city life (29 June 2016)
City Life is an apartment hotel
on Wellington’s Lambton Quay.
The yellow-leafed tree is
a ginkgo biloba.
I know nothing at all about
the white splotches on the wall.
City Life
Category Archives: Minimalism
Courting danger
brush-strokes
Courting danger, risk —
albeit measured, at least —
I open your book.
(14 May 2016)
Crunch!
pebbles
poems crunch under-
foot like shells and dry shingle,
step after slow step.
(07 May 2016)
Kaizen – a change for the better
kaizen
.
.
The Japanese term “kaizen” translates loosely as improvement or change for the better, according to the web-site of Leclair Ryan, an American firm of legal advisors. In Porirua, however, Kaizen is the café at Pataka Art + Museum.
After visiting my father at Kemp Home, Titahi Bay (21 May 2015), I met my sister for lunch at the Kaizen. The beautiful Japanese garden adjoining the café added to our experience as we ate the best spanakopita we’ve tasted in a long time … and the coffee was great!
Incidentally, kai refers to food in the Māori language, and a pataka is a place to store treasures.
Pataka houses a fine collection of sculptures, including one of Michel Tuffery’s tin-can bulls (image below).
Outside the entrance, and elsewhere in the vicinity, heaps of white sandbags – needed after mass rainfall on 14 May resulted in extensive flooding in the area. (My camera could not resist.)
Pataka: sandbags after flooding #292
Pataka: sandbags after flooding #293
Pataka: Zen garden #291
Pataka: Zen garden #288
Pataka: Michel Tuffery bull
Starstruck!
stars and sun (31 March 2015)
Adorning the window of my little dining room, a garland of glass stars by a Waitakere artist, Jenny McLeod, is a source of unending delight. A few days ago, the light of the morning sun struck the stars at just such an angle as to make them brilliant, but not too bright for the camera to catch them.
Just for fun, here’s a quote (a fairytale gift, in fact) I cannot resist: “Hans and Christian just stare at me, faces grim. All I can think of is how awesome it would be if my name were Andersen.”
(Cyn Balog, in the Starstruck)
Rusty skip
rusty skip #1 (21 March 2015)
rusty skip #2 (21 March 2015)
On the grass verge between the bus-stop and the Eastbourne address where I was planning to spend the day, a rusty skip was waiting. Quite empty, it had been delivered earlier that morning – or so I surmised.
The colours of the original shots have been adjusted to optimise the abstract effects.
Victoria’s chimneys
Victoria’s chimneys (28 November 2014)
My sister and I had taken a trip to the university, where she had been doing film studies: she needed to pick up an essay that had been marked.
As we walked and talked back along Fairlie Terrace, my camera begged to be let out of the bag.
And then I forgot that I’d taken those pictures. Here’s the one I like best.
Summer morning
laundry (02 January 2015)
.
This summer morning …
a few honey-bees are drawn
to my lavender.
Sipping camomile
tea, I contemplate the lines
of drying laundry.
“After enlightenment, the laundry. It’s a Zen proverb,” writes Jen Zbozny in her blog piece titled After enlightenment, the laundry (24 January 2014).
Rusty skip
rusty skip (03 October 2014)
“A toast to the weapons of war, may they rust in peace.”
A rusty skip lurking in a deserted side-street in Wellington on the afternoon of Friday 03 October 2014 …
Robert Orben is a comedy writer and an expert on comedy, has written books on the subject, has written for magicians, and has worked for the White House as a speech-writer. Hmm!
Re: numbering
space numbers (03 October 2014)
Have I photographed these numbers before? If so, it was years ago.
As far as I am able to deduce, these time-worn stencilled numerals signify one of the spaces in a church parking area – a space which had been numbered 19c but was subsequently renumbered 20. My penchant for deconstruction renders the image endlessly fascinating.
a twisted pair 