It's now April 2011... and I haven't looked at this blog in a verrrry long time.
I thought about deleting Under The Slate Eaves, but it's probably better than a traditional photo album -which I never did get around to creating, so I guess I'll leave the blog up for awhile longer.
If you're curious to see what I'm up to lately, check out: www.peargirl.weebly.com
Friday, April 8, 2011
Friday, July 4, 2008
Penultimate Chapter in my Adventures Abroad
July 4th, 2008
I am a self contained animal
balanced as buxom city pigeons
alighting small ledges and drooping lines
all strung out overhead in the sedimentary firmament
the ozone lacking heavens
blazing preposterous phallintropic trumpets
in a resounding theatre of disbelief
my cynic’s armour unpolished
a pastiche of grande bigmac mistakes
media frivolity and spun out episodic truth
holler down the self-conscious corridors
theory of the sapient mind still 60,000 years young*
a wonderment of conviction still angry in enduring youth
mortal rapacity an evolving technology clap-hammer capacity
a cacophonic song ascending every glass ladder rung
brilliant, resonant and replicate
the frogs croak in the lowering swamps:
perhaps it was better left unsung
*(Coughlan, pg 8)The New Scientist, magazine May 2008, article “Thank culture for the modern mind” by Andy Coghlan. “Then around 60,000 to 70,000 years ago, the biology and structure of our brains stopped changing and other factors began to take over as the main driver of human development.”
Another month has come and gone and though I am aware that I am entering the final chapter of my year abroad I am still in revelry of European exploration, contemplation and enjoyment.
I’ve also been practicing playing my new hurdy gurdy, Prudence, everyday. I make terrible, terrible, terrible noises, and delight in the cacophony of learning what is a rather complicated instrument. The gurdy should keep me busy for the rest of my life… trying to teach myself to play and to read music is proving a rather slow, satisfyingly painful process as my brain seems less receptive to translating little black dots on the page and relaying the information to my fingers whilst turning a bowing crank-handle with the other all simultaneously while acknowledging that I learn a tiny fraction more everyday (and then often forget it on the next day) has been a fantastic new element in my life.
My sister arrived in Aberystwyth on June 17th and is here to visit and so I get to revisit some of my favourite sites, walk to Borth again and play tourist some more.
I’ve gotten well-ahead on my dissertation and I am now cooling my heels awaiting some feedback from my supervisors… in the meantime I am working on some research into folklore and faery tales. If the circumstances were right, and I could get funding, I would consider doing a PhD in folklore, perhaps in Welsh folklore. But… such are my daydream fancies, there’s nothing to stop me from writing more than one essay, so I’m working on a bit of extra research while I’m here and have access to some glorious old books. The library still allows 150 year old faery tale and folklore books to be signed out… which warms the cockles of my geeky cranium.
I awoke early this morning as the seagulls began to scream and wheel in the sky through the alternations of almost-summer blue, and the thickening cumulus and cirrus greys and whites that continue to whorl above Wales in a tropical discontent storm that has lead to hot days alternating with warm blustery storm winds of 50-60 mile per hour winds, just in time for my sister’s arrival. There was an excellent week of swimming and becalmed sea at the beginning of June. The promise of more of the same was abandoned for a return to unpredictability, freak thundershowers leading to delightful summer drenchings, often only ten minutes after it is sunny. People in general bemoan the weather, but I have been adoring it… apart from wishing the sea would settle a bit as I’d like to swim more; at least the surfers, skim-boarders and the men with paddles who stand upright on their boards in a quasi-Jesus walk-on water illusion seem happy out in the ocean, and often can be seen running in their wetsuits barefoot, board under arm, leaving nothing to the imagination but wonderment at such a passion as that of paddling out to go to try to ride the waves.
I woke thinking about how much I have come to love and admire Wales, how it is a country of determination and tenacity. How the ancient geology, the very bones of the country, so visibly layered in the pangs and throes of creation as the twisted and undulating rocks still show evidence of their rise and fall, the wearing away and fraying at the jagged edges of the cliffs, are skinned by the fundamental antiquity of their persevering culture. The Welsh are proud of their language and stories; will defend it, but not parade it. They look to themselves, their traditions, their honour rather than pushing a façade and parade upon the rest of the world. How well known are the Welsh? They don’t desire fame. Just ‘bugger off and leave us alone, for we are who we are’ seems to be the sentiment.
Of course Wales has frequently been mined of its culture; just as of its metals and stone…Shakespeare has been criticized for his inaccuracies in citing British faery tales, but is quite true to the Welsh tradition. Welsh tales have been altered, adapted and rewritten and claimed by many different cultures, from German to Americans. Tolkien gathered the sources for much of his material from Welsh mythology, and so CS Lewis, his drinking buddy, followed suit… are only a few examples.
And I am just as guilty of being inspired by the Welsh lore. My claim to having Welsh blood in my veins thanks to my ancestors is minimal and perhaps un-provable since the great tree-prunings of the family tree which have occurred. Yet still I’m a stranger in a strange land writing faery-tale type stories with abandon, in an orgy of inspiration. The smell of gorse flowers, the ragged cliffs with small hunting falcons riding up upon the winds, the sound of Welsh radio, reading the Mabinogian and the Welsh faery tales again, but this time when I am so close to all the actual places mentioned in the stories, has been vastly satisfying and inspiring.
June 6th-7th
I went on an adventure and managed to see a great deal in only two days.
I went on a pilgrimage to St. Govan’s Chapel, and went down the stone stairs to visit the cave behind the alter where St. Govan is said to have rested, hid form pirates, and writhed in religious ecstasy (or perhaps the result of eating too many limpets) and you can still see the marks of his ribs and fingertips gouged into the stone walls. I went to the city of St. David’s by the sea, and looked at cows running near the ruins of a great abbey, I went to walk the sea cliffs to the spot where St. David, patron Saint of Wales was born, the first thing he saw after his birth on that rugged coastline, the storm his mother, St. Non had been caught out in. I went to St. Non’s well and knelt upon the stones and saw that the interior of the stone arch above the well was festooned with large snails.
Past the stone painted to remember Tryweryn (troo AIR inn) the town that was drowned to give the English water.
To Castell Henllys, the recreated Iron Age fort where I saw woad growing and wondered how such a golden weedy plant had come to be cooked, fermented and turned into the blue pigment made famous by the Picts and Celtic cultures
Walked widdershins around the old church beside Castell Henllys, trying not to step on graves hidden in the overgrown yard, to look at a curious bell tower and a very ancient bricked over doorway. Admiring the pentagram motif in the windows so old that you could see the liquidity of glass evidenced in the supporting lattice of lead.
I travelled somewhere near the cemetery with the famous bleeding yew.. but didn’t make it to see that particular place. Often things are difficult to find, or are fenced in private property, and one has to ask oneself if one is willing to scramble over an electric fence, rudely walk across freshly sown and tilled land, or to risk walking beside rather large, inquisitive cows to get to standing stones. The former example was the Devil’s Quoit standing stone, and I decided not to tromp on the freshly seeded field. The latter, Sampson’s stone circle, after checking with a farmer, it was OK to go into the field and negotiate with a minefield of bovine offal obstacles in order to visit the ancient standing stones/burial chamber… this was just down the winding made-for a horse-drawn-cart road from Castell Aber –a ruin near a place just called Aber beautifully nestled and secluded on the coastline.
Had lunch in Fishgaurd.
Visited the working mill Melin Tregwynt –and thinking I’ll buy a £200 grey and black blanket after I’ve won the lottery.
Pembroke castle
Pentre Ifan burial chamber
Near Rosebush, where the Preseli blue stones were quarried and then teem to Stonehenge to form one of the circles.
Porthgain industrial ruins.
Huntsman’s Leap
Carew castle ruins and ancient Celtic cross (1033-1035 AD)
Castell Carreg Cennan on the hill with the deep, damp and hand and foot-worn caves underneath the castle that were still open for tourists to crawl, scramble, and bump their way through, and having the caves almost all to myself as there were few tourists, but lots of sheep.
The ruined abbey Talley, once a proud tall building in the 1200s, now a façade and stony echo of its former glory.
The 13th C. was the happening century in Wales as far as erecting stone buildings, castles and churches goes, and then having them knocked down again, and then more being built…
Strata Florida Chapel ruins and graveyard –visiting the grave of the famous Welsh poet Dafydd ap Gwilym (c.1315/1320-1350/1370) under the ancient yew tree in the graveyard next door to Strata Florida.
I’m particularly pleased I went a little out of my way to visit Laugharne, the site of poet and writer Dylan Thomas’ house. Walking along the seaside, the ruins of Castle Laugharne on the hillside, going to see where the poet’s pen had once flowed with almost as much overwelling as the whisky in the jar-o really meant something to me… and it is partly because the land is so steeped in stories and centuries, nibbled by the sea, and the soft lips of the dull-toothed sheep, a land cut and hewn; shaped and moulded by human hands…
Without the story, the narrative, the tales (whether they are sanctified as history, or hammered and lengthened by time into legends and sagas) it is the story that above all else is the skin of culture. Information leads to connection, connection to meaning, meaning to some sense of identity and place, not just external, but internal, which is necessary for us to be more than human, but allowed to be of the understanding that it is the body that comes first; the kinetic actions of the body and instinctive action twinned with the will and consciously compelling components of humanity that build stories, culture, who we are and where we are in a propelled wonderment of wondering where we are going next either in a sedentary passive acceptance, or a propelled kinetic blaze. The living traditions are what we’ve got, and though we’re a technologically rich society, many have grown too thread bare of the importance of being earnest: the importance of telling a good story and having someone to tell it to.
Without the story it becomes an empty postcard that is more like adding a notch in a tourist’s belt…. I try to savour a sense of connection, a slow tourist, absorbing as much as I can in my peregrinations, finding the marrow in the bones; amazed at being in a landscape where the bones are littered so thickly that one cannot walk far without stumbling over something ancient, weighty, symbolic, romantic or thick with the gloaming of ‘once upon a time…’
I am a self contained animal
balanced as buxom city pigeons
alighting small ledges and drooping lines
all strung out overhead in the sedimentary firmament
the ozone lacking heavens
blazing preposterous phallintropic trumpets
in a resounding theatre of disbelief
my cynic’s armour unpolished
a pastiche of grande bigmac mistakes
media frivolity and spun out episodic truth
holler down the self-conscious corridors
theory of the sapient mind still 60,000 years young*
a wonderment of conviction still angry in enduring youth
mortal rapacity an evolving technology clap-hammer capacity
a cacophonic song ascending every glass ladder rung
brilliant, resonant and replicate
the frogs croak in the lowering swamps:
perhaps it was better left unsung
*(Coughlan, pg 8)The New Scientist, magazine May 2008, article “Thank culture for the modern mind” by Andy Coghlan. “Then around 60,000 to 70,000 years ago, the biology and structure of our brains stopped changing and other factors began to take over as the main driver of human development.”
Another month has come and gone and though I am aware that I am entering the final chapter of my year abroad I am still in revelry of European exploration, contemplation and enjoyment.
I’ve also been practicing playing my new hurdy gurdy, Prudence, everyday. I make terrible, terrible, terrible noises, and delight in the cacophony of learning what is a rather complicated instrument. The gurdy should keep me busy for the rest of my life… trying to teach myself to play and to read music is proving a rather slow, satisfyingly painful process as my brain seems less receptive to translating little black dots on the page and relaying the information to my fingers whilst turning a bowing crank-handle with the other all simultaneously while acknowledging that I learn a tiny fraction more everyday (and then often forget it on the next day) has been a fantastic new element in my life.
My sister arrived in Aberystwyth on June 17th and is here to visit and so I get to revisit some of my favourite sites, walk to Borth again and play tourist some more.
I’ve gotten well-ahead on my dissertation and I am now cooling my heels awaiting some feedback from my supervisors… in the meantime I am working on some research into folklore and faery tales. If the circumstances were right, and I could get funding, I would consider doing a PhD in folklore, perhaps in Welsh folklore. But… such are my daydream fancies, there’s nothing to stop me from writing more than one essay, so I’m working on a bit of extra research while I’m here and have access to some glorious old books. The library still allows 150 year old faery tale and folklore books to be signed out… which warms the cockles of my geeky cranium.
I awoke early this morning as the seagulls began to scream and wheel in the sky through the alternations of almost-summer blue, and the thickening cumulus and cirrus greys and whites that continue to whorl above Wales in a tropical discontent storm that has lead to hot days alternating with warm blustery storm winds of 50-60 mile per hour winds, just in time for my sister’s arrival. There was an excellent week of swimming and becalmed sea at the beginning of June. The promise of more of the same was abandoned for a return to unpredictability, freak thundershowers leading to delightful summer drenchings, often only ten minutes after it is sunny. People in general bemoan the weather, but I have been adoring it… apart from wishing the sea would settle a bit as I’d like to swim more; at least the surfers, skim-boarders and the men with paddles who stand upright on their boards in a quasi-Jesus walk-on water illusion seem happy out in the ocean, and often can be seen running in their wetsuits barefoot, board under arm, leaving nothing to the imagination but wonderment at such a passion as that of paddling out to go to try to ride the waves.
I woke thinking about how much I have come to love and admire Wales, how it is a country of determination and tenacity. How the ancient geology, the very bones of the country, so visibly layered in the pangs and throes of creation as the twisted and undulating rocks still show evidence of their rise and fall, the wearing away and fraying at the jagged edges of the cliffs, are skinned by the fundamental antiquity of their persevering culture. The Welsh are proud of their language and stories; will defend it, but not parade it. They look to themselves, their traditions, their honour rather than pushing a façade and parade upon the rest of the world. How well known are the Welsh? They don’t desire fame. Just ‘bugger off and leave us alone, for we are who we are’ seems to be the sentiment.
Of course Wales has frequently been mined of its culture; just as of its metals and stone…Shakespeare has been criticized for his inaccuracies in citing British faery tales, but is quite true to the Welsh tradition. Welsh tales have been altered, adapted and rewritten and claimed by many different cultures, from German to Americans. Tolkien gathered the sources for much of his material from Welsh mythology, and so CS Lewis, his drinking buddy, followed suit… are only a few examples.
And I am just as guilty of being inspired by the Welsh lore. My claim to having Welsh blood in my veins thanks to my ancestors is minimal and perhaps un-provable since the great tree-prunings of the family tree which have occurred. Yet still I’m a stranger in a strange land writing faery-tale type stories with abandon, in an orgy of inspiration. The smell of gorse flowers, the ragged cliffs with small hunting falcons riding up upon the winds, the sound of Welsh radio, reading the Mabinogian and the Welsh faery tales again, but this time when I am so close to all the actual places mentioned in the stories, has been vastly satisfying and inspiring.
June 6th-7th
I went on an adventure and managed to see a great deal in only two days.
I went on a pilgrimage to St. Govan’s Chapel, and went down the stone stairs to visit the cave behind the alter where St. Govan is said to have rested, hid form pirates, and writhed in religious ecstasy (or perhaps the result of eating too many limpets) and you can still see the marks of his ribs and fingertips gouged into the stone walls. I went to the city of St. David’s by the sea, and looked at cows running near the ruins of a great abbey, I went to walk the sea cliffs to the spot where St. David, patron Saint of Wales was born, the first thing he saw after his birth on that rugged coastline, the storm his mother, St. Non had been caught out in. I went to St. Non’s well and knelt upon the stones and saw that the interior of the stone arch above the well was festooned with large snails.
Past the stone painted to remember Tryweryn (troo AIR inn) the town that was drowned to give the English water.
To Castell Henllys, the recreated Iron Age fort where I saw woad growing and wondered how such a golden weedy plant had come to be cooked, fermented and turned into the blue pigment made famous by the Picts and Celtic cultures
Walked widdershins around the old church beside Castell Henllys, trying not to step on graves hidden in the overgrown yard, to look at a curious bell tower and a very ancient bricked over doorway. Admiring the pentagram motif in the windows so old that you could see the liquidity of glass evidenced in the supporting lattice of lead.
I travelled somewhere near the cemetery with the famous bleeding yew.. but didn’t make it to see that particular place. Often things are difficult to find, or are fenced in private property, and one has to ask oneself if one is willing to scramble over an electric fence, rudely walk across freshly sown and tilled land, or to risk walking beside rather large, inquisitive cows to get to standing stones. The former example was the Devil’s Quoit standing stone, and I decided not to tromp on the freshly seeded field. The latter, Sampson’s stone circle, after checking with a farmer, it was OK to go into the field and negotiate with a minefield of bovine offal obstacles in order to visit the ancient standing stones/burial chamber… this was just down the winding made-for a horse-drawn-cart road from Castell Aber –a ruin near a place just called Aber beautifully nestled and secluded on the coastline.
Had lunch in Fishgaurd.
Visited the working mill Melin Tregwynt –and thinking I’ll buy a £200 grey and black blanket after I’ve won the lottery.
Pembroke castle
Pentre Ifan burial chamber
Near Rosebush, where the Preseli blue stones were quarried and then teem to Stonehenge to form one of the circles.
Porthgain industrial ruins.
Huntsman’s Leap
Carew castle ruins and ancient Celtic cross (1033-1035 AD)
Castell Carreg Cennan on the hill with the deep, damp and hand and foot-worn caves underneath the castle that were still open for tourists to crawl, scramble, and bump their way through, and having the caves almost all to myself as there were few tourists, but lots of sheep.
The ruined abbey Talley, once a proud tall building in the 1200s, now a façade and stony echo of its former glory.
The 13th C. was the happening century in Wales as far as erecting stone buildings, castles and churches goes, and then having them knocked down again, and then more being built…
Strata Florida Chapel ruins and graveyard –visiting the grave of the famous Welsh poet Dafydd ap Gwilym (c.1315/1320-1350/1370) under the ancient yew tree in the graveyard next door to Strata Florida.
