Footsteps of Love

Photo Credit: June Perkins

Every now and then I like to add just a few words to an image. This is a recent example. I shared this on my tumblr page a week ago. Sometimes I will reflect on the words and image to either create more in the series, or to compose a poem or story. Here is the beginning of my mind map on this topic. I wonder what will come out of it as I mull over it the next few days. Maybe something to inspire my next guest blogs for the ABC Aftermath project.

Footsteps to follow

Footsteps to courage

Footsteps to resilience

Footsteps young

Footsteps old

Footsteps of mystery

Loud footsteps

Soft footsteps

Allegro footsteps

Silent footsteps

Memory Footsteps

Recovery footsteps

(c) June Perkins, all rights reserved.

Music Heart

(c) June Perkins, Guitar Boy series

The best, most beautiful, and most perfect way that we have of expressing a sweet concord of mind to each other is by music.
-Jonathan Edwards

Music, when the heart of my day, is so empowering. Words, notes, instruments, timbre, sometimes lyrics all combine to create something that stirs the heart, soothes it, takes it and transports it somewhere else.

So many lessons in music about harmony – and how to work together, and about internal harmony and how to unify within.

In the last year I notice how often the guitar is photographed, and how much more my daughter sings. My son loves to make his own music on the guitar. I think we should record some of it. It is gentle and him.

She sings words that mean something, that tell her about love found, love lost, and love scorned. She laughs at life, mostly, when she is not tired.

She has the music heart.

So many songs of birds, like music, not like music, some just make sounds that remind you of other things – mocking and rocking.

Wind through cane, makes music. People through life make music. What settles in their soul music for eternal journeys?

Perhaps time to do close ups all about music in the last few days of ABC Open’s close up competition and finally decide on my actual entry.

(c) June Perkins

For All the Worlds Women

Feather for Flight - June Perkins

Feather for Flight

 

 

Here is a feather for Flight

To strengthen your wings

To put the world right

 

Take this peace feather

For all of life’s weather

Add to it

more for your wings.

 

Who are the women you treasure?

Who helped you into the sky?

Speak to them, pray for them, work with them

Strengthen them -

 

Give them a feather of peace.

Give them a feather of joy.

 

Here is a feather for flight.

 

(c) June Perkins, all rights reserved.

5 essentials to host kids visiting with their parents

Image: Lego Robin Hood

You learn what houses are not not used to kids.  These are houses with glass table tops, vases in places where kids love to run, and absolutely no toys from previous occupants.

I respect people’s choices to have kids or not have kids, and to move out all their kids things when they move out.  However the houses my kids love to visit still have traces of their occupants who spent a childhood of playing lego there.

There are two friends we visit who have a box full of lego.  The children never say they are bored there when they know the lego never leaves but stays waiting for absent grandchildren, they simply ask for the lego and enter the world of make believe.

Lego, is compact and small, and good for keeping children on a mat, but also their minds take them away beyond that mat.  They are in Sherwood Forest with Star Wars figures, or they are putting traffic men on horses.  You can see the history of the lego collector, what eras their children went through, in the sets they own.

I love how lego doesn’t take up as much space as another brand I will not name, but which is also highlighly popular play brand.  Who hasn’t take a head of a knight and put it on a policeman- that’s the fun of it.

Small hands find it difficult at first, but soon they get the hang of it, and the fixation has begun.

Essentials for visits from kids

1) Patience if you don’t have kids.

2) Childproofing the house for anything danger to age specific (especially little ones)

3) Some books and toys different ages- don’t let kids too young

read your teenagers former book collection.  Some hands are too little for lego.

4) Lego (it does for most ages and they will come and show you what they have made and not just switch off like on a computer)

5) A willingness to engage with the children and not just their parents.

Lego

Lego is my children’s childhood
in the house to house visits
where they play in another world
within the world of the visit

Lego is not my childhood
it was mecanno and monopoly
500 with the cards

A neighbour came with a cup of sugar
and joined our monopoly world
she was our friend for a while

Then she grew up
streaked her hair
and all her friends rang my brother
Asking to go out

But there was one lady
with a basket of old alphabet and puzzle blocks
and books
who everytime we went to stay
with her by the coast
Let us be free for a while

I loved that basket
and always will

The basket of Agatha Bainbridge
who always welcomed children
And she would have had lego if she was a
mother or grandmother today

She’s gone now
into that merry wood of dreams.

(c) June Perkins, all rights reserved, words and image.

