red-tailed black cockatoo

Cavan of Breifne, Land of Hollows and Hills

2010-12-28T15:35:00.000-08:00

Cavan of Breifne, Land of Hollows and Hills
There are fault lines in Ireland that run between north and south but never once had I thought that fault lines could exist between east and west and lands in between.

Liam Lynch from Dublin lives in Australia, and I play on his generosity of spirit and his quick wit and abundance of laughter. “You’re one of us, Liam O’Lynch!” Your people, your old people were from Cavan.” At this suggestion he throws back his head and convulses in laughter.

See there’s a story about all this, about the differences between us and them, the ones in the east, the ones in the west and the ones in between. My friend Liam is an Irishman. He says tree instead of three and his face goes a shade of crimson when he laughs too much at me telling him he’s a Cavan man and that he shouldn’t be ashamed to admit it.

For between east and west there was once a district, I tell him, a district that has spent the last thousand years or more defending itself from the rest of Ireland. The story is as old as time and goes back to the struggles of the Fir Bolg, and even Queen Medb’s armies and the Tuatha De Danann, including the Holy Dagda himself, they all took refuge in the lands of in between.

Then even my lot, the MacCaba arrived in the 13th century from the Isle of Arran as a clann and branch of MacLeods. They were mercenaries hired by the O’Reilly’s and O’Rourke’s. But when the potato famine hit, many left that land of in between for America, and some of my lot went further to Australia. Liam’s lot however made it only as far as the wharf in Dublin, and knew when they saw the sea, that their legs were the legs of the country people, that they had land legs not made for swimming. So there Liam’s lot remained, until in recent times when the Celtic tiger’s teeth began to rot revealing that the tiger was in fact a liger and not as fierce as all had originally thought.

Now the day I tell Liam Lynch that his name is O’Lynch and that his family was formally associated with Cavan he does not sneer but with questionable recognition he throws back his head and turns red in laughter.

Whenever I connect his name to Cavan he looks at me with an eye of the curious, the way that all Irish must view the tourist in the strangers they meet. But before he opens his mouth I tell him that my name is MacCaba or McCabe and that it is the name I wear. This name embodies me I tell him, it wraps around me like an oversized coat. And with the O's and Macs or McC's of Cavan all are kindred, but before I’ve uttered another word he says in terse reply and resignation, “Culchie”.

“Your lot of McCabes from Cavan, they’re Culchies” he says and I am thinking, as one thinks when not versed in such words, that he is talking through his accent about the ones with culture. I feel a sense of pride for being named a descendant of the Culchies for everyone knows that the ones with all the culture and who speak the most Irish live west of Dublin in the Gaeltacht.

And so I am telling him before he calls me another name that I don’t understand, that “Breifne”… Breifne where Cavan and its land of hollows or little hills reside takes its name from an Irish Goddess, and a woman who died fighting defending her land and people from invaders. Within the borders of Breifne lies Art Cabban or, as it is better known, Cavan. These are names within names. Art Cabban, the place of hollows and small hills is a name for a part of Briefne, and within Briefne a great number of ancient names and places abound.”

He stares at me half-smiling. He seems half-believing but is still holding out waiting to be convinced.

“I’m telling you Liam, Breifne was an Irish beauty Queen!”

He just nods his head. He sits back smiling and seems he has heard it all before, just one more voice defending the Culchies of Cavan.

“Breifne” I tell him, was a beauty queen from Cavan and she was widely known for her enchanting good looks. She wore golden plaits in her hair woven with emerald and amber. Her gem encrusted hilt of her sword hung high on her hip. She was the daughter of Beoan mac Bethaig. Her name speaks of great beauty, of a ring and a journey. The name Breifne, I tell him, evokes an invitation for all who originate from her lands and loins to return, no matter how scattered and separated, to return to Cavan and her inland kingdom”.

Now, long ago, I begin to tell him, “long ago the King in Dublin wanted the hand of Breifne but she wouldn’t give it. She wouldn’t give it to just anyone. But that lot, your lot from Dublin made war because of the perceived snub, and since that day to this all from Dublin have been jealous and envious of people from Cavan and it all began with that woman named Breifne who wouldn’t accept the hand of the one from Dublin.”

I continue for I am spinning wax lyrical now,

“Briefne died for her inland kingdom, keeping evil from her door. And it is her blood that lies soaked into that earthen floor”

And he grins, and says without hesitation, “What in Cavan!??”

“Yes,” I tell him, “in Cavan!!”

Wearing the Green of Cavan on a Green Bus
Now conversations about the greatness and wonders of Cavan happen in all sorts of places with all sorts of people.

Where I live in Perth, West Australia the seats of our buses are embroided with scenes of the sea shore, scallop shells and sea fish, star fish sewn into the seat and back rest. It’s an attempt to make the passenger distracted, to soothe their journey, and the rush of their mind. For most, if not careful, will imagine themselves aboard a boat and, for some, the motion of imagined swells will rock them to sleep.

One day I am minding my own business on a bus when an old man comes stumbling down the aisle. He wears his shirt like a billboard. In Australia no one wears their identity on their sleeve except for the Irish, or the-would-be-Irish, or those whose ancestors blame their uncomfortable sense of selves on the potato of 1847. But on this bus an expat Irishman jumps aboard and upon his black shirt the words “J.B. O'Reilly and Guinness” are proudly proclaimed. Sure, now there’s no harm in that excepting of course the conflict and civil war of words when these two words are pronounced together. For wearing that word Guinness identifies the wearer with a place and not just any place but a preference and attitude for a certain locality. There’s always the attitude.

T-shirts and the emblems of the Irish are a pet favourite of mine.

Once in a giant supermarket in the Czech Republic I spied one wearing a shirt that read, “Never Surrender UDF… And this man was looking for oil to cook his chips, and I was looking for a conversation in a language other than Czech. And, sensing something of a Scottish accent or was it Irish in this man I open up on him: “Ciamar a tha thu!? Conas atá tú??” I blend two languages of the Celtic tongue into one sentence. His eyes look me up and down and he says in a dark monotone with a dialect that rocks the space between us, “I don’t speak that language” and nearing him I see his T-shirt and read the words printed in black thereon.

Now, back to this man on the bus with the accent that seemed Irish, for before I have picked him to be a Jackeen (a bearer of the Union Jack) from Dublin I am hesitant remembering that man from Derry, but when I see the words “Guinness” and “O’Reillys” I know it is safe to proceed, for while there is no shamrock, no words other than “O’Reilly” and “Guinness” these words alone spell out the man’s social, cultural and economic hearth and home. But I can tell for this Irishman, aboard this bus, these words are every bit his flag of “never surrender,” that bears an uncanny similarity to another's shirt I had seen in the wilds of the Czech.

The Irish when in lands that are not their own wear their hearts on their sleeve and their emblems over their heart. But you’d think he would have known, that the bait of names upon his shirt would be taken, and devoured by the nearest fish! And being a descendant from Cavan it was easy to sense his Dublin exuberance and self-confidence.

"Guinness" I announce, "Guinness that is brewed from the waters of the Liffey?” I ask him.
“We send you our Australian Vegemite in a jar and you mix it with the water from your sacred rivers and streams and export it back to us as beer."
He half sniggers, only half, and the bait is left dangling on the hook.

"And J.B. O'Reilly was born in Drogeda, I tell him. “But,…” and I am working him to the grand fanali, “His family's origins, his roots…” I tell him, “His roots are from Cavan."
"CAVAN!!" he chokes.
"CAVAN!! He says as if the mere word has pierced his shirt and heart with a rust-jagged knife. “They're the bloody Jews of Ireland!!"
Now, indeed having had several Jewish forebears who sold snuff in Grafton Street, his suggestion that they – my forebears - might have been selfish gives me courage to continue.

“Ah” I hear myself saying and I smile, he has taken the bait, and no matter how much he shakes his head there is no getting him off the hook.

"But don't you think…," I add, "Don't you think it’s strange that a Dublin man such as yourself should be wearing one of Cavan's royal names over his heart?"

"OH SHITE!!" he says.

And at that he can take no more. With great haste he jumps back down from his seat to the floor and dances and runs his way along the aisle of that bus. And all I see, the last I see of him is his black shirt with that Cavan name O'Reilly waving back at me, and embroided proudly next to it is Ireland’s river Goddess inspired drink Guinness sitting alongside it.

Cavan land of Sparkling Lakes
And now it happens one day that my friend Liam O’Lynch of Dublin smiles with his Cheshire Dublin grin and another conversation about Cavan unfolds.

And he reminds me, is quick to tell me, “Cavan”, where they peel their wallpaper from their walls to stick to the walls whenever and wherever they move” he adds.

“Cavan, yes, Breiffne I tell him, “The land of lakes that feed your sacred rivers and streams.” And the sparkle, I tell him, “Do you see the sparkle in my eyes?” I ask him. And he searches.

“It is the glint that my ancestors have passed on to me from their eyes looking at all the sunshine on all those lakes of Cavan, and all that beauty…”

“Yes” he says.

“Yes, Cavan people might have the glint of sunshine in their eyes but they surely don’t want to share it with anyone else.” He adds. “They walk around all day with dark sunglasses.”

And in his polite Dublin way I can tell he is mocking me only because he is struggling to come free from the hook that is embedded in his mouth.

“Well,” I continue. “You would know about Asterix the Gaul,” I tell him, “…that cartoon figure and his village of Gaulish warriors that held out against the Romans?”

“Yes” he says.

“Well” I tell him, “They got their story from Cavan in much the same way that the English turned Ireland’s story of Finn MacCool into King Arthur and that Lady of the Lake.”

“The English,” I tell him. “They not only took the story of Finn MacCool but renamed Finn, Arthur, after the man who first invented Guinness, Arthur Guinness. And the French, who love all things Irish, stole from the English what they had stolen from the Irish. Arthur’s magical waters of the Liffey enhanced the brew of Guinness, and the French appropriated that story for Asterix of Gaul and that magical druid made potion which gave to them supernatural strength…”

Liam doesn’t know what to make of the story I am spinning him, but I keep on and mention how the Gauls had beaten the Romans, at least in that book…
And that hook is firmly embedded in our man from Dublin’s mouth and the further I spin the yarn the deeper that hook is sliding. Mention the English to most Irish and they’re stuck, mention the English, the French and the Romans in one sentence and they’re spellbound and lost in a cavern or hollow of thought.

“And that story of King Arthur and that Lady of the Lake came from the lakes of Cavan”, I tell him.
“And the story of appropriation and theft from Cavan does not end there,” I say to him earnestly.
“For in that story of Asterix the Gaul there was a Bard named Cacofonix who could not sing. In fact his singing drove people mad and his countrymen would use him as their secret weapon against the Romans.

I see in Liam’s eyes some recognition of this story…

“And in Cavan,” I tell him, “…In Cavan we had a similar Bard named O’Carolan.”
“Yes” he says as my bait and hook slides several centimeters further down his gullet. “But O’Carolan was not a man of fiction, and yet he too was Ireland’s secret weapon against the English…”
“Yes,” he agrees.

“And no more beautiful music could you hear from all of Ireland,” I say.
And he is half-nodding whilst attempting to rattle off a few other ancient bards to steer me off my track.
“And…” I tell him, “And all this beautiful music which came from the man O’Carolan, came from Cavan, all of it learnt from time he spent living by those sparkling lakes. Music developed and mastered from Cavan’s Lakes that feed your sacred rivers and streams, rivers and streams that you bottle with Australian Vegemite, Vegemite and Liffey River water that you use in the magical ingredients of Guinness, and Guinness that they sell at J.B. O’Reilly’s Hotel in Perth, West Australia and all connected with the O’Reilly’s from the hills and hollows of Cavan.

Liam looks at me and says nothing. His eyes seem to sparkle and in his sparkling eyes he leaves few doubts about his O’Lynch Cavan origins. In fact his Cavan cultural heritage is evident for all to see.