I’m particularly pleased I went a little out of my way to visit Laugharne, the site of poet and writer Dylan Thomas’ house. Walking along the seaside, the ruins of Castle Laugharne on the hillside, going to see where the poet’s pen had once flowed with almost as much overwelling as the whisky in the jar-o really meant something to me… and it is partly because the land is so steeped in stories and centuries, nibbled by the sea, and the soft lips of the dull-toothed sheep, a land cut and hewn; shaped and moulded by human hands…
Without the story, the narrative, the tales (whether they are sanctified as history, or hammered and lengthened by time into legends and sagas) it is the story that above all else is the skin of culture. Information leads to connection, connection to meaning, meaning to some sense of identity and place, not just external, but internal, which is necessary for us to be more than human, but allowed to be of the understanding that it is the body that comes first; the kinetic actions of the body and instinctive action twinned with the will and consciously compelling components of humanity that build stories, culture, who we are and where we are in a propelled wonderment of wondering where we are going next either in a sedentary passive acceptance, or a propelled kinetic blaze. The living traditions are what we’ve got, and though we’re a technologically rich society, many have grown too thread bare of the importance of being earnest: the importance of telling a good story and having someone to tell it to.
Without the story it becomes an empty postcard that is more like adding a notch in a tourist’s belt…. I try to savour a sense of connection, a slow tourist, absorbing as much as I can in my peregrinations, finding the marrow in the bones; amazed at being in a landscape where the bones are littered so thickly that one cannot walk far without stumbling over something ancient, weighty, symbolic, romantic or thick with the gloaming of ‘once upon a time…’
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
The Spring Catapult sprung into early Summer
June 5th 2008
It’s been a bit over a month since I updated my blog and if there is any excuse I believe it is because that for the final phase of my Masters program I now have my head firmly up my dissertation…. I am currently surrounded by books, notes, emails, essays, photocopies of essays, reference materials and am in a new, sublet flat.
Yesterday I spent over 5 hours helping to clean up the old Blaenwern flat, for as is typical in communal living situations, most people left like rats from a sinking ship after the most minimal of efforts… whereas I went back, for although I moved out on May 21st, I did live there for just over eight months and didn’t want to let the few responsible people left cleaning and moving to have to do all the work… and besides, I want my deposit money back!
It was odd to see the place again, even after getting away from it for 2 weeks, returning reminded me of how much I blinded myself to its grottyness. The cracks that had once seemed charming, managing to share one fridge and one stove with 9-11 other people, the peeling paint and mold living on the bathroom ceiling, the marks on all the walls, the single plastic mattress with no box on the wire metal frame, the birds and other things living in the ceiling, the institutional carpet… its no wonder that my eyes were always having a minor allergic reaction in the mornings… but that’s behind me now, and when I hear things such as asbestos being in the School of Art studios –just across the hall from me, it doesn’t surprise me, because I found out some time ago that the wing all the masters students are in was condemned in 1996 as being unsafe to occupy. Perhaps that was why the heat kept malfunctioning all through the winter –but was fixed by mid-May and left on high, just as the temperatures reached 21 degrees, but don’t worry, it’s cooled down again so the heat will probably stop working again….
I now laugh when I hear things such as all the students being forced out of Alexander Hall two days ago, because the private landlord hasn’t paid the electricity bill and the university, in selling off most of its assets, is ever so comfortable not taking any blame for the fact that it puts its students under care of private, slightly unscrupulous landlords as an additional layer of dealing with the moronic, impersonal bureaucratic B.S. of the school itself. (Can anyone tell me why everyone but a few have to move from one building to another a few months before the end of their program…. Why do they bother to claim to have Masters residence for the masters programs if everyone is evicted just before they must begin to write dissertations?) It was all a bit too stressful. I wasted far too much time packing, moving, unpacking, and even more time trying to find a place to live. Thankfully I now have a nice sublet in private accommodation. Oh the joy of having my own little place…
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Overview of latest adventures
Graduate Exhibition and Final Exams Have been completed. Hurrah! Huzzah!
Attended last classes and lectures of the year, completed my essays, reports, teaching experience, tutorial experience and studio portion of the program.
Two of my new textile art pieces are currently being hung in a prestigious, curated exhibit at the Oriel Davies Gallery in Newtown. The exhibit is called Re:drawing.
My new website www.peargirl.weebly.com features my new work, and can also be accessed via the front page of www.peargirl.com
By hopping on trains on weekends, and because I worked over the Christmas and Easter Breaks, I got a bit ahead of my program and so was able to take a bit of time off when Tess came to visit! (plus there were two holiday weekends in May!)
April 25-27th I went to Lancaster for the incredible Hurdy Gurdy Festival. I’ve never played an instrument before, but have always said that if I could learn to play an instrument a hurdy-gurdy would be it! They’re WAAAAYYY more complicated that I expected… the wheel that turns the interior circular bow being almost as fussy as a violin bow… oh, and you have to learn to operate the keyboard upside down and blind with your left hand because the keys need to fall back into place with the help of gravity. But those gurdies… oh so pretty.
There were also events for kids and for dancers and lots and lots of concerts for the public. Overall it was a quite well-run little festival and I met all sorts of interesting people –the girl from the outback who taught herself to play the gurdy and, of course, Morris dancers who happen to know people I know, because it is a small world after all.
May 2-5 The Upton on Severn Folk Festival (aka over 40 Morris sides taking over charming Upton Upon Severn) Tess and I met lots of Border sides, watched the dancing, went to ceildhs and pub music jams in the evenings. I danced at the celidhs and with some of the morris dancers… and it was a grand weekend in folkdance land!
After the Folk Fest Tess and I caught trains on fire (literally) up to Scotland and walked the Great Glen Way –a 73 mile walk from Fort William to Inverness. It was a grand adventure and my first long-distance walk. The highlands and he area around Loch Ness was magnificent, and reminded me so much of home that I know, or knew, that I thought: I could live here! I highly recommend the Bespokes Tour guide company that put together our lodgings, arranged the baggage transport and provided us with detailed info. So we knew if it was going to be an easy day strolling along the loch surrounded by moss and train-line ruins, or seriously hiking up and down the hillsides… and what the options were each day.
After the 5 day walk we returned to Aberystwyth and Tess helped me to set up the grad show! We went to a Bretton Dance potluck night and it was good to have a friend in Wales…. It was incredible to see someone I actually recognize for the first time in nine months… instead of just seeing snippets of people in strangers (oh, hey, that looks like so and so’s nose/hair/bodylanguage/ etc.)
Last weekend there was a free community festival in the local castle ruins called Castell Rock. It was fun for a bit of impromptu circus hooping, teaching kids how to walk on mini stilts and listening to some music... a glowing golden fog visited Aberystwyth for a few days so the misty backdrop surrounding the castle ruins and the stage was truly romantic. The sunset through the fogbank and dancing in the broken castle ruins surrounded by a stone circle at the end of the day with an enthusiastic crowd to the nine-piece energetic sounds of The Mighty FUOD is something I'll recall with enduring fondness.
And that takes me to June, and my dissertation. After chaining myself to the desk ten days in a row in an attempt to rough it out I believe I need a little break so I may traipse off to find St.Gofan’s well this weekend as it’s all research for my writing!
If I’m leaving many of the details out, it’s partly because there are just too many to dive into, partly because the pictures will each say at least a thousand words (apparently) and because I need to save some of my stories for when I return, for I should be back in time for Bowfest at the latest!
Ta rah!
Hax
-------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------------------------
Monday, April 21, 2008
Visiting a mill, a mine, drowned trees and dancing with horses... just another month in mythical and modern Wales
April 21st
Another month has flown by and I swear that after February time somehow learns to speed up… the days are noticeably longer and I look in wonderment at the trees which are beginning to branch-tip swell with budding leaves ready for the explosion of new foliage that is the miraculous renewal of life –and a good indicator that I’ve been here longer than I realize, for it strikes me as somehow significant that I was here first when the leaves began to turn colour –or simply fall –off their million perches… which inspired me into a flurry –perhaps a paroxysm of poetry –would be the correct phraseology… Now that collection of poetry has been edited and printed in limited edition as Peargirl V –the poetry edition- and I am already working on Peargirl VI –the online edition which is more reflective of my delving into the many myths, folklore and fairy tales of Wales.
So catching up –memories of Budapest still linger and sing in my memory recall data banks, but a new tumult of experience has come piling in the last month along with realizations that a) I’ve been here long enough to start to feel more settled in, to get to know people and to feel comfortable enough that I worry if it will be difficult to reconnect with my old routines on Bowen. Likely reconnection will be transformative and a development of new routines and associations on top of the old bedrock of my islander identity. b) For a workaholic occasional hermit, I have the capacity to make new friends and to be social –even if I’m still not keen on drunkenness out of moderation or sitting still in Pubs for too long) I’m proud to be a bit of an academic, a geek, an organizer and planner as well as a creative type d) I want to follow more of my dreams, and now is the time…. I want to learn to, or attempt to learn, to play a musical instrument even though the idea and the associated bad noise, steep learning curve, and my own complete ignorance, scares the bleep out of me.
In the last month the muse of writing seems to have taken over from the muse of painting –the two seem to swing back and forth on an internal pendulum for me. Although the muse of textile arts and embroidery seems uninterested in the painting/writing swap-over and she just hangs around and insists that I drag a bit of needlework around with me wherever I go… after an eight-hour Welsh-smocking embroidery marathon while watching the extended BBC version of Mansfield park on a day when I was fighting off a cold (or the vapours?) I wondered, in an Austonian fashion if I was indeed now an ‘accomplished young lady’ or if I was really just wasting my time! Still, the square of embroidery I did may or may not outlast me, so it’s difficult to determine, just yet, the full measure of waste and folly in my life versus my accomplishments and usefulness as a human being on this blue-green orb.
Speaking of orb-awareness… I attended a local food awareness event at the Morlan on April 5th and then went walking in the slate hills of Tal y Bont, approx 800 meters above sea level, with the waters grey and gem-like in the distance… despite being on a guided tour we still got lost… but in the best sort of ways, for in getting one path mixed up with another, we just was different things, and I was more interested in seeing some tall trees and altitude up in the old lead-mining hills, that to look at a few lakes. I got to see some of the forestry practices, what iron water looks like seeping through slate, fenced off mining shafts, more of the rumpled Cambrian mountains, farmers piling boulders at the edge of a field in an almost-pagan style… sheep sheep and then beyond the sheep into some of the more of the rugged and isolated/desolated areas of the more lonesome-beauty of stubborn old Wales.
Welsh Colours…
What colour are my true love eyes?
It’s very easy to see
Whether brown or green or even blue
There is an ease in old Welsh poetry
Whether of sea, gorse, slate or sky
There is no concern to my memory
As long as she’s wick
There’s only one word for me:
For my true love’s eyes are glas,
glas will do the trick
My true love’s eyes are glas
As long as she is wick!
Welsh eyes and Welsh words tell us there is more than one difference in how we see things. I was told there was not Welsh colour for brown, except a recent word, and no colour for green either, until modern times, for there used to be one word, for the living colours, which ranged from grey to green to blue. From the colours of the sea, to the sheen of water on slate, the greys of the sea to the greens of the land including the gorse, bracken and even the greys and blues of the sky.
Glas
Glas
Ynyslas (inn-IS-lass)
Blue hill/island of sand
Mutations in Welsh language frequently occur to the first consonant.
“Modern Welsh is tending toward the 11-color Western scheme, restricting glas to blue and using gwyrdd for green and llwyd for grey. Similarly, in Gaelic, glas can mean various shades of green and grey (like the sea), while liath is grey proper (like a horse), and the term for blue proper is gorm (like the sky or Cairngorm mountains).”
Wikipedia consulted April 6th 2008
Many stories have been told by the long, flat sandy shores of Ynyslas, where the blue island is a tuft of grass at the top of the sand dunes, and those tough, knotted and knitted grass roots are the only thing preventing the edge of Wales from unravelling in the ceaseless, tuneless wind, the tides rise and lower in a swift foam-trimmed slate grey rush… across the flat sands.
Aberdovy, is across the way, sitting idyllic and quaint in slate and paint. Nestled beside the river Dovy. It is so close to Ynyslas, which is no longer really a place to live, but an idea of what once was, a parking lot and set of sandy dunes to traverse to get to the long beach that stretches over the miles back to Borth which is South of the river mouth. To the North is Aberdovy, so close at low tide and yet ever so far since the trains took the ferry away and the tracks go around and up the river before crossing. Once upon a time, if you missed the last boat and were ‘benighted’ in the old fashioned sense of being caught out at night, with the tide coming in –there was a hut on stilts in which to take shelter until the next day.
I went with a jovial local historian as a guide to find the fabled petrified/drowned trees of Ynyslas Nature Reserve and I discovered that the trees are not actually petrified; they’re just old and salt-preserved centuries old stumps that are as often covered by the rising tides as they are by layers of sand. (which ties into the Welsh myths of the Low Hundreds and the town that drowned when the man who was supposed to be looking after the gates of the sea dyke was drunk and asleep…(part of the Taliesen legends) and which may or may not be the location of Cantref Gwaelod (can-TREv goo-why-LOD) the drowned town off the coast between Aberystwyth and Both where an old stone path stretching out into the sea appears at low tide and scientists still argue if it is man-made or natural, and the locals say that they can hear the bells of the drowned church ringing warning when a storm is coming in –in anycase the ancient tree stumps do seem to indicate that the sea has risen, or that the land has sunk… the stumps looked as though they had been chewed down by a twelve foot high beaver! –which I suppose is the mark an old stone or bronze-age axe makes ( reminding me of the Welsh monster known as the Afanc which an American writer interpreted as a twelve-foot high beaver in her retelling of the Welsh tales.
There seems to be a tradition of ‘those from away’ to come to Wales, to fall in love with its myths and then to re-tell them with varying degrees of regard for the original story… I’m not being critical, this is a process repeated around the world to fables and myths. Some of the alterations do not suit me, and others do; but overall I’d rather see the material re-used than left discarded on the scrap-heap. Besides, I find my own writerly muse sniffing around the old Welsh Tales, going, hmmmm, there are some tasty morsels here!)
Rambling around on a miles-long beach where time and space are folded in the perception into a dream-like perspective where a mile or two seems like it is within reach… I learned about the scepticism towards ley lines, but the firm believe in dowsing and the basic theories of how to dowse using a common aluminium coat hanger (cut the hook off, cut in half, bend into 2 L’s, one slightly larger than the other, hold upright in your fisted hands, antennae pointed out, and walk… when the antennae move towards each other, pointing to each other, or crossing, then water lies underneath.)
Back to the colours and how we separate them… vision, perception and culture are quite fascinating. What is the difference between blue and green? It’s a boundary line I think most would place differently. When does grey turn into grey-ish blue, and how to I convey what I see? And what of the Welsh bumble bee, which sees in an entirely different spectrum, or the Welsh dogs that don’t see in pure black and white, but just lack the ‘full Western colour spectrum.’ I wonder if in the future we will evolve our colour spectrums into divisions akin to the palettes offered to us in computer palettes. Oh –you’re still on the archaic 11 part rainbow – -how quaint! -I’m into the 254 I-rainbow version 12.2! Well, that’s it from this glas-eyed lass for today…
And I always think I won’t have much to write each month!
Other highlights of the month:
–getting two pieces into the Imaging the Bible in Art Exhibition (an art show for secular and non-secular artists) and being photographed by the local media. (why do those media dogs love teeth so? It’s not a picture unless you show your pearly whites.)
-Walking up into the hills by myself a few times to see the sheep and to fall more in love with hedgerows.
-meeting energetic photographer Grace Lau after her lecture and discussing the narrative impulse in imagery and community art projects.
-meeting Daniel Meadows after a talk he gave on his ’73 project driving the 1948 omnibus around England taking photos of people in what was dubbed ‘The Great Ordinary Show’ and then 20 years later going back, meeting them and photographing them again and developing a community story –narratives that he produced in a show for BBC radio. Daniel Meadows’ presentation was probably one of the most self-effacing, personal-yet-informative, engaging, well-paced and organized presentations I’ve ever sat through. Who wouldn’t love a man who sewed a huge old battery-run cassette recorder into the back of an old long coat, stitching the microphone into his sleeve so that he could do sound recordings while taking photos!
Afterward the official talk he gave freely of his time and spoke ‘off the cuff’ of his passion of photography –and his knowledge of the ‘There’s no such thing as Society’ exhibition which showcases the work of over two dozen photographers. I especially appreciated hearing what he had to say about Homer Sykes’ work (a photographer who documented British and Welsh rituals including the morris dancers). Daniel Meadows has classic long artists’ hands gesticulating in a dance of enthusiasm, his blue eyes twinkling and his genuine earnestness and interest still shining through him, even in his silver years, as much as it had during his hey-day long-haired hippy days when he followed around in the footsteps of Benjamin Stone. Daniel Meadows is a part of the ‘iconic digital storytelling movement’ and idea I quite fancy.
-going to Henllan Mill too visit David and Aubin’s friends: David Millward and Jenny Nimmo. Jenny is a successful children’s author and David is an artist and teacher –between the two of them they run a summer artschool/B&B in the old mill and the cottage and barns around the lovely old mill…. Despite being complete strangers they welcomed myself and Phillipa, an MA art student who is in the process of designing and building her own Creative Retreat B& B in Wales… we had a few cups of tea, went for a tour, saw chickens sunning themselves under the willow besode the happy stream running beside the old mill. It was lovely. The hour and a half trip there and back was in perfect glorious golden spring sunshine (the first time I’ve been on a jaunt in the sunlight on the roads of Wales) and it was a great day to see the land and take some photos. Phillipa, being an artist herself, was sympathetic enough to stop when I HAD to take some photos of a particularly dilapidated barn!
