Ree-flections
I hope you’re enjoying the change of seasons in your part of the world. Here’s a busy collage for my Ree-flections:
Left to right, by row:
I drew a running green cat that LittleOne said looked like me. This tickled me a lot! I can only aspire to this level of skinny, lithe, elegant running and long tail. I’ll pass on the lime green fur though.
Some of the last couple of frangipanis of autumn. I do love these flowers.
The bottom of my 7-year-old laptop has separated from the keyboard body. I think this may mean swelling inside the laptop? Whatever the cause, this is not good and has me crying internally. I love this laptop and it’s worked so perfectly for me for so long. Sobs.
A drawing of flowers using LittleOne’s cheap watercolour brush pens. I then photoshopped it blue. It’s a cool cyanotype-ish look (I think).
Our backyard trees have had lots of seeds and fruit and flowers, which means birds visiting in droves. On a recent phone call, my mum said it sounded like there was an aviary in the garden. On this particular morning, the symphony of screeches from the assorted birds (lorikeets, blue-faced honeyeaters, white cockatoos) in the flowering gum trees was interrupted by an even more raucous noise. The sounds of kookaburras laughing loudly at each other (here’s kinda what it sounded like). Btw, as far as I know, kookaburras usually laugh at each other in challenge, not camaraderie, so I rushed out to see what they were up to and ummm, managed to silence them with my presence (oops?) There sat not one, not two, but three kookaburras (see helpfully encircled pic). They side-eyed each other grumpily and then departed (quietly).
We’ve been having very pretty autumn sunrises.
LittleOne and I did paper-plate crafts. I think LittleOne’s red peacock is bold and absolutely wonderful and eclipses my attempt by a long shot.
We went to a nature park and I was lucky enough to snap a clear pic of this pretty parrot. A birding enthusiast on BlueSky said it’s a Female Eclectus parrot (which I’d never heard of before).
And finally, a lovely butterfly which has been flying around the garden regularly, sometimes even in light rain. I love the shivelights which stayed in my pic.
Also, the final one (with absolutely NO photographic record) is that I’ve been trying to learn the flossing dance with LittleOne. I’ve already put my hip out.
I hope my words find you well in your world, and I hope you enjoy this issue.
Writing, Creativity & Random Cool Finds
I love this very much: You’ve got tree-mail. In Melbourne, trees were given email addresses as a way of tracking problem branches and other tree-maintenance/public safety issues. Instead… people wrote love-letters to the trees. And the trees wrote back! (I feel like this could be woven into a gorgeous movie, but on the other hand, *points to the next link* maybe not.)
This one is eye-opening and unsurprising: a Harper’s Magazine article on screenwriting in Hollywood, streaming TV, creators and IP, antitrust laws and the US writers’ strike. (I found this courtesy of a Neil Gaiman share on BlueSky).
Here’s a peek at some of the seedy worlds where spammy, scammy ebooks proliferate on Amazon (a dubious companion piece to the machinations of the Harper’s Mag piece).
Here is a mash-up I could never have believed would work: metal guitar and devotional Sufi singing. It should not work. And yet work it does. Here’s the original clip of the Nooran Sisters, minus Andre Antunes’ guitar. I’ve played the latter version often enough, LittleOne will hum the tune while playing.
To continue on my “butterflights” theme, here are some amazing photos of the monarch butterfly migration. For the heart.
Something I created
Butterfly Tanka
Early morning drives
Relentless, humid summer
And what my heart sees
Through roads, exhaust and concrete
Fearless butterflies courting
Backstory: This poem describes a true moment 🙂 It was from earlier this year, on the way to work one humid, summer morning earlier in 2024, when it felt like there were butterflies everywhere in Brisbane, including right in the concrete middle of six lanes of traffic. It was the most … hostile (for want of a better word) place you would ever want to see any kind of living creature, yet here were these two butterflies obliviously twirling and swirling around each other, and completely in their own world. I hope they stay successfully in their own worlds for the long rest of their lives. I was initially going to do a haiku of this moment, but went with the extra syllable count of a tanka poem instead.
My steps for the above illustration: I generated an AI image using the Adobe Photoshop Express app (which I believe/hope uses its own image bank which hopefully minimises copyright irregularities/unfairness); I photoshopped the image with the PS Express app; emailed it to my laptop; from my laptop’s proper Photoshop program, I applied a couple of filters, and then I added in the two butterflies extracted from a separate photo I took.
I then tried to draw my own illustration (see below). This involved: copying my version of the above AI image with my watercolour brush pens on paper; attempting to add light and shade (badly); taking a photo of the drawing; attempting colour, blending, light and shade touches in my phone’s Autodesk Sketchbook app; photoshopping in my phone’s Adobe Photoshop Express app; emailing the image to my laptop, aaand doing more editing/fussing in my laptop’s Photoshop program, including photoshopping in my butterfly photos .<insert manic emoji here>
I think the AI image wins by a long shot for illustrating my tanka, but I kinda like the cartoony effect of my drawing attempt in its own right!
If you managed to read this far (thank you!), and I’m wondering: which illustration do you prefer?
Thank you
Du fond du coeur, thanks for reading x
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Find my scattered self online: My Dodo Au Gogo blog | My art-practice Instagram | My BlueSky | my website.
Ree-Imagined Worlds 
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