AUSTRALIA ~ The Antipodes

AUSTRALIA ~ The Antipodes
I love a sunburnt country / A land of sweeping plains / Of ragged mountain ranges / Of droughts and flooding rains / I love her far horizons / I love her jewel-sea / Her beauty and her terror / The wide brown land for me / ~ Dorothea Mackellar (1885-1968)

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Saturday, November 15, 2008

Brittle Yesterdays


Pic by Gemma Wiseman ~ Nepean Historical Society Museum and Heritage Gallery housed in the Mechanics' Institute of 1876-77 ~ Sorrento, Mornington Peninsula
~
Cafe Writing prompt ~ Option 1 Pick 3 ~ Fewer and fewer Americans possess objects that have a patina, old furniture, grandparents’ pots and pans, the used things, warm with generations of human touch, essential to a human landscape. Instead, we have our paper phantoms, transistorized landscapes. A featherweight portable museum. ~ Susan Sontag
~
Pick at least three of the following words, and build a piece of writing around them. The form is up to us: poem, scene, flash-fic, essay, or general blog entry.
~
essential, furniture, landscape, museum, paper, patina, possess, touch, warm
~

The peeling furniture of old memories
The brittle paper of yesterday's ideas
Become
A musty, clinical landscape
Locked in some recycled building
Open only for
Selective viewing at
Selected times
(Perhaps a weekend fill-in
Often closed on Mondays)
~
Little wonder
This break neck world
Prefers the essential
Instant touch of
A warm keyboard
(Open 24 hours)
Linking the unknown landscape to
A transisterised
Ephemeral
Portable museum of
Past
Present and
Maybe
Future
Realities
~
And perhaps
All we really possess
Is the chance opportunity
To peer through a smeary window at
The patina
The curiosity of
What was
~

Pic by Gemma Wiseman ~ Windows on the Sorrento Museum
~

5 comments:

paris parfait said...

Wonderful photos and poem, Gemma!

Anonymous said...

Gemma, I love the mood you set with this, and especially liked the last stanza, and the ending phrase, "The curiosity of what was."

Your photos are wonderful as well. If you ever want to submit one to be used as the "Can You Picture That" prompt, let me know?

paisley said...

i have always found what was ever so much more inspiring that what may be... beautiful words and photos.....

Leslie said...

Beautiful photos and writing this morning Gemma. :)

Anonymous said...

"locked in some recycled building"

this piece has a definite ache to it

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Archive of Blog Quotes

  • A perfect summer day is when the sun is shining, the breeze is blowing, the birds are singing, and the lawn mower is broken. ~James Dent
  • Autumn is an introspective season when stray thoughts of the mind dive into the mystique of the soul - Gemma Wiseman
  • Autumn is the bridesmaid of Summer and the flowergirl of Winter ~ Gemma Wiseman
  • Autumn whispers the tones of yesterday in a minor key ~ Gemma Wiseman
  • Love is born / With a dark and troubled face, / When hope is dead / And in the most unlikely place; / Love is born, / Love is always born. - Michael Leunig's Christmas Song Cycle "Southern Star"
  • Spring paints the stars of heaven in Earth colours ~ Gemma Wiseman
  • Summer sizzles with a sibilant hush / Broken by dreams of / Clinking ice ~ Gemma Wiseman
  • The object of a new year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul. - G.K. Chesterton
  • Winter is an etching, spring a watercolor, summer an oil painting and autumn a mosaic of them all. - Stanley Horowitz
  • Winter is the fire, simmering lonely in the soul ~ Gemma Wiseman
  • Winter is the shadow, the etching of the seasons in the mist ~ Gemma Wiseman

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