Random beauty ... remembering Mom

On this of all days, I need a bit of cheering up. This is the fourth anniversary of Mom's passing ... it seems more like four weeks, sometimes, while at other times it's more like a lifetime. So I amused myself for an hour painting over some photos -- while I try to recover from the effects of the Covid vaccine. It drove my immune system to warp speed, and for thirty-six hours I was sure I had full-blown 'flu. It's just starting to get better now, but I still have the headache and fatigue. Not a lot of fun.  There's nothing to add to this ... just "I miss Mom," and "I don't feel well," so I won't dwell.  Time to make some fresh tea and go back to my book. That's the book I'm reading, not (yet) writing. I'm starting to write again, but not a lot, yet, and I certainly don't feel up to immersing myself in a 100k words. Later.  

The May Report

 

Well ... I promised myself some time ago that I wouldn't blog here until I had good news. Not bad news. Not no news at all, but good news ... and here's another month gone by, while I wait for something to blog about! So the addendum to that decision is: I'll blog once at the end of each month, with a roundup of what's been going on, though not in any depth. Yes, autumn has been and gone, all in the space of May! We caught the fall colours at Stirling and Belair NP, fleetingly ... by the end of the month, there was frost on the car yesterday, and we just put the heavy duvet on the bed. Safe to say, it's winter!

The high point in the month was the first week -- vacation week! -- and we headed north to the Flinders and Remarkable Ranges. Ports Wakefield, Germain, Pirie and Augusta, and then north to Wilpena, and east to Alligator Gorge, Bundaleer Forest, and so on. Four wonderful days, staying in a huge caravan named Sundancer, at Port Augusta -- an Airbnb, which worked out marvellously, after an initial hiccup in connecting with the owner. Things were all smoothed out and resolved in no time, which is a credit to Roseanne, when one remembers everything going on in her personal life at the time. We saw and did some amazing things ... even managed to get some decent bird photos --

...though the little beggars didn't make it easy for me, and in fact there weren't very many birds at all in any of the places I could get to. (I'm very lame just now, with problems in both feet, knees, hips and lumbar ... disability is a bummer, but we do what we can). In fact --

That just about says it all! I also didn't see any wildlife, other than a couple of grey kangaroo does, which are a hundred times more commonplace down south here, an absolute plague of locusts at Telowie Gorge, a tiny lizard on a tree at Wilpena -- and ferals. Wild goats, deer, sheep. Nothing else moving in the landscape, which made me sad. So I photographed said landscapes, until --

In closeup, you can actually see how dusty the camera is. Was. The dust got into the lens and jammed it comprehensively. It died on me at Bundaleer Forest, and didn't work for the rest of the trip. Even though I was able to physically pull to lens out and unjam it, now the whole zoom mechanism grinds and growls. The camera isn't 100% dead, but it's close to it. So I spent weeks researching replacements, blew hours on this ... chose the Nikon P900, which I expected to get for ~$850, which is double the price of a new Lumix, and would have given me an 85x zoom! Got to the point of ordering it, only to discover that it's been discontinued. All the stores are now pushing the P950 which is $1200, give or take. Nope. Not right now. In the future, maybe, but the pennies are too tight at the moment, and I can't rationalize spending that much on a camera. Soooo, another Lumix is on the way: the FZ-80, which will give me a 60x zoom, and Leica lenses, and an f/2.8 to f/8 aperture, and a touch screen, and UHD video, and an articulated LCD, all for ~$400, which beats hands-down the nearest competitor, which is the Canon Powershot SX70, at almost double the price. Uh huh. In fact, Australia Post just sent Dave an SMS ... the new camera will be delivered sometime today! Now...

...the spice of life at the time of this writing is actually art! I confess, I'm spending a little too much on 3D goodies to put in front of my virtual camera. But, but, but ... this is my hobby, it's keeping my brain working, and I enjoy art as much or more than anything else at this moment. These are my rationalizations for spending more than I should, funds ripped out of my so-called Dental Fund, that stash of cash that's guarded to pay for dentistry as my teeth go bung one (or two) at a time, as they will, given how ancient I'm becoming! Art?

This is where my mind is at this moment. Images. I can handle images, and I can crunch the numbers to make them go, and digitally paint them in Photohop etc. after they've rendered up on a system that's fast enough to do the work. This PC is amazing. Must remember to give Dave a hug for organizing it for me, six months ago! Art is keeping my brain healthy, although I have to admit, I have "word block." Not traditional Writers' Block, because I can write, no problem (to wit, this blog post!) ... but I can't even edit at this moment. Not in the zone, and can't get into the zone, even though I have ideas galore. Sigh. It'll come back. I have a short story -- Ignis Fatuus -- to tackle, then The Hesperides to finish editing, then Pet Shop Dragons to write, before I get into collaborative projects with Mike. All I need is for my brain, or maybe my muse, to cooperate. In the meantime ... art. While I wait for a my new camera. And in the garden --

...the seasons are so confused, the Monarch caterpillars are starting to cocoon just as winter comes in. It's going to be too cold for the butterflies to manage, I think, when they hatch out. At the same time, the north is having a locust plague, NSW is having a mouse plague, and Victoria is struggling with a new Covid-19 crisis. It's not a happy country, or a happy world. My thoughts have turned inward; I've been looking deeply into Buddhism as I search for "spiritual solace," and discovering how much I disagree with the critical 20% of Buddhism. All spiritual paths, bar none, agree on the broad points (love thy neighbour, including -- or especially! -- one's enemies, do unto others, be kind, always be kind, never cowardly or mean). Those points are just common decency which we share with many animals; there's nothing spiritual or pure about them: just decent. It's when you get into the nitty gritty, the "what's it all for, what does it all mean, isn't there more than this, where am I going next?" stuff ... I've found that I'm at odds with Buddhism as surely as I'm at odds with every path I've looked at, barring one ... Gaia. Safe to say, "I know what I believe," and that'll have to be enough. 

