In this issue

1. My Artwork of the Week

2. Frontispiece

3. The Songline of Water's Gathering

4. Waiata mou te Ata-Moth Song, Moon Song

5. Fevered Mind Links (to make your Sunday morning coffee go cold)

6. Endpapers

My Artwork of the Week

Sometimes the truth of Te Taiao (the natural world) is so clearly evident that you don't want to mess with it.

Sometimes it would be disrespectful to do anything other than try and make as accurate a likeness as possible.

My journey into the wonder of Fiordland began in southern Westland when I looked down upon Te Wehenga, the Cook River, where it flowed out into the sea and realised I was looking down upon the heart and lungs of Papatuuaanuku, Mother Earth.

She was alive. She is alive.

Abruptly all the labels fell away, and a lifetime of having my understanding calcified by indoctrinated norms underwent a transformation.

If the planet truly is alive, everything within it is conscious; people, plants, animals and even the minerals themselves.

Everything.

So how am I to make the likeness of so many lifeforms that are at once diverse and yet an aspect of a greater whole?

The journey begins by acknowledging this singular but essential truth. The rest will surely follow.

My friend Kat, who at the time was one of the skippers of a tourist boat on Lake Manapōuri, told me about Spider Rocks. You will love it, she said.

She arranged for me to come on the boat and told me that there would be no tourists on one of the journeys, and we would have plenty of time to make our way up the lake to West Arm.

Fine by me.

When she eased the boat into North Arm and brought the engines back to idle so we could gently scythe through the water, I understood what she meant. It was something quite extraordinary. Time, weather and possible seismic disturbance had flayed the skin from the land, exposing the ligaments and nerves.

The truth was revealed. A truth was revealed.

My mind looked for a logical (read: scientific) explanation. And, even without the benefit of an education and geology, I could work it out.

My heart saw something completely different, something profound, a deeper older knowledge the mountain had brought to the surface.

And when I sat down to process the image, the temptation to make it in my likeness was strong, but I resisted.

I opted to honour it with minimal postproduction, to try and be delicate, to evoke rather than evolve.

Frontispiece

Atamaarie e te whaanau:

good morning everybody.

My apologies to those of you who have written the beautiful emails that flooded into my inbox in the last week or so. I'm still dealing with the replies that I feel compelled to make. I will get there. I promise. Where possible, I will attempt to call you personally. I treasure every one of you who remains a subscriber.

Despite my suggestion two issues ago that Breathing Light might be on its last legs, I've had new signups and a clear message not to stop producing this newsletter.

I am humbled.

When you sign up, I only see your email address, not your name, rank and serial number. So it has been a surprise to me on a couple of occasions when I've received emails from people I didn't even know were subscribers. Then there is the embarrassment of not being entirely sure whether I have met the person writing to me. It's like that awful moment at a party when you go to introduce one person to another, but you can't remember their name (am I the only one who suffers from this social malady?)

Please humour me if I email you asking me to tell you about yourself. I'm interested to know about all my readers. And, if we met somewhere, perhaps in a workshop, please remind me so I can join the dots.

The cherry tree in my front yard doesn't seem to have got the memo from Winter about shutting down and going into sleep mode. Instead, for reasons known only to itself, it's already thinking about the coming Spring, which is over two months away. Small patches of delicate pink blossom punctuate the dour branch sentences of winter slumber. Or maybe it is a slow learner.

The joyous result is that tuii, the raucous bully boys of the bird world, have returned. They warble and gargle, preen and prance, and fluff around like teenage males at a school dance, full of pomp and self-importance. Then, finally, they perch on a branch, abruptly tip over until they are upside down, and then poke their curved banks up into the flowers and drink the nectar. Having done this, they spring upright and boast about their feat to anybody who will listen, which is usually only me. I'm contemplating getting one of those sugar water birdfeeders for them, so I can enjoy their company and terrorise the neighbour's cat-with-an-attitude who is terrified of them ever since they ganged up and attacked him for daring to catch one of their own.

There is so much wonder to be had in observing the everyday.

The Songline of Water's Gathering

The Songline of the Water began as an idea in the mind of the God of the Winds, a singular, separating drift of thought which emerged from his restless spiralling of the planet and fingering the hair of the oceans.

He reached down and, moment by moment, began gathering up these ideas, lifting them ever upwards into his realms, kneading and shaping them into a form which was yet formless. Then, herding them together, he drove and drew them towards the land to the east.

As he approached the edge of the ocean, the sharply-spiked barrier of the mountains forced him to climb higher. The effort of vaulting them was such that he could no longer hold onto his diaphanous cloud sheep and was compelled to let his new charges go.

They cascaded away beneath him, and as they fell, tumbling and drifting softly downwards, they solidified into a countless cloud of tiny white flecks piled onto the top of the grim grey granite mountaintops.

For a time, they lay there in numberless legions, piled upon each other, waiting for Te Raa, the Sun and Older Brother, to come and release them from their mountain hold and set them free on the next stage of their journey.

Then, released from their solid iceform, they went on their liquid way, gaily sliding and sidling down the cracks in the mountain walls, chattering and chuckling in glee to each other as they wove themselves together in creek bed skeins.

Skipping around boulders and falling over joyous drops, they wove their way amongst trees and the deep green silence of the forest. Some of them were so entranced by the dark, gnarled wonder of the outstretched tree roots that they opted to remain, be absorbed and take a shorter route home.

The remainder stayed true to their destiny, growing in number as more of their kind came to join them on their pilgrimage.

Time passed.

The rapid chatterjoy of their tumbling passage over the mountain stone softly subsided as they wove themselves into the deep purple silence of the lakes, gently passing through the timeless dark in a place where other lifeforms had found their home and purpose.

