Framed

 

Watched ‘Framed’. Disconcerting, to watch a documentary where there are so many people I know, or half-know. One degree of separation. Half-knowing something is a leitmotif of the whole work. Half-knowing people. Everyone knows something, no one knows everything. Whoever stole ‘The Weeping Woman’ from the National Gallery of Victoria in 1986, the fallout of their crime caused much harm to many individual lives. Unexpectedly, I found Quigley, the detective inspector since retired to Phillip Island, the most sympathetic main character. He knows his role and never does role-playing, plays it by the book and, to his credit, he understands the cultural value of the Picasso. ‘Framed’ brings out the amateur sleuth in Melburnians. I question the film’s settled view that the thief took the painting out the front door. Having worked with Philip Hunter in the adjoining art college at that time, it seems perfectly plausible to me they took the Picasso out the back door, via the VCA. Trioli laughs at the outrageous wording of the letters sent to Mathews by the Australian Cultural Terrorists (ACT), but no literary analysis is pursued to narrow the authors to insiders driven by contempt. The reverse side of such comedy is anger. The wording is unorthodox but the layout mimics official bureaucratic memos; the author is familiar with such style concerns. Crawford can never be properly objective while his smug smiles, softly wreathed in cigarette smoke, say he has secrets he’s not going to tell, just yet. His performance reminds me of Quigley’s view that people just can’t help themselves, they are going to tell you things. Just not everything. McCaughey plays the sleight of hand. Two strong memories I have of 1986 are the Leunig or Tandberg cartoon ‘Weeping Director’, in which Dora Maar has morphed into someone with a flamboyant bowtie; and the news item reporting how McCaughey had visited someone in a North Melbourne studio. ‘Framed’ adds extra to the second memory, but is unforthcoming about whatever c-c-c-con-conversation actually transpired. His is not the only main role that refuses to deliver any more lines to the drama. Dixon, the conservator, is thoughtful and practical. It is a critical moment when he says his judgement of the authenticity of the recovered painting, one way or the other, put his career on the line. He is not the only actor where that was the case. Dixon reminds the amateur sleuths of another vital matter: security. All the time we think, why isn’t there footage of Locker 227 at Spencer Street Station? Because there wasn’t even CCTV in the Gallery, never mind railway stations. Unnervingly, I probably know who it was, and half-know any number of people who do know.

      

Semicolon

 

Photograph: A dictionary of modern English usage, by H. W. Fowler. 2^nd edition revised by Sir Ernest Gower (1986).

It has been a mixed year for the semicolon. My casebook records instances of where relationships have broken down irretrievably. For example, A confesses that he has tried using semicolons but can “honestly see no point in them anymore.” This at least shows some effort, unlike B who won’t use the semicolon on principle because it’s outdated and a mark of “a privileged education”. Socio-economic factors inform C’s certainty that she could not have completed her doctoral degree without the semicolon; they “connect concepts and groups into sentences, thus avoiding the scatter effect of multiple sentences with no unifying links.” Likewise, E believes strongly that the semicolon “joins clauses that lack a connecting word or conjunction”, a belief that seems self-evident to E and scarcely worth further discussion; in the same way he sees no point in getting stressed about the Oxford comma. “Just do it and you will avoid litigation.” Unquote. F comes armed with facts. For example, in the past thirty years use of the semicolon in British fiction has fallen by 25%. Worldwide use has dropped by 70% since 1800. She puts this down to social media, which F sees as the root cause of the collapse of punctuation in general. G could fit the description; she has given up all punctuation for the dash, but endures bouts of guilt withdrawal over her “neglect of full stops, commas, and even the semicolon.” The enneagram has not been invented for H, his overdependence on social media training him to add stops wherever it feels right at the time; any stop. His favourite is the semicolon because it’s just right there in the middle of the keyboard. I is into conspiracies, believing Silicon Valley plans to do away entirely with stops, replacing them all with a universal slash. The casebook records strong emotions about the semicolon. J is hardened to the prospect of the semicolon’s extinction. He is troubled by how he’s done little or nothing to stop this inexorable drift. A semicolon here or there will not change things; he feels as if he’s “perpetuating built-in obsolescence” and people think he’s “dotty.” Sessions with J always have an elegiac air. Others express nothing but love for the semicolon. K is effusive about the “cute little squiggle”, thinks people are missing out who don’t use them, that self-isolation’s no excuse not to “start now on this stop.” Love flows freely for those who treat semicolons as pause managers, “creating their own voice” (cf. L), or turning “mundane prose into a poem of seemingly unconnected lines” (cf. M). Therefore N, a scientist with logophobia of technical terms longer than 20 letters, may confide in practical yet devoted terms that the semicolon is “absolutely fundamental for constructing a flowing argument and drawing a conclusion.” O’s semicolon infatuation has not subsided.

