The love of books

I have a passion for books, I cannot walk past a bookstore or a stall or go for a day without checking what Amazon can offer me. The other day I visited Borders, to gawk, and I felt incredibly happy. There are people who do not understand my love for books and my insatiable need to own them. Books are magic. Pieces of paper bound together, with no intrinsic value. But the words upon those pages are what makes them powerful beyond anything. I have always loved reading, as a child I remember purchasing Enith Blighton books with my Dutch Guilders 1.10 in pocket money, which is about 70 cents in AUD, every Saturday morning I would buy one of the series. When I was in Borders I looked around me. What attracts me so much. It is the seeking. Books hold truths, kernels of wisdom that might explain in one sentence what has been eluding me for years. Solutions to problems, the sudden realisation of the meaning of an emotion, a feeling, articulation of a sentiment. I seek all that in books.

Some writers have the ability to touch you with their words, it has occurred to me that there are lines that will forever be etched in my soul. Call me Ahab. I can see it in other book buyers too, touching the jackets, leaving through a novel, caressing the spine. What can this one teach me, does it contain what I am looking for? Will it have that pearl of wisdom, the escape, the solution, the hidden treasure. Can it fill my life, enhance what is missing or highlight what is already there. Books are time capsules, recording the writers thoughts and creative energy from the time the first word was written on the paper.

I received a book today in the mail, Beaded Opulence by Marcia DeCoster and that book is filled with other magic. I have learnt to appreciate RAW late in life, it took me a while before I could appreciate the stitch; to learn to like its ability to be fabric, strong and soft at the same time. This book shows you all of that and more. I really love the conversational tone in the book, sometimes bead artists who write feel the need to write as the third person, to me it almost depersonalises that very intimate dialogue between writer and reader. Marcia does not do that, she actually gifts you with the things she has learned and does that in a logical and personalbe way. And yet, passion shines through on every page. My brain has been firing on all cylinders since I opened the book. There are a few strenghts I would like to highlight: there are sections that discuss different attributes of RAW: Fabric, Layering, Cords, Armatures and that gives you the opportunity to mix techniques and truly understand the options in front of you.

Then there is the creativity, the lightbulb moments. Oh gosh, is that what you can do, is that how you can make that beaded fabric curve. Is that how you get a smooth tube, is that how you get that organic look. And those lightbulb moments are gold, they take you beyond what you see in front of you and they slot in what you already know. I have purchased and read a lot of books lately, here are a few on the shelf:

Jenny Rolfe - Beautiful Embroidered Bags

Lizzy Houghton - Creative Felting

Sarah Keay - Jewellery with textile techniques

Diane Fitzgerald - Shaped Beadwork

Marcia DeCoster - Beaded Opulence

Rachel Nelson Smith - Seed Bead Fusion

All these books have an extra quality, that bit of spark and passion that sets my world on fire. Even if I never make a project from the books, they make their way in my work.

Books are magic.

Now if only I could sew, but that is not a skill I posess.

Sea Nomads

I think it was the smell, that heady blend of salt, fish, tropical warm air and franginpanni flowers. Yes, the smell of ocean, the Coral Sea gently nibbling on 4 Mile Beach in Port Douglas last week. See that is where I have been for the past few weeks, PNG and Far North Queensland or FNQ. And I think it was the smell of ocean that made me feel as if I had finally come home. I loved Port Douglas, it is a wonderful place. Thanks to, or maybe due to is a better term, the financial crisis, it was not busy even though it is typically busy in winter. Waking up early to walk on the beach and see the sun sparkle on the water and sense the peacefullness really made my shoulders un-tense.

We have been sea nomads for a few weeks, travelling from Port Moresby to Madang in PNG, to Cairns to Port Douglas. All to submerge ourselves in tranquility of the oceans and get away from daily live. My partner and I are avid scuba divers, he learned to dive as a teenager in the 70's and conned me into being his dive buddy in 1997. I love scuba diving, it did not take much coaxing into a PADI continued education journey which lead me to Dive Master level. A nice word to indicate a level of experience and allows you to work as a guide, or an assistant to the instructor. Which is what I did for my partner a few times, he went through PADI boot camp. We dive with a group of friends, a dive trip at least once a year. Last year, for those who remember, it was Vanuatu. This year the warm waters around Madang.