The visit to the Mill inspired a new fairytale and the stop in ‘Mach’ at the fabric shop to buy canvas and embroidery floss will keep me busy in the studio for the remainder of my time here.
-Last night (april 20th) I went with eight improv-contact-dancers (one of whom I know from Welsh dance who invited me) to the barns of EquiLibre and found a bit of Cirque du soleil Welsh-style. A lady named Jane is a horse trainer and does annual horse-theatre performances. Her last event was a theatre show and masquerade banquet for 160 deep in the heartland of Wales! http://www.equilibre.co.uk/intro.htm
Through local connections I was lucky enough to get invited along to an artist to horse introduction night. She gave us a tour, introduced us to her horses, talked about horse language and then we got to interact with some of the horses after she put them through some paces. The rapture of seeing a Spanish stallion with some war-horse/parade training, meeting a young gelding named Trigger, and then an aging white Lipizaner, a beauty of an animal who felt comfy enough to roll upside down outside of the barn, at twilight. -Quite the spectacle- It was surprisingly easy to forget about the red and orange paint and stage-prop mirrors around the show ring as the horses were the most beautiful, and clearly well cared for, and magnificent gems of the farm!
I’ll admit when I first heard of the scheme I was highly dubious… but after meeting Jane I became confident and impressed that she’ll accomplish what she sets out to do. After looking her up online today the impression of awe and notion that it would be my privilege to participate in a project of hers has deepened.
But last night I arrived back in Aber late, to the familiar lights and confusing one-way tangle of streets with my hands smelling of horse -despite the soap and water -feeling quite happy. I may have the opportunity to dance with horses.
What an idea!
Another month has flown by and I swear that after February time somehow learns to speed up… the days are noticeably longer and I look in wonderment at the trees which are beginning to branch-tip swell with budding leaves ready for the explosion of new foliage that is the miraculous renewal of life –and a good indicator that I’ve been here longer than I realize, for it strikes me as somehow significant that I was here first when the leaves began to turn colour –or simply fall –off their million perches… which inspired me into a flurry –perhaps a paroxysm of poetry –would be the correct phraseology… Now that collection of poetry has been edited and printed in limited edition as Peargirl V –the poetry edition- and I am already working on Peargirl VI –the online edition which is more reflective of my delving into the many myths, folklore and fairy tales of Wales.
So catching up –memories of Budapest still linger and sing in my memory recall data banks, but a new tumult of experience has come piling in the last month along with realizations that a) I’ve been here long enough to start to feel more settled in, to get to know people and to feel comfortable enough that I worry if it will be difficult to reconnect with my old routines on Bowen. Likely reconnection will be transformative and a development of new routines and associations on top of the old bedrock of my islander identity. b) For a workaholic occasional hermit, I have the capacity to make new friends and to be social –even if I’m still not keen on drunkenness out of moderation or sitting still in Pubs for too long) I’m proud to be a bit of an academic, a geek, an organizer and planner as well as a creative type d) I want to follow more of my dreams, and now is the time…. I want to learn to, or attempt to learn, to play a musical instrument even though the idea and the associated bad noise, steep learning curve, and my own complete ignorance, scares the bleep out of me.
In the last month the muse of writing seems to have taken over from the muse of painting –the two seem to swing back and forth on an internal pendulum for me. Although the muse of textile arts and embroidery seems uninterested in the painting/writing swap-over and she just hangs around and insists that I drag a bit of needlework around with me wherever I go… after an eight-hour Welsh-smocking embroidery marathon while watching the extended BBC version of Mansfield park on a day when I was fighting off a cold (or the vapours?) I wondered, in an Austonian fashion if I was indeed now an ‘accomplished young lady’ or if I was really just wasting my time! Still, the square of embroidery I did may or may not outlast me, so it’s difficult to determine, just yet, the full measure of waste and folly in my life versus my accomplishments and usefulness as a human being on this blue-green orb.
Speaking of orb-awareness… I attended a local food awareness event at the Morlan on April 5th and then went walking in the slate hills of Tal y Bont, approx 800 meters above sea level, with the waters grey and gem-like in the distance… despite being on a guided tour we still got lost… but in the best sort of ways, for in getting one path mixed up with another, we just was different things, and I was more interested in seeing some tall trees and altitude up in the old lead-mining hills, that to look at a few lakes. I got to see some of the forestry practices, what iron water looks like seeping through slate, fenced off mining shafts, more of the rumpled Cambrian mountains, farmers piling boulders at the edge of a field in an almost-pagan style… sheep sheep and then beyond the sheep into some of the more of the rugged and isolated/desolated areas of the more lonesome-beauty of stubborn old Wales.
Welsh Colours…
What colour are my true love eyes?
It’s very easy to see
Whether brown or green or even blue
There is an ease in old Welsh poetry
Whether of sea, gorse, slate or sky
There is no concern to my memory
As long as she’s wick
There’s only one word for me:
For my true love’s eyes are glas,
glas will do the trick
My true love’s eyes are glas
As long as she is wick!
Welsh eyes and Welsh words tell us there is more than one difference in how we see things. I was told there was not Welsh colour for brown, except a recent word, and no colour for green either, until modern times, for there used to be one word, for the living colours, which ranged from grey to green to blue. From the colours of the sea, to the sheen of water on slate, the greys of the sea to the greens of the land including the gorse, bracken and even the greys and blues of the sky.
Glas
Glas
Ynyslas (inn-IS-lass)
Blue hill/island of sand
Mutations in Welsh language frequently occur to the first consonant.
“Modern Welsh is tending toward the 11-color Western scheme, restricting glas to blue and using gwyrdd for green and llwyd for grey. Similarly, in Gaelic, glas can mean various shades of green and grey (like the sea), while liath is grey proper (like a horse), and the term for blue proper is gorm (like the sky or Cairngorm mountains).”
Wikipedia consulted April 6th 2008
Many stories have been told by the long, flat sandy shores of Ynyslas, where the blue island is a tuft of grass at the top of the sand dunes, and those tough, knotted and knitted grass roots are the only thing preventing the edge of Wales from unravelling in the ceaseless, tuneless wind, the tides rise and lower in a swift foam-trimmed slate grey rush… across the flat sands.
Aberdovy, is across the way, sitting idyllic and quaint in slate and paint. Nestled beside the river Dovy. It is so close to Ynyslas, which is no longer really a place to live, but an idea of what once was, a parking lot and set of sandy dunes to traverse to get to the long beach that stretches over the miles back to Borth which is South of the river mouth. To the North is Aberdovy, so close at low tide and yet ever so far since the trains took the ferry away and the tracks go around and up the river before crossing. Once upon a time, if you missed the last boat and were ‘benighted’ in the old fashioned sense of being caught out at night, with the tide coming in –there was a hut on stilts in which to take shelter until the next day.
I went with a jovial local historian as a guide to find the fabled petrified/drowned trees of Ynyslas Nature Reserve and I discovered that the trees are not actually petrified; they’re just old and salt-preserved centuries old stumps that are as often covered by the rising tides as they are by layers of sand. (which ties into the Welsh myths of the Low Hundreds and the town that drowned when the man who was supposed to be looking after the gates of the sea dyke was drunk and asleep…(part of the Taliesen legends) and which may or may not be the location of Cantref Gwaelod (can-TREv goo-why-LOD) the drowned town off the coast between Aberystwyth and Both where an old stone path stretching out into the sea appears at low tide and scientists still argue if it is man-made or natural, and the locals say that they can hear the bells of the drowned church ringing warning when a storm is coming in –in anycase the ancient tree stumps do seem to indicate that the sea has risen, or that the land has sunk… the stumps looked as though they had been chewed down by a twelve foot high beaver! –which I suppose is the mark an old stone or bronze-age axe makes ( reminding me of the Welsh monster known as the Afanc which an American writer interpreted as a twelve-foot high beaver in her retelling of the Welsh tales.
There seems to be a tradition of ‘those from away’ to come to Wales, to fall in love with its myths and then to re-tell them with varying degrees of regard for the original story… I’m not being critical, this is a process repeated around the world to fables and myths. Some of the alterations do not suit me, and others do; but overall I’d rather see the material re-used than left discarded on the scrap-heap. Besides, I find my own writerly muse sniffing around the old Welsh Tales, going, hmmmm, there are some tasty morsels here!)
Rambling around on a miles-long beach where time and space are folded in the perception into a dream-like perspective where a mile or two seems like it is within reach… I learned about the scepticism towards ley lines, but the firm believe in dowsing and the basic theories of how to dowse using a common aluminium coat hanger (cut the hook off, cut in half, bend into 2 L’s, one slightly larger than the other, hold upright in your fisted hands, antennae pointed out, and walk… when the antennae move towards each other, pointing to each other, or crossing, then water lies underneath.)
Back to the colours and how we separate them… vision, perception and culture are quite fascinating. What is the difference between blue and green? It’s a boundary line I think most would place differently. When does grey turn into grey-ish blue, and how to I convey what I see? And what of the Welsh bumble bee, which sees in an entirely different spectrum, or the Welsh dogs that don’t see in pure black and white, but just lack the ‘full Western colour spectrum.’ I wonder if in the future we will evolve our colour spectrums into divisions akin to the palettes offered to us in computer palettes. Oh –you’re still on the archaic 11 part rainbow –
And I always think I won’t have much to write each month!
Other highlights of the month:
–getting two pieces into the Imaging the Bible in Art Exhibition (an art show for secular and non-secular artists) and being photographed by the local media. (why do those media dogs love teeth so? It’s not a picture unless you show your pearly whites.)
-Walking up into the hills by myself a few times to see the sheep and to fall more in love with hedgerows.
-meeting energetic photographer Grace Lau after her lecture and discussing the narrative impulse in imagery and community art projects.
-meeting Daniel Meadows after a talk he gave on his ’73 project driving the 1948 omnibus around England taking photos of people in what was dubbed ‘The Great Ordinary Show’ and then 20 years later going back, meeting them and photographing them again and developing a community story –narratives that he produced in a show for BBC radio. Daniel Meadows’ presentation was probably one of the most self-effacing, personal-yet-informative, engaging, well-paced and organized presentations I’ve ever sat through. Who wouldn’t love a man who sewed a huge old battery-run cassette recorder into the back of an old long coat, stitching the microphone into his sleeve so that he could do sound recordings while taking photos!
Afterward the official talk he gave freely of his time and spoke ‘off the cuff’ of his passion of photography –and his knowledge of the ‘There’s no such thing as Society’ exhibition which showcases the work of over two dozen photographers. I especially appreciated hearing what he had to say about Homer Sykes’ work (a photographer who documented British and Welsh rituals including the morris dancers). Daniel Meadows has classic long artists’ hands gesticulating in a dance of enthusiasm, his blue eyes twinkling and his genuine earnestness and interest still shining through him, even in his silver years, as much as it had during his hey-day long-haired hippy days when he followed around in the footsteps of Benjamin Stone. Daniel Meadows is a part of the ‘iconic digital storytelling movement’ and idea I quite fancy.
-going to Henllan Mill too visit David and Aubin’s friends: David Millward and Jenny Nimmo. Jenny is a successful children’s author and David is an artist and teacher –between the two of them they run a summer artschool/B&B in the old mill and the cottage and barns around the lovely old mill…. Despite being complete strangers they welcomed myself and Phillipa, an MA art student who is in the process of designing and building her own Creative Retreat B& B in Wales… we had a few cups of tea, went for a tour, saw chickens sunning themselves under the willow besode the happy stream running beside the old mill. It was lovely. The hour and a half trip there and back was in perfect glorious golden spring sunshine (the first time I’ve been on a jaunt in the sunlight on the roads of Wales) and it was a great day to see the land and take some photos. Phillipa, being an artist herself, was sympathetic enough to stop when I HAD to take some photos of a particularly dilapidated barn!
The visit to the Mill inspired a new fairytale and the stop in ‘Mach’ at the fabric shop to buy canvas and embroidery floss will keep me busy in the studio for the remainder of my time here.
-Last night (april 20th) I went with eight improv-contact-dancers (one of whom I know from Welsh dance who invited me) to the barns of EquiLibre and found a bit of Cirque du soleil Welsh-style. A lady named Jane is a horse trainer and does annual horse-theatre performances. Her last event was a theatre show and masquerade banquet for 160 deep in the heartland of Wales! http://www.equilibre.co.uk/intro.htm
Through local connections I was lucky enough to get invited along to an artist to horse introduction night. She gave us a tour, introduced us to her horses, talked about horse language and then we got to interact with some of the horses after she put them through some paces. The rapture of seeing a Spanish stallion with some war-horse/parade training, meeting a young gelding named Trigger, and then an aging white Lipizaner, a beauty of an animal who felt comfy enough to roll upside down outside of the barn, at twilight. -Quite the spectacle- It was surprisingly easy to forget about the red and orange paint and stage-prop mirrors around the show ring as the horses were the most beautiful, and clearly well cared for, and magnificent gems of the farm!
I’ll admit when I first heard of the scheme I was highly dubious… but after meeting Jane I became confident and impressed that she’ll accomplish what she sets out to do. After looking her up online today the impression of awe and notion that it would be my privilege to participate in a project of hers has deepened.
But last night I arrived back in Aber late, to the familiar lights and confusing one-way tangle of streets with my hands smelling of horse -despite the soap and water -feeling quite happy. I may have the opportunity to dance with horses.
What an idea!
Saturday, March 22, 2008
March 22nd Spring Equinox, which means Bunnies, Budapest and Bela!
March 22nd
Spring Equinox Surrealism
There's a TV in the communal kitchen which is often on... as I was making lunch today I noticed Robin Williams as Mork from Ork in red spandex with a large silver triangle making The Fonz do mime against his will! I thought: wow, that's rather surreal... and then, about the time my thai stir-fry was ready I watched Mork from Ork kiss Ritchie Cunningham! Awesome t.v. moment! and for surreality it beats out the oddness of watching Arnold Schwartzenegger dubbed into Hungarian whilst in a hotel in Budapest that was fromerly an insane asylum after travelling for 24hours...
Squillion: one of my favourite Jude-isms. A squillion: the opposite of nano
Real fluffy, hoppity-hop brown bunnies have recently appeared around town... their arrival synchronous with the appearance of a young woman in purple leggings, orange hotpants and a yin-yang painted mime makeup. She likes to wander and waft around – a sort –of off-key cirque du soleil escapee, ethereal-lunatic styled fashion-victim who belts out Celine Dion songs while rhapsodizing with the elements and draping herself over benches along the Promenade. There’s no space on the beach unmarked by tourists and their dogs.
It must be Easter in Wales.
Well, I should get back to working on my thesis outline! Only seven weeks left of this semseter, and there's quite a few things to wrap up... then there's the grad show and then the summer semester which will mostly be studio work and my thesis.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Back from Buda pest!
School of Art Budapest trip March 9-March 15th 2008
Most of me is back -I think I left bits behind -about half a year's worth of lung health and a good portion of my diet. It was impossible to order sensible food from menus in Hungarian –even items on the vegetarian menu had bits of chicken, eggs, sour cream and sausage bits dropped into it. ‘Lost in translation’ was good excuse to eat goulash! The food was good… totally calorific!
It was a nightmare getting to Budapest –bus not showing up, storm of the winter hitting, second bus showing up, but making sound like asthsmatic hamster –eventually crawling along the side of the highway at 4am, massive lorries hurtling through the darkness looking threatening and impressive in their size and speed… eventually limping the bus in to a highway pit-stop with overpriced triangular food, fluorescent lights and large clocks which ticked away the minutes until our flight left –without us –and then another seven hours- before we re-routed (all 50 of us) to a different airport to catch a flight on a cattle call Ryan Air Flight… and to arrive in Budapest at the overly institutional looking, former insane asylum converted to a hotel -a full 24 hours after we’d supposed to have begun our journey in Aberystwyth… I’d been awake for over 36 hours by that point and everything was a little cartoonish.
Straight jacket for one and straight to bed!
Budapest was FANTASTIC once we made it there. Budapest was a feast for the senses!
I went to museums and galleries, I saw Egyptian, Italian and Eastern European Art works from various millennia centuries. I saw palaces, churches, and saw a contemporary ballet performance in the State Opera house and sat at the burgundy velvet balcony staring up at the painted inner dome. Best moment: when the Harley Davidsons ridden by real bikers roared onto the stage and carried away the prima ballerina. You just don't see that everyday!
I viewed castles, monuments, bastions, sculptures, tiled roofs and walls pockmarked by shrapnel from WWII. I walked across red carpets, on marble stairs, in gutters, and alley-ways, up hills and on the last metro-train of the night.
I ordered what I thought was hot chocolate and discovered the joys of 'drinking pudding'
I learned to say ‘thank you’ in Hungarian in a number of tones which implied: thank you! As well as ‘sorry, I don’t speak your language!
Budapest was an impressive array of architecture, ornamentation, statues, gargoyles, statues, the dirty Danube, relatively reliable transit, no buildings built higher than the domes of the parliament buildings
smog, soot, exhaust... amazing art collections housed in incredible buildings, 40' high statues of women, caverns, turrets, domes, public bathing houses which were cool to visit –but I stayed out of the ‘People Soup’ while three of the Quartet (each of us representing a different decade) visited the baths I wandered around by myself was amused by getting hot drinking pudding in a cup when I thought I was getting hot chocolate, looked at public art, saw mistletoe growing in trees, admired castles, gazed from a safe distance at horrifically ‘new fangled’ modern buildings, tromped around a moat… and under the leafless branches, off the beaten path, under an ivy-splashed stone wall I discovered the neglected bust of Bela Legosi!
