By Vita Forest
This week I have been
WRITING Mobile Tales 11: a sky full of stars
READING The Girl who circumnavigated Fairyland in a ship of her own making by Catherynne M. Valente
PLAYING Muggle Quidditch at school after
MAKING broomsticks out of newspapers and masking tape (but no one completed their homework and learned how to fly…)
VISITING The Finders Keepers Market at Barangaroo with the whole family
ATTENDING the Year 6 Farewell
FEELING rather exhausted
By Vita Forest
She sits on the edge of the bathtub and trails her fingers in the water. The water is hot, but she knows it will not stay that way for long. Still, she finds she feels slightly touched that he has tried to make it comfortable for her. A lesser man would not have bothered. She knows plenty of that kind. She hopes he will work fast however, it is not the weather for spending long in the water. He has moved the tub in front of the fire but she does not have great faith in that gesture either, although it too, was kindly meant.
She decides to sit there waiting until he is completely ready. How they fuss these fellows! She looks down at the dress he has procured for her and runs her hands over the silver embroidery. It is finely done. She squints down at the stitches, noting the skill in the design. She wonders who he borrowed it from.
He clears his throat. She looks up a trifle scornfully. She will make him speak, she decides. She will not splash eagerly into the water like a playful puppy. This is not an ordinary request he has made.
He has already described the scene to her; the dark water, the rushes, the ferns and flowers, the muted, cold light. And the body of Ophelia reclining in the current, dead and beautiful. Luminous and mad. Yielding to the river. Her fingers curled over a garland of wild flowers, the current gently loosening them as she floats downstream. The flowers drifting over her skirt. Lips parted, palms turned upward in surrender.
Lizzie had sniffed loudly as he demonstrated the pose (standing up, mind you). He was quite caught up in it all, she must say. He reminded her of those pictures of Mary or the saints. Their palms exposed, a look of ecstatic agony on their faces. Like they were enjoying the pain, finding comfort in the life draining through the holes in their hands. She could understand that look. She thought of Dante and sighed.
He clears his throat again and gestures to the bath.
‘Would you mind?’
She swings her legs over the bath and sits down in the water. She grimaces as the water penetrates through the folds of the brocade, to her skin. This was not going to be pleasant.
‘Now if you move down the bath a little, so your hair will float.’
He gestures again. She stares up at him balefully. He had it all worked out didn’t he? She sighs and lowers herself down. The water rises and she tips her head back, shaking her hair onto its surface and then pushing her head down through its web. The water fills her ears until she is lying alone in a silent void.
She looks up and sees him doing that saint imitation again. She raises her hands out of the water curling her fingers against each other. She looks down the length of the bath and settles her gaze on the top of the window behind him. She glances quickly at him. He nods at her. She looks back at the window and tilts the top of her head under the water. She can feel her hair drifting around her and then settling.
She can feel him looking at her. She stares fiercely at the window. She thinks about drawing. Dante has been trying to teach her. He stands behind her and points out small details that he feels she should include in her sketches; the shadows in the depths of a rose’s petals, the pearl of light in the eye of the stuffed pigeon he brought out one time. She can see what he means. It is as if she has been given a magnifying glass. There is more to things when you actually look hard at them and forget about what they actually are. She raised her pencil to the paper, fully aware of his solid presence peering over her shoulder. She felt them both hold their breath.
Forget about the word – forget Rose, forget Bird.
Only look!
Just record what you see…
And yet…
If this was so, why is it Dante doesn’t see the shadows under her eyes, hear the fury in her voice when he talks of doing another painting of Fanny?
Her hands are sinking beneath the water. She adjusts her elbows and lowers them down onto the bottom of the bath. It is entirely uncomfortable. She will have to get something to make it more comfortable. She sits up hurriedly and the sound of water rushing back into the bath is as violent as an avalanche.
John frowns at her.
‘I need something for more head,’ she says. ‘To hold it up.’
‘I want your hair to float around your head,’ he mutters as he rubs his chin.
