Forget me nots

Aqua sky and bell tower

The sun is in and out today making the sky a bright aqua dissolving into grey-chill cloud cover. My gumboots, recommended by a friend as a necessary item here, are my treasured companions. This does of course suggest that I spend time away from my desk ambling around the Montsalvat grounds and sploshing through puddles. This is true.

Bird house in chill-grey sky

Montsalvat has enough hidden corners, garden beds and sculptures both strident and blending into nature’s ramble that my outings for air, for movement, are a delight.

In observation the Truth, Miller pursues, is evident. Today I watched a bee, legs with swollen bags of pollen, descend further and further into a white camellia, slightly rain damaged, but still pure. The photo is focused on the wrong flower and doesn’t share the scent or sound of this productive event.

Fat yellow bee leg!

I spent some time trawling deeper into the Google pages of a ‘Godfrey Miller’ search and around page 12 discovered that Miller’s second address in Sydney, 89 Sutherland St, Paddington, had been sold in March this year! The sales blurb suggested it had been held by the same owners for some 30 years. As Miller bequeathed the house to the artist Helen Crabb in 1964, who unable to pay death duties, sold it fairly soon after, this would mean the 2010 vendors may well have been the first permanent residents since Miller. More to my interest was the mention in the brochure of Godfrey Miller. So on an offchance I contacted the agent by email for copies of the brochures. Dan Tussie, of Place, Double Bay responded within hours. I can imagine Miller now in those rooms, walking the stairs and noting the growth in his back garden. Such is the spirit surrounding this project Dan also included a photo of Miller.

Finally I have printed out and catalogued all the letters I have transcribed from the Mitchell Library collection MSS1005 & MLMSS 2719. It is only about 40% complete. It is largely from these letters that I am getting to know Miller more intimately and developing my Writing Practice page. The letters bring Miller’s mind into today’s world and his thoughts from these letters, as indicated in various past posts, have provided me with great guidance.

His voice is strong and he is determined that it is his voice that comes through in this biography – he almost pushes me aside at times as a mere conduit. Which brings me to the Forget-me-nots discovered in the lower vegetable and herb garden that borders the cemetery.