Guinea Pig Memory

Image: Guinea Pig Magic

You never know how a memory might turn out and where it might take you.  I think for just a while I will blog some memories and see where they take me.  They are sketches that can be developed into fuller stories, or mythical, fairytales of everyday.  I won’t publish the final products but give you just a hint as the final creations will be part of Island Rock Girl my in progress memoirs…

Guinea Pig Memories

We had a guinea pig called Weasley
he lived in a cage in our yard
with a crazy rabbit
who liked to chew all the cords in our house
when he was upstairs visiting.

We said goodbye to that guinea pig
when we moved North
found him a home with some uni students
and dropped him and
said crazy rabbit
and waved goodbye.

Wonder what happened to Weasley
did he join a guinea pig school of magic
we hope his ending wasn’t tragic.

We wonder if the crazy rabbit
calmed down
and found peace with those uni students.

Can’t keep rabbits in Queensland
although its rumoured people do.

Now we have pet geckos, well family geckos
and Eagles and Rosellas in the garden.

My little girl longs for a
guinea pig and is building a cage with her Dad.
She wants to grow up to work with animals.

She wants to practice by having lots of pets!

(c) June Perkins

Tracks

Image: Beach Track

She went to the archives stretched out in the land
Followed their tracks
Followed their scents nipping in the wind
Followed a canvas sniffing out the paint.

She sent out the brushstrokes to become picture words
Reeling in acrylic memory
Reeling in encounters with testimony
Reeling in the sites of her aunties’ significances.

She called out to the images against the grain
Installed in galleries, libraries, town halls
Murals and tracks and scents and canvas
And mouths, and songs and steps
And gestures, she danced.

She called out “Here comes the butterfly
Lamenting the suffering of the
Koori song, Murri Song, Warlpiri song, Kimberly song,
Mekeo song, Man song,
Woman song, Human song,”

She danced the revisions of her story
In layers upon layers
Of the red earth
Yellow earth, brown earth and white clay.

Image: Sky Tracks

© June Perkins, First published in Aboriginal History 30, 2006.

Mango Mother – Poem/Story in Process

I thought I would work on a few posts on my writing process after all I am a blogger, emerging writer (full length book still on the way),  and a poet with scattered publications.  I came to the computer today wondering what I was going to post on.  Would it be my kids obsession with chat features (they’ve signed me up to chat to them) or would it be something about what happened during this week (not much on that front just the flu), was there anything I was reading (not finished current books yet so as to be able to write about them).  So I headed for some books on mythology.  I love the pithy ones that give a plot outline without much colouration of story.

I have just read a myth about the divine origin of the mango,  and realised I don’t have a single photograph of mangoes.    That is something to fix in my photograph stocks.  In this myth, from Thailand, there is a king who falls ill.  His doctors organise all sorts of fruit juices for him (sounds like the flu doesn’t it) and none of them fix him up.  He has a dream in which a ‘god’s’ voice tells him to go to the mountains of a particular town and there he will find a tree – this tree is the mother of the mango trees.  However, the doctors or courtiers of the king find when they get to the tree,  they cannot pick the fruit from ‘her’ because whenever they try to the tree cries like a mother.  So in the end they say prayers and ask the priests to come.  The tree parts with one fruit for the sick king after the prayers have been offered.

I like the structure of myths.  Problem is presented, followed by possible cure, followed by complication and then resolution.  For today’s writing session I was looking for such a structure, I could have gone with a poetic form as well, but my own real life flu is dictating this is not a day to attempt a sonnet, and my ballad cookpot is not on the boil and I fear my free verse will ramble too much.    So instead I will reflect on this myth and what it says to me in my present stage of feeling unfit and unwell.

DRAFT 1#

Somewhere there is a mother tree

crying for her lost fruit

she knows she can cure the world

but she likes to have it all

close in her branches

so she can shelter it

But if it’s there too long it will rot

and she will

have lost all that fruit

by not letting

it be eaten

Pity to let it all go to waste

She is like a real mother

keeping her children too close to home

worried they will not be able to survive

But in each core of fruit

is a new seed that will grow

another mother tree

and she must let go

Why does the prayer make her let go

why does faith say the seed will be safe

if she lets the fruit fall from her branches

today is a day for a prayer

for the mother tree

on a mountain that can

cure me

Although I am not royalty

I long for some fruit from that sacred mango mother tree.

So tomorrow I will come back to this poem and keep reworking it until I am happy with it.  It may develop a metre or some pattern, but it is a beginning and there are some ideas there I’d like to work with.  The real poem probably won’t be blogged as I’ll save it to send somewhere.   So you’ll have to wait for it a while.

Wonder what myths there are for other fruits like apricots?    I do know there are many memory stories about apricots in my childhood.  Apricot childhood…………  So now I definitely have some writing prompts of my own to work with.

