Month: July 2020

Here at the cabin everything is oriented towards the lake. The lakeside porch is called the front porch. I suppose, because it fronts on the lake. 😉 How’s that for circular logic? This porch has a door, but I always think of it as the back door and the other end of the cabin as the real front door. I suppose that back in the day there must’ve been a time before you drive here, before there was even a road here that the only way you could get here was by boat. In that time, it would come naturally to call the lakeside the front.

The cabin faces west, giving us spectacular sunsets in the evening. Morning sunrises are a more muted affair, with the sunlight first filtered through the trees. Mornings here are less a visual than an auditory one. One first hears the approaching dawn…

 Movie Review

“Unable to perceive the shape of You, I find You all around me. Your presence fills my eyes with Your love, It humbles my heart, For You are everywhere.”

That line from an unknown poem pretty well defines the movie, The Shape of Water.

Written and directed by Guillermo del Toro, The Shape of Water is pure movie magic. It is hard to peg exactly where this genre movie falls, but since del Toro was heavily influenced by Creature From the Black Lagoon (1954), I’ll start there. This movie is much more than just a horror film. It is a period piece, a romantic thriller, and a spy movie, all wrapped into one. It explores the timeless themes of loneliness, alienation, isolation, being different from others in an intolerant society, and yes, falling in love with the other.

Sally Hawkins as Elisa Esposito

Sally Hawkins plays…

Movie Review

Birds of Prey (2020)

Directed by: Cathy Yan

Starring: Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn, Rosie Perez as Renee Montoya, Mary Elizabeth Winstead as the Huntress, Jurnee Smollett-Bell as The Black Canary, Ella Jay Basco as Cass,  and rounding out the cast, Ewan McGregor as the Black Mask.

Some of you might be surprised that I went to see this movie. To be honest I am a little surprised myself.  First of all, I am not a big fan of Marvel movies. I agree with Martin Scorsese that Marvel movies aren’t really cinema. I know, this is a DC Comics picture. DC Comics, Marvel Comics, the same thing. So, what possessed me on a bright, sunny, Sunday afternoon to enter a dark cavern in a multiplex and witness mayhem at its finest? Margot Robbie, that’s what. Plus, there isn’t a whole lot to choose from right now and I…

Explanation

Is an erosion

If it begins in defence

An unravelling occurs

Building momentum

As it rolls

Tearing strips from the soul

Of any artist

If it means to enlighten

The words spill one over the other

Over the other

Not always going anywhere

At

All

To the non verbal thinker

And inward dweller

Explanation is hell

Preferable all round

Is silence

Questions after all

Are just words

Making the rounds

Step out of the whirlpool

And

As my Mother always said

Keep your own counsel

*Kate Moss “never complain, never explain” as a recovering explainer I find this concept so deeply relaxing.

Header photo – chairs along the wall of a simple tin, one room house in Windorah Qld. It belongs to the man below who kindly let me take his photo. We had a long chat.

Horses

Life forces

Of their very own

Intelligent

Capable

And if you win their respect

Honour it

As the great treasure it is

*My father was a great horseman – he broke them in, used them for mustering, played polo from their backs and had a great respect for his four legged companions.

My Grandfather’s life was if anything, even deeper entwined with that of the equine. He also had a great reputation as a horseman and his polo sticks are displayed in the Eulo pub – or they were at one time. I haven’t been back in years.

Horses were indispensable as work and play mates for a very long period in our history.

By the time I came along we used motor bikes to muster and any horses left on the property were brumbies, shy and rarely seen.

I wanted a horse as a child and would nag…