Sun

 

This is my siesta dream. One siesta dream. Today’s siesta dream, as the windows hold off the sun on the sun side and sleep has happened so that it is not possible to say here we are in sleep’s hold, as dream keeps happening in diverse diversions. Lunch has receded from mind. Plans for the summer have turned into hopes. They are listed in diaries and backs of envelopes and on folded lengths of paper the length of a small dream inside a long dream. There is shade cloth to put into position, herb beds to save, and fallen timber to bundle for hard green collection. The garden is a yet more unfinished challenge than can be remembered. To look quietly upon the heaps of fallen wattle pods raked and layered over the ground is to follow the torn contours where beaks have picked out miniscule seeds; the brittle serrations where wind has blown them from the heights; and the pink turning to brown or turned brown and black some places where the sun has weathered them through. It is the realisation that the sun can kill. In my siesta dream it becomes critical to record this fact about the sun. The truth of this discovery must be circulated widely for general awareness. Further evidence is collected, much of it in broad daylight: suffering daisy bushes, pinched leaves, dusty grass. It must be written down at once in clear language. The result of all that writerly effort must then be broadcast widely, which is why effective expression is required. A location must be found to write down the words about how the sun kills. One option is a large French palace with stupendous chandeliers, dove-grey corridors leading everywhere to the vanishing point, a harpsichord, and other hand-me-downs of French palaces. Words are forming about how the sun kills. Other locations include the attic of a lofty apartment building decorated with Bohemian floral motifs, once used by an interwar writer who could not decide between black ink and typewriter ribbons. And a red Australian beach box reconverted for writerly purposes, lined inside with books about solar radiation and how to swim, its square view uninterrupted towards sunny horizons. Being a dream, the choice is made for me, which finds me writing in the palace drawing room, as if lives depended upon it, the sun kills. Flowers, that in reality spread gloriously a week, fray, shrivel, and die thanks to the sun. They get worried out of their skins, and they are not alone in this respect. We ourselves are not immune. The writing continues in this vein for some time, reinforcing the main point. Such is the negative vibe this generates, so great is the heat being produced, I must wake up immediately as it is all getting too much.

Alongside

 

The policy of alongside should already be falling from favour. As omicron figures escalate in Sydney at Christmas, the casual instructions from the Premier look less like a common sense option, more like the main cause for omicron’s escalation. It harks back to the previous Premier’s promises, that if Sydneysiders do the right thing they will be rewarded with a picnic. Alongside is rendered obsolete once we consider that the whole world is living alongside the virus, regardless of borders or comparative claims on common sense. Alongside is in the bloodstream. Omicron makes approving noises about alongside, understandable given that’s precisely the sort of proximity it actively pursues. The Premier is encouraging the spread of omicron while he persists with his promotion of alongside. Laissez-faire fairly translates as ‘bring it on!’  His Health Minister takes this to its ultimate conclusion when announcing that everyone will get omicron. Some people think the job of the Health Minister is to stop that from happening. Perhaps he has given up trying to deal with coronavirus. Perhaps he should look for another job. Considered another way, the policy of alongside betrays the social division that the Premier likes to keep in place. He must find it hard to live beside voters from the poorer suburbs of Sydney. There must be moments when the very thought of living alongside the great unwashed tries his patience. He has no choice. They are not going away, anymore than new variants of coronavirus. While they stay over there and he stays over here, out of the way, alongside, then things ought to continue a bit longer without mishap. No doubt those trapped in war learn to live alongside bullets, just as those living near volcanoes are accustomed to residing alongside hurtling red-hot pumice. Alongside is in the air we breathe. As we recover from seasonal good cheer and travel uncertainly into the new year, one other consideration is prompted by alongside, and that is closure. Separation from omicron as we go about our normal daily life is an illusion. The cure for the illusions promoted by the Premier is found in the seventh paragraph of health advisory reports in newspapers. The sentence more-or-less goes: This variant will take a year of two more to play itself out. Unquote. It should be the headline, it should have been the headline back in the days of alpha, but that might be too much like realistic responsibility. In this worldview, alongside will continue for the life of the virus. This means alongside successive Premiers and Health Ministers, taking their chances with picnics, declaring we could all be buried under a lava flow so get used to it, and wondering if we must survive the entire Greek alphabet. Living in Sydney will not make any difference to this scenario.

