Plumblossom (September)

For we look at the plumblossom in Melbourne hoping for a new year of fresh fruit. Through August and September the plumblossoms break out on the wood, the petals all over the branches, noticeably present. Old concerns and minor resentments are lost in the sight of plumblossom. It is a reminder that a hundred new hopes will rise inside us, dreams will take us into new places, new chances will open up. We may be free of burden and in touch with a beauty that is graceful and light. The day is long. As we travel through nature and meditate on its sheer excess, its massive abundance, it is difficult to countenance words like ‘depletion’ and ‘crisis’ and ‘extinction’. We wish people would lighten up. Our reading and our intuitions give little space for comfort or consolation. It is disillusioning to see that while “the science is in” about human-induced climate change, the people who stand between us and a solution are politicians. And the voices in my head. Like, where do we begin when we are told there is nothing can be done? Make up art? Enter a monastery? Hit the drink? The sunned and savoured overindulgence in which our society passes its days, and it isn’t enough. While our imaginations surge towards tropical dystopias saturated in global humidity and we see in every plant the prototypes for triffids, here in actual September it is our one world we crave. We want its familiar shapes, its seasonal variations, its stubborn insistence in being just the way we always remember it. How it comes up out of the ground. Voices? Voices from everywhere in the transmissions of our now world. Like, your plans will all be subsumed in the consuming ideology, without which no one may be happy. Your summers will be hotter and rainfall will be deluges, your beaches floods and your glaciers turned to rivers. Your creations are just illusions and cannot save you or make a difference to the upheaval of the Earth. Your machines will erase the airways and your computers overload the arguments and your stuffed gadgets pile up on the sides of the street. But soon these voices diminish. Because the mind exhausts itself with lonely fears. We go looking for signs of certainty, in familiar voices and eager eyes. We see the world as we know it today, surprised by little events: someone puts out the washing; an old man says good morning as he walks his dog; the blossoms, all white, or pink, come out on the plum trees.

Maybloom (September)

Grand Final Day today. It is cold and windy this morning and if it rains at the ground the conditions will favour Fremantle, not Hawthorn. Or so they say. Australian football is often talked about as a religion amongst its followers. Even outsider sociologists are quick to note the devotion with which it is attended and the inability of some of its worshippers to talk about anything else. Nevertheless this religion analogy does not survive close analysis. The seasons come closer to explaining the special feeling in Melbourne at Grand Final time, than the trope of religion. It is about Spring. Between the Finals and Melbourne Cup Day Melbourne emerges from Winter and the Grand Final is one of the great unspoken triumphs of nature overcoming the gruelling struggle for survival. It is a rite, albeit a rite in which women are largely absent from any main participatory role. Stravinsky is not the half-time entertainment, but the colours are there, each year a different colour to celebrate the fecund multi-coloured beauty of the world coming back to life. The air is fragrant with blossoms as the people go down to the ground of festivity, or enjoy watching it on colour TV in the refreshing atmosphere of their own gardens and homes. Each of us waits our turn to be once more the main totem, in my case that of the tough and proud harbinger of Spring, the Magpie. Interestingly though, none of the big football teams have a flower as their moniker. There are things that fly high (Eagles and Bombers) and plenty of felines (Lions and Tigers), but the most recent additions are macho titles: Power, Suns, and Dockers. It was not always so. In the early days the Melbourne Demons were known as the Fuschias, probably because of their colours, and Hawthorn were the Mayblooms, the English name for the hawthorn flower. The brown and gold colours of the club are taken from the maybloom and not from hawks, a moniker only introduced by popular usage in the 1940s. Although the hawthorn may bloom twice a year in Australia, the month of May is the least likely time. The maybloom is classified as a weed by authorities, hardy and cheerful enough making hedgerows in city and town. Australian footballers do not take a flower as their symbol, not even the native plants that surround them with palpable and emotive meanings, and must look to the thugs of rugby, who chose to call one of their teams the Waratahs. Yet still the colours of Spring come out onto the ground every September to celebrate overcoming the tests of Winter.

