rummaging in the past
Not long back from a trip to my Alma Mater - Otago University, Dunedin. Drove out round the peninsula to broad bay to find a shop filled with china and glassware from every imaginable era and level of fanciness; road hugging the harbour, lanes often empty of any traffic but us. The smell of bracken, clouds of cold wavering over my skin, dispersed by sudden sun bringing to life the talk of four seasons in an hour.
Found, at last, my old friends and neighbours - having located themselves exquisitely (as is their wont) in victorian ease, with land all round, and space enough for wood-fired kilns as large as a Sydney house. Stole from Peter the most exquisite little test pot (he gave me a little tenmoku teacup which is finished and perfect) - with crystalline, aqua opalescence on an amber glaze base.
Drove through land, on roads that the map said were NOT roads, but fairweather four-wheel drive tracks, to flooded valleys that figured in an exhibition by Rachel Hirabayashi (landscapes with two horizons - the flooded, and the sky), and on to a wedding in the open air.
It felt like gathering up innumerable loose ends of a life. And feeling the richer for that weaving.
Found, at last, my old friends and neighbours - having located themselves exquisitely (as is their wont) in victorian ease, with land all round, and space enough for wood-fired kilns as large as a Sydney house. Stole from Peter the most exquisite little test pot (he gave me a little tenmoku teacup which is finished and perfect) - with crystalline, aqua opalescence on an amber glaze base.
Drove through land, on roads that the map said were NOT roads, but fairweather four-wheel drive tracks, to flooded valleys that figured in an exhibition by Rachel Hirabayashi (landscapes with two horizons - the flooded, and the sky), and on to a wedding in the open air.
It felt like gathering up innumerable loose ends of a life. And feeling the richer for that weaving.
posted by Diorissi at 2:49 PM
5 Comments:
Yes, Doris! I travel with you along that road. This very morning Narayan was sharing a time of visiting friends on the Otago Peninsula, sitting outside watching the illusion of boats sailing across the sand-dunes and I talked about our bike ride one sunny day, out along the peninsula to a pottery class - remember that? I also reminisced about staying with Mum & Dad on Ancestral land near McAndrew Bay. The property, now a guest house, belonged to Mum's family and I sat down in the general spot of the unmarked graves of William Geary, his wife, Etahi and their horse.
I remember so well that bike ride to a pottery class - I still have the black and white photos of us all; going on 18 - I have my hands on Joan's head, as she smiles knowingly at the morning - no Doris could change her mind. And there is a clarity to us all.
Your visit to ancestral lands sounds amazing - I like the fact their horse figures in the history. We are usually to humanocentric.
Dxxx
Thank you for your sweet poetic verse ...it took me immediately back there, so I could smell and feel and know the place again. It makes me think of Mum, who grew up on land in McAndrew Bay swimming in the harbour. And the time she was with friends, getting ready (with either great uneasiness or great hilarity - I can't remember which,) for a dance by sticking sticky tape over nipples!
I knew that people did things like that - using flesh-coloured elastoplasts. Is it part of New Zealand's reputation as being the home of the Passionless People in those days do you think? Though unease and hilarity...sounds like a passionate recipe to me.
Thanks for your lovely words about my post. Dx
Ah, Janaki - your mother was one of the most passionate people I have ever known...It is such an image isn't it - of having to keep a certain intensity under wraps?
Dx
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