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An Xmas Easter Egg- 'The Princess': an excerpt from the sequel to The Blackthorn Orphans

27/12/2015

 
The second book is starting to come together, but I've had this bit written for a while.  

Sachiin and Susan are in Kathmandu, doing washing by the river since they're avoiding laundromats for... reasons.  Anyway, a bunch of kids from the adjacent ghetto have come down to do the same, and Sachiin tells them an old story.

Hope you're having a decent holiday.  Enjoy the tale.


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Clutching faded towels and enamel jugs, the children first encircled the sleeping pig, exclaiming in whispers, before dividing shyly on either side of Sachiin like an ordered chorus, united and unblinking in their intent.  Their hands made hesitant forays to his hair and shoulders and the smallest of them squatted by him, staring with dark eyes, like inquisitive frogs.  

​They began a randomized interrogation, the girls lapsing into hill dialect when he delighted them with his parochial replies; as he came to the end of his washing, one of the eldest produced a Hindi celebrity magazine and suggested that he read an article aloud, longing to be party to the text accompanying the brilliant images.  The younger cohort objected loudly,and he compromised by offering to relate a story of his own selection.  His court of miniature vassals ceased their clamouring and seated themselves about him, slim hands shading their eager gazes.

​"This is about a princess, and is a very old story from a very, very old kingdom that was once part of India, but is now buried under a desert."  

"There was a wicked king, more wealthy than all of the other kings around him put together, and so vain that every morning he insisted on being carried to do 
puja on an enormous white elephant, dressed from head to toe in silver with a tikka made of ruby juice.  If he saw a grain of dust on the elephant's harness, he called the sice, and had him lick that dust off with his tongue, and then the elephant squashed his head on a stone with its foot.  And the very worst thing about all of this was that the part of the garden he rode that white elephant over was from here..."  He patted the stone of the ghat and then pointed at the far side of the street.  "To there."  The girls expressed their wonder and disgust on cue, and fell silent again.  ​

"His kingdom was absolutely huge, and if you had taken ten of Kathmandu and laid them out together, it would hardly fill the royal shikar jungle where he hunted animals for pleasure, and not one of his subjects was allowed to gather a twig of wood or a single mango.  The king gave orders every day, turning into laws all the crazy, evil things that popped into his head... no smiling during Teej, no admiring of peacocks, and if anyone had something special, something that was the best of all its kind, they must report this wonderful object to his jamindars, in case he decided he would like it for himself.  In this way, the king had gathered in his palace the finest carpets, the most beautiful and lifelike paintings, his great white elephant, the silkiest goat that ever lived, and shoes made of mirrored glass so that he could always see his own reflection, even when he looked down at the ground." 

​The silent audience were visibly struggling to digest this new, expanded definition of largesse.

"One night a jamindar came running into the palace and threw himself before the king... he had found something the king did not possess, and he agreed to hear what this prize could be, sitting on his throne while a dozen brahmins fanned him with punkahs made from phoenix feathers.  'I have found, oh King, a girl who is the most beautiful in not only this kingdom, but twenty others.'  The king demanded to know what he would do with a girl such as this... 'I am told that they are costly to feed, and that their voices can be disagreeable.' he complained.  'You can marry her, oh King, and once she if your wife, you can do with her exactly as you wish.' promised the jamindar.  'She is as beautiful as a deer and a bauhania flower, if those two things could be squashed together.'  'Well,' said the king... 'I certainly don't want anyone else marrying her... bring her to the palace, and make sure she doesn't give me any trouble, or it's the elephant's foot for you!'" 

Sachiin paused, anticipating interruption.  Several of the older girls conferred, and one of them asked him to quantify the cited maiden's beauty, watching him closely as he formulated his reply.  They queried him extensively on the precise amount of jewellery worn by such a heroine, necessitating a lengthy digression.  Susan eased her legs out before her at the edge of the stone and rolled herself a cigarette.

​"So the jamindar returned to this girl's village and told her to pack up her things and say goodbye to her parents, which she did, because she didn't want the cruel king to be angry with her family.  She set off to the palace in purdah so that no one else could enjoy looking at her, now that she was to become the king's wife."

​"As soon as the king saw this beautiful girl, he felt jealousy stab him all over his body like a thousand thieves with knives, and when the wedding ceremonies were over, he ordered everyone who had spoken to the bride be put to death.  To that wicked king, the thought of sharing her with anyone was as disgusting as eating rotten lizards.  He commanded that from that moment on, if he should hear of her talking to another person he would kill them and most probably her as well, if he could be bothered, with his own sword.  The princess was terribly sad, and told the king that such a fate would be preferable to the great loneliness she would feel, and the King replied that she was forbidden to be lonely because it bored him greatly.  She agreed to do what her husband commanded, but she could not give up puja, because she loved Krishna and Durga Ma more than anything.  The king agreed to this, but only in case Durga Ma struck down his elephant and forced him to walk somewhere."
"And so, the poor princess was forced to stay inside the palace, and go across the garden every morning to do puja behind a great big white elephant with the king sitting up on it eating halwa and laughing at the beggars who groaned with hunger in the street outside the grounds.  Every day she prayed to Krishna to make her husband into a kinder man but it never seemed to happen." 

"One night Durga Ma appeared to her in her dreams and she woke up the next morning, put on her best red sari and asked to see the wicked king, alone so that none of the guards or servants could see her face, just as he had ordered.  The king agreed, and waited for her on his throne, already very angry because he had to fan himself, since there were no slaves to use the punkah."

"The princess reminded him of his horrible law and asked him if he would take it back, because it was selfish and stupid and cruel.  He told her he was the king, and it was his right to do whatever he wanted, and besides, people would laugh at him if they knew his wife was bossing him around."
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"The girl told him that Durga Ma had shown her a way to make sure no one would ever laugh at him again, and the king said he would definitely like to see this trick, since no goddess had ever told him anything useful.  So the princess took the king’s jewelled sword from his belt and cut off his head, and because he had sent everyone away and there was no one to help him, she didn't do it very quickly at all."

​For a small while the circle of faces shared a frown, but one by one, the girls began to smile to themselves in appreciation, rising to their feet and pressing their hands together in a grateful namaste, all grins and flapping hands as they trundled back across the road.

"They're all going to marry you when they grow up." Susan murmured, putting out her cigarette and picking up the shirt that he had discarded earlier that morning.   Sachiin sighed as he lay back on the stone with his head in the shade, closing his eyes.

"Are you cool with that?" he smiled.

*   Read the Book onsite   *


The Blackthorn Orphans Best of 2015

24/12/2015

 
2015 was a fairly bad-to-indifferent year for us, with one or two luminous milestones along the way.

We hope for better things in 2016 and to blog them for your delectation.  We're going to do it anyway so you may as well relax and enjoy it.

