hairy nudeness

In my drawing class we've had nude ladies and nude men (some of them were even our models). Last night we had a nude dog. This is Iggy. And this drawing technique is called 'blind contour', where you look only at the subject, not at the paper. I find it very freeing, because then it's not my fault that the drawing doesn't look like the dog.

(And, yes, I did draw his feet - about seven or eight of them - but the paper is larger than my scanner)

Anzac day

"Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives… You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours… You, the mothers who sent their sons from faraway countries wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well."

So wrote Mustafa Kemal Ataturk of his "enemies" the Australian and New Zealand soldiers he fought on the Gallipoli Peninsula in 1915. When he said it, in 1934, he was President of Turkey. One of the definitions of the word 'presidential' is 'befitting a President'.

I listened to this again last week. I believe that words have power.



Uploading the photo above, which I took in a cemetery in the Hunter Valley, I put in the wrong number at first and this one popped up. I'll let it stay.

dream big

Phoebe Fay reminds us to dream big. Here are Pookie & Schatzi on the top of Schneibstein in the Bavarian Alps.

tits out for the lads

This is for mike, who apparently needs healing boob energy to recover from the delivery of his kid-ney. And the boobs need to be bare, apparently.

This is for angryginger, who told me she loves swimming nude. (Yes, 'she' - we all start as girls, and ag is very new).

This is for our dear lost sara sue, who once posted a lovely photo of herself as a naked 18 year old. I found it quite moving. This is me as a naked 18 year old, sistergirl.

This is for my pal Kate gone these four years, who loved saying "Tits oot for the lads" in an appalling Novocastrian accent, though she was famed for her own modesty.

This is for Phoebe Fay, whose eloquent musings on gravity and breasts made me feel close to her.

This is a photo of me "a whole girl ago" as Nuala Fury would say. Thirty years later and I got here okay, though, like mike, there may be some bits missing. It's been a great ride. I wouldn't have missed it for quids. So this is for me, too.

And for the rest of you? Oh, all right. A photo of me in a bikini.

I wonder ...

If there were no birds, would we have learned to fly?