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Tuesday, April 20, 2004
Tree hugging for novices
Your thin end for today:
When my kids were small, Reg tried to get them into hugging trees. I don't remember hugging trees when I was a pre-schooler so I don't know whether this introduction to grounding was given to me when I was their age or not, but suffice to say he tried to teach my kids. I think Heather took to it ok, but being the precocious tart she was even back then if she did think it was weird she probably put it down to grandparent foibles and didn't think too much of it. Adam, however was a completely different story. He just couldn't get with the whole hug-a-tree thing. He as much as said he considered hugging trees was way strange. Sometimes I look at him and think "where the hell did HE come from??" and yet at other times he is right into all the spooky-possum stuff, the Gypsy cards and candles and herbal remedies (he really likes my new Gothic jewellery and my whip... yes sir, that's my baby).
A few years ago (December 2001, to be precise), I decided that, as a present to myself for working so hard at polytech and graduating again, I would buy myself something from the local gemshop. They have all sorts of crystals and gemstones there for all manner of healing requirements (yes, they even work for people who don't believe in it). Anyway, this is what I bought;
It's about 5 inches diameter, 900 grams (2.2 pounds) of rainbow obsidian, black as night apart from a dark forest green circular swirl (like the iris of an eye) which runs right through the centre of the ball and it cost me $180. I still love it. It was always known as the Orb until the first Lord of the Rings movie came out and then the kids renamed it "Mum's Palantir". They both say they want it when I die. Sweet babies, the pair of them.
Anyway, getting back to the trees, I seldom hug a tree (although I probably should) but I love the sound of the wind in them (so like the waves, maybe?) and the creak and slap of the giant bamboo out the front swaying 30 feet above the ground.
We had a large Melia tree that Mum planted many years ago that fell down in a storm last spring. I really miss it; I used to sit in my chair in the lounge when there was a full moon and watch the skeleton of the tree outlined against the brightness. Once night Shari and I watched a possum roaming around in silhouette before we scared the shit out of it and it fell out and ran away.
Now we are going to plant a big blue mountain cedar in there for the kids to hang decorations on and light up for Christmas. Shame it is too prickly to hug, though.
I think Mum will approve.
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When my kids were small, Reg tried to get them into hugging trees. I don't remember hugging trees when I was a pre-schooler so I don't know whether this introduction to grounding was given to me when I was their age or not, but suffice to say he tried to teach my kids. I think Heather took to it ok, but being the precocious tart she was even back then if she did think it was weird she probably put it down to grandparent foibles and didn't think too much of it. Adam, however was a completely different story. He just couldn't get with the whole hug-a-tree thing. He as much as said he considered hugging trees was way strange. Sometimes I look at him and think "where the hell did HE come from??" and yet at other times he is right into all the spooky-possum stuff, the Gypsy cards and candles and herbal remedies (he really likes my new Gothic jewellery and my whip... yes sir, that's my baby).
A few years ago (December 2001, to be precise), I decided that, as a present to myself for working so hard at polytech and graduating again, I would buy myself something from the local gemshop. They have all sorts of crystals and gemstones there for all manner of healing requirements (yes, they even work for people who don't believe in it). Anyway, this is what I bought;
It's about 5 inches diameter, 900 grams (2.2 pounds) of rainbow obsidian, black as night apart from a dark forest green circular swirl (like the iris of an eye) which runs right through the centre of the ball and it cost me $180. I still love it. It was always known as the Orb until the first Lord of the Rings movie came out and then the kids renamed it "Mum's Palantir". They both say they want it when I die. Sweet babies, the pair of them.
Anyway, getting back to the trees, I seldom hug a tree (although I probably should) but I love the sound of the wind in them (so like the waves, maybe?) and the creak and slap of the giant bamboo out the front swaying 30 feet above the ground.
We had a large Melia tree that Mum planted many years ago that fell down in a storm last spring. I really miss it; I used to sit in my chair in the lounge when there was a full moon and watch the skeleton of the tree outlined against the brightness. Once night Shari and I watched a possum roaming around in silhouette before we scared the shit out of it and it fell out and ran away.
Now we are going to plant a big blue mountain cedar in there for the kids to hang decorations on and light up for Christmas. Shame it is too prickly to hug, though.
I think Mum will approve.
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Sunday, April 18, 2004
What a wonderful World
Your thin end for today:
I was always visually and graphically inclined, and when I was 15 Mum bought me an art book with pictures of famous works of art included in it. Among them was a picture of a woman in a pink dress sitting in a paddock of grass, just outside a brighter lit area with an old house sitting on the top of the hill. For some reason I was always drawn to this picture. I wondered every time I saw it why she didn't sit within the brighter circle; why her whole body seemed to beckon to the haven of the farmhouse; why she was alone. It was always my mystery picture, well one of them.
Even though I forgot the authors's name, I never forgot the name of the painting - "Christina's World". This famous 20th Century painting was by an American painter, Andrew Wyeth (1917 - ), and the subject was a Maine woman named Christina Olsen (1893 - 1968). The original painting, which now lives in the New York Museum of Modern Art was described as "a haunting portrait by Andrew Wyeth of a crippled woman and a forsaken house on a bleak New England hill…that would become one of the most popular paintings ever done by an American."
Except for the last two months of her life, she lived her entire life in the house on the hill in the painting. The short version of the meaning of the painting is that by age 53, Christina Olsen, increasingly disabled her whole life by an unknown but suspected degenerative disorder, could no longer walk and refused to use a wheelchair. In 1948 Wyeth sketched Christina as she crawled down the hill to visit her parent's graves. The dress she wears in the painting is one she made and wore at her nephew's wedding a few years earlier.
This was Christina's World.
Today, it looks like this
More about the 18th Century sea captain's house HERE.
After 25 years, all my questions are answered. Lucky I got more paintings and artists that fascinate me to delve into yet.
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I was always visually and graphically inclined, and when I was 15 Mum bought me an art book with pictures of famous works of art included in it. Among them was a picture of a woman in a pink dress sitting in a paddock of grass, just outside a brighter lit area with an old house sitting on the top of the hill. For some reason I was always drawn to this picture. I wondered every time I saw it why she didn't sit within the brighter circle; why her whole body seemed to beckon to the haven of the farmhouse; why she was alone. It was always my mystery picture, well one of them.
Even though I forgot the authors's name, I never forgot the name of the painting - "Christina's World". This famous 20th Century painting was by an American painter, Andrew Wyeth (1917 - ), and the subject was a Maine woman named Christina Olsen (1893 - 1968). The original painting, which now lives in the New York Museum of Modern Art was described as "a haunting portrait by Andrew Wyeth of a crippled woman and a forsaken house on a bleak New England hill…that would become one of the most popular paintings ever done by an American."
Except for the last two months of her life, she lived her entire life in the house on the hill in the painting. The short version of the meaning of the painting is that by age 53, Christina Olsen, increasingly disabled her whole life by an unknown but suspected degenerative disorder, could no longer walk and refused to use a wheelchair. In 1948 Wyeth sketched Christina as she crawled down the hill to visit her parent's graves. The dress she wears in the painting is one she made and wore at her nephew's wedding a few years earlier.
This was Christina's World.
Today, it looks like this
More about the 18th Century sea captain's house HERE.
After 25 years, all my questions are answered. Lucky I got more paintings and artists that fascinate me to delve into yet.
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