Carol

 

In my childhood, services of carols and lessons were a regular part of the season. They still are regular, though not as universal. Christmas morning heard the acclamations of the choir of St Paul’s London through the house, singing the standards and rarities from the record-player, as wrapping paper was gaily strewn across the rooms to reveal the unexpected within. All of which was continuation of what had been happening in church that morning and the night before. These memories return when I walk through interminable supermarkets and dazzling department stores this Christmas Eve in search of last-minute presents, the entire atmosphere sugared with American schmaltz. Even city streets and arcades are jingly with the bling of Bing. When did crooners and faux-jollifiers become the default setting for Christmas, as if the whole world is eternally New York City in December 1958? Pleasant it is to stop by a busker doing a disjointed ‘Hark! The Herald Angels Sing’ on the saxophone. I wish I could drop some gold coins in his hat, but the credit card economy has done away with cash. Pleasant to find a teenage quartet of strings, out of the blazing sun before a shop window, playing their run-through of familiar beauties with admirable pitch. Does that still happen? Yes, back in the days of cash economy when I could at least smile supportively at their artistry; even that is impossible in the years of the mask. It is bizarre the number of Paul Kelly posts online during the Season, as his gravy song gets rotation airtime. It would be a Scrooge who grumped at this carol, though the poignant meaning of the song became clear on first listening. Its theme of genuine disjunction from the social life of the Day makes me wonder how many listeners feel removed from the spirit they are supposed to feel. Kelly’s song reminds me of Raymond Carver’s poem about life after alcoholism: “it’s all gravy, every minute.” At church the children’s nativity pageant is the gospel reading. It is an artless combination of harmonised Incarnation stories and carols, the musical accompaniment to the tough old words. A children’s ensemble of xylophone, triangles, flutes and violin transmits peace on Earth. On Christmas Day in the morning the greetings come easily. Carol streams English carols through the rooms on her laptop, St Paul’s London, I wouldn’t be surprised. I ask her did she know that ‘carol’ means song of joy? This is a standard joke. Mockingly she reacts, yes she has been aware for some time that ‘carol’ means song of joy. She goes on preparing breakfast. Soon it will be time to open the presents that have stacked up slowly over weeks under the tree, purchased as usual from the Ivanhoe Scouts and delivered off the back of a trailer early December. David Willcocks was some kind of genius.

Colour

 

Sometimes we stop to notice how our entire existences are lived in and against vast expanses of colour. Their continuity is so permanent we trust them as we would any reliable consistency in our lives. It seems obvious, not platitudinous, to say blue is something we can rely on about sky. Its oceanic reflection is usually paler than any blue the oceans have to offer, deep water being somewhere none of us gaze in too long. Certainly not as long as the time we spend unthinkingly gazing at its spatial reflection in atmosphere, the ‘overarching’ sky. No one is unaware of the predominance of green across the Earth. The amount of green is incalculable used by artists in representations of green in landscapes, so much taken for granted that no one pays much attention to all the green generations of artists have attentively applied with the purpose of showing the Earth. Green rises up out of pure watery coastline, ranges inland fairly much in every direction. It’s the field colour of forests, plains, the avenues. The eyes rest easily and familiarly as green inches into view or, more typically, commands visual space. Though we don’t look at green like this normally, as if landscape were an artwork, green is the complete demonstration of how light and water took over the world, long before colour names. We sometimes consider the main colour of our urban environments, concluding again green is consistently present. Cities vary in associations. Siena is red-brown amidst Italian forests. Paris off-white, notwithstanding its parks and gardens. New York may be silver, even if it’s actually grey. It’s at night that urban areas awake to rivers of silver and white and other luminous variations, curving out across contours of their own special geography. In the days when plane flight was common, these sights were universal in the darkness, coming down out of the conquered heights to something approaching normal, again. Black, in fact, is the vast expanse we find ourselves in at night, whatever the background glow of our favourite cities. The colour that is no colour reminds us of the places beyond the reaches of sunlight. Such blackness is more like the norm, or so it seems, than the rainbow of Earth that meets us each morning. Black, even darker than the bushland at night, than imagined in our halcyon cities of haloed midnight. We try to imagine the darkness of remote spaces seen by the naked eye at night, with black to go by as a chart. And the forces of light that natural stars hundred times larger than our own must emit across their extended systems of turning planets. Anyway, we also have red fields as that same sun goes again behind horizon, overturnering Turner in multiple shades. And there is morning, a glow aglow, a golden burst made of star, that no artist can reproduce, its iconic light.

