Arty arternoon

Well, an outing at last! She took me out to do art this afternoon. We learned about Polaroid Transfers. What fun! You take an image of a slide using a special Polaroid machine and then transfer the partly processed emulsion onto paper or fabric or somesuch to make a pretty groovy picture. Robyn used to do this with some of her amazing travel slides from around the world, and Miriam brought some old family photos to play with, as well as a Mt Isa shot from the sixties by her Grandma Cathy.
She took me out of the (damn) sock and let me help. Yaay! Our tutor for the afternoon was Wave. Cool name, eh! He let us do the workshop in his little place in the West End of Provincetown. It was set up like a little photographic laboratory! I got the job of checking the water in the plastic bucket. It had to be within a pretty strict range of temperatures.

MZ tried wet paper and dry paper. For the wet paper she had to put it in this container for a few seconds. And I had to supervise. After all, it's not as easy as it looks. Nothing is, really. And it is Miriam we're talking about. She needs constant watching.

Luckily Jim was there, taking care of the details. He's working here on one of the photographing machines... you put some Polaroid film in the bottom and a slide in the top, then push a few things in and pull a few things out and peel the thingy off the whatsit and roll the black thingy (face down) onto a sheet of paper. Easy!

The bit they let me help with, other than paper-wetting, was the rolling. Great. The roller is bigger than I am. "Press harder!" was all they could say. "Press harder! Work evenly! Don't let the Polaroid slip!" Ye gods. I did a great job and don't you let anyone tell you different. Here's proof.

Here are a couple of bits I did and really like - they are on silk.

Spring is sprung

Something she really loves about the USA is that they stick to the proper dates for the change of season. For example, Spring starts the day after the March equinox. Not on the first of the month!

She hates this thing that's happened in Australia where we start Autumn on 1st of March and Spring on 1st of September. It wasn't always this way. When she was in primary school, the seasons started on the old fashioned dates of 21/22 ish of March, June, September and December... around solstices and equinoxes.... But all that's changed now and she gets to grit her teeth four times a year when the 'seasons' change. Aaargh!!
Truth is, maybe those dates don't apply in Australia anyway, because apparently our seasons in Australia aren't the same as the four that exist in the northern hemisphere. But she's adamant (you know how she can get) that seasons are about the earth's cycle and not about the convenience of a calendar. And here, in Provincetown, there's no escaping the real seasons, so she gets to be right. Which can make her unbearable (you know how she can get)...

One piece of evidence that spring has sprung is that the crocuses are in bloom. They are a first sign of the new season; they are dotted in gardens all over Provincetown, and she loves 'em.

The Breakwater

The Breakwater is a long rocky wall that stretches across from the bottom end of Commercial Street across to Long Point. Yesterday she went for a walk across there - it's a great adventure... she checks the tides and then heads down there when the time is right; walks across the wall and then onto the other side. The last few times she's done it, it's been the other end of winter - with the town quiet and only the most foolhardy aliens making the treck across the slippery rocks.

This weekend was the first one of spring... and Sunday was warm. That's relative of course. It was 52 degrees F. That's about 11 or 12 degrees Celcius. Mmmmmm Toasty!!!

The trouble was, she turns into a bit of a loner when she's here and going walkies. Basically it's just her and the quiet. Clean air, bird song... the sound of her own breath. And me, of course. But I'm quiet most of the time. It's these ceramic vocal chords. And on Sunday, being so toasty, there were other people out walking and a few of them were on the breakwater. Mostly quiet but one couple came along and the guy was yelling and laughing... filling up the silence with what even she described as inane noise. At first Miriam thought he was laughing at her because she leaps from rock to rock with her hands out for balance and it seemed that the guy was imitating the way she did that. And you know how she is. Sometimes she just speaks when she shouldn't. She stopped and let him catch up and said how glad she was that she had managed to amuse him. She had that particularly sarcastic tone of voice that we all love so much.

"Oh, no," he said "I wasn't laughing at you! I was laughing at my wife. She's scared of heights and I was laughing at how she's walkin' with her arms out for balance."

"No, no", he went on, loud and blustery, "No, I would never laugh at someone I didn't know!"

So Miriam just looked at him and let them pass. After they had gone, she took the photos in the previous post... and then walked quietly home. She'll go back on the breakwater again on a nice quiet weekday before she goes home. A cold grey day with nobody else around.

Here's the guy and his wife... in the distance, where they belong.