More Quality Time, More Gum Trees and More Sunsets

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Oh my god, I cannot believe there are only two weeks left before the big departure!! I am not ready! “That’s because you have so many shits to pack….”

Very true. (that’s a shame..)

But also, I had not realized how many important people were out there until I started to organize my farewell events. Actually, I really want to take the time to say properly goodbye to each of them (through tea-time and scones orgies, Mexican night(s), picnic and strolls, lunchs, diners, exhibitions (especially Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera at the NSW Gallery) coffees, coreen BBQ, brunch etc and why not a glass of wine at the Opera House but I cannot guarantee the Argyle afterwards haha). Bref, the next two weeks are packed, packed, packed with -I hope- lots of quality time in perspective.

I also want to see as many Gumtrees and Sunset as possible. I could never get enough of these.. and it definitely something that I will be missing.

I know that we do have sunsets in Europe as well but… it is not the same.

The last couple of weeks have been quite intense. Uluru was just an amazing experience; we slept outside under the milky way (♥.♥) and around a campfire. It has reminded memories from all my scout camps. I also met great people, I laughed, I really tried to be mindful during the entire journey so that I could enjoy to the fullest. That is a difficult exercise, but when you manage to be in present moment, you get to deeply connect with the place and as he said “something magical happens”.

I feel like I made the most of this trip to the northern territory. 🙂

Actually, I feel like I made the most of this exchange.

and I am so excited of seeing you soon.

Blue Mountains and Three Sisters

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Scenic Three Sisters

Coucou !

Exceptionnellement, je vais écrire cet article en français. Parce que je viens de terminer mes examens, mon semestre, mon année, mon bachelor (hallelujah) et aussi parce que je n’ai pas beaucoup de temps et que honnêtement j’ai la grosse flemme là. 😀

et puis zut à la fin, je n’ai pas besoin de me justifier, ici, ça reste mon blog tout de même.

Or… I could make a mix between French and English (le truc trop chiant à lire haha).
Anyway (bon j’arrête mes blagues), février dernier, je vous parlais d’un petit voyage que je venais de faire au Blue Mountains. J’avais promis d’écrire un article à ce sujet et bien sûr, je n’en ai pas eu le temps. Mais c’est parce que qu’il y a tellement de choses à dire là dessus (et parce que comme vous le savez, je me suis fait matraquer par l’Uni) (olala c’est fou qu’à chaque fois que j’écris en français, j’ai direct envie d’écrire en langue verte, à savoir de dire tout plein de gros mots. C’est mal. I will work on it. But not today).

Allez, je vous préviens, ce sera un post patchwork. Mais puisqu’il faut bien commencer quelque part, commençons par une petite explication du nom des blues mountains. Pour cela, je vais citer Kat qui a su être simple mais efficace:

“Nature is cool! Oil droplets released by the eucalyptus trees scatter short wavelengths of light creating that beauteous blue haze” Kat S, 34 weeks ago

Voilà pour l’explication biologique qui nous éclaire sur étymologie du lieu.
Moi quand j’entendais parler des montagnes bleues (montagnes bleues ça sonne un peu moins bien en français, mais bon, il faut savoir être consistant parfois….) je m’imaginais un truc comme ça :

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Lettre à Grand-Mère, semaine inconnue, j’ai perdu le compte.

Alors qu’en fait, c’est plutôt comme ça (je n’ai toujours pas d’appareil photo du coup navrée pour la qualité hs):

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Bon on comprend quand même d’où vient toute cette histoire de bleu (« and stuff »).

Et du coup, allez savoir comment mais ça m’avait fait pensé aux esprits de la montagne du film “Princesse Mononoké” réalisé par mon très cher and beloved Hayao Miyazaki.

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Soul of the blue mountains

 

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Ouais, je sais que je pars en live là, mais.. restons concentrés, et puis restez avec moi j’ai encore plein de trucs à raconter 😀

Toujours dans les montagnes bleues, une des plus grosses attractions du coin et je dirais même de l’Australie est la vue panoramique des trois sœurs or Three Sisters.

Voir photo ci-dessous ou voir le dessin du début de l’article.

Faut dire que c’est joli ♥

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Et la pluie et le vent et le temps ont érodé un même grès (roche détritique de la catégorie des roches sédimentaires, traumas de mes cours de géomorphologie).

Allez, une petite photo vintage pour la route:

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J’avais entendu parlé d’une légende aborigène qui expliquait la formation particulière de ce rocher mais j’ai lu ensuite que cette légende avait été construite de toute pièce par des non-indigènes pour attirer les touristes. *soupir*

Bon apparemment ce lieu a tout de même une signification spirituelle et culturelle pour certaines tribus mais je ne connais pas les détails.