Marimba

 

Rain begins again its random intervals of percussion on the decking. The beats become a blur of wash, harder and harder, an orchestral seethe increasing in volume and strength. Watery film on the planks collects and absorbs the downbeats, spreading effect louder as the downpour gets heavier. Very soon the sound of rain upon wood will become a uniform roar, only wavering softer or louder as the wind lets up or gets stronger by minor degrees. My attention to the acoustics of wood has been enlivened by listening to the marimba, played at the wedding this weekend before, during, and after the ceremony. The fine scene by the riverside was settled by the gracious sounds from smoothed panels of the marimba, cool and delectable in the air. Here at our hideaway in Kennett River, the day after the wedding, the dreamy after-effects of good prosecco and a night of celebration and dance floor in the Wye River Store, is to listen yet more closely to the sounds of timber, the timbres of which are innumerable, occurring unnoticeably at any time. Unless I think to notice them by a conscious act of the will. The tiny falling fronds of eucalyptus that crash on to the decking slap into the rainy timber, their hard centre and swish leaves, over in seconds. The creak of the trees themselves, taller than the house, has undetectable origins, deep in their lively core. Bark rattles loosely against trunks. A branch snaps and plunges into branches below, to dangle or thrash until the wind subsides, and eventually even the rain. The calm of subsidence brings out other sounds. Lizards tap inside hillocks of sticks. Indetectable is the click of bird claw on tree branch, come then gone, the sensational search for food. Subtle crunch of animal feet over ground twigs. Hard to believe how these lithe columns of timber, swaying against themselves, could end up as clattering driftwood, disintegrate in a bonfire, or worse. They push millions of leaves to make storm sounds, impossible on a funky marimba, even in a fair breeze. Marimbists, maybe, maybe not? Walking with a stick along the paths we let ripple it along a fence, or tap at objects with our fortunate grip on reality. Inside, my feet stepping up the wooden stair quicker or slower take the marimba path, the beat to any kind of improvisation, the start of a tune, a tune that may walk which-way into any room. Preparation for dinner is a sinfonia of chopping block, slicing of avocado and quartering of pear. Chairs scrape crosswise on floorboards as chatterers arrive to sit for the meal. The peppermill clomps along the table. I could start dreaming of the other instruments, the electric guitar like unto vehicles taking corners of the Great Ocean Road. Or the bass guitar, with its on-again off-again registers, like the old fridge in the corner. For now it’s touch wood.  

Moving

 