In time they emerged from the shadowed Halls of the Night and continued their journey downwards. Contained and constrained by the walls of the land, they followed the songline ever onwards, an army following orders they had yet to receive.

Their pace slowed to a gentle calm, mirroring the planet's heartbeat.

Time passed.

Then they heard a new sound in the distance, a welcoming roar far more significant than themselves. They separated into strands, each seeking a better way to reach what they now knew to be the Destination.

And finally, slithering over rock so finely ground it had become dust, mere specks like themselves, they found themselves merging into the Great Song of the Ocean.

Home.

Oblivion.

Rebirth.

Renewal.

And singing the Song again.

Waiata mou te Ata-Moth Song, Moon Song

This is one of my favourite waiata from my book Raahui.

Moth Song, Moon Song

On day thirteen

a solitary, hovering moth

sprinkled with the moon’s magnetic shimmer

and dancing to the glowing tune

of her own glimmering self-purpose,

carved blue-white scripts of light

on the sensuous, velvet sigh of the night.

She fluttered me west,

over languid mountains,

with upturned, dreaming faces

and sinuous, silver-veined rivers in veiled valleys,

under barely-brushed clouds wandering east

till we came to the edge

of the shimmering ocean,

to wait and mourn

as the bright-faced moon

lowered herself slowly

below the rim of the world.

Fevered Mind Links (to make your Sunday morning coffee go cold)

Last minute dinner sorted: Cook spinach, potato and lemon soup tonight — www.stuff.co.nz

If you grab a jar of preserved lemons on your way home tonight to make this soup, you will not regret it. Yes, the initial outlay is relatively high, but where preserved lemons are concerned a little goes a long way.

Women Photographers: A Modern Vision — www.blind-magazine.com

The Denver Art Museum presents more than 100 photographs by women artists that reflect on history and society.

From aardvark to woke: inside the Oxford English Dictionary — www.newstatesman.com

The team at the Oxford English Dictionary felt some nervousness about writing the definition for “Terf”, an acronym for trans-exclusionary radical feminist, which this month has been added to its pages.

Anne Pratt’s Flowers, Ferns, Quiet Ferocity: How a Middle-Aged Victorian Woman Became One of the Great Masters of Scientific Illustration — www.themarginalian.org

“We call it ‘Nature’; only reluctantly admitting ourselves to be ‘Nature’ too,” Denise Levertov wrote in her stunning poem “Sojourns in the Parallel World.

Octavia Butler on the Meaning of God — www.themarginalian.org

“He is the only God. And so am I and so are you,” William Blake said of Jesus in one of his prophetic koan-like pronouncements.

And Then the Sea Glowed a Magnificent Milky Green — hakaimagazine.com

A chance encounter with a rare phenomenon called a milky sea connects a sailor and a scientist to explain the ocean’s ghostly glow. This article is also available in audio format. Listen now, download, or subscribe to “Hakai Magazine Audio Edition” through your favorite podcast app.

Naomi Toilalo's supreme Southland cheese roll pizza recipe — www.stuff.co.nz

I grew up in South Otago, and we loved Southland Cheese Rolls so I took the delicious filling and turned them into a Supreme Cheese Pizza.

Pinpoint the Start of Pinhole Photography and How To Start Snapping Pictures for Yourself — mymodernmet.com

Today's DSLR cameras and smartphones may seem complicated, but there is still a charm to old-fashioned photography techniques. Since its invention, photography has utilized the simple physical properties of the camera obscura effect.

Every day the natural world reveals its intelligence, but humans choose to ignore it — www.newstatesman.com

As a child, I was taught to believe that, unlike humans, animals were not intelligent in the usual sense. Instead they “obeyed” instinct, each blindly following a limited, hardwired behavioural rule set, according to its specific character and needs.

End Papers

Each time I come to write my weekly paanui (newsletter), I'm never sure where it will go. It seems to have a mind of its own and goes where it will go. So I'm usually content to step back into the shadows and let it have its head.

Art is like that. When we attempt to impose our own will upon the work, rather than allowing it to flow through us, we end up with a portrait of our ego rather than the inspiration that came to us. So sometimes, we must take a deep breath, get out of our way and allow what will come to do so. Then, as often as not, the results will surprise us and be infinitely more authentic. Truth is always watching us from the shadows.

I know a number of you come to the newsletter expecting photographic wisdom from me. Unfortunately, that hasn't happened this week. I did consider talking about AI's impact on our beloved medium, but the newsletter told me to save that for another day. Next week perhaps.

I'm beginning to run out of new work to publish. In my garage, I have a server with 500,000 images on it, with a blown motherboard, waiting for me to afford a NAS so I can gather them up and reconsider all those files.

Ma te wa. When it is time.

And it is time. Time to go out and create new work. More importantly, I'm on the verge of a new way of seeing and making work in a new mode. I can feel it. At the moment, it's nothing more than an impulse, a sense of moving up a level and exploring new ways of expressing my vision, which seems to be in a state of change.

Our picture-making should be like that. It should be a process of constant evolution, where we explore our unique way of seeing the world. After all, we are not the person we were yesterday, a week ago or even a year ago. So why should we attempt to cling to the past? All around us, the world is changing radically. While so many of us are desperately backpedalling to pre-COVID times, the truth is the world is not the same as we would like it to be (or are used to it being), so let us be like the river.

Let us surrender to the current and allow the songline of life to carry us downstream.

As always, I wish you joy, peace, fulfilment, and a wonderful week ahead. Please celebrate the wonder of who you are and what you have and give thanks to the One who guides you.

Ngaa mihi nunui arohaa ki a koutou.

Much love to you all.