The things you see as a sea nomad are astounding. Relying on a metal tube to provide you with air in a hostile environment is adventure enough, but to encounter fish, sharks, rays, turtles, snakes, moray eels, and all kinds of sluggy colourful creatures is magic. The routine was like this: wake up early, head over to the jetty and being met with the dive masters, all native Madang residents. I loved to see a female dive master, and Melissa did a great job. We'd find a dive site, either a wall (where the shallow bottom drops down suddenly sometimes 100's of meters, or a reef or a passage through the reef to the ocean. The tide drives where you go, visibility is a condition you want to be good for fun but also safety. After the dive, typically 50 minutes to an hour, we'd head over to an island, anchor the boat and have lunch on the beach. The dive masters would get some coconas out of the trees, or other fruits and we'd share what we had bought at the market too. Fruits are incredible, one day I bought this paw paw that fed us for 3 days for 2 kina (around 60 cents). Then we'd snorkel a bit, you need to off gass the nitrogen before you get back into the water on scuba. Then another dive site and the same routine. Some days we'd do just two, some days 3 dives. You could dive in a lycra catsuit, which I did most days, but I did wear a 3 mm wetsuit over that during the last few dives as your core temp does go down, even if the water is 30 degrees al year round.



Colours under water are weird - red disappears in the first few meters so sometimes corals can look washed out. But when you shine your torch over a piece, the pinks, corals, salmons and reds appear. I saw corals I had never seen, cabbage like, lime green with banana yellow edges. Deep blue coral, really deep blue. Pink and purple and green corals. One dive we dropped onto a wall and suddenly 4 huge shadows loomed in the distance: absurd looking fish with humps on their heads and a mono jaw like Jaws in James Bond movies had. Humphead Parrot Fish. Now we are talking about a 2 meter fish here, with a jaw that can chomp your arm off but dumb as anything and very docile. The feeling you have watching a creature like that in its own habitat is like nothing else in this world.



I think we did around 17 dives in Madang, after a few days you loose count. LOL. Then we flew back to Australia and spent 10 days in FNQ. We dived the great barrier reef there and if you have never done that, I would recommend it. Staghorn coral as far as you can see, schools of barracuda, the most beautiful giant clams, the colours on these creatures is just amazing. Fish every colour of the rainbow, turtles, sharks, moray eels and lionfish. It is all there and you can see all that beauty snorkelling. It was a lot different than Madang, more hard corals and much more fish life to see.



So I leave/tease you with a few images, hover the mouse over the images to see what they are. I brought back some bits and bobs from PNG and FNQ that will appear in beadwork over the next few months.

Man in the Mirror

The Man in the Mirror has forever taken off his white glove. Like so many people my age, the music of Michael Jackson played a big part in my formative years. I stated to someone the other day that I was never quite into him, but that is not the real story. In the 80's he revolutionised music, I can't hear a song from his legacy collection and not think back in vivid images. Billy Jean, She's out of my life, Thriller, Bad and of course Man in the Mirror. Sunday night countdown, MTV, Jackson dominated a lot of the musical inspirations and are mnemonics to youth experiences.

Musically he was a genius, his use of rock, disco, but also tribal sounds, gospel and African traditional songs are sheer ingenuity. He was also an innovator in music, the simple bass riff that kicks off Billy Jean, the whining guitar in Dirty Diana, the African chant in Black or White, the gospel harmonies in Man in the Mirror - sheer and utter genius. I saw Michael Jackson perform in 1996 in Adelaide, I seem to recal Human Nature was the supporting act. At the time, my partner and I were travelling up and down from Melbourne to South Oz for a major IT transition and we decided to go. I will never forget the golden suit he wore but also the performance ability that man had. A presence he did not have when he was not performing.

I can't help but think he didn't stand a chance.

