Adventures in Paradise

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Prelude to Long Walk to the Truth: Book 2.

Yellow Brick Road to Truth

Nearly at end of the Book 1: Morocco. The Donkey Walk. Can’t wait to start into Book 2, the serious Long Walk Pilgrimage from Spain to India.

Not all on foot, it must be admitted. But quite a lot was.

I have moved from the torture prison of the scammer conman, the fraudulent so-called Dr, Smith and his psycho-loco poor lost soul would-be chatelaine. 

Yes, I did get a few chapters done there but it was a 6-month long saga of fielding insults and abuse, bullying and intimidation. Basically stymied my creative flow.  

So pleased to have found safe haven in Serenity, my new home. It looks straight across to Koala Mountain Sanctuary my old home of 40 years on Mt. Uki. I became a climate refugee this last year when my studio home there collapsed as a result of the damage by Cyclone Debbie (2017) and a previous tornado.

Serenity is a share house. I now live with a beautiful artistic lady, the Goddess Diana, a vegan with high values of Beauty, Love, Joy. Deeply concerned at the future of life on Earth. Lives her ideals.

A painter of the nanoscopic world. Creator of angel sculptures from recycled bits of anything. With her decorators’ eye and antique collector’s touch she has created a beautiful studio environment. Her eclectic objects are pleasingly displayed all around what was basically a fairly ordinary suburban house, now transformed into a gallery. The eye is charmed as it roves from one precious beautiful thing to the next. Her lifetime of treasures. Each object deeply meaningful to her. I see a lot of myself here, especially in the collections of tiny things. Here I can work surrounded in peace, birds, trees. There is even a pool. Pity I can’t manage the steps down. One day I will. I am commanding my body to walk again. I can. I will. I do. I’m at the will stage.

 I arrived here quite raddled in a heatwave. Three days of torrid 35-40 degrees and no aircon just fans and showers. I was quite heat affected. Hallucinating when I closed my eyes. Sweating constantly. Really unwell. Couldn’t eat for a day. My beautiful house sharer wasn’t coping with me. I wasn’t coping with me. Would not have been able to do the move if it hadn’t been for dearest Adi, a friend in deed. I just collapsed. All too much for this old bear. I felt quite dislocated, barely holding it together in a new place, still hurting from the season in hell I had just escaped from. Operating on some subconscious automatic. But, hey. Here I am again. I have survived!  It seems like a dream that happened to someone else.

Then came the storms. 2 days of gales, hail, strobing lightening and the whole north coast copped it. The communications went down and I, like many others, had to live with no phone, Internet, TV. The power went out as poles & lines were down. With no power, no water. Diana made the place into a wonderland with giant scented candles. We sat in the humid evening outside on the veranda overlooking the pool, sharing a plate of hors d’oeuvres and snippets from the sagas of our lives. Getting to know one another. She is more than a decade younger than me, but we still share a commonality of experiential life events. She is as slim as I am gross. I watched her swim in the gloaming, wishing I could join her in the rain-freshed water. One day. Soon!

It is the Eve of the holiday I call Crazy Day. XXXmesss. 
I am not a religious believer, so to me it is a day of work. Into my creative flow. I am about to finalize the Moroccan adventure. Already setting my sights on Book 2. So many memories are crowding in, rushing at me saying “me, me, me, do me!” 

The Alhambra

Paris 68

.

.

Herat, Afghanistan

                                                                    

Taj Mahal.

Montserrat

A first step for Mankind

                                           .

 Himalayan high snows and Tibetan thangkas

 

.

So much more;:everything in between, before and after.

Well my hearties, all in the fullness of time. 
It was 50 year ago.

Driving me forward on this last burst, I draw inspiration from 2 legends of writing. 

Hemingway, writing in his last days about his 1920's Paris experiences.

Patrick Leigh-Fermor who died finishing his memories of his own early 30's long walk across Europe from Holland to Mt. Athos, A boy then, just out of his teens

. 

Patrick the young adventurer on his epic walk from the Hook of Holland to Mt. Athos.

 What a man he became! 

Patrick, the WW2 hero.

                                                                     

These are the flag bearers. I will plant my flag on the hill with theirs.

But will I get you all back to Australia? I have several more books after my Long Walk.

In the dawn tomorrow, head down tail up. So little time, so much to tell. Yes, I had a full life. Let me share just some before I go. Safe in the Cloud for some future intelligent lifeform to access and know what it was to be a woman of the human kind in the cultural morass of the 20th C. as we call it.

