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Windows, I can’t resist them! Every school report which complained of incessant daydreaming was really just the story of that term’s window, and the glimpse it gave me of life outside a classroom that too rarely excited my imagination. Whether … Continue reading
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… there’s a triumphal new entrance to the dagaba on Nagadeepa which is all the excuse I need to introduce you to some of the faces I met on the ferry the other day and of course, to the ferry itself, … Continue reading
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They do entrances well, here in Paradise. Here’s a bit of a gallery of some entrances I’ve come across recently. (Click any image to activate the gallery/hover over the image for location information.) Hastily compiled in response to Jake’s Sunday … Continue reading
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I love arrangements – making them, looking at them, enjoying the benefits from organising one’s affairs just so – but sometimes what I admire most are the artless arrangements of chance or nature. Click on any thumbnail to activate the … Continue reading
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I’m just back from my weekend retreat at Samadhi, up in the Knuckles near Digana. It was hard to tear myself away. Many of you may know that my favourite places in Sri Lanka are in the Knuckles Ranges, otherwise known … Continue reading
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When I read Jake’s challenge for this week one photograph flashed up on my mind – a woman so deep in the moment she’s acting out her thoughts as though she’s been hypnotised. While I was looking for her I … Continue reading
Jake demands nothing but splendour this week, so there’s nothing for it but to give you a glimpse of a couple of magnificent perahera elephants.
First came this fellow, with his splendid tusks encased in hand-beaten brass ‘gloves’ – not to forget his splendid new led-lite regalia.
Much later, the climax of the first phase of the perahera, the gloriously resplendent Maligawa tusker drew reverent attention in cloth of gold. Carrying the sacred relic in its jewel-like reliquary, this splendid animal is flanked by two other tuskers – each carrying attendants who bless the relic chamber with showers of scented jasmine.
Other splendid entires can be viewed here.
Dawn is such a photogenic time! And one which I didn’t used to see very often, certainly of my own volition. That is, until the rhythm of life changed with my move to the tropics, where its the most beautiful time – cool, bright, and filled with the comforting sounds of the world slowly embracing the day.
I have a “Dawn Series” I thought you might enjoy – all shot here in Sri Lanka, in my favourite part of the island: the Knuckles ranges.
My friend Mo and I kept seeing these Knuckles mountains, in the distance, on our jaunts around various places in the central part of the island. After hunting around on the internet, we eventually came across a place to stay, and set off one weekend to get a close-up of these characteristically shaped mountains. We were a little late arriving – we’d been waylaid, watching an elephant loading logs onto a truck.
The wind – a howling, tenacious, tearing wind – was really all we registered when we arrived, in the dark – the wind and the rather grim and charmless features of our accommodation. When I awoke, there was a quality to the light that almost hushed the gale outside. I opened the door to investigate, and this is what I saw:
Awestruck, at first, then propelled like an automaton, I dashed inside and scrabbled in the gloom looking for my camera, all the while importuning Mo to motivate herself out from beneath her snuggling doona, to “come and see”.
Barking Deer Lodge is transformed by the dawn.
We loitered there, on that narrow ledge above the yawning valleys below, mesmerised by nature’s own sound and light show, as finally, the sun thrust its mighty burnished head above the mountains down below.
Well on its way to becoming a ‘favourite place on earth’ long before breakfast, or stepping off that narrow ledge to explore the mountains themselves, now when the craggy Knuckles call, we set forth with joy and anticipation to Barking Deer Lodge, if only to watch the sun rise in the morning. Sometimes it’s all grey and misty, shot with pinks and mauves
Sometimes, it’s copper and brown with the dust of summers on the plains.
And sometimes, perched on the edge of the world, it seems we’re sandwiched between the heavy water-laden clouds and the inky black mountains.
There was only one morning the sun failed to make an appearance. Buried beneath the clouds of a massive storm system, it failed to arrive all day, the rain whited out the valley, obscured the lakes, but up through the pass, waterfalls were sending ribbons of silver crashing down the jagged rocky peaks – but that’s another story.
Thanks to Jake of Jakesprinters for this Sunday’s prompt. Visit some of the other entries, here.
Couldn’t resist a supplementary “Door” post for Jake’s challenge.
Hope you like my see-through doors!
Fitting the new screen doors …
Closing the door … talking
Jake’s challenge this week is ‘Door’.
From my earliest recollections doors were there to bar my way. Handle hardware was always way above my head, and although there wasn’t a lock in the place until we drove to Adelaide for Christmas in 1956, I was effectively imprisoned once the door was closed on me – which for some reason Ma, and even Papa, did every night. Was I a prisoner? Or was I a treasure to be protected? Either way, I hate closed doors to this day, and take it as being personal excluded when I can’t see inside other’s doors to the lives that are being lived there, just beyond my reach …
This collection of Venetian doors – all closed to me – invites populating, and storytelling. Until I make the time to write them, make up your own stories – I don’t mind!
Check out other doors here:
Christine’s post in response to Jake’s challenge this week started me thinking about pets, and my relationship with them. I’ve been thinking about it all afternoon, and I’ve come to the conclusion that I would be unable to live anywhere that would force me to forego the pleasure, and companionship, of a pet. Throughout my life – wanderlust notwithstanding – they have been the constant. Further, while I may enjoy my own company and love to be alone, there’s a predicate to that assertion of independence: with my animal beside me, or waiting for me when I come home. Let me introduce you to the animals in my life, and perhaps then you’ll understand how it is that I have come to these conclusions.