I'll write a proper blog post when something actually happens! For now ... this is the May Report, signing out. 

The April Report

 It's been so long since I touched down here. If a blog is supposed to be a journal of one's thoughts and deeds, I'm neglecting this badly!. So much has happened ... so much didn't. I could have blogged here and whined the whole time, so it's probably a good thing I gave it a miss, till I can touch base with myself and catch up without, uh, whinging. Too much.

The last couple of months haven't been easy. All we'd planned for the wedding anniversary got cancelled literally at the last minute. It was supposed to be a road trip to the Limestone Coast, and ended up as $4,100's worth of car repairs, and a handful of outings, the most significant of which was a train ride up to the Botanic Gardens, while the car was in dock ...

The train ride was an experience; not something I've ever done, in fifty years of living in this city, this state, this country. Not something I'd want to do all the time, though. The Botanic Gardens were very lovely; I walked so far that day, these poor old feet took almost a week to recover! We drove to Seaford, which is the end of the line, and rode the train right through to the other end of the line -- takes not much under an hour.

In fact, these poor feet were still a big issue when the anniversary itself rolled around. Then ... 7:00am, 20th March, I ploughed up a hardwood floor withy my left kneecap. Uh huh. It's now April 28, over five weeks layer, and it still hurts, though I can walk properly. Dave and I did a drive around part of the Barossa Valley, and had lunch at the Lorch Lyndoch to mark the date. (The food is excellent, though expensive; we've been there before, and enjoyed it both times.)

So, being lame and in a lot of pain, I concentrated on getting Dark is the Valley finished, and getting to grips with artwork -- so much to learn there. Well, Dark... was done on time, and submitted; in fact, it's already racking up the rejections. This is a bugger of a career, one based on countless thousands of hours worked for nothing, then the heartache and disappointment of untold rejections while you wait, hope, and even pray if you know how, to see a contract and a few bucks. We're still hoping, and my next major project is Pet Shop Dragons. I just finished a longer, better version of Exit Strategies, which is out on sub now. You can only try. So -- art...

Yeeees, I kept myself busy with art, and have done a lot of good work. Also spent a lot more than I'd intended to, on new props, costumes, shaders, sets, whatever. But it's my hobby, so -- what the heck. The latest challenge I've handed myself is to get back into Terragen, learn it, use it to generate the atmospherics for DAZ backdrops. The oars are in the water, but it's a steep learning curve --

Like getting back up on my feet again, and getting back to walking. I've done this, but it wasn't easy. I'm back to the point where I can walk four kilometres, and a bunch of it uphill, which is the equivalent of walking more like seven or eight. Being able to walk means I can get out with the cameras again, which is something I love, and have always loved; the last year has been about birding, since I got my hands on the Panasonic Lumix in February 2020 --

...the bad news is that something has happened to the Lumix. It just ain't working properly. The light metering is off by a mile, and it's giving me ludicrous shutter speeds, apertures and ISO numbers, which are making my pictures soft, grainy, noisy. I can't take a landscape to save my life because all detail blurs out into great swatches of colour; if anything moves in the shot, it blurs; and when the light levels fall, the ISO is so high, you're seeing the photo through golf ball sized grain. Grrrr. 

The bottom line is, I need a new camera. It's going to cost $550, and at the same time, my cash flow has quit. Brilliant. So I've pulled the old Fuji HS-10 out of retirement to pick up the slack. It also has 720mm of zoom, though it only has half the megapixels ... it's also slow, and has all its own problems, but at least I get photos.

So at this moment I'm muddling along. Getting photos, doing art, working on this and that writing project -- getting back up on my feet after the altercation with the floor, and generally feeling my age! At which point, it may have become clear why I haven't blogged very much lately. Uh huh. I'm re-editing The Hesperides at the moment, and will write a short piece, Ignis Fatuus, before launching into another novel. Fingers crossed -- because I really do need some cash to start flowing. 

Otherwise, I'm in reasonable health, as are the rest of us. Dave is off to Melrose, South Flinders Ranges, on Friday, to ride a couple of cycle events. Mike is cranking along with writing and selling short fiction. Zolie is fine, and the Indian summer is in the process of winding down into winter. I just need to grab myself by the scruff of the neck and give myself a good shake, get my life together and my mind back into gear. 

On that note, I'll close this post. I could ramble for pages, but there's nothing more to add that wouldn't involve the aforementioned whinging! And I shall try to return to the blog and keep pace with myself more frequently...