Poor Bela.
----------------------------------------------
FROM WIKIPEDIA:
Béla Lugosi (October 20, 1882 – August 16, 1956), was an iconic stage and film actor best known for his portrayal of Count Dracula in the American Broadway stage production (1927), and subsequent film (1931), of Bram Stoker's classic vampire story.
Lugosi, the youngest of four children, was born as Béla Ferenc Dezső Blaskó in Lugos, at the time part of Austria-Hungary (now Lugoj, Romania), to Paula de Vojnich and István Blasko, a baker. He was raised in a Roman Catholic family, [1] and had a sister, Vilma. Lugosi started his acting career on the stage in Hungary in several Shakespearean plays and in other major roles. He began appearing in Hungarian silent films under the stage name Arisztid Olt. During World War I, he served as an infantry lieutenant in the Austro-Hungarian Army.
Lugosi died of a heart attack on August 16, 1956 while lying on a couch in his Los Angeles home. He was 73. Rumor has it that Lugosi was clutching the script for "The Final Curtain" a planned Ed Wood project, at the exact moment of his death. [3]
Lugosi was buried wearing one of the many capes from the Dracula stage play, per the request of his son and fifth wife, in the Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California. Contrary to popular belief, Lugosi never requested to be buried in his cloak; Bela Lugosi, Jr. has confirmed on numerous occasions that he and his mother, Lillian, made the decision. At his funeral it is reported that Peter Lorre looked over at Vincent Price and asked, "Should we stick a stake in his heart just to be sure?"
--------------------------------end of Wikipedia snippets--------------
Poor Bela! –after snapping a couple of pictures of Bela I was instantly treated to an internal soundtrack for the rest of the day of all the Peter Murphy songs that were once part of my audio immersion that have been stored… somewhere in my audio archive. It’s been awhile since I had Bauhaus and Murphy on heavy rotation on my cd player, but evidently I have an internal musical archive that is extensive. Upon returning to Aberytwyth I poked around online and did some Bela research …and then moved onto Peter Murphy and Bauhaus. I’d still listen to Peter Murphy read a phonebook, or even a tax form.
http://www.petermurphy.info/intro.html
Perhaps because Wales is wonderfully disconnected and occasionally navel-gazing in its focus culturally speaking, and because I’m a student without TV, an established social network (we’re all transient here, it seems,) and other excuses, I had no idea that Bauhaus has just launched a new, and its last, CD Go Away White on March 4th, 2008. What was I doing during this momentous event hmmm…working at the Art School from 9:30am-6:30pm.
http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfmfuseaction=blog.view&friendID=34133313&blogID=338078373
I wonder what the ‘incident’ was that caused the band to decide to not tour the album and to just call it a day.
-----------------------------------
Spring Equinox Surrealism
There's a TV in the communal kitchen which is often on... as I was making lunch today I noticed Robin Williams as Mork from Ork in red spandex with a large silver triangle making The Fonz do mime against his will! I thought: wow, that's rather surreal... and then, about the time my thai stir-fry was ready I watched Mork from Ork kiss Ritchie Cunningham! Awesome t.v. moment! and for surreality it beats out the oddness of watching Arnold Schwartzenegger dubbed into Hungarian whilst in a hotel in Budapest that was fromerly an insane asylum after travelling for 24hours...
Squillion: one of my favourite Jude-isms. A squillion: the opposite of nano
Real fluffy, hoppity-hop brown bunnies have recently appeared around town... their arrival synchronous with the appearance of a young woman in purple leggings, orange hotpants and a yin-yang painted mime makeup. She likes to wander and waft around – a sort –of off-key cirque du soleil escapee, ethereal-lunatic styled fashion-victim who belts out Celine Dion songs while rhapsodizing with the elements and draping herself over benches along the Promenade. There’s no space on the beach unmarked by tourists and their dogs.
It must be Easter in Wales.
Well, I should get back to working on my thesis outline! Only seven weeks left of this semseter, and there's quite a few things to wrap up... then there's the grad show and then the summer semester which will mostly be studio work and my thesis.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Back from Buda pest!
School of Art Budapest trip March 9-March 15th 2008
Most of me is back -I think I left bits behind -about half a year's worth of lung health and a good portion of my diet. It was impossible to order sensible food from menus in Hungarian –even items on the vegetarian menu had bits of chicken, eggs, sour cream and sausage bits dropped into it. ‘Lost in translation’ was good excuse to eat goulash! The food was good… totally calorific!
It was a nightmare getting to Budapest –bus not showing up, storm of the winter hitting, second bus showing up, but making sound like asthsmatic hamster –eventually crawling along the side of the highway at 4am, massive lorries hurtling through the darkness looking threatening and impressive in their size and speed… eventually limping the bus in to a highway pit-stop with overpriced triangular food, fluorescent lights and large clocks which ticked away the minutes until our flight left –without us –and then another seven hours- before we re-routed (all 50 of us) to a different airport to catch a flight on a cattle call Ryan Air Flight… and to arrive in Budapest at the overly institutional looking, former insane asylum converted to a hotel -a full 24 hours after we’d supposed to have begun our journey in Aberystwyth… I’d been awake for over 36 hours by that point and everything was a little cartoonish.
Straight jacket for one and straight to bed!
Budapest was FANTASTIC once we made it there. Budapest was a feast for the senses!
I went to museums and galleries, I saw Egyptian, Italian and Eastern European Art works from various millennia centuries. I saw palaces, churches, and saw a contemporary ballet performance in the State Opera house and sat at the burgundy velvet balcony staring up at the painted inner dome. Best moment: when the Harley Davidsons ridden by real bikers roared onto the stage and carried away the prima ballerina. You just don't see that everyday!
I viewed castles, monuments, bastions, sculptures, tiled roofs and walls pockmarked by shrapnel from WWII. I walked across red carpets, on marble stairs, in gutters, and alley-ways, up hills and on the last metro-train of the night.
I ordered what I thought was hot chocolate and discovered the joys of 'drinking pudding'
I learned to say ‘thank you’ in Hungarian in a number of tones which implied: thank you! As well as ‘sorry, I don’t speak your language!
Budapest was an impressive array of architecture, ornamentation, statues, gargoyles, statues, the dirty Danube, relatively reliable transit, no buildings built higher than the domes of the parliament buildings
smog, soot, exhaust... amazing art collections housed in incredible buildings, 40' high statues of women, caverns, turrets, domes, public bathing houses which were cool to visit –but I stayed out of the ‘People Soup’ while three of the Quartet (each of us representing a different decade) visited the baths I wandered around by myself was amused by getting hot drinking pudding in a cup when I thought I was getting hot chocolate, looked at public art, saw mistletoe growing in trees, admired castles, gazed from a safe distance at horrifically ‘new fangled’ modern buildings, tromped around a moat… and under the leafless branches, off the beaten path, under an ivy-splashed stone wall I discovered the neglected bust of Bela Legosi!
Poor Bela.
----------------------------------------------
FROM WIKIPEDIA:
Béla Lugosi (October 20, 1882 – August 16, 1956), was an iconic stage and film actor best known for his portrayal of Count Dracula in the American Broadway stage production (1927), and subsequent film (1931), of Bram Stoker's classic vampire story.
Lugosi, the youngest of four children, was born as Béla Ferenc Dezső Blaskó in Lugos, at the time part of Austria-Hungary (now Lugoj, Romania), to Paula de Vojnich and István Blasko, a baker. He was raised in a Roman Catholic family, [1] and had a sister, Vilma. Lugosi started his acting career on the stage in Hungary in several Shakespearean plays and in other major roles. He began appearing in Hungarian silent films under the stage name Arisztid Olt. During World War I, he served as an infantry lieutenant in the Austro-Hungarian Army.
Lugosi died of a heart attack on August 16, 1956 while lying on a couch in his Los Angeles home. He was 73. Rumor has it that Lugosi was clutching the script for "The Final Curtain" a planned Ed Wood project, at the exact moment of his death. [3]
Lugosi was buried wearing one of the many capes from the Dracula stage play, per the request of his son and fifth wife, in the Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California. Contrary to popular belief, Lugosi never requested to be buried in his cloak; Bela Lugosi, Jr. has confirmed on numerous occasions that he and his mother, Lillian, made the decision. At his funeral it is reported that Peter Lorre looked over at Vincent Price and asked, "Should we stick a stake in his heart just to be sure?"
--------------------------------end of Wikipedia snippets--------------
Poor Bela! –after snapping a couple of pictures of Bela I was instantly treated to an internal soundtrack for the rest of the day of all the Peter Murphy songs that were once part of my audio immersion that have been stored… somewhere in my audio archive. It’s been awhile since I had Bauhaus and Murphy on heavy rotation on my cd player, but evidently I have an internal musical archive that is extensive. Upon returning to Aberytwyth I poked around online and did some Bela research …and then moved onto Peter Murphy and Bauhaus. I’d still listen to Peter Murphy read a phonebook, or even a tax form.
http://www.petermurphy.info/intro.html
Perhaps because Wales is wonderfully disconnected and occasionally navel-gazing in its focus culturally speaking, and because I’m a student without TV, an established social network (we’re all transient here, it seems,) and other excuses, I had no idea that Bauhaus has just launched a new, and its last, CD Go Away White on March 4th, 2008. What was I doing during this momentous event
http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfmfuseaction=blog.view&friendID=34133313&blogID=338078373
I wonder what the ‘incident’ was that caused the band to decide to not tour the album and to just call it a day.
-----------------------------------
Friday, March 7, 2008
LEAP YEAR in ABERYSTWYTH
A FEW DAYS LATE on ‘Welsh time’ enter the year of the RAT, Feb. 9th
Feb. 9th Aberystwyth breaks out the lanterns and dragon and lion dancers for Chinese New Years! In an odd quirk Chinese New Year was celebrated all over town in style, whilst St. David’s day (the patron saint of Wales on March 1st) was demurrly denoted primarily by wearing daffodils and unobtrusively eating leeks.
For Chinese New Years I donned traditional Welsh garb and paraded with the Welsh dance Group. Cruelly an enthusiastic Samba band was tight behind us… I so wanted to samba, but the Welsh costume just wouldn’t let me.. not to mention I couldn’t really raise my arms with the wool shawl tied on!
------------------------------------
ANTI V-DAY DINNER Feb. 13th
I hosted an Anti V Day dinner murder mystery evening at the Orangery Wed. Feb.13th. The theme:It's V Day so Someone Must Die!There were 6 acting parts to choose from:
Parson Snows -The Village Rector was played by Kendall
Claire Voyant -The resident mystic, was embodied by Ruth
Frau Pumpernickel -the German cook was animated by Gretchen
Slaughter -the Gamekeeper was type cast as Steve
Major Windbag -Lord Shippe's shooting partner was interpreted by myself (because the point of dressing up is to look sexy!)
Lady Shippe -the flamboyant mistress of the Shippe Mansion household was a sensation caused by Aoife
Shawn came to hang out, watch the show and rest from her hectic social calendar
It was a fun…. Different kind of night! A bit of distraction from the regular hallmark celebration of V day for sure!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Feb. 19-20th TRIP TO CORRIS AND MACHYLLNETH
I hopped on a train and went to Mac to meet Eireen, a lovely kindred spirit who hails from Greece. We went for coffee, and –oh bliss –to a three story fabric shop! I didn’t allow myself to buy anything as I need a plan before purchasing anything…. Oh, the wool remnants were
tempting though. Maybe a little quilt… hmmmm…. I do love textiles.
Eireen’s living a few hours away from Aber in an old slate-quarry town nestled in the Welsh hills. The smell of cow was in the air, along with echoing moos across the valley that almost drowned out the cars in the distance. Corris felt like stepping back in time and experiencing an authentic Wales –walking around the mostly unlit town my almost-full moon light at night and standing on the old stone bridge with the river gurgling by, and the hills in the distance whitened with frost was a treat.
Eireen and I went on a long rambling walk that went on for hours as she showed me all the magical places she has found in the area –long old paths through coniferous trees, old slate walls that supported nothing but pine-needles, old slate fences looking like dragon’s teeth, the house of the old eccentric (now deceased) who had filled his yard with follies that made me envious. Part of me longs to be one of those eccentrics that turns their yard into a playground of whimsy, leaving an irrational legacy of personal indulgence and bizarrities…
We hiked further up into the hills to the old quarry site itself, and the waterfall, where the old eccentric artist who had taken up stone carving, had carved and placed some carvings of hands onto old, large slate pieces at the base of the waterfall. Enchanting.
It felt as though we had discovered that grotto for the first time in centuries, so isolated and golden and perfect was the afternoon… and so free for a bit of larking about, to embellish and contrast the observations of all the weighty beauties and dark history which lay thickly strewn, and abandoned, across the rocky Welsh landscape.
The best picture of Corris exists only in the memory of the moonlight on the owl's back as it flew from the dark old oak tree... it was a lovely visit, I feel privileged to have been invited and treated to Eireen’s hospitality, to be able to sit on a couch under a real Welsh wool blanket at to feel ‘at home’ in a real home…. As a student I hadn’t realized how much I miss things like comfortable furniture, stereos, well-appointed kitchens, wood stoves…
(No longer a coal virgin) I had the novel experience of bringing in coal from the coal bin… and seeing the soot of coal and smell coal and wood smoke mixed in the night airs, and looking at the stone homes, the top-floor frequently being more a half story than a full story, up in the eaves. I felt too tall for Corris, and wonderfully foreign… I felt as though I was walking around in a Susan Cooper novel… something dark, ancient and magical around every corner, if only I could walk quickly enough.
----------------------------------------------------------
TRIP TO CAERNARFON Feb. 29th-March 1st
I'm off to Caernarfon (the place with three different spellings that NO ONE pronounces in the same fashion, so I alternate between pronunciations -but get corrected EVERY time!) but c'est la vie, I'm going to see a BIG castle and three of my diminutive artworks in a gallery group exhibition....back sometime on Saturday :)http://www.castlewales.com/caernarf.html
Caernarfon Castle
http://www.castlewales.com/cae...
Caernarfon is located at the southern end of the Menai Strait between north Wales and Anglesey, 8 miles south west of Bangor. During Edward I's invasions of Wales, this was strategically an excellent place...
The Oriel Dafydd Hardy Gallery Graduate Show 08 March 1-28 in Caernarfon is all about unexpected relationships. Sixteen artists graduating this year form the University of Aberystwyth School of Art (SOA) Fine Art and Art History BA and MA programs are part of a curated group exhibition displaying a range of contemporary artworks. Realistic, subtly mesmerizing oil on copper paintings of spoons, accompany hand-made books, landscape paintings, etchings, a conceptual cake performance piece, video installations, large-format photography and contemporary embroidered textiles inspired by traditional Welsh men’s 18th and 19th C. workman’s smock-frocks.
The work of Eloiza Mills, Hazel Money, Tracy Smith, Hester Berry, Zoe Dunn, Bryony Purvis, Michael Nobbs, Jonathon Gupta, Sian Kingscott Smith, Sarah HAxby, Elizabeth Ragg, Dawn Olive, Rupert Lawler, Amy Jane Blackhall, Ruth Hogg and Freeda Lohr is on display thanks to a partnership between Glynnis ----, the gallery coordinator, the support of the Oriel Dafydd Hardy real-estate business (which is also the entrance to the gallery,) and SOA instructor Miranda Whall. Any emerging/young artist in Wales may apply for an exhibiton at this gallery, and artists are not charged a commission allowing for the presentation of work at a very reasonable price in a professional exhibition space open to the public.
The unexpected combination of media, arts and business partnerships make the Graduate show an inspiring and insightful presentation of sixteen emerging artists to watch for in the future!
On the Leap Year day I didn’t do what 700,000 other women did (propose to a man) instead I ended up on the exciting journey of travelling up North to Caernarfon and spending an enjoyable day (after painting plinths and helping with the last minute details of setting up the exhibit) I went for a long walk up the hills and around the ancient walled town.
We stayed in the nicest hostel I’ve ever been in –Totters hostel- it was clean, welcoming, filled with nice things, and right beside the wall and a romantic archway which led to the promenade –so of course I had to walk the whole promenade and imagine what it would have been like in the late 1200s when it was built. The large castle was fantastic! I really appreciated the tenacious ferns and bonsai’d buddleia and other clinging plants that manage to find a root-hold in the ancient stone walls. Much of Caernarfon has a romantically abandoned feel to it, as though the tide of the place is caught in the past because the people who live there now are not of sufficient number or conviction to modernize the place. Apart from the general commercial homogeneity of the shops –the individual characteristics of the place shone out here and there, even if under a layer of historic smudgery. I treated myself to Thai food and was delighted that the food was authentic… equally amazing was that everyone in the restaurant was speaking in slightly heavier northern accented Welsh, except the owners of the restaurant who were speaking Chinese. I really felt as though I was in a different country –it was just a bit difficult to tell which one.
Drinking is a pretty big social problem in the UK –and people were in town on the eve of St. David’s day to drink. A couple of young men were walking towards me, past me, decided to kick and swear at the construction fence near them –and to throw their pint glass my way –the glass hit the paving stones and a few chunks sprayed up my back! It was only 5pm on a greyish unassuming afternoon… I had just reached the door of the gallery… the door was locked… I looked back to see the most inhuman look in a person’s eyes than I’ve seen in a long time. The drunkard began to lurch towards me, but the lady in the gallery got the door unlocked faster and so I nipped inside and locked the door behind me!
The show opening was a success, and a great opportunity to get to know some of my fellow students a bit better. It’s hard to believe that in just less than three months the BA students will all be going home!