Something bad- the death of our lovely cat Moo.  We miss him tremendously and are doubly grateful for our other boy Felix, who almost makes up for him.
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Blogtacularly, I cut my hair and dissed the NZ flag referendum.  And talked about being one of the richest people in the world.
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Discussed gay marriage, and marriage in general.   Called out sexist fucktard cat callers.
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Wrote a poem about undies.
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Talked about some of the shit I've learned in my 43 years
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Finished being a lardarse.
Ate delicious chocolate
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Shared my thoughts on the refugee crisis in Europe
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Went bra shopping
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Took some black and white photographs
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Induced the Lovely R to finally set up his own blog onsite and share some of his fantastic images
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Took a swing at cake-face contouring
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Blogged some nice textiles
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And some vintage fabrics from my collection
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​We enjoyed some fairly diverse treasures from other people this year
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El Gato Chimney
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Alex Shatohin
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Luc Jamet ​
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Jerico Santander
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Tamas Dezso
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Nico Delort
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We've taken you on walks around Port Chalmers
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On a road trip up and down the South Island of New Zealand (in three parts)
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But I think the thing that gave me most satisfaction is the conclusion of The Blackthorn Orphans serialisation. Knowing people had been reading it all the way through, finally, after so many years.
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I think my lipstick reviews were fairly respectable this year.  

And Hostile Witness Film Review is starting to look like something I might not disown when questioned.
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The blog gets around a thousand views a day now, which is about 900 more than I ever expected. I think my record day was nearly three thousand. Which is pretty fucking dusty compared to a lot of fancy social media shit, but I don't promote, so yeah, I'll take that attendance record. I wouldn't kick it out of bed if it was a guy.  Or girl.  Lol.  I am rich in clicks.
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Thanks for reading and looking and eye rolling and shit.  

​I hope you've found something worthwhile in what we've posted, even if you've hated it or really fucking disagreed.  We're grateful to enjoy an existence that includes stuff worth sharing, and to have the opportunity to contribute to the creative commons.

​Next year we hope to keep keeping it real with more crusty wisdom, depressive musings, indiscriminate photography, spasmodic verse and spooky long form.
Back in the new year.  Have some holiday if you can possibly manage it.  ​Stay crazy, bitches.
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PS: Look out for an xmas day easter egg onsite.

Photos du Jour: the first Roses, summer 2015

22/12/2015

 
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That's the best I can do.  They made us wait this year, but we appreciate them all the more for it.
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​Clockwise from top: Evelyn: unknown Bourbon, Purplicious x3: Louise Odier x 3: Evelyn, Mary Rose, Scepter'd Isle: Purplicious.
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Stare hard, then close your eyes and smell.

The best soap broken almond kernels curling ghostly sundried lemon peel afternoon nougat and pistachios perfect toast and butter with heavy pale honey soaking through onto the plate pocket- warmed toffee sunlight on someone's lovely neck golden blooming vines tapping pollen on your forehead morning jasmine crushed raspberries and plums smoky dusted silver-spiny myrrh. 
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*   More nice things in our Garden   *   Best of the Blog   *


Photo du Jour: Portrait of the artist

21/12/2015

 
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in misshapen, reflect'd beast form.
Pedicure is the fucking shit, though.  Feet creases courtesy of special expensive athletic torture socks.

​It was a lovely afternoon at the reservoir; total isolation, surrounded by hundreds of dragonflies and nesting birds.


The Blackthorn Orphans Serialization: Inferi Invidia 2

19/12/2015

 
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Languid dub rebounded on the plaster walls and fell in through the windows from a silver ghettoblaster rattling in the shade of an antique canvas lounge.  The bumperball echo drew Susan from the hall into the only room that she had left uncharted, a plate and cup of tea in both hands.  The double doors rode inward to reveal a mighty gallery or ballroom, its south wall overlooking the defunct parterre through a cortége of picture windows reaching almost to the ceiling, the latter's vast white acreage reflected in the floor where it retained a polish.  Toward its eastern end a virgin canvas large enough to face a covered truck had been fixed to the ruby-papered wall with a nailgun, as though crucified; a red enamel toolbox stood padlocked on the floor before it and she sipped her tea while pondering them both, wandering on toward the windows where the view recalled the abortive encounter she had fled the night before, chagrin souring her cup.  

Down in the pool William floated, sun-warmed, on a blue and white striped air bed, winged sunglasses obscuring his gaze, his hair tied in two ear-like sheaves atop his head.  Intermittent smoke drifted from his nose over the water as though he were some font of minor, lackadaisical volcanism.  Susan sat down with her back to it in the windowsill and gazed at the griddle print on her toasted sandwich, cheated of its enjoyment, the tactics she had devised to beguile the morning failing to efface the prospect she so dreaded.  She shook her head, set down her lunch and walked with some resolve toward the doors, wiping her hands on her pinafore.

A capacious garage had annexed a portion of the original servants' quarters, the remainder fashioned into a primitive laundry and warren of utility rooms linked by a sequence of doors painted shiny absinthe green.  An impressive consignment of furnishings and objet trouvé had half-filled the garage since her arrival, like ballast drafted in against the vacancy of the house itself; she threaded through them, arms raised where they narrowed the way uncomfortably.  Only by keeping the building's exterior in mind did Susan rediscover the portal to the windowed passage traversing the rear of the ground floor.  At its end she paused before another door and listened carefully before tapping at its recessed panelling.  The slice of room beyond was lit by one dim source; knocking again, she stepped into the midst of a private library, a carefully-assorted cache of thick, reptilian volumes, bound folios and journals and the green tobacco smell of hand-worked hide, of rag and linen paper.  The collection stood in shadow, much of it enjoying the security of the locks set into the glass-faced shelves, and she frowned at such a measure.  

Susan could not stay the hand that leapt to her breast as she finally perceived the figure seated in the rear third of the room, behind a black Directoire desk.  Her intrusion had stilled him in the midst of excising shagreen from the handle of an old square-bladed knife, the procedure performed upon a piece of leather faced with the intimate grain of an animal's skin.  He did not smile at her intrusion.  In his imposing shape and unaccountable ethnicity he was as surely William’s brother as she was not.  She cleared her throat and forced words from her mouth.

“Mr Lamb, good morning... I'm Susan Christabel, your housekeeper.  We... um, met last night." she reminded him when he evinced no sign of recognition.  Edward's attention proved coldly metallic, like chain mail draped across her throat and shoulders, flushing her face with swathes of high colour.  She coughed into her hand, using it to look away from him.  “I’ve already talked to... to your brother... he said you won’t be needing me to cook.  There are chefs, though, at the agency... they’ll do macrobiotic... I can have them send you a li...”

"I didn't engage you." he told her.  She nodded slowly, then frowned and shook her head.

"Well... I didn't just wander in... somebody hired me..." she reminded him.  He rose unexpectedly, and she stepped back through the doorway, letting go of the frame.  "There's a trial period, a month... we get paid for that..."  

Edward slid back one of the glass partitions and extracted a slim wooden box.  The ensuing silence threatened impasse until he turned to study her directly, forcing her to brave the weight of his unqualified attention.  In watching her, the colour of his gaze was necessarily revealed and she saw that some conspiracy between shade and aversion had cast it in an aureate, fimbriated bale.  She stepped back again into the passage, her hands finding and clasping each another.

"Mr Lamb, I'm sorry for the misunderstanding last night... you did surprise me, and I didn't mean to be rude.  But once we're signed on to a place, we get the..."

​“Submit your account details." he muttered, returning to the table in a gesture of dismissal that did little to relieve her, even as she walked back along the windowed corridor.

Her sandwich had cooled by the time she reclaimed it, its layer of oozing cheese turned to greasy rubber.  Cursing, she bore it back into the passage, intending a return to her rooms, but caught sight of a figure hunched before the doors to William’s suite, a woman rattling the lock with something she had worked into the keyhole.

