by Steve Tanham
The Silent Eye The faded flower caught my eye as I was trimming the potted plants on the windowsill. The rich shades of its life and death were so striking they would make an amazing watercolour. Appropriate, really, as the flower was an Anthurium, the painter’s palette. The heart shaped bloom seemed too beautiful to simply add to the compost so I reached for … Read More A painter’s palette
by Steve Tanham
It is, in the end, all about creation time. The meaning of this is not obvious to the Western psyche steeped in its causal logic, locked into this-to-that and the inevitable need, therefore to create this…. and the fear of not doing. If you believe that we don’t create anything, that our role as a divinely inhabited observer is subtly different, then everything changes, … Read More Journal of the far side: 7 – Tjukurpa
by Steve Tanham
“Mama Mala, there is man missing – a tourist. He was last seen with you!” “Yes, child, I know… the man who asked…” Sigh…”Asked, Mama? What did he ask? How did he ask?” “Water flows between the meeting places, child. He asked to see the waters flowing…” “But he is not of the Anangu people, Mama Mala, he would not understand the ways…” “He … Read More Journal of the far side: 6 – Dreamtime
by Steve Tanham
Longitude 131 is the place where Uluru lives. Right in the middle of nowhere… It’s 06:10 in the morning and the mercury is rising past twenty-eight degrees centigrade outside our air conditioned and life-saving room. Most of yesterday afternoon, it was over forty degrees. When they bus you in from the local airport, they tell you you’ll need a litre of water for every … Read More Journal of the far side: 5 – Longitude 131
by Steve Tanham
The pictures on the wall tell the story – they’re an homage to how the world was in 1954, the year that Pellegrini came to Melbourne and established his iconic coffee bar. It was also the year I was born, and a small assortment of Italian-owned coffee bars were a favourite haunt of my mother and grandmother when they met, three times a week, … Read More Journal of the Far Side – 4: The 1954 Coffee Bar
by Steve Tanham
I’m not a lover of big cities. I like to visit, but find little ‘humanity’ in their towering steel and glass trophies that seem to impose conditions of spiritual sterility on us – conditions and expectations that take us away from what we are, inside. Some cities are able to take advantage of natural features to soften and humanise their landscapes, while still embracing … Read More Journal of the Far Side – 3: City of the Shining River
by Steve Tanham
The Silent Eye I had wondered what the ‘experiential chord’ would be on this trip; arriving for the first time in this vast continent of Australia to spend most of January with my eldest son, our daughter-in-law, and our granddaughter, Alice, now sixteen months old. ‘Experiential chord’ is how I think of what experience does to you–for you, as it assembles the parts of … Read More The Eyes of Being
by Steve Tanham
Originally posted on Stuart France:
* Guard your tongue in youth, and in age you may mature a thought that will be of use to your people. – Big Chief Wabashaw *
by Steve Tanham
It’s 07:31 on Tuesday 3rd January 2017. As the hastily-grabbed selfie shows, I’m being force-fed very small peanut butter sandwiches. My glasses, now covered in the sticky delight, have learned to stay out of the way, but my mouth has no choice because Alice has decided that we need to share part two of her breakfast… This is the reality of our Australian adventure, … Read More Journal of the far side – Post 3: Peanut Butter Glasses
Sun in Gemini 
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