I spent the morning of St. David’s (March 1st) day running around in spooky dark castle hallways, holding onto ropes to get up into old towers, daringly taking a good digital camera with me... accidentally erasing all my pictures just minutes before I had to leave... so I could take one more photo -of a stuffed goat. It was the ROYAL goat –a tradition established by Queen Victoria (presumably because a sheep is unable to be royally solemn enough?!)
OOPS! I had to laugh, because otherwise I would have cried... thankfully my crumby old digital camera still had the mediocre shots left from the day before.... adventures are often in the unexpected things we would have wished to avoid, but will never forget!!!
And, on the bright side of things, I did get a picture of an old goat!
-----------------------------------------------------------------
SMELLS OF THE MONTH
The night before last one of my flatmates decided to cook eels for the first time –in the microwave –which unfortunately for me, is located opposite from my bedroom door in the half kitchen….in the main kitchen she was cooking eggs in a pan filled with a quarter inch of olive oil which was burning –as it was on the highest heat- (I’ve had the talk with her about oils and heat too many times to recount) –suffice it to say that the small kitchen smelled like nuked eel, the main kitchen like burnt olive oil, and when she was finished cooking she went directly to her bedroom -safely a floor and a half below!
Microwaved eel is not an odour I would choose to experience ever again…
However, on the odiferously positive side: I smell like a burnt marshmallows tonight, and saltspray from the rapidly incoming tide blown in by storm winds the art school students were valiantly ignoring in order to celebrate Angharad’s birthday on the beach. They had an excellent set up of chairs, stuffed sheep, and a bonfire, a BBQ with burgers, prawns and marshmallows to roast! I was going for a sunset walk, but stopped to join them for a time.
February has been a month filled with adventure, and much soul-searching after hitting a bit of an artistic impasse/mortal blow to my muse of painting that I shan’t subject you to, nor myself for much longer hopefully, as I have a trip to Budapest March 9-16th with the School of Art to distract myself with.
Budapest, am I really going? …. Eeek, in a plane? Time to start packing and flapping… off on another adventure…
Besides, this is enough for now…. Amusingly each month I think ‘well I won’t have much to say this month!!’ and then I have to edit and select what to highlight of my ONGOING ADVENTURES IN WALES… until next month!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Feb. 9th Aberystwyth breaks out the lanterns and dragon and lion dancers for Chinese New Years! In an odd quirk Chinese New Year was celebrated all over town in style, whilst St. David’s day (the patron saint of Wales on March 1st) was demurrly denoted primarily by wearing daffodils and unobtrusively eating leeks.
For Chinese New Years I donned traditional Welsh garb and paraded with the Welsh dance Group. Cruelly an enthusiastic Samba band was tight behind us… I so wanted to samba, but the Welsh costume just wouldn’t let me.. not to mention I couldn’t really raise my arms with the wool shawl tied on!
------------------------------------
ANTI V-DAY DINNER Feb. 13th
I hosted an Anti V Day dinner murder mystery evening at the Orangery Wed. Feb.13th. The theme:It's V Day so Someone Must Die!There were 6 acting parts to choose from:
Parson Snows -The Village Rector was played by Kendall
Claire Voyant -The resident mystic, was embodied by Ruth
Frau Pumpernickel -the German cook was animated by Gretchen
Slaughter -the Gamekeeper was type cast as Steve
Major Windbag -Lord Shippe's shooting partner was interpreted by myself (because the point of dressing up is to look sexy!)
Lady Shippe -the flamboyant mistress of the Shippe Mansion household was a sensation caused by Aoife
Shawn came to hang out, watch the show and rest from her hectic social calendar
It was a fun…. Different kind of night! A bit of distraction from the regular hallmark celebration of V day for sure!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Feb. 19-20th TRIP TO CORRIS AND MACHYLLNETH
I hopped on a train and went to Mac to meet Eireen, a lovely kindred spirit who hails from Greece. We went for coffee, and –oh bliss –to a three story fabric shop! I didn’t allow myself to buy anything as I need a plan before purchasing anything…. Oh, the wool remnants were
tempting though. Maybe a little quilt… hmmmm…. I do love textiles.
Eireen’s living a few hours away from Aber in an old slate-quarry town nestled in the Welsh hills. The smell of cow was in the air, along with echoing moos across the valley that almost drowned out the cars in the distance. Corris felt like stepping back in time and experiencing an authentic Wales –walking around the mostly unlit town my almost-full moon light at night and standing on the old stone bridge with the river gurgling by, and the hills in the distance whitened with frost was a treat.
Eireen and I went on a long rambling walk that went on for hours as she showed me all the magical places she has found in the area –long old paths through coniferous trees, old slate walls that supported nothing but pine-needles, old slate fences looking like dragon’s teeth, the house of the old eccentric (now deceased) who had filled his yard with follies that made me envious. Part of me longs to be one of those eccentrics that turns their yard into a playground of whimsy, leaving an irrational legacy of personal indulgence and bizarrities…
We hiked further up into the hills to the old quarry site itself, and the waterfall, where the old eccentric artist who had taken up stone carving, had carved and placed some carvings of hands onto old, large slate pieces at the base of the waterfall. Enchanting.
It felt as though we had discovered that grotto for the first time in centuries, so isolated and golden and perfect was the afternoon… and so free for a bit of larking about, to embellish and contrast the observations of all the weighty beauties and dark history which lay thickly strewn, and abandoned, across the rocky Welsh landscape.
The best picture of Corris exists only in the memory of the moonlight on the owl's back as it flew from the dark old oak tree... it was a lovely visit, I feel privileged to have been invited and treated to Eireen’s hospitality, to be able to sit on a couch under a real Welsh wool blanket at to feel ‘at home’ in a real home…. As a student I hadn’t realized how much I miss things like comfortable furniture, stereos, well-appointed kitchens, wood stoves…
(No longer a coal virgin) I had the novel experience of bringing in coal from the coal bin… and seeing the soot of coal and smell coal and wood smoke mixed in the night airs, and looking at the stone homes, the top-floor frequently being more a half story than a full story, up in the eaves. I felt too tall for Corris, and wonderfully foreign… I felt as though I was walking around in a Susan Cooper novel… something dark, ancient and magical around every corner, if only I could walk quickly enough.
----------------------------------------------------------
TRIP TO CAERNARFON Feb. 29th-March 1st
I'm off to Caernarfon (the place with three different spellings that NO ONE pronounces in the same fashion, so I alternate between pronunciations -but get corrected EVERY time!) but c'est la vie, I'm going to see a BIG castle and three of my diminutive artworks in a gallery group exhibition....back sometime on Saturday :)http://www.castlewales.com/caernarf.html
Caernarfon Castle
http://www.castlewales.com/cae...
Caernarfon is located at the southern end of the Menai Strait between north Wales and Anglesey, 8 miles south west of Bangor. During Edward I's invasions of Wales, this was strategically an excellent place...
The Oriel Dafydd Hardy Gallery Graduate Show 08 March 1-28 in Caernarfon is all about unexpected relationships. Sixteen artists graduating this year form the University of Aberystwyth School of Art (SOA) Fine Art and Art History BA and MA programs are part of a curated group exhibition displaying a range of contemporary artworks. Realistic, subtly mesmerizing oil on copper paintings of spoons, accompany hand-made books, landscape paintings, etchings, a conceptual cake performance piece, video installations, large-format photography and contemporary embroidered textiles inspired by traditional Welsh men’s 18th and 19th C. workman’s smock-frocks.
The work of Eloiza Mills, Hazel Money, Tracy Smith, Hester Berry, Zoe Dunn, Bryony Purvis, Michael Nobbs, Jonathon Gupta, Sian Kingscott Smith, Sarah HAxby, Elizabeth Ragg, Dawn Olive, Rupert Lawler, Amy Jane Blackhall, Ruth Hogg and Freeda Lohr is on display thanks to a partnership between Glynnis ----, the gallery coordinator, the support of the Oriel Dafydd Hardy real-estate business (which is also the entrance to the gallery,) and SOA instructor Miranda Whall. Any emerging/young artist in Wales may apply for an exhibiton at this gallery, and artists are not charged a commission allowing for the presentation of work at a very reasonable price in a professional exhibition space open to the public.
The unexpected combination of media, arts and business partnerships make the Graduate show an inspiring and insightful presentation of sixteen emerging artists to watch for in the future!
On the Leap Year day I didn’t do what 700,000 other women did (propose to a man) instead I ended up on the exciting journey of travelling up North to Caernarfon and spending an enjoyable day (after painting plinths and helping with the last minute details of setting up the exhibit) I went for a long walk up the hills and around the ancient walled town.
We stayed in the nicest hostel I’ve ever been in –Totters hostel- it was clean, welcoming, filled with nice things, and right beside the wall and a romantic archway which led to the promenade –so of course I had to walk the whole promenade and imagine what it would have been like in the late 1200s when it was built. The large castle was fantastic! I really appreciated the tenacious ferns and bonsai’d buddleia and other clinging plants that manage to find a root-hold in the ancient stone walls. Much of Caernarfon has a romantically abandoned feel to it, as though the tide of the place is caught in the past because the people who live there now are not of sufficient number or conviction to modernize the place. Apart from the general commercial homogeneity of the shops –the individual characteristics of the place shone out here and there, even if under a layer of historic smudgery. I treated myself to Thai food and was delighted that the food was authentic… equally amazing was that everyone in the restaurant was speaking in slightly heavier northern accented Welsh, except the owners of the restaurant who were speaking Chinese. I really felt as though I was in a different country –it was just a bit difficult to tell which one.
Drinking is a pretty big social problem in the UK –and people were in town on the eve of St. David’s day to drink. A couple of young men were walking towards me, past me, decided to kick and swear at the construction fence near them –and to throw their pint glass my way –the glass hit the paving stones and a few chunks sprayed up my back! It was only 5pm on a greyish unassuming afternoon… I had just reached the door of the gallery… the door was locked… I looked back to see the most inhuman look in a person’s eyes than I’ve seen in a long time. The drunkard began to lurch towards me, but the lady in the gallery got the door unlocked faster and so I nipped inside and locked the door behind me!
The show opening was a success, and a great opportunity to get to know some of my fellow students a bit better. It’s hard to believe that in just less than three months the BA students will all be going home!
I spent the morning of St. David’s (March 1st) day running around in spooky dark castle hallways, holding onto ropes to get up into old towers, daringly taking a good digital camera with me... accidentally erasing all my pictures just minutes before I had to leave... so I could take one more photo -of a stuffed goat. It was the ROYAL goat –a tradition established by Queen Victoria (presumably because a sheep is unable to be royally solemn enough?!)
OOPS! I had to laugh, because otherwise I would have cried... thankfully my crumby old digital camera still had the mediocre shots left from the day before.... adventures are often in the unexpected things we would have wished to avoid, but will never forget!!!
And, on the bright side of things, I did get a picture of an old goat!
-----------------------------------------------------------------
SMELLS OF THE MONTH
The night before last one of my flatmates decided to cook eels for the first time –in the microwave –which unfortunately for me, is located opposite from my bedroom door in the half kitchen….in the main kitchen she was cooking eggs in a pan filled with a quarter inch of olive oil which was burning –as it was on the highest heat- (I’ve had the talk with her about oils and heat too many times to recount) –suffice it to say that the small kitchen smelled like nuked eel, the main kitchen like burnt olive oil, and when she was finished cooking she went directly to her bedroom -safely a floor and a half below!
Microwaved eel is not an odour I would choose to experience ever again…
However, on the odiferously positive side: I smell like a burnt marshmallows tonight, and saltspray from the rapidly incoming tide blown in by storm winds the art school students were valiantly ignoring in order to celebrate Angharad’s birthday on the beach. They had an excellent set up of chairs, stuffed sheep, and a bonfire, a BBQ with burgers, prawns and marshmallows to roast! I was going for a sunset walk, but stopped to join them for a time.
February has been a month filled with adventure, and much soul-searching after hitting a bit of an artistic impasse/mortal blow to my muse of painting that I shan’t subject you to, nor myself for much longer hopefully, as I have a trip to Budapest March 9-16th with the School of Art to distract myself with.
Budapest, am I really going? …. Eeek, in a plane? Time to start packing and flapping… off on another adventure…
Besides, this is enough for now…. Amusingly each month I think ‘well I won’t have much to say this month!!’ and then I have to edit and select what to highlight of my ONGOING ADVENTURES IN WALES… until next month!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sunday, February 3, 2008
February is almost regular month-sized this year -couldn't another month spare it an extra day?
FEB.3rd 2008
and I’VE SEEN CAMELIA BUSHES IN BLOOM and hillsides covered in snowdrops!
Predictably this blog has suffered the slowing inertia that comes of cooling off… it is one of the universal laws: Big bang, the explosion of the creative muse, and life itself begins with a spark, with heat, and as life unfurls eventually the heat dissipates… we stumble through obstacles, ditches and doldrums trying to maintain velocity. Some manage to feed the furnace and keep up a consistently good pace for the long haul, others stumble in and out of the race… but eventually it all tapers off. Slackens. And stops -unless violently, unnaturally truncated. I tend to by cyclical in my efforts… Sisyphus had it easy –he only has one rock to push up hill. I always feel like I’ve got a half dozen on the go, and when I ignore one I have to go running back down hill after it -in a comical fashion…
'WHAT THE HECK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?' –someone is bound to be thinking by this point.
Well, I’m using obfuscating metaphors and references to Greek myths as a crutch to limp along a pathetic dog’s breakfast of excuses for not updating my blog since Dec. 18th 2007 -when today is Sunday February the 3rd, 2008.
Enough with the excuses! No one wants to hear them, no matter how clever or abstruse they are.
-------------------------------------------------
COUNT DOWN
I would say there are 207 days until I return home, but I believe I may be home a little earlier than that. Possibly the beginning or middle of August. Partially because my dissertation topic may use Ione Betty McIntyre’s art work as the focusing lens to look upon my subject matter (an idea that is recent, or else perhaps I would not have travelled to Wales to decide to study a local artist’s work from back home…. Or perhaps it could not have occurred in any other fashion, as there is nothing like travelling to another country to give one perspective on what one has left in their wake.)
If I arrive home at the start of August that means that I have approximately 179 more days in Wales. The sands of time are running through the hour shaped glass just as the money is pouring out of my bank account… I am satisfied I will be tired, but happy when I come to the end of both. I’m not yet certain what my next chapter will be, and am reticent about trying to prematurely pre-write it.
I am as settled as I am going to be here. It is a strange thing to be in a place for a year. It is cloaked in a variable sense of impermanence. Constantly conscious of the finitude I find myself refraining, or resisting from nesting or putting down roots. Of choosing some discomfort over the future discomfort of having to dispose of/leave things behind. It is not a way to live for long. But it is a terrific way to live for a time! Ah –the adventure! Then I can return home to mundanity and the comfort of the illusion that when one buys something it owns you just as much as you own .
I have given in to buying a peace lily that sits upon my wardrobe, happily blooming. Mostly I enjoy the flowers, but sometimes I look at it with guilt and think –it won’t be long before I leave it behind. As I will leave behind a great many things. I have plans to put together a care package at the school for the next international student to come in, so they will have a start-up kit of art supplies etc. to get them going. The plants and other things I will either find good homes for, or install on the windowsills in the art school with the other plants. Anything else can be taken to the art school and tagged with ‘Free’ and will most certainly be raven-ized. Art students are nothing if not scavengers!
I should know! Just look at the accumulation around me –from beach stones to a new suite of paintings (it was a bit of a shock to me to discover that my Portfolio Review Power point Presentation contains 55 images –all new paintings- and that it does not include every painting, or any of the drawings I have done –and only a few of the embroidery pieces, or any of the 60 or so poems, or half dozen or so short stories, or the –very rough- sad scrawling attempt of mine to begin to map out a graphic novel.)
For better or worse I am prolific! (I say with a measure of chagrin) For what am I going to do with this abundance of creativity? I’ll be lucky if anything sells in this somewhat depressed economy where the finance minister openly uses the words ‘recession’ and ‘economic depression’ which leads to very cheery thoughts when repeated hourly on the BBC radio.
You know what they say about repetition. And people who create art with the expectation that it will sell. I paint to please myself these days.
-----------------------------------------------
BACK TO THE BEAN
I’m extremely perky at the moment. I’ve just had my first cappuccino of 2008 at Little Italy –the only restaurant of any note in Aberystwyth. (they hand make every dish and then send it down a little food elevator from the top floor to the floors below).
FIRST COFFEE????? Well, I went full-bore for the New Years Resolutions –with the caveat that they would –for the most part –be just for January. (I was trying to keep it manageable while at the same time do some sort of penance to balance of the completely un-regretted and much appreciated excesses of Christmas –more about those later)
My New Year's Resolutions were (for the long grey month of January) were: to stop buying milk and to consume as little as possible when not at home, to stop eating all land animals –except for a few free range local eggs- and to limit or eat no sea creatures and then to see how I felt at the end of the month. I also decided to give up caffeine for January.
I also resolved to get back to palates/exercise classes and dance classes as soon as they resumed after the holidays. (The holiday season lasts much longer here than I am used to.)
Well, January has come, been and gone and I am happy to report I stuck to all my resolutions and not only lost my Christmas indulgence weight gain, but have lost an unexpected inch (unexpected inch? –just pretend my peculiar phrasings are poetical and roll with it) –I lost an inch from my waist –which I know from social conditioning must mean I have become prettier. Skinny= pretty in this culture, right? But too skinny= scary. I recall talking to one of my fitness teachers once, she was somewhat shocked to discover that I like my curves and though I desire to be strong and healthy I have no desire to lose my distinctly female hips and thighs. She actually stopped and stared at me as though I had uttered some sort of blasphemy. She shook her head at me, stating that she loved her ‘hardbody.’ I could appreciate her pride in her hard-earned looks… and envy her for her well-defined triceps, but… there’s got to be variation in the world. Someone has to hold up the tradition of beauty that was big back in the 1600’s.
