Green Movements Beyond the Glass

Movements of Green 30th Nov 2007

Windows and their views are reality TV. My window view is no exception, although its script is the reality of wind and leaf, and its visitors move deliberate and I stare at them like fish in a terrarium.

But this TV comes with no script, at least not one that is easily discerned. Surely, this view is one inspired by the trinity and infinity of air, and earth - what grows out of it, and the birds that visit it and the rain that sustains it and the sun that summons its leaves upwards and the birds into its shades.

Today a cold front is making itself visible - clouds move from the west and the branches of the Platanus are bending and holding their green spinnaker like sails.

The red coral-like flowers of the Illawarra Flame (Brachyciton) hang amid the star-fish leaves of the green reef that surrounds them and people move undetected silhouetted by the Jasmine hedge beyond.

The Gardener's Oak

The Gardener’s Oak 29th Nov 2007

The gardener’s oak, to me it spoke,
in its tree-wise wisdom filled way.
It said: “Gardener’s are keepers,
of flowers and thinkers, of scents and
their seekers – yes gardeners are thinkers
and more, they make shade and
sweep the leaves from your door –
But such a thankless task, sees them nearly
a thing of the past, but the earth needs
gardeners galore; to sow seeds
and thinkers of law, and medical herbs,
and lovers of words,
of the Arts and of Sciences and soil.
See gardeners are as honey bees
collecting nectar from their trees,
to feed the soul and inspire the heart,
for this I know is a gardener’s art!”

By Tim McCabe

A Green Enchantment in the Spring of 2007

Written in the Spring of September 2007

The letter below I wrote to a Noongar linguist, or is that a linguist of the Noongar language..? Bob Howard of Albany has worked and lived enchanted and entranced by the Noongar of the lower south coast for so long - he is now 'owned' as one of them. We catch up when ever I am in Albany and the letter below relates to one of his posts. It was written in spring, in September when the branches beyond my window were in bud and beginning their movements beyond. I begin by describing one of his posts and what, I suspect, he looks out upon (Albany's King George Sound) each day, and then I detail what I see through my window, written both in English and in Noongar mai:

Bob,

These threads of cloud look like the coils of an unfolding snake, or the spiral of a snail's shell or a giant twirling willy-willy bearing down - I know you're a linguist and a lover of the Noongar tongue, and one wonders what things made up of words and sounds must entertain you.

Your description of the winds beyond your window and the movement of tides and lunar entanglements articulate something of great beauty.

From my window, I sometimes peer from a room with a view. The plain trees beyond the night Jasmin hedge stand semi-bare covered in emerald green shoots of spring. Closer to the window, an evergreen coral tree stands immobile, leaf like hands wait to embrace, or applaud the wind.

My window sometimes moves with the foray of birdlife, mainly the high energy marauding rainbow lorikeet. Occasionally, magpies navigate their way through the green beyond, seemingly oblivious to my watching.

And, like you, I am searching for the billion plus words of Noongar mai description - calm, how does one describe an airless, windless calm - maar-birt - wind without - perhaps. Kedalak, I know this word of Cliff's describes this time of dusk at 6.04pm.

And the sun - ngaalaa ngaarngk, baalaa nookert ngoorndiny, wodern daarabiny - yeyi daabakarn baalaa dirrn yaarragata yaarkiny, boordu baalaa djindang boolaarang yaarkaalanginy - nyarni-waarngkiny! Whispering their way into being, these stars, above our heads, beyond the heads of clouds even and beyond our earth, this beautiful place, blue orb of wonder, now in peril.

Minditjabiny yarn nidja? How is it possible that such things could come into being? Nyittiyang booy borlaa-boolsbininy minditj nyanginy, nirnamin djoolanginy - like a leech, I suspect, and yet still she spins, twirling like the willy willy, spiralling enchanting, this earth - this beautiful being, life giver, regardless of our folly - and meanwhile, there are those like you who map the movements of the wind, who speak so insightful of the moon and whisper so wise to the movements of the tide - well done, do not stop - you give us hope!

Tim McCabe
6:35 PM

Leaves of Prayer: Leaves of Hope: Leaves of Love

28th November 2007, Leaves of Prayer: Leaves of Hope: Leaves of Love

The platanus leaves beyond my window are moving, moving as if in prayer.

It is strange how the lightest of breezes send them spinning, bowing, nodding their green heads and form. And i am thinking, how they resemble, en mass the bowing heads of Jews reading their Torah or Muslims reading their Koran, and I cannot get away from this supicion that they are moved by the spirit > The wind that moves over the water, and, I know I am not the first to have made such connections between the spirit, and the manifestations of God and his, her movements in leaves and wind before me.

