Originally posted on RECREATING ME: Sunset Reflection This photograph fascinates. It represents so much about reflection, about illusion, about layered reality. Living high on an escarpment looking out over the Upper Derwent towards Mount Field, we experience so much that you don’t see when there is only a narrow sky above. And central to all…
Finally done.
But it’s been a week of disaster heaped on disaster. I so envy people who have any compatability with electronic – digital equipment. (Don’t laugh – one day you may meet me and then the smile will quickly fade.)
I’m not quite sure how I’ve survived this week. And I’m not quite sure what to make of it all.
First there is the issue of digital technology itself. I thought iPads were supposed to be our ‘friends’. THEY MOST CERTAINLY ARE NOT. Neither are mobile phones – I’m supposed to own a ‘good’ one – HAH.
Nor is my computer particularly nice. Today it decided to get stroppy just because I’ve ‘picked on’ its friends. However, there was no need for a go-slow and “pretend to die on the spot”. I didn’t do any physical damage to them, just vociferously challenged their rather dubious morality.
It was a particularly nasty form of industrial action. I had been able to make it home with time to spare despite the frantic 50 minute drive, (it should have been 40 but it was Friday afternoon close to Xmas, hey?) There I sat, fidgeting and fiddling, and stressing myself silly. So it would be quicker to reboot, right. Three quarters of an hour later, we got finally got life. Too late for me.
Now, from the way Adam and the highy competent crew in ALC708/203 make it sound, putting a podcast together is a cinch – nothing to it. WRONG …. I had been so excited when after long hours of very hard work I managed to put a tentative talk together. Despite its obvious flaws, I’d made it, and uploaded it onto SoundCloud.
So proud I’d succeeded. It completely flattened me to miss the boat the way I did. What did I hear you say? Put it all down to experience! Like to see you do that.
Here’s a more formal appraisal 🙂
SUMMARY
POSITIVES
NEGATIVES
We have cared for one of our grandson’s for 15 years. We finally thought things were looking up for him – BUT. -today all that collapsed in a dreadful mess. Funding that has helped him in the last 12 months to find his feet and begin to make a real life for himself has just been slashed!
Even money – totally inadequate as it was – that allowed us to get him to the bus has been discontinued.
Dusk, Black Hills, New Year's Day 2017 In my front room, eyrie, window to the world, overlooking valley, field, and stretch to mountain, where in is out, and out is in, I sit, day-fogged, content, cocooned, immersed in words, and worlds away. late-twilight, day fading, dusk plumed the unseen sky, the curtained fields, and home; submerged by drifts of curling foam, shadow-dimmed the smoke-grey hills; fog-swirl, cloud-drift, and flow. light shift; subtle, barely noticed, seeping silent through the edges of awareness. a flicker, ghost-like, riffling air, vibrating with strange undertones of haunting, eldritch melody, faint sung disturbing, pricking conscious thought. my eyes glance up - I am transfixed, drawn out, up into cloud-fire; mist and tree and time and self are merged, cloud-swallowed, all substance gone, dissolved. Imagine this; an “other” world, unstable, shifting; smoke-brown mutates to brick-red ochre, crimson mists to rose, transforms to luminous red; and dims to barest flushing pink; endless synthesis and permutation, a passion-play, ethereal, suffused with shapeless, fluid form, where time itself shape-shifts. My mind, my body lifts, diffuses, drifts free in glowing light, then, disembodied, swirls with fog and cloud and mist, folds tree and field in crimson, rose, and glowing red, merges time with form, unfurls, flowing, seeping into sunset cloud. No more a separate entity,I'm magicked into transient form, colour and mist-merged. Imagine this. mist feather-formed flamingo wings, mysterious, alien fog, sensuous, sinuous in brolga dance; the flare of pink flushed cockatoo lifting in flight, the flame of scarlet robin's breast; heart-blood's crimson pulse; the softest touch of roseate dawn: all that ever was, will be, aglow, and glowing; passion, love, and gentle tenderness.becomes reality. Imagine this: embraced in sunset cloud, swallowed, atom-merged in glowing, writhing fog ebb and flow, ebb and flow - one long, long moment in one short life, one frail instant lingering, flowing, fading, fading ... light change, shape-shift; time slowed to this. one moment, one instant one fixed one boundless point in time. Copyright Jean Law – January – October 2017
Are there substantial links between hyperempathy – a condition of which I had not been aware of until recently – autism and creativity? This is a question I want to address in some depth. I have a personal interest in this issue because autism and related disorders affect so many of my own family. Me included
It is nowadays well known that people diagnosed as being located on the Autism Spectrum vary in their personality types, their skills and interests, their aptitudes and behaviours in the same way that people who a ‘neurotypical’ do. Or perhaps I should say this ought to be a well known fact. Sadly, there are far too many people who clump all autistic people into the same large unwieldy basket. It is an error that frustrates many of us who deal with the issues of abuse, bullying, disrespect and even contempt directed to themselves or members of their family on a daily basis.
Creativity and autism have been frequently recognised as being connected. I want to take that one step forward, and look at how this relationship may/may not affect my own family. There has been a succession of women on my mother’s side who have been very creative, although not always successful. There is also a long history of anxiety disorders, depression, feelings of personal and social inadequacy, clinical depression and alienation that shows up through 5 generations. This extends now to my granddaughters.