Now: the dilemma –do I return to meat eating –my previous ‘social carnivore’ status, or do I draw some sort of line in the sand (a vegetable purity demarcation). There’s such a problem with pedestals, plinths, declarations of absolutes. I generally try to avoid such things. I guess I’m not ready to call myself a vegetarian again. If I see a rack of ribs that ‘has my name on it’ I don’t want to deal with the guilt of ‘falling from vegetarian grace’ again just because my inner cave-man sometimes comes alive –and demands BBQ sauce, bones and gnawing.
---------------
THINGS THAT ARE DIFFERENT FROM BACK HOME and RANDOM NOTES
-not once have I worried that a tree would fall on me -or my home
-no power outages (just lots and lots and lots of internet interruptions)
-buying beets that are already cooked and packaged in a macabre fashion in vacuum packs (they don’t sell raw beet root –as it is called here- as far as I can tell.) It looks like a set of four hearts in a bag
-rugby is a very big thing (though a little confusing to me –I do like it when there’s the circle of men lifting a man up in the centre –how did they come up with that?) and rugby players must be awesomely tough –the game looks rougher than American football –but without the padding!
-large men sing loudly in pubs during sports games
-the words are hard to make out, but you can hear them a block or two away!
-going to a pub to watch TV –especially sports- is a v. big thing
-if you ask for sour cream you may get a bowl of salad cream
-sour cream is properly called soured milk (yum)
-a cel phone is a mobile etc. etc.
-the way I say castle is endlessly amusing to Brits. As is my pronunciation of the letter h
-people who like to go for walks are Ramblers
-I haven’t had to chop any firewood, shovel snow, carry water, gotten stuck anywhere due to weather, etc.
I haven’t been bitten by a single mosquito, spider, etc. (no complaints there!)
-haven’t been sick enough to miss out on anything (only a couple of mild head colds since I was here –knock on wood!
-you have to chase after teachers if you want attention otherwise they leave you alone to get on with your own thing
-education is a much more organic, laid back structureless structure here
-there are fewer hoops to jump through
-as a post-grad I can go to just about any lectures I want (again -no complaints here!)
-one can purchase canned BEANZ and BALLS
-my Chinese flatmate received a care package box of pig’s feet and chicken parts preserved in vacuum packed msg flavoured goodness
-what do I miss most from back home food-wise? Sockeye salmon (cooked on a BBQ) and SUSHI sushi sushi sushi sushi…. And the Shao Lin Noodle house
-they are only just considering giving UK police the right to take alcohol away from minors who are drinking in public!!
-UK police do NOT carry guns
-precooked hotdogs are available in cans, jars or vacuum-packed
-fruit and vegetables are best plastic-wrapped onto Styrofoam trays
-people really do eat beans on toast –and the beans are sweetened with sugar
-almost everything has sugar or worse –artificial sugar- added to it (which means a great deal of label reading even on foods that I would normally think were safe)
-bags that have ‘I am not a plastic bag’ on them are very popular
-I have a notebook that has ‘I used to be a plastic bag’ on it
-The next level of Ugg boots have just come into fashion –in plaid, floral prints, stars, etc.
-‘Oi! You’re really getting on my tits!’ Is a maternal expression used loudly in grocery stores to calm eight year old kids as is ‘shut it, or you’ll get a smacker!’
-Hot pants are back in style –even in January
-If you’re a female and you don’t wear heels and don’t have a man with you when you go out to dance at a night club with friends then you’re called a lezza and drunken girls in 3”stilt-high heels wearing 5” skirts and metallic sparkly tops want to pose with you and have their photos taken. ‘She’s Amish’ –‘-no a lezza’ ‘definitely a lezza’ ‘maybe an Amish lezza?’ giggles (I know I wasn’t supposed to hear this part of their conversation, but they were very drunk)
-A closing-out sale allowed me to buy dance shoes for £10 instead of £110 –and the business really was going out of business instead of just setting up for the next sale.
-Aberystwyth Christmas trees (if not artificial) have probably been dragged down to the beach or thrown into the sea from the seawall -which seems to be the tradition around here. It’s February but the now needle-less Christmas trees keep returning to shore like large pinecones, or some sort of Xmas-skeletons
-20 people showed up at Welsh dance last week!–almost half of them there because I can’t keep my mouth shut… It was fantastic having four full sets for some of the dances! …and then, a little late, 4 more people (I had never seen before) came in. They were Goths in velvet trench coats, black lace, leather and chains. Pretty, pale-faced, Welsh Goths with soft hands. There’s nothing like Welsh folk-dancing with a 6’4” Goth wearing chain-ladened black bell bottoms and 3” high stomper boots with steel toes –giving him a total height of 6’7”! It was like dancing with an armoured flagpole who wasn’t certain of his right and left. During the polka I feared for my poor wee feet!
-----------------------------------
THE TREE’S LONG GONE
-THIS IS XMAS TAKEN OUT FROM UNDER THE HEAT-LAMPS AND RE-WARMED
I’m now going to plagiarize myself as I’ve written about my Christmas adventures in various epistles, and I don’t think that I could do the memories any more justice by rehashing them.
My apologies to anyone who is offended by the re-use of my words - instead of reworking them to serve them up fresh. I find it easier to write letters – the impulse to write while ‘speaking’ with a specific person in mind is more compelling than the idea of blog writing, where I know I will be more careful as I’m less certain of who will read it. So, perhaps dragging stuff out of letters will keep the blog a bit fresher… Perhaps.
Dec. 30th 2008
So… I'm back at Aberystwyth in my own wee room after an adventure… I spent almost a week in the Wilmslow area –specifically the even smaller townsite of Styal (they never actually built the town) but eventually the Manchester airport sprang up beside it and ate a good chunk of the farmland.
After sleeping on a fold out cot wedged between a filing cabinet and a computer desk in the Woodley house computer room for 5 nights my student residence single bed and ability to swing a small cat seems like luxury!!!
I’m also glad to hear the sea again, and to see it foaming about in a Winter stormy froth, flinging stones up onto the promenade and drenching me in a moment of witnessed public hilarity this morning when I put my foot up on the metal railing to tie up my shoe in a not-as-sheltered-as-I-thought spot!
Xmash dinner.....
I stayed at my Aunt and Uncle’s home which is directly adjacent to the Manchester Airport. An empty plane body sits just over their back fence –occasionally they airport staff light the segment of the plane on fire and do emergency training and drills. They had one on the 23rd. It was very festive!
My 12 year old nephew, Mattie (occasionally called Rattie) is batty about plane spotting. The only time I could get him off the couch to do anything that wasn’t plugged in or Wii related (there’s nothing like a young man obsessed with his wii to add a few smirks to the face. It was my wii this, and my wii that.) I got him to go for 2 walks… he wanted, of course, to go to the airport fence to watch the planes, which is a fun thing to do if the person you’re with is psyched up and full of plane stats. Amusingly Mattie wore one only sock all Christmas and played with his new remote control cop-chase cars, and his remote control mini helicopter (which landed in the goldfish bowl eventually).
Between Nana –age 96, and Gertrude and Teddy Edwards -85, and 84, Great Uncle Jim at 85, my various aunts and uncles (in their 50s), aside from Matt I was feeling quite youthful and in awe at having a traditional Xmas dinner with over 7 centuries worth of wisdom and experience around one table. It really made me think about what a life is for, and what sort of person/situation I would hope for in my later decades.
-----------
When in doubt… eat.
Christmas at Woodley house was memorable; it was a treat to be invited to share in the traditions and life of another family. To see the 50 year old plastic ornaments on the tree, learn how to make trifle…. I did wonder aloud where the eggnog was at one point, and got a blank look.
No loss, there were puddings, brandy sauces, gravies, mince pies, chocolates, Christmas Cake, a million types of vegetables, with new wonderful condiments to try in a mix and match flavour fest.
-----------------------------------------------------------
FAVOURITE MOMENTS
- seeing the full moon rising between the forked, truncated limbs of an old dead tree in the middle of a pasture. It looked like a 20 foot high wooden tuning fork with the moon nestled in it like a pebble.
-Old oaks frame the sky in leafless black linear patterns, that when seen in isolation against the grey cloudy sky remind me of patterns seen in biology books –the molecular branchings of vision and, somehow, if only I could get the mathematical formula sorted out, I could somehow unlock a key to how things grow, and why we are separate and yet connected, and what rate growth is possible in the trees occurs somehow on a more universal level. The microcosm reflecting the macrocosm etc. etc.
- making a homely wreath for the Woodley house front door using blooming pussy willows and other twigs I pulled out of a pruning pile from beside the old Mill. Who would think of Pussy willows blooming just after the Solstice? Some daffodil bulbs are already pushing up from the ground, perhaps they are confused. I keep waiting for winter to arrive in the UK. I’ve seen frost a few times…. yet everyone keeps complaining about the cold they are and how miserable the weather is! I feel like a Polly-anna as, form my point of view it’s all been GREAT. The weather changes rapidly and dramatically and I’m never bored.
Back in Aberystwyth –which is a bit like a holiday greeting ghost town -I wandered through castle ruins yesterday, soaked from the wave that caught me on my left side, but grinning like a happy fool –for one is either a happy fool in adverse weather conditions, or miserable. I tend to grin, because I know that getting bashed about in the rain and wind a bit only makes the cup of hot chocolate taste even better. Or in my case today I’m trying a new grain drink –no preservatives or caffeine –made from barley, chicory and rye. It’s most excellent and may become my new virtuous vice now that I’m charting a path back towards healthy New Year’s resolutions.
------------------------
EPILOGUE: FULL CIRCLE
I’d say I would resolve to update my blog more frequently, but it’s gone on to Welsh-time now!
Until next time, stay warm and hwyl!
Hax
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
and I’VE SEEN CAMELIA BUSHES IN BLOOM and hillsides covered in snowdrops!
Predictably this blog has suffered the slowing inertia that comes of cooling off… it is one of the universal laws: Big bang, the explosion of the creative muse, and life itself begins with a spark, with heat, and as life unfurls eventually the heat dissipates… we stumble through obstacles, ditches and doldrums trying to maintain velocity. Some manage to feed the furnace and keep up a consistently good pace for the long haul, others stumble in and out of the race… but eventually it all tapers off. Slackens. And stops -unless violently, unnaturally truncated. I tend to by cyclical in my efforts… Sisyphus had it easy –he only has one rock to push up hill. I always feel like I’ve got a half dozen on the go, and when I ignore one I have to go running back down hill after it -in a comical fashion…
'WHAT THE HECK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?' –someone is bound to be thinking by this point.
Well, I’m using obfuscating metaphors and references to Greek myths as a crutch to limp along a pathetic dog’s breakfast of excuses for not updating my blog since Dec. 18th 2007 -when today is Sunday February the 3rd, 2008.
Enough with the excuses! No one wants to hear them, no matter how clever or abstruse they are.
-------------------------------------------------
COUNT DOWN
I would say there are 207 days until I return home, but I believe I may be home a little earlier than that. Possibly the beginning or middle of August. Partially because my dissertation topic may use Ione Betty McIntyre’s art work as the focusing lens to look upon my subject matter (an idea that is recent, or else perhaps I would not have travelled to Wales to decide to study a local artist’s work from back home…. Or perhaps it could not have occurred in any other fashion, as there is nothing like travelling to another country to give one perspective on what one has left in their wake.)
If I arrive home at the start of August that means that I have approximately 179 more days in Wales. The sands of time are running through the hour shaped glass just as the money is pouring out of my bank account… I am satisfied I will be tired, but happy when I come to the end of both. I’m not yet certain what my next chapter will be, and am reticent about trying to prematurely pre-write it.
I am as settled as I am going to be here. It is a strange thing to be in a place for a year. It is cloaked in a variable sense of impermanence. Constantly conscious of the finitude I find myself refraining, or resisting from nesting or putting down roots. Of choosing some discomfort over the future discomfort of having to dispose of/leave things behind. It is not a way to live for long. But it is a terrific way to live for a time! Ah –the adventure! Then I can return home to mundanity and the comfort of the illusion that when one buys something it owns you just as much as you own .
I have given in to buying a peace lily that sits upon my wardrobe, happily blooming. Mostly I enjoy the flowers, but sometimes I look at it with guilt and think –it won’t be long before I leave it behind. As I will leave behind a great many things. I have plans to put together a care package at the school for the next international student to come in, so they will have a start-up kit of art supplies etc. to get them going. The plants and other things I will either find good homes for, or install on the windowsills in the art school with the other plants. Anything else can be taken to the art school and tagged with ‘Free’ and will most certainly be raven-ized. Art students are nothing if not scavengers!
I should know! Just look at the accumulation around me –from beach stones to a new suite of paintings (it was a bit of a shock to me to discover that my Portfolio Review Power point Presentation contains 55 images –all new paintings- and that it does not include every painting, or any of the drawings I have done –and only a few of the embroidery pieces, or any of the 60 or so poems, or half dozen or so short stories, or the –very rough- sad scrawling attempt of mine to begin to map out a graphic novel.)
For better or worse I am prolific! (I say with a measure of chagrin) For what am I going to do with this abundance of creativity? I’ll be lucky if anything sells in this somewhat depressed economy where the finance minister openly uses the words ‘recession’ and ‘economic depression’ which leads to very cheery thoughts when repeated hourly on the BBC radio.
You know what they say about repetition. And people who create art with the expectation that it will sell. I paint to please myself these days.
-----------------------------------------------
BACK TO THE BEAN
I’m extremely perky at the moment. I’ve just had my first cappuccino of 2008 at Little Italy –the only restaurant of any note in Aberystwyth. (they hand make every dish and then send it down a little food elevator from the top floor to the floors below).
FIRST COFFEE????? Well, I went full-bore for the New Years Resolutions –with the caveat that they would –for the most part –be just for January. (I was trying to keep it manageable while at the same time do some sort of penance to balance of the completely un-regretted and much appreciated excesses of Christmas –more about those later)
My New Year's Resolutions were (for the long grey month of January) were: to stop buying milk and to consume as little as possible when not at home, to stop eating all land animals –except for a few free range local eggs- and to limit or eat no sea creatures and then to see how I felt at the end of the month. I also decided to give up caffeine for January.
I also resolved to get back to palates/exercise classes and dance classes as soon as they resumed after the holidays. (The holiday season lasts much longer here than I am used to.)
Well, January has come, been and gone and I am happy to report I stuck to all my resolutions and not only lost my Christmas indulgence weight gain, but have lost an unexpected inch (unexpected inch? –just pretend my peculiar phrasings are poetical and roll with it) –I lost an inch from my waist –which I know from social conditioning must mean I have become prettier. Skinny= pretty in this culture, right? But too skinny= scary. I recall talking to one of my fitness teachers once, she was somewhat shocked to discover that I like my curves and though I desire to be strong and healthy I have no desire to lose my distinctly female hips and thighs. She actually stopped and stared at me as though I had uttered some sort of blasphemy. She shook her head at me, stating that she loved her ‘hardbody.’ I could appreciate her pride in her hard-earned looks… and envy her for her well-defined triceps, but… there’s got to be variation in the world. Someone has to hold up the tradition of beauty that was big back in the 1600’s.
Now: the dilemma –do I return to meat eating –my previous ‘social carnivore’ status, or do I draw some sort of line in the sand (a vegetable purity demarcation). There’s such a problem with pedestals, plinths, declarations of absolutes. I generally try to avoid such things. I guess I’m not ready to call myself a vegetarian again. If I see a rack of ribs that ‘has my name on it’ I don’t want to deal with the guilt of ‘falling from vegetarian grace’ again just because my inner cave-man sometimes comes alive –and demands BBQ sauce, bones and gnawing.
---------------
THINGS THAT ARE DIFFERENT FROM BACK HOME and RANDOM NOTES
-not once have I worried that a tree would fall on me -or my home
-no power outages (just lots and lots and lots of internet interruptions)
-buying beets that are already cooked and packaged in a macabre fashion in vacuum packs (they don’t sell raw beet root –as it is called here- as far as I can tell.) It looks like a set of four hearts in a bag
-rugby is a very big thing (though a little confusing to me –I do like it when there’s the circle of men lifting a man up in the centre –how did they come up with that?) and rugby players must be awesomely tough –the game looks rougher than American football –but without the padding!
-large men sing loudly in pubs during sports games
-the words are hard to make out, but you can hear them a block or two away!
-going to a pub to watch TV –especially sports- is a v. big thing
-if you ask for sour cream you may get a bowl of salad cream
-sour cream is properly called soured milk (yum)
-a cel phone is a mobile etc. etc.
-the way I say castle is endlessly amusing to Brits. As is my pronunciation of the letter h
-people who like to go for walks are Ramblers
-I haven’t had to chop any firewood, shovel snow, carry water, gotten stuck anywhere due to weather, etc.
I haven’t been bitten by a single mosquito, spider, etc. (no complaints there!)
-haven’t been sick enough to miss out on anything (only a couple of mild head colds since I was here –knock on wood!
-you have to chase after teachers if you want attention otherwise they leave you alone to get on with your own thing
-education is a much more organic, laid back structureless structure here
-there are fewer hoops to jump through
-as a post-grad I can go to just about any lectures I want (again -no complaints here!)
-one can purchase canned BEANZ and BALLS
-my Chinese flatmate received a care package box of pig’s feet and chicken parts preserved in vacuum packed msg flavoured goodness
-what do I miss most from back home food-wise? Sockeye salmon (cooked on a BBQ) and SUSHI sushi sushi sushi sushi…. And the Shao Lin Noodle house
-they are only just considering giving UK police the right to take alcohol away from minors who are drinking in public!!