Jackadup, Yaargadup: Jackadder Lake, where the bandits swim

2010-11-28T06:22:00.000-08:00

Jackadup, Yaargadup: Jackadder Lake, where the bandits swim
Upon Jackadder Lake the sun sets and shines gold and red till it is replaced by neon night lights from the village shopping centre opposite, bobbing red ripples in the wind wash.
Here on dusk and into the night, the golden bell and banjo frogs sing their night time ballads to the swans navigating and singing overhead. The frogs are their guides to the lake and both sing, when the swan hears the frog, both sing their way to the water.
Without the song of the frog how else might the swan find it?
When I was a child I did as children do. I hunted the edges of that lake for duck eggs. The ducks built their nests above the water line, nests that they dug from the roots of the grass that hung beneath the lakeside turf. And visiting the local delicatessen of Mordini Brothers I collected and fed stale bread to the waiting swans, gulls and coots and stood fearless amidst their frantic feathered fighting and squabbling for scraps.
The extended necks of swans gave the marauding gulls and coots something to fear for tail feathers were often pinched and ripped from extended beaks.
But beyond the squabbling of beaks and flying feathers, hovered half-submerged long-necked hard-shelled yaargeny. The yaargeny are the long-necked tortoise, the namesake of Jackadder Lake (Jackadup, Yaargadup) and below the surface they waited and bided their time.
Once I spied several attacking a seagull. It didn’t stand a chance.
In the shadows cast by the lakeside willows where the long reeds sing with reed warbling songs swam this band of bandits. One attacked, brave from beneath, he attacked the unsuspecting gull unnoticed and another winged that gull and pulled. And then another was biting its now bleeding breast, and that desperate gull trod the water. It struggled in its vain attempts to break free, to find its height before it sank.
I watched the white feather sky dweller’s carcass and fighting form, half-submerged and sinking in the depths as the bandits finished him, until the stillness of water returned to calm him.
In the shallows the white Egret stalks and hunts in silence, scanning the reeds for frogs, tadpoles and gambezi fish. He stands rigid, fixed, and aiming, and like a shot his beak flashes. His spear is thrust and seldom misses.
I too had watched and admired the pinging tail movements of the musk duck. I had once caught some beneath the arching bridge from the stream that fed Herdsman’s Lake. This stream also had openings that fed the east side storm drains from Yaargadup. I wondered if the young musk had been sucked in from that lake and beneath the roads had swum before finding the stream beneath that arching bridge.
All around that lake I found my way.
I once strapped 33 gallon drums together and paddled the raft across one day, and together with friends we trawled and swept the shallows with nets for carp and dragonfly larvae and sucking leech.
But now I am older, I walk with my own children by that lake beneath the willows and teach them the names of ducks and together we watch for the black protruding noses of the black shelled bandits of Yaargadup.
And here that was once a cow paddock was also a horse yard. I find myself thinking of horses, imagining them galloping with tails held aloft, whinnying in their play near the lake. Here in the 1930s my grandfather’s brothers James and Tom acquired a foal from this herd. Its name was Chico and it was here it had received its winning genes.
Here too near this lake white hunters in the 1890s had chased their quarry, a wild kwerr brush kangaroo. Here their hunting dogs had caught her baying and howling along the now unseen fence line and delivered their kill for the men on horseback blowing horns.
But before this time Yaargadup had seen other events, for here bands of wilgied Noongar had wandered in their millennia of coming and going, in skin cloaks and naked in the sun, standing knee deep in the mud hunting yaargeny to cook in the ashes of their smouldering lakeside fires. Others had dug their eggs from the soil, and made their beehive huts where million dollar mansions now stand, where the wealthy watch from their wide glazed windows the silver lines of recreational 4WDrive vehicles, with young families lazing on tartan rugs with prams.
But sometimes I still see the originals. In the trees I still see and hear the wild ones of former days.
The family of magpie still hunt their lands and nest and swoop in spring, and at night I can sometimes hear the mopoke sing.
And recently my daughter and son spied the broken shell of a black baby bandit that some pedestrian’s foot had stepped upon, unseen in their walking. Some other passerby had discovered it, and felt pity for it, the namesake of this lake.
This lake where miniature sails now flap between foam buoys and race and where their owners in rubber suits and wellington boots stand with radio controls for hours.
This lake where red and yellow Ferrari sometimes park and drivers sip coffee, where thousands of feet now tread, and where the lakeside sports equipment sits spaced, idle and waiting.
This lake, the wind still washes from one side to the other the feather down of swans, sea birds and coots, where the musk duck pings in its courtship, with the banjo frog singing: ‘plonk, bonk,’ and guiding the swan.
This lake where I want to cast my shoes aside. Here I want to enter the water once more. I want to hunt duck eggs and fish for the bandits with woollen twine weighted with lumps of meat. No matter how much the yaargeny stink I want my children to know the thrill of their capture and release.
I want my children to fish for carp and wade in the shallows, and to name the birds as I did, but in reality I know they can’t, for nothing is as it once was.
We can’t feed the swans or wade in the water with nets for it is now a nature reserve, nature and bread stuffed ducks are rightly a thing of the past, times have changed, we’ve got to keep the waters calm, except for that lake’s edge frantic in its steps and stepping, with untethered marauding dogs and 4WDrive all terrain vehicles hugging the kerb and ladies with wide-brimmed hats and wide-eyed glasses cramming the shoreline.
But at night as the stampede subsides the peace of Yaargadup returns once more.
When all have left the plonk-bonk song returns to serenade the moon and guide the singing swan. And sometimes I have this Déjà vu that where the bandits swim, I’ve been before and sense I am that child again.

The Devil's Gap of Albany or Yokaa-kaany Waaliny

2010-10-13T06:08:00.000-07:00

Man on the Cliff Top at the Devil’s Gap, Albany.
(Kalgoorlie Argus 9th December, 1913 p. 18).
I was reading through old newspapers and wondering on their use of words. And I was thinking how minds tend to think similar thoughts through the ages.
And, in reference to the Gap near Albany I had written before of the siren’s song (26-04-10), of the sounds generated in the gap in the surge of wave and the hollowed rocks through which they roar. I had written previously,

This fingering fragmented froth that lingers seeks to touch you; reaches out to connect you with the sea and its mournful melody that holds to its memory of men and women lost who never understood the cost - of wandering too close to the sirens songs - to their tidal surge and singing and all their anguish bringing.

So recently, reading through papers of the past I was interested to read the following description of the “Devil’s Gap.”

The awesome Devil's Gap, the dark frowning walls of which rise up in for bidding majesty to the height of 150ft above water level, make an impressive scene...The view can be taken in only by extending oneself flat upon the earth and drawing up cautiously to the edge. The ocean's swell dashing and swilling into the bides of the Gap, churning itself into fantastic, tongues of water and sending clouds of vapour-like spray into the 'faces of those above, form a picture " the fascination of which holds the lover of Nature for hours in silent admiration. Here Nature is seen in her sternest mood; bold massive piles of granite which have defied the seas for centuries are her materials; grand and impressive have been the manner of their employment: Near-by is the Natural Bridge, which in future years should join with the Gap in attracting thousands of-tourists to view its rugged and peculiar form. A unique geological formation probably many centuries ago left an uncovered cavern near to the rocky shore walled off from the ocean by a high barrier of granite about 60ft. wide. The swirl of countless swells beating against the wall has worn an aperture at water level leaving an irregular arch, through which the waves roll in, dashing themselves against the cavern's sides, producing music such as one would imagine coming from the thundering notes of a colossal organ. (The West Australian 15th Jan, 1914 p. 8).

I like this talk of waves producing music. I like the vivid descriptions of words used, such as, “The ocean's swell dashing and swilling into the bides of the Gap, churning itself into fantastic, tongues of water.” I think the word 'bides' means, in this context, a place that withstands and waits... like, as if it has stood in its making of music from its earliest days...
So that this ancient formation of rock and pounding sea has been singing and booming to the surges of water-mountains for thousands, if not millions of years...Such that the sirens songs I’ve heard are the ancient ones and their waiting has been long.
One wonders if their songs have changed through time?
When the water was far lower due to the last ice age what songs did the sirens sing 5 to 10.000 years ago?
I also like the way the writer of 1914 had described the watery tongues of the Gap... and thus adds a human dimension to its movements and Poseidon’s view to all its description therein...and thus the god of the sea and the songs of the sirens are activated in our imaginations...
And the picture of the man, his silhouette of the brave, or fool, who stands on the lip of the abyss, reminds me, plays with my memory of what I saw as a child. There on the hip of granite sat the living image of youths and all their risk taking. Their image remains branded in my childhood memory, their dangling of legs over the edge and their tempting of fate, and to this vision of them I remember and shudder...and imagine the sirens that bided beneath their feet...
You wonder don't you, did they hear them? Was their songs that drew them near to tempt their fate?
And that man on the roof of that Gap what was he thinking?
Did he hear Poseidon and the sirens singing?
Did he return across the threshold or join the brotherhood or sisterhood biding for the many who have never returned?

Wild Man Story 2 Too

2010-09-27T19:51:00.001-07:00

Johnny Chester

I too have a story of the wood chip bomber, that man of myth who lived/still lives alone(?) in the forest with his horse and dogs.

My story of this man relates to a time in the mid to late 1990s when I was living periodically in the forests near Nannup. Returning to my old camp one day after some time spent forest blockading, I wandered towards St John Brook at Cambrey for a wash in the stream. I did not get too far before I soon noticed with some mild trepidation, a decapitated head of a recently dispatched grey kangaroo. Its head was fresh and it lay off one the paths leading to the brook.

I had proceeded only a short distance when to my worry, I entered a clearing where a "pack" of large dogs lay lazing in the shade, and suddenly they sat on their haunches and showed their teeth and I could hear their snarling.

I wanted to quickly back step, but was frozen, until a white Irish wolfhound came towards me with its tail swishing rapidly back and forth and its tongue protruding from the side of its mouth.

"Hello!" I said. Any port in a storm is a welcome one. And this dog kept coming. It reached me with an inquisitive eye and a friendly tongue. Maybe it was the scented lolly or chocolate wrappers in my pockets, I don't know. But within a moment a voice was telling the rest of the pack to lie down. And from the shade came a friendly welcome from a bearded man with an Akubra hat.

"Any friend of my wolfhound is a friend of mine" he said.

His white horse stood off to one side, tethered to a branch and from our first introduction it became clear he was the woodchip bomber. I said "You're kidding!?" "You're a legend" I told him. I think he liked my attitude and together we swapped some small talk about our lives. He said he was pig hunting and followed the tracks through the forest where ever they took him. He was something of a wild man, and my memories of him are now magnified remembering that day.

Some years later I also saw him gallop his horse into Northbridge and his horse stood on its hind legs in front of the Alexander Library with police running from all directions. I think he was bare chested and although I knew it was him, I wondered what he was doing there. His forest cover and hidden sanctuary was a long way from where he now sat in his saddle.

He had a free spirit and I suppose he is still out there and so too is that Irish wolfhound of his or its offspring. I wonder what stories he swaps with those he meets, and whether he is as hospitable as he once was with me. I hope so.

August - The Spring Time is Coming

2010-07-30T10:29:00.000-07:00

August is coming, days will be longer, bluer, blossums will appear, that cold chill of winter will whisper her end in our ear.
The Magpie will be choralling, the willy wagtail too, songmen in the night you will hear them, that their ballads are for you
That the fertile is rising, that nectar will come, that spring time and the flower will be blessed by the sun
And our fears of old winter, and of the age in our walk, won't seem so bleak or the thoughts of our talk
We know, and we've got to believe, that the clouds will pass by us... That winter is only a station that next stop is spring
and sweet is the memory of the hope that it brings.

Crinia catchers of Ngooraganup: Herdsman's Lake

2010-06-17T21:30:00.000-07:00

Crinia frog catchers of Njookenbooroo Ngooraganup: Herdsman's Lake

Their name is crinia, the small frog - and as children, we spied them in their thousands.

The water in which the crinia swam was finger deep.

Overhead, giant paperbark stood silent locked away from the breeze catapulting faerie fluff from the bending lakeside’s reeds beyond.

The water sat at a constant temperature resting, as it did, on a millennium bed of peat. A peat bed fed and feeding from its millennia of fallen branches and rotting trunks and leaves.

In Woodlands, in Perth’s western suburbs, bordering Herdsman’s Lake was a white limestone track that drew alongside the lake’s edge. Stepping over and through the bracken and long grasses of kikuyu one had to take care. Tiger snakes and dugites abounded there, and came with enlarged fangs, foraging in frenzy, hungry and, every bit as mad as a cut snake for every sound we heard, or at least we frog catchers had imagined and believed what others had told us, for we never saw one, not one.

Once on the peat the hottest day was forgotten, and sightings of crinia, golden bell and banjo, and all matter of unknown multi-coloured thumb-sized frogs took over.

Here, and there, the prizes of car thieves or forgotten wrecks sat rusting, brown and disregarded, forgotten by all except we frog catchers.

Temporarily this car yard was ours and oil spots or droplets of leaking aging fuel left rainbows, rainbows that expanded before disappearing in the wash of paperbark shadows. Was that a crinia, a banjo or golden bell? The eye had to be quick to catch their springing, swimming in the half-shadows, with their speckled back, legs and thighs golden, green, brown and sparkling, glinting in the half-light.

Shadows submerged them and, on hind frog legs ever quickening and bounding behind them, the crinia left us for dead darting to their sanctuary in the old Morris or radiator wedged between the corrosive chassis of some aged car gone to rust.

This sanctuary of car wrecks was their hideaway their secret world in the shadowed everglades of Herdsman's Lake. After school in the afternoon hours between 4 and sundown we played in the shadows on the peat, and for an hour or two both the crinia and my band of crinia hunters ruled the crinia kingdom together.

The lake side crinia kingdom whilst ruled by frogs overlapped with the reed beds and occasionally the elongated flexing staggered movement of the spear billed Egret came on reconnaissance seeking the crinia and its cousins, just as we catchers did, but with the desire for feasting, not for spying. The crinia were often no match for him, but his plumage of white might have given the frogs a moments warning. The moorhens were far better camouflaged for shadows and crinia, but their feast was weed. As was the diet of the swan, but we never put it past them, surely a feed was a feed, but crinia were hardly a feast, not that it ever stopped the Bittern or Nankeen Night Heron. These great hunters fished in the shadows. The sharp beaked ones were the best equipped to hunt the crinia and their larger frog cousins, as their plumage was camouflaged for shadow hunting. When the late afternoon lakeside hunters emerged from their reed hideouts, the crinia would not have seen what waited for them and what we crinia catchers knew was sure to hit them as quick as any Egret if given the chance.

Herdsman's Lake was named by the Noongar as the place of the black duck - Ngooraganup, but the duck is hardly black, pied perhaps, and a close relative of the European Mallard. In between its wing feathers, it revealed a plaid of navy blue, a navy commission of duck medals we imagined.

Black ducks, Moorhens, Swans and Herons hunted, preened and fed and out of sight and, although seldom seen, the musk duck was frequently heard and watched for every courtship performance in which it engaged. Its tail feathers bent like a peacock and its wings swept water in unison with its tail movement, before it let out its piercing ping like a submarine hunting Russians.

Bordering the reeds, the peat and paperbark was a field used for the equestrian inclined and some days we crinia catchers watched from our well-hidden sanctuary as riders and their horses competed in their jumping and competition. And beyond the field was a line of factories. On some afternoons, we went to the sanctuary by way of a wide detour, and made straight for a potato chip factory where there stood lines of kindly Italian factory women who handed out free bags of salt and vinegar, barbecue, tomato and plain. All of the chips were salty, such that each mouthful forced and drove us to thirst, but with nothing other than lake water to quench that thirst, we were forced to backtrack on a quickening return journey home.