“Can I help you or something?” Susan called, blowing a tea leaf from her tongue.  

The stranger straightened quickly and began to stalk toward her down the hall, blond hair streaming back over her shoulders.

“You are?” she quipped.

“The housekeeper.  Is Mr Lamb expecting you?”

Rachel hitched up the golden chain strap of her handbag and cast a withering eye over the new arrival; Susan lifted the sandwich to her mouth, crunching noisily through its brittle crust.  The large gold letters emblazoned on the glasses propped atop the woman's head were repeated on her bag and in the printed leather of her heels; her breasts challenged the fabric of her tawny tank-top with their distracting amplitude, their proportions answering the tanned hips so tenuously contained by the brevity of her custom-distressed jeans.

“Where is he?  I have to talk to him privately.” she insisted, sighing loudly and staring at the ceiling as Susan began to reply.  “You have food in your mouth... I cannot understand what you are saying.”  

Taking a moment, the latter wiped a crumb from the corner of her chin and took a quick sip of her cold tea.

“Mr Lamb's downstairs.”
"Where, downstairs?”
“It’s sort of... like a cave."  

Rachel glared pointedly.

​“Are you going to show me, or are you just going to keep on eating whatever that is?” she exclaimed, throwing an open hand at her repast.  Susan swallowed unhurriedly and shook her head.
“I’m on a tea break.  It's down there, through that door at the back... just follow the hall.”  

Disgusted, Rachel stalked down the stairs alone, the jarring clatter of her heels dying away to nothing.  

William swapped his phone from one ear to the other as the breeze blew him toward the end of the pool, chuckling at his caller’s reportage.  He barely heard the aerodynamic disturbance accompanying the object stabbed down into the pillow by his ear, but held his phone clear of the water as his craft deflated beneath him.  His brother’s expression was far less scenic than the clouds it had replaced.  Edward shucked the tines of the gardening fork from the airbed and thrust it into the grass. 

"Macrobiotic.”  The single word sunk under the condensed weight of his antipathy.

“I know it was dumb... you sprung this on me.  She was asking about food and I couldn’t think of anything.  What the fuck.” William sighed.  Igniting his cigarette with a table lighter at the water's edge in the shape of a jewel-eyed carp, he smiled and stretched out again on his back, floating unassisted.  Taking the folded newspaper from under his arm, Edward dropped it onto his face; the gossip section rewarded the recipient's curiosity with a lurid description of his own conduct at the avant-garde event the night before.  “Promiscuous flotsam floats quite conspicuously." he explained.  "And three weeks running is something... it’s not nothing...”

"Paris."

​"C'est naze.  Why not just lock me in a fucking room full of burning tyres?  And Susan's staying.  I've already told her that legally, she comes with the house as a chattel and that I was going to keep her here, secluded from the gaze of others while I alone knew her flesh in marathons of sweaty, freaky shit til one of us, and it wouldn't be me, called time.  She wanted to go right there, but I said child, I will give you a night of prayer and contemplation so that you can come to me in a state of readiness.  But Kala'amātya, if you don’t like the way I handle things, fucking deal with it yourself.”  He let the paper darken and submerge and lay his hands on his stomach, thinking better of the suggestion.  "Okay, so maybe... don't do that.  But fucking Opal sent her, so that's on you..."  His brother's irritation prompted him to lift his arms in an expansive gesture.  “We’re the upper ten thousand now, mahatma... it’s totally appropriate and necessary to have a household full of buxom maids of easy virtue.  She's been undressing me with her eyes ever since she got here." William laughed, intensifying Edward's displeasure.

"Was anything ever more redundant?" he muttered bitterly.

​"At least buy her contract from Opal.  You've seen her... she's friandise.  She won't last a hot minute with that fucking old crocodile handbag."  He received no reply.  "Whatever.  We're keeping Susan.  I like her.”  

“You liked Rachel.”  Edward spoke with such distaste that, for once, his words influenced his expression, his teeth appearing in the midst of an involuntary grimace.  "Gas gangrene..." he added, the association as powerfully impulsive as it was obscure.

“I never said I liked Rachel... I just asked her to stop pitching rufies into my piña colada but apparently that came out as stalk me til I lose the will to live."  Gazing up into the sky, William smiled in beatific gratitude.  "She was here and you scared her away, didn't you?  Je t'aimie tellement..." he sighed.  "I didn't tip her off about this place, so it must've been Opal, and don’t come crying to me about your evil overlord... you're her little punk bitch now.  Better lube up and grab a chesterfield... get some wood between your teeth.”  Edward looked toward the fork standing in the grass.  “I can live with your art thing... you're a creative, they couldn’t beat that out of you, and christ only knows you need the outlet... but you're letting neckfuckers up in your business, et putain de merde... Opal’s the worst.  What do the dogboys say?  If three rounds won't put it down, don't unzip...”

“Visible means.”
“Say what now?”
“Open an account.  Discover modern insolvency.  Become an OFAC superstar.  Report back to me with your single designated phone call while black helicopters land on the roof.”   

"You're just mad because I'm in your swimming pool and you don't know how that happened.  Kala'amātya... allez.  You are the only creature with my bloodtype on this entire fucking landmass... well you were until a week ago... B and Ny are here now... and you're always looking at me like the history's all bad, when it’s not... it’s chequered.  That’s not the same thing."  He sighed again at the protraction of their exchange.  "Fucking say something or I'll book you an open casket."

"I live alone."
“I know that.”
“Then why persist?”
“Because you’re so unhappy.  And I just want to sit in a room with someone I don’t have to explain myself to.”  He did not read too much into his brother's silence.  “You're totally harshing my buzz right now, but did you notice how many words you just said?  You're opening up like a beautiful flower.  How fucking theraputic am I?"

“No reggae, no inflatable plastic.  If I find evidence of conjugation I will hire a bitumen truck."

"Susan stays."

​"Sachiin..." Edward warned, his stare falling toward him.  "Don't ever make her think she feels the ground tilting toward you.”  

William scowled after him as he walked back toward the house. 

CONTINUED NEXT WEEK
© céili o'keefe  do not reproduce


*   Read the book onsite   *


Red Rose Death Match:  'Lady of Megginch' v 'Darcey Bussell'

18/12/2015

 
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David Austin rose Lady of Megginch.  That's her on the left.  Though it's frequently described/sold as a red, it is not. It is in fact a deep fuchsia with slightly silvered outer petals, the colour almost in the Bourbon style as far as this rich, saturated pink is concerned.  For me after a year and a half as a grafted plant, she is low and slightly tentacular in that tall canes are emerging from a squat shrubby foundation and her bloom has good upright Hybrid Tea sort of form and really decent rain resistance.  These pictures are quite accurate on my monitor.
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Not as fragrant as I had hoped from something with this sort of colouration, although I have found some roses take a couple of seasons for their perfume to really emerge so I'm withholding judgement.  Currently I'd describe it as a low-medium tearose scent with a hint of dusty fruit, about 4/10.
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Darcey Bussell, also a DA job.  No complaints about the vigour of this nice little doer; in half a year it's gone from a slightly wimpy graft to a prolific competitor to a too-close and fucking monstrous Golden Celebration.  The small galaxy of close-set buds have started popping to reveal flattened and button-eyed blooms in this deep, dark dimensional magenta purple which is very Old Garden Rose to my eye; images above use natural indoor daylight while below is obviously on the bush in some morning shade.  There is some scent- warm, slightly plasticky fruit, which I'd rate around 5/10.  But it's a nicer plant than the sum of its parts.
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Cactus flowers- Aloe, Sulcorebutia, Rebutia, Parodia, Mammillaria, Echinocereus etc.