-UK police do NOT carry guns
-precooked hotdogs are available in cans, jars or vacuum-packed
-fruit and vegetables are best plastic-wrapped onto Styrofoam trays
-people really do eat beans on toast –and the beans are sweetened with sugar
-almost everything has sugar or worse –artificial sugar- added to it (which means a great deal of label reading even on foods that I would normally think were safe)
-bags that have ‘I am not a plastic bag’ on them are very popular
-I have a notebook that has ‘I used to be a plastic bag’ on it
-The next level of Ugg boots have just come into fashion –in plaid, floral prints, stars, etc.
-‘Oi! You’re really getting on my tits!’ Is a maternal expression used loudly in grocery stores to calm eight year old kids as is ‘shut it, or you’ll get a smacker!’
-Hot pants are back in style –even in January
-If you’re a female and you don’t wear heels and don’t have a man with you when you go out to dance at a night club with friends then you’re called a lezza and drunken girls in 3”stilt-high heels wearing 5” skirts and metallic sparkly tops want to pose with you and have their photos taken. ‘She’s Amish’ –‘-no a lezza’ ‘definitely a lezza’ ‘maybe an Amish lezza?’ giggles (I know I wasn’t supposed to hear this part of their conversation, but they were very drunk)
-A closing-out sale allowed me to buy dance shoes for £10 instead of £110 –and the business really was going out of business instead of just setting up for the next sale.
-Aberystwyth Christmas trees (if not artificial) have probably been dragged down to the beach or thrown into the sea from the seawall -which seems to be the tradition around here. It’s February but the now needle-less Christmas trees keep returning to shore like large pinecones, or some sort of Xmas-skeletons
-20 people showed up at Welsh dance last week!–almost half of them there because I can’t keep my mouth shut… It was fantastic having four full sets for some of the dances! …and then, a little late, 4 more people (I had never seen before) came in. They were Goths in velvet trench coats, black lace, leather and chains. Pretty, pale-faced, Welsh Goths with soft hands. There’s nothing like Welsh folk-dancing with a 6’4” Goth wearing chain-ladened black bell bottoms and 3” high stomper boots with steel toes –giving him a total height of 6’7”! It was like dancing with an armoured flagpole who wasn’t certain of his right and left. During the polka I feared for my poor wee feet!
-----------------------------------
THE TREE’S LONG GONE
-THIS IS XMAS TAKEN OUT FROM UNDER THE HEAT-LAMPS AND RE-WARMED
I’m now going to plagiarize myself as I’ve written about my Christmas adventures in various epistles, and I don’t think that I could do the memories any more justice by rehashing them.
My apologies to anyone who is offended by the re-use of my words - instead of reworking them to serve them up fresh. I find it easier to write letters – the impulse to write while ‘speaking’ with a specific person in mind is more compelling than the idea of blog writing, where I know I will be more careful as I’m less certain of who will read it. So, perhaps dragging stuff out of letters will keep the blog a bit fresher… Perhaps.
Dec. 30th 2008
So… I'm back at Aberystwyth in my own wee room after an adventure… I spent almost a week in the Wilmslow area –specifically the even smaller townsite of Styal (they never actually built the town) but eventually the Manchester airport sprang up beside it and ate a good chunk of the farmland.
After sleeping on a fold out cot wedged between a filing cabinet and a computer desk in the Woodley house computer room for 5 nights my student residence single bed and ability to swing a small cat seems like luxury!!!
I’m also glad to hear the sea again, and to see it foaming about in a Winter stormy froth, flinging stones up onto the promenade and drenching me in a moment of witnessed public hilarity this morning when I put my foot up on the metal railing to tie up my shoe in a not-as-sheltered-as-I-thought spot!
Xmash dinner.....
I stayed at my Aunt and Uncle’s home which is directly adjacent to the Manchester Airport. An empty plane body sits just over their back fence –occasionally they airport staff light the segment of the plane on fire and do emergency training and drills. They had one on the 23rd. It was very festive!
My 12 year old nephew, Mattie (occasionally called Rattie) is batty about plane spotting. The only time I could get him off the couch to do anything that wasn’t plugged in or Wii related (there’s nothing like a young man obsessed with his wii to add a few smirks to the face. It was my wii this, and my wii that.) I got him to go for 2 walks… he wanted, of course, to go to the airport fence to watch the planes, which is a fun thing to do if the person you’re with is psyched up and full of plane stats. Amusingly Mattie wore one only sock all Christmas and played with his new remote control cop-chase cars, and his remote control mini helicopter (which landed in the goldfish bowl eventually).
Between Nana –age 96, and Gertrude and Teddy Edwards -85, and 84, Great Uncle Jim at 85, my various aunts and uncles (in their 50s), aside from Matt I was feeling quite youthful and in awe at having a traditional Xmas dinner with over 7 centuries worth of wisdom and experience around one table. It really made me think about what a life is for, and what sort of person/situation I would hope for in my later decades.
-----------
When in doubt… eat.
Christmas at Woodley house was memorable; it was a treat to be invited to share in the traditions and life of another family. To see the 50 year old plastic ornaments on the tree, learn how to make trifle…. I did wonder aloud where the eggnog was at one point, and got a blank look.
No loss, there were puddings, brandy sauces, gravies, mince pies, chocolates, Christmas Cake, a million types of vegetables, with new wonderful condiments to try in a mix and match flavour fest.
-----------------------------------------------------------
FAVOURITE MOMENTS
- seeing the full moon rising between the forked, truncated limbs of an old dead tree in the middle of a pasture. It looked like a 20 foot high wooden tuning fork with the moon nestled in it like a pebble.
-Old oaks frame the sky in leafless black linear patterns, that when seen in isolation against the grey cloudy sky remind me of patterns seen in biology books –the molecular branchings of vision and, somehow, if only I could get the mathematical formula sorted out, I could somehow unlock a key to how things grow, and why we are separate and yet connected, and what rate growth is possible in the trees occurs somehow on a more universal level. The microcosm reflecting the macrocosm etc. etc.
- making a homely wreath for the Woodley house front door using blooming pussy willows and other twigs I pulled out of a pruning pile from beside the old Mill. Who would think of Pussy willows blooming just after the Solstice? Some daffodil bulbs are already pushing up from the ground, perhaps they are confused. I keep waiting for winter to arrive in the UK. I’ve seen frost a few times…. yet everyone keeps complaining about the cold they are and how miserable the weather is! I feel like a Polly-anna as, form my point of view it’s all been GREAT. The weather changes rapidly and dramatically and I’m never bored.
Back in Aberystwyth –which is a bit like a holiday greeting ghost town -I wandered through castle ruins yesterday, soaked from the wave that caught me on my left side, but grinning like a happy fool –for one is either a happy fool in adverse weather conditions, or miserable. I tend to grin, because I know that getting bashed about in the rain and wind a bit only makes the cup of hot chocolate taste even better. Or in my case today I’m trying a new grain drink –no preservatives or caffeine –made from barley, chicory and rye. It’s most excellent and may become my new virtuous vice now that I’m charting a path back towards healthy New Year’s resolutions.
------------------------
EPILOGUE: FULL CIRCLE
I’d say I would resolve to update my blog more frequently, but it’s gone on to Welsh-time now!
Until next time, stay warm and hwyl!
Hax
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Dec. 18 2007 the pre-Holiday Blog
NADOLIG LLAWEN
Nadolig llawen means Merry Christmas in Welsh
But have you ever heard the expression Merry Crimbo?
Apparently it’s slang around here for merry Xmas, and one may say happy instead of merry and presents are called pressies –with 3 s’s
Cariadlawn means ‘filled with love’ which is a good holiday sentiment whilst surrounded by family.
For my Xmas plans I’m looking forward to heading to Manchester to spend Xmas with Uncle Kevin and Helen, Great Uncle Jim and others in the large Cooper clan.
I’m also hoping to visit Milton Keynes and Jeff and Carol Birch.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
PRIMAEVAL and GAS
On Dec. 14th at the Morlan Centre a terrific band of 4 played a mix of medieval and modern instruments… and rocked out the house with their amplification for four hours!
Extended jams between hurdy gurdy, bass, and accordion player also on kick drum and a man in a beret wailing away on a traditional horn –which appeared to be made of horn –whilst the dance floor was filled with free styling and interpretations on the dances we had learned during the first part of the evening which was a Breton dance work shop that had begun at 7:30pm
Yes, more pinky dancing… and an amusing grape stomping dance!
I caught the hang of a waltz and the polka –but have yet to grasp the lovely oscillations that are involved in the stately mazurka.
One of the nice things about the Breton dance evenings is that there is always a potluck of free food, snacks and coffee to keep the dancers going. And the kids had pretzel sticks to use as swords and covered themselves in the inked bee stamp that was used to establish paid admission.
My desire to learn to play a hurdy gurdy was once more enflamed –even if a good hurdy gurdy costs approximately $4,000!!!
Maybe I’ll stick to dancing!
I left the dance at about 11:30, emerging, breathe visible into a world of frost and minus 2 or so. Crisp, clear, the stars and moon looking removed, but polished.
I was walking back to good old Blaenwern, with Xiao Fen and Christina whilst looking at my mobile -4 missed messages?! Who could have been calling me?
As I was trying to figure this out we ran into the rest of the Blaenwern gang –they had been evacuated from the building because of a gas leak!
We’d be let back in… in an hour… maybe.
I dragged them all back to the Morlan, where it was warm. Some of them were in p.j.s under their jackets, which perhaps made them unwilling to go to a pub –even if going to a pub in your pyjamas is par for the course in Aberystwyth –the seaside town supports TWO costume shops.
Only a week ago I saw an entire football team dressed as cowgirls in blonde pigtail wigs and ill-fitting gingham tops tied tight around their torsos… it seems it is always Halloween in Aber.
X and C went off to a pub with ‘large couches’ to try to snooze and the rest of us went to Simon’s to while away the time trying to figure out a card game tired students from Britain, Canada, Germany, India and Wales could play.
CRAZY EIGHTS! Slogging through old memories I tried to cobble together enough of the rules for a coherent game. I’m pretty sure I missed something crucial –something to do with the 4s? –we came up with a nice variant with the ace blocking the 2… and Lauren beat us in both rounds.
Rohan and Jude staked out Blaenwern after a certain amount of time and called us when the coast was clear.
It was close to 2am by the time I’d aired my gas filled room out and I haven’t completely closed my window since… I don’t usually close my window completely unless there’s a storm wind.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
SLEEPING WITH THE RED DRAGON
It’s difficult not to think about the red Welsh dragon, and about ideas of identity and how we, and I, define ourselves individually and collectively.
Symbols of Canada and Wales have crept into my art work… and my writing.
the Red Dragon (the national emblem of Wales): y Ddraig Goch
the red dragon will show the way: y Ddraig Goch ddyry cychwyn
--------------------------------------------------------------
ONGOING POETRY AFFLICTION
PEARGIRL V is going to go to print soon as the Welsh poetry edition. A limited number will be printed in Wales and then the complete run will be produced and launched when I return to good old Canadia.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------POETRY
I, like the Welsh starlings,
At the sunset’s eve
Return to the idea of the homeland
To which I cleave
Speaking in Babel’s tongues
I remember
I remember
I remember
aelwyd
Invariable as twilight
A mathematical constellation of flight
(dive, ascend, weave)
By instinct
I gather my selves
Under the slate eaves
(Aelwyd is Welsh for home. )
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
AND SPEAKING OF ART
“I was temporarily dragged into the theoretical Great Art Sea and forgot how to swim. Thankfully I seem to have surfaced again and am heading back to the studio.”
Waves of critique, from external, but mostly internal sources have assailed me and will either make me stronger, or break me. I think I am stubborn enough that the former will occur, but old enough to realize that a few things are bound to get broken along the way. I just don’t know what.
Rather than ask why we produce art, a different angle on the idea of creativity is: whom are we producing art for?
Why do I paint?
How has something as mundane as applying pigment on canvas to make pictures I make up, that have no inherently ascertained market value, social redeeming qualities or other such promises or some form of merit… how has making silly pictures landed me on the other side of the world?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
RADIO DRAMA
I’m enjoying the Archers –an ongoing radio drama on BBC Radio 4… soap on the radio!
I usually have a radio on in my studio and it’s always fun to hear a bit of the Archers –even if I still have yet to discover what exactly is going on…
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
NATIONAL IDENTITY
So far V’s been my good ‘let’s hang out and eat and go for long walks and get lost trying to follow directions on walking paths and try Welsh dance class’ friend in Wales… but sadly she’s leaving tomorrow to return to her homeland –the very cool Iceland-. She’s taking a pile of notes back to the Icelandic president on my humble notions on ‘how to make a country sexy’
The short version of this lengthy media image make-over scheme is that countries (such as Iceland and Canada) need to have cool animals on their flags. It makes tourists happy and makes locals proud. Just look at the Welsh flag with the dragon on it. What could be better?
Canada needs to get rid of the Maple Leaf- it’s far too reminiscent of the fig leaves used to cover statues’ genitalia. A mark of over prudishness that leaf is!
We need to replace the Maple leaf with a Winged Beaver immediately. Canada’s cool quotient would SOAR!
Iceland needs to get those cool creatures off its coins and remarket them as the Storm Bull, Ice Dragon, Stone Eagle and Wise Giant… and get them on the flag. By using all 4 symbols (one for each cardinal point on the compass rose) Iceland will offer a choose your own image form of patriotic identity. With 4 magical creatures to choose from there’s something for everyone.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
DEVIL’S BRIDGE
Because V is leaving tomorrow I agreed on Sat. to go on the trip to Devil’s Bridge quite enthusiastically. Who wouldn’t want to go to Devil’s Bridge?
The event was organized by a Christian social group (I found this out later –but perhaps I should have been suspicious about the ‘free ride’ part – a free ride at topspeed along winding narrow –yet well tarmacked- roads). I realized that though the roads are narrow, they are quality instead of quantity. In Canada we need the extra width to make up for the lack of quality aka: so we have enough room to dodge the potholes.
We met Sunday Dec. 16th at the public parking lot at what is colloquially called St. Mike’s Church (Saint Michael is what is on the signage). I figure if you’re going to be cool enough as a Christian to call it Saint Mike’s, one might as well call it the House of G. G has a lot of houses. He’s big into real estate. Ya –let’s meet at the house of G, yeah, man, Mike’s house of G.
Gee wiz. The dozen or so people were very lovely and I tried to be tactful as possible. I may have pointed out the irony of going to Devil’s bridge as a group of Christians, but I did not wear any pentacles, horns, or flower headdresses, and tactfully answered questions about the (in) frequency of my church going and completely avoided all religious topics.
The bridge was originally built by monks -by there was a fable about an old woman going home with her cow and dog who needed to cross the river. The Devil said he would build her a bridge -but would own the soul of the first to cross the river.
The clever old woman sent her dog across the river first and then led the cow across -so the devil got the dog's soul instead of hers...
Of course this story upset me to no end. She should have driven the cow across first!!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
MILVUS MILVUS
... as the sunset the sheep on the hillside turned PINK!!!! And the Red Kite, also known as the milvus milvus, back from threatened extinction, wheeled in the sky over the valley catching the sunset light with its distinct red and white underbelly, forked tail allowing it rapid manoeuvring…
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
HOW TO MAKE A WELSH PERSON LAUGH
Explain to them that the reason you came to Wales from Canada is because Wales seems romantic to Canadians and that the post-colonial identity crisis we exist in makes an international degree be held with more value than a home-grown Canuck degree.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
CANADIA?
Me: Nope. Canada.
Do you say aboot? (asked with snickering)
Me: maybe on the East side of the country? Does ANYONE say aboot?
So you’re from Vancouver -Do you know Mr. Greenwell in Toronto?
Me: May I ask if you know someone in Italy? It’s about the same distance away.
Canadia’s not THAT big is it?
Me: It’s bigger.
Say Crik.
Me: I reckon the crik’s dried up dear Ethel, time to move the RV unit. No one says Crik either. But we do say VASE not Vahwsz and we don’t say
al-YOU-min-EEE-um, and we think the expression ‘someone’s getting on my tits’ is almost as amusing as seeing the young man walk past in the shirt with MANWHORE 22 printed on the back.
You sound like an American
Me: unfortunately I do to some people. Yet over half a dozen people have asked me if I’m Irish. And I can usually tell the people who have BEEN to America, or are from there, because they always ask me if I’m a Canadian.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
GUINESS NO LONGER TO BE SOLD IN DRAFT FORM IN THE UK??!!!
Sales are down and in the future it will only come in a can…. Apparently the real reason is that fewer pubs are able to deal with a beer that is complicated to serve because staff turns over so quickly that they don’t bother to train anyone anymore and so many wait staff will lie and say Guinness isn’t available because they don’t want the difficulty of pouring it, getting it wrong and getting yelled at…
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
TWEE?
According to my supervisor my artwork is ‘at its best’ when I am being Twee and I should be more twee… and what precisely is twee?
I have a vague sense of the word… but twee? She deploys the word several times each time we meet –which is only once every 2-3 weeks. Apart from that I am left to my own devices to fill the 287 hours of studio time that is a graduation requirement for Portfolio development.
Art History class –I mean Visual Culture- and Professional Practice are the other set classes, and then there are all the optional lectures, most of which I enjoy.
IN THE WORKS: to produce a Traditional Welsh Smock Frock
To research the links between Canada and Welsh textiles
On Sat. Dec. 1st 2:30pm at the Ceredigion Museum after taking notes and documenting the Smocks textile exhibition (I have an interest in creating a Welsh smock to accompany my Welsh Border Morris Dance kit as I’ve never been certain what to wear shirt-wise under the Morris jacket and after reading that the Welsh smock was traditionally worn for centuries (by men and women) until it began to disappear in the early 20th C (as noted by Gertrude Jekyll around 1814). I’d like to create an ‘authentic’ Morris smock –as ‘Although originally a practical garment it started being used for more formal occasions such as rural weddings, funerals (particularly for pallbearers) and festivals such as Plough Sunday.’