I will submerge myself in getting it all into the blog,
https://longwalktothetruth.blogspot.com/2012/06/hello-whats-this-all-about.html
for anyone wanting to check out Book 1.

That’s All, she wrote…..

Latest Apophysis

Here are a few of my latest fractals made with Apophysis.
You can see them larger size & read details of their creation
here on deviantART

Dugong Habitat - where seagrass sways

Sing Ho! for the Life of a Droid

T-Time

Cosmos

Created by tao-armonia using a selection of my Apophysis and Incendia fractals combined with the music of Vangelis, his presentation takes you artfully on that primal spiritual journey that resonates in all our souls.

Follow this link http://www.tao-armonia.com/
for the free download
and view Cosmos for yourself.

Enjoy with love from Georges and Anu to all

BLUESKY

BLUESKY OVER WALL STREET

Blue skies smilin' at me
Nothin' but blue skies do I see
Bluebirds singin' a song
Nothin' but bluebirds all day long

Irving Berlin lyrics

It seems the global financial crisis is turning the corner into better times ahead. Well here's hoping. My latest Apophysis Escher-esq piece above echoes that sentiment. Maybe the leaders are just talking it up, maybe the unemployed are still suffering and maybe things still don't look as rosy as they could, but hope feels good.

Here we've had one of the best winters. Not too cold, good rains, and now endless blue sky days as we go through our usual end of July - start of August calm sunny dry days I call our "champagne weather". Each breath feels like "soma", recharging and reinvigorating every cell & fiber of the being.

Spring is very close, it usually comes arrives here in next couple of weeks. Already the Jasmine and Peach blossom are in abundance, heralding the warm days to come.

My life is Apophysis, as it has been for 2 years now. The complexities and intricacies of chaos tamed into meaningful art is so all-absorbing, so hypnotic. I am an addict now. How I love this addiction. The rewards for slavery to this machine, ephemeral tho they may be and only available thru it, fill my waking hours with delight and obsess my dreams as well.

PC addiction is often looked on as a problem. I can certainly see the problems of computer, IT & gaming addiction if the associated behaviors affect our survival. But at my age I don't think those concerns apply, as long as I maintain my health & safety. If I am hurting no-one, staying happy and producing a minimal ecological footprint with it, I do not see the harm. You can check out my work by following the links on side-bar and make your own judgments, remembering that I am a lame old woman and cannot function as that riparian botanist I once was. It is a rewarding way to pass the days of my dotage.

Swine flu is spreading exponentially throughout Australia. People are dying every day from it. The news today is that it has been found in pigs in a NSW piggery. Bellingen hospital staff & beds have been reduced by one-third by it after a swine flu patient was treated there and they are sending new patients to other hospitals. Yet still people are saying it is just the normal winter flu toll. OK, no panic, but surely it is better to face reality and embrace what is really happening, rather than live in delusions of what we would prefer to think.

The Grey shrike thrush has just landed in studio in front of me as I type this. It hops across to mirror and lets forth with its excruciatingly delicious piping melodious harmonic call. Go to the link to hear its' call. How can anything feel bad when the day is so magnificent and my visitor brings such rich gifts. What is happening on our planet is disturbing, but here all is peace and I am in bliss.

TATHATA

Waterlog

WATERLOGGED!

Endless weeks of rain. Coastal areas north & south of here just had 1 in 500 year events. 26 inches in 5 hours up on Sunshine Coast & Coffs Harbor declared a Natural Disaster Area! Many lost everything in the walls of water that swept thru, taking all in the unprecedented surging waves. We had our share, but nothing so devastating. It has been an endless wet season. Good rains here tho, not damaging, just persistent.

It's been nearly 6 months since I blogged - so much has happened.

I've been Apophysing endlessly mainly. Follow the links on sidebar to see my latest output on deviantART. But been keeping my eye on global events. We live in interesting times.

The race to keep the tail up with the head is getting tense, but at least we have People of Peace (well, some!) trying to put the ravages of the past to rights. But with the latest news of the accelerating breakup of the Antarctic Ice shelf it is obvious that the warming process is far advanced. Too far for us to survive? Time will tell. Meanwhile the ridiculous wasters keep destroying, denying and generally ignoring the fact that we need to act as one to get thru what's coming.



Meanwhile I'm reading a book that fills me with joy.
Roger Deakin's Waterlog







I'm taken back to all the free swimming of my life.
Rivers, surf, lagoons, pools, creeks, dams and so on.

Drifting downstream on bubbling streams in Far North Queensland, only to find, on exiting, crocodile slides on the banks....oops!

