the fish in the phone

Having contracted myself this semester to an unseemly number of classes, I have found little time to do much else, and thankfully I am now more than  half way through the semester.

As can be expected when one works nine hour days, the family chooses to all have simultaneous breakdowns and issues, which contributes to all the excitement. There is not a lot of time to do much else at the moment: when I am not teaching, I am reading up for the two postgraduate classes I was breaking my neck to have. This week I am reading up on Bourdieu, Elliot Eisner,  and pictorial conventions in Venetian portraiture.  I am very thankful for this, as some of the other things I have had to read were very annoying. 

Interestingly I looked at the photos on my iphone and found it had become a little journal of sorts, a record of my life in phone photos.

Classes

They are many classes. Lots and lots, so it is fortunate I actually like them.

Here are  some students drawing a few weeks ago.

At the moment they are painting. All 180 of them...

thankfully not all at once.

Driving

I spend a lot of time in my car thinking about things. I look at the sky a lot because I go up and down a few big hills. This was on my way home.

Some days are of course nicer than others. This is Sydney,  City of four seasons in one day.

The band

The Husbands band plays quite a bit, and here they were playing down the coast a bit and I drove down to watch.

I drove home in a rather melancholic state, because of reasons, and played Einaudi all the way home, looking at the scenery. It is an emotionally-laden landscape, full of nostalgia, change, and remembered other lives that I have led.

 

In contrast, they played at an inner city pub, which was fun even though I think that day I was fretting over some reading for that week, which was not Bourdieu but something very tedious if I remember correctly. It was good to get out and watch. the proprietor said it was his biggest crowd ever.

The Archibald, Wynne and Sulman Prizes Opening Night at the AGNSW

Here I am with My friend Ben in front of his artwork. That room resembled, as Ben described it, a zoo.

As you can see I remembered to take my favourite bling (in the form of silver coral) to work, but NOT my hairbrush. 

Pity.

Here is Lucy Culliton's painting of Ray Hughes. She is a great girl, and I have a few of her paintings here in the house, one is of cakes.

Here is the winning Ben (Quilty),  with whom I have had the pleasure of speaking a number of times and  been impressed by the depth of his feelings on various issues such as indigenous rights, australian history and identity, and the way young men in the outer suburbs enact various suburban rituals. 

He seems a very generous guy, and before he moved to the southern highlands from Sydney, was happy to accomodate my painting students, and give them talks on his work and ideas for nothing. 

In his speech at the opening, he gave a pasting to sportspeople who dont pay their HECS debts. Culture, he said, is the glue that sticks us together, and in hard economic times it was culture which provided social cohesion. He then questioned the legitimacy of famous swimmers who did not have to pay university fees, whereas others who made important contributions to life, still had to. He included in this equation his own brother who had just attained a doctorate in soil rehabilitation, rather than just swimming up and down a pool. It was interesting.

Peace and Quiet

The boys of the family spent some time on a surf trip. This meant that after I cleaned the house, it stayed that way. 

Sadly, they have decided to return and fill my life with chaos.

Weather

Some days commence in spectacular fashion

and finish with a tsunami of sorts, right above my house.

And such is the life of the fish, whio ha managed only fragments of time in the water, and is hoping very soon to be spending far more time in the salty deep.