Grassflower (September)

When, the, grass, seeds, their, flowers, let, go. Their, flowers, are, invisible, to, the, eye, most, times, or, else, make, small, grassflowers. The, names, of, these, grass, flowers, or, grassflowers, are, numberless. They, have, hooked, into, the, soil, and, seeded, and, shot, forth, like, commas, in, a, poem, by, Villa. Because, grasslands, alone, cover, twenty, percent, of, the, earth’s, land, surface. In, our, garden, we, call, them, daisies, interchangeably, for, the, white, buttons, tiny, blue, stars, pink, dots, and, other, miniscule, grassflowers, that, have, reached, that, stage, without, being, mown, down, on, Saturday, morning. They, make, the, beautiful, cloth, patterns, beloved, of, Elizabethan, poets, those, ones, who, dispensed, with, punctuation, marks, like, commas, even, when, they, were, required. They, called, them, jots, and, tittles. Let, someone, else, figure, out, where, the, commas, go. Jose, Garcia, Villa, was, a, fearless, poetic, experimenter. He, invented, the, reversed, consonance, rime, scheme, but, is, best, known, for, good, or, no, as, someone, who, wrote, poems, with, a, comma, between, each, word. Opinion, will, always, be, divided, about, the, virtues, of, this, device, whether, it, is, a, gimmick, or, a, godsend, whether, his, commas, serve, as, medieval, pilcrows, or, postmodern, solvents. Villa, himself, thought, his, commas, were, pointillist, “where, the, points, of, colour, are, themselves, the, medium, as, well, as, the, technique, of, statement". Which, is, why, when, I, look, at, this, page, I, see, the, uncut, ‘carpet’, of, springtime, grassflowers, in, my, back, garden. But, there, is, the, readerly, as, well, as, the, visual, component. We, have, to, concentrate, hard, just, to, understand, each, sentence. Commas, slow, everything, down, into, what, Villa, himself, called, "a, lineal, pace, of, dignity, and, movement". Sometimes, it’s, like, watching, grass, grow, which, may, be, a, benefit, sometimes, who, can, tell. When, a, figure, becomes, the,  common, feature, in, our, sight, it, takes, on, uniformity. We, accept, its, universality. Grass, spreads, in, every, direction, as, rain, and, sun, and, wind, assist, its, tenacious, hold, on, earth. Their, flowers, visible, and, invisible, send, seed, profusely, wherever, it, will, land, and, hook, into, the, soil. No, one, calls, it, eccentric, or, contentious. No, one, wishes, it, otherwise. No, one, says, it, is, taking, hold, of, us, messing, with, our, minds, or, making, things, difficult, to, understand. Grassflowers, with, names, for, all, I, know, like, jot, tittle, pilcrow, spread, in, profusion, thanks, to, an, anonymous, comma, poet.

Violet (September)

They are described here, “Underfoot the violet, crocus and hyacinth with rich inlay Broidered the ground” (John Milton) and here “ I know a bank whereon the wild thyme blows / Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows / Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine, With sweet musk-roses, and with eglantine” (William Shakespeare). In both places we look down, in both places the flower serves as cloth design, and as sign of nature’s goodness. This sense informs the later words “O wind, where have you been, / That you blow so sweet? / Among the violets / Which blossom at your feet,” (Christina Rossetti) though notice how the eco-connection is made between all the elements, including the element known as homo sapiens. This ‘gazed-upon’ affirmation of individual existence is heralded in the following words: “A violet by a mossy stone / Half-hidden from the eye!- / Fair as a star, when only one / Is shining in the sky.” (William Wordsworth) And then we have the unforgettable short poem by Graham Nunn, “Violets at Vaucluse”, here presented in its entirety: “Quite over-canopied / The nodding violets grow / Underfoot richly embroidered / Fair as stars half-hidden from my eye. / Where have they been / All my life / Which blossom at my feet?” Here the flowers return again, the same but different somehow. We see them just as they are, but in a new arrangement. Same flowers, different order, another year. In the years before Rossetti we find “Yet there it was content to bloom, / In modest tints arrayed; / And there diffused its sweet perfume, /  Within the silent shade.” (Jane Taylor) This praise of the violet’s special sensory effects is lost in modern times: “Not entirely crazy / though a little bit insane / outside in the daylight / mind runs as clear as rain.” (Gina Morrone) Or else is incidental to someone’s psychodrama, as when “Stumbling through burial grounded luminescence. / Cauldron mixed medicine of narcissus and headaches. / Adorned with the violets of Hades; / reminiscing of past redemptions; / Stirring Styx with a gnawed off finger. /Still tastings of ashes and blood; leaving portents in teacups.”(Gregory Burgess) It takes the originality of an Andrew Slattery to make it new: “There it was content to bloom, / Not entirely crazy / outside in the daylight/ my mind clear as rain. / Stumbling through burial grounded luminescence, / Adorned with violets of Hades, / I tasted their ash and blood / leaving a storm in a teacup.” Incomparable results laid open in this excerpt from his 100-page prize-winning “Ultraviolet”.