Enfin ce qui était aussi hyper cool, c’était « The Giant Stairway » de 800 marches, qui part de l’Echo Point et qui va jusqu’au fameux rocher. Enfin c’est plus cool à descendre qu’à remonter surtout sous un soleil de plomb mais c’était une marche impressionnante.

Et puis j’ai bien sûr été touchée par ce rocher (ça se dit ? Peut-on être émue par un rocher grammaticalement parlant?) parce que nous somme trois sœurs et que du coup à chaque fois que je voyais « Three Sisters » écrit quelque part (c’est-à-dire à peu près partout) je pensais à mes deux sœurs et à nous trois (c’est à dire à peu près tout le temps).

Comme en voyant cet hôtel par exemple.

Comme en voyant cet hôtel par exemple.

Dans ma lancée des trois sœurs, j’aimerais aussi partager des tableaux que j’adore peints par Colleen Wallace Nungari, une prolifique et talentueuse artiste aborigène :

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Dreamtime Sisters, 2010

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Dreamtime Sisters

Dreamtime Sisters

Bon je me suis limitée à trois (parce qu’on est trois) mais en vrai j’aurais pu vous en montrer mille. C’était dur de se restreindre 🙂

Encore trois sœurs! Décidément! Et puis “Three” ça ressemble à “Tree” et dans la famille on aime bien les arbres. Et on dit toujours qu’on est les cinq arbores. Etrange… Surtout qu’il paraît qu’il n’y a pas de coïncidences dans la vie \0/

Purée, je pensais que ça allait être plus facile d’écrire en français, mais je galère aussi.. (la meuf)

Ce n’est pas tout mais je dois vous laisser, il faut que je fasse mes bagages, je pars demain pour les territoires du nord et Uluru (hiii)

En tout cas vous avez dû remarquer que je parle souvent de montagnes dernièrement. C’est vrai que les Alpes me manquent (et le fromage aussi mais c’est une autre histoire) alors du coup j’ai dessiné beaucoup de montagnes.

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Raah, j’arrive pas à m’arrêter mais puisqu’on parle de montagnes bleues, je ne peux pas ne pas parler de Louis le Brocquy. Son tableau « Greatlake Glendalough » (ci-contre) de 1991 a inspiré ma Maman les magnifiques aquarelles suivantes :

 

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Auteur: Maman

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Auteur: Maman

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Auteur: Maman

Oulala c’est ce qu’on appelle un gros article. Je suis éreintée maintenant 😀 Et complétement à la bourre pour aller voir Doris au cinoche.

Allez bisous et à très vite les copains! Virtuellement et dans pas si longtemps, on se reverra même dans la vraie vie! Unbelievable !

Red Mountains or Sacred Rock and Indigenous Progressive Knowledge

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And..it’s booked!

I am going to see the sunset at Uluru! (also known as Ayers Rock) (you know, I talk about it in this article). My departure is right after my exam.

Needless to say that I am very excited, especially since now that I have learned a little bit more about the beautiful aboriginal culture and also the indigenous protected areas (IPA) notion. IPA are like areas (it could be land or sea), where traditional owners (that is, Indigenous people) have entered into an agreement with the Australia government to promote biodiversity and cultural resource conservation. While some of those areas such as Dhimurru are successful in their endeavour, there are still many administrative and communication issues in those areas. Indeed, how do you find an agreement when the two parts involved have a completely different way of looking, representing, thinking about the world? The two parts that I am talking about are of course the Australian government and the traditional owners.

The thing is that we, when I say ‘we’ I mean, the West, tend to think that our knowledge is universally true, that we are the most advanced in terms of sciences and technologies and that other nations that do not  join our camp are ‘primitives’ (Modernisation theory baby).

We have huge troubles to recognize other kind of knowledge as also valid and true. In our view, our medicine is the best, our way of mapping the world is the best, our political system is the best, our economic system is the best and in this case our resource management system is the best.. Well, I think that you get my point.

