Magic is in memory

[azhure]

I have been inspired, of late, by many of the amazing artist blogs I read – Terri Windling, Christina Cairns, and Rima Staines among others.

As always, when I read the blogs of visual artists, I wish that I could produce art.  Yes, I can pick up a pen or brush and produce something, but I don’t have the talent that would imbue that with real life, the way some of these artists can.

My tools are words and ink and paper.  And, thanks to technology, I can, at least, capture some beauty with photography.

I have been making an effort to get moving lately.  Writing is a sedentary occupation, and while I do burn some energy running around after a toddler, I crave the time to myself that I get with exercise.  Given my choice, I usually walk (these days, pushing the toddler in a stroller).  Summer has descended with a vengeance now, and it’s been too hot to walk.  And so, I return to the pool in the house in which I grew, and I swim.

While I swim, making laps back and forth through the clean water, I am watched over by the tree in the image above.  This tree has looked over this house for 40 years.  It’s watched the land be cleared, my parent’s house built.  It watched them arrive as newlyweds and birth three children.  It watched those children grow, and watched a new generation be born.

In those branches, birds come and go.  Most often, while I swim, there are ravens.  There’s one hiding in that photo if you look carefully, riding the sway and dance of the branches as they move in the wind.  Sometimes there are magpies, or twenty-eights, pink and grey galahs and doves.

Growing up, I often despaired of not living in the green and fertile landscapes of Europe, of not having that kind of history and magic soaked into the land.  But now, as life turns, I realise that this land has just as much magic.  We make it ourselves, with memories.

Mirrored from Stephanie Gunn.