Wisteria (September)

At the end of the searoad and the landroads of hope pushed forward and ambitions reignited, beyond the rutted tracks and boisterous sidestreets of settlement prolonged and the indigenous dispersed, further than the newly existent driveways of establishment gravel and along the heritage coloured wrought iron tracery hang the pale purple dreams of a since lost English spring sky. At the end of the wallaby kills and scaring off of wildlife, after clearing of pretty small natives and ringbarking of threatening giants, the landscaping and levelling, comes the set square of foundations and rows of orderly roses, the planting of the verandah vines that will turn into the unequal charm of the northern hemisphere, its softest dependent blooms hanging in space like victory garlands. At the end of an education in acquisitiveness, where risky investments turn right and a blind eye to misfortune is essential, where the online balances increase exponentially and offshore accounts sleep at night, the symbol of achievement sheds its petals on the stone-hearted paths, like the tears of unmentioned employees. At the end of a week of hit and miss appointments, a maybe interstate trip, lunch with the impossible egotist, a traffic jam without possible parallel, the Thursday from hell, and a gremlin that may as well have been a Trojan, is the weekend under the semi-permanence of anchored hangings. At the end of the natural cycle of winter rains and harsh frosts and overcast expressions comes a little spring sunshine all afternoon, when the grass untangles and the floorboards relax and the brickwork warms lukewarm and the waterblue blossoms riffle as though this were a myth-like Eden. At the end of the crumbled backstreets and the swirling freeways and shopfront high streets and leafy crescents and overhead detours and scrunchy paths and concrete driveways climb the swirl and leaf and overhead of resplendent blues, heavenly to the eye. At the end of the deep loam and swishing gravel, the bug-aerated earth and mulch-piled surfaces, the wrinkled root systems and absorbing trunk, the twisting tendrils and secateured stems, flow the extravagant survivors, their survival a matter of being extravagant.

Camellia (September)

Rows of them along side streets this morning have lost half their flowers. They are washed up against the lengths of cream brick fence. The ghosts of camellias and memories come back of yesterday’s matinee of La Traviata where for the first time I noticed how the main character is Violetta and were they roses, not camellias at all? This, I wondered, is one more Verdi aside, one more turn-up for the books. Those in the know overlooked the tenor’s debut nerves and no one else noticed anyway. We all had our own reasons for being at the opera. If the Baron made a gesture with his cigar was this Italian for high spirits or something more explicit? We’ll never know and it may never matter. The laughter of the chorus was staged but we believed every pretence as chords changed for the next mood. No wonder Italians adore Verdi, as he lines up a series of impeccable art songs into an emotional roller-coaster. There is barely a story to speak of. The story is how one emotion leads to another through song, not by plotline. Only Verdi could take hold of a narrative and make it almost invisible behind a foreground of music and words, like the ghost of a camellia. Did we notice how only once does someone say directly to Violetta that she has “a past”, as though nothing more need be said. Do we ever believe the characters feel these emotions? They feel them when they sing them, even if the action causes belief to fall apart within moments of the news. For that one sweet sorrowful moment there is nothing more to be said. Verdi gives his cast their moments of choice and let’s the music lead us into consequences. Drinking songs and intervals are realistic time-out from this sort of intensity. Did the curtain catch halfway at the ovation? It didn’t matter, after Violetta’s death song, which does the surge through my senses next morning down in the street where no one is waiting nervously for the Director’s notes.

