Sitting here this morning when I hear the warning cries of mickey birds, pee wees and magpies. Look up and winging toward me on slow powerful wings is a tawny frogmouth. He doesn't hit the side of the house but lands at the foot of it just below the window I'm peering from. Went out and tied the dogs up. They knew something was up but hadn't left the deck. Grabbed a towel and went around to see. He was sitting against some rocks which abut the house, holding his head and neck stretched in dead branch camouflage - which doesn't work against pale blue paintwork. Lifted him in the towel and felt his keel bone - slim but not starving. Then I saw his (her?) left eye. Covered with pus and whited out with injury. No wonder he was flying in the daytime. Put him in one of those white plastic storage bins while I put together a cocky cage with accoutrements.
Then it came time to feed him. I know frogmouths don't remove fingers but they can and do bite. Still he had to have something. Got some of the dog mince but it had too many hard lumps in it so decided to use some of Natalia's c/d. Managed to get in a few teaspoons. He threw some out but ate others so at least he's got something to go on. Gave him some water too. Will try and feed him more late afternoon. That should hold him until I get him to Karen tomorrow. He's unreleasable with his blind eye but I know she takes them and puts them in a huge aviary to live out their days on day old chicks. That is if she's got room. That's all I can do. At least he flew this way and not out in the bush somewhere. With one blind eye they can't hunt. Tawny frogmouths have such large lustrous eyes, yellow with black pupils. He made an awful racket when I fed him. He must have thought I was trying to kill him. Last time I checked he was sitting quietly on a perch. They must think they are invisible if they stay still and most of the time they are.
Have moved forward on the drawing. Strange how it's always in fits and starts. Spend more time staring at it then actually working on it. Popped the bright yellow mat board around it yesterday and it looks fine. Still a lot to do. The water and the reflections aren't right and the centaur doesn't stand out from the background enough but the problems are solvable. Well, no picture that I do is perfect but conceited as it sounds if I saw one in a gallery I'd want to buy it. Guess that's because I do pictures that I like.
Watched Arts:21 on SBS yesterday. I must be really out of the loop but I can't help but think many artists are just having a wank. If the work needs long explanations as to its meaning with background, political correctness (or incorrectness), antecedents to the original idea and reference to a seed inspiration of some vague or esoteric root than it doesn't, in my opinion, stand alone as something which can be appreciated for itself. And some of it is just BAD. I know I'm very archaic in my idea of what constitutes art but a blank canvas with a dot or a squiggle that people are willing to pay big $$ for is just beyond my understanding. There was an auction of a large gold (not real gold) circle by some name artist and it fetched hundreds of thousands of dollars. I've got pictures on the refrigerator by R's grandkids that are more pleasurable to look at than some of the stuff produced by 'artists'. I suppose I'm old fashioned enough to believe that artists should be able to draw or at least use colour in some way which is understood or appreciated by the viewer.
I wasn't going to write this because of privacy and not wishing to hurt R but realise that pretending my thoughts are always proper and good is just fooling myself. I was on ABC arts looking for interesting artwork and saw the search box. Hmm, I thought, wonder if there's anything on id. There was, an interview he did on the current status of free to air television on a radio program out of Brisbane. It was a year ago but I could listen to it thanks to modern technology (never fails to amaze). There was that voice, instantly recognizable. Happily it didn't evoke any particular emotion. He sounds mellower. Perhaps age has wrought its magic.
So that was that. I didn't doubt that I was over him but yet there is this ego thing. He has taken the place of the autocratic parents (which I never had) in that I am still, after 30 years, mentally pleading my case, my life, as though I still have to prove how worthy I am. He is a success. Highly regarded screenwriter/playwright, winner of AFI awards, etc. I am a non-certified vet nurse dabbling in art with an unfinished book languishing on my computer and a penchant for bird rescue and training.
Why is that? Why, in that first instant of seeing him did he appear to glow standing, one among many, in that crowded Freemantle pub New Years Eve? I do think there's something to reincarnation and if that is so, we have unfinished business. Our ending was not resolved. Or maybe it was in his mind and not in mine. That seems more likely. It is I that have unfinished business - but not with him, with me. That judgment and lack of self-worth. What is a persons worth? Is it the wealthy celebrity man or the poor man who, like R, sees a rainwater tank that a new neighbour down the road has lost down the hill, and says I must give that man a hand to haul it back up? I wish I naturally had R's generosity of spirit. He hasn't even met this man yet there is no hesitation in offering his help. I've seen that rainwater tank for days and thought, poor guy, he's lost his tank. It didn't even occur to me to offer help. R's spirit humbles me. Yes, id could talk R into a corner. He is smarter, more widely read, more creative, more observant but is he a better man? Unless he's undergone a complete transformation, I doubt it. So that takes care of that. How do I take care of me, checking my reflection in a mirror ' how would he see me after 30 years, not too bad for a 54 year old', look I can do yoga and even stand on my head, wow, isn't that something? Can you do that, id, can you?
Debussy's Claire de Lune. A harp recital from Brisbane on the radio. I remember when id and I had had a horrible fight and I played Afternoon of a Faun repeatedly. Id asked me why and I said something about the fact that there was such beauty in the world was a lifeline.
If there was a time in my life when I courted disaster it was with him. Not drugs or alcohol or reckless living, it was the way I was influenced by him. I hit rock bottom. Depression and sadness was like a physical weight on my shoulders. I wouldn't have survived him. I don't think he's a bad man. He was just bad for me. Like people search out their abusers, someone to show them in real terms the real opinion of themselves that they secretly harbor. I still don't understand it. I'm not sure how I can stop those conversations in my head, 'but I am doing something with my life.' Certainly not his fault. If I knew how to confront them and destroy those thoughts in one go I would but I suspect it's a process, a process called life.
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