Ruggles was only six weeks to my toddler status when we first met. For a while I was bigger than him, a fact, which I’m sure, I exploited mercilessly, in the manner of older siblings. You will understand his satisfaction then when the unfortunate Rosemary arrived one Christmas to take his place at dress-ups, and in the pram. Good naturally (or was it because he was permanently on duty?) he would escort us as I sallied forth from our Willow Tree House by the dam to take the air, wheeling that battered perambulator up and down the dusty driveway, as far as the cattle ramp, down by the road. He was my playmate, my first friend. He was the first being on whom I consciously lavished love. (Of course I loved my parents, and showered them with hugs and kisses whenever cheeks were proffered for that purpose, but parents lavish love on their children, not the other way around, during those years of self-absorption.)
Almost 20 years later, returning to Canada to set up house after a year in a van in Europe, a little grey striped tabby singled me out at the ‘pound’ to be followed, miraculously, by her matching number in solid colours, an unwanted bundle of joy from a neighbour’s litter. Why was it that, even in Toronto the Clean, it wasn’t mandatory to have cats (and dogs) de-sexed in those days? Thea, the tabby, was an aerialist, routinely climbing up and down shingled or brick walls, leaping from roof to roof, from our third floor attic flat. Gaia, as you can imagine, was more rooted to the hearth. It was R’s first experience of pet-fatherhood, and those two girls were shameless; they quickly turned him into their slave. Luckily they did the same to his sister, whose house they invaded when we returned to Australia in 1983.
Amber and her friend (and eventual adoptive brother) Red ruled our lives in Sydney, going to live with their father after the divorce. Like many childless couples, we had the romantic notion of ‘letting her have a litter’, which she did, insisting on the tent under the sheets as her birthing room. A little lilac girl was driven all the way up to Queensland to brighten the lives of her grandparents, but that didn’t turn out well. Never fear, several years later my little sister Nangi and I came home to look after them. Ma was a terrible snob, and was heard telling that understanding animal that she wasn’t nearly beautiful enough to win her over. But Ma hadn’t counted on the fortitude of that very Buddhist cat – the more the old lady turned away in disdain, the more comfort that little moggie gave in return.
And you know the Misses Kotte: Maggie, Mischief and Podi the cat.
Running on the spot, most of this week, but since it’s only Thursday night, I’m inspired to enter Jake’s Sunday Post. My nominees (two are scans, sorry about the quality) are a little along the lines of the sublime to the ridiculous – though I leave it to you to decide which is which!
From the glamour of Spanish Haute Couture circa 1976, come two swanky shots from the Alhambra:
Fur, can you remember? Fox, I think it was.
And, the photographer – how simple his SLR looks by today’s models.
And lastly, I couldn’t resist this shot taken a couple of years ago when I capitulated and bought an air conditioner. I like to call it “How many Abans-men does it take to install an air-conditioner?”.
In all fairness, much of the chaos around them was because we were doing the paving around the pool, at the same time! But again, can you imagine – barefooted!
I bring you two Sri Lankan dwellings which couldn’t be more different – The 1761 House, which I almost persuaded the owner to let me have on a peppercorn rent, and The 300 Year Old House, in the village of Meemure, a village that time forgot.
The tragic story of the 1761 house will have to wait for another day. Empty now – save for a watcher, and desperately in need of a purpose – it stands proud on its hill, despite the vicissitudes of its family’s history, an elegant but endangered example of upper-class urban architecture – the epitome of shelter for its time in colonial Sri Lanka.
A shelter desperately in need of a purpose.
The 300 Year Old House on the other hand, while in need of a more handsome roof and a little touch-up here and there, is still sheltering the descendants of its original owners. Sited on a cleared knoll in the village of Meemure, at the end of the track, deep within the Knuckles Ranges at the centre of the island, this house might well have been standing when the young English cabin boy Robert Knox, and the entire crew of his father’s ship was captured by the King of Kandy in 1659. Certainly Knox would have recognised every element of its wattle and daub construction, for it follows the time-honoured methods which he copied when he built his own house on the island during his 20 plus years of captivity.
The main entrance is reached by way of the front yard ...
Although we came at it from behind, grandmother drew us in for tea and a tour, telling us the stories of generations of farmers who have lived here and lovingly maintained the house and the lands from which they have sustained their livelihoods.
One can see how the house is sited on high ground and sits on top of a series of earthen platforms, plastered over with an insect-repelling mixture of mud, straw and cow dung – as are all the other surfaces of the structure. Built around a central courtyard which provides light and ventilation – and is in fact the utility area of the home – it offered shelter from the elements, and from the danger of leopard and other animals. As was the case before the advent of glass, windows were small, and infrequently used, ventilation and light being provided by the central courtyard.
I will take you to Meemure one day. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy a little tour of The 300 Year Old House – Meemure, Sri Lanka.
I have a favourite stairway, and a fabled stairway – both to temples (my favourite places) which I’d like to share with you this Sunday.
Stairs to the temple at Wat Phu, Champasak, Lao.
Detail, Wat Phu stairway:
and my favourite stairway, to the Dagoba in the sky, near Gampaha, Sri Lanka. I wish the scan of this old print was better, what to do.
Enjoy
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