17/12/2015

 

We document the usual xmas dwarf cacti explosion and a few choice aloe flowers for your delectation.

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Aloe capitata: bud and bloom.  First time it's flowered for me; ecstatic.
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Above left & below right: Aloe cameronii: this is the greener, more upright, more vigorous and less plastic-looking form of the two I own.  The bellbirds came in an devastated the earlier blooms on this plant while feeding chicks.
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Left: Aloe schomerii - rare in cultivation, first flower on this plant.  Below Lobivia/Echinopsis ancistrophora ssp arachnacantha
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Below left: Sulcorebutia Krainziana orange form       Lobvia ancistrophora buds
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Above left: Sulcorebutia candidae  Above right: Echinocereus sp.  Or could be a Rebutia hybrid.
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Above: the beauteous Parodia rutilans  
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Below:
Mammilaria carmenae
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Sulcorebutia canigueralii (I think)
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Below:  Rebutia pygmaea (or heliosa): many subtle charms.    Euphorbia horrida hybrid
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Below  Sulcorebutia pasopayana
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*   More of our succulent friends here   *   From our half acre garden   *   Flora   *


Sweetmeat: Eddie Izzard

16/12/2015

 
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His insane lurch from chunky indolence to running a charity marathon a day for I think the entire length of England was perhaps the only sort of batshit fuck-yeah example that could have helped propel me from my own similarly fat, louche stasis. One doesn't have to be a slender whippet to enjoy terrifyingly kinetic half-bestial health and I owe that realisation in part to this dubious and exceptional transvestite.
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*  More hotties   *   

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As a fellow spark of dainty luminous femininity trapped in the body of a big butch bitch, let me correct the oversight that was my omission of la Izzard from this catalogue of androgenic excellence. Sarcastic men in frocks are one of my favourite things ever.

Eddie would be my spirit animal if I believed in the necessity of remedial transubstantiation. Which I do not.  

​Everything is everything.
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That brings me tremendous joy.
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I prefer his earlier, bitchier work to the sort of stadium-pleasing recitals he does now, but whatever- I'd still still exploit him physically if I ever caught him in a vulnerable moment.  

​Lol.
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Photo du Jour: poppy & watermark

16/12/2015

 
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​Last of the first round of Princess Victoria Louise (?) oriental poppies; they were especially vivid this year, perhaps because of the cooler temperatures.  Thought I'd try and make something of it.
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*   See more of our photography here   *   Nice stuff from other people   *


Monday slash Tuesday slash Paris Climate Agreement slash sure, Jan.

15/12/2015

 
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I'd never usually dream of tinkling on the head of some blameless newborn public accord with my bad attitudinal wee-wees (comes out blue, smells like burning rubber), but if there's anything I've learned in my 40 plus years of sentient existence it's that vested corporate interests will sleaze their way out of public compacts in order to continue their ratchet cronyism.  They will in fact profit from the public complacency engendered by the expectation of meaningful progress.  

There, I said it.  So while the Paris thing is better than being awkwardly pegged with a rusty boot last by someone with the meth shakes, I won't be bending over in a darkened alley to celebrate any time soon.


If you really want to make a difference to climate change outcomes, you probably already know what you should be doing.  Most of it is its own reward, really.  Travel less.  Buy second hand and vintage stuff.  Enjoy the extraordinary gift of contraception.  Ditch your stinky, boring, ugly, pain in the arse money-pit car, or at least use it a lot less and invite others to share it when you do.  Plant trees.  Oppose the environmental degradation and support the regeneration projects happening in your area.  
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Let go of greed and infinite entitlement, that stuff we've been marinating in since birth- think of it as the best xmas present ever.  To yourself.  Fuck other people is a perfectly legitimate driver of social and environmental salvage.  ​

I may or may not be sitting in bed eating the white chocolate brownie someone gave me, in the face of all my own philosophical pronouncements. dietary hygiene, the revilement of grains by a crucial faction of my transhumant ancestors and the gaseous objections of my gut flora, pontificating about climate change whilst emitting methane on a scale disastrous within this particular domestic context.  Spoilt dogs may or may not have taken over one side of that bed in response to the unseasonal southerly blasting off a melting icepack in the Antarctic that is fucking with summer temperatures as part of an almost unprecedented 
el Niño.  

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But it's the end of a fairly shitty year and the monstrously conjugal complexity of material existence can eat a bowl of dicks while we watch Aqua Teen Hunger Force.  Again.

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La vie est un mystère qu’il faut vivre, et non un problème à résoudre.  Life is a mystery to be lived, not a problem to be solved, said some French random a while back, and he wasn't wrong.  

​I think I might make that my mission statement for 2016.  It'll either be that, or
 no one can defeat the quad laser.  ​Or
 I hope you can see this because I'm doing it as hard as I can.

I am already advanced beyond rules.  And manners.

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liked this caiman by Andrew McGibbon

14/12/2015

 
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Like crocodiles?  Like glamour?  Animal Lectures #01 make your lizard beauty dreams come true.
You can see the other stunning images and backstage shit
here in Behance.
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The Blackthorn Orphans Serialization:  Inferi Invidia

12/12/2015

 
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Two miles from the end of Commoriom Drive, along a paper road intended for the monstrous vehicles that would one day denude it, a fir plantation had displaced the forest clothing the surrounding hinterland.  Rain from the fat, dirty clouds of a stalled low dropped onto the black roof of the muscle car parked beneath the trees, the candy-red flames on its flanks defying the gloom.  Its windows ran with the condensed breath of the pair writhing in the front seat, their panting audible even over the babbling radio and squealing complaints of the suspension.  The woman stripped off her tiger-print dress, hands striking the ceiling light; her partner flipped back the sweaty fringe of his coif and frowned up at her when she had ceased to move astride him.

"Christina, one day I'm gonna make you fuckin walk home." he promised, slapping her rump.  

The woman lowered her dress without shifting her gaze from the back seat.  A stranger watched them from the rear, female, bereft of clothing, her pallid torso glistening with rain.  Her filthy black hair was matted with leaves and needles and clung to her cheeks and shoulders, following her arms and pooling with the water on the vinyl.  She dropped her chin and looked from the woman’s face toward the man with eyes of slanting nephrite green, like some satanic merrow awaiting the souls of the drowned.  Beside her the door hung ajar.  

“Do you wanna get the fuck outta my car?” the man sputtered, offloading his companion into the driver's seat.  He kicked open his door.  “Junkie bag-brides all the way out here now?  What the fuck’s wrong with this shithole of a town?”  The woman in the print dress shuddered under her orange backcomb at the intruder.  A glossy substance flowed from the latter's stare and coursed over her cheeks, down her throat and between her high, pale breasts, meeting the dark line of tattoo that began at the base of her neck and ran almost to her navel.

“Don’t be an asshole, Jonah.” the woman called softly.
"You wanna come do this?” he snapped, leaning down to glare at the intruder.  “Bitch, get out.”  

A moment of perfect inertia passed them by as he stood at the door.  In her own time and without warning the nameless female began to slide toward him, white chin drawing level with his forehead as she emerged.  Her mouth held the faint, spoiled colours of dying spring blossom.