She waits in the bath, not looking at him, looking around at the room. She needs to be made more comfortable. This is not an unreasonable request. He leaves the room and comes back with a blanket which he folds up into a parcel and then passes to her. She adjusts it, then lays it down in the bath. It should work. She lifts up her hair and lies back down again, resting the back of her head on the wad of fabric. Now she can relax her neck. She nods up at him. He stares at him a moment then hurries off. What is it now?
He had forgotten the flowers.
She looks up and sees him standing above her clutching a hearty bunch of wild flowers, full of colour. He stands solemnly over her and one by one, tosses the flowers about her face and along her body.
Blue cornflower. Red poppy.
She feels a chill run through her body; it is as if she is looking up at a mourner at her own grave. She remembers her mother’s burial, the gash dug out of the earth, the open grave, peering down into the darkness as she dropped the small posy of violets among the clods of dirt.
John opens the palm of her right hand and closes it again over the few remaining stalks. He walks away again. She settles back.
She imagines wading into a river in this dress. The ripples swigging at her fingers, the iciness of the water making it tempting to go no deeper. And this dress – the fabric so heavy and long, she would have to fight it too. Hauling her feet, one by one, into the cold, over the smooth stones, through the current, until suddenly it would be deep and strong enough to lift her and she would be part of the river. She cannot quite think how death would occur, not knowing how to swim. Would she float for a time before drowning? Or perhaps this dress was so heavy there would be no floating. Perhaps she would end as a pile of brocade and swirling hair among the stones of the riverbed. She will have to ask John how it would happen.
She glances at him. Not now. She knows that look. She has ceased to exist. He is busy with Ophelia. His eyes move back and forth between her body and the easel but his mind does not register what he is doing. He is under a spell. He is possessed. His brush is guided over the palette. His eyes squint and frown.
Lizzie looks away.
By Vita Forest
Spit to Manly walk, Sydney
WRITING She should be
READING the lovely poems of Misuko Kaneko (Are you n Echo?)
GETTING back to the gym after missing it for about 10 days (all those parent teacher interviews…) My mental and physical health is much improved.
HOSTING Bookclub and
EATING slow cooker pulled pork (mmm mmm).
PLANNING programs and units of work for next term.
FINISHING Term 1
SKETCHING again after all the rain, at the truly delightful Chinese Garden of Friendship in Darling Harbour.
CATCHING up with Fleur and having a cuppa and a laugh.
WALKING the iconic Spit to Manly walk with Vastra and Saskia then
SWIMMING at Shelly Beach at Manly – a weekend can’t get much better than that!
By Vita Forest
This week I have been
READING The Art of Travel by Alain de Botton
WRITING Overheard… In the playground
WATCHING Rosalie Lum at a preview with Lucy. We liked it!
DANCING
FAREWELLING my little people as the school year ended (for them).
SKETCHING at Milsons Point and its surrounds
WALKING and SWIMMING at the beach with Vastra and Saskia
EATING pomegranates and mangoes
By Vita Forest
This week I have been
WRITING Mobile Tales 4 – a fishing expedition
READING Farenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
MAKING
CELEBRATING
WATCHING Fantastic Beasts and where to find them (how fab to visit the world of Harry Potter again – albeit many years earlier).
VISITING Echo Point at Roseville Chase with Lucy, Sui-Sui, Alessandro, Saskia, Laura and Rowdy for a lovely picnic, a walk along the beach and a game of Sardines (climbing rocks and trees barefoot).
MEETING up with Vastra for a coffee while Lucy practised dancing.
DRAWING peonies on a paper tablecloth and eating a favourite desert (Flan Catalan with blood orange) with Lucy and Max at a lovely local restaurant.
REQUESTING some fast-finishers in my class to sort dirty dance gloves from clean ones (I did not suggest they sniff each one and yet they did…). The grimy gloves are currently soaking in the laundry, soon my clothesline will look like we live with a company of mimes.
By Vita Forest
Isaboe “helping” me with school reports
WRITING
READING
FINISHING a course on Dyslexia
LISTENING to Recomposed by Max Richter: Vivaldi – The Four Seasons with the light out, as the sun set, with a cup of tea, as I try to
FIND some sense in this crazy world
By Vita Forest
Reclining Figure: Angles 1980, by Henry Moore
To this I would add, “I don’t know what I see until I draw it.”