The sanctuary of giant paperbark and its millennium of peat cooled the fringes of the lake. In the summer heat when the fires roared sending cinders over our nearby suburb of Woodlands, the sanctuary prevented the fires spread. It was a managed spectacle that flared into the night and in the shade and cool of the sanctuary the wading birds sheltered as if boats in their pens riding out a cyclone.

All around the lake's edge the seasons played out as the waders, coots, cormorants, and swans year in, year out, in their breeding cycle of nesting, laying and looking after their young was mimicked by the lakeside’s market gardeners. After one crop the swans would breed, their cygnets would hatch and after the harvest these families of swans and their bundles would forage, before making their perilous journeys over the busy Pearson Street to Jackadder Lake.

The human lake side dwellers knew when to expect them, each year the crinia hunters watched for them even acting as cross-walk attendants guiding, shepherding them to the lake. Too bad the same did not occur for the long-necked tortoise whose grey form matched the bitumen and left them and most car drivers unaware of each other.

Red mounds of broken brown-shell, sinew, guts, offal and intestine marked the previous night's rush to lay their eggs and rush to return to the lake, and many became a roadway road-kill. But one somewhere had always gotten through, had made it across the killing field, past the grey kerbed butchery that saw so many die, not just tortoises but birds, frogs and even cats. Someone's moggy that no one claimed would lie for days until rigor mortis had left him flat like cardboard, stiff and stinking.

But between these lakes lay arteries, networks of cement aqueducts that carried roadside run off in subterranean drains. All of them fed and led back to Herdsman's Lake. All of the underground drains carried oil leaks and road wash and all matter of fish joined in their swim to the lake. Periodically, great schools of golden carp fingerlings swam in the shallows, while much larger three-pound monsters swam in the depths. Goldfish also found their way into the lake and grew into Koei as large and as prolific as the carp. One stream, more a tributary connected distant swamps to the lake, and there in deep pools, we crinia catchers baited our hooks with bread. The fish, large hungry carp were caught, released and re-caught. The same fish being caught four times or more, and the same fish, we thought, appearing day after day.

From time to time the local council’s drainage team came through removing waterweed and teams of southern Europeans speaking in an unknown tongue moved slowly along the bank, removing weed and the gilgie - the small freshwater crayfish that lay waiting in the mud. We crinia catchers saw this and learnt fast.

On any day one could locate duck eggs, young ducklings, gilgie, and frogs and, with some help from the village butcher, we learnt how to lure the tortoise sometimes two or three at a time. Although whilst fun, this was not our favoured catch for the putrid scent of the yaargeny left their stench on our hands that proved difficult to remove.

The streams and drains all led to the lake, all a vast underworld network of waterways that entered the lake from one-side and fed another steam that meandered between the old police stables, Churchlands High School, Edith Cowan University before touring the flanks of Newman Sienna and disappearing. We crinia catchers went to these schools, and each day viewed the stream and its journey to the grate. The movement and rush of the streams to the grate entranced and reminded us of where the waters originated, and sadly where the sanctuary ceased. For we knew what perhaps the tortoise, gilgie, carp and fingerlings did not, that beyond the grated underworld a giant outlet pipe fed the waiting salt water schools of sharp-toothed Tailor, Skipjack and Trevally. This was the final destination of the subterranean drains of Woodlands, Innaloo, Osborne Park and beyond. All matter of fresh water things were fed through the Swanbourne drain till they reached their final destination and the unceasing appetite of the Indian Ocean. Unsuspecting, they went with the flow. If only they had known what lay in wait for them.

In time we crinia catchers grew up and our glimpses of the sanctuary were periodic single spied moments from windscreens, side windows, and rear-vision mirrors of what was quickly becoming another's sanctuary of progress. How unreal it seemed to see giant mechanical arms lifting bucket loads of peat as the sanctuary was up-ended and drained.
The offerings of the fresh water fish into Swanbourne's drainage pipe had obviously not been enough. With the peat removed the giant age old paperbark were cut down, all to make way for new roads that fed the factories and technology parks. Where the sanctuary once rested a four lane road was built and named 'John Sander's Drive' in memory of a lone round the world yachtsman. How ironic that the memory of salt water had come to occupy that which was once fresh water, in celebration of a roadway of progress built through what had once been a frog sanctuary.

Beneath the bitumen the peat swamp lives on. The bumpy road that rises high and low now forces each driver to remember what went before it. And where once the market gardens had sown seedlings and provided for the life cycle of the swans, an ever increasing population and its suburban sprawl has moved in and almost, very nearly taken their place. The peat and paperbark have gone now and only memories of the days we spent with the crinia and their cousins remain. But sometimes these old memories return to me. When I hear the plonk-bonk song of the banjo frog and that golden bell singing and guiding the swans in the darkness to Ngooraganup Herdsman's Lake and its near neighbour Yaargadup Jackadder Lake, I become that child again.
With the songs of the frogs singing in the darkness I eagerly remember our band of crinia catchers, and hope they are still out there in some sanctuary somewhere, watching with eyes and experiences anew, the magical world of frogs and water birds and the places they call home.

Emu Point: Bairn of the shallows

2010-05-20T20:36:00.000-07:00

Emu Point: Bairn of the shallows

When the high tide falls and runs, hardly noticed, all of it so gentle, with hardly a ripple – the mud flats rest from their movement – except here and there are the domain of long-snouted snails who drift carefree in their guilds – fluting, slipping, sliding as lorries do in peak hour, bumper to bumper with periwinkle and bubbling half-submerged scallop shells, stopping only for streamlined whitebait and whiting.

In this place with mud under her feet, ankle deep mud-skipper, my blond-haired bairn goes careering, sailing past me. And in the blink of an eye my father is twirling his fishing line in giant arcs with his bait-laden hook and sinker, for then I was his blond-haired bairn and he the would be fisher-man, and as I watched him swing and arc his line and bait, so too had a wandering seabird above his head reassigned its fate.

This place of dreams and micro-observations moves as if in slow motion, and speaks with surreal memories of snails underfoot, and of giant-billed pelicans, of preening and dancing gulls and the movement of tides running beyond the bar and returning to the shoreline. This place where my daughter danced and my father caught a gull, this place where some of life’s most poignant moments have caste their spell.

The fishermen’s altar of rock

2010-05-16T21:01:00.000-07:00

The fishermen’s altar of rock

When the southern seas are seemingly tame or boiling and the seacoast’s altars of rock and ledge are awash with the periodic king of waves and froth, and fishermen are prepared to risk all, or throw their lot in with the millimetres of hull that separate them from the sky-world of seabirds and the seabed of starfish – at these times their lives would seem held by a thread.
Yet, surely he is a fool who underestimates the sea, for such oceans forgive but few.
When the southern seas are feathering most of us can all but hold our breath.
For the sightseer who beholds the rippling roar of blinking, breaking swells, majestic in their movements beholds too their myriads of cobalt and turquoise, free-falling.
Those with the sight and an ability to predict must know better than to stand in harms way, better to risk less and to walk away.
And what for he or she who knows and trusts in fate alone, or likes to gamble on Poseidon’s throne?
What says he or she to the boiling sea when grasping kelp and weed?
What last images flash before their eyes, but that altar of rock and its safety of lies?

An illogical non-ecological capitalist creed

2010-05-03T21:37:00.000-07:00

Frog.

I am a frog who wades through the mess you mask and make
and all the risks you choose to take
I am the embryo through which you prod, dissect and bleed.
I am the measure of your illogical non-ecological capitalist creed...
and I am dying...
And you who choose to remain unaware choose not to care
your profits shall be your snare for as you sleep you’re suffocating me
silent to the frog beyond your window and the disease that stops my breath
we suffocate together you and I and we will oneday wander homeless
into the sky

i WROTE THIS MANY YEARS AGO. HOW IS IT... that an oil rig can leak and BP passes the buck and people speak of a lost economy, lost jobs??? And the Greek economy goes to the wall and they want to inject 120 billion dollars, and yet couldn't decide on what action they needed to take at Copenhagen, because the economy might be affected??? HOW IS IT...frog... ???

Kindling in the Metters: Water in the Pot

2010-05-03T21:32:00.000-07:00

Kindling in the Metters

Kindling in the Metters is firing the pot
The steam is rising through the grill
The pot is alive

Who could have thought
that a steaming pot could fire the inspiration
for a steam train, then an airliner
and space ship -

Steam so speaks of invisible thoughts,
of forces born in the embers of wood, water and fire
where air speaks of earth’s strongest desire
that courses
through her veins; higher and higher.

The Gap in Albany: Can you hear the Sirens singing?

2010-04-26T06:26:00.000-07:00

Sirens of the Southern Ocean

I wrote the following poem about the gap in Albany.

When I was a child of five in between chasing my father's golf buggy wheels down Parade Street and watching the whalers moor their Norwegian guns and depart for their rendezvous with the Sperm whales at the drop off to the continental shelf, in between these times I was periodically taken to the gap. I shun that place today for I believe it contains an uneasy spirit, a temper and aggrieved brooding.

I remember in the late 60s, the sight of teenagers with their legs dangling over the edge. They sat as if tempting what ever it was that lived and waited for them, if ever one of them was to slip and fall. The deep blue of the ocean, cobalt blue, angry grey, and roar of swells came surging for the shoreline.

And I read the blog of the one who is a fisher-she, a fisherman of that sea and coastline and she who drifts upon this cobalt blue with ease leaves me pondering. I know where my respect or fear originates. As that same five year old I remember some fifteen children including myself in a cabin cruiser negotiating the shore break at a Lion's day picnic at Frenchman's bay, or some bay similar. The boat had strangely veered from its course and flipped, and I with eyes wide open under water grasped at brightly coloured bathing costumes that resembled seaweed and somehow, in those seconds that seemed minutes, I made it out from under that boat and the wash of confused sand and bubbles.

I remember as I cleared the confusion and crying mass of children, I remember my saviour and rescue party, my lone father running-struggling through the beach break in his Sunday suit (as we had just left the mass at St Josephs). That morning the two girls I had sat between on that boat left with busted foreheads. And I left with a deep and continuing respect for that southern ocean. I know too that the submarine shapes that gorged themselves on whale blubber from the whales that lay tethered to 44 gallon drums at the Whaling Station also had an effect on me. And in recent years some cousins from Nannup were lost to the southern ocean.

And now, every traveler I meet, I tell them, more like plead with them to be careful, full of care and to have respect for that southern ocean, that brooding ancient sea, that deepest blue who demands respect. Is it her eyes we look into but cannot see? Is it her songs in her breaking of waves and movement of tides that we cannot hear?

The Sirens of the Southern Ocean

Can you smell the salt air?

This scent of singing sirens whose mournful melody lingers, whose fingers rise from the cold worn rocks below – deep is their undertow – that reach to find you and would draw you near.

Can you taste the salt air?

This fingering fragmented froth that lingers seeks to touch you; reaches out to connect you with the sea and its mournful melody that holds to its memory of men and women lost who never understood the cost - of wandering too close to the sirens songs - to their tidal surge and singing and all their anguish bringing.

Too close so many have wandered till swept from view in a silent mournful moment, swept away.

Oh rock fishermen I pray for the lost, for those who seek the siren’s froth; through night time into day; in their passing away we miss them; will always miss them; would warn them please take care when they hear the sirens and feel the salt air that rises from the cold worn reef and rocks below.

Tis the siren's singing, for deep is their undertow. They want to draw you near.

Koorabup: Denmark, The Place of Return

2009-07-15T05:10:00.000-07:00

Koorabup Denmark: To Return
Koorabup, some say, is the place of the swan, the maali or kaljak.
Some say Koorabup means the place of return, to where with each winter's gale and the river in flood, rains would strain bleeding brown mud in the torrent's quest to fill the inlet and break the bar to the sea.
And then, that done, soon thereafter, freshwater for a time in spring, at high tide, mixed and melded fresh with salt and fish in shoals and schools of plenty, provided tartj: meat for hungry mouths of the Biboolmin - the people of the paperbarks.
The river still floods and the bar still breaks and paperbarks still line the river banks.
The blackswan moves motionless when the water sits still.
The swan's reflected double means its never alone, and the ancient fish traps remain, they've worn their test of time, echoing reminders of some one's home; some one's attention to tides that flow, that therein provided their reason to return, to sit by their fires with their fish cooking close to their mia's: their huts, and there to sleep, to sing, and weep, there to hear the recriminations ring, to cry, and live their lives till the tides had turned, till the sandbar silted and enclosed once more, the fish, then few, which signalled the Biboolmun return to the forests they new, to their haunts of the yongka grey kangaroo, and to the kwenda, and the wooly-kangaroo rat and the long-tailed karda: goanna and to the forest floor with its stores-a-plenty; red roots and wild potato all dependant on the season's rains, that returned, that flooded the creeks and signalled the breaking of the bar and eventually their return to koorrabup, to the swan's reflection and into the arms of family and friends with their fires and food a plenty; to the spring-tides of fertility, to noppa: babies in their koota bags, and then when moorart, when nourished, when the sandbar returned, they'd return, once more, to their fires in the forest's deep waiting for Koorabup: waiting for the signal of return to speak, its words in the running rush and gurgling creeks and the flooded river's return to the sea.