“Jonah, get in the car...” his partner hissed; he stumbled backwards, teeth bared as she advanced on him; the stranger brushed away the blow he swung at her and snatched at his neck, the fingers of both hands working deeply into the stubbled flesh and closing until they met, while the woman's screams blasted white mist onto the car window.  The stranger crushed his cartilage and vertebrae together, the tissues collapsing as they might have done in the jaws of a carnivore; oblivious to his icthyoid struggles and the nails that gouged the cold skin of her arms, she watched the spittle splutter from his swollen lips while in his throat the great vessels ruptured in unison, their blood escaping his nose in pulsing concert with the shuddering of his dying limbs.  Claws as clear as the scales over a snake's eyes slid from the ends of her fingers into the throttled flesh.

The corpse fell heavily when she let it go, rolling twice over the needles.  The woman had screamed herself silent by the time the stranger bent at the window and opened her mouth into something between a lizard's gape and a lunatic's rictus.  Remembering the keys, she worked them desperately, sobbing as the mechanism refused her and the creature found an unlocked door.  

Buried stones and arching tree roots tore at her muddied legs as she was dragged over them, though having hauled her so far from the vehicle the looming creature released her hair and let her lie against the ground.  The woman gasped beside a blue-grey trunk, thunder rolling slowly down the hill like something that could crush her, slowly regaining her wits; hearing nothing, she lifted her head from the ground and reached for a hooped root.  Only when she had climbed onto all fours and begun to crawl away was she flattened again by a foot stamped on her back, cold hands lifting and tossing her stiffly against the tree.  Her head cracked hard on the fissured trunk, harder still a second and then third time, and at first she lolled amid the circling sparks and bubbling black fade of failing consciousness while the tang of cushioning fluids leaked into her throat.  She hacked a mouthful into the stranger's face and was flung back again in retribution, her assailant succumbing to the shrill delights of battery, the woman's head leaving a soft confusion of torn hair and slick, dim colours on the snagging bark. 
                                                            
                                                
                                                                                                                




Sachiin tried to dismiss the memory of his brother's banishment as he sat amongst the insects that danced in a shade scented by ice and broken stone.  Two thirds of the day had already passed while behind him the Tien Shan lay in awesome, shimmering repose, veiled in dusty white heat that lofted under their scant banner of cloud.  Waiting alone at the edge of their attending plain, he burnt out his gaze in the fata morganas of its restive horizon.  Though the altitude was too great for human comfort, it was to him of such sunken weight and density that it oppressed with the insistence of a grave; bored, he weighed the rumour that had solicited him, finding little to assure him that his brother was not as far away as the world allowed.  

A lammergier circled in the haze, its shadow flashing over him.  Sachiin knew the cool taste of the air that it enjoyed, his eyes following its pale shape until they were drawn landward by a visual disturbance of the horizon.  An animal came at speed toward the mountains, into the burnished rays laid down by the sun's descent, trailing a long tail of dust.  Closer still, and it was more substantially revealed, a four-legged beast devouring the distance remaining between them like windblown flame, a long, self-coloured plume tracing the arch of its neck, the blasting of its breath sounding even as it threw its weight onto its haunches and slid to a halt, circling tightly before the boulders.  

A figure sat astride its back amongst trappings of red, sweat-darkened wool and swarthy felt.  Sachiin climbed down from the stones toward the surmounting stranger in visible anticipation of his identity, though only his breeches and the muffling cloth about his head were of bai'issātva homespun, a shocking display of perfunction beside the deep blue silk of his tunic.  He spoke no word of greeting but looked first to the comfort of his red horse, taking a goat skin trimmed with sunbleached tassels of human hair from its neck and allowing the animal to slake its thirst from the bulging reservoir.

Passing his eyes over the alien array stowed in its harness, Sachiin wondered at the shape of a great knife in its tanned sheath, one half of a pair, at a dark coil of plaited rope, a black, furled blanket of piled wool and a felt bag enlivened with shamanic abstracts, secured to the rear of the saddle.  He feasted on their strangeness until he became conscious of the survey to which he was himself subjected; satisfied or wearied by it, Kala'amātya spoke to his horse and left it to rest, sitting down on a length of slate cast by the hill above.

The face and hands revealed as he unwound the black cloth from his head were heavily scarred, new damage supplanting that earned previous to his expatriation.  Sachiin set himself down on the other half of the broken stone, immediately regretting the confronting nature of their respective positions.  If he had been distant before exile his brother had returned as something incalculably remote, vastly extending his knowledge of the concept; when he spoke, the sound of his voice had changed to conform to the shape of the plain itself, flat, arid and comfortless.

"What did you tell them?" asked Kala'amātya.  

"That there were snow lotus on the hills, and I would return with them..."  Sachiin's reply sounded too loud and eager but the visitor scanned the slopes as if his assurance counted for nothing.  

"I rejoice that you can now lie on your own behalf." he murmured, sitting in his dispassion like a spectre humouring the living with a mortal shape.  His companion’s dismay slid into shame.

​"Kala'amātya... I am sorry, every day, and every day I have no brother." he vowed, the words leaving them in silence while the day went gladly to its death around them.  The visitor leant back to rest his head against the slab, closing his eyes in a private moment of weary, melancholic concession, a gesture so unprecedented that Sachiin almost started at it.  "Are you well?" he demanded impulsively. 

His brother did not reply for a long time, speaking only slowly when he finally did.

"I would ask something of you, if you can swear on your own eyes that you will answer plainly, and not to please me, nor any other.  You must speak only for yourself."

The respondent sat poised in grave anticipation.

​"I swear it."
"Are you content, Sachiin?  With life, as it is?"

The latter's confusion, so gradually realised, was as much an answer as anything he could have consciously supplied.  In his heart he ran as though on tilting ice, gaining nothing, while his brother took something from the amulet bag strung around his neck and placed it in his upturned palm.  Intensely cold and perfectly smooth, the object proved a polished disc on which the brightness of their skin reflected.  Some noble species of stone, Sachiin guessed, like that which he had seen upon the priestesses, its extraordinary hues recalling ice calved from a glacier, its glassy whiteness clouded around fingers of dense pine green.  Its beauty and alien artifice pressed him back into silence, leaving no words to question or give thanks for the inscrutable endowment.  Together they became aware of an approach from the far side of the ridge, executed with more care than stealth.  

"Sis'thle bai'in." said Kala'amātya briefly, and wound the cloth around his head, catching his horse and returning to the saddle while the beast spun, tail lashing.  At his bidding it sprang away across the dusty ground, working hard to gain speed, and they were lost to the thickening dusk, the sound ushered away by the evening wind that began to sweep out over the plain.

High on the ridge, the arrival followed his retreat with her own eyes, knowing that her eldest child had likely blessed the fleetness of the animal bearing him away from her.  The little she had seen of him gave her a moment of rueful gratitude; he had seemed as impervious as she could have privately desired, an able denizen of hell, if nothing more.  With his brother lost to him again Sachiin concealed both the jade and his disappointment.  She slipped her hands into her sleeves and spoke to him.