But then, my geography teacher (décidément!) has challenged these assumptions and she has introduced us to a post-colonial geographer, Deborah Bird Rose, that has been interested  on how aboriginal view lands and landscapes. She looked at their relationship with their environment and especially the way they take care of it. So indeed, the difference with us is like night and day. To a better understanding of what I am trying to convey,  I encourage you to read this quote below that explain a bit aboriginal view on the land (allez Sofia, elle est petite celle-là, you can do it :D). And then, you will understand how indigenous view differs from our own view of the world:

“People talk about country in the same way that they would talk about a person: they speak to country, sing to country, visit country, worry about country, feel sorry for country, and long for country. People say that country knows, hears, smells, take notice, takes care, is sorry or happy. Country is not a generalised or undifferentiated type of place, such as one might indicate with terms like “spending a day in the country” or “going up the country”. Rather, country is a living entity with a yesterday, today and tomorrow, with a consciousness, and a will toward life.” (Rose 1996:7).
I have been really moved when she said that “they can be sorry for a country”, and that the country can be sorry as well.. I imagine that this must happen when the land has been damaged or so. When I think about it, thinking about the land as something alive makes sense, it is both poetic and clever actually.
After reading stuff like that I always wonder who are the most developed human group on the earth: the one that feel sorry for a land? or the one that view the natural landscape as something that exists only out there to serve our needs?
In this perspective, are we truly the most ‘developed’ civilisation?
I don’t think sooo ♪♫” (as Cher would say, in Clueless :D)
Anyway, I hope that I will learn more from these cultures (there is not only one aboriginal culture) during this trip. I genuinely want to connect to a intellectual but also deeper level.
In the meantime, 9 days to go before the end so I should better go.
Love ♥
PS: I messed up my scan of the red mountains so one quarter of the drawing is lost in space (including my signature). When I realized that, I had already sent this drawing to my Grand-Mother.. Oh well, a little bit of anonymity does not hurt anyone.

 

Happy Cacti (Cacti = Latin plural of cactus)

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My cactus has been published in p.4 of the Grapeshot issue of May!!!

Grapeshot is the cool Macquarie university paper, run by its students 😀

I am super proud. \0/

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“Hellooo”

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*Miou Miou*

The design of these cacti have been inspired from a drawing that I received for my birthday last September (see below). It has been made by my beloved neighbour, friend and soul sister, Nana ♥

Thank you again.

You should check her blog by the way. It is super cool!

Nana

Pictural Haïku

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The drawing above has been inspired from the picture below which has been taken by D.Petitpierre at the request of M.

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It is true that it looks like an Haïku

“Haiku (俳句) is a very short form of Japanese poetry. It is typically characterised by three qualities:

  • The essence of haiku is “cutting” (kiru). This is often represented by the juxtaposition of two images or ideas and a kireji (“cutting word”) between them

  • Traditional haiku consist of 17 on (also known as morae though often loosely translated as “syllables”), in three phrases of 5, 7, and 5 on respectively.[3]

  • A kigo (seasonal reference), usually drawn from a saijiki, an extensive but defined list of such words.”

Wikipedia

An old silent pond…
A frog jumps into the pond,
splash! Silence again.

– Matsuo Bashō

In the twilight rain
these brilliant-hued hibiscus –
A lovely sunset

– Matsuo Bashō

The clouds passing by
Carried my past in silence
To another time…

– Jesus James Llorico
If you can come up with an Haiku that includes the words cloud, mountain and forest (or trees), or sky or blue sky..
that would be great!
Don’t forget that Haiku is about celebrating the nature.
Here is mine :
Solitary fluffy cloud …
Flying the rough forest
Ageless mountain away
It is not very clear but it is the cloud which is flying. Not the forest. At first I put hanging but I prefer flying, even though the cloud looks motionless.
Anyway, it is late and I still have a game to design for tomorrow (again a game!) and a research paper about Chaos Theory (Oh dear).
In short, this is not quite the right time for me de jouer à la poète maudite.
Cheeers!

 

Sea + Sunsets = Seasets + Lemon Tree

LemonTree

Dear you,

As I told you before, I have been to Melbourne a couple of days for holiday just before the beginning of the semester. There, I didn’t draw that much, instead I took a lot of pictures.
As my real camera is still resting somewhere in France (I know exactly where it is. I can perfectly visualize it, in my closet on the bottom left. Oh dear.. why am I so scatterbrained sometimes?), I bought a disposable camera for the occasion. This has made me a bit nostalgic because whenever I went on holiday with friends or summer camp, I use to buy a disposable camera. I started out with a basic and legendary red Kodak than I have upgraded for the waterproof one.

Those were the days I can tell….

Anyway, I have just developed the film and though I didn’t remember taking as much pictures of sunset as I actually did, I am rather happy with the result:

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The moon and I

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Fisherperson (a lot of changes can occur into everyday language. That is why it is time to be a bit progressive and to stop the fireman, fisherman thing & cie) 😀

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Little bird.

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And my favourite:

there was something special about that sunset in particular..

It was …gorgeous!

