Balance
JULY 2025
I am now 60 years old.
An age I never expected to reach.
60! Tumeke.
Now what to do?
Learn to love myself.
Learn to look after myself.
Biological clock ticking on.
Lived a life of looking after others.
The best I can do is share the knowledge I have gained, create the forms that sit in me waiting to be made, realise dreams, be an example for those that I nurture.
Balance.
So the off grid workshop dream is halfway complete. Complete enough for me to dry cut softer stones. I’ve nearly finished a marble thats been sitting my yard vaguely shaped for too many years. And the more I look around my yard at those half finished marbles and the other lumps that have shapes dreamed into them.
Yeah for limitations, as it forces you to work with what you have available.
It is a joy to carve on the mountain in this off grid workspace, where a feeling off freedom is predominant. The trees , the sky, the mountain, the earth, the storms, knowing the noise of my machines only likely to annoy one person 200metres away, instead of I’ve lost count of how many new neighbours I now have all jammed into less than 200 metres.. Thinking best to carve at home when the weather is bad, ‘cause everyone is inside and my noise wont be so bad. Funny though, no-one has complained so far. Aunty walking through yard with headphones on, I’ll be carving away, making noise , mess, in my own wee world, look up, oh no- moko too close- shoo them away. Bit dangerous and bad for ears. I have a photo somewhere of me dry grinmding that big whales tail, which I carved by my letterbox in town ( no wonder I got shutdown) , and there’s toddler Poutama bottle in mouth watching me, loud noise dust pouring out.
Now is that good mum- bad mum,- desperate mum- happy mum?
I really wasn’t going to have children, I did. So I believed on order to be a better mum, I needed to be a satisfied person. There’s just something about a rock thats bigger than me, and that loud noisey grinder that defines that creative moment, refines it down to you the rock the machine, listening to the voice of the three- go there-cut here- whack that out- grind there-STOP. Always listen to the stop voice or else one of the three will break.
This process satisfies me.
Balance