During the past 10 years his behaviour and the stories got weirder and controversy seemed to follow him around. It was pretty clear from some of the media stories that the childhood of the Jackson children was not happy and fraught with abuse. I guess we also know about the child abuse charges, and we assume that those stories were true. I don't know about that, as the public, we only hear and see what is controversial and if it does not exist, it is probably made up. The fact that he paid the boy off does not indicate guilt, a lot of people don't get that, the law is not justice and justice is probably not what people were after. I suspect that he was surrounded by people who saw him as a meal ticket and that it was not always easy to be in that spotlight.I also believe that the fighting over the money will start soon, and probably played out with his children. What we saw was a boy child who did not want to grow up, heck, grown ups do horrible things so who wants to be that way, Right? I get that. I also have no doubt that there was a really good and innocent heart somewhere in there, you only have to listen to his music and the words to get the picture. Art does not lie, it has no reason to. And so I have more faith in that than what the media have made him out to be.

One of my favorite Jackson songs is Man in the Mirror. I think he has made a difference by being on this earth. That might sound odd considering the shallow world of music and showponies, but think about it. Generations of people who feel something when his songs are played, the global outpouring of grief is evidence of that. There were Jackson tribute shows on the radio all weekend and sheesh, every one of them had a different memory. It is a real shame that the pressure of life in the limelight killed the music.

I hope he is in a place where he is no longer alone. This legacy of music will go on forever, in the years to come, we will all forget about the controversy. The music and the brilliance of this musicial artist will live on in the inspiration he has given other musicians and his fans.

Renovators Delight

Oh I ache, in places I never thought I would have muscles. My hands, shoulders, arms, legs, feet they all ache. No I don't have schwine flu, I am renovating a house. A few weeks ago my partner and I walked into a 45 year old house in a sea side suburb one burb south from where we currently live. She was tired, had not had a lot of TLC for a while, had been empty for 12 months (family circumstances) but she had potential. 3 bedrooms, a nice open area living morphing into a kitchen but the best part is the backyard, it is huge. Maple, orange, jasmin and lemon tree live there and it smells divine. So we made a low ball offer and got it. Typically we wouldn't buy a house with so much work, but we liked this one a lot.

We are both pretty handy people, and we have a lot of tools at home so we decided to reno her ourselves. How hard can it be, structurally the house is sound. Okay. This is how hard it is - 4 decades of wall paper (I mean how much retro metallic and paisley can you stand, that house used to be orange for crying out loud), 3 layers of floor covering and you gotta look out for asbestos in a house of that age, bad DIY jobs on the paint, beige upon pink upon green upon orange. Luckly the linoleum under all the carpet was old but not asbestos backed. A few tiles in a laundry drain are but I am going to cover that with cement so that will be fine. Then she started to show her colours, high ceilings, nice windows (they were covered up), floor to ceiling windows in the master bedroom, boarded up. When the light started to flood in, that was great.

I love it though. I love the fact I can do this stuff, we are saving ourselves so much money doing the work ourselves. A good trady is worth their weight in diamonds and beads but doing it yourself is fantastic. I love the sense of achievement when I managed to repair a really badly damaged wall smooth as silk, and when we fixed up some of the woodrot in the windows. Years of craft work come in handy, it is like working with clay, smoothing it out with wet fingers, shaping, then sanding. Voila.

Next weekend is a long weekend in SA and we are painting. Every room will have a feature wall, in related muted colours. Soft olive green, donkey grey, pumpkin yellow, limousine blue, with a soft ivory base wall and a beige trim. I can just picture the house loving it, houses have a feel don't they, a vibe. This one didn't have a very happy vibe, but it is changing so much. We won't live there, we're building on a portfolio of investment properties, to be able to retire in a few years. My partner, god bless his cotton socks, said to me yesterday that we have to try to get a migrant family in the house. He remembers his roots, we both do.

So hence the radio silence. And the lack of beading. I can understand now why those chicks on reno shows look so lean and muscular, this is hard work. I'll post some before and after shots next weekend.