Rose (September)

That buds and breaks in due course. That was in a time it is impossible accurately to imagine. That the tall Emperor sent as a message, though it may only be a fable that he sent the message or that he was tall.  That followed the Silk Road out across the Wine Dark Sea. That you love one another as I have loved you. That opened like the heart of the Sufi Master. That the Sultan pinched between two fingers after he captured Constantinople. That is all that remains to remind us of the great houses of England that fought and fell. That blooms in and out of season. That became instead symbol of a Virgin Queen, she who prayed to the Virgin Queen. That is the question. That bends, that blows. That the visionary of Felpham saw was sick in the howling storm, in the time of the Mad King. That the wife of the short Emperor General planted out in her backyard, as though to memorialise those who died in battle, at his whim. That went bottled over the mountains to enhance Paris. That scatters, that dies back. That of which we cannot speak we must remain silent. That was the last word the film director stole from the media magnate in the name of fame. That the Duce sniffed for photographs on the cliff edge of his own ego. That was a very good year for city girls who lived up the stair with all that perfumed hair and it came undone, when I was twenty-one. That still lines the gardens of palaces as sign of power, acquired over time. That is feint, that is full. That is opaque. That Morticia pruned for stems, metaphor of TV separating us from nature, left holding the wrong end of the stick. That only an Australian would turn blue. That can be my next tweet. That stands in a vase in my cottage full of books, well read, and antique vinyl, one week after a mediocre federal election. That is that.

Caesia (September)

The caps are sealed against the heat: smooth sunset skin. We could travel to New York for their spring, on return know this intense endurance will outlast New York. But what is it, does it? Minni ritchi breathes as it protects, its delicate colours harsh as the granite Great South-West. Its striations are silver days upon mustard days upon crimson days. (Yes, true, thank you.) The caps break, barely millimetres, green and rose, a hundred threads cannot stay inside. A glimpse of the mop of colour pushes the retina. Others of us witness the winter in the Great South-East of the Island Continent, winter that causes this occidental import to flare and burst into red straggles, defying reason. Gungurru (mismatched name) of weeping aspect, of silver splendour, of unexpected bends. What have we got that could improve on its individuality? Its raw multi-textures? Centuries the great waters of the Indian Ocean turned to storm clouds, rushed through the South-West, twisting caesia frames and scattering filaments. What? Why? Wonder. In the end wrote to Donna. She knows the Great South-West. She’s over there, so I said in my email: “Why do the branches hang down? Why does it suddenly die in some places and shoot out in new other directions? Why the silver coating like bird poop all over the branches? And what about the amazing bark with its tough strips that seem laminated to the core?” Reply: “Here’s the goss on EC. It grows in shallow soil, and rocky outcrops, i.e. in the clefts of granite rocks. It’s called Gungurru. It has adapted to wet winters and very dry summers. We call it the Silver Princess, and it hangs down because it’s a Mallee tree which has this characteristic. It appears to die in some places and shoot in others because they have a regenerating root stock that re-grows after fire. Silver coating is part of growing in a dry climate. Suspect the amazing bark is also due to the arid summers. There’s a special name for the bark— Minni ritchie Bark. In the wild there are only 2,120 of them. Honeyeaters are the pollinators because they flower in the winter when there are few insects. Because it is so fire-resistant it’s used as a natural firebreak.  And, Maree (my friend) has a beautiful image of it which you can’t have unless you want to buy  Life on the Rocks by Philippa Nikulinski.  That’s the best we can do for you! Maree accepts chocolate or tea-glasses. And she’s glad you love them. Ciao d.” I already have Life on the Rocks by Philippa Nikulinsky. 2,120? The two domesticated specimens in our front garden look special.

Jasmine (September)