This pattern is not limited to the women in the family. 3 of my 6 grandsons have been diagnosed as being on the spectrum. Another has both verbal and physical dyspraxia. 4 of my grandsons – not all those diagnosed as having ASD but certainly including some – are extraordinarily bright. 5 have experienced serious bullying in the streets and in schools, both as children and as young men. This includes occasional bullying conducted by staff in their schools/colleges. 1 of my 6 grandsons has attempted suicide, and very nearly succeeded.
Recently there has been an explosion of knowledge about the way autism expresses itself in females. For many years the seeming disparity in the ratio of males to females diagnosed as being on the spectrum meant that autism was seen as a ‘male’ disorder. This is no longer the case.
So you should be able to see why the issues I have set out below interest me so intensely. I am particularly focussed on the three articles I have linked to this post. The issues they raise tie in closely with the experience of my own family, and in future posts I will be examining them more closely.
Dusk, Black Hills, New Year's Day 2017 In my front room, eyrie, window to the world, overlooking valley, field, and stretch to mountain, where in is out, and out is in, I sit, day-fogged, content, cocooned, immersed in words, and worlds away. late-twilight, day fading, dusk plumed the unseen sky, the curtained fields, and home, submerged by drifts of curling foam, shadow-dimmed the smoke-grey hills; fog-swirl, cloud-drift, and flow. light shift; subtle, barely noticed, seeping silent through the edges of awareness. a flicker, ghost-like, riffling air, vibrating with strange undertones of haunting, eldritch melody, faint sung disturbing, pricking conscious thought. my eyes glance up - I am transfixed, drawn out, up into cloud-fire; mist and tree and time and self are merged, cloud-swallowed, all substance gone, dissolved. Imagine this; an “other” world, unstable, shifting; smoke-brown mutates to brick-red ochre, crimson mists to rose, transforms to luminous red; and dims to barest flushing pink; endless synthesis and permutation, a passion-play, ethereal, suffused with shapeless, fluid form, where time itself shape-shifts. My mind, my body lifts, diffuses, drifts free in glowing light, then, disembodied, swirls with fog and cloud and mist, folds tree and field in crimson, rose, and glowing red, merges time with form, unfurls, flowing, seeping into sunset cloud. No more a separate entity,I'm magicked into transient form, colour and mist-merged. Imagine this. mist feather-formed flamingo wings, mysterious, alien fog, sensuous, sinuous in brolga dance; the flare of pink flushed cockatoo lifting in flight, the flame of scarlet robin's breast; heart-blood's crimson pulse; the softest touch of roseate dawn: all that ever was, will be, aglow, and glowing; passion, love, and gentle tenderness.becomes reality. Imagine this: embraced in sunset cloud, swallowed, atom-merged in glowing, writhing fog ebb and flow, ebb and flow - one long, long moment in one short life, one frail instant lingering, flowing, fading, fading ... light change, shape-shift; time slowed to this. one moment, one instant one fixed one boundless point in time. Copyright Jean Law – January – October 2017
FROM MY WINDOW THIS MORNING
December 2016
FROM MY WINDOW THIS MORNING
From my window this morning
sun-drift
gentle green of sloping hill
content from weeks of rain
soft-shadowed forms
the single line of gums
fold down the flow of grass
hill-bound
sheep graze, white dots
on living green
in the rain-spill pond
a blue faced heron slowly wades its way
grey, slow
following receding line of shore
its seeking
gladdening my heart
closer, brazen ravens splatter mud-brown water
strong black bodies,
flashing, wings a-spray
I see them revel, play
in water-gift of spring
soon destined to recede into
the drying land
… and shrink to nothingness..
Wild wood ducks glide upon this marshy
pool
diving and weaving
calling out their
joy
the dams are full,
life abounds,
creation, re-creation,
wonder and delight
the land smiles.
my wandering gaze roams this earth
I love, am bonded to,
and falls upon
the gum that is the centre and the all,
burgeoning, widening, dipping laden boughs
in green skirt of scent
and glinting leaf.
The sun, the glowing sun, delights it,
slick sheen glistening,
oil-gleam,
sparks of fire dancing
to the languid tune
played by summer
breeze.
This is nature at its fullest flower
gums in finery of green and white and pink
soft stir of air …
the call and twitter and the caw
beat and flutter,
buzz and drone
rippled water, wade and glide
and fitful, gentle breathing
sky
haze heralds change,
morning peace melds into
lazy afternoon
sky-change in grey and slowly fading mountain rim
wind freshens, world-changes
recreated, time
moves by.
Warm afternoon
will fade in haze of softening light,
darken, fade …
the sun will set behind the western mountain range …
slow rapture
If fortune smiles, the spinning world will weave its day
to find me greeting wonder.
and I will celebrate
this ever-moving flow
undying rhythm
eternal nature, endless play,
unforced pattern, birth, and growth, and re-creation,
gentle bloom and fade of light,
enthralled, ensnared
until the final failing of my sight.
and death of light.
Jean Law copyright
December 2016
Back! Fighting the most abysmal bout of depression, and still not totally through the long black passage. Such fantastic mind-plays of the worst sort those little neurons form, and their dreadful emotional aftermath. At least I have reached the point where I can once again move forward.
Above my favourite fishing spot in southern Tasmania – sheer magic, and light-plays of the most entrancing kind