"When we were created, the Mother in her great wisdom gave to us this high place, so that all that lies beneath the clouds might trouble us not.  This was the greatest of her gifts to us." she told him, as he began the climb toward her.  
                                                                               
CONTINUED NEXT WEEK
​© céili o'keefe  do not reproduce                         
​

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Photo Essay: Spring 2015 in the Blackthorn Garden, Port Chalmers NZ

10/12/2015

 

I bought a lot of new roses over winter and have been obsessing over their first flowers for some time.

I'll post some more of the new guys when they get going.
​And that's not to say we don't appreciate the older soldiers.  A cold windy el Niño spring has meant some blind buds here and there but overall the flower load has been satisfactory.
​Both the Lovely R and I took these recent shots for your delectation.
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Arum lilies  /  Mary Rose (David Austin) -  Splendid, enthusiastic and underrated.
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My prince did come but he was nothing like his Tinder pic.  Brown Tree Frog Littoria ewingii amongst lilies and Irene Watts rose  
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Unknown blue clematis x in MIL's Christchurch garden  / rose Ellen (DA)
Rugosa rose Martin Frobisher- new but coming along nicely, shapely frame, elegant foliage, a tidy rice-white bloom and modest clovey scent.
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DA rose Wife of Bath, a long desired acquisition, first time flowering for us.  Hardcore myrrh.

​>  Madame Isaac Péreire- the Jabba the Hutt of Bourbons; fruit scent doth verily smack one upside the head. 
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unknown rhododendron in the front yard  /  rose Agnes (rugosa)  / iris  /  Rose du Rescht
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Nectaroscordum siculum Sicilian honey garlic flower detail- a fabulous no-bullshit allium and the only one to come back consistently for me / white clover detail.
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DA rose The Endeavour / rose Royden (local HT)  / DA rose Glamis Castle (DA)  (a bit spindly
but sublime flowers and massive myrrh scent)  / rose Sally Holmes  (uncomplaining and prolific)
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Rugosa rose Rugspin - the very first flower on this young plant.  Stunning imperial crimson and lovely pale golden anthers; there is a fresh-ground clove scent and the bush is doing well in half shade despite a hideous aphid burden.

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Kitchen Bitch:  Hey hey, let's cook Black Rice

8/12/2015

 
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While I grew up cooking both Indian specifically and Asian food in general, I'd never done black rice at home.  Perhaps because I've tried almost every other variety known to man and found they generally don't live up to the hype, because they're all just... rice, really; Oryza sativa, that ancient friend.  An exception to this blanket dictum is a good montane basmati, which is truly distinct in both flavour and texture from your long/medium-grain standard commercial varieties.  

Today I'm using an organic Thai black rice.  Some black rice is glutinous but I did not find this one particularly sticky even though I overcooked it, so I'm assuming it was one of the less gluggy varieties.  I don't personally consume much cereal any more; when we do, w
e eat wholegrain (non-hulled or brown) out of a (probably half-superstitious) belief that less processed = better.  According to Wikipedia, black rice is fucking loaded with anthocyanin, iron and vitamin E, however the page sort of reads like something issued by the Black Rice Hurrah Ambitious Growers Association, so my critical faculties are toning that shit down by half.  Whatever.  If you're going to eat rice, black wholegrain is probably the way to go.

Whole rice of all persuasions is the shitty and distracted cook's friend, retaining an acceptable texture waaaay beyond the point when white rice collapses into blown-out pasty mush because you forgot about it in your narcissistic self-absorption.  I soaked this rice overnight as per recommendations and found it fast-cooking and tender, to the point where a wholegrainphobe would possibly overlook the fact that they were
actually consuming fibre and nutrients.  It's also very beautiful, retaining all those inky ochre copper eggplant tones through the cooking process and lending even boring bumfuck not-again dishes its undisputed aesthetic advantages.

I can report that all that rhapsodical flavour hyperbole around black rice is exactly that- confabulated hipster bullshit.  It's not going to take your tongue on a magic carpet ride as-is so forget any notions of lingual psychedelia.  It just tastes like a mild high-quality brown, with maybe a five-percent swing toward bland, slightly smoky sweetness á la basmati, rather than hitting you with those hard, grassy notes sometimes present in coarser wholegrain varieties.  But this laid-back, neither/nor aspect is what makes it such an eminent vehicle for other flavours; it really did come out swinging as a fantastic absorber and projector of condiments and sauces.
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Okay!  Let's cook this shit.  R's making toasties in the background but I want to do it now so just ignore him.  I bought half a kilo of organic black rice and that cost me $6-something NZ dollars, which is stupidly expensive.  

​What are you going to do- grow it yourself?
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Here's what the raw grains look like- phoenix food is the first thing that came to mind.  I'm going to soak a standard cup of the dry grain in cold water overnight, which I'll put in the fridge because it's summer, I'm not making beer and food poisoning's bad, mmmokay?
Soaking isn't absolutely necessary.  I have a dodgy gut for grains and find it improves digestibility.  I add about triple the dry volume's worth of water to anything I'm soaking and that's always worked well across the board.
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​Halfway through the next day I yoink it out of the fridge.  It's swelled a wee bit but not as impressively as something like chickpeas.  Rinsed, into a pan with the obligatory three xs cold water, no salt (salt can make some rices swell and burst so I generally abstain), covered and brought to the boil.  Five minutes of this + another twenty or so of quiet simmering got me cloudy purple water and a very slightly overcooked result.  Compare the cooked grains to the raw ones in my palm below right.
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The rice blew up to around triple the original 1 cup volume; this impressed me and took some of the sting out of the price per kilo.  It also drained and dried out well in the sieve without glueing itself into a hard lump.  I put it back in the fridge for tomorrow.
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Lunch is a free range peppered pork steak, asparagus and my patented WTF fried rice which is a shredded Chinese omelette and whatever vegetables and sauces haunt the fridge (today cauliflower, mushrooms, spring onion, and fucking tomato which is not a match for Hoisin sauce so don't ever do that). 
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The original one cup made enough for four people in the context of this meal, but R eats for two and I held some back for another dish so it worked out well.  The black rice stayed structurally intact, didn't stick to the frying pan and certainly broadcast all those flavours nicely; it did amplify the sweetness of the sauce so perhaps keep that in mind.  You can make a shitload of different sweet dishes and puddings with this lovely grain so have a look for them online.  I know I will be.  

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liked this image of Mt Etna erupting by Marco Restivo

7/12/2015

 
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 Fire and ash emissions spew from Mount Etna’s Voragine crater.  Marco Restivo/Demotix/Corbis  More in the G

Monday slash Tuesday slash multicellular eukaryotes slash black rice slash NWA

7/12/2015

 
I'm bored with words, we're both real-world busy and plus we've taken a fucktonne of photos in the garden so that's what you're getting this week- flowers on mute.  Well as mute as I ever am.  It's what you get every fucking spring, I know, but I think if 2015 has taught us anything, it's that there are worse things so you'll just have to deal with it.  

​The Lovely R's been getting all his dodgy old lenses out and wanking on about the various properties of this one versus that, but I just nod and shut my ears because my thirst for knowledge knows no bounds.
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This is the awesome hybrid Clematis Warsaw Nike.  Below and to the right there are progressive zooms on the bizarre flowers that have been happening for the first time on our native Rewarewa tree, Knightia excelsa.  ​

We have three examples of this species that I grew from seed; to see these increasingly mighty organisms go forth fruitfully after having held their papery little embryos in my hand and helped them into being has all the sentimental appeal of child-rearing and none of its shit-stained fatigue and midnight regret.  Trees don't smoke meth in your garage, get their sullen underaged girlfriends pregnant, hate you, get expelled from school or steal your car to impress their dipshit friends.  
​
​Trees > biological children.