Fishing in the backyards of Albany

2009-01-28T06:02:00.000-08:00

Fishing in the backyards of Albany 29th Jan 2009
When I was young in Albany, after school, I'd climb the back yard picket fence.
My friend Franky Moore, as I knew him then, lived next to the giant white house where parades of soldiers gathered, some who stood to attention or came trouping in lines of green.
As I think about it now, they might have been on their way to Vietnam, some perhaps never to return.
I didn't think those thoughts then, no not at all, things like that don't occur to a child of why men stand in lines, no, my mind was full of the games of fishing which Frank and I played from the backyard fence that joined our two properties.
See the back garden was an ocean in disguise, the buffalo lawn was a shallow bay full of mullet, yellow-eyed herring and silver-sided skipjack that were swimming... The leaves on that lawn that lay littering his backyard was really an ocean full of fish where we planned out our strategies for the weekend ahead.
Some days when the weather was right, his father sometimes took us to the end of a long, very long, wooden jetty, that reached and ran out into the harbour.
In the shallows we'd watch the schools of mullet messing and swirling the otherwise still surface, and then walking to where the shallows gave way to green and the dark waters out back, we'd set ourselves down with our mess and tangles of lines...and wait...
And now, as I come to think about it, I guess it is not so strange that the sight of leaves on grass still carries memories of skipjack, of herring and mullet.
Maybe my love of gardening, still carries memories of being a child in Albany, still fishing...with green line wrapped around cork with hooks still half baited...and lead sinkers and hessian brown bags and buckets...
And when walking barefooted, atop the grass of home, when the wet dew dampens my feet and I see the odd leaf, I remember the fish, yellow-eyed, bright-eyed herring silver-skipjack and mullet in the shallows...

Memories of Movement

2008-12-14T22:13:00.000-08:00

Shapes I See 15th December 2008

Each space has any number of individual qualities, stories of the unseen return in the blink of an eye.
Through these walls I have seen a shape pass by me, walking through the wall as if it didn't exist.
The layers of leaf litter beyond reconnect me to the mass movement of things.
The sighting of the two bobtails have brought on this sensory sighting... and in the corner of my eye the kangaroo skin over the shoulders of that shape disappears through the wall, through the hedge, and then another shape passes by me, and similarly, a kangaroo skin covers him and his thin calf muscles and spears appear and disappear.
I once saw something, imagined it atop Sgor nam fionnaidh, the mountain of Fingal in Glencoe, Scotland.
I had been hiking into MacDonald's hidden valley, and looking upon the tartan-like grasses and moss I spied the movement of ancient Scots moving unhurried up the hill. Sure, these are imaginings of an overactive mind that wants to see, and yet something of the magical herein touches me, what am I seeing?
This space beyond my window, and within this very space where I sit, at my desk has been something else than the scholar's cell in which I now dwell.
I have written about it before, imagining the straining of my ears to hear the mopoke or barking owl, and the fight and cry of the warring territorial possum.
Before me now stands a red flowering coral tree, but not so long ago it was a pine tree in a pine plantation, and before that a tree remnant of Noongar's earlier forest.
Imagine that... and it ain't that hard to see, these shapes of humans walking in between the leafy shades on their way to the river and its swamps beyond.
Just as the plane leaves show the shadows within them, of leaves that stand between them and the sun, so too might time reflect the time-swept-memories of the many, shadows and outlines of they and their shapes pinioned to places of the mind's eye, shadows as clear as the tracks left by their feet only moments before - all now outlines contained in the air-laden shapes that walk the hallways and into spaces beyond.

The tales of the bobtail lizard

2008-12-09T17:23:00.000-08:00

Bobtales of the old Lizard 10-08-08
I saw two bobtails through this window last week.
I don't know why I feel the urge to report such observations, now a week after the event, but I had thought to but I just hadn't acted on my thoughts...
The usual story.
Actually, I know now why I am writing about them.
These two that I saw were big, fat and seemingly at home in the leaf litter.
One was following the other, nudging at its tail as it went.
I didn't know that such lizards lived in this locality, especially with the number of students and noise here abouts.
But, no, here they were, seemingly unaffected by the noise around them, and within this enclave they were hidden, or so they thought, from prying eyes.
And so the question arises, are we, too, capable of finding and living in such gardens unaffected by the dramas of the human world around us?
I know that the old bobtails are not without their problems.
Blood-sucking ticks often invade the folds of their skin and rest between the scales of their armor and sometimes dig down into their ears until they fill the ear cavity like an earplug.
Maybe we share with the bobtail more than we first realise.
We seem to be happy living in suburbia, and like the bobtail we have periods when we become fat from the food we eat.
And although we don't carry ticks, we do have any number of parasites sucking the juices from outside of us.
While we don't have ticks burrowing into our ear cavities, we do allow the media, a space between our heads, glued as we are to our TV and these TV hybrids called personal computers.
These are the human electronic ticks and all the while they are digging deeper - they have moved from our ears from the sound of the radio to the visual impregnation of our brains with their coloured blueprint visions of the ideal and the heroic.
TVs are our ticks and so too are computers and mobile phones that radiate their heat.
But no one can see it.
The ticks that dig into the bobtail are camouflaged, and the bobtail has such poor eyesight it cannot see what causes its discomfort.
How I envy the Luddite among us, the old people who relied on swarming ants and the black cockatoo for their meteorological predictions, rather than the satellite pictures on their TV, within their newsprint or computer.
We share more with the bobtail than we care to realise.
Hell, some of us even have a love of eating snails...

The Wind at my Window: Dances and Scents of the Green God

2008-12-04T00:56:00.000-08:00

Dances and Scents of the Green God 26-11-08

I wanted to write in my blog how I saw/met God in the leaves outside my window recently.
I wanted to write how it is that something, some new level of awareness and an 'awe-entity' has came over me.

Maybe, it is a question of ripeness, a time that we notice when we need to be ripe, and ready for such things.

But I thought, and I still think, that the key to seeing God is through our senses.

I have this sense of the sight of the plane leaves straining, bowing, playing in the breeze outside of my window, that they seem to allure me to a vision of awe. The sighting of green fingers and arms bending this way, and that, has indulged some part of my brain in an interaction and has given to me an insight of a space that is practised (de Certaeu), and an insight of a nourishing terrain (Levinas) of the spiritual of the awe-entity (my word)...beyond and yet near.

Maybe, I have wanted to see God in the wind and thus the tree beyond is simply the vehicle through which God is revealed...and communicating, but then too, plunging my nostrils as I am often intent in doing, like a bee does its tongue into the sexual organs of a rose, I know something else of the awe-entity that sends another of my senses reeling, dancing and pondering on the scent of the sacred.

And this sensing in seeing, smelling such scents like the rain on cement, or the scent of rain on ancient rocks by the sea - or dust mites in the air (?) - has created in me an awareness of how my mind and my inner senses are anchoring my intuition to a growing attunement and sense of the sacred in my life.

I am beginning to believe there is a part of me that is growing more and more attune and adjusted and even charged to the possibility that God is revealed when individual senses work in unison.

Certain senses are developing an acute sensitivity to certain aspects of where the sacred is revealed. The orange murraya (orange jasmine) hedge beyond the plane leaves communicate something different to the movement of the breezes beyond the glass, but each anchors a recall of moments where I have had sightings/glimpses of the sacred - fleeting glimpses and glances and instances - fleeting moments of something of the awe-entity beyond.

Humble Yourself at the Sight of the Tree

2008-11-19T20:55:00.000-08:00

Humble yourself 20th November 2008

These leaves are movers, bending branches before the wind they bend toward the earth.
These leaves are like a giant green prey mantas...
Bow down I am hearing in the words of an old hippie song: "You got to humble, yourself at the sight of the tree"
"To know what it knows you got to bend down low and humble yourself at the tree - for we, shall, lift each other up, higher and higher we, shall lift each other up!" And I am thinking, what rituals have been born from the bowing and bending of the leaves and branches, bending before the earth, bending full with the breath and winds of God...these branches that sway and bow before the breeze...?
More than solar sails these leaves and branches are guides and story tellers.
Why did Buddha sit beneath a fig tree (Bodhi tree: Ficus religiosa)?
What inspiration did it bring him? It is written, "...after his Enlightenment, the Buddha spent a whole week in front of the tree, standing with unblinking eyes, gazing at it with gratitude."
What inspiration does it bring to all of us - with eyes unblinking in our quest to see?
Some sacred action here is communicated (commune created) - some transcending (transform sending)which in turn transforms the mind, lets us see another side... the side of the wind.

Leaves on a Green Tide

2008-11-16T23:48:00.000-08:00

Leaves on a Green Tide 17th Nov 2008

If you could see the light in these leaves, the inter-layered half lings of shaded inbetweens that lift like sheets on a hills hoist; it is the sight of a green man sighing.
This stirring of some giant's pot, all of it the sensory probing and stamina of light and air feeding leaves which breathe and dance to the flexing of currents that eddy and froth all about them.
This current that passes and sometimes bends them in a turbulent motion of the unseen - I feel as though through the glass of a fishbowl I am watching, expecting brim and skip jack to gather, hoping to sight yellow-eyed, bright-eyed herring or mullet schooling drifting in the shallows...and somewhere distant, I can just make out their free forming of silver undersides that flex and twist when gravitating in the wash the shining in the green waves and currents beyond...
With each new wave the wash within the arboreal reef sends them careering...
With each new gust they spin and when the wind falls they're returned to their camouflage of leafy shades and depths - restored they drift and move and wait, for the returning of the current and tide...Through this window I watch them become leaves once more...a hills hoist of green beyond my window, waiting on the wind for their permission to tumble...

The Magpie Sings for Jakub's birthday aged 2

2008-10-30T20:12:00.000-07:00

The Magpie Sings for Jakub's birthday aged 2
It is nearing the end of djilbaa, the Noongar spring.
We are entering early summer on the 31st of October 'Halloween,' but Halloween it isn't.
Here in Perth, in the southern hemisphere it is not Samhain, Halloween, but Bealltainn or Beltane.
It is a festival time, a celebration of life, fertility and the crop.
Here it is a pinnacle of prosperity.
The flowers of the Australian bush are laden with nectar. All matter of birds and frogs have been signalling the arrival of this peak period for weeks.
Yesterday, I had another visit from the singing virtuoso magpie.
He, or she... I find it not always easy to tell... but I think he... showed me again his ability in mimicking the singers around him.
First there was the sound and song of the twenty eight parrot, then came the song of the mud lark, then the morning honey eater and then the wattle bird and others... small brackets of song.
He and the hedge of orange murraya are in flower, all of them singing their songs of nectar and the sweet scents of the season. And my little boy turns two today.
Miles away he is, and I miss him.

The bees have gone

2008-10-23T00:55:00.000-07:00

Beehive below the bush by the letter box where did they come from and where did they go?

The bees have gone 23rd Oct 2008
The bees have gone...that is they only hung around for three days and then leaped into motion once again swarming somewhere...
But in the days following their departure I felt something of sadness that they were no longer there.
A day or so after they had gone, I bent down to inspect where their hive had once been and noticed a number of white waxy markings on the stem from which they had hung.
I even noticed several disgruntled bees still clinging to the surrounding stems and I wondered, what if they had been left behind?
My neighbor had said that bees had ways and networks for getting back to their hive but now I am not altogether sure that that is true...no matter how much I'd like to believe it.
Poor bees.

Moths and frangipani

2008-10-20T06:16:00.000-07:00

Moths and Frangipani 20th Oct 7pm 2008
Tonight I stepped out from my study space beneath the Social Sciences building and the sky was grey, cumulus grey and cloudy, sure, but the wind was still.
I walked past a lamp that a willy-wagtail was stalking and ensnaring the gnats and bugs that flew into its light.
The white wings of the unknowns, were drawn illuminated for a moment, in the briefest moment of time they cartwheeled like Japanese fan dancers on a stage, straight into the samurai like beak of the black and white assassins that flew waiting half hidden in the shadows...
Each insect, it seemed, was driven by an unknown desire to feed the feathered frenzy that similarly cartwheeled mimicking their momentary-lived movements - and I walked - and the lamps of Pan's sanctuary and his vestiges of Arcadia seemed caught in the twilight the liminal space and breath or sigh between day and darkness.
In this moment the scent of the native frangipani drew me near.
In this moment I became the moth or recognised the moth within my name (timothy) and I found myself free-falling winged and winging on the periphery of that scent that did all it could to draw me near.
One tends to be lost to such moments, for surely these are moments of the sensual - moments when an intuition of the magical seems pregnant with possibilities to breathe, to remember to breathe, to let go, to fall by the wayside and to lose ones-self to the moment.

Bees of Spring

2008-10-15T07:36:00.000-07:00

Bees of Spring 15th October 2008
Today a swarm of bees came like a willy-willy dust devil with a sting in its tail. It swarmed in front of my parent's house funneling in the centre of the roadway T-junction...
It didn't seem to know which way it was going, but that it kept together showed its movement, its flight and the formation of thousands was intentional, they were seeing, seeking, feeling their way.
They moved as if they were a spirit dancing, I could see an outline of their form grouping and regrouping, then dispersing, around and around and around they went till all at once some scouts found their way to a lower branch of a rose bush.
Just as suddenly they attached their bodies beneath the apricot flowers of a Just-Joey, a sweet scented Rose.
Perhaps it was the scent of nectar that lured them there.
Equally surprising was mine and other's reactions.
Me, with my memory of bee stings went primitive, instinct took over...
"There was danger in the neighborhood, my neighborhood."
There in my mother's garden bed was a thousand honey producing stingers, each one of them irrational, poised in their possibility of thrusting their stainless steel elongated tiger-striped abdomen injecting pain pincers into my memory of allergic reactions.
Yep, and so I stood ready... ready to run, or to hide behind fly wire.
"Let sleeping bees lie" said my father.
"Stay away" said my mother.
"Show no fear" said a neighbor.
"Find the queen" said another...
But no, I stood fixed to the veranda and watched with an irrational fear that soon, any moment, they'd hatch a plan to make a bee-line - whatever that is - to where I stood watching.
But as they quietened down, and settled, so did I.
Maybe they could feel it in the watchers around them, maybe they were equally watching us as we were them...maybe...
Just like the menacing zealot magpie's watching from their eucalypt castle towers, watching for anything that moves.
"If only the world would stop moving."
I watched one today attempt to catch and savage a passing Catalina-pelican.
As soon as the pelican saw the black and white mirage fighter closing in, it dipped its wings, lifted and sliced the surrounding thermals and quickly changed course.
The magpie mirage was left in its jet stream, but I think I saw it celebrating, dancing by the way it dived, celebrating that it had seen this flying Catalina on its way.
The sight of it going after that pelican-Catalina made me wonder if it ever considered going after a Boeing A-300.
Maybe that Qantas QF72 that fell from the sky was attacked by a magpie, and not by a computer fault.
That no one mentioned it does not mean it never happened.
It is spring time after all - a time of swarming bees and a testing time it appears, for the swooping black and white menacing mirages - we call magpies.

