Fan (Domestic Ponge)

Fan (Domestic Ponge)

Three curled blades with smooth graded edges and scalloped surfaces are locked in to a central revolving axis, so that they resemble the leaves of one enormous black clover. Air flows freely through the brick grill on the outside wall, through and around the fantastic triumvirate, not as in diagrams by way of ideal arrow directions, but in any way that air moves into an available space, and thus into the happy haunt of more meditative moments. In this place of airiness and light the artfully constructed clover takes on a cumbersome and utilitarian feel that can make someone uneasy or, at least, jolt them back to reality. All of this is very difficult to see because it is fitted with a circular plastic grid that is attached to the wall, both to obscure the vicious miniature reminder of the industrial revolution there in the very midst of domestic life, but also to repel all reminder of our more distant and even uglier victories over the insect queendoms. Lint and the singular mosquito have collected without choice along the finer parallels of this grid, leaving a murky look. Something very shadowy is back there, so keep the circle on. If the blades began rotating they would build in revolving waves until suddenly into wombly firmness spinning, into airy thinness beating. Adults do it, adolescents do it, even very tiny children with the assistance of special laminated lids do it, and after they’ve done it they will often go to the manoeuvrable dimple in the centre of the white gleaming plate near the door, switch it, and so ignite the jolly decent gyrations of the ornate triumvirate. Irrevocably another sitting of Parliament has dumped incredible rubbish down the system. Imperceptibly, the noisome Neapolitan pollution is sucked from the tiniest room. A pretty, laced sachet of lavender beads and a cute bowl of rose soap discs help recall more pleasant times. Also, clear daylight is seen through the wall for the first time ever, as the speed of the blades, already returning the place to some semblance of normality, is such that they vanish, giving the buoyant observer an insight into the wires and grids that keep the gadget going. Through the brick grill a hotchpotch of blue and fluffy clouds is in evidence, presumably wafting off with the unsightly odour.

[Circa 1991-92]

Brush (Domestic Ponge)

Brush (Domestic Ponge)

The red-moulded handle, where thumb and index can pinch the implement hard as the surplus detritus is swept up, narrows and then straightens out into a long oblong tongue that is perforated for the incision of plastic tufts. Twenty or so pliable but tough lengths of white plastic hair, about half the length of a middle finger, are tied together at one end and inserted into one of the perforations. The process is organised automatically and systematically, so thirty-three perforations on the oblong tongue have inserted these secured bundles of artificial wiry hair, or fibre. Originally they looked like rows of little geysers designed and installed by the meticulous council of a city in need of a fountain for its new shopping complex. Now the geysers are dishevelled; they shoot out all over the place, sprockets are missing, and at the most-used end they have been reduced to a leaning, grey miasma. PL-1492 is its code, embossed on the bridge of the handle, well on into middle age. The date of the ‘discovery’ of America is purely random. The plush, stiff ends of the bristles are beaten down through overwork. They have bent, some have split ends, some have been cut back and harrowed, some have been cut to the bone. They are matted and tangled in places, with no one to look after them. Held to the light it is now difficult to penetrate the splay of fibrils. At the purposeful end, where they are appreciably beaten down and hardened little battlers, puffy clouds of grey lint shot through with dribs of cotton adhere with offensive familiarity. Tiny pieces of wood chip seem to have got in amongst the woollier areas of experience. One or two human hairs have taken a grip and float above the fray, lithe and immoveable, like some mobile curlicues appended by a calligrapher for purely no reason at all. Decoration, hardly. A practical thing, it rests utterly attached to its matching red tray, under the laundry trough.

[Circa 1991-92]

Night (Philip Hunter)

Waking

All of us associate night with the colour black. Darkness falls again across our portion of the Earth and we experience black, whether immediately, slowly, at the edges of our sight. Putting aside discussion of whether black is a colour, we stay silent instead. Even when we find ourselves in total black at night, so-called pitch black, in our minds we believe in something else. We expect something other than black. After all, we’ve had all day to think about it. Our eyes strive to discern. We are at work with black. We may dwell at length on black. Any shade may be a lineament. Over there the city glows for miles across hills and plains. It haunts itself with facades and overlit roads. It can faze out the stars, this earthly constellation of millions of lights. We stare into boxes of light, as though not enough light faced our lives. Still, the darkness is enough and we draw the blinds. Over there the country rests, out of sight. Even moonlight unevenly describes each feature of the country, when it appears full from clouds. The rest of the time is half-guesses. Yet little creatures underground bear the light inside them. Vehicles flash and waver and fall short behind a contour, or reappear. Trees must be lit if we discern their outlines, though darkness falls. Larger creatures take their bearings after the passing of cool of day. A satellite or an insect makes its earnest bid. We believe, in our minds. All of us associate with the night.  

