bilateral kellerberrin

I dream about “spitfires” – hairy caterpillars which form linear trails across the footpath. But the spitfires in my dream have formed a beard-shaped clump hanging from a tree. I run around asking people how to get rid of them.

As I write this, it’s raining. It started softly last night after midnight, but only enough fell to make a few small puddles. David Blair came by this morning with the key to the cinema (he’s finally changed the locks!) and said it wasn’t yet enough for the farmers to start up their seeding tractors. But shortly after he went on his bustling way, it began to fall again, light and sweet, the drops just drifting to the ground. Maybe this is, after all, the “opening rain” Pauline described, and which everyone has been waiting for.
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It seems like ages since I was last down at the Cunderdin DHS (District High School) boring Trevor’s intrepid gang of multimediainformationcommunicationtechnology students to tears with my pointless art activities. Yesterday was the return.

At the end of my show-and-tell session before the holidays, I asked them what sort of things they might be interested in doing with me for this month of workshops. A lot of them mentioned games. Since then I’ve been collecting shabby board games from wheatbelt op shops. I’ve accumulated quite a bundle by now…
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THE RULES
YOU MUST INCLUDE ALL OF THE FOLLOWING ELEMENTS IN YOUR GAME:

-THE OBJECTS YOU HAVE BEEN GIVEN
-THE POINTLESS ACTIVITY YOU PULLED OUT OF THE HAT.
-SOME APPROPRIATE USE OF LAND/SPACE/TERRITORY IN YOUR GAME (more…)

Anne and I drove down to Cunderdin, perhaps for no decent reason. We talk pretty good while we’re driving along together in her noisy old van. I like the way you sit right up front, the windscreen vertical in front of your face, all her junk on the dashboard, the wind whistling through the passenger window which doesn’t close properly, and the left side lurching strangely like it needs a wheel alignment. Sure, it’s so loud you can’t listen to tapes at speeds of more than fifty, and having a conversation leaves you hoarse. But it feels like you’ve really gone somewhere.
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It’s late in the day when I’m writing, and I feel I have lost touch, a bit, with all that happened yesterday. It seems strange to say it, but so many things take place in the course of an ordinary day in a country town.

Sure, the key event of yesterday was the friendly frenzy of the Pipeline Newsletter assembly. The ladies on the committee were very happy to have us on board. I had been meaning to contact “Michelle or Eva” ever since I got here, but somehow never got around to it. Yesterday was the deadline, so it was now or never. I arrived, unannounced after ten. The pages had pretty much already all been laid out, but a opportunity came up to insert an extra page, and I jumped on it. I decided to include some selected excerpts from this blog so far, together with the website address. I wonder how many “hits” I’ll get as a result…
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Yesterday Cristina and I helped out with the compiling of the Pipeline, Kellerberrin’s esteemed local newsletter. I showed up after ten and was lucky enough to be there when they needed an extra page. So I rushed off and we put together an artists-in-residence page post-haste. It was a case of “stop the press” and before you knew it, 350 odd copies of late breaking news were making their way around town. Herein is a small set of photos documenting the frenetic collaborative compilation of the Pipeline, in its small office located in the Keller Telecentre.
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Yesterday was the Anzac Day ceremony outside the Kellerberrin Memorial Hall. A new monument had been built and was unveiled, with the minister for something or other officiating. (I liked his name, I think it was Mr Chance). He made a speech which skillfully marked a trail between remembering past military service, and deliberately not glorifying war. Betty played a mean piano to accompany the trembling voices of the congregation as they sang the national anthem.
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One of the pointless tasks I have been trying to get around to for a few weeks is oiling the cross on top of the Prev. What follows is an explanation and illustration. Apologies to those of you with dial up access, as there are a bunch of photos to follow…
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Yesterday I went for my walk around the “wrong side of the tracks”. I wanted to shift the way I was thinking about being here, and I felt better as soon as I started walking. Everything became interesting again, I was less focussed on the idea of an “outcome” and more “in the moment”. What more can you want?

The first thing that happened as I turned off Sewell St and into Rason, was a police car pulled up alongside me. I wish I could remember the name of the policeman, it’s rude of me as we did introduce ourselves. Perhaps it was Darren. He asked if I needed a hand with anything (which I think was a euphemism for “ello ello ello!”) – and said he’d noticed a new face…I explained that I was an artist in residence at IASKA, just having a look around town. Anything particular I was in search of? he asked me…Nah, just inspiration, I replied, and he drove off slowly.
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In an attempt to counter my lazy no-exercise regime (the pool being shut is NOT an excuse) I decided I would walk around town. Also I was feeling a bit low, not wanting to get out of bed etc, so what better than a bit of a constitutional to revive the spirit? It seemed to work.

What follows is a kind of dodgy photo essay, a sort of game. Each time I turned a corner, I took a photo of the corner street sign. Kellerberrin being well catered, civically, I was delighted to find a right angle sign at nearly every turn! Today I covered the perimeter of what Jo, the gallery lady from Yorkshire, called the “wrong side” of the tracks…
[apologies to you if you are on a slow dial up connection, there’s a bunch of photos contained in this post…]
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