Around the Tuggerah Lake

DSCF0086 lake portraitThings have been tough. Depression, pain and this awkward little space have been making my life pretty miserable. That should be obvious from the last post.

I had a long look at the photographs and resource material hanging about the place. I know I keep saying it but there are a bunch of things I could be getting on with. The cat, the bird of paradise flower, the self portrait or the Roman icons. I would have cruised into their orbit only I think I just wrecked another canvas. That self-portrait is on hold and looking like a failure for now. It is a bit hard to see the colors from this image but that part of it may work. I just cannot make the leap from an illustrated face to working the paint with a little emotion. It is a bit of a low confidence thing I imagine.

This morning was a nice dull morning and I had no chores apart from going to the pharmacist and getting the stronger pain relief. That seemed to be alright to be left for another day. I have probably written about the fact that I am trying to create a body of work in mostly ink showing the shops and retail buildings that small business people on this part of the coast are found in. They are mostly strip markets and older buildings and I like to record them. DSCF0090 newsagent berkeley vale

This morning I took the scooter and headed along the lake towards Berkeley Vale. The little shops there include a convenience or general store, a bakery cafe, a real estate agent and a couple of empty buildings. The empty shops were a surprise. They were operating not too long ago.

The convenience and newspaper store is particularly bright and begs some artistic attention with all its signs and posters and the trees reflected in the window. It will be a very graphic and illustrative style of work. Very disciplined if I can set up for it. The set up is the trick for me now. Every thing I do means a pile of stored tools or clothes or papers has to be moved to another place and there are quite a few stages to this style of drawing. Things need to be clean and clear for each one. The items that need to be moved need to get there without more damage. I love the work when I am able to come to grips with it but in between the different parts of building the image there is just the need to do it even if it hurts or I hate it. Sometimes I despair at facing the effort but despair doesn’t get me off the chair. Hey that rhymes!DSCF0099 lake suzuki

The ride about the lake is something I love as is the process of photography. There are beautiful and even sublime views along the lake. There are unexpected things that you would not see without being in the artist’s head space.  Something beautiful slides into the unrelenting difficulty of our lives and for a moment that is all there is. It makes a lump in my throat. There was a rusty old Suzuki scooter in the backyard of a very old cabin. A boat full of water. DSCF1857trampoline lake

This year the iconic visual item for the 2015 storms is the trampoline that has escaped its masters to end in a tree or a paddock or a swamp. This one was in the lake. I was busily photographing it when some locals on bikes gave me a bit of a ribbing. It was the obvious thing for the tourist to shoot and they had a little contempt for my effort. I was surprised they didn’t see the beauty. Our final shared joust was about making soggy somersaults.

On the way home it started to rain. I wasn’t worried. There were plastic bags in the rear of the scooter and I draped one over the controls which is the only place the water will get at. I was shooting down a path in the rain at about the full seventeen kilometers per hour when I approached a little bundle of conifer branches the stuck out onto the path. It looked soft and I figured to pass right through it with one wheel as I did clumps of grass so I did not slow at all. In the middle of the bundle was the log that the light branches had been cut off. There was were just enough branches to look light but to disguise the branch. It grabbed the wheel of the scooter and flung it sideways and onto its back. I went over it on the high side and had a hundred kilos or something of battery land on my back. Not the first time it ever happened either. I think I stopped the slide of the scooter with my face and knee. The cars on the road, (Eastern Road, Bateau Bay) immediately stopped in a big queue and people raced to pick me up. I let them this time. I was hurt! I lay in a scatter of branches and hand-held radios and cameras and I couldn’t get up. That is the first time I didn’t spring immediately to my feet after a stack like that. They picked me up and brushed me off. Blood ran down my leg under the jeans and into my boot. That later turned out to be an embarrassingly small graze on my knee. That heart medication thins the blood and makes us bleed a lot! I really appreciated the guy that got the scooter back on its wheels. The fact that I had not been able to gather myself and do that was a little suspicious and while I didn’t hurt I figured there may have been some damage hiding beneath the pain relievers I use to assist me on these journeys.

I got home all right and the pain killers wore off and I feel as though part of my face was displaced and either there is a bruised vertebrae or another crushed or cracked one. I know the feeling well. As the afternoon moves on it all starts to hurt but the glow from getting a few good images holds off the tendency to get maudlin. This immediate pain doesn’t lend itself to depression as much as it does to resting while it heals so perhaps I should be grateful for it. I am always falling off stuff so its cool.DSCF0088walker frame

There was a mobility walker on a roadside collection pile in front of one of the public housing apartment blocks across the paddock. It had some sort of cancer in the hand grips that turned them into a sticky jelly and the brakes needed an adjust and a spring. I grabbed it up and brought it home. On the last Saturday morning I tied it to the back of the mobility scooter and ran it over to Debbie at The Mobility Center on The Entrance Road at Long Jetty. I told her I was going to give it a little TLC and some new parts and it could go to someone from the apartments here who needed one. They cost almost $200 new and I know there are a couple of the locals who had a need. Debbie has helped on a few things like that and she loves to help set up good deeds so she set me up with all the parts at somewhat of a discount. They didn’t cost a lot anyway. I brought it home and polished it and fixed everything. Before I had a chance to ask anyone about it one of the nearby tenants asked for it and it went to a new home. Very satisfying!

You will notice I didn’t theorize about the previous owner. Whatever they are doing I am sure they would like to know their cherished little walker has been rebuilt and given a good home.

It is difficult to see the magic in some of these images. They  look just like any other picture taken by anybody. I can see it though. That is what we do. We pull the magic from the mundane and share that vision with you if we can at all.

 

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