~ In the bluebell wood ~

It's quiet here and in spite of the proximity to the road, it remains wild. Darker than usual, fresh leaves block the sky. At dusk the light fliters through at a rakish angle making long shadows and spotlighting the little blue flowers I have come to see. 

To get to the woods I have to hop a few walls and climb down a steep hill of rocks and young trees. Every time it's worth it. Changes take place over these few weeks, and yet fundamentally everything remains the same over so many years.....

It can be spooky in the woods. It's isolated and I feel vulnerable in these lonely places. But a camera is a companion, and although I am a bit rushed by my caution, time passes and I soon forget the rest of the world.

June is the best month here, bright and new. I wish it would go on until at least November......





All these images are for sale here

~The eyes behind the lens~

Far from familiar meandering lanes, I am here in the midst of the dramatic lines of Sydney. Strong diagonals on the Bridge, soaring curves on the Opera House, tiny human forms a reminder of our presence.

A woman tied to a harness sets out on the climb. It will take three hours and 189 dollars to complete a walk to the top of the bridge and back. I savour planet earth, sit back and soak it up, from below. I didn't understand it before, why so many of our young people live, work, settle here? But Australia is beautiful and I am beginning to get it.

Although moved by the effort and imagination, I am intimidated by the height of the Coat Hanger Bridge and go into frozen denial even on the lower pathway. The camera is a distraction which soon works it's magic and I get lost in the moment.

From nothing they made this place and dreamed large. I study old photographs of the 1400 men who worked on the Bridge with their bare hands. 16 of them died on the job. The white hot rivets of steel made their lives a misery and sparks shredded their overalls within days. No safety harnesses, no hard hats.

But it's the invisible photographer who I remember now. The one who carried that primitive equipment all the way up here to capture their faces, the see for the first time the view of the harbour, to marvel at the engineering and craftsmanship.

I think of the eyes behind that lens and in this moment I share the passion of so many who walked the path before me.

~ Mementos ~

I'm in Micky Macs place. It's been disturbed by party goers, doors open to the yard, a gentle sea breeze blowing through windows, cracked and broken. I once visited him here in his smokey room, walls blackened from the wood fire. I sat on a settle bed in a wollen blanket while he sat on that once pink arm chair with a once yellow cushion.

Even on the beach where he used to sit on summer evenings, he wore the whole kit; a long great coat, a flat cap and black boots. Surrounded by picnics and bathing families he stayed shyly at the edge, chatting to anyone who lingered.

His neighbour, used to wave down cars by standing in the middle of the road. A tousled head would peer through the window, asking mysterious questions;

"Have ye any cigarettes?"
"No we don't smoke"
"Well have ye any kittens?"

They are both gone now as are most of the older generation of my own family. Flimsy remains of curtains and occasional memories all that's left.

A way of life is dying out too. Small farms are being swallowed up and old walls, lanes and streams, absorbed into lawns for horses and feed for herds. No more cattle roaming freely along roadside verges, grazing the long acre.

At the top of the lane is another collapsing cottage. There's an eery emptiness there, a tweed jacket on a hanger in the bedroom, a candle on the kitchen table. The next neighbours, three stoic older siblings, recently lost their fine thatched cottage in a horrible blaze that took all they had. Everything seems vulnerable.

My Dad used to talk about the old days around here and return in his mind to the lanes of Kilkenny where he grew up. He could still feel the hunger experienced through the War. He remembered feet crossing the footpath windows above his grandmother's basement kitchen. The smell of laughing gas from his Father's primitive dental surgery. I have some audio of him singing every word of Run Rabbit Run which he learned as a small boy. Precious mementos.

Today I step into Micky Macs little house, falling down and forlorn without him. My strange ambition to become even more eccentric isn't any wonder, because for a lifetime I have studied the elders. I have loved them, admired their depth, questioned their mysteries, witnessed their fading. And I know that as they disappear I am an elder apprentice, creating my own mementos as I go.


PS To honour Micky Mac a plaque was erected by his friends right on the wall at Garrarus beach where he used to sit.