Image: Apricots

©June Perkins – words and image all rights reserved

Fishing deeper for words: intertextuality and citation

Image 1: First Fish

So sometimes working from our own imaginations is simply not enough. Communicating deep topics with others means drawing on the mythologies, and popular culture that everyone relates to so as to construct our metaphors.

Yet, citation is fraught with danger of falling into the malaise of cliche. Cliche, that thing that professional writing instructors tell us kills good writing. A well placed transformed cliche though is a citation that surprises and causes writers to take their writing to another higher plane,  where they are looking down on all those cliches that once clouded their meaning.

Last night we were chatting about how my eldest son loves to set trends, but once they are a trend he can’t practice them any more. He has turned into a cliche even though he was original. So what does he do, set a new trend. He may begin wearing a fedora hat, but if too many people wear it, off it comes. Then he tries odd shoes. No one copies that, he has found his originality.

I wonder how that would work applied to writing, and transforming our blogs. I wonder about the discipline of citation, and referrring to studies and others to make our own words more legitimate and remember people introducing me to the work of bell hooks. I must go back and review some of her work and remember why it excited me so much to read.

Intertextuality in a blog is in the links placed in our posts.  We may not explore it as fully as we could, the reader simply clicks and can go exploring.  Yet, if we explore it, as well as provide that different coloured font, that will remind them to click, will we be going deeper in our writing.  Maybe just a link is like a skim on a surface, a short cut, a shallowing of our writing.   We need to stop and think before we link – and make the link firmer and more understandable.

Deeper words, how do we fish for deeper words. The fisherwoman/man puts bait or lures on a hook and then places it into the water. I imagine myself putting my creative hook into a pool of culture. The words/books/myths are like fish swilling around in the water. They see the lure of my text and swim towards it – attracted by the colours, the shine- until they are hooked. I have to reel them in, crystallise them, make the connections clear enough to see so you can see it too

I pull up my text, oh wow, that is some fish/book, it is part of a genre/species, yet it is my very own catch of the day.

So now if I was to think more deeply about fish I might free wheel through culture, to the greedy fisherman’s wife, who tells him to keep asking the magic fish for more and more until they are left with nothing. Or I might think of stories of mammals of the sea like Moby Dick, or Flipper and a cartoon my children and I recently read which said – ‘I am sorry it just won’t work out I am a mammal and you are a fish.’ and I might keep working with these ideas, or start trawling through google, and my bookshelves for more stories of fish.

Yes, stories of Gods and Godesses, disguised as fish, and holding the answer to the universe. And I might come across stories of arks and so on and then when my mind is completely blown away by all this intertextuality I might take a deep breath and write something.

(I)

Lucas Luna is the first catch
of my eight year old
but he could hold the answer
to the questions of the universe
somewhere inside him

Maybe he saw the bait of the young man
and said to himself I will be a story
for you to tell your children in the future
I will be a memory

Lucas Luna could be a character
of a dream a fish that was once a man
and said thankyou for not eating me
now I will bring you luck and wealth

Or Lucas Luna could simply be the first
catch of a young boy
who used to hate fishing.

Image 2: Girl Fishes

(II)

C’mon fish take a bite

Stop following the lure all night

It’s just not right.

My brother has his fish

Not big enough for a dish

But he has his wish.

I am a lonely fisher girl

I long to see you take a whirl

on the line.

Fine, don’t bite then,

but I will be waiting

I do have spine.

I will be waiting.

I will be waiting.

I will be waiting.

(c) June Perkins, words and image, all rights reserved.

Why blog? Why write?

Image1 : Digging Hope

Why write?  You might as well ask the addicted writer why breathe.  Writing is like breathing.  We are all born to communicate something.  We all have a life that is a potential memoir.  So what if most best selling published memoirs are written, or ghost written, by the celebrity or people who did something spectacular or infamous.  Goodness they are not the only ones I like to read. I do like inspiring ones. But is any life truly boring, if written well? Do I really need to know any more about Tiger?  I can’t see myself buying that one.  Although I’d say his is going to be a biography as he is so notoriously private.

Your life can be extraordinary when you write it.  You can see patterns you never saw before you began to write it all down.  You can make sense of all the crossroads you stood at and see the movie like moments.   Triumphs and lowpoints.  You can feel it all again as you write it, if you want to.  You can welcome or despise the memory, let it out, and let it go.  I once wrote that fiction however is so powerful because you can rewrite all the endings for your characters, but can we rewrite our endings in real life, even if we can’t rewrite the past.