The majority of the smocks were linen and (twilled) cotton in beige/off white tones, however there was documentation of different coloured smocks being associated with the different trades associated with the wearers. The embroidery patterns had as much in common as they did with being unique patterns created by the embroiderers, personalized for the wearers.
I viewed a monologue play written by Liz Jones, performed by Jez Danks on the life of local photographer and painter, Alfred Worthington, many of whose paintings are on display at the museum.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
BUTTONS STRING & WHAT TIES CHARACTERS TOGETHER
At the museum I was compelled to speak to a striking woman who was wearing a peace sign pinned to the top of her hand dyed headdress with a massive pearl pin.
She seemed a matriarchal character… and indeed, she is. We chatted after the play and she gave me her sticker, as she does not have a card. Olwen Davies, recently celebrated her 85th birthday and.. is always a peace activist. Later I read about her a bit more in the local HEDDWCH free paper –part of the CND –campaign for Nuclear disarmament.
I also met a friend of hers named Susan and her partner who have since dropped by the art school twice to visit –once while on the University of the Third Age lecture (U3A) and a second time recently to give me bags of old buttons, embroidery threads and other sewing oddments that belonged to HER mother.
I am THRILLED to discover traditional chalk fabric marking fragments –used in traditional smocking as well as BONE BUTTONS –I’d been wondering how on EARTH I’d find some traditional Welsh bone buttons for a smock, and debating how traditional I need to go with the project and now the buttons have come to me. Oh Happy Raven dance of found treasure joy!
I showed Susan the picture I’m working on –using some of the heritage embroidery wool she’d given me to trace the outline of Wales around the image of the mythical Woman of Wales. I explained how at one of the lectures I was at I learned about this character –which can be seen in the outline of Wales –with a bit of imagination- and she exclaimed ‘I’ve been living here for over 60 years and I never heard of the Old Woman in Wales –but I see her now! Imagine that.’
Tactfully we avoided discussing the dragon and its –um –attributes –which I display in the painting.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CARDIFF
On Tues. Nov. 27th I went to Cardiff with the Artschool, but broke away from the main group to pursue personal interests: viewing the Cardiff castle, various art exhibits around town as well as the Industry to Impressionism: What Two sisters did for Wales exhibit at the National Museum of Cardiff.
It was a grand tourist-ish day! With all the joy and freedom of random exploration in a strange land.
Six hours seemed like a good deal of time –but it all sort of flew by.
I regret not making it to the area they film Dr. Who in, but there were more than enough distractions in the area we were in. Art shows, carnivals, old buildings, markets, bypassing the slightly surreal 45’ high Santa’s spray painted Grotto… dodging Christmas shoppers…
The Cardiff castle was very inspiring and fun to hang out with V and to meet Max the Russian student physicist working on developing diamond tools for use with lasers –if I recall correctly??!!
It felt like one of those days I’ll always recall fondly. Hanging out with a Russian and an Icelander surrounded by the panoply of European accents on a grey early winter day, map in hand, a fistful of ‘wood roses’ I bought for myself and all the silliness and exploration that we could cram into the day, and still make it back to the UWA school bus, allowed.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
MERRY CHRISTMAS
HAPPY CRIMBO
MERRY SOLSTICE
NADOLIG LLAWEN
&
HAVE A MAGICAL NEW YEAR
MY THOUGHTS ARE WITH YOU
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Nadolig llawen means Merry Christmas in Welsh
But have you ever heard the expression Merry Crimbo?
Apparently it’s slang around here for merry Xmas, and one may say happy instead of merry and presents are called pressies –with 3 s’s
Cariadlawn means ‘filled with love’ which is a good holiday sentiment whilst surrounded by family.
For my Xmas plans I’m looking forward to heading to Manchester to spend Xmas with Uncle Kevin and Helen, Great Uncle Jim and others in the large Cooper clan.
I’m also hoping to visit Milton Keynes and Jeff and Carol Birch.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
PRIMAEVAL and GAS
On Dec. 14th at the Morlan Centre a terrific band of 4 played a mix of medieval and modern instruments… and rocked out the house with their amplification for four hours!
Extended jams between hurdy gurdy, bass, and accordion player also on kick drum and a man in a beret wailing away on a traditional horn –which appeared to be made of horn –whilst the dance floor was filled with free styling and interpretations on the dances we had learned during the first part of the evening which was a Breton dance work shop that had begun at 7:30pm
Yes, more pinky dancing… and an amusing grape stomping dance!
I caught the hang of a waltz and the polka –but have yet to grasp the lovely oscillations that are involved in the stately mazurka.
One of the nice things about the Breton dance evenings is that there is always a potluck of free food, snacks and coffee to keep the dancers going. And the kids had pretzel sticks to use as swords and covered themselves in the inked bee stamp that was used to establish paid admission.
My desire to learn to play a hurdy gurdy was once more enflamed –even if a good hurdy gurdy costs approximately $4,000!!!
Maybe I’ll stick to dancing!
I left the dance at about 11:30, emerging, breathe visible into a world of frost and minus 2 or so. Crisp, clear, the stars and moon looking removed, but polished.
I was walking back to good old Blaenwern, with Xiao Fen and Christina whilst looking at my mobile -4 missed messages?! Who could have been calling me?
As I was trying to figure this out we ran into the rest of the Blaenwern gang –they had been evacuated from the building because of a gas leak!
We’d be let back in… in an hour… maybe.
I dragged them all back to the Morlan, where it was warm. Some of them were in p.j.s under their jackets, which perhaps made them unwilling to go to a pub –even if going to a pub in your pyjamas is par for the course in Aberystwyth –the seaside town supports TWO costume shops.
Only a week ago I saw an entire football team dressed as cowgirls in blonde pigtail wigs and ill-fitting gingham tops tied tight around their torsos… it seems it is always Halloween in Aber.
X and C went off to a pub with ‘large couches’ to try to snooze and the rest of us went to Simon’s to while away the time trying to figure out a card game tired students from Britain, Canada, Germany, India and Wales could play.
CRAZY EIGHTS! Slogging through old memories I tried to cobble together enough of the rules for a coherent game. I’m pretty sure I missed something crucial –something to do with the 4s? –we came up with a nice variant with the ace blocking the 2… and Lauren beat us in both rounds.
Rohan and Jude staked out Blaenwern after a certain amount of time and called us when the coast was clear.
It was close to 2am by the time I’d aired my gas filled room out and I haven’t completely closed my window since… I don’t usually close my window completely unless there’s a storm wind.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
SLEEPING WITH THE RED DRAGON
It’s difficult not to think about the red Welsh dragon, and about ideas of identity and how we, and I, define ourselves individually and collectively.
Symbols of Canada and Wales have crept into my art work… and my writing.
the Red Dragon (the national emblem of Wales): y Ddraig Goch
the red dragon will show the way: y Ddraig Goch ddyry cychwyn
--------------------------------------------------------------
ONGOING POETRY AFFLICTION
PEARGIRL V is going to go to print soon as the Welsh poetry edition. A limited number will be printed in Wales and then the complete run will be produced and launched when I return to good old Canadia.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------POETRY
I, like the Welsh starlings,
At the sunset’s eve
Return to the idea of the homeland
To which I cleave
Speaking in Babel’s tongues
I remember
I remember
I remember
aelwyd
Invariable as twilight
A mathematical constellation of flight
(dive, ascend, weave)
By instinct
I gather my selves
Under the slate eaves
(Aelwyd is Welsh for home. )
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
AND SPEAKING OF ART
“I was temporarily dragged into the theoretical Great Art Sea and forgot how to swim. Thankfully I seem to have surfaced again and am heading back to the studio.”
Waves of critique, from external, but mostly internal sources have assailed me and will either make me stronger, or break me. I think I am stubborn enough that the former will occur, but old enough to realize that a few things are bound to get broken along the way. I just don’t know what.
Rather than ask why we produce art, a different angle on the idea of creativity is: whom are we producing art for?
Why do I paint?
How has something as mundane as applying pigment on canvas to make pictures I make up, that have no inherently ascertained market value, social redeeming qualities or other such promises or some form of merit… how has making silly pictures landed me on the other side of the world?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
RADIO DRAMA
I’m enjoying the Archers –an ongoing radio drama on BBC Radio 4… soap on the radio!
I usually have a radio on in my studio and it’s always fun to hear a bit of the Archers –even if I still have yet to discover what exactly is going on…
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
NATIONAL IDENTITY
So far V’s been my good ‘let’s hang out and eat and go for long walks and get lost trying to follow directions on walking paths and try Welsh dance class’ friend in Wales… but sadly she’s leaving tomorrow to return to her homeland –the very cool Iceland-. She’s taking a pile of notes back to the Icelandic president on my humble notions on ‘how to make a country sexy’
The short version of this lengthy media image make-over scheme is that countries (such as Iceland and Canada) need to have cool animals on their flags. It makes tourists happy and makes locals proud. Just look at the Welsh flag with the dragon on it. What could be better?
Canada needs to get rid of the Maple Leaf- it’s far too reminiscent of the fig leaves used to cover statues’ genitalia. A mark of over prudishness that leaf is!
We need to replace the Maple leaf with a Winged Beaver immediately. Canada’s cool quotient would SOAR!
Iceland needs to get those cool creatures off its coins and remarket them as the Storm Bull, Ice Dragon, Stone Eagle and Wise Giant… and get them on the flag. By using all 4 symbols (one for each cardinal point on the compass rose) Iceland will offer a choose your own image form of patriotic identity. With 4 magical creatures to choose from there’s something for everyone.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
DEVIL’S BRIDGE
Because V is leaving tomorrow I agreed on Sat. to go on the trip to Devil’s Bridge quite enthusiastically. Who wouldn’t want to go to Devil’s Bridge?
The event was organized by a Christian social group (I found this out later –but perhaps I should have been suspicious about the ‘free ride’ part – a free ride at topspeed along winding narrow –yet well tarmacked- roads). I realized that though the roads are narrow, they are quality instead of quantity. In Canada we need the extra width to make up for the lack of quality aka: so we have enough room to dodge the potholes.
We met Sunday Dec. 16th at the public parking lot at what is colloquially called St. Mike’s Church (Saint Michael is what is on the signage). I figure if you’re going to be cool enough as a Christian to call it Saint Mike’s, one might as well call it the House of G. G has a lot of houses. He’s big into real estate. Ya –let’s meet at the house of G, yeah, man, Mike’s house of G.
Gee wiz. The dozen or so people were very lovely and I tried to be tactful as possible. I may have pointed out the irony of going to Devil’s bridge as a group of Christians, but I did not wear any pentacles, horns, or flower headdresses, and tactfully answered questions about the (in) frequency of my church going and completely avoided all religious topics.
The bridge was originally built by monks -by there was a fable about an old woman going home with her cow and dog who needed to cross the river. The Devil said he would build her a bridge -but would own the soul of the first to cross the river.
The clever old woman sent her dog across the river first and then led the cow across -so the devil got the dog's soul instead of hers...
Of course this story upset me to no end. She should have driven the cow across first!!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
MILVUS MILVUS
... as the sunset the sheep on the hillside turned PINK!!!! And the Red Kite, also known as the milvus milvus, back from threatened extinction, wheeled in the sky over the valley catching the sunset light with its distinct red and white underbelly, forked tail allowing it rapid manoeuvring…
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
HOW TO MAKE A WELSH PERSON LAUGH
Explain to them that the reason you came to Wales from Canada is because Wales seems romantic to Canadians and that the post-colonial identity crisis we exist in makes an international degree be held with more value than a home-grown Canuck degree.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
CANADIA?
Me: Nope. Canada.
Do you say aboot? (asked with snickering)
Me: maybe on the East side of the country? Does ANYONE say aboot?
So you’re from Vancouver -Do you know Mr. Greenwell in Toronto?
Me: May I ask if you know someone in Italy? It’s about the same distance away.
Canadia’s not THAT big is it?
Me: It’s bigger.
Say Crik.
Me: I reckon the crik’s dried up dear Ethel, time to move the RV unit. No one says Crik either. But we do say VASE not Vahwsz and we don’t say
al-YOU-min-EEE-um, and we think the expression ‘someone’s getting on my tits’ is almost as amusing as seeing the young man walk past in the shirt with MANWHORE 22 printed on the back.
You sound like an American
Me: unfortunately I do to some people. Yet over half a dozen people have asked me if I’m Irish. And I can usually tell the people who have BEEN to America, or are from there, because they always ask me if I’m a Canadian.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
GUINESS NO LONGER TO BE SOLD IN DRAFT FORM IN THE UK??!!!
Sales are down and in the future it will only come in a can…. Apparently the real reason is that fewer pubs are able to deal with a beer that is complicated to serve because staff turns over so quickly that they don’t bother to train anyone anymore and so many wait staff will lie and say Guinness isn’t available because they don’t want the difficulty of pouring it, getting it wrong and getting yelled at…
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
TWEE?
According to my supervisor my artwork is ‘at its best’ when I am being Twee and I should be more twee… and what precisely is twee?
I have a vague sense of the word… but twee? She deploys the word several times each time we meet –which is only once every 2-3 weeks. Apart from that I am left to my own devices to fill the 287 hours of studio time that is a graduation requirement for Portfolio development.
Art History class –I mean Visual Culture- and Professional Practice are the other set classes, and then there are all the optional lectures, most of which I enjoy.
IN THE WORKS: to produce a Traditional Welsh Smock Frock
To research the links between Canada and Welsh textiles
On Sat. Dec. 1st 2:30pm at the Ceredigion Museum after taking notes and documenting the Smocks textile exhibition (I have an interest in creating a Welsh smock to accompany my Welsh Border Morris Dance kit as I’ve never been certain what to wear shirt-wise under the Morris jacket and after reading that the Welsh smock was traditionally worn for centuries (by men and women) until it began to disappear in the early 20th C (as noted by Gertrude Jekyll around 1814). I’d like to create an ‘authentic’ Morris smock –as ‘Although originally a practical garment it started being used for more formal occasions such as rural weddings, funerals (particularly for pallbearers) and festivals such as Plough Sunday.’
The majority of the smocks were linen and (twilled) cotton in beige/off white tones, however there was documentation of different coloured smocks being associated with the different trades associated with the wearers. The embroidery patterns had as much in common as they did with being unique patterns created by the embroiderers, personalized for the wearers.
I viewed a monologue play written by Liz Jones, performed by Jez Danks on the life of local photographer and painter, Alfred Worthington, many of whose paintings are on display at the museum.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
BUTTONS STRING & WHAT TIES CHARACTERS TOGETHER
At the museum I was compelled to speak to a striking woman who was wearing a peace sign pinned to the top of her hand dyed headdress with a massive pearl pin.
She seemed a matriarchal character… and indeed, she is. We chatted after the play and she gave me her sticker, as she does not have a card. Olwen Davies, recently celebrated her 85th birthday and.. is always a peace activist. Later I read about her a bit more in the local HEDDWCH free paper –part of the CND –campaign for Nuclear disarmament.
I also met a friend of hers named Susan and her partner who have since dropped by the art school twice to visit –once while on the University of the Third Age lecture (U3A) and a second time recently to give me bags of old buttons, embroidery threads and other sewing oddments that belonged to HER mother.
I am THRILLED to discover traditional chalk fabric marking fragments –used in traditional smocking as well as BONE BUTTONS –I’d been wondering how on EARTH I’d find some traditional Welsh bone buttons for a smock, and debating how traditional I need to go with the project and now the buttons have come to me. Oh Happy Raven dance of found treasure joy!
I showed Susan the picture I’m working on –using some of the heritage embroidery wool she’d given me to trace the outline of Wales around the image of the mythical Woman of Wales. I explained how at one of the lectures I was at I learned about this character –which can be seen in the outline of Wales –with a bit of imagination- and she exclaimed ‘I’ve been living here for over 60 years and I never heard of the Old Woman in Wales –but I see her now! Imagine that.’
Tactfully we avoided discussing the dragon and its –um –attributes –which I display in the painting.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CARDIFF
On Tues. Nov. 27th I went to Cardiff with the Artschool, but broke away from the main group to pursue personal interests: viewing the Cardiff castle, various art exhibits around town as well as the Industry to Impressionism: What Two sisters did for Wales exhibit at the National Museum of Cardiff.
It was a grand tourist-ish day! With all the joy and freedom of random exploration in a strange land.
Six hours seemed like a good deal of time –but it all sort of flew by.
I regret not making it to the area they film Dr. Who in, but there were more than enough distractions in the area we were in. Art shows, carnivals, old buildings, markets, bypassing the slightly surreal 45’ high Santa’s spray painted Grotto… dodging Christmas shoppers…
The Cardiff castle was very inspiring and fun to hang out with V and to meet Max the Russian student physicist working on developing diamond tools for use with lasers –if I recall correctly??!!
It felt like one of those days I’ll always recall fondly. Hanging out with a Russian and an Icelander surrounded by the panoply of European accents on a grey early winter day, map in hand, a fistful of ‘wood roses’ I bought for myself and all the silliness and exploration that we could cram into the day, and still make it back to the UWA school bus, allowed.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
MERRY CHRISTMAS
HAPPY CRIMBO
MERRY SOLSTICE
NADOLIG LLAWEN
&
HAVE A MAGICAL NEW YEAR
MY THOUGHTS ARE WITH YOU
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
+hang+out+in+Aberystwyth+castle+ruins.jpg)