The Bealtaine Festival celebrating creativity as we age

Also posted today on Vision and Verb a global gathering of creative women sharing words and images.

~ How to be a photographer ~

At first light, let the sounds and colours of the morning enter you. Rise when the animals take breakfast. Over coffee keep a steady hand on a long lens, chaffinches might be dropping by. Or go out into the frosty dawn, well wrapped up and remember your key this time!

At the peak of the day open the kitchen door and watch gulls rinsing their salty feathers in the pure lake waters. After a rain shower study bulging drops on twigs. Smell the sweet damp soil. Listen to the hail, how it hops off the gravel path. Wash the mud off your hands if you can't resist handling those wet stones.

Towards evening time let the fading light distract you from work, cooking or company and draw you yet again to the window or the roof top. During the darkest night sense the moon or the constellations. Is it going to be frosty or warm tomorrow? Keep some shoes close to the bed for emergency exits.

In winter follow the sun as it sets over the forest. In summer watch it move into the true west and sink behind the mountains. Track it, while monitoring the movements of the earth. Ponder her speed, flying through the universe.

Know the way light streams into the house at angles. Sit with the cat snoozing in each ray, following her from lap to sill. When the light catches a glass or the shadow of a chair falls on the rug, pay attention. Get close.

If there's a lemon in a bowl or a blue teapot, put it with a pink geranium on a green table cloth and snap it then and there. Cake is good but colour is even better and will sweeten your soul.

Most of all listen to the land. How it swells and ebbs throughout the days. How it warms and cools or sometimes rumbles in the night. How it questions you while holding everything still.

Photograph where you live and what you see. Your own trip, every day, every year, throughout your life. Be there with that camera in your hands.

Because this is the beginning of what I am learning about how to be a photographer and every other thing in life.......

Relentlessly snowy Berlin

I'm just back from a relentlessly snowy Berlin. 10 times the size of Paris with an ever growing and developing creative community. Iconic monuments, grungy clubs and cafes, graffiti on everything, and always reminders of the Cold War.

They may have tried to kill off diversity in the 1930's but today Berlin is one of most multi-cultural and open cities in Europe. It is also a city that can never afford to forget.

The young artists who make it their home don't carry the baggage of the past. They eat Lamb Koftas and African Yams on alternate nights. They dance in the snow. They weave their way through the streets without a consciousness of the gaping holes left by the absent wall.

In the 1970s I went through Checkpoint Charlie from west to east, barely understanding it's significance. Another country another border. The Guard checked under the van with a torch on mirrored wheels. He glared at my passport thinking I might be an imperialist American. Irischen!!! Gut! Smiles and relief all round. We spent a day in East Berlin trying to fritter away the 10 dollars they insisted we exchange. No matter how many beers with sausages and potatoes we tried to consume, it was an impossible task.

Then we were staying in the Western sector near Tiergarten, in the home of exiled Chilean diplomats. Today I stood in that same spot, a winter wonderland and remembered the grim grey streets and confusion of those days. A brown legged man in an orange singlet and little more jogged past me on the snowy path. Running with a cold breeze in his face and the warm sensation of a free man in his heart and I felt like cheering for Berlin, for the Germans and for all of those who lived to tell the tale.........some things do change.....




See a connected piece about the bright city lights calling, today on Vision and Verb

The Mare's breakfast!

When would he arrive with breakfast? The snow had settled as it rarely ever does. The hours were passing and the icy grass was none too appetising.

The mare heard the engine before the foal even realised that at last he was on his way.

Bale after bale of warm hay, thrown over the hedge. Steam rose from it as they both dived in.

Now the mug of coffee and the crunchy toast for me. All of us lucky to have our much needed breakfast on this beautiful but freezing cold morning beside the lake.

Then across the field, the sounds of happy munching........

For the week that's in it......a real Irish pub......

Come in out of the cold ya poor craythur!

Smoke from the fire and a kettle on the boil. The clock tick tocks. A lad sits at the counter. He dropped in "just for one" to his home away from home......