Sappho the Greek poet had spoken of a kind of love that moves the leaves of an oak tree. I had also read in Wikipedia that "in Trabzon (Turkish) folklore, the swinging of tree branches and leaves symbolised worship" and so, Sappho appears to me, to have been connecting an early Greek/Turkish belief with that of her love for her lover. And perhaps, here too, Sappho-like, my suspicion of the spiritual moving before me is also tied to my dreams, wishes and hopes for a life lived in love, and the beauty of the world before, around, and even within me.

Trees and Children: platanus orientalis

A platanus orientalis growing in Telavi, in Georgia

An 800 year old platanus orientalis growing in Telavi, in Georgia.

Tuesday 27th November 2007 Platanus Inspiration
What I see through my window are trees in their youth. I see trees that are mere children, trees reaching out and finding their place. The photo above speaks of an arboreal giant and its attraction to parents and children alike. In days and cultures gone by, and somewhere still present, remaining and affirmed, ribbons and prayers were tied to such trees. It was thought that the trees, deeply rooted were teleportic in what they communicated between the earth and sky.

Touch wood, we hope and long to believe that our children might live as long as the trees they stand with. And similar, like such trees their genealogies might extend as long and as many as the branches that shade them. For deeply marked in the palm of our hands and marked into our fingers are an arboreal grip and traction, containing the markings of memory of our primate links and past. Our fingerprint traction and attraction for trees reminds us of our previous roles as former stewards, druids and guardians of glades and groves and wild places.

The tree that feeds us and gives us air and feeds upon our waste – the trees that bring oxygen to the soil and shades our skin from the sun are the same trees that provide us with shelter and wood for our fires. Trees we once revered as Gods now in many lands stand condemned as commodities as tokens and the spoil of our capitalistic creeds and no one counts the cost of all that we’ve lost and are losing.

Recently I began a conversation with a Tafe student - one working in a local supermarket who I rightly identified came from Malaysia. “You’re from a Chinese family aren’t you?” “Yes,” she replied. “And you study business?” I continued. “Yes,” she said, beginning to look at me with anxiety-filled eyes. “How do you know this?” she said. “Ah, so many overseas students from Chinese backgrounds study business” I told her. It was just a good guess.

“Which part of Malaysia do you come from?” I then asked. “Sabah” she said. “And your father has a business?” “Yes, he owns a palm oil plantation.” “Oh,” I said. “Oh,” and unable to help myself, I said – “Well there goes our rainforests.” And I knew there lurked anger towards her and her kind, but it was fleeting, for quickly a thought arose within as I stared into her eyes, for I knew that she was not unlike myself in that she was born a child of colonialism, and beheld to a generation and culture that valued only that which brought them capital. The salt encrusted lands of the wheat belt were once forests and I reminded myself, that these forests like their northern kindred rainforests had been raped, logged, profited upon and or destroyed. Similar too, had been the loss of such environments for the animals that lived there and the people, Indigenous peoples that had called these places home. I wished the student from Sabah well in her studies and left.

And now I return to the trees beyond my window who want nothing (although I can’t be 100 percent sure about this) but to share their oxygen and to provide the ground and lives beneath them with shade and respite from the sun and the occasional soaking of water and organic materials to enrich their roots.

What homage might they expect from us? I doubt they expect anything more than our respect that they are there and here – present amongst us. I sense we have much to learn from them – far more than they have to learn from us. I know deep down that they know that some of us admire them, but is that enough?

From my window of green

A Room With A View: Humanities Room 118 (Desk Number 5 - 26th Nov 2007)

I am writing from a room with a view. The window I peer through looks through a window of plane trees - orientalis and coral trees, over a hedge of night jasmin, where occasional feral cats conduct sorties of sorts for Senegal doves that peck and preen unaware. Beyond, the orange Terra-cotta tiled roof of the architecture building rests cloaked by sunlight. Between the branches I see the sky - bright blue darkening, turning to cobalt, darkening like the branches it looks between, branches clothed in green that move around me, heavily laden by their emerald understories becoming darker - moving into shadow. Here, and there, the last specks of golden light move upon their leafy arms like squirrels in their branches, never resting, always on the move. The leaves beneath now rest as solar sails that the branches have loosened, untethered from their work of tracking the sun through the day, now bending, hanging limp in preparation for the night. This sight, now so calm, this sight gives one to rest, slows the heart, although temporarily as a gust of wind upon the tree beyond sends her leaves careering. But well tied they flick and flex and return to their form - ever ready - for rest and movement. Deep in the branches yonder I see the green man staring my way, or fleetingly I see myself a reflection of what I'd like to be - entangled in green, at rest, yet free to move when the breeze blows in.