Today at sketch club we fanned out to find a subject from the steps of the Art Gallery of New South Wales. The weather forecast was iffy – rain was predicted, but the sunny skies contradicted that certainty. The art gallery is a good standby – lots of scenery outside, and easy to duck inside if the heavens open.
Some artists went straight for the interior, borrowing the handy stools that the art gallery will lend a sketcher and searching for a subject in the cool inside. The sun was shining, the breeze was gentle, so I decided to stroll around outside and see what I could see.
I didn’t walk far before I came to the large Henry Moore sculpture on the lawn of the gallery. It’s a female figure sprawling casually on a rectangular plinth, like a sun bather on a beach towel, or one of the many picnickers you will see in the parklands around the gallery. She leans back on her elbow, glancing over her shoulder, feet bare.
I have always liked the monumental solidity of it, the way the folds of the skirt are captured in the hardness of bronze. I have walked by it a million times. But when I started to draw, I realised there was a lot I had never noticed.
If you stand close (which I did to do a study of the face) you can see the imprint of Moore’s tools leaving scratched lines in what I took previously as smooth metal. As if he sketched over the whole body. You can see how the weather has streaked the bronze with green, so again, that smooth colour that you register from a distance, is fact rather painterly, with contrasts of icy mint green and deep chocolate brown.
I moved from the shade of one tree and into that of another – a new vista appearing. I could now see that the figure, rather than being a bulky simplification of forms, had some quirky character details – there were toenails on the feet, and the left foot was turned in, slightly pigeon-toed, with the toes raised from the solidity of the plinth.
She is wiggling her toes.
Detail of her face – notice the lines of her hair
Later, I moved back to the steps and tried drawing some passer-bys and a fellow sketching pal who was across the road. (He caught me at the bottom of his sketch too – hat and all!) Then I turned and saw another bronze sculpture – a gallant soldier on a horse and began doing some quick sketches of the pair. This time I noticed that despite having on a rather solid looking helmet, the soldier had bare legs and bare feet! I wonder how he fared in the battle…
Soon it was time for our Show and Tell, we trickled back to where we first met, crossing the road, walking up the hill, back out into the light after the dimness of the gallery. We compared and praised and marvelled at our different styles and what a range of subjects caught our attention in the same place. It’s comforting to realise how individual we all are. And what secrets are illuminated if we take the time to stop and look. Thanks Henry!
The folds in the fabric of the skirt is the main feature that I used to notice.
By Vita Forest
Max (on entering the concert hall of the Sydney Opera House for a large combined schools musical performance): Aw ma gawd! You know what scares me? That many kids with that many recorders!
It was actually very lovely.
By Vita Forest
This week I have been
READING The Circle by Dave Eggers (hope to have it finished before Book club…)
DISCUSSING with my kids how radicchio sounds to them like a spell from Harry Potter, try it – Radicchio!
FINDING out that our dance group got through the auditions and into the big interschool performance to be held later this year.
WATCHING some Olympic finals with the whole school – deafening cheers!
GETTING the carpet in at last. The kids love it “It’s like walking in a meadow of soft grass.”
VISITING Balmoral Beach with my Dad, sister Briony and kids Max and Lucy on a sunny winter’s afternoon.
SPENDING some time hanging out with the kids and the cats, luxuriating on the velvety soft carpet, while looking out at the blooming camellia tree, as the sunshine streamed in.
I’m very excited to have my list included in a special exhibit based on Jessica Gross’s “Things we Like” blog at the St Agnes Branch of the NYPL! Look at the beautiful Charrow illustration that accompanies it – lemons in a blue bowl. Do pop along if you are in NYC… wish I could visit too.
Thanks Jessica for your wonderful blog!
The “Things We Like” exhibit is officially installed at the St. Agnes branch of the NYPL! It will be up through the end of the month, so if you’re in New York City, please do stop by. (The library is located at 444 Amsterdam, between 81st and 82nd; make sure to check the hours). In the meantime, here’s a taste.
Jotterizing 