Mm the Moon Man

2008-10-14T08:10:00.000-07:00

Mm The Moon Man 14th October 2008

Mm The Moon Man murmurs to the trees at night;
Holds every leaf and their trunk so tight,
Glazes their form in its light, so bright,
Mm the Moon Man murmurs to the trees tonight.

And Venus is the star that moves on high,
The siren queen singing in her vault of sky
- for blessed are the beings that move and fly -
celestial bright beings who in the heavens lie.

Black Duck Blue

2008-10-05T01:55:00.000-07:00

Bronze Wing Green

2008-10-05T01:39:00.000-07:00

Bronze Wing

2008-10-05T00:25:00.000-07:00

Bronze Wing 5th October 2008
Once again I found myself following that ribbon of gravel, following the stream to Hovea Falls.
Each time I arrive I am reminded to live in the moment.
I find myself thinking, it is not the destination but the journey that matters... and so I am walking, listening and watching.
Today the floral arrangements that surround me are vivid.
Vivid blues and reds, and occasional orchids line the path.
And that distant bird sound, that one with its ethereal high-pitched melodic whistle seems to follow me, singing in harmony with the nearby gurgling bubbling brook that borders the walking trail. And I am walking...
Today in the company of a friend I was walking full of child-like anticipation for what flower or oddity of granite formation we might find.
And later, finding ourselves at the John Forest National Park Tavern, drinking tea from a sparkling silver teapot, we sat talking sipping tea in the company of a dozen grey doyens of the bush with their pouches full and twitching, and we saw them...for there, stepping between the half-shadows of grey feeding kangaroo were the fearless bronze wings.
In Noongar the bronze wing pigeon is called the Moritch but, unable to glimpse the deeper meanings of their naming, it is the English adjective in describing their wing that resonates most deeply.
But this bird, ever-determined moving in and out in the shadows of paw and claw-footed kangaroo exudes a wing that shines metallic green as well as bronze.
Its wing's colouration resembles the blue-wing inner-linings of the black duck, which in turn finds a connection with the dark green of the European mallard.
But this colouration, this distinct patch shining glistening on the upper forward tract of its wing seems to speak of some function or other, but attractive and attracting to whom?
It is spring and perhaps the vividness of its colouration speaks of its biological intent and endeavor, its intentions to find a mate, or to signal it has found one. Perhaps what I am seeing reflects the success of the species, an adaptation formed from a life spent deep in the forest, an adaptation formed amid the forest green, something born and worn of signification and magnification, magnified in the eyes of their species, but half-hidden in the grass, camouflaged from the eyes of the predator.
And yet to imagine the formation of such a markings is to imagine and to see it in other life-forms as well.
All of us are marked or camouflaged at some time in our lives.
For the Hindu, both woman or man, for example, adorned with their third eye, their sari or bangles, or for western woman, for some, with their nose rings, tattoos and bright colours speaks in signs, and signals the evocative vocabulary of unsaid words and narratives and stories that never end.
Sometimes I find myself mingling with the throng.
Sometimes, half-stepping the fruit carriers at the markets, my head is spun from the scent of patchouli.
It is really a hippie's errand - a message to the world, that to both the wearer and receiver, it speaks in a tongue meant to allure, to transform.
For some who wear it, their scent is forgotten and only remembered when others make comment, who know its attraction.
And it seems to me, that just like the bronze wing, that we too share something in common attempting to allure and to speak without speaking, either in scent or in colour.

The Balyet and the coming of the spring

2008-09-25T02:13:00.000-07:00

Balyets 25th September 2008

Balyets...some say are invisible beings.

I read somewhere where the balyet was a woman who had lost her child. The woman died from the loss of her child and became a spirit - a wirreny. And with every child she found straying from its camp she would embrace, only to find that every child she embraced had died and her cry, the echo, was her anguish filled scream.
And I wonder what this story was meant to identify for the Noongar?? What message were the old ones trying to instill in successive generations?
Did this woman, old balyet, did she hold the child too close, only to smother it?? Did she love it too much??
And yet this story, ancient in its telling, is not singularly the providence of myth but the substance of belief, of experience.

Sure there is something that moves with the wind, something lonely, watching... waiting.
I have walked the trail to Hovea Falls through all sorts of rocky areas...and I am convinced I have been therein watched... but, likewise I have been watching too, listening... for the koooo!!! waiting for the signal, its cry.
Somewhere among the rocks I have heard them scurrying, jumping.
"Was that a wallaby or a maamara??" I am thinking in my mind.
I dare not speak...I try to allow instinct to direct me, let my senses react the way they should...
And all the while that little black and white bird I sense is watching, following, feasting off the gnats and bugs that my boots reveal.
Every boot-laden step, awakens and reveals all matter of slaters and centipedes who are upended and everywhere birds are watching.
Silver eyes in their blossoms feeding on nectar - watching. Wattle birds - warbling for the wet, all matter of birds are watching, and some watching my steps and in the distance you can hear them calling, conversing with each other high in the branches.
In the distance, sometimes, old man crow is calling to his yok - his one of several wives: "Has he been past your way yet?" "Is he carrying any food?" And then the lookout, the sentry somewhere who sits ever alert, signals with a piercing whistle. It signals the imminent arrival of sharpening talons and of marauding beak.
All fall silent.
The telegraph line of bird-speak is seldom ignored.
All fall silent and still to listen...
Then dark eyes hurtle by with the black falcon on reconnaissance hunting for the unaware, the deaf, the ignorant.
I see her pass me by.
Her eyes dark and searching.
We hold each other's stare, for a moment.
My stare for her is but wonder, awe, her stare for me... unknown...
Then, just as quickly, the whistle, that signal returns, the sign of the 'all clear' is given and it travels and follows that black falcon in its wake.
And everywhere there is movement and the sounds of feathered conversations returning to the surrounding paperbarks and tea tree.
I don't know how they do it, how they know to keep watch to keep listening.
Like them, I guess we humans have our satellites and spies.
When that falcon flies in, and we, unsuspectingly catch just a glimpse, then you have to take your hat off to the birds who have outwitted the falcon.
When I am walking to Hovea Falls, when wandering along that track, whilst I might call myself attentive, I am very often far from that.
The sweet nectar-laden scent of the paper bark and underbrush has me swaying.
Drunk... with my mind awash, my senses are anything but attuned and tuning.
The sound of rapids eddying in the foam-making flow of froth catches my ear.
So too is my sight enamoured to the froth caught in the straining and stirring hands of the stream side sink of tea tree.
I am distracted, too distracted to take in the eyes that are watching me and their sounds...
Was that a balyet or a wallaby??
There is just too much to take in.
And that maamara half-hidden in the rocks, scurrying in its clefts of rock in its hidden caves it calls home.
Mostly, but not always, I fail to see them.
Their stench is covered by the nectar honey-laden scents that spring has had a hand in stirring.
The dugite which moves from its burrow, moves hidden, olive green for the juvenile and brown black for the parent.
It is lost in the new grass.
Mice cannot see them but they are there.
Mice like we humans are focusing on the feast at hand.
Too focused on the feast than on that which might wish to make a feast of them.
All around us in spring are the eyes of watching feast dwellers.
When we humans walk such trails, we forget we have entered the food chain of others. Sure, we are hunters, but eyes watch us for the food possibilities we offer.
That the balyet spends her time looking for her lost child and the food possibilities is mostly lost to us...
Old stories are there for those who want to know them, but most don't care.
Why the willy wagtail moves and follows the movement of ground dwellers especially those she calls food, revealed by our footwear we very rarely see.
But that the willy wagtail might be the balyet in disguise we have never thought...or that the sweet nectar-filled scent of the underbrush might hide the scent of the maamara most had never once considered.
All of these scents hide the unsuspected or the hunter in the food chain.
But balyets are invisible how could we even know to see them??
They're invisible aren't they??
And that silence, that presence returns melding the unseen with the felt.
We are clothed in silence or that shadow hidden in the rocks.
And we know it, we are watched.

Bob and the song of the Magpie

2008-09-21T16:50:00.000-07:00

I heard him singing 22nd September 2008

I heard the koolbardi magpie singing several mornings ago.
I heard it when it was still dark at about 3am.
I heard it above the wind and its tune was melodic, beautiful.
It sings, say old Noongar yarns, it sings for its moyer or nephew the goanna the karda or old yurrn the bobtail who it knows still sleeps in the warmth of its burrow in the earth.
It sings to tell its nephew that spring and the warmth of summer is approaching and that sometime soon it should think to move into the shades of the trees that surround it.
Now I want to tell you about a friend who passed away recently.
I only heard the news yesterday by means of a letter to this blog.
I know now that the koolbardi sings for such people as my friend Bob.
Is there life after death?
Well the magpie singing in the knowledge of spring seems to think so.
Bob would have known that yarn, as he knew many of the Noongar yarns of the lower southwest.
It seem strange that he has passed.
I dare not believe it.
I sat with him at the Charlie Gardener Hospice recently and whilst the cancer in his jaw had made it difficult for him to speak and eat he was his usual joy-filled self. His warmth was contagious, it was easy to feel relaxed and inspired in his company. His passion was for the Noongar of the lower south west.
There is a statue dedicated to Mokare on Albany's main street, but you know a similar one should stand nearby dedicated to Bob...
His work with the southcoast Noongar was often a thankless and unrecognised task.
Of course he never did the work he did for recognition, he was just moved by the wonders that such knowledge brought him.
Bob and I frequently met at his favourite cafe in Albany where we discussed all matter of facts and details and insights into the Noongar language and our concerns and specifically his for his Noongar community.
I say HIS Noongar community because that's the way he felt about them and I am sure they felt about him.
He was a Noongar wadjalla... Yep, in the Noongar sense he was moort - family - and you know, in the old Noongar sense one's ngorp blood mattered not, all that mattered was one's relationship, one's reciprocity.
Bob was always giving and his Noongar moort knew this, we all knew this.
He was a colbung...I have read where the word 'colbung' means friend.
In the language I know from the Noongar east we say maadarn or ngoonden, friend or brother, or ngoodjar brother-in-law, something similar to the name of that white-tailed black cockatoo the playful 'ngoolyark' whose origins link it to the porongorups the place of Noongar's borongaar, totem place of the older brother - a highly significant and sacred Noongar place near Albany.
Bob was a special being the kind of which I don't know if we will see again.
I only hope someone said something at his graveside, showed a Noongar concern for his passage to his spiritual home and to the Noongar that would be there to meet him.
Now, if that magpie, that koolbardi's song is anything to go by, then spring is coming, even when in our deepest burrow, in our darkness, we are all given to the possibility of hearing its song.
Bob we shall meet again.

I lost an auntie three days ago, two people that were close to me and two people I deeply respected. Two people who knew the Magpie's song.

Old Friends

2008-09-18T00:33:00.000-07:00

Old friends 18-09-08

Noongar boodjaa nidja yaaragat nyininy, djert mai kaadidjiny, djitti-djitti kaadidjiny, djinaanginy niint kwoordidjiny.

Yeyi ngientj nidja nyininy, kaaram Prague Czech Republic kaalagap yiddiny...Czech mai dwonkabert... yeyi nidja boodjaa ngientj benaanginy, yaalanginy... baal kwopidaa!!

And these leaves, the leaves beyond my window from the English plane plantanus orientalis have returned, small leaves but growing large. Through them, in between them I can see the sky. Through them I see the tree's bones we call branches, limbs slowly filling with green...

I have returned and old friends can I see.

Pan's Promenade

2008-06-27T01:04:00.000-07:00

Pan's Promenade 5:30pm June 27th 2008
Today I was walking along Pan's Promenade, with a vision of Arcadia I could hear Pan at his pipes and the sounds of a goat herd and herder.
This garden does that, makes one dream and want to believe such things.
But the university, however, in its wisdom refers to this path of flowers, exotic trees, leafy lawns and cool shades, jacaranda purples, myrtle pinks, and haunts of youth and their displays and movements of their coming into ripeness, as Sir Charles Court Promenade.
And I know the name they have chosen, of an identity who no doubt gave greatly and unashamedly for the university, deserves to be remembered, but not in this space along this sacred corridor.
His name seems out of place.
His name should adorn the architecture building with its stark communist greys of jail-tone and uniform rigidity it is an apt place to remember a politician.
Names are important.
They have important stories to tell and symbols to uphold and most often we tend to forget this.
Now, I have noticed of late, how the last leaves of the maple or liquid amber are only just hanging on in the lower branches.
Then too periodically the wing tips of the oriental plain continue to glide.
I saw one today that glided straight out above my head for perhaps 30 metres.
Its wing tips were pointed skywards and I could see it was aerodynamically formed. The sight of its flight made me curious as to where the new passenger jets had taken their designs from - was it the sight of one of these plain leaves?
Most of the leaves beyond my window have already left their branches and flown - bare branches are becoming more and more common.
In two weeks I too must fly away, 38.000 ft in the air.
For I am leaving to see The Telc Lepa, The Dup and lazing red trams of Stromovka, and to while away some of my moments with Capek and Kafka.
In a little while I will be flying to the Czech Republic.
This window I will not see again until green shoots have emerged and in their springing have formed new leaves and solar sails in ripening eagerness for the heat and bright light of summer ahead.

