A PAGE AND HOW IT'S MADE

A little mid-week stop-motion magic for you … one of my favourite kinds of magic. 

GO HOME

Volcom 'Holy Smokes' tank, 'Runaways' jacket; vintage/markets necklaces; Rejoice the Hands, Millie Savage Silver and vintage/markets rings. 

The world I know best feels softer, especially in summer. Although, I’m still afraid of snakes and I suffer in the midday sun, I can’t wait to get home to the places I navigate by instinct, and know as second nature.

There the water is gentler and the shade is sweeter. I know exactly the tree lines of the horizon even as I turn away from them; it’s the east and west I've looked to more times than anywhere else. I know what certain clouds foreshadow, and I know what changes in the weather taste like on the air. 

It is exactly how I remember summer.

Of course, I love summer for the sun that thaws out my now-southern bones. I like lazing in the afternoon sun with my dog, lying around on the grass and not caring about it sticking in my clothes. I like finally being able to swim again, anywhere, salt or fresh. I like drinking a cold beer and holding the can against my forehead between sips. I like John Lee Hooker playing while I’m making a cool, fresh salad in the shade of the kitchen. I like reading All the Pretty Horses, again, in front of a struggling pedestal fan. I like watching live music and feeling crowded and humid and young. I like stone fruit and will probably eat nectarines and cherries every day for the next couple of months. I like everything blossoming and verdant and giving off the heat of life that is photosynthesis, that is growing, that is energy transforming.

But most of all, what I like about summer, is going home. It’s sitting on my teenage bed, re-reading the books that changed my mind; it’s walking through my mother’s garden, and stealing my dad’s tins of beer; it’s looking at the bones and feathers and stones they've collected while I was gone. It’s the late sunset finally hushing the unbearable cicada chorus in the bushland behind the house, while we sit under lights in the back garden, ignoring flying Christmas beetles and picking apart fresh ocean fish. It’s walking across the paddocks, sharp with the sound of noonday crickets, to my sister’s house at the bottom of the hill – the first cute and creaking farmhouse my parents ever bought – with her dogs already out to greet me, and the plums and the mangoes and the mulberry trees all where they've always been.

THIS IS WATER

LOVEABLE: NOVEMBER THINGS

Things that have been excellent in November: 

A new house in a new suburb, with crazy warped floors and a weird log-cabin vibe Δ bushwalks with Humble and Scotty Δ Talking Heads Δ ciders in the sun in our back yard Δ eating quesadillas and watching Louis Theroux Δ this Coyote Negro ring Δ this new shoot from Three Arrows Leather Δ any image created by Dana Trippe Δ Chuck Palahniuk books Δ stealing flowers from all the crazy gardens along our new street Δ these Strong Medicine fire keepers at Sugarhigh and Lovestoned Δ catching my housemate Ben Whiting playing live shows around Melbourne Δ this scaly-sequinned mermaid-on-the-morph dress from Portmans Δ the new Volcom blog Δ flicking through Twoone’s new Psychological Portraits II on a lazy daylight-savings afternoon Δ Moroccan hair oil and coconut body mist from the Body Shop Δ the buzzy, end-of-year anticipation feeling that has me daydreaming about drinking tins in the river on the farm and eating long lazy late-twilight dinners and laughing lots with my family … Δ

SKETCHBOOK: IN A NEW PLACE

This week my usual sketchbook post has jumped over onto the Volcom blog, where it's in the company of radness among posts from artist Jamie Browne, typographer Gemma O'Brien and creative babe Billie Edwards, to name a couple.

Click here to check it out ... this is my first post from the cute back veranda of our new house, which is full of excellent creative mojo, strange bold birds, and late-spring sunshine.

ACID EAGLES

Volcom Tees Me tank; vintage jacket; rings: Rejoice the Hands, Tree of Life, vintage; vintage turquoise necklace.

I love nothing more than an 80s-esque eagle print and an acid wash jacket. 

OK, maybe I love a couple of things more ... Scotty, Humble, my Harley boots, Ted Nugent, spiced rum ... but yeah, not that many things. 

GOLD AND GYRFALCON

New prints! 

I've just stocked two limited runs of my favourites of the moment -- Gyrfalcon, and a hand-finished run of Trust the Path -- in my online store here.

Gyrfalcon is a piece that holds a special resonance for me, with the initial sketch drawn on the road in Belgium in anticipation of the arctic shores of Iceland, earlier this year. And for added bonus points, there's a bit of a Yeats reference in there, i.e., The Second Coming, which brings us in a round-about way to Joan Didion's constantly-echoing-in-the-back-of-my-mind book of the same name.

Well, I love nothing more than references that run in vein-like traces to ever greater discoveries, so consider that self, indulged. 

WILDER

It’s a weird feeling, packing everything into boxes, deciding what to keep and what to discard, winnowing away at all that life detritus and accumulation.

I’m a terrible hoarder: in every corner of the house there was something hidden or taped to a wall or safeguarded in a wooden box or a glass jar. There was a piece of ivy growing in a green bottle on the windowsill. Dried paper daisies that I’d collected on the walk back from Nethercote waterfalls during the past summer in Eden. Buckets of urchins on the front porch where my dog couldn’t get them. Polaroids, taken everywhere from Iceland to Barcelona, from Brisbane to Las Vegas. A box of kangaroos jaw bones I bought before Northern this year. Flowers pinned to the wall with electrical tape next to my desk. Leatherworking tools from my dad. Books from my sister. Invitations to weddings, funerals, engagements, christenings.

But I had to sort through it all, and make sure it fitted into a smaller volume than previously. I hope I didn’t throw away anything I’m going to miss.

All because we now live in a new house, in a new suburb, and the vibe seems good. It’s spring, so everyone along the street has amazing gardens, and our little lemon tree still had a couple of stragglers on board when we arrived. There’s a tree on our neighbour’s place that hangs over the fence and almost touches the ground, like a willow, making a little green room at the back of the yard. The floor boards are all twisted and the walls are a bit cracked, but there’s French doors and wooden window sills, and Humble can stand on our bed and stick her head out the window to see who’s come in the front gate. There’s a good Mexican place at the end of our street. Yesterday we found a park with a creek and a dog park and a lookout and miles of native bushland.

And last week I sat at the table on the back veranda and painted and drank and listened to Talking Heads and Notorious BIG until it got dark, and it all seemed really excellent. So I promise I’ll be back again soon, making things and taking photos and chasing ideas around … because, yes, the vibe seems good.