Rewarewas are part of the whacky southern hemisphere Proteacea group which includes everything from Banksias to Macadamias (as in the highly delicious nut).  Look at the beautiful copper-flecked bark; trés Japonisme.
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In keeping with this week's vegetal theme I'll also be blogging my first domestic foray into cooking black rice, because I never have before and that's a fucking unacceptable state of affairs.  Stay tuned.  
Depressive?  Angry?  Withdrawn?  Otherwise fucked in the head?  Think you'll explode your acid blood Mr Creosote-styles if one more arsehat tweaks you the wrong way?  Get a garden, seriously.  If it's at all possible.  Borrow someone else's if you have to or maybe get involved in your municipal/communal horticultural situation.  

It may seem boring, middle-aged and dully quotidian; I thought all this about gardening too until my late twenties, when I made friends with the neglected specimens lurking around my partner's inner city cottage and found them better and more rewarding company than most of the sentient objects in my life.  I would have probably topped either myself or some of the many knobgobblers who've been on my figurative dick this year if I hadn't been able to go and stare at beautiful plants in silence and privacy.
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Were we the only goths who rolled to NWA in '90?  Back in the day we used to battle this shit out conversationally, walking down the street dressed like the whitest undead freaks ever, flipping off carloads of rednecks and confusing the hell out of standard-issue passers by.  Yeah I'm a gangster but still I got flava :)  I shouted my nephew to Yella's show in Christchurch the other weekend for his birthday; the circle is complete.

I'm so fucking old : /

David Austin Rose Death Match: Ellen v Grace v Crown Princess Margareta v Ambridge Rose

7/12/2015

 
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Natural light, no photoshopping and very representative on my monitor.
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Clockwise from top left: Grace, Ellen, Crown Princess Margareta, Ambridge Rose.
​This Ambridge bloom is a little tired but still comes out swinging as the hands-down winner of the scent challenge with the most beautiful and complex myrrh I've ever encountered- even if you generally dislike that note, the intense bonus mix of fruit and powder make it worth your attention. Ellen runs second with great big soapy fruit and petitgrain- these first two are must-haves for scent queens.  Crown P is all low dusty fruit with a hint of peat and an odd sort of pea-green element, and Grace exhibits modest smoky tea-type notes.  All but Ellen are new in my garden this year and doing well.  The first three listed are all similarly large, thick-petalled and rain-resistant once fully open (the Crown P is still only half-out here) with Ellen possibly taking the heavyweight title, whilst the Ambridge is smaller, more tissue-y and delicate.

The Blackthorn Orphans Serialization:  Rahat Loukoum 2

5/12/2015

 
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While he could still feel his blackening hands, the Bon shaman reached out stiffly through the cold for the glittering furs wrapped around his general’s shoulders, shaking the man awake.  The wind slapped away any words spoken at a distance, so he leant over the mounded rime between them and directed the soldier’s thin, ice-crusted gaze toward the end of the shallow white valley.  Daylight had already fallen to the storm that had rolled up over the high pass and pressed the exhausted detachment to the ground; though they huddled in a desperate throng, the shrieking gale ripped the warmth from their flesh and froze their legs and feet to the black rock beneath them.  While the bodies of the dead had stiffened under their felts and hides the general had heaped rueful imprecations on the head of the Qijia prince who had ordered them into the mountains, on the fatal creatures he was to have subdued, and onto the shaman he had paid to locate them.  The latter stared, wide-eyed, and shook him again, urging him to throw back the bear hide from his head and behold the black shape that came toward them through the snow.

New agonies stabbed up through his legs as he rose, scuffing ice from his face and warning the babbling magician to be quiet.  Black homespun wreathed the approaching creature like the shrouds enrobing the dead of the general’s own tribe, filling him with a pious dread that almost overcame him.  From his tattered cloak of felt the shaman drew a bird-bone rattle and began to shake it at the visitant with a hand browned by a forgotten sun.  Without preamble or introduction, it ceased its advance and addressed them, speaking in the magician's own tongue, the narrow stripe of skin between the windings of its veil so kindred to the snow that its gaze appeared to float amid the storm itself.  The shaman stuttered an imperfect version of the creature’s address.

“This shaitan will lead us over the pass.  For this kindness, it will accept all of the gold that your chieftain has given you to...”  He turned to his companion, clutching his rattle.  At last beholding a member of the race he had been commissioned to destroy, the general took a measure of its form, from where its feet stood bare upon the snow to its golden eyes, seeing nothing he could recognize, not honour nor loathing, compassion or impelling greed.  

“I did not march from the Blue Lake to be murdered like an old woman.” he muttered.  The creature received the news phlegmatically and gave a swift reply.

“The shaitan says that it will go back onto the mountain, and wait... wait... until we are all dead, then it will take the gold!” the shaman cried.  Behind them those soldiers still sensible began to struggle to their feet, clutching their blankets and crying out in support of the shaman.  Their leader pulled his hide about him and lowered his short frame to the ground.

​“Look at this beast for yourselves and ask what use it has for gold.  It does not come down from the Tien Shan to hunt coins.  I am old, the snow will take my legs, and I will not waste my last breath haggling with demons.  This shaitan will have nothing from me.”  The figure in question recognized the unblenching finality of the general’s judgement and turned from their party, heading back toward the west.

At the urging of the shaman the detachment surged after it, stumbling into each other in their desperation, the blown snow flying from their heaving shoulders as they toiled through the drifts.  The stranger led them down a slow incline and onto the floor of the valley lying between two ice-collared peaks of fractured stone where the snow thinned, blown to the sides of the cirque by the gale, and where the footing became firmer, allowing the men to coalesce.  Their squinting gasps became rigid grins as they began to credit their good fortune, turning to each other behind their guide.  It was in the midst of their hysterical acclaim that some saw the black-garbed creature disappear before their streaming eyes, swallowed as if by some drape of snow; they shuffled forward, discovering a shallow hole piercing the ground on which they stood, no wider than a swan's wing.  Black water slopped from its jagged margins.

A sound like cracking stone and tearing flesh flew with the faults that opened across the frozen lake in three directions, its surface tilting with their weight.  Beneath them, the solitary creature waited in waters thrumming with the supple groaning of the ice then glutted with their hapless bodies, plunging and thrashing as they were dashed into the lake, their flooded garments and leather cloaks binding their limbs like sheets of lead.  The ice righted itself, clashing and merging on the surface and crushing their clawing limbs, sealing them under the floes while their screams belched silver and they drowned, struggles fitfully degrading, their hair and clothing rising as though blown behind their sinking forms.

Their guide stroked back slowly through the drifting bodies in a blue haze returned once more to silence.  At the eastern shore of the lake he stood his feet on the silty bed and cracked the frozen surface with his shoulders, stepping out onto snow that had already overwritten the ploughed tracks of his victims.

It gave the general no joy to see he had been proven wiser than the rest, and he fell ponderously sideways in his effort to meet his end with a modicum of dignity, struggling up onto his frozen knees.  Despite the twinned blades sheathed on his back, the creature raised a hand only to stroke the water from his face as he walked on past without a glance toward him, heading north into the snow. 

