Lisa- it's your birthday!

Sleepy-eyed, I sit here, umbilical cord slowly unstretching after 4 days away on a birthday trip to the sea (Bateman's Bay, Aust). Blogging started as a TAFE assignment which I didn`t get into at the time...largely because when we did blogging/HTML, I was under the fist of a diabolical, sleep-stealing, heart-mincing demon (as initially, a certain amount of concentration is required for left-brained learning)...however, since, I have taken to it obsessively and being away for the past few days has been hard...

And now I am back, I gaze around at the snapshot of life from before I left. Any time you leave for a period of time, upon returning you may find yourself looking at a person you now feel removed from...(ie- you). A holiday can be like a step outside the usual unquestioned flow of things...
Just for a moment before returning to your familiar domain, you will be taken up above your forest of you, beyond the prosaic details of the trees...

I have been away from my parents for most of the time since I was 11. Every time I have returned any objects I have left in my room have acted as a time capsule of who I was and what I was on about the last time I was home...

This trip was for my birthday. For as long as I can remember this day has been such a black-hole for me...it's not a vain-one-year-older-thing, but just a profoundly lonely day that brings me face-to-face with myself (bit of an lonely-only-child- thing). Usually I would tell nobody and disappear by myself with a journal, pen and bottle of something strong. Not this year- this year since I have found love, so much has changed. I know how it sounds and feels to hear someone else's exclamations of love...somewhere between boredom, discomfort and tantalisation...actually it's always been a heart-breaking tease for me, being immersed in others' luke-warm-used-bathwater tales and public shows of love- (or whatever)...

I searched for 18 years for the ever-elusive chalais of love, and now I have found it with my beautiful Québecker. If anyone has paid their dues to the puppeteer/s of love, it's me and I deserve to speak of it. All takes on such a different face and seeing pictures of myself now, there is a look that fills my face that I don't recognise and suddenly all feels so possible.

My birthday trip was also a chance to celebrate with my best friend, who was born only two days and less than a kilometer away from me. Four years ago, I flew back from Greece to share our 30th birthdays (and with her twin brother). She's one of those people whose colour and life always create a comforting and fun place to be. I am about to start a blog for her, which I will link to on doing so. Since our initial years we hung out, we have moved into parallel universes to each other, but the language is still the same. It's a true test of friendship when all can superficially change, but the meaning's still there...

Here are some image of my friend, her babies and my love making sand-castles just down from where we stayed. One day, these images will help form the boys' memories. When we see a child, we see a child as they are at that time and we don't even notice the look of the world as it is...however one day, that child will look back at those images and be taken by every detail of what is different and what is the same in themselves and their world;- wallpaper, hair, toy, cars, people...

This generation's memories won't be as flavoured by format as mine or those before...in that digital technology has reached a basic floor of images of realsitic appearance whose information will not degrade (unless the actual file is lost or damaged). For me, as a '71 baby, technology very much fits into my assessment of history...at the beginning of my grandparents' lives (the earliest generation I can really be aware of), came the first real beginnings of 4-D media (in film and believe-it-or-not- video). They were sepia and black-and white. Blue eyes looked white and reds looked black. Noone could move thanks to excrutiatingly-long shutter speeds. This and movement-preventing braces made for very stern faces on adults and often ghostly-looking babies (who could not sit still (increasing the appearance of hard-living adults and short-living infants).

With the advent of colourised film

to be continued...
the other birthday song...