summer baby

i spent last summer in the north of queensland, where the rainforest creeps down to the ocean and the sun glows gold in the hot sand. 

 first we went to byron bay, where i sucked mangos and gelato and threaded frangipani flowers through my sun-bleached hair, swimming and growing brown in the heat as all around us locals flew past on rusted bicycles, long hair curling behind them as they rode, tattoos rising and falling across muscles in tanned skin. we played with my small cousins; maeve who is dark hair and quiet eyes and wonder and oliver who is impatience and youth, and so, so much love. i walked down dusty market lanes and there was so much colour and art and life everywhere, beauty in all forms surrounding me. 

after byron we drove through tumbling hills and misted valleys and cragged cliffs until we found the town of toowoomba, far away from the green sea and green land, just starting to breathe again after years of drought. we spent christmas there, listening to the ticks of clocks in my grandmother's house and chasing the younger children around the lawn until they collapsed, giggling and gasping for breath. we met new faces, dorje who had only opened his owl eyes for the first time two days ago when i met him, and niamh, who was older than her tiny cousin but only by a month or so. baby hands played wondering with my fingers and rings, and the older cousins wrapped their strong little arms around my kneck and leant their cheeks against my shoulders, sighing sleepily as i carried them through the night. the summer belonged to us and we lived in it with all that we could. there is so much warmth and love in family, and i hold on to mine with all my heart. 

 maeve.

oliver.

 (oh dear, can you find me?)

 young magic in byron.

byron markets.

 beauty.

 dorje.

 getting lost on the way to toowoomba.

the range.

all pictures by me, christmastime 2011.

daisy is

to want more is natural, but to find it is harder.

you play peter and i'll be wendy and we'll fly away and never grow up. we'll never lose our hearts and find our heads and accept that we do not have more, we have nine-to-five and day-to-day and that is all, that is enough thank you very much. we will be freckled skin and lightning smiles and long hair forever, we will let rain fall on flesh and wind hit our cheeks and we will be more. one day, we will be good.

and then reality hits and we realise that we cannot fly to neverland. shoulder bones jut from thin backs hopefully and we trace feathers onto our translucent skin, but none appear. we are bags of broken glass, splintering behind our skin and far too fragile to fly away, far too afraid to truly leave. years pass and we grow and as our bodies lengthen we think maybe we are no longer right, but i am learning to find beauty in the smallest things and it gives me hope. and when i am so high above the world in a far away tree as the first rain is drawn from the sky's grey flank across the sea, and when the clouds are purple and gold and the storm cuts daggers through the air and through my hair, i find it. i find more. and when you look at me in long grass and everything but my beating heart falls away from my being and it is just you and me, me and you, we are more, and i want it to last forever.

i see the world through a lens because that way, i can make it my own neverland. when i take a picture, it is no longer just a pretty girl in a pretty dress, or the places i played when i was a child, or a piece of technology. it has become a feeling, a moment, a story, a whisper, a tiny breath of life that i can keep forever. i don't just want to show you the world; i want to show you my world, what i see, what i love, what i need to hold on to. i am still young, but i am on the brink of growing up. i refuse to let go of who i am now, so before my life becomes a muddled web of lines and smeared ink i want to make something beautiful, i want to make something more. i hope you see that in my art.

so search for more. find more, but don't just make it yours.

find more, and make it you.

ephemera

with katie, who is one of the best people i know.