Update

It has been awhile. I note, with some appreciation, the trickle of hits this blog continues to receive, even though I have been reduced to posting email forwards.

So, what of me...

I have started a new part-time job, working in one of the commercial galleries [www.helenmaxwell.com] in canberra, which has been great. It is very nice to be working with art, and getting a feel for how a commercial gallery operates. The new shows just opened and are looking quite spectacular, so it is nice to feel good about where one's working hours are spent. Even if the range of skills bear no relation to anything I studied in my "Art History and Curatorship" degree - who knew that I would be spending so much quality time with packing tape and debating the merits of bubble wrap. And that it would be in an art gallery that I realised how profoundly unfit I am, having spent the day lifting and shifting, to collapse in a deadened heap at the end.

The thesis, is, brace yourself, going well! I have a sense of purpose about the direction and work is being done.

Combined with the other part-time job, it amounts to me being quite busy, which is a good thing, as I only truly become productive when there is a certain amount of pressure. Although there is a skill, when busy, to slow down and spend time over things that need reflecting upon, ie, anything to do with the thesis, when time is short and there is a feeling of being rushed.

I'm still digesting all the experiences of travel - it was such a charged, intense time of over stimulation, that only now, as I have flashbacks to different places and sites, do I feel like I'm absorbing it. It is nice to realise that a lot of it has stuck in my mind and I remember it. Having one experience after another in places so different from each other, I was worried that each successive place would overwrite each other and I wouldn't remember much except a lot of gallery cloakrooms and how much I hate renoir. Which would be a truly heartbreaking result. But, thankfully, I still have a firm mental picture of the truly splendid this-is-the-definition-of-kitsch water fountain (with its muzak soundtrack) of the Bellagio in Vegas, and the moment I almost burst into tears in front of the Cezanne in the Musee d'Orsay. AND how much I hate Renoir. And a thousand why-don't-_I_-live-in-New-York moments.

I'm in Bundanoon for the weekend, I came up to surprise my mum for her birthday [there's a certain arrogance in being able to assume that one can be a present for someone - but that is the joy of having parents isn't it? They have to be excited to see you, even when you walk in just as they sit down to lunch, because They Are The Rules.] We have just been out for an Indian meal [v. tasty] and are generally relaxing. It is great to finally see some rain, even Goulburn is looking a teensy bit green. Having some errands to run, I drove via Fyshwick, and then Queenbeyan and Bungendore, and then, semi-accidentally, Goulburn. Fyshwick saw my quest for The Perfect Soup Spoon achieved, which was a relief, as last weekend saw me on a tour of the Endless Mall that now adorns the centre of Canberra (and thus entitled The Canberra Centre - which if they keep expanding will have a certain amusing frisson, not actually having a centre, but being an interconnected series of land grabs with various acknowledgements to the streets that have been swallowed, incorporated into the architecture.) that ended up costing $85 dollars on everything except soup spoons.