There wasn’t to be any rest for me that evening either as one of David’s friends had put a suicidal status update on his facebook page. I lay awake in bed listening to my son trying to contact his friend, X on the telephone, hearing my sons voice rising in fear as he demanded that X pick up the god damn phone.

After about 15 minutes of distraught phone calls and frantic inboxing with no response from X, I ended up in the car in my nightie driving David down the road to X’s house.

I was so tired I was a bit trippy and the memory of my son frantically ringing and ringing X’s mobile has become less real now. Eventually when we were about half way there X’s brother answered the phone telling Dave he had come home from work and found the boy passed out in his bed covered in blood from multiple slashes to his arm and wrist.

Shit.

Luckily the cuts were only superficial and didn’t require stitches.

David stayed with X that night and the next and on Australia day I picked them up and drove them down to the Mona museum.

I don’t know what I was hoping to achieve by taking the boys to Mona. I know that I was hoping that the museum would work her magic on X. That he would see that there is a whole other world of beauty and art and expression out there.

That there is never only one path.

That it is okay to be different.

That we are all different.

Maybe I was also a little bit starstruck by the sheer amazingness of the Mona museum and I know I wanted the boys to share my joy because in hindsight Mona really isn’t the place to take a confused and sensitive 16 year old. X was totally freaked out by the place. The darkness of the rooms made him jumpy and video art works that my eyes had only skipped over because they weren’t my cup of tea drew the boys in and they were repulsed by them. X was horrified by the wall of  porcelain vaginas and declared Mona to be totally creepy.The boys didn’t even glance at Snake as I took them to see the fat car hoping that the sensual curves of the car and the brightness of the red bodywork would at least  be a positive experience for them and it was.

As we drove away from the museum towards the city park where they like to hang out with their friends, we had a brief discussion about what is art and what isn’t. I had forgotten the black and white certainty of being sixteen, of a sixteen year old perspective that art has to be beautiful in order to be called art and I worried if I had done more harm than good.

On the Thursday morning I took X into a youth counselling place, I had previously spoken to them about X and they had prepared a packet of pamphletts and such for him. I waited in the car whilst Dave and X walked into the building and I knew that I had done all I could for this boy.

It is never easy when it is someone elses child.

Years ago an old woman held my toddlers hands in hers and told me, this boy is going to be a healer. Over a decade and a half  later I watch as my child gathers the broken to him, as the broken are drawn to him and I worry.

It is never easy when it is your own child either.

This week I have had itchy writing fingers coupled with limited time at my desk, so scattered sentences have been tumbling around in my dreams, of course when I wake up all the words have gone into hiding and I haven’t had the time to hunt them down.

It has been a tumultuous week that started with driving my daughter Veronica to an early morning a radio interview and at ten pm that same night driving my son David to his friend who had left a suicide note as his facebook status and wouldn’t answer his phone. (He is alive)

Today isn’t the day to be writing about youth suicide, Invasion day and racism, the Mona museum, grief and autism and Hobart’s amazing clown doctors but the words are all there and they will make me write them out sooner rather than later.

As always I am constantly looking at the world around me in terms of light and shade and often the lines and shadows are more interesting to me than the actual objects themselves.

I took these photos inside the newly opened Mona Museum.

I take a lot of photos and most of them are just sitting around in folders on my desktop not doing anything. I thought that a dedicated post once a week would be a good way to share some of these photos that  otherwise wouldn’t be seen by anyone other than me.

I am also remarkably absent minded and I put photos into folders and think  that I will publish them later on and then then I never do.

So I thought I would start a photo meme that anyone can join in and play as well. The rules are so simple as to be virtually non existent.

Just add your name and URL to the Mr Linky. Publish your photos on your blog using the “Sunday Selection” title and link back here to me.

Easy Peasy.

How is it Sunday again? I am sure it was only Tuesday a minute ago, time just slips through my fingers these days.

Well seeing that it is Sunday already it must be time for my photo meme, come and join in. It is fun and you will get to meet some very nice bloggers from around the world. Here is the blurb.

I take a lot of photos and most of them are just sitting around in folders on my desktop not doing anything. I thought that a dedicated post once a week would be a good way to share some of these photos that  otherwise wouldn’t be seen by anyone other than me.

I am also remarkably absent minded and I put photos into folders and think  that I will publish them later on and then then I never do.

So I thought I would start a photo meme that anyone can join in and play as well. The rules are so simple as to be virtually non existent.

Just add your name and URL to the Mr Linky. Publish your photos on your blog using the “Sunday Selection” title and link back here to me.

Easy Peasy.

Today is the first day that I have managed to stop and catch my breath. This week has been a whirlwind of activity ranging from taking my daughter to local radio interviews to attending high energy rock concerts, being awed by Korean opera singers who shout at waterfalls and registering my son for song writing workshops with icons of the Aussie music scene.

What am I talking about?

MONA FOMA

A week long celebration of Music and Art culminating in the official opening of the MONA Museum last night.

Wow! What a week in Hobart it has been and I am completely knackered.

My photos would not do this extraordinary event justice and so if you are interested in some Amazing photos of the amazing week that was MONAFOMA go over here to Kate Burtons blog and check out her shots.

Welcome to the second edition of Sunday Selections.

I take a lot of photos and most of them are just sitting around in folders on my desktop not doing anything. I thought that a dedicated post once a week would be a good way to share some of these photos that  otherwise wouldn’t be seen by anyone other than me.

I am also remarkably absent minded and I put photos into folders and think  that I will publish them later on and then then I never do.

So I thought I would start a photo meme that anyone can join in and play as well. The rules are so simple as to be virtually non existent.

Just add your name and URL to the Mr Linky. Publish your photos on your blog using the “Sunday Selection” title and link back here to me.

Easy Peasy.

Much much much more awesome.

It is official.

I am a superstar.

My plans to take over the world via the internet are on track.

I have officially hit the big time.

My star is rising and I will definitely need minions sooner rather than later.

How do I know? I hear you ask.

Someone has taken the time and trouble to set up a fake blog about me.

A completely fake blog, using my name, my blog’s name, my image and a post written by a friend of mine Xbox 4 Nappyrash.

BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

It is hilarious.

I needed cheering up and this fake blog about me is just the trick.

Oh and for the authors of the fake blog, this image by @mackiemarsellos epitomises what it means to be Australian

*updated 15 Jan. Now there are two fake blogs. That must mean I am twice as awesome as I first thought I was. Well done you two.