What I see

2008-06-27T01:00:00.000-07:00

What I hear

2008-06-27T00:58:00.000-07:00

Molgaa the beautiful

2008-06-27T00:46:00.000-07:00

Molgaa the beautiful 3:50pm June 27th 2008
Right now a thunderstorm is pulsing above the work desk where I have sat these many months. Through thick glass I can hear it roaring like a lion. Sure, I have nothing to compare it with but my memory of when I worked at the Zoo. Nidja maar-moorn yiraar yaaragat goondaar-mai waarngkiny, echoing these dark clouds echoing as if in a cave. This beautiful earth. Tis moments like these that humm and everything stills to listen.

Whadjak boodjaa nidja

2008-06-05T03:28:00.000-07:00

Whadjak djoolaa nidja ngoordiny 5th June 2008 7pm
Yey, ngaalakat boolaarang, kaarakatap Kings Park nyinaalanginy.
Yey baalap Wilderness Society, baalap waarngka nidja Ngadju boodjaa nidja 'Great Western Woodlands' Ngadju-Noongarr-Gaabran boodjaa kaadjaali...
Yey kwodjaa baal Nannup-a-koonyart waarngka: 'Welcome'... Baala mai waangka nidja wadjak boodjaa...yey yarn, nardja? Baal Nannup-a-koonyart-a-waarngk, nidja Karta-wadernang boodjaa... Yey ngientj nidja kaadidjiny...kaa moort-kooraarr boodjaa nidja? Yey ngientj wadj-waarngkiny, koorraar Nyoongaara bardlanginy nidja, ngaadanginy nidja, moonyanginy nidja, koompaniny, gooneriny nidja... Wadjak 'tribe'??? Wadja-Noongar baalap noitj nidja ngoorndiny... Yey nardj nidja derbal yerrigan... brackish water... kaa darp yaaragat nyininy... Baal waarngk: Baalay, aaliwaa... yaaragat nyininy darpmin, baal noonaar ngoorntj, djena nyeraniny, darp boorniny... Noonook djildjit waartiny, ngaadangat nidja norn baal darpal yaaragat nyininy... boordu noonook ngay-yanginy, ngorp baardang-koorliny warra!! Baalay...
Yey nidja boodjaa naarak nyininy plane doolyaa ngaardangat nyininy... yorak, yaaly, djoolaa nidja... boorna-plane baal nidja ngaarniny... plane-doolyaa baala daartj baal ngaarniny. Wadj-djoolaa, boordu ngany djoolaa, nidja daaragaa-djoolaa ngany djoolaa, yaalyabiny boorn-a-daartjabiny Boordu Noongarr baalap waarngkiny, nidja Wadjak boodjaa nidja... Noongar-a-moort nidja ngoorndiny, wadj-a-la, noongar-a-djoolaa yaaly doorntj nidja... Yaarggany 'Yagan' John Forrest djoolaa nidja... yaalyabiny womberabiny noonaar moortabiny Whadjak

Beauty

2008-06-04T05:55:00.001-07:00

The Owl

2008-06-04T05:33:00.000-07:00

I want to tell you about an owl. 4th June 2008 8:50pm
According to my Frost ancestors from County Clare, Ireland, the owl was their seal.
Personally, I have felt myself drawn to the attributes of the white-tailed black cockatoo, the bird that visits here each year to devour the pine cones.
But the owl once lived and roosted in the giant Jarrah through my window.
When the night was still, and this space was seldom quiet for the screeching of possums (declaring what property was theirs and where unseen boundaries had been crossed).
When the night was still you could hear the owl, and its hoot-hoot would echo across the valley.
But that was years ago.
When I was a child my grandmother lived in Thelma Street, and I remember very vividly the pine plantation at the end of her road.
It seemed dark and foreboding and now here I am, sitting smack in the middle of it, pondering whether the forest that supported the owl will ever return.
Everything is impermanent, nothing remains forever.
So maybe this view in front of my window will one day return to the trees and shrubs that once stood there.
And then, perhaps, even the owl might return, and then the kangaroo and screaming possum.
Imagine that.

How to describe the sun in leaves

2008-06-02T01:00:00.000-07:00

2nd June 2008.
Lesson 1.Yey nidja ben baal doolyaa-yaaraagat nyininy - is the light sitting upon the leaf or is it doolyaa-bwoorr nidja nyininy, inside the leaf sitting? And shadows of other leaves behind, above, atop, yarn nidja, nidja noll, doolyaa-nollak-yaaragat-nyininy, nidja keniny don-waariny, dancing and waving, but ngiyang doolyaa-don waariny? Yey ngiyang?? Baal maaman yirra nidja nyininy, maar-boolsbininy - beautiful to speak and to ponder.

Leaves and their shadows

2008-06-02T00:53:00.000-07:00

4pm Tusday 2nd of June 2008

It's now three days after the thunder storm and the leaves are deep upon the pathways and hedges.
For the greater part they are only just holding on.
But as their sap and life in their leaves wanes and withdraws they leave the most beautiful colours and this is especially the case right now at 3:57pm this very afternoon the 2nd of June 2008.

Molgaa-Mai Thor's day on Saturday the 31st of May 2008

2008-06-01T01:24:00.001-07:00

Today is the first day of June.
Yesterday was a day like no other.
Several giant thunder cells had formed in the northwest on the edge of a cold front. Its cold front arm arced inward like a bow aiming its arrow.
The sky was darkening to the west.
Molgaa, I was thinking, molgaa is the name the Noongar had given what the old Norse or old Greek called Thor or Zeus, and it was they who were speaking.
Actually, I thought it was something bigger than any individual, something beyond the anthromorphic of human form or design.
I thought I could hear in the thunder roar and boom the words of nature, or the language of the earth speaking.
And I watched Molgaa, listened to the sound of the storm coming closer.
First I saw a bright bolt of lightening and then I heard the clap of thunder and in the old language of this land I was thinking: molgaa-mai waarngkiny, ngai-ngaiyanginy, kaarang-abin, aali maarman yaaraagat nyininy...boordu kep boorong bit-bitanginy ngientj nidja kaadidjiny, djooripiny!
Actually, beside the sound of thunder and rain and the sight of the darkening cloud, I spied the movement and sudden alarm of birds.
Outside the front of my parent's house I had noticed a sudden movement of the yellow-winged New Holland honey eaters (Phylidonyris novaehollandiae) flying to the Callistemon (King's Park Special) that sits on the verge of their property.
One bird within was signalling, crying in sharp chirps of alarm and at first I thought it must be the approaching thunderstorm.
But, all of a sudden, I noticed a grey goshawk swoop in.
Its eyes were bright yellow.
It looked my way.
It seemed to hold my stare.
And for the briefest moment I followed it in flight from the veranda where I stood in awe.
How did the birds in the callistemon know it was coming?
How did they know to sing out?
Obviously it was the bird's own telegraph line of communication.
They have their own signal in times of trouble.
I wonder whether they call the same way when they see a cat?
Anyhow, it came, for the better part of Saturday was Thor's day a day of Molgaa-mai this storm and its lightening was wonderous!!
Imagine if we knew how to harness such energy!!
I had read somewhere that if such a bolt was caught it could power a city for a year...or was that a month...?
Anyhow, today, the first day of June, the leaves beyond my window drift between calm and movement.
And as the sun is setting some are turning golden...
And still my mind is full with my memories of yesterday.

To quote that famous Jewish poet Mr Zimmerman:

As majestic bells of bolts struck shadows in the sounds
Seeming to be the chimes of freedom flashing
Flashing for the warriors whose strength is not to fight
Flashing for the refugees on the unarmed road of flight
An' for each an' ev'ry underdog soldier in the night
An' we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.

In the city's melted furnace, unexpectedly we watched
With faces hidden while the walls were tightening
As the echo of the wedding bells before the blowin' rain
Dissolved into the bells of the lightning
Tolling for the rebel, tolling for the rake
Tolling for the luckless, the abandoned an' forsaked
Tolling for the outcast, burnin' constantly at stake
An' we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.

Through the mad mystic hammering of the wild ripping hail
The sky cracked its poems in naked wonder
That the clinging of the church bells blew far into the breeze
Leaving only bells of lightning and its thunder
Striking for the gentle, striking for the kind
Striking for the guardians and protectors of the mind
An' the unpawned painter behind beyond his rightful time
An' we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.

Through the wild cathedral evening the rain unraveled tales
For the disrobed faceless forms of no position
Tolling for the tongues with no place to bring their thoughts
All down in taken-for-granted situations
Tolling for the deaf an' blind, tolling for the mute
Tolling for the mistreated, mateless mother, the mistitled prostitute
For the misdemeanor outlaw, chased an' cheated by pursuit
An' we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.

Even though a cloud's white curtain in a far-off corner flashed
An' the hypnotic splattered mist was slowly lifting
Electric light still struck like arrows, fired but for the ones
Condemned to drift or else be kept from drifting
Tolling for the searching ones, on their speechless, seeking trail
For the lonesome-hearted lovers with too personal a tale
An' for each unharmful, gentle soul misplaced inside a jail
An' we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.

Starry-eyed an' laughing as I recall when we were caught
Trapped by no track of hours for they hanged suspended
As we listened one last time an' we watched with one last look
Spellbound an' swallowed 'til the tolling ended
Tolling for the aching ones whose wounds cannot be nursed
For the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones an' worse
An' for every hung-up person in the whole wide universe
An' we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.

twins

2008-05-29T21:22:00.000-07:00

colour of the worlds within

2008-05-29T21:13:00.000-07:00

Leaves in Waiting

2008-05-29T20:49:00.000-07:00

Close to the Wind Close to God

2008-05-29T20:31:00.000-07:00

The Fall

2008-05-29T17:39:00.000-07:00

The Fall 30th May 2008 8.40am
Yesterday there was hardly a breeze but this morning the slightest breeze sends them tumbling. I just saw a fluted winged plane leaf that soared, glided but held its course... Some of them spin, actually most spin, but some glide as a seagull might - wow. Today, this second last day of May the leaves are falling more than I have seen on other days. Most seem priming in their aircraft hanger branches waiting for the word to come when they spread their foliage and fall.

King of Peace

2008-05-29T04:17:00.001-07:00

http://www.mcsr.olemiss.edu/~mudws/sounds/King_of_Peace.mp3

The Mother and her Garden called Eden

2008-05-28T18:34:00.000-07:00

The Mother and her Garden called Eden 29th May 2008 9.30am
Ecclesiasticus 24:13 I was exalted like a cedar in Libanus, and as a cypress tree upon the mountains of Hermon.
Ecclesiasticus 24:14 I was exalted like a palm tree in En-gaddi, and as a rose plant in Jericho, as a fair olive tree in a pleasant field, and grew up as a plane tree by the water.
Ecclesiasticus 24:15 I gave a sweet smell like cinnamon and aspalathus, and I yielded a pleasant odour like the best myrrh, as galbanum, and onyx, and sweet storax, and as the fume of frankincense in the tabernacle.
Ecclesiasticus 24:16 As the turpentine tree I stretched out my branches, and my branches are the branches of honour and grace.
Ecclesiasticus 24:17 As the vine brought I forth pleasant savour, and my flowers are the fruit of honour and riches.
Ecclesiasticus 24:18 I am the mother of fair love, and fear, and knowledge, and holy hope: I therefore, being eternal, am given to all my children which are named of him.
Ecclesiasticus 24:19 Come unto me, all ye that be desirous of me, and fill yourselves with my fruits.
Ecclesiasticus 24:20 For my memorial is sweeter than honey, and mine inheritance than the honeycomb. (http://www.biblicalproportions.com/modules/ol_bible/King_James_
Bible/Ecclesiasticus/24/).

Nakedness in the garden

2008-05-28T17:54:00.000-07:00

Nakedness in the garden 29th May 2008 9.20am
One wonders what the garden called Eden looked like? Paradise, some call it. But what if the story of Eve and Adam's 'nakedness' was a metaphor and a gardener's attention to the plane tree's loss of bark? And what if the loss of bark was a gardener's signifier of the coming spring and all its possibilities? What if in its nakedness, the tree's new skin was a signpost for when s/he should do certain things that guide one's gardening calculation and preparation? For it is written, (see below) that the,

PLANE TREE - plan'-tre ('armon; platanos (Gen 30:37), elate ("pine" or "fir") (Ezek 31:8); the King James Version chestnut): `Armon is supposed to be derived from the root aram, meaning "to be bare" or "naked"; this is considered a suitable term for the plane, which sheds its bark annually. The chestnut of the King James Version is not an indigenous tree, but the plane (Planus orientalis) is one of the finest trees in Palestine, flourishing especially by water courses (compare Ecclesiasticus 24:14).
(http://net.bible.org/dictionary.php?word=Plane%20tree).

Set Free

2008-05-28T05:51:00.000-07:00

Set free 9.20pm 28-05-08
We have such little time, walking, living as we do between spring and winter.
"I'm in the summer of my life, I've seen the good times and I've seen the strife..." (Archie Roach).
And are we aware that we as leaves are perpetually falling?
Some might say that it is the wind, at season's end that breaks our hold and sets us free.
But that same wind comes throughout and with every season.
Blowing strongly in the easterly winds and in the Fremantle doctor's afternoon breeze, absorbs and pushes the heat haze, which soon withdraws and they such leaves who cannot bend soon all but disappear.
It's life's journey, those who are flexible survive and prosper, those who rest too upright in the branches are too often caught by surprise, humbled in their demise...
Plane leaves are flexible - they have at least taught me that.
Equally, they spread themselves before the midday sun and when their work is done they rest - hang limp upon the branch.
They live in community and carry the burden of falling drops, that shatter, but harm them not.
And then, when the nearby Illawarra has dropped her handbag of coloured red lips that all her winged lovers have there in kissed, the leaves of the Plane begin to turn.
Hardly noticeable at first they quicken as the days grow shorter.
The air grows cooler and their solar sails fade to yellow, then brittle winged brown.
Till like today they become paper planes thrown by an invisible hand, their grip unloosened, unleashed, they are finally, set free.

