![gumtree135](https://i0.wp.com/www.penelopetodd.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/gumtree135-e1317197915780-300x193.jpg?resize=300%2C193)
While in Australia I went out looking for wildflowers but it was too hot to snatch more than a couple. Well, that’s my excuse. All that foliage is a fiddle to draw. I chose simpletons.
![wildflowers136](https://i0.wp.com/www.penelopetodd.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/wildflowers136-e1317197199302-223x300.jpg?resize=223%2C300)
I read only one book (and started another):
![bedside134](https://i0.wp.com/www.penelopetodd.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/bedside134-e1317197297300-300x297.jpg?resize=300%2C297)
May Sarton writes in Journal of a Solitude: ‘… we have to make myths of our lives, the point being that if we do, then every grief or inexplicable seizure by weather, woe or work can — if we discipline ourselves and think hard enough — be turned to account, be made to yield further insight into what it is to be alive, to be a human being, what the hazards are of a fairly usual, everyday kind.’
We were given tickets for a dress rehearsal at the Sydney Opera House:
![don giovanni137](https://i0.wp.com/www.penelopetodd.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/don-giovanni137-e1317197721705-263x300.jpg?resize=263%2C300)
Add a pair of black leather underpants; pop snugly into all four items Teddy Tahu-Rhodes and you have Don Giovanni, Sydney style. Splendido.
![](https://i0.wp.com/www.penelopetodd.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/giraffe-stool138-e1317198396215-243x300.jpg?resize=243%2C300)
That’s all.
2 responses to “Auscellany”
Hello Mary and thanks for kind words. I dare say the replacement would work, but I wonder if it isn’t the tug toward the mythic that sees us trying to make some golden stuff from the mundane ‘hazards’. We over-reach (or over-imagine, perhaps) in order to attain some more modest goal.
I like the May Sarton quote, Penelope. I wonder if you couldn’t replace myth with ‘story’ which is less grand but surely as true… I love your stories here on your blog.. your drawings too…