Up above the trees up above the sea, all day we sit identifying moving beings.  The fluffy-chested bird with wings of bark-slab markings, hard jut of beak, moves from a bare branch for food-territory-something, returns to the branch, all day. The kookaburra reappears at the picture window of the house, without a sound. One of us humans moves along the decking carrying teapot and cup, to an advantageous viewing position, comfortable clothing moving easily. This human is readily identified as Carol, book and notebook on a nearby table. A troop of head-upright tail-downbeat canterers move from nowhere across the somewhere below us, smooth and emphatic their thumps and lopes and darts and graces. In another place, we would find it hard to believe we were identifying kangaroos by the seaside amidst slopes of houses, but here this is readily normal. They stand at the sunny area further along, staring back towards us, or something, one with a joey in her pouch. They move someplace else while we’ve stopped watching them. High untended callistemons move with a waving motion unlike the usual breeze where along their branches grey-brown speckled birds poke the flowers with determination. At this distance from the windows, it’s tricky to identify which kind of wattlebird is under review, nor do we have time, as they are on to the next callistemon down the slope and out of view.  Red- or yellow-, grey and brown: something. From a corner of one of the picture windows scrambles a spindly knot of tiny agile legs, activated by the presence of a blot on the landscape moving too close for comfort towards its airy mesh of kitchen. This time death is avoided, the black blob of fly moving vaguely away along the sill, averts an end in the spider’s net. Simple pleasures of passive observation go on for hours, the sliding wire doors left open for air to circulate and the surf below sounding into beach and reef at the mouth of the Kennett River. Unquestionably, the yellow question marks of the cockatoo just landed on the railing ask, so what’s on the menu today?  Singular identification becomes habit, such that it’s a jolt to observe a being moving for whom we have no instant name. We could exhaust ourselves identifying the exact title of every butterfly. They skip past, seemingly without a care. The black curve, curving straight under geraniums as we descend the steps, it’s enough to say skink, even if they’re not, a skink. Insects moving above the grass, and other beings, can take a lifetime to name accurately. Up above the sea, leisurely identification is but prelude to knowledge of the patterns of existence moving their bodies through air and earth and water, mindful of the next movement someplace, sometime, somewhere safe. Up in the house a phone rings, news comes through, day opens out, or changes in an hour as we prepare for the next movement, turning away from all our casual observations. Another human is identified moving though the house towards her yoga on the decking. It’s Bridie, commenting on how nice the cool air is through the house.

Iris

Iris the Platonist rolls her eyes at the Logical Positivists. She relishes the god Wittgenstein, but not the Wittgensteinians. That much is the case. She prepares for today’s seminar by having Hume for breakfast. Existentialists have to be accounted for. There are so many of them. They roam in packs. One thing they have in common is their differences. Makes it worthwhile going back to the classics, they are so full of common sense. At least Hume knows how to talk to people. More tea, thank you. Universities are zoos. Last week she spoke to a flock of parrots. Next week it’s to be a club of hyenas. A novel is not a zoo. Characters escape labels, change their minds for some unknown reason. They don’t have to compile the bibliography. They can, however, turn into types. Iris the Letters lets you know there is nothing more precious than love and friendship. Enthusiastically she offers these views to her friends. Sign-offs that never sigh, other than wanting to be with them. Sometimes, forever. She wishes you to know Australia is very big, having now seen Australia for herself. Big, and friendly. She has written a novel and would you believe it someone, a friend, says it’s about them. They can see what’s going on. So there will be mending of fences and reconstruction of bridges and anyway Iris the Storyteller doesn’t write about people she knows, only about people in her mind. Let the Post-Structuralists explain that, before they exit, pursued by a bear. Iris the Dame is a lifetime existence inside a world where her friend devises the lion & unicorn crest on the British passport. At least I’m Irish, she says, when other identities waver. When all else fails, Irish. Being British, there’s too much baggage. Makes her want to be a Buddhist. Iris the Irishwoman has managed her aitches with ease. It’s metaphysics that prove disorderly. There are always exceptions in every crowd. Moreover, everyone is exceptional, ready to surprise you just when you had given up on them. Yet there is commonality, call it love or goodness. Sounds so simple, put like that. Is it? Iris the Film can no longer speak French philosophy like no-one else. She cannot speak French philosophy like herself. She can no longer hold court at a long college dining table. She is pictured as a brain scan. The colour ratios are not promising. It will kill her, says the angel of death in the form of a logical positivist doctor. It itself is not named. Her body could swim that no longer knows how to swim. Jokes that went thick and fast have thinned to a halt. It’s a whole new job for a husband. Iris the Memoir is her husband’s way of living with the job called grief. Grief for a woman who is there, and not there at the same time. The memoir in her mind though, where is it going next? Perhaps the only relationships now are being conducted inside her. Even the angel of death’s scanner cannot say if Iris the Memoir has relationships, with whom, at what times, and about what. Her eyes roll from one object to another. There is no need to have the name for each one. Like a character in a novel, her mind is on other things.