Paper gliders

2008-05-27T20:52:00.000-07:00

Paper gliders May 28th 12.00pm
Like in autumn-automatic the leaves disconnect from their branches.
Like as if remote-controlled, these paper gliders with eagles wings are falling.
Their initial velocity points them downwards and then they bottom out and soar.
The earth beyond my window looks like a classroom floor, where trunks are the legs of chairs and beneath them the remnants of childhood paper planes remain, all childhood attempts at origami, their paper birds lie scattered.
This window is a cinema screen and the trees hide their secret paper messages, everywhere they are falling - in a brief moment of time they flicker and glide, some perform their art better than others, dazzling in their brilliance that inspired birds to grow feathers.
God is moving there, in the wind that moves the branches and in the wind that enchants the air.
These leaves or solar sails careering, paper planes with messages in their wings.
Coloured leaves carrying memories of summer now bowing before the winter gale, carrying their messages of the coming spring.
If I stood outside I would hear them singing now nourished with my belief inside that I can hear them sing.

Leaves Turning Brown

2008-05-23T01:50:00.000-07:00

Leaves Turning Brown 23-05-08 Friday 5.02pm

The days are growing shorter.
Winter is approaching and the margins of the plain leaves beyond my window are browning growing ever deeper.
My lovely green leaves are being sapped of their life.
My hand-in-date is looming and all the threads of my thesis are being spun together. I want more time, I need more time... in my head there are deadlines, chapters to be corrected, handed back in and re-corrected again - got to make that diamond shine.
And, all the while, the leaves outside show the end of my scholarship getting ever more closer.
I did my word count today, 94000 not counting footnotes. Somewhere I have to squeeze in my lit review, thesis outline and a conclusion. It's going to be a big one.
I pity the poor librarian stacking the shelves... Oh well, back to it.

Destiny

2008-05-03T20:46:00.000-07:00

Little Tree

2008-05-03T20:43:00.001-07:00

Entirety

2008-05-03T20:40:00.000-07:00

Colours at Rest

2008-05-03T20:32:00.000-07:00

Beak, Neck and Wing

2008-05-03T20:27:00.000-07:00

Colours of the Rainbow

2008-05-03T20:22:00.000-07:00

The Crow and the Rainbow

2008-05-02T03:04:00.000-07:00

The Crow and the Rainbow (2nd May 2008 5pm)

The marauder was staking its claim today. One crow had seen me through my window watching it eyeing off the carcass of a rainbow lorikeet. Its paranoia knew no bounds and it trod ever-careful with watchful eyes, plotting the movement of my head to see if I posed a threat to its carnivore desires.
I later went to the lorikeet before I left on my own excursion to the cafe to (like the crow) feed my hunger and quench my thirst. But before I did I stopped at the dead lorikeet and took several close-up photos of its bright coloured plumage (photos forthcoming).
At the sight of my arrival, the ever-watchful crow on the lower limb of the platanus flew out of sight and disappeared behind the Murraya hedge. And once there in the garden, something else caught my attention, for I spied under the Illawarra, a younger Illawarra (its sibling perhaps at least I think it was a Illawarra..?) seedling rising from near the limestone border right near the wall and my window.
And upon my return to my desk I once again saw the return of the watchful crow. It knew I was there at my desk, but I bent backwards so it could not see me. And so without sighting my figure through the window it quickly took command of the carcass and attempted to whisk it away in its beak. But, when I stood up and tried to photograph its attempts, with it possibly fearing the sight of my form and watchful stance at the window, it quickly dropped the carcass and flew away. Why it would fear my presence I did not know.
Crows are usually a lot smarter than that, and they will normally take far greater risks than that posed by the sight of me. Maybe it wasn't that hungry. Maybe easier and more tastier morsels were to be found from pilfering the university's bins. It is, after all, the doyen of scavengers and eating from bins is where its real skills come to the fore.
Note: I suspect that my description of the window being 'my window' is inadequate and only half true.
The crow's actions prove that he had an eye into my world as I had an eye into his.
His attention to me was matched by my attention to him.
This window is thus equally his (or hers) and the birds that abound beyond are thus equals to me and my growing craft and awareness of watching, of 'seeing' and of course, being seen.

Coloured wings of Light

2008-04-29T22:50:00.000-07:00

Coloured wings of Light (Wednesday 30th April 2008)

It is 2pm in the afternoon and the sunlight from my window is illuminating all that flies within and through it. Most days I am not given to seeing this spectacle, but I think with the dark curtain of the Murraya hedge behind all that flies before it, all is exposed in this otherwise invisible world.

The picture above was taken in summer and the focus of my picture was the garden bed of blue Agapanthus (African lily) that sat lush and bordering the Rob Riley walkway and Vege Patch Cafe. But, upon aiming for a close-up of the flower, I spied an insect in flight hovering next to it. All I could make out of this small-winged being was the white light of its beating wings. And I thought, as one is given to thinking on such occasions, I wonder how many times its wings beat per second?

And then, moments later, this hovering light-filled being perhaps, having become used to my probing camera and close but watchful eye, settled on one of the flower's elongated outstretched stamens.

Was it resting or feasting on nectar or pollen?

Then as I drew closer I noticed how its wings were reflecting the sun.

I did not notice at first, but it was only after I took the photo that I was able to zoom in for a closer look and insight of my photograph, and there to my surprise were its wings streaked in the colours of the rainbow. But not only did I make this important observation but I noticed that its delicate wings were paper thin, so thin they seemed to be made from a spider's web.

And as I think about it now, nostalgic for such observations, sometimes in spring, or summer, one is given to sighting such things. And such things arrive like an epiphany of surprise and child-like wonder especially in seeing fleetingly the web threads that fly on unseen currents, web threads that hold to tiny spiders that sail to their future but unknown destinations and homes. I have dreams of such sightings. But now with these insects their sightings are mostly memories.

Autumn is closing in.

And like the borders of the platanus orientalis leaves turning brown that hang just beyond my window, my thesis too is nearing its conclusion and like the leaves of the platanus has also begun to change in form and colour.

This movement through the seasons of my study has been a green signifier that my days in scholarly pursuits must near their end. Such are memories! Such are the sights and delights of one who is watching.

The moments spent observing beyond this window, has brought beautiful things, betwixt and between, of moments and the movements of leaves that are changing and their constant companions and visitations of winged beings and feral cats. I feel more the nourished for it and more attentive to the future of possibilities that such sights might once again avail themselves.

Solar Sails in Summer

2008-04-29T02:22:00.000-07:00

Illawarra Hands of Summer

2008-04-29T02:12:00.000-07:00

Illawarra Eye

2008-04-28T18:53:00.000-07:00

Flowers and Leaves of the Illawarra Flame

2008-04-28T18:46:00.000-07:00

The Flower of the Murraya

2008-04-28T18:31:00.000-07:00

A Murraya Princess for an Elvish King

2008-04-28T02:36:00.000-07:00

A Murraya Princess for an Elvish King 28th April 2008 6pm

I caught myself praying today, I had been walking to the library and then, almost unconsciously, I was drawn to the Murraya hedge. The garden's avenue along which I often wander is bordered on either side by its green pews of orange jasmine (Murraya paniculata), and overlooked by its cathedral columns of arbour’s arch and autumn leaf. Level with my nose, I, like a bee, or butterfly had therein rested.
Impatient to the monopoly of movement of pedestrian steps around me, I was momentarily lost in green, and white. I had stopped and bowed my head in prayer. I prayed to the flowers there. I prayed to their surge of scent - heaven's scent - scent composed of earth and water, and the night air. Scent composed from the surging sap sucked up by sunlight and held within the green palms of the murraya priestesses and their sprigs of white – their flowers like the light of the moon that twist to their tunes of the night.
Night jasmine does that, it signals the sighs of green scents, the scents and sense of breath of the goddess within. Sure tis the way to hear the earth sighing, to sense in her crying her erotic entrapments and scents that are flying, casting spells from her fingers and hands that would draw us all near. Draw us to her bed, her garden bed of butterflies and moths.
If I had stood there long enough I could therein have merged with the green, sucked within to remain unseen. The green man given to his leanasidhe bride, I could have been trapped inside. I once knew a blackthorn hedge. Her white flowers were hung to ensnare and magnetic were her charms to a man like me, looking for things that I could not see, all wise things tied to an ancient's memory.
But now I do remember, for such whispered words have come to me, of Thomas the Rhymer and his Eildon Tree, who had met his Lady there, enticed by a woman he wished to see, a woman he wished to snare, but she snared him, in him her hope held he, that he’d become her Elvish King, that she had found by her Eildon Tree.

The Art of Seeing

2008-04-26T22:26:00.000-07:00

The Art of Seeing Sunday 27th April 2008 (1.30pm)

Yesterday a fellow scholar, an Irishman from Dublin took up the desk next to mine. He had worked with the Irish Tinker community or communities of Gypsy or Travellers. And today another scholar, a friend named John Fielder, a man I refer to as John Redleif, a being wise to the world of leaves of books and trees showed me a new cafe, a true bohemian establishment, and next door a secondhand bookstore. And upon scanning its shelves, with the word 'tinker' still fresh in my mind, I saw reference to it and was quickly drawn to its title. It was the work of Annie Dillard, "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek," and it has proven to be a Godsend (good send). On pages 41-42, Dillard states with immense purpose and clarity, "The secret of seeing is to sail on solar wind. Hone and spread your spirit till you yourself are a sail, whetted, translucent, broadside to the merest puff" (1975: 41-42). And, then, I look outward from my window at the green-beings held out on their branches. The leaves of the plane tree, solar sails I think I have referred to them, once, or several times before. I know they are an extension of my sense of self. My reflection and theirs through my window embodies the one, a shared liminal space and connection between us. And the sun, sometimes yellow in the green of their leaves warms my heart and encourages me and reminds me to breathe.

Approach of Autumn

2008-04-06T00:40:00.000-07:00

Autumn

6th April 2008 (we had 48 mm of rain fall in 6 hours yesterday)

A month ago, looking through my window, I noticed a leaf drop. It was green when it fell, and I thought maybe it was the work of a bird. But now, in the first week of April, the leaves of the Platanus are brown tipped and yellowing at the edges. Autumn is showing herself. I for my part have been working 7 days a week and for many hours each day, trying to get this thesis finished. It is a drawn-out process and one that requires my utmost attention and focus, that at times I just don't have. My leaves are losing their green. Winter is approaching and my thesis hand-in-date is looming.

The Spirit of Things: The Green God

2008-01-20T20:52:00.000-08:00

The Spirit of Things: The Green God

21st Jan 2:18pm

It is a strange thing, but for all the churches i have entered, i have never seen such beauty as that which I have glimpsed through this window. And I find myself frequently wondering, whether man in his attempt to harness and capture the spiritual within such places as churches, mosques, temples or synagogues, has done a disservice to the spiritual and had it wrong from the very beginning?

For didn't Moses see, meet and engage the spirit in a burning bush and receive his directions atop a Mountain? So why have we restricted the spiritual between walls and separated our ourselves from nature? Where would God prefer to rest? Would you find him, or her, or the Alpha and Omega beneath the shade of a tree or laying upon or beneath an altar, or inside a tabernacle, at rest and complete without a view of the stars in their night sky, or a view of the rising or setting sun and the travelling and changing moon - would God give up such things? I doubt it. As William Wordsworth had written:

I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And tolls through all things (Tintern Abbey 93-102).

No, I doubt whether the wind that moves through the trees would ever advocate being locked away and enclosed. So why has man taken it upon himself to lock away the spirit, why did he walk away from the green altar and its testimony of moving, swaying, shading and life giving leaves?

The Black Cockatoo and the Gathering of Crows

2008-01-10T20:27:00.000-08:00

The Black Cockatoo and the Gathering of Crows

11th Jan 2008 1:43pm

White-tailed black cockatoo continue to inhabit the pines. I occasionally hear their rasping call when they are roosting and their call 'ngoolyaark-ngoolyaark' when they are on the wing in flight. Their calling is mostly faint - hard to hear through the glass - but I can still hear it. Also, magpies continue to visit the patch of red petals outside my window. Willy wagtails likewise continue to make sorties across the surface, and they are given to flicking their elongated tails hoping to disturb and scatter insects therein gathered. And on occasions crows continue to gather and mud larks come close on their heels.

I also had another thought about the seed pods. Perhaps they open at the time of flowering when the heat is most concentrated. Or, perhaps the pods and seeds availability at the time of flowering and the crows association to the seeds and pods is singularly that of chance.

Red Petals, Black Pods and Yellow Fruit/Seeds.

2008-01-09T19:00:00.000-08:00

Red Petals, Black Pods and Yellow Fruit/Seeds.

10th Jan 2008 12:15am

Amid the fermenting petals I have noticed several seed pods. Have they always been there? I hadn't noticed them before, and only took notice when I saw two large crows attempting to dislodge the yellow seeds from the pods, which following their apparent success they quickly ate. Does the Brachychiton enable its seed pods to loosen and fall with the fall of its blossoms? Or is it that the seeds and their black pods are most nutritious and most noticeable surrounded by the red burgundy platter of fermenting petals? Does the tree think or know to capitalize on the fall of its petals in attracting the spread of its seeds, which, I suspect, are carried and spread in bird droppings some distance from the parent tree?

