Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.

Looking south-east from atop Mount Wellington. June, 2010.

I am not sure that I would like to live on top of a mountain. Sure, the views are fine and you can be assured of some peace and quiet. Yet supermarkets are thin on the ground and it gets pretty cold up on tops of mountains.

Do you live on top of a mountain?

Tasman Bridge on the left, Battery Point and Sandy Bay central, heading down to Taroona on the centre-left. That's Opossum Bay on the hook inlet of South Arm. June, 2010.

Comments

Roddy said…

Do you remember when you were a kid and I wanted to buy a mountain and build a house right at the top and erect an electric fence right round the bottom. Just for the privacy. I would still like to.
As for cold, that is the attraction. Remember, I like it cold.
Supermarkets? Who needs them. Buy in bulk once a year.
Peace and quiet, great!
And if you remember we live half way up the hill.

5 July 2010 at 19:43

Unknown said…

I live in the foothills of a mountain. That's not really the top of a mountain ...

5 July 2010 at 20:30

Magpie said…

These are beautiful photos and I love the quote. So very true and a good frame of mind to keep.

6 July 2010 at 03:06

Kris McCracken said…

Roddy, no.

Linda, in the shadow of a mountain, no doubt...

Mapie, indeed.

6 July 2010 at 16:31

Unknown said…

The mountain top view is amazing. It could be a view of earth from a rocky moon. Your boys are quite photogenic. You have a nice blog, thank you.

9 July 2010 at 01:42

Kris McCracken said…

Thanks all. Even though my new desk is in a cubicle at the center of the top floor, I can still see the mountain!

16 July 2010 at 11:07

Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it...

I still have the robot on the job. Here you can see the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery . And here is a poem: Soliloquy for One Dead Bruce Dawe Ah, no, Joe, you never knew the whole of it, the whistling which is only the wind in the chimney's smoking belly, the footsteps on the muddy path that are always somebody else's. I think of your limbs down there, softly becoming mineral, the life of grasses, and the old love of you thrusts the tears up into my eyes, with the family aware and looking everywhere else. Sometimes when summer is over the land, when the heat quickens the deaf timbers, and birds are thick in the plumbs again, my heart sickens, Joe, calling for the water of your voice and the gone agony of your nearness. I try hard to forget, saying: If God wills, it must be so, because of His goodness, because- but the grasshopper memory leaps in the long thicket, knowing no ease. Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it... I like Bruce Dawe. He just my be my favourite Austral...

There was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding; even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong.

Here is a self portrait. I’m calling it Portrait of a lady in a dirty window . Shocking, isn’t it? However, it is apt! Samhain , Nos Galan Gaeaf , Hop-tu-Naa , All Saints , All Hallows , Hallowmas , Hallowe'en or HALLOWEEN . It’s Theme Thursday and we’re talking about the festivals traditionally held at the end of the harvest season. Huh? No wonder Australians have trouble with the concept of HALLOWEEN. For the record, in my thirty-two L O N G years on the planet, I can’t say I’ve ever seen ghosts ‘n goblins, trick ‘n treaters or Michael Myers stalking Tasmania’s streets at the end of October. [That said, I did once see a woman as pale as a ghost turning tricks that looked like Michael Myers in late November one time.] Despite the best efforts of Hollywood, sitcoms, and innumerable companies; it seems Australians are impervious to the [ahem] charms of a corporatized variant of a celebration of the end of the "lighter half" of the year and beginning of the "darke...

Hold me now, oh hold me now, until this hour has gone around. And I'm gone on the rising tide, to face Van Dieman's Land

Theme Thursday again, and this one is rather easy. I am Tasmanian, you see, and aside from being all around general geniuses - as I have amply described previously - we are also very familiar with the concept of WATER. Tasmania is the ONLY island state of an ISLAND continent. That means, we're surrounded by WATER. That should help explain why I take so many photographs of water . Tasmania was for a long time the place where the British (an island race terrified of water) sent their poor people most vile and horrid criminals. The sort of folk who would face the stark choice of a death sentence , or transportation to the other end of the world. Their catalogue of crimes is horrifying : stealing bread assault stealing gentlemen's handkerchiefs drunken assault being poor affray ladies being overly friendly with gentlemen for money hitting people having a drink and a laugh public drunkenness being Irish Fenian terrorist activities being Catholic religious subversion. ...

This will hurt me...

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