Blowing On Out of Tasmania Soon..

Hobart at night time.

I’m going to be away for about three weeks so don’t know if I’ll have much time to write posts. I embarking on a 9 day photography workshop in northern Japan with a professional photographer, his Japanese wife and six of us “duckling photographers”. All participants are from mainland Australia except me. We’ll be in Tokyo where we begin, then off to small towns, coastlines and national parks. I’m very much looking forward to it.

I’ll try to put up some phone pics as I go on Instagram (travellin_penguin) but won’t be downloading any photos from my ‘big camera’ until I return home.

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What’s been happening the past two weeks? Well I am almost finished reading the book Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Curry. 

Good Reads describes it as:

Kafka, frustrated with his living quarters and day job, wrote in a letter to Felice Bauer in 1912, “time is short, my strength is limited, the office is a horror, the apartment is noisy, and if a pleasant, straightforward life is not possible then one must try to wriggle through by subtle maneuvers.”

Kafka is one of 161 minds who describe their daily rituals to get their work done, whether by waking early or staying up late; whether by self-medicating with doughnuts or bathing, drinking vast quantities of coffee, or taking long daily walks. Thomas Wolfe wrote standing up in the kitchen, the top of the refrigerator as his desk, dreamily fondling his “male configurations”…. Jean-Paul Sartre chewed on Corydrane tablets (a mix of amphetamine and aspirin), ingesting ten times the recommended dose each day … Descartes liked to linger in bed, his mind wandering in sleep through woods, gardens, and enchanted palaces where he experienced “every pleasure imaginable.”

Here are: Anthony Trollope, who demanded of himself that each morning he write three thousand words (250 words every fifteen minutes for three hours) before going off to his job at the postal service, which he kept for thirty-three years during the writing of more than two dozen books … Karl Marx … Woody Allen … Agatha Christie … George Balanchine, who did most of his work while ironing … Leo Tolstoy … Charles Dickens … Pablo Picasso … George Gershwin, who, said his brother Ira, worked for twelve hours a day from late morning to midnight, composing at the piano in pajamas, bathrobe, and slippers….

Here also are the daily rituals of Charles Darwin, Andy Warhol, John Updike, Twyla Tharp, Benjamin Franklin, William Faulkner, Jane Austen, Anne Rice, and Igor Stravinsky (he was never able to compose unless he was sure no one could hear him and, when blocked, stood on his head to “clear the brain”).

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I am surprised by how much alcohol, drug use, insomnia and other very weird habits are involved with so many artists and writers. The book is very interesting. It is often laugh out loud funny too.

I think it is a book people might just dip into for fun but I wanted to finish it before I went away and I should do so by this weekend. I’ll take my kindle on the plane to Japan as I need to read the book The Names by Florence Knapp for our November book group. I am looking forward to a more serious book than some of the ones I’ve been just puttering around with lately.

Airplanes are great places to read. Especially with noise cancelling headphones on which I just would not travel without. 

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Something else that was very interesting that I attended this past week was a session at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery (TMAG).

The museum received two very large 1800s portraits in frames as a donation. The portraits are wonderful but need a lot of work with some repair and quite a bit of cleaning.

The session went for 90 minutes in the members lounge. We had a 30 minute power point presentation discussing the history of the portraits and describing the work needed and how it happens by the scientists involved. Everything from x-rays to chemical solutions to just plain elbow grease with a lot of Q tips. 

After the presentation we went upstairs to their lab and saw the portraits. The woman’s was on an easel and the man’s was laid out on a large table as it is under investigation and restoring. The three women who work on it described him as ‘their patient’ as he lies on the table.

They showed us the work they are doing close up. We asked questions and we all laughed at the work around the man who made the frame. He lived in Hobart in the early to mid 1800s and his name was Robin Hood. He learned the trade from his father, Robin Hood, Senior.  It was interesting and fun to get out with others learning about something entirely different than what I usually get up to.

The last half hour was spent downstairs having a very lovely morning tea. Sandwiches, fruit and yummy cake, with tea and coffee.

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I came down with a very bad cold this past week so didn’t do as much as was planned. I rested a lot as I don’t want to spend hours in an airplane with a cold. I’m happy to say it is almost gone by today.

Thursday night Mr. P, two of our friends and I went to the playhouse theatre to see the Agatha Christie play, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. Three of us had read the book so knew the ending but our fourth member didn’t have any idea. It is a very good story and our local Hobart actor who played Hercule Poirot did an excellent job. He had both the accent and the moustache.

Well that finishes up a very bookish and arty week. For the next two weeks everything will be Japanese food, new friends and lots of photography in that order. 

Peanut says, “Have a good week everyone.”