The Day of the Triffids, Ohariu Valley

I hate wind farms – and so does our God of the Winds, Tawhiri Matea. He particularly dislikes the arrangement around Palmerston North. Anyway I am doing the usual checking of my letterbox at the flats to see if there is another ten day notice to leave (for non-payment of rent) and there is this pro-wind farm advice for residents of the Johnsonville – Ohariu region.

The scissors appeared from nowhere, and like these giant aether swipers, started cutting. Three of the monsters metamorphosized and begged to be allowed to ravage the Makara and Ohariu regions. A few strokes of gesso, acrylic and a swirl of black in judicious spirals and the background to day of the triffids emerged. Then the triffids, and the cross. The people of the valleys appeal to Tawhiri Matea to hold aloft a Celtic Cross, gifted by the avatar Christos, to stay the invasion. The frame was ready made as the original picture – nothing to do with the subject matter – came from it.

Gesso, acrylic, oil, collaged triffids and Celtic Cross, 2008

Hi there on June 4 2009. It's me, inanga, again. I'm in hard trying to learn this amazing blog world. Amazing because it allows any of us to send our thoughts out to the world from little ol' New Zealand (Aotearoa). 'The poet and the painter, No allowance for the other...' and something about the failing light illuminating the mercenaries creed.

Exhibiting , possibly, five pieces next week for sale in a gallery ROAR in Wellington and frightened that this belt-tightening recession has scotched the populace's penchance for fine art. Whatever God wills... Begnissimo solo tibi cordis devotianum quotidanum facio. The pic posted above Day of the Triffids is for Miles from Nowhere who hasn't seen or photographed the piece. He does the photography for me, and apart from having studied under the great Cecil Beaton, he knows what an f-stop is. Anyway, it is a detail and I don't want to go into details.

A poem as a tester:

Tumbleweed

Tumbleweed, tumbleweed
Nomadic North American son
Rambling seed of desert creed
Watching it… all be done

Rolling down Gila River
Watching Mama and Papago
Flying in cup and saucer
That came long time ago
It came to deliver
Good ol' folks from Casa Grande
Baptism in the Goldwater
Far more than they planned

Tumbleweed, tumbleweed
Rented truck in Tucson
Going to see cactus
Organ pipes play
To hear saguaro sing along
Mourning with Cochise
On some desolate reservation
From the three Mesa of the Hopi
To the Apache Nation

Tumbleweed, tumbleweed
Call wind
To come the other way
Roll time backwards
Taiowa hold the reins
Geronimo make the sway
Tumbleweed, tumbleweed
Cross another plain
South wind pushes north
Time paints a desert
Where fountain issues forth

Tumbleweed, tumbleweed
Don't tell me life's a bitch
May as well call canyon Grand
And shove us in that ditch
Tumbleweed, tumbleweed
Time will come I'm sure
Window Rock will open
And dreams rush through the door
Where Catcher Man 'ill catch 'em
As he did before

Tumbleweed, pure blood, full breed
Keep on roamin'
Keep on ramblin'
Tumbleweed
Road never endin'
Tumbleweed
Tumbling, turning, rolling, tumbling, stalling, rolling...
Tumbleweed.

Inanga Wiremu, Desert Poems, 2000

I wrote this poem in Houston Creek Over 50s RV Park near Payson, Arizona. That crazy time is described in Book I of the North Star Road trilogy The Circlestone. I have often thought that it would make a great folk or C&W number. If you like it and feel you could put music to it, just ask.

Well it is inanga out until later. Have to pick Phil up from station.

inanga

PS

I almost forgot description of Surfing the Ecliptic.

Surfing the Ecliptic

An artist spends a lot of time thinking about the weirdest of subjects. At the moment I am all-consumed with the ‘end times’. Most will know this as an analysis of the Mayan calendars (Long Term, Short Term and Venus) and the fact that they come to an abrupt stop at 11.11 am, 21 December 2012. Google 2012 a couple of times and you might be suitably surprised. No one now disputes that the Mayan calendar is deathly accurate and that when it winds down to 13.00.00.00 a new baktun cycle will start. It will start anew, hopefully at a greater level of consciousness. Each full round of the calendar has as its endgame the elevation of the species.

All sorts of other strange things are going on at the same time. You think this a kook-fringe conspiracy theory at this stage - all I can say to you is welcome to most blissful ignorance. A day Google-ing should at least open up your third eye enough to allow you to begin to question the current consensus reality. I am not making it all up but am merely attempting to paint a universe in chaos and then happily in greater chaos. Chaos is our true state - a state of ever evolving possibilities in such ratios as 3.4.5, 1.618039989 (Phi), 1.58 (13.20 ratio), etc, etc. We are the most cleverly constructed suprahologram and if you break us down into our smallest parts (even beyond atoms) then the hologram can still be reconstructed from that - the macrocosm in the microcosm or ‘as above, so below’.

We are surfing the ecliptic towards this date. It is a date when time stops in the mythological calendars of the so-called primitives who were indeed spiritual pioneers in a much more golden age - the Hopi of Hotevilla, Az; the Nagual of Mexico; the Maya of Meso-America, the tohunga of the Waitaha in New Zealand; the Hindu writers of yuga sequences; and the day of judgement of religions too numerous to mention. In the middle bottom of the painting you can see a face constructed out of red swirls. This is backed by a star chart that indicates the ecliptic we are surfing. It faces North and M36 sneaks into play…

It is said that on 12/21/2012 that the Earth crosses the ecliptic of the universe and the sun at this point gets in the way of the emanations from our galactic centre, hence a total galactic eclipse of the earth (and perhaps a total eclipse of our hearts). The Mayans called this xilbalba be (the road to the Underworld) and forewarned us that we should be on the lookout for it. I suggest http://www.2012unlimited.net/Near Future.html and Mayan-timing.html as good sources.

I finished the picture (I thought!). I picked up several tubes of acrylic paint, squirted them on the canvas, and then let my partner Phil spray it with a garden hose three times. WYSIWYG. Strange, but Isis’s third-eye is open!

Acrylic, oil, gouache, astronomical & facial collage, a garden hose and three well aimed bursts of water on canvas, Easter 2009