Visibility Poor

I learnt a lot this week, I am amazed by the power of the internet, the speed with which so many locals responded and recorded the Sydney Dust Storm, the truth that rang loud with so many different photographers coming up with the same 'red' that couldn't possibly be faked by touch ups. But mostly, for me, not only just following 'the call' to get in my car, badly dressed and GO (I ended up walking over the Sydney Harbour Bridge), but after seeing thousands of images from all sorts of photographers, both amateur and professional, the STAY came loud and clear at last, stay where you are too, and see the beauty in that, be here now, love your life, love the light in your life, it doesn't need the Opera House or the bridge, it just needs love. I thought later that night 'oh my god, I should have gone to the swamp', my favourite place in the last year. How I wish I could have photographed that. So I shall file this little piece of self-earned knowledge away for the next time.

Do you know what? I asked the universe for this. Remember the copper skies of around 2002 from bushfires. I was tiring of photography, as you do, and I just couldn't be bothered to take many photos, even though I could really appreciate the beauty of the red light from the haze, I never took advantage of it. The day before this dust storm I lamented that and told the skies I wouldn't miss that opportunity ever again. Instant rewards. This photo is out the front of my house in the first minute after my family woke up and realised what was happening, after the three year old alerted us loudly to the fact the sky was orange and creeping around the edges of the venetian blinds like an alien light source. They have never seen me leap so fast out of bed. Those rubbish bins are in order L-R yellow, blue, red and green. I thought it was a good measure of how crazy the light was that you could hardly distinguish their true colours. After this shot I grabbed my car keys and just started driving, initially heading to our local bridge which has a fine view of the city, but visibility was so poor you couldn't see more than 100-200m so I kept following the city traffic and had this 'call' to walk over the Harbour Bridge. By the time I made it there and a few stop offs on the way to snap, they intensity of the red light had faded, so this shot here was the most red, and captures my daughter's fear, she went inside after this and started putting lots and lots of clothes on, too many, leggings, winter jackets, as if to protect herself. It was like waking up in a disturbing dream.

Pessimism is a last resort

Very busy dreams last night.  Melinda (she's a fitness instructor) is baking pies. I'm not allowed to touch them. Eunice is at Coles, she walks past me, I'm near a register waiting to be served. I must also find time to enter the Moran Art Prize. The dream shows me ten artworks so beautiful, a whole body of work - pointillist, silvery, esoteric - great stuff. Tiny windows of magic light flashed at me for a second. I suppose my imagination was exhibiting what I am capable of. I drink them down fast like shots.

I wake up to fart and think on this coldest morning of the year. 'Six degrees' reported from MSP who delivers the morning cup of 'hot, steaming Joe', which it is not by the time I pull-up on one elbow. My fingers peep out from under the doona, feeling bitten, looking for pen and paper. My arse does an excellent impression of a trombone. I consider risking frostbite up to the elbow to reach the coffee before it is beyond repair.

This was to be the weekend I meant to rent a six hundred dollar snow chalet overlooking Lake Eucumbeen. Poverty, once again, has forced me to live behind my hopes. Our next fabulous weekend planned in the country of my day-dreams is Dubbo Western Plains Zoo. I shall wake up in August and think 'I dreamt of lion's roaring last night - in Gladesville'. 

It hurts. I like to concentrate on pain in the morning. By afternoon I've worked my way up to mild discontent. If I plan an outing I can enjoy slight boredom. In the evenings I turn to drink. I've decided that making money might get me truly wondrous. That way I can use it to gawp at expensive magazines, spread my legs at top-class beauty salons and ideally visit African animal resorts and centrally-heated winter cabins. I would alleviate my ennui with trips to IKEA and post large packages of gifts to my nieces instead of the piddling efforts I'm currently guilty of.

For this week's menu, in order to buy myself a book or a bra, I'll plan meals that rely heavily on noodles and vegetables. That old temptation to toilet train Chuckles returns every time I enter isle three for nappies. By the time I pay for my trolleyload I'll experience the equivalent of a tiny thrill, smug in the knowledge I can feed the family for another week, or is it just seeing a three figure number on a cash register. In my Coles dream I spot Eunice shopping, I bet she never has to count carefully for groceries. In real life I did phone her for a loan so I could rent the snow chalet. She never acknowledged the request, she did however tell me of her own plans to take her children skiing. I pray to be a considerate friend, so blog bitching about them isn't very good as they are my only readers. Names have been changed.

There is a particular time of morning, when I am due to get up, the sun enters the window, piercing my dim, sleepy world. I am not a morning person because I wake up angry, covered in sleep-mud. Writing helps me beat off depressing, rabid-dog thoughts. I have to mentally kick the little fuckers off me. Sometimes that small, happy square of sunlight drifts over me and picks me up from under my armpits and props me up on the pillows and says 'here, drink this'.

The clouds mask the sun with a grey filter, everything is not so sunny, there is no pick me up. My pen is grumpy, the coffee has gone cold. But today I remember the science, that if I lay here as usual, I know that somewhere the sun is swimming in its blue sky as usual, just behind the clouds, right there where it always is, only obscured by a passing earth mood. It will come back. I cheer myself with thoughts like 'when I am dead I will get to sleep in a bit longer'. My Auntie Christine (pictured in the 60's) died in her mid-thirties of a brain tumour, cleaning the kitchen cupboards.