Lilo-ing down Bell's Creek gorge canyons in the Blue Mountains in NSW.

Years of early morning laps in Sydney's Queenscliffe saltwater rock pool after running the 5 miles up Manly Beach & back.

The freezing cold dips into the Tamar River pools at the bottom of our cottage field at Hardstone Farm in Devon before and after my daughter Klea was born back in '66.

The raging force of the Himalayan snow-fed Ganges at Rishakesh .....then the eye-to-eye meeting the body-eating dolphin midstream of its'downstream turgid muddy polluted maninfestation at Varanasi. I broke all records to get back to the houseboat of louche stoned hippies who responded to my "omfg you should have seen it" freaking out as I threw myself back on board, with "Cool Man".


Countless naked dawn surfs on pristine surf beaches all along our Pacific coast here in Oz. Crystal aquamarine tubes catching the rising sun, dolphins in silhouette riding the waves in alongside me.



Bliss beyond bliss.















Mountain pools high up in the canyons of our old volcano, not called The Fridge for nothing!










Water has been the dominant presence in my life in so many ways, right up to the last real work I was able to do, surveying the rivers for appropriate vegetaion for restoration works by govt depts., Landcare & Councils & etc.

Now, lame, all I can do is live vicariously in the memories. How I long to swim in a saltwater rock pool just one more time.















I can dip in my creek, but that's about it for me now.

This book, Waterlog by Roger Deakin, such an erudite writer & dedicated swimmer & environmentalist is bringing back my love of water and so many memories.

I went to find him online but sadly found he died a couple of years back.

So I add this blog to the tributes to his ethos, spirit, energy.

In the Search I did find this site: SwimSallySwim Reading that has given me a new thrust and determination. I will swim again! Thank you Sally!

TIPPING POINT

TIPPING POINT

BUCKY BOOGIES ON THE EDGE OF THE ABYSS





LIMITS TO GROWTH



PLAYING WITH INCENDIA.

I've been learning 3-D digital art in a new program, Incendia , in last months.
Go here to view the other results.

The above Incendia images are my comments on what's going down as we approach the climate change tipping point and weather the global financial crisis, or the comprehensive failure of extreme capitalism, as Kevin Rudd expresses it.

I watch with interest. Uncontrollable forces affecting every living thing on this planet.

How will it all pan out?

I am beyond expressing anything much about it all now, except thru my art, as I doubt we can do much except try to survive. The time for remedial action was last century when we could have averted a lot of the problems becoming catastrophic by addressing biosphere carrying capacity in better management of sustainable life support systems & population controls.

I think few realised that the threat was real and partied like there was no tomorrow.
The future is NOW.

My opinions, such as they are, are in previous posts. However action is all that counts and apart from being as minimalist as I can in my lifestyle here, I can do no more.

Good luck everyone.

Try to be kind & share the burden, not destroy eachother in some blighted Mad Max scenario.

Yes, we will survive, but will civilisation endure?

How will it all look in 100 years from now?

I am coping by creating art (aka selfish pleasures), and appreciating this extraordinary thing we call life, living in hope that our stupidity will not result in our annihilation.

While there is LIFE.......ah yes, but will we be part of it?

Is HOPE all we have now?

WINTER SOLSTICE OFFERINGS

Here are two offerings to celebrate the
Winter Solstice, 2008.


*Chronicles d'Anu
A fractal fantasia.

*Anu Fractal Style
Have I created a "New Style" of fractal?
You be the judge.

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CHRONICLES D'ANU

Recently I've created a fantasia - a series of fractal images with attached brief fictions that link as the Chronicles d'Anu. Fantasy imaginings based on various episodes of my life's journey.

I posted the series on deviantART and some images are also on Flickr.


Chronicles d'Anu

SECRETS IN THE CAVE


ANCIENT MAGIC


WILDE EYE


MOONFLOWER


SCARLET PASSIONFLOWER


SPELLBOUND






SWAMP SECRETS


Hope like what you find as you browse these old Journals.

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ANU STYLE OF FRACTAL

DeviantART's cmptrwhz recently posted an Apophysis tutorial for the Julian Chain. I played with it and came up with heaps of images & posted the ones you see below. He calls them a new style of fractal. Read about all that here.

The below are the "new Style" fractal images.

What do you think?

Witchy Brew

Caldron of Troubled Bubbles

Are these below also included in the "New Style" category?

Buddha Bowl

The Cherry Bowl

Cmptrwhz says not, the "New Style" having the brew in the bowl being the difference.

What do you think?

Enjoy,

Anu.