                                                                                 




Susan leant through the kitchen door into darkness, turning her head in search of the ringtone rendition of Ave Maria's opening chords that had exhausted her patience while she sorted laundry in the adjacent garage.  The blinking flourescence overhead revealed three paper bags stuffed with groceries on the formica table, her own name blocked in black felt pen on top of each; the bottom of one had darkened with some internal mishap and she pushed through the manga-branded pot noodles and pillowy bags of marshmallows until her fingers found a carton of gourmet ice cream from which the contents had escaped.  It had drowned a clutch of croissants and begun to leak onto the table.  Employing both arms, she made a careful attempt to shift the sack toward the sink, exclaiming loudly as it gave way and dumped melted dairy down her legs into her mary janes.  The forgotten telephone began flashing brightly on the bench as it replayed the offending jingle.

William responded neither to his name nor title in any portion of the ground floor.  Clutching the telephone in her determination to visit it upon him, she sighted movement through the drawing room doors; the damp grass swept the icecream from her shoes as she marched out through the cricket song and darkness toward the pool, where a figure swam laps in the fresh charge of water.  He alternated between its surface and the unlit depths, undulant motion rippling the motifs on his back amid his unremitting toil.  Susan stood on the tiles and frowned for a moment before leaning over with the telephone chiming in her hand.

"Mr Lamb... Mr Lamb... I think this is yours.  You might want to answer it." she called.

The swimmer abandoned his trajectory, stroking through the water until he broke the surface almost at her feet.  Grasping the stone with both hands, he hauled out swiftly, the element he departed sliding back over his shoulders, falling from the black shorts at his waist and the long white arms he lifted and shook out in a gesture of startling, whiplash violence.  Astonished, Susan stepped backward as he took the phone from her hand.

"This is private property." he told her, his stare like a fist to her face.

"I'm sorry..." she offered; he arrested her retreat, his white hand cold on her wrist while he examined the appliance.  She exclaimed and tried to pull free, which he did not allow until William stepped down through the French doors and waved to catch his attention.  She looked between them, startled by the resemblance that had inspired her mistake, imperfect though it proved in actuality. 

​"Hey, Edward Lamb, meet Susan Christabel, la déesse du foyer." his brother called, though his intervention was rendered redundant, Susan hurrying back toward the house without acknowledging him.

CONTINUED NEXT WEEK
​© céili o'keefe  do not reproduce

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liked this work by Meghan Howland

4/12/2015

 
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 Cycles / Union / Mein Pova
Was taking my own advice the other day and looking through her latest work, which is so... everything.  Sigh.     See more here.

Hostile Witness Film Review Recent Documentary Rodeo

3/12/2015

 
It's December already and the struggle to avoid meaningful human interaction intensifies.  Everyone knows holidays are oversold shite, so why not stay home and watch something that won't compromise your IQ with a fucking bag of chips or something?  Works for us.
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AMY (2015, Asif Kapadia) 
Chronicles Winehouse’s enormous talent, shitty fam,  joie de vivre, unfortunate susceptibilities and tragically attenuated life in compelling detail.  Superb in every respect and mandatory viewing.  Fandom strictly optional, which is always the test of a great documentary.  I would just say that anyone unlucky enough to have dealt with addiction or lost a loved one to either drugs or ED will find this a fairly harrowing and horribly familiar experience, so please approach with caution.  Stunning, tho.

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Dior and I (2015 Frédéric Tcheng)  
Lovely to look at and smooth as a length of good habotai silk but also verrrry much in line with the fashion industry’s view of itself i.e. 
hautement expérimentée, exclusivity, bankable tortuousness etc. and therefore not especially interesting in itself beyond the beauteous visuals.  There’s still enough here for anyone wanting a gander at Raf Simons, the creative / constructive process and the atelier system, but I was left wanting a bit more substance; a bit of fucking critique wouldn't have gone astray either.

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The Emperor’s New Clothes (2015 Michael Winterbottom)
The Russell Brand/Winterbottom antiglobalisation/inequity polemic is a nice place to start for anyone wanting a friendly practical overview of the results of the financial crisis and batshit cannibal capitalism.  Even if you personally would like to beat Brand with a studded switch for all his hamfisted attentionwhoring, there’s no point shooting the messenger when the communique is sound.  Preaches to the converted but not as bad as we expected; worth a look when you’ve got nothing else on.

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All of Me (2014 Alexandra Lescaze)
Witness the Austin chapter of the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance’s struggle with the new scope of, and emphasis on, the obesity that is so intrinsic to its members’ identities.  A homely, humanist, non-exploitative investigation that allows those living with overweight to voice their own private struggles amid an increasingly confused clamour in the popular media.  Everyone should see this for a hundred different reasons.

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Artifact (2013 Bartholomew Cubbins)
Much-touted exposé of the financial and legal assaults faced by faux-emo outfit Thirty Seconds to Mars.  And virtually everyone else in the commercial music and creative industries.  We loathe Jared Leto and don’t give a dry fuck if he’s beggared by Virgin/EMI, but their point stands, it is fairly well delineated here and civilians need to know this shit.  Still heavily marred by Leto’s oozing vanity and punchability; generators of intellectual property should probably avoid for the sake of their stroke risk.

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The Armstrong Lie (2013 Alex Gibney)
We’ve watched this four times now and are still gobsmacked by both Lance’s brass-necked sociopathy and former fanboy Gibney’s utter blindness to its pervasive monstrosity, but kudos to the latter for outing his own worshipful bullshit.  The fascination hinges on Armstrong’s viperish exploitation of seemingly everyone around him vs the public image he was still so able to project, and why so many people were so loathe to accept his reality.  You don’t have to follow or even understand team sports to profit from The Armstrong Lie’s mightily valuable insights.  As good as it could be given the icky nature of the beast.

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That Sugar Film (2015 Damon Gameau)
While That Sugar Film boasts far more Damon Gameau and his lensfucking partner than we were ultimately comfortable with and cribs shamelessly from Spurlock’s Supersize Me, it does manage to communicate many of the problems posed by sugar in the Western diet to the naive audience for which it was presumably intended.  Anyone past the WTF how many teaspoons? stage in their journey to enlightenment will probably find it as basic as we did.  Highlight: the half-Mountain Dew yokel and his intensely satisfying dental comeuppance (sadists only).

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About Face: Supermodels Then and Now (2013 Timothy Greenfield-Sanders) 
​What is it like to be a collection of fetishised angles?  To depend on them for financial and psychological security?  To be so blessed and inevitably betrayed by that ambiguous currency?  About Face won’t change your life but some of these hot bitches drop wisdom we can all profit from. Not as hagiographic nor mindless as we expected.


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20 Feet from Stardom (2013 Morgan Neville)
​Excellent account of the backup singers’ lot in an industry renowned for its shameless appropriation and cruelty.  Extremely well-executed, heaving with righteous archival stuff and affecting reportage from the women in question, so long overlooked and exploited.  Highly recommended.

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Inside Job (2010 Charles Ferguson)
​The definitive OG account of the 2008 economic fuck fest and the astonishingly comprehensive international sleaze that is still romping on unchecked.  We don't understand how Ferguson's team got so many of the greedy psychopaths involved to outline their malfeasance on camera but suspect that's just a depressing insight into their smirking impunity.  If you are going to sit through any of the numberless post mortems, give Inside Job your iTunes dollar and reward its discipline and daring.

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