Jacaranda

 

Summer is coming in. This morning an enthusiastic man posts photographs on social media of blooming jacarandas in warmish Malvern, with the passing remark “When pronounced in my mother tongue (Javanese) jacaranda means ‘a widow’s young bachelor’”. Truly curvaceous are the etymological branches taken upon encounter with this curious definition, but then truly curvaceous are the time frames spent inside out of the heat of summer days. Jacarandas bloom in Brisbane in October, Sydney in November, and Melbourne in December, the trees feeling the heat as it moves down the coastline. It would be pleasant to think they bloomed in Java in September. This search is not helped by many hits for University College London’s Jacaranda System user’s guides, a computer software product implemented using Java language. Happily, a search on Google Image for ‘surabaya jacarandas’ delivers a mosaic of azure, mauve, violet, purple, and indigo, photographs of trees all taken in September. Nevertheless, jacarandas originate in South America. Merriam-Webster says the first known use of the word in English is 1753. Why, 1753? The word is Portuguese, but seems to have been taken from Tupi, a native language of Brazil: jacaraná or jacarandá. Emphasis on the final syllable is not common amongst Australians, as they laze out of the heat on their veranda. Which raises the question we ask of so many exotics, when did the jacaranda arrive in Australia? Before or after 1753? 1864 in Brisbane, according to a former curator of that city’s Botanic Gardens. In the 1850s, Queensland was sending wheat and grain to South America. Upon return, thy would unload at Kangaroo Point. The first curator, Walter Hill, rowed over to exchange seeds and plants with the sea captains. And thus he planted the first Australian jacaranda in his Gardens, that tree presumably the progenitor of hundreds more as humans and other forces of nature moved them down the coastline. Further curvaceous searches take us away from current reliable history into the 2020’s internet world of persistent and predictable headlines: ‘Jacarandas: icon or pest?’ I will save you time by summarising that jacarandas are iconic but not really a pest. Thank you for that. Just as well really, given that the common jacaranda in this country (mimosifolia) is a threatened species in its original habitat of Argentina and Bolivia, due to rapid land conversion to agriculture. Curves within curves. The unreliable history asks, were the seedpods brought to Australia by current? This thought bobs along in my mind as I reflect how the trees thrive here for the same climatic reasons they thrived for epochs on the other side of the Pacific Ocean, before 1753.   

Advent

 

I open the little cardboard door and enter into the end of the world depicted there on the backing sheet of my [advent] calendar. Calendars do not rate much at the end of the world, anymore than all pictures ever contrived to illustrate that day, the day to end all days. The artist has done a reasonable job, given no-one knows exactly what the end of the word looks like. Others would have done it differently, but given the artist’s available materials, accumulated knowledge, and general time period, there is no escaping the overall effect of 4 square centimetres. My eyes do not deceive me. Still, the little cardboard door keeps trying to close again so I must crease it hard at the edge to keep the door open. All told, there are 24. It is a day about which no one speaks lightly, though plenty try. Digressions on paper, specks of pixels in a digital abyss, count for nothing much. That is clear as I peer through the square doorway into the end of the world. My cliched preconceptions of heaven and hell are decisively displaced at such a moment. It would be prevarication to say I didn’t see this coming. No quantity of edifying sermons or B-grade movies prepared me for this unexpected expectation. Instead of a figgy pudding or a canister of myrrh, this door is a judgement. Judgement’s one word for it, at least. Everything is become a backward in time that my collective experience has thus far suppressed, dismissed, lived with thanks to endless distractions and agonisings. So much for endless distractions! My being is counting up furiously not just what I did, but didn’t do. I suppose there had been warnings attached to the calendar which is, after all, called an advent calendar. The front image is an impressive simulacrum of the world as I know it so well: the sun rises over fountainous trees and bounteous cities and mountainous complexities. It is a picture perfect image of this morning in December, in fact, just as usual. Even the address matches. If I could break the spell the calendar’s front image enables, I would find myself very exactly on this present day in time, writing down words in a notebook. Like everyone else, the end of the world occurs for me in my own backyard, where I am now. It is a personal revelation that cannot be resisted. As it happens, I notice the folly in monetizing the end of the world. There has been a huge rise in the market for these advent calendars. People don’t seem to get enough, everyone seems to be in need of their very own copy. Not In My Back Yard Inc. offers an extensive range, each with its own personalised worldview and immediate reality. It’s childhood all over again, playing peekaboo each day with cardboard doors opening up on a scene of shepherds abiding at night tending their flocks, witnessing the glory and message of angels, and terrified out of their wits.

