Pony Gold.: August 2012

The right and godmade sun

(The top left image is from Psychonautical tumblr)

It had ceased raining in the night and he walked out on the road and called for the dog. He called and called. Standing in that inexplicable darkness. Where there was no sound anywhere save only the wind. After a while he sat in the road. He took off his hat and placed it on the tarmac before him and he bowed his head and held his face in his hands and wept. He sat there for a long time and after a while the east did gray and after a while the right and godmade sun did rise, once again, for all and without distinction.
-- Cormac McCarthy

So I had this big sketchbook plan about how the parrot was going to be an exotic type -- not the King and Crimson parrots and rosellas I grew up with -- and it just ended up looking exactly like a King Parrot with a Crimson Rosella's colouring. Anyway. This is an Instagram/sketchbook peek, hopefully I can pin down a second to scan/fix up/maybe even reproduce in larger format.
More fun later.
And there's always fun happening here: Instagram: @raychponygold, Tumblr

Sketchbook pages

Everything ever is half-finished.

Summer of Love

Photography: Petra Collins via Rookie

Winter blooms

Top - Evil Twin

Jeans - Dr Denim

Boots - Harley Davidson

Hat - Akubra

Necklace/rings - markets and pawn shops

Earrings - Tree of Life

I'm not sure if we've talked enough about this hat yet. Or these boots. Or even this jumper.

As for the hat and the boots, they are my most prized sartorial possessions at the moment. Mostly because they are accessories that incorporate metal/conchos, which is a major criteria in how I rate accessories.

The jumper, it's pretty much only been taken off because I can't wear it to work. But then I did wear it to work on casual Friday. And I wore the boots. I left off the hat because, frankly, you can't go wearing an Akubra into a corporate office if you plan on staying employed there for any period of time, no matter how well-embellished said Akubra might be. Also, it's a really imposing sort of hat, in no way subtle, and I don't want to make a fuss in the workplace.

Anyway. It's still cold in Melbourne, but all these blossoms are popping up everywhere, so I'm optimistic about the onset of spring and the lengthening days and the rain stopping... And most of all Bay returning from America so we can go on some spring adventures here in Victoria.

The good Niño horse

Photography: Amanda Leigh Smith

Model and stylist: Mariah Makalapua for Medicine and Headdress
Clothing: Animal Traffic Vintage

via Born to be Wild

Well, Bay has gone to California without me, headed off to some sunsoaked shore while I ride out the rest of the Melbourne winter. And, as if I wasn't longing for summer enough... there's the above. Amanda Leigh Smith has been pulling off some amazing shoots recently, and the latest is no exception. You can almost smell summer heat, dry grass and horse sweat.

Also, sort of in the same Southwestern-horse-sweat vein, I finished reading The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy -- it was my first dig at one of his novels. There was some seriously profound sadness to it, but I was totally taken by the main character en el camino on the border of Mexico and the US... Sometimes with his brother, sometimes with their "good Niño horse", sometimes with a wolf. A bit of gunslinging and gitanos and a lot of righteous bewilderment at the injustices of the world, offset by some roadside philosophisers. It's God and nature and the way of the world.

Anyway, I love that sort of stuff.

"Before he reached the door the old man called to him again. The boy turned and stood. The matrix will not help you, the old man said. He said to catch the wolf the boy should find that place where the acts of God and those of man are of one piece. Where they cannot be distinguished... The old man said that it was not a question of finding such a place but rather of knowing it when it presented itself. He said that it was at such places that God sits and conspires in the destruction of that which he has been at such pains to create."