Jasmine is the world of Melbourne backlanes, the first mild evenings of springtime. The bluestone lanes were smooth in their horse-and-cart days that have enjoyed unevenness for years, due to eucalypt roots and re-fencing. We amble along them still in a different time zone, away from the franticism of arterials, for time goes slow here. Jasmine was the natural complement to our drug-infused twenties, ranging from one party to the next: half-hinged back gates open all night and everyone raving in the beery garden, through the crowded kitchen, along the chatty corridors up the creaky stairs and out onto the balconies. What ecstatic music rose from the turntable! What insane conversations could only have been possible due to such excellent education! What noise and substantial desires!  Impulses led us onward to eternal delight and some very messy affairs. Jasmine clouded our judgement with its instant perfume. Lips and language and meaningful looks. Jasmine was not to blame though, it was the air we breathed. Next morning nothing much had changed except our sense of anything is possible. Jasmine was the great clump we tore with pleasure from a wall and arranged in a glass of water. Rooms took on an air of sweet surprise. The parties turned into plans for the future, or else directionless dissipation. 9 to 5 with 2 and a half children or daily over the limit in Byron Bay: at the time it was impossible to guess which way people would go. It’s still hard to understand. The young gods of vinyl records made way for other heroes. The flowers turned brown in a short time. Their stars waned. But jasmine is the forgotten year that comes round again and hits the senses, all over. It springs eternal like bicycle wheels over a bump in Canning Street. Its profusion dazzles the eye. It clambers over a fence, like someone visiting their lover secretly at 3 in the morning.

Magnolia (September)

It is, we cannot but see it, a symbol of survival. On what other tree does the flower burst forth before the leaf, as though it must force out statements before the necessary preliminaries? How ancient is ‘before the bees’? It survived thanks to beetles going merry-go-round between the petals and the cone year in, year out, across Asia, as the world rotated, so long ago. Whatever long ago is, exactly. Mauve and white and pink are the colours of survival? Mighty trees they were, still are in places. Though why someone, still a little bleary from last night’s conviviality and not exactly sure if evolution or existence itself is the main question, stares simplemindedly at a tree a surviving descendant of thousands of years of rough extreme, only to wonder why trees are planted for purely decorative purposes, he cannot say. The pink blush of petals defies the pattern of a native garden. They are fleshy and rounded, they turn into a cloud of flowers for days before the leaves cast their green shadows. Mighty things out of rocky places and most every climate. Decoration oughtn’t to be anything to agonise about. Some people do. They believe in superior decoration and won’t accept anything less. Or else they see decoration as a perjorative, an abstraction behind or beside or around the thing that matters. He doesn’t agonise, only he knows from what he’s been told that nothing in nature is purely decorative. It goes on doing survival against all the odds. It survives even as he survives, consciousness evening out last night’s crazy opposites and this morning’s soft honesty that, against all odds, it’s another day. Only does it think for itself? What is it saying to him? By Christmas all the mulch will be feeding its thoughtful root system. It will be perfect and all green, sober as a judge, while carols sail from the windows and red wine flows to sort out differences. Will there be a time ‘after the bees’?  

Jonquil (September)

[1854] The French have a word for it, the way the light touches the clear spaces on the glass pane where jonquils line the path. It eludes definition. They are distinguishable as they merge with the sunlight. The figure nearby is a woman. She lacks definition, having swayed slightly during the shoot, just as jonquils sway if there is a breeze. Her daywear has doubled, her face is shining, her thoughts are so distant from us we cannot even guess. They elude description. [1908] Endless springtime, like endless summer, comes to an end. It all ends up brown, in a sepia picture. The flowers, arranged as backdrop for the shot by human Water Rat or human Toad of Toad Hall, were taken from the water pastures that very morning. Their pungency fills the room where the colossal camera was assembled. The common shape of their petals puts us at rest, as though to think it has been like this since the time of the ancients. Is that music? We translate the season into something resembling eternity. [1959] The French invented photographs and guillotines. Little square kodaks capture the moment when the shutter came down and for a split second everything was More Light! [1984] Polaroids go from glamour to lurid, with enough gazing. The stars line up in their amazing look as though this were all perfectly natural. Their glow is extra-glow, their pose is what goes. But appearance is overexposed, it seems, the colours richer than anything we see in real life. We feel let down. Maybe they’re only there because they are photogenic. Beauty is skindeep. Gloss is boss. They are narcissuses, every last one. We were impressed, thrilled by our own fantasy. We start longing for the real thing. [2013] Loaded for the slideshow after a day out, they click past. Each angle is a few microdots in the attached download from anywhere it might spring.