Scarlet: The Sweet Scent of Fermentation and Fertility.

2008-01-09T17:41:00.000-08:00

Scarlet: The Sweet Scent of Fermentation and Fertility.

10th Jan 11:00am

The flowers petals from the Brachychiton have begun to rot beneath it. The area has turned a deep burgundy to scarlet red and the area has attracted a number of birds. Yesterday I saw a number of crows, magpies and willy wagtails. Others birds included several wattle birds and a few singing honey eaters. The rotting petals have no doubt attracted many insects, which in turn have attracted the birds. And it was only the day after that it registered in what I was seeing. And I wonder whether the birds know to expect it or whether they watch each other's movements and make their way to plentiful food sources when they are found. Or, has the tree's petals found another way of fertilizing itself and the many Brachychitons around it. Does the gathering of insects and birds beneath it encourage and increase the possibility of its fertilization? And I am wondering whether the Brachychiton located in its native state and locality interacts with the fertility of other tree and animal species?

Green Butterflies

2008-01-07T17:35:00.000-08:00

Green Butterflies 8th Jan 2008 10:45am

Platanus doolyar waarlitjabin waar-koorliny - nyaarng-korl baarng, bordak-ngat, daardj maarngka-waariny, red flowers, hanging suspended, and below the spent carcasses of their kill - these birds of prey leaves of the affray seldom resting, tossed and twisting in the thermals bending - green butterflies that allure the eye, green oxygen givers I watch them fly.

doolyar: large leaves

waarlitj: eagle

abin: becoming

waar: flying

koorliny: going/moving

nyaarng-korl baarng: this way and that

bordak: close

ngat: near

daardj: meat

maarngka: branches

waariny: hanging

Ngaarngk: The Noongar Sun

2008-01-06T23:03:00.000-08:00

Ali Ngaarngk: The Noongar sun beyond. 7th Jan 2008 4:09pm
Dooytj is the heat. Ngay is the breath, and conspiring with the heat - kaalanginy - on fire, and dookeniny, the heat and breath cooking in the sun, the full sun, the ngaarngk yirraa karlmin kaalanginy, ngaarda djinanginy.
The sun, the mother above looking down and burning all below it, and me, safe in this my postgraduate's cell, under the airconditioner's spell. Meanwhile, the world whizzes by, and the heat, beyond my window, knows not where to find me, or the sun to blind me. I am hiding in the shadows looking out.

The Philosophy of the Tree-Like Gardener

2008-01-03T18:31:00.000-08:00

The Philosophy of the Gardener 4th Jan 11:50am (Written from my room with its view of the platanus orientalis).

Gardening is a philosophy, for gardeners practiced in the arts of seeing know that one has to think and do as a tree. One needs to spread their leaves equally so as to harness the best chances of engaging and utilizing the sunlight.

Like leaves, the gardener must learn what plants/trees need to be planted where. They need to learn like the leaves and spread of foliage, what plants are going to excel in relation to others, so as not to impede their growth but to encourage the growth of others.

Gardeners must also understand what they cannot see, and only feel. Intuitively, like the roots of trees, they must search deeply of themselves to know where and what sources of nourishment can best be located. They must also think laterally and vertically with roots that seek sources of nourishment where ever they may be found.

Like the tree the gardener knows that her/his trunk must be strong enough to carry the weight of his arms which in turn carry the weight of his growth and years and crown. And with feet deeply rooted in the soil of his community, s/he must know how deep to extend his searching and probing.

Then having acquired such things that a tree knows and does, a gardener can rest in his shade and provide protection and nourishment to those growing and searching around him.

Cyclone Melanie

2008-01-02T02:59:00.000-08:00

It's 8pm with daylight saving, and the remnants of cyclone Melanie are still drifting over the platanus. Her leaves are grey and sombre. The heat has driven most of the red coral flowers of the Brachychiton: the belle flame tree to shed, and gradually her bright petals are being consumed by the woodchips beneath them. Opposite, watching from beyond, the orange jasmin rests deep green beneath and light green above - is it an optical illusion or the arrival of new stems and shoots? I suspect the latter. And the sky, high clouds blue roan, steel grey or is it Melanie at play, or deceased? But the weather has changed, El Nino is no more and the eastern seaboard is awash with storms and we, in the west, the tail end of cyclones.

Green Limbs

2007-12-20T01:54:00.000-08:00

The Signal and the Fire

2007-12-20T01:50:00.000-08:00

A Green Marriage

2007-12-20T01:46:00.000-08:00

The Tree and Flowers

2007-12-20T01:42:00.000-08:00

Illawarra Flame: A Tree on Fire

2007-12-19T21:34:00.000-08:00

Illawarra Flame: A Tree on Fire 20-12-07

The Illawarra Flame beyond my window has lost much of its flowers.

The fallen bright red petals rest like confetti on a sidewalk surrounding its bride. Maybe, this fall of flowers signals the time, the moment, the period and passing of some kind of marriage.

I cannot help but think that there is more to this tree than meets the eye. And I wonder if this tree has not designed the fall of its confetti in this way to attract something, or someone, bird, insect or other, to increase the likelihood of its pollination and thus its fertility?

The bright red petals she wears like lipstick, or are these red petals below and remaining her red blouse she wears to gain attention, arousal and attraction?

Her trunk and leafy body is green, and her petals, like painted finger-nails (bright red) tell us she is not to be so easily dismissed. She is on fire.

I wonder what the platanus men that surround her think? They have nothing but their coloured bark to compare, and their leafy eyes look on.

And periodically, when a breeze of wind allows it, their leafy torso their branches, arms and extended hands reach out, they touch and momentarily as lovers, they embrace.

2007-12-12T22:08:00.000-08:00

White-tailed Black Cockatoos 13th December 2007

Yesterday, a feral cat, a two toned grey and white, moved near and beneath the orange jasmine (Murraya paniculata) hedge.

I also saw a magpie and wattle bird, on tha ground and in the branches of the platanus. Then high and acrobatic came a flock of white-tailed black cockatoo calling. For the last fortnight they had been present, and seemed to have moved in when the rains set in, but that is most likely just a co-incidence.

High in the pines they are feasting and jumping, tree to tree, and therein singing their mournful melodies to all who might hear them.

Tehran Plane: The Chenar

2007-12-11T23:24:00.000-08:00

Tehran Plane by Siamak D. Ahi

In 1881, Ms. Dieulafoy was much impressed by a colossal, odd-looking Oriental Plane in “Tajreesh” masque in northern Tehran.Its circumference reached “nearly fifteen meter”, shaded the activities of a great many people. Including a primary school master and his classes, and a Ghahve-chi (tea-shop keeper) who had installed his Samavar and his paraphernalia inside the hollow trunk in tree base.H.Rawlinson said that in “Tajreesh”, … he measured a great Chenar which had a girth of 108 feet at 5 feet from the ground.

http://chenarestan.blogspot.com/2005/07/chenar-e-emamzadeh-saleh.html

Around A Greek Plane Tree

2007-12-11T23:15:00.000-08:00

September 2004 by Terje Raa

During the summer, the Greek island of Kos is invaded by thousands of young people. In one particular place, we all feel young - that's under the 2400-year-old plane tree of Hippocrates in the heart of Kos Town.

When the wind is whispering through the fragile old branches, it's like hearing the whisper of time, telling the tale of Hippocrates, the father of medical science, who walked here teaching his students long before the Christian era began. Whether this tree is the original or not, is open to dispute; some say it is 600 years old at most. Anyhow, it's old for sure and turns yellow early, much to the delight of little kittens, busy chasing the plane leaves that come sailing from above.

Hippocrates is still a ubiquitous gentleman, posing full-length in his circular room at the Archaeological Museum. Although one arm is missing and his nose has crumbled, he exudes wisdom and calm, a calm that has spread to the little square with the plane tree, Platia Platanou. At a local kiosk, it's possible to buy - or read secretly - the Oath of Hippocrates, probably known by every doctor in the world. It sets out the principles of his teaching and medical work, his pledge of secrecy and personal behavior in general.

The plane tree, like the man himself, is indomitable, with no respect for what a tree normally looks like. The trunk has in the course of time split into numerous limbs, both vertically and horizontally, many of which have been cut through in order to change their direction. Distinguishing between stem and branches isn't easy. The plane tree is unable to support itself and was years ago provided with a metal corset, a green rack of iron bars.
To prevent it from spreading all over, the plane tree has been enclosed within a circular wall equipped with a metal railing, a hint that nobody is allowed to come closer. A handsomely domed Turkish well adorns one side of the wall. On the opposite side, water can be drawn even today - from a tap decorated with Turkish characters. Today's water, though, is delivered by the municipal water supply.

Historic Neighbors
The surrounding square is covered with fine stone mosaics, light-colored pebbles where the monotony is broken by contrasting dark stripes. Fine also are the neighbors bordering the square. They all radiate age and history, and the most imposing of them is the castle of the Knights of St John, strikingly well preserved and dominating the entire harbor.

A bridge leads from the square over to the entrance of the castle, across a moat in which the water has long since been replaced by a magnificent palm avenue. Before the Knights surrendered Kos to the Turks in 1522, they had set up two frightening cannons at the bridge, still ready to be fired, for a pyramid of cannon balls - apparently in good condition - remains inside the castle.

The most conspicuous neighbor is no doubt the three-story Hadji Hassan Mosque whose slender minaret makes everyone stare admiringly up into the sky. These days, only the ground floor is being used, by little shops selling souvenirs, films and jewellery to the tourists. If casting a glance into the arcade leading straight through the mosque, a Hamam appears in the background; not a Turkish bath any longer despite its name. The steam has been superseded by alcohol - the Hamam is a night club now. Even Italian history is present, in the form of an impressive white Governor's Palace, nowadays housing the court and a police station. (The Italians succeeded the Turks in 1912 and ruled Kos until the Germans took over in 1943.)

Quiet Evening
The tavern Platanos makes it possible to spend a whole evening in the company of Hippocrates, at a table in lush greenery outside an elegant building with a reddish-brown archway. The low-keyed harmony of the square characterizes the tavern as well. Tonight, it's occupied by an international conference holding a banquet, accompanied by gentle music and sensitive French songs performed by a young chanteuse in black.

Between the audience and the stage, a happy dog sits wagging its tail in time with the music, quite unaware of the attention it attracts. Life is too short for French music, it seems to think after a while, tripping along only to cock its leg against an old oleander. The red-flowering bush aspires, it seems, to outgrow the plane tree. Passers-by are more enthusiastic about the entertainment than the dog is; they stop short to listen, and as the few benches are already taken, they simply sit down on the mosaic pavement.

Everyone senses that this spot is a special oasis. It invites thoughtfulness and inspires some to revise their lifestyle. A slim man, in black trousers and an open black shirt, comes staggering across the square swinging a beer can. He is middle-aged, maybe frustrated at not belonging to the young crowd any more. Suddenly, he raises his arm and flings the beer can furiously against one of the cannons, obviously very determined to stop drinking.

Old and New Fanatics

It's really odd that Kos Town should become a party destination for young people. However, the place is so wisely organized that in the middle of the boisterous partying, there are quiet spots where peace is intact, and the square of Platia Platanou is perhaps the most poetic one. Here, you may try out what Hippocrates often prescribed to ensure health and a long life for his patients: fresh air, nutritious meals and lots of quiet and rest in beautiful, peaceful surroundings.

History is so present in Kos that one's own age nearly becomes a trifle. Maybe that's why more mature Kos fanatics never gave up but have adjusted themselves to the new times by arriving in the off-season. Even some of the young people are bound to lose their hearts to Kos - when stumbling over archaeological finds or resting under the old plane tree - and will end up coming back once a year for the rest of their lives. — TR
http://www.artist-at-large.com/greece/kos.htm

The Armon Plane: The Naked Tree

2007-12-11T23:07:00.000-08:00

Plane

Armon in Hebrew. The Septuagint translates it as platanes, the plane tree. It is called armon because its bark peels off the trunk, leaving it naked (arum). There might also be an allusion to Laban's trickery (armah; Lekach Tov). The reference is to the oriental plane (planatus orientalis). This is a tall tree, with a trunk as great as 18 feet in diameter, having a lofty crest (cf. Ezekiel 31:8). It is like the sycamore, and was very common in the Middle East. Later sources, however, identify the armon as the chestnut tree (Rashi; Radak, Sherashim). This is difficult to understand, since the chestnut did not grow in Mesopotamia where Jacob was (also see Tosafoth, Rosh HaShanah 23a, s.v. Armonim, Sukkah 32b, s.v. Dulba, Bava Bathra 81a, s.v. Armonim). http://www.eretz.com/NEW/trailgalil.shtml

Thunder and its Scents

2007-12-11T01:25:00.000-08:00

Molgar and Rain 11th December 2007
It rained this afternoon.

The clouds opened up and Molgar the thunder in the distance roared. The leaves beyond my window are silent, fixed and dank, dark green. It's the calm before the storm. The illawarra flame has begun dropping its flowers, they litter the newly spread woodchips that the gardeners laid last week.

I walked outside this afternoon, and giant drops filled puddles and the scent of pine trees and eucalyptus leaves hung in the air - beautiful!!

God is the scent of rain, and the air that moves before the arrival of thunder of Thor, God is the entanglement of scents and sounds of life and the rich moist scents of decay, of fertile soils and the possibility for the germination of the seeds within.

Green Movements Beyond the Glass

2007-11-29T18:26:00.000-08:00

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

2007-11-28T23:23:00.000-08:00

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

2007-11-28T02:36:00.000-08:00

A Green Enchantment in the Spring of 2007

2007-11-28T00:17:00.000-08:00

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

2007-11-27T21:36:00.000-08:00

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

2007-11-26T23:24:00.001-08:00

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

2007-11-26T02:15:00.000-08:00

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.