You know they don't serve "coffee" so don't even ask. This is where my Grandfather drank a pint of Guinness and a chaser of Rum and Blackcurrant. Where at closing time the doors were locked and himself and the Uncle adjourned to the widow's kitchen. They cycled here the 6 miles resting their bikes against the lampost outside.....there was no need to lock them....and they cycled home again in the early hours of the morning.

Here you could buy biscuits and bacon while you sipped a hot whiskey. Here the kids waited for hours, bribed with Red Lemonade and packets of Tayto playing under the tables and in the dark back corridors. Here we spent our teenage years planning our imminent escape to join the revolutionaries of South America.

On a Saturday night you could watch the Late Late Show while the widow did her ironing, demanding hush with a pleading tone. The warm pints were lined up and took an age to settle, gathering in number as the evening progressed. Here is where on Sunday after Mass, the men stood against the wall in their suits and hats while the women went home to make the dinner.

I was passing Morrrissey's of Abbeyleix, County Laois and shyly took a few snaps. It was exactly the same as I remember.......


Have a great Seachtain na Gaelige and a Happy Saint Patrick's Day

Frosty morning on the lane

There's a tranquility over the land when the morning is icy. You can hear it before you even leave the hammock. Everything is slower to stir. Except me for once, as these are the days I love!

The little lake is like a cauldron of steaming broth at the centre of the valley. The swans seek out the first rays of light and move with it. The mist rises and clears to the east, burnt off by the weak winter sun.

A distant tractor starts up with a bit of coughing and spluttering. The Robin is first on the scene and little by little come the songs of the rest. Blackbirds begin their swooping, the Heron flies in low against the land.

But in that first breath of the day, there is a beautiful empty silence. If you were here, and you heard it I think you would wish, like me, that time would linger for a little longer before we all have to go on into the rest of the day.

An encounter with a dragon

I crashed into the week with news of an unexpected piece of work which was urgently required but at the very same time an old slain dragon (one I thought had long been put to bed) suddenly erupted into fiery form and whacked me over the head with it's tail!!!

In no time there I was in the eye of yet another storm, face to face with the protagonist. I talked to myself.......... stay calm, listen, hold the line, you know what's right here..........I then wedged myself between the dragon and the mouth of the cave...........he breathed heavily..........

I noticed there wasn't too much flame..........I saw a way through.

"I'm on my own here now but there are dozens more like me coming" I roared "they are on their way now, you'd better believe me!" This was the closest I have ever come to making any kind of threat.

I saw a moment where he looked tired, his life flashed before him, he was listening........he stumbled.......he began to consider an easier option.......I have seen this look before. It happens just before an agreement is clinched, before a compromise is reached, before a dragon backs down.........

But there is always one more sting in the tail and I waited and waited, while the dragon thrashed around in the cave.......then it came at last, a final snarl. I turned my head towards the light. In the distance I saw the sun coming up at the edge of the forest.........it's sunbeams highlighted my way through.............the bellowing would stop very soon if I could hold out......

Then it happened, he faltered, slouched and there was a huge rumble as he collapsed on the cave floor spent and old. Dust rose, cleared and then silence.

For now it was time to return home, job done.

This was no triumph. There would be no celebration. As I set out on the journey back my feet would barely lift from the ground. I could only smell the heat of the battle. My head hurt.

In the forest, the light grew and the green wood filled me with damp mossy thoughts. The beauty of the world. The goodness of people, the sweet smiles of my loved ones. And that soft light and squishy path lifted my spirits just enough to remember that I would never fully harden to the world in spite of it's darkness. And anyway, here I was on my way home.

The absent fisherman......

The ice has gone for now and the lake is deserted and quiet. During December last year I walked around its perimeter pacing out the last days of his illness. There was nothing surer than the beginning of the end, and no one could alter it.

Today a daybreak sunbeam spotlights a forgotten pair of oars.  And there he is, the absent fisherman.

His hands resting on his lap. The blanket which warmed his shivery limbs. Reciting the names of his children and grandchildren, touched by his internal picture of each one as they came to mind.

The living, breathing lakeside is a million miles away from that room.  How much he would love to have seen just one more shimmering winter dawn like this!