There are some experiences I am glad I have never had, and hope to never have.  Watching based on real life telemovies where someone is catapulted into a situation that is unbearable, whether it be having a family member be a victim of crime, or been a victim of crime you just don’t want to go there, but you are so happy people get their justice.  Although that’s not completely true we may have more experience than we realise.  We have had someone try to break into our house, and at that moment I had so much fear – I couldn’t believe it.  I saw my life running by and exploding like a toad with a cricket bat about to connect with it.  It is not telemovie material but to me it was a significant event!  It taught me you are not safe anywhere, even in your own home, in a small country town.  The only true safety is in connection, friendship, and community.

At these moments of fear how often do we make promises to live life differently.  I don’t want to fear like that again.  I don’t want anyone else to fear like that.  Yet, every day I wake up watch the news and someone has been through that fear or much, much worse.

Fear is not a place to live life in.  It stops us from doing things we want to, just in case.  Just in case we experience something we don’t want to.  All the just in cases become like bars and we never venture forth to discover the new.

Image 2 : Hands and Rocks (from a series)

Recently a blogger I only really just began reading, Kathy, wrote about the secret life of bloggers. This made me think about the question of why people blog.  They shout out in the cyberspace.  They want their stories to matter.  Well some do.   Bloggers blog because it’s like breathing to them.  They chart their thoughts, stories, and things that just stand out in their day.  As Kathy says on her blog we may not know bloggers as well as we think as they pattern their experiences to become the multidimensional blog representation of it.  Over time we may come to know them better if we persevere.

Bloggers can share what delights them, disgusts them, enchants them – some publicise their projects, their successes, their self, some chart the blogosphere of others, seeking connection and reconnection, and a community to belong to.  Others meditate, reflect on their spiritual challenges and successes.  Although some keep this out of the public sphere, and they are entitled to some privacy.

Bloggers are as varied as the world.  But the ones I read why do I read them? This might help answer the question of why people read blogs, but brings me no closer to the answer of why keep a blog. I like bloggers who take on challenges like Sarah and her poem a day,  or set up photographic assignments like Views infinitum.  They inspire me with their writing or photographic projects, to take on my own challenges.  I love this sense of an arts community.

Many bloggers love photography.  A well placed photo brightens up a post, adds meaning to it, provides a visual snapshot into their lives or their creative thought.

So the question is – why stop blogging?  Maybe there is mild danger in blogging, in being so out there in writing.  You might not blog just in case something terrible happens to you.  However, that cuts one off from the amazing people you may meet out there, reading their blogs.  Blog with care – now that’s a better maxim.

And for all those who invent characters in their cyberworld, keep it to fiction, obvious fiction.  There is a line people shouldn’t cross in cyberspace – the line that imprisons, or disrespects others!  This line doesn’t just exist in the blogging world, it exists everywhere.

So many bloggers gather where we feel safety, enthusiasm, connection, support, and encouraged.  There is so much that can hurt people everyday, crush their spirit, take away there desire to share the power of their voice and story, their ability to see that in reality we are all extraordinary – for we breathe, speak, write and take the journey of life.

Why do you blog?  Why do you read blogs?  It is a  question that has too many answers for it is part of the tapestry of the blogosphere – big – varied – unanswerable in a few words.

(c) June Perkins all rights reserved.

Discovery, Being Found, and Joy

Image 1: Shell Discovery

My daughter now shows me her discoveries on the beach.  She cups them in her hands and presents them for photographs.  She is fascinated with intricate and tiny shells.  There is something about shells which will always hold true for her.

Image 2: Being Discovered

One afternoon some green butterflies came and attached themselves to Hawkeye.  They fluttered onto his nose and his hands.  They were there for several minutes and we were able to capture them.  It was as if the butterflies discovered him and loved his green tshirt, or maybe they just thought he was a tree and his hands extension of the branches.

Image 3: Joy Hands

Whenever I see this photo I wish I had just caught the whole hand, but sometimes photography with kids can be tricky.  When they’ve had enough of being photographed that’s it nothing will change it.  Still the moment is there despite the flaws in the photographs and I still treasure it.  David Suzuki said it’s important for kids to get their hands dirty, and dig in the soil.  They discover so much that way.  I have so many pictures of my kids digging in the sand and the soil, and this image is all about that joy of discovering through feeling things.

Found my Hand Poem

Hands

to hold

and dream

becoming branches for butterflies.

Hands to dig

and discover

and nature’s secrets to uncover.

Hands to be found

hands to find

happiness in every drop

of sunlight

and every grain of dirt.

© June Perkins, words and images.