Japonica (September)

Aileen and Alec opposite grew one. In our childhoods in the streets where Edwardian pomp turned to California bungalow turned to triple-fronted Cold War, there was a place for a little piece of Japan. A stand could grow at a strategic position on nature strip, driveway, or corner near the wall. They always required a space of lawn. Its eruption of dark branches, tough as Teflon, helped claim its own space. The explosion of radials from out of the ground spread and spread as more shots went direct for the sky and daylight. Our architecture was the demographic of democracy, but there had to be a touch of Japan. The people across the street became folklore, like the rest of us, Aileen and Alec Opposite. Conversations were amiable but back in our kitchens it was, who is the emperor, what do they think, and can we expect Pearl Harbour. It was guessed they voted for the wrong party. One was sociable and the other prone to melancholy. But we had this in common, a little piece of Japan. Like a Noritake cup. Or a piece of cloisonné in the Show Cabinet. They could imagine Japan was there without having to take the trip. It was a mass of branches, it was raw and well Zen, hmmmmmmm, om. They staved off the year with quiet stoicism, or holidayed in Eden. One day there was only Aileen Opposite. She became more talkative than we remembered, even started asking after people. Come September she would snap off dark branches of Japan, where red petals lined the bark, take them inside for a vase. Some things get on your quince, Alec would say. Other things simply come into flower, no fuss. The new neighbours rampage about the house, at least at night. Their conversation is a manga cartoon, but it calms down after lunch. They’ve thought about the garden, maybe a practical no-spiders barbecue landscape (it was in a catalogue cut price) but agree, whatever, the Japonica must stay.  

Cactus (September)

The weird cactus thing comes out in September: spongy diamonds, aeronautic globes, flash mobs. Who knows what. The Mexicans had a name for the weird one when their heads weren’t on fire. When they weren’t Mexicans but the Blood Dreamers of Higher Plateaux. Mexicans must think this is common as gumleaves. What’s the name of it, now that the nursery label has crumbled into plastic shards? The Mexicans probably have a name for it like The Tablet or The Spoon or Number Eight or Left Turn or Helicopter. All that time and secretly we still just think, you’re cactus. I mean, what? You are cactus. But isn’t that something you might want to be? Able to keep your reserves. Able to push forth the boundaries. Able to come out surprisingly well in season. Isn’t that an ingenious way to spend the time? Indifferent to the long hours of afternoon. Accustomed to cold evening or warm. Ready for the morning as you sit up and take notice. Would be a good idea. Stones that turn into bulging shrubs, sticks that take shape and balloon to fill the space, the soil that cracks up at some cosmic joke and cannot stop laughing green flesh. Where do they come from? And why do they sometimes become something we don’t want to know about? An overweight slob, a grotesque caricature, an utter prick? But I digress. Or rather, you are still reading. Attempts to categorise cactus are doomed to incompletion. Calculations of numbers are mistaken ventures. That they exist together with us and everything else between the watery blue above and the granite fires below, takes up so much of our writing time; and why, even more. Did they start in Patagonia and just move north? The word is not Mexican, it’s Greek. It drifts into usage on the Gulf Stream sometime after the invasions of the Americas. Maybe it’s Jacobean Greek, or what a Spaniard thought was an artichoke. Millions of them. Flowers pop out. Enough said.

Grevillea (September)

The meaningful sidestreet off Chapel Street is forever associated in my not-forever mind with overpriced second-hand bookshops and music clubs too cool for their own good, soon out of business. The bookshops survive, though how is a secret in the not-forever minds of their owners. Hot summers in Greville Street are memories of overpriced pizzas, then spillover on the footpath during the gig of a visiting jazz hero. Winters are a time to avoid, unless one goes out in search of an impossible colonial imprint or shortcuts to Prahran Railway Station. With its incidental urban affectations it is hard to accept the street is named after the same family of obscure Georgian politicians whose name was given to my favourite flowers, just about. They curl out in profusion through the air as if in defiance of gravity. They twist upward and outward as if inward were a long ago dream, a stage they had to go through. Their bodyweight is somewhere in the midst of all that mass of soft-lined curlicues and hard-edged loops and supple hooks. What has this to do with a person called Greville, the name redolent of French towns and imposing Shakespearean actors? A man who never went south of the equator, never sighted in blooming flesh the 360 different types of rosy protea, what would he have made of the words ‘bush’, ‘prahran’? As he stood in calflength boots and London woolcoat did he sign off on grevillea with a sigh of satisfaction? Did he know they kept sweet water to drink from their tendrils? Did he live for his garden? Did his signature resemble the calligraphy of a grevillea?