There is not one big cosmic meaning for all,
there is only the meaning we each give to our life,
an individual meaning, an individual plot,
like an individual novel, a book for each person. - Anais Nin
It's interesting that in young adulthood we adopt our own - individual - role models. If we are lucky, those luminarie's keep guiding us and reassuring, long after their deaths and long after the initial infatuation. Nin keeps speaking sense to me, 30 years later.
My favourite female author, Isabelle Allende, interviewed by my favourite Australian TV person, Andrew Denton.
I think that when I was around 5 I realised that my mother was a victim and I didn't want to be like her. My mother was a beautiful woman who was victimised by the society. My mother had no rights, no money, no power of any kind and the only way she could get attention was by being very sick. So she was sick all the time. And I wanted to be like my grandfather, I wanted to be in control. I think I was a feminist before the word was invented. By the time I came across feminist books by eh by American or European writers, I realised that there was [noise in background] an articulate way or a language to express all these feelings that I had had for years and years and so I became a raging feminist as a young woman". - Isabelle Allende.
Interesting how those we admire turn out to be, after all this time, quite like ourselves.
My curiosity whetted, I nailed the local librarian and came home with this book.
Whooee. This guy is a REALLY GOOD DRAWER.
Believe him when he says his drawings are 'visually complex'...and 'for older readers'. I was stumped by the sequence of pictures and hey I'm really old.
My really young (9 year old) son said when I showed him a page:
"I don't get it".
Ah hee hee, I love kids. However, The Arrival is a darkly beautiful depiction of a migrant experience with an almost breathtaking visual imagination behind every frame. I will continue to seek this man's work out. He's very very good.
Most of my time is currently spent writing and illustrating picture books, which have reached quite a broad readership in Australia and overseas via foreign publication and translation into several languages. They are best described as ‘picture books for older readers’ rather than young children, as they deal with relatively complex visual styles and themes, including colonial imperialism, social apathy, the nature of memory and depression. -Shaun Tan
I love to share incredible talent with young people. But even more satisfying - talent with an edge.
Shaun Tan: Born 1974 in Perth WA, he was known at school as a "good drawer".
I love these colouring books by UK illustrator Roz Streeton. They are so much more interesting and indeed interactive ( enough with the i's !) than your average derbrain colouring books.
In designing the books, I have paid attention to all things which irritated me as a child.- Roz S.
Clever woman.
You add your own heads, arms and legs. What mad joy I could have! I want one for myself. So does my daughter. There's also a boy's series (Johnny Joe's) which Ben's keen on too. Let's buy em all goddammit!
Via the gorgeous Book By It's Cover
I'm a very visual person and I actively seek out images of beauty, interest and delight. Such things captivate my imagination and can literally turn an ordinary day into something with a lovely twist.
Since losing my favourite blogger, Theresa Duncan, to her suicide last July, I've been scouring the net for blogs to help satisfy that need for visual romancing. (Theresa was a genius at this art, as well as an intellectual giant).
In my hunting process, I've come across a blog called dear ada, the author of which always features beautiful pieces of art that fill in my day very happily thank you.
Today, still being on holidays, I found myself with time to languish around the dear ada site and find that the author "birdie"has been struggling with diabetes for 20 years. She speaks about this disease with eloquence and indeed grace in her other site.
She has published her own book Aiming For Grace: 20 Things I Know About Diabetes. (Gorgeous cover).
I really loved reading birdie's posts about her life with diabetes. Having had gestational diabetes when pregnant with Ben, I know something of it, but certainly not what it's like for 20 years on end. The theme of these posts can be summed up in one word - inspiration.
This is the beauty of blogging I think, a person's world can become known, even accessible and in birdie's case, the beauty and struggle of that world is intertwined in a fabulous way.
What a marvelous and interesting woman.
I saw things as a chain and felt that everything
is continuous and never really ends. I had a
sense of continuity and relatedness relatedness
between the past and the present and the future,
between races and between the sexes, between
everything.
-Anais Nin
Happy International Women's Day.
I love this book. I haven't finished it yet, which is good because I will be disappointed to lose it in the end.
It's written from the perspective of an autistic (perhaps Asperger's ?) 15 year old. A label is never mentioned. This author however, has an intimate knowledge of how these kids see things.
I work with a lot of these kids. I still have to find the answer to the question,"Why are there so many Aspergers/Autistic/Pervasive Developmental Disorder children diagnosed these days?" But that's another story.
I like these kids. They do it hard but there's just something about them with which I can relate. I think there's a bit of Asperger's in all of us frankly.
These children don't understand social skills or niceties and need specific teaching in them. They reach unbearable heights of anxiety with change to routine, noise levels and other assorted bits and pieces the rest of us take in our stride (for the most part).
Last year, I was running a social skills group with a colleague to such children ("high functioning" Asperger's children). One day we were showing them pictures of faces - angry, sad, happy, surprised etc.
I showed one boy a picture of an angry face and asked him how he felt when someone looked at him like that. He replied, "I just...don't care". And that for me, was a quintessential Asperger's comment. What a dear child I thought, so honest.
This book captures such moments and provides a beautiful, funny and sensitive description of a condition that many kidlets have. It's so well written too. A really good and delicious read.
The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time by Mark Haddon
Lover of psychology, women and art, the writer Anais Nin in 1932, is pictured.
Via community journal, Vintage Photographs.