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Besides, I think that the person (or computer, you never know nowadays) who was in charge of developing the camera’s film, has heavily processed my photographs on its own initiative. Like, the colours, the luminosity and the contrast are supernatural sometimes. I did not ask for that but I like it that way. And it is true that all the sunsets that I have been able to see were magical somehow.

Concerning the Lemon Tree:
During my stay in Melbourne, we have been to Point Lonsdale for the week-end. In the garden of my host’s (beautiful) house, you could see a lovely lemon tree with one lemon swaying in the wind.

No, no, no. It is not far-fetched at all ! This lemon tree has a legitimate place in this post. It belongs to the Melbourne-trip-thematic.

Allez, bisous.

PS: while you are walking along the ocean, or sea, or lake or whatever, you can listen at Ocean – John Butler. It puts you straight into the mood for that. (Courtesy of Lucy)

Fifty Shades of Sydney – Chapter 13 + Galaxtree

Fitfty

Hoy,

Just some little words to say that everything is okay but, with all this master applications and with the beginning of the second semester, I do not really find the time to write long piece of text here.

My trip to the Blue Mountains was really nice, especially the hike to Wentworth Waterfalls. The landscapes are breathtaking and despite the heat (more than 36°) and a tricky part where you have to climb ladders, the view is well worth the effort!! I will post something exclusively on this area.

Today, you can see that I am still obsessed with the idea of drawing the galaxy and tree. Voilà voilà

Sorry for dashing off this post 😀

Bisousousou

galaxtree

Random Access Memories – Last beat

Hello,

In order to complete the collection of drawings from Bali, I am happy to share with you these last two drawings as well as the story and picture(s) that go with each. Ready?

THE GHOST HOTEL

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The story takes place in Bedugul, it was just after visiting the Pura Ulun Danu Bratan Temple. We were sitting in the middle of the lake and I let you imagine how much the fog gave a special atmosphere to the lake: a kind of mystic or magic air somehow, especially if you have a vivid imagination. I remember that, after taking the picture, we walked for a while on the shore. It was already dusk, we were hungry, we had seen some lights far away and we had guessed that it was a restaurant. At some point, we couldn’t apparently go any further because there were big stones and heavy vegetation blocking the way. Since we were very close to the lights (and starving) we decided to climb the stones anyway with help of our flashlight’s phones because it was getting very dark. C’était casse-gueule mais bon. After climbing the rocks, we found a little Iron Gate leading to a stone stairway. We climbed the stairs and arrived into a very curious and quite disturbing temple.

*toumtoumtoum* ♪

At that moment, we began to feel that it was obviously not the gateway and that it was perhaps not a good idea to be there. Anyway, we managed to get out of the temple and… arrived into a huge and completely empty hotel. There were hundreds of tables on a terrace facing the lake (that must have been the lights that we had seen before). Not only that, there were like a giant ballroom, dining room, breakfast room with red curtains and fancy chandeliers hanging from the ceiling.. like in Titanic or something!!

And yet, we did not see any living soul.

Quite frankly, I felt more like in Shining than Titanic.

Eventually, we bumped into a woman –a waitress—. It was funny to see that we were more surprised than she was even though we had entered by the back and that we were alone in the hotel; she gave us the menu, took our orders with a straight face. Later, when I went to restroom, I had to cross the ball room (I saw two rats on my way) and spotted a very old lady, who was sitting on the middle of the piece and watching a completely- fucked-up- Indonesian-reality-show. THIS WHOLE SITUATION WAS SO WEIRD.

Anyway, we ate all right and left by the front door this time, but in the complete darkness. There were no lights on the front of the hotel…

We thought that we were far away from our own hotel with all we had to walk along the lake but actually less than 5 minutes later, we came across our hotel! That was a bit disturbing as well. (Voilà pour l’anecdote. Non, il n’y a pas d’autres chute).

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THE APE EMPIRES

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For this one: In Ubud (big up to all the members of Eat Prey Love’s Fan Club) we went to the Sacred Monkey Forest. One of the first things that have happened is that a monkey robbed one of my earrings. Goodness me! It was fortunate that I was not wearing my diamonds that day! (LOL)

Then, another damned monkey stole the cup that I used to use for painting. As its name suggests, the monkeys (or forest I am not sure) are, well, sacred. So needless to say that there was no way that I could bring my properties back in this ape world.

I felt dispossessed. 😀

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On another matter, I go back to school in less than one week. It I can’t believe that the summer is almost over: the three months have gone sooo fast! Melbourne was amazing and I am going to blue mountains tomorrow for three days so that means that I see you very soon for other adventures !