It Makes It Easier To Get Up At 3am

you know,

if you ever want to feel how fast the world is turning
watch a planet rise
preferably venus when it is close to us and the sun

because the visual brain measures distance compared to the size of the objects, and the moon is so huge that it seems to rise slowly
but if you have a pure point of light and a horizon for reference, you can see the actual speed

i can tell you, it skeered me how fast the world is terning .....

the above picture is venus rising in the east. i had the full moon setting behind me in the west to light up the boats for me. it is the seaside town i am staying in for the summer, and this is pretty much just outside our door.
it is bliss here. we have a house painted with rainbows, which is a good environment for my own painting.

the last one i did was of the god Jupiter and his friends. it's from my collection Translocations Of The Red Child.





ps: yes the promise of venus got me out of bed, but alas; it is the rainy season here. though we live in the temperate zone, it is an El Nino summer.

Antpocolypse

i got there and the ants were everywhere. i am now used to them crawling up my legs. there are even sum in the car. i put a teaspoon of milo in a cup and terned my back for a moamant and then there were two ants rushing down the inside. i spilt some milo on the bench and i swear all the ants, wherever they were on the bench, instantly sped up. they inhalde the milo fumes and hypered up to find the source.

the howse has been subject to chemical warfare. chris renamed the bathroom Chernobyl.

today i followed the ant trails to their convergence, which was just out of sight in the outer edge of the frame of the partially openable window. i had to climb onto the roof to get a better look at the outside, but i still couldn't see the little hole. i sprayed chemical death all along the ant trails that weren't on food-frequented surfaces, and i mashed the benchtop surface with a nold reader's digest. i ran it along all the ridges and dismembered them all. i filled the questionable corner of the window frame with chemical death also.

i am not a vegetarian.

i shall see how long it takes the residents to notice.

i can still feel them on my legs......

I was wrong; it is not from Lundin

-turns out the piano at Mozarts is from WELLINGTON [wellington i miss you i will see you next year i promise (and i will take photos of jupiter from all over town in the small hours of the morning in the latter half of the year).

I was at Mozarts for open mic night last night; it went splendidly. i received vast instruction from a Muso, and learned the fourth chord that makes modern music [it is the major 7th]

so now i can reduce all songs to four chords rather than three in order to play by ear. [not including the minors]

after attempting to sing 2 1/2 songs, i realized that the entire keybord has been transposed three or four tones lower.
this terned out to be due to the age of the piano, and the fragility of the strings; the tuner could not safely apply as much tension to the strings as needed [about 100kg per string] and so had to adjust the entire set of strings to a lower tension and thus pitch.

it is the rest home piano that is from Lundin
i played it yesterday for grandpa
there was also a Pat there listening
and both were free with their advices on how to play chopin

but everyone plays chopin differently

and i also have my brothers instructions on how to play the chopin piece he is vicariously living through me [he is unable to play anymore]

it was lovely, having a lesson with Grandpa; he greatly enjoyed the nocturne that he seemed to be PERPETUALLY playing for the last 20 years, and i played several parts several times for him. it is fun to play.

Lovely.

The Aquisition

I have acquired this Amazing Dress

it is red

red dresses do instant wonders for one's social confidence

it is thick red felted material, made just for dunedin blizzards; i'm not sure whey it was sold in Orkland

apparently it was $10

my mother bought it but

it wasn't Quite The Right Shape and with some alterations it

[i had to writhe into it]

Will Be Mine

mine....

on the way

do you have a piano bar here?

a what?

or something with a piano and a nopen mic night? i'm from dunedin....

no he said, you wont find something like that here, welcome to Hick Town.

but he told me somewhere down the road to go ask, and so i did. and they told me somewhere around the corner, a bar called mozarts. they had a nancient piano at the back with the front taken off. i sat down and played chopin. the twitchings of the mechanism was a little distracting. below the fall board it said London in gold paint.

it had real ivory keys that were once roaming the savannah. they have open mic night twice a week.

on the way home, i passed the original bar, and informed the hick town men that i had found the perfect place in their hick town.

i passed the toothless old islander on the way, who lives in the house i have wanted to do a loose watercolour of for years. it is pastel blue and yellow and has old broken stuff on the lawn. we walked in the same direction and talked for a bit. i didn't tell him i was going to secretly paint his house now that i knew watercolour. some of his teeth are really long and grow diagonally/

i passed a nold man painting portraits for people, mostly in black and white, for roundabout $20 ea. he even had some pastels like granny's. he sounded american. i said he underpriced them and he said that's just what his daughter said and it's so that he sold more and so that he stayed busy. he hadn't changed the prices in fourty years......

i passed a closed down gift shop on the way, with stacked up merchandise along the edges of the floor.

i passed wards music on the way, and snuck into the back piano room and browsed and lost the nerve to play them. real pianos are a few grand cheaper than plastic ones.

i passed the christian bookshop on the way [i had wondered where it had moved to] and bought antony a pick [he has just bought his First Electric Guitar]. it says pick jesus.

lol.

art

and

music

not a hick town







i passed auckland art students on the way who had won a competition to repaint our railway overbridges.

i passed the art museum on the way and they had a Religion In New Zealand Art exhibiton on. it's a national exhibition, which has sparked a temporary colin mcCahon obsession in me. i am inspired. i am going to paint some frogs now.