One of the few books Sharon and I have accessible here (all the rest being in storage at present) is STILL LIFE (2010), a coffee table size book of photographs taken inside the Antarctic huts of Scott and Shackleton by the New Zealand photographer Jane Ussher. Sitting flat on a shelf in our lounge because it was too large to fit into our packing boxes, it caught my eye as I sat down planning to write about my Mum's hut.
In photography and the fine arts a still life is generally a depiction of inanimate objects within a framework imposed by the artist. The subtle composition of these everyday taken-for-granted artefacts or items from nature - their lighting and framing in the lens of the camera - is designed to make us view them with a more attentive eye. Among Jane Ussher's Antarctic hut photographs, for example, are close ups of pieces of rope, broken egg shells, boxes of dog biscuits, rusted fuel tins, jars of provisions, bones of dead birds, boots and shoes and medical supplies together with shots of the huts, their furnishings and the surrounding landscapes. The presence of Scott and Shackleton and the members of their expeditions is brought to life by the images of their workaday Antarctic world. There is stillness and within that stillness there is life.
It set me thinking about the psychological huts we build, places where we feel most at ease with ourselves and with our lives, content and relaxed in the moment. For my Mum it was her hut at the bottom of the garden in Malvern, an old tin shed with just enough room for a bed, an easy chair, a bookcase, a small table and an electric fire. This was Mum's retreat and at every opportunity she would take off there after lunch to put her feet up, have a read and doze off. [A granny nap; I am of a napping age myself now and no longer delude myself by calling them power naps.]
Mum had covered the walls of her hut with pictures and photographs, mostly from old calendars of Scotland and Malvern. As any kiwi of overseas origin will attest, overseas relatives can deluge you at Christmas with calendars of the beautiful local landscapes and heritage buildings you have mysteriously abandoned. I often feel that these gifts come with a gentle reproach for my distancing myself so greatly from my relatives - remember these places? remember us? I can respond in kind, as if to expiate this dislocation from my roots, with pictures showing the grandeur of New Zealand's natural heritage and stunning images of wild places where I have never ventured. See these, I say, surely you can understand why I would rather live here? Although I have many happy memories of Brighton from childhood to my last visit in 2008, my brother and I have an implicit understanding that he won't send me any more calendars of the city where he lives, particularly ones devoted to its most photographed structure, the derelict West Pier, and I won't send him any more of New Zealand.
Mum loved the hills of her youth in Scotland, especially the Pentlands on the outskirts of Edinburgh, and the hills of her maturer years in Malvern, Worcestershire. She and Dad were great walkers. They spent their honeymoon walking in North Devon and all our childhood holidays included long walks somewhere. There probably wasn't a photograph in her hut that didn't trigger one or more memories of times she had spent out in the hills with family and friends.
After Dad died, when family visited, Mum would gladly give up her bedroom to us and take off to spend the night in her shed. We had images of her accidently setting the place on fire and triggering shock-horror headlines in the Malvern Gazette about these selfish cuckoos from New Zealand who had ousted an old lady from her home and sent her to sleep in the garden shed, followed by an account of other recent cases of elder abuse in the area.
My psychological huts have generally been my studies. When we moved here last month my priority was to set up the study whereas Sharon's, much more practically, was to have the kitchen organised. Here is a photograph of my study in Milford and part of a piece I wrote about it in 2004.
One of my favourite places is my study. It is on the top of my house, three stories up. In my study I am surrounded by riches. Family photographs; holiday mementoes; favourite books carted from place to place over many years; half-written stories shoved in bottom drawers; pieces of dialogue that end abruptly without resolution; hats from faraway places, wistful reminders of journeys taken, journeys never taken and journeys wrongly taken; Sophie’s Fan, a gift from a Chinese friend that touched me deeply, provoking a poetic translation of its inscription.
In my study I have the prompts to reconstruct the dramas of my life. When I am bored with that, I can gaze out at the windsurfers careening madly across Lake Pupuke in a strong north westerly, becoming airborne briefly and then, out of control, somersaulting into the water with an electrifying soundless splash. Like marlin. Or shooting stars. Or apprentice writers.ANd so clouds fALL Here
Now in Orewa we have a study set up but very few books on the bookshelves. The old desktop computer has been sold and the laptop is used mostly in the downstairs living area. There are just a few treasures kept from the packing boxes to put on the desk or hang on the walls so here are some still life images of my present hut. I hope you can can see me among them.
The black and white framed photograph on the far left was one of a series titled "Shuttered Spaces" taken as part of the 2002 University of Auckland Summer School (see Blog 7). The other photographs in the series are currently boxed up in the garage awaiting transfer to our new apartment next year.
The clown was purchased in Mount Manganui in 2002 during my first holiday away with Sharon so it, together with La Barca Italian Restaurant in Mount Manganui Road - run at that time by Francesco Manna - has special memories. For a time the clown hung upside down on our bedroom wall in Milford simulating the tarot's hanging man. Beneath him was the caption:
THE HANGING CLOWN
"Extravagantly accepting life's chances and hazards, the suspended mind, anarchic, irrational and venturesome, sets out on a voyage of self-discovery."
He looks a little unsure about that, doesn't he?
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