Her Golden Dress and Aunty Violet

Last night I dreamt of my Grandmother, sometimes known to those who had learnt to love by loving her, as Madgie May. She loved to have her hair brushed. She loved to have her hair brushed, mainly by me. I loved to brush her hair because brushing Madgie May’s hair proved the magic wand to a virtual history book and I’ve always loved history. I’ve loved history because we are made by history, every new day is a building block, every year a wall, a home that grows in a constant state of renovation and as such, history is the greatest pedagogue. In other words it’s hip to be old, provided you are a nerd who loves learning that is. The stories were of family, of truth and of dancing and music of great loss and in loss of an even greater love. And I looked forward to that kind of knowing, from someone who had lived a different past, of much less or more depending on the story, depending on my own blooming point of view. My Grandmother loved two colours most:

1) Sunflower Yellow; bright, bold, energetic, hard to tame,     balanced, a merry melody

2) Gentle Violet; calm, unusual in nature, a wonder, infinite, mythical, empowering 

And Violet was my Grandmother’s Aunt. My blog title is literally for her, Aunty Violet, who we imagined together. I suppose remembering her mother, Mary May, directly, was a little more difficult. She did speak of the loss and always quite the same way;

“Tell me about Mary, Madgie May?”

“No child should lose a mother, eight years young, so young, so love your mother, love your mother for me.”

“I’ll....now let’s talk about Violet then...”

“She lives in the flowers, do you think?”

“Yes, I think, I think she must...”

And on we would go with the story. And in those moments I wanted a garden of my very own one day. And I love gardens. And I love what gardens represent. 

From Vita Sackville West to Martha Stuart, to George Harrison, Kim Wilde, to some spiced “Sting” in your backyard chili plant and so many more, the garden is an artist’s canvas.  From Australia’s Vasile's Garden to Costa Georgiadis to Don Burke to the sway of less known but equally legitimate growers, young folk and adults and adults who have been adults for an even more notable length of time, tying back your sleeves and getting down and dirty in a bed of organic matter, actually matters. It’s safe to say, that gardening is a pursuit encompassing all walks of life and all ages from your 100 year old grower: 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2302409/Britains-oldest-gardener-tending-rose-bushes-growing-vegetables-age-104.html

..to the Hip Hop Horticultural Society 

http://www.cbpm.org/hhhsociety.html

...to the subversive environmental pro-activism of Guerrilla gardening in the vein of Ron Finley

http://www.ted.com/speakers/ron_finley

...and everyone is welcome and I happen to think it’s great. 

Gardening of all pursuits is one of the most meaningful quests we might partake in. John Steinbeck once wrote;

“Somewhere in the world there is defeat for everyone, some are destroyed by defeat and some made small and mean by victory. Greatness lives in one who triumphs equally over defeat and victory...”  The acts of King Arthur and his Noble Knights 

One of my more personal, more humble of victories is life itself, being connected to life through nature and regrowing grief or defeat into many new beginnings. 

It’s 2015 and the real magic of spring gradually builds in our modest Coburg born garden. We await the gradual crescive of colour to peak at its greatest intensity; bulbs reborn, oranges consummate and sweet, peach trees in diminutive floret blooms, olives picked and cured by Eva over the fence, Marigolds line the path, Primroses out on the window ledge say Hello and Jasmine all the years up the arbor she has climbed and now buds new again. Our spring vegetable patch has been dressed and groomed with mulch and a straw bedding... planting awaits. 

Because I love quotes and because I love artists and because I loved my grandmother here’s a couple more to add to the curation of ourselves and to all those who bring motivation and inspiration every day;

“The violets in the mountains have broken the rocks...” Tennessee Williams

“Do you think amethysts can be the eyes of good violets..?” L.M. Montgomery 

Last night I dreamt of my Grandmother in her favorite sunflower golden silk gown and the walls of her new home were a garden now, covered in flowers and words and everything good that she had been.

Wax Wings

Aeronautic Wax Winged

Shuttle

In beauty bound

By his downy heart

A pinion to love

Or else

How is the measure

Noted

So sweet

So sweet

So deep

So deep...

Icarus not

Coniferous flame

You’re,

Neither complacent

or adjacent to any

counterfeit light in lime,

Time rider

Sky slider

And right in the middle of center.

You’re

Of gold

And warm crimson

Spotted wax melt

And

Blushing fawn

Wax winged
Winsome

Song Bird
Be True.

The Time Travellers

We, the time travelers. We, the makers of history, we the lovers, the dreamers and the ventures, the wanderers and the pioneers. We the stories in the eaves of our own hearth, born to remember and baked from the womb of survival’s greatest masterpiece, us.

It was once said that;

“Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards..”
 Soren Lierkegaard

I happen to believe in reflection, a gift of what was in what could be new again. Today I found myself gardening and pondering and remembering too, kneeling and grounded to a luxuriant bed of fibrous soil, rich and dark, soft and potentially more. Yes, Melbourne in Winter and an atomizer sky of soft pixie-dust mist had me again flying backwards, hummingbird heart to a very first experience of film, well at least for me anyway. Peter Pan was screening at the local cinema and I was to attend and I was very, very excited. All the night before, I couldn’t sleep. All the morning through, I couldn’t eat and all the wonderous moments then of cinema, for the first time, were everything and more than I could have hoped for. I decided right then and shortly afterwards there must surely be a way... a way to fly. Mission impossible? ...Not for an almost five year old spirit, not at all, for where there’s a will, there’s a way and the way was to ....dance!

First it was me and music. Oh what a partner, so versatile, so many choices, so fully alive with those floating notes that sat on the peaks and troughs of an aerial ocean, wave upon wave of delight filled sound. What a time we had, free and funny, falling and flying from one wide sofa to the open arms of a soft, safe seat. Bunched round the ankles, puckered and twisted in all the wrong ways, I was forever in tights. They were not the right size, always with room for growing taller. And taller I became and I wanted to join a class and I did just that, especially after falling in love with Leeroy Johnson in tights  willing us all “to live forever” “to learn how to fly...high..” 

I loved to dance. I practiced. I learnt the routines. I wore the right uniform. I was dressed by someone else now. It was no longer my own dance. An instructor made divisions, presented as choices;

“Large girls there, right girls here. Your costumes will need to be different..”

That summer I vowed to be right, in all the wrong ways. I lost weight so fast and it felt just like winning, shedding flesh to bare bones, lighter, down, down, down and sinking. My body was shocked.

“What are you doing?”

Warning bells rang at the loss of a menstrual cycle for the time being. I stopped dancing and I also got better, as better as I could get, in time. 

I met a boy some years on. He wrote me a letter. He said..

“Why not stand on your own two feet..”

Politely I smiled on through and up to a clock perched high in the middle of love. But I did have an answer left undelivered and the answer was..

“I am”

And the answer was 

“But I would rather fly..”

And as it was once already said, so what of this? We can do both of course. Women, men, children, stand strong, fly high and teach each other how to jump on the winds back. Be a creator, do not forget, move forwards and ask questions. And so a question can have favorites, and my favorite is this..

“ Would you like an adventure now, or would you like to have tea first?

J.M. Barrie (Peter Pan)