Dreaming

We appreciate how black is a colour like all other colours. We open up to one of our main elements. We relearn the first place we are in, even before our birth. Night is half our lives. The outlines of things we are to define have turned into one of the many colours we call black. It is time to imagine. Trees of night enclose their secrets. Once more they co-ordinate and rarely take to visitors. They are a highway for nocturnals. Birds never cease to surprise us because surprise is about never ceasing to surprise. They draw us out of ourselves. Their sounds become the true measure of space at night. Their sight is better than black. We are waiting. In order to spare further argument, we accept for now that black is a colour. Night sky itself is eloquent on the subject. We are waiting and it is the night begins our waiting, gives waiting a start. Distance becomes a matter for mapmakers, navigators, and other riveted Enlightened individuals. While we breathe in this night of black, until day is a memory we are pleased to be away from. It will be many hours before those memories are brought to life again, when blackness slowly breaks open again into yellows, greens, blues, browns, reds. As darkness edges away from daybreak.

Night Paddocks – Wimmera 2 (Philip Hunter)

Isolated (Philip Hunter)

Waking

The Island Continent. You can see it from the moon. Moon of our going down and rising up. Tears and laughter as an isolated shower falters from a cloud. It is the cloud. You observe the entire skyscape with your brain, and its smallest changes. The Island Continent. Profoundly well-known before the Enlightenment arrived. The Enlightened killed off the knowledge. This was not the knowledge that it wanted to know. Strangely it remains in rich veins amidst original Islanders. They’re not saying half of what they know. In isolated settlements they share the sky and land. Their history stares silently at the millionaire banqueters who hang it on their harbour walls. The Island Continent. The Enlightened brought their print. Books were full of No Man is an Island. Comprised: The Island is Full of Noises. An isolated business, reading, despite the purpose of books to communicate and be inclusive. There are books on this subject, too. Books about overseas for when we don’t go overseas. Books that are their own land mass. A lifetime of reading and they are no closer. The books have not left port. They stay like some final answer, a rough scrawl in the cave of the brain. We are less than Enlightened. The Island Continent. Seas everywhere go down and rise up. Their waters filter over the land airborne. Inland, after weeks of dry, the cool reaches our faces. Rainbows are fortune. Who, in extremis, would not see a rainbow as a fair sign? The rain drops begin to fall on our face, our hands, our clothes. 

Dreaming

The brain is kept supple every day by taps, hoses, sprinklers, watering-cans, little bowls, and other isolated showers. Water them geraniums. A fifth of the energy of the body goes into brain maintenance. But how come we might have guessed the brain is not alone? There are two hemispheres, two brains, and might that mean two of each of us? Probably more, yet here we are all the time having conversations with ourselves. Several selves and a true self. Meanwhile, conversations continue between north and south, land and sea, light and dark, as each one of us takes turns speaking for each side of the equation. Inside ourselves we converse, while knowing all the time it is outside and an other that begins new conversation. Our limited language of signs gets us some place, though even those with an extensive flair and repertoire are limited by time and style and taste and interpreters. The brain keeps bouncing its millions of talents this way and that, a repertoire in itself with its own terms of reference, its own term time. But what we want, what we must have, comes when it comes as though it were a gift: an isolated shower.

Arrival (Philip Hunter)

 

Waking

The geographic grid point of the detonation of a nuclear bomb is ground zero. It is the place where the bomb arrives. On the land’s surface this is the zero centre, or epicentre, from whence the radius is measured outwards. But it is also the place where zero remains after arrival. Nothing is left. In 2001 New Yorkers on the day were quick to name the place of arrivals, ground zero. Buildings were transformed into living crematoria above the hard ground of downtown. The modern city lives as a target. Once hit there is a need to identify ground zero, even though two airplanes is not Hiroshima or Nagasaki. The surface is still there afterwards, we can see, only it has been changed, seriously, since the arrival. Ground zero is meaningless outside of that moment of arrival, it is a passing term of reference. For anyway, there is no such thing as ground zero. The ground is number, it is matter, it cannot be zero. We tread upon it, rub it with our hands, dig it out with our fingers, smell the ground. Our arrival is something. We judge the consistency of the ground, we calculate and define. Even as we describe our reality we scrape ground together for material, mix it into pigment, makes signs of our existence in this unique ground. And as we do this we start seeing all the signs of life past and present, delicate leaf and bone and ash that are part of the ground. They go down literally onto our surface. Our own arrival may have been as recent as last century, or last Saturday.

Dreaming

Walking delicately over the ground, where we arrive we are here. The reception may be full of misunderstandings. The language may be antiquated or in another tongue. The place is familiar insofar as we can breathe. Some of our colleagues have the glazed look that says there is no gold. You would have thought we had got over our alchemy syndrome. Others hoped for rivers and find waterholes. One chap over there is already drawing up leases, as though that’s what it amounted to. Our arrival has been noted by the natives, who keep their distance. Any trouble and we’ll bring out the big artillery. A couple of fellows think it the place for a settlement, though they say that about everything in sight. Our cartographer is a bit of a draughtsman too, done some nice work capturing the likenesses of the native animals, whose pale brown coats are remarkably similar in colour to the soils in these parts. Ditto the noisy birds of the district, with feathers to match the flora of the unusual agglomerated trees.