Perspective.

This is the view from my airbed in the lounge where I am camping while Dog is convalescing. I am thoroughly enjoying the change in perspective.

As a drawer I probably make a half decent painter. I can manage to get a bit of a sense of distance and space using colour and I know about making things far away smaller and things closer bigger, but the composition of this sort of stuff has never been my forte, and I have never been much of a planner so instead of grabbing for a pencil to do a little preliminary sketch, out come the brushes and I just get started. Yeh I have buggered up many many canvases using this avante guard method, but all is not lost cos you can just paint over it and try again. Some canvases have ended up so heavy with paint that they'd make a damn fine weapon if your thing is knocking out small children with oversized frisbees.

And as I am writing this I am reminded of an art class in perspective I was teaching some time back. It was a year 9 class and to say they didn't give a shit would have been an exaggeration, and mostly that was my fault. Firstly I had allowed them to steal all but a few of the 2 and 4 B pencils so equipment was sparse. It took a while for me to believe that they would steal from themselves, and when I finally cottoned on to it and insisted that they leave a deposit if they wanted to borrow something, it was almost too late. But the biggest problem was the boring still life shit I had set up for them to draw. I mean in retrospect, it was like I set up this weird assortment of shit as a punishment, it was too fucking hard for 'em and I was too shit to teach 'em how to go about even starting. It was a disaster. Chairs were thrown, literally, and it was mostly my fault. Yeh some of these kids were mean little fuckers, but I should have found another way. Ho hum, too late she cried.

However that's not the only sort of perspective I have been pondering. The view from my temporary camp in the lounge room is marvellously odd and interesting. I guess most of us wake up in the same bed most of the time and look about and so all the details have been well observed. The crack in the plaster, the paint chips here and there and the fading of the carpet. I am pretty sure most of us could wander around the bedroom in the dark without fear of dented shins or broken toes. Ah the familiarity of it all.

But this last week the lounge room is transformed into a wee bedsit at night, thanks to a very comfy airbed, courtesy of my camping girl. It's a long, long, fucking long way down to that air bed. I have just about perfected the ease down into a little roll over to get in and my core muscles, which I thought had long since left the building, are getting a bit of a work out, as I drag myself to the sitting position and then pull my legs up and roll over onto my knees and then once in position as if I am giving some kid a horsey ride, I manage to wedge my toes under the mattress and push myself up leading with my arse, into that downward facing dog thing, before I finally become vertical. The getting down is much easier than the getting up - sounds like a fine Rap tune huh? I am pleased Stevie has not seen fit to video this effort and pop it on you tube.

Yep the getting up is the down side of this arrangement. Each night, I am limiting the number of times I haul arse up and so desperate have I been for the loo on occasion that woe-be-tide anyone between me and the potty. If running cross legged was an Olympic Sport, I could now be a contender.

There are no curtains or blinds downstairs and so I am awake with the sun and even that has been a revelation. It is wonderfully quiet, if you don't count Dog farting and scratching and chewing up the plastic rungs of her playpen. And I am really enjoying the view from the floor.

Oh sure I will be happy to get back into my bed, but for the short term the change in perspective is the bonus bit part of poor old Dog's misery.

There that's just how close I am to Dog...yep the farting is becoming a problem.