Nightfall

 

All of us falling asleep as [nightfall] falls. Notice the light gone down over Mallacoota, the tent lights and whiskey laughs, and the others like us asleep. Outlines of trees now almost indiscernible from sky. Paddocks turning down the heat to off, beside back roads inland and down to the edges of farm houses. The Gippsland Lakes are losing their colour to the darkness, medium boats somewhere for some of us within to fall asleep. And dark is sweeping along the coast so quietly, the falling yellow now fallen blue-black as the ocean reminds us how sleep is one part of a two-part act only darkness can impart. Inverloch, typically, listens to the waves it hardly notices, so familiar is Inverloch with waves where beach grass holds out against sand collapse, coastline falling backwards and nightfall falling again, and us sleeping here and there already. Maybe some birds make sounds but most seem to choose quiet now the dark again provides security from intrusions. And here it comes, darkness falling across glistening Melbourne into the metropolis’s next night like the million others after and before anything called Melbourne, where the wind rests into a quiet kind of tree whisper, a tranquil rush between sides of residences. Bending branches of white and orange lights where roads take the easing traffic into tunnels and out, lead again towards moderately well-lit streets and gold-mosaic windows wherein soon enough all of us are falling asleep. White rectangles of computers glint softly within, or go black with screensaver, as rooms talk the talk before falling forwards into observable sleep patterns. Paling fences give up their cubist shifts of shade, forgotten like all the other extraneous cares that lengthen and shorten over a day. Meanwhile within the hour nightfall turns down the heat in the ranges where the beautiful animals drift into their nocturnal other selves, barely crushing a twig where they may go, or else falling asleep outside the attentions of predators or cameras. Out the back of Ballarat all of us are falling asleep, another day of crops or livestock, how the water levels are up or down, and what next with extreme weather events. Dogs open one eye to watch the human scenery, to fall asleep in relative comfort. Nightfall comes to Warrnambool and soon beyond, a solace to those worn down with work, a wake-up call for shift workers in hospitals. A torch helps those finding their way across an unknown destination, beams twitching across the trees, in the immediate darkness of the countryside. Notice the moon in one of its phases speechless and unassuming between where horizon must be and the start-ups of stars. Thereabouts, above rivers and old volcanoes, are the millions of other moons that go unseen without name, but bigger than the average river stone, asleep or awake.

Breakup

Things we said today begin to sound like something we said yesterday when all our troubles were so far away. The Get Back blitz ignites the same excitement, the fifty year reply to, will you still be sending me a valentine. Being minus Disney+, I get by with a little help from trailers, newspaper blogs, reviews, interviews, and all the online ‘what do you do after the White Album?’ It’s not Yoko, Brian, George or George… Might it not be much simpler to say that the [breakup] occurred because they were four young musicians with a perfect sense of timing?

Paint

 After two days afternoon torrentials in Melbourne, the days are early summer blue and cloudy. Steve comes over to paint the west side of the house. Last summer was the north face, the one with the most chips and peels and crumbles, but now we all get into giving the west a lift for the first time in twenty years. Builder’s Bog goes into unfortunate crevices. Cecile Brunners are cleared back, giving Steve access to surfaces. Fixtures are unfixtured. Moss dirt is sanded from railings. All the prep, before the [paint] layers are lavished on the timber, gleaming and handsome.

Magnolia

The magnolias originate in the pre-bee epoch. Magnolias were pollinated by beetles. There are two of these trees in our garden. Pink magnolia. White magnolia. Time is spent imagining the pre-bee epoch. Our garden is filled with small surprises. There is no special reason to compile lists of these small surprises. They occur in the moment. That is sufficient. Birds, for example. Red birds. Black birds. Birds originate in the pre-human epoch. They arrive from somewhere, perch in a wattle, cherry tree, even in the odd moment, a [magnolia]. They make the most extraordinary racket. Or no sound at all.

Agapanthus

Leonardo waited for the loud bright day to pass. Leonardo preferred evening, when colours turned deep, relaxing in the cool. Turned from its sky-blue tassels, agapanthus is almost purple come evening. Nightfall will do the rest. You need to sharpen your instrument and dip it in ink. Fine brushes please, with lapis lazuli and ultramarine in mind for paint mixes. Rayed bodies of petals require space. Observe physics. Edge lines, crosshatch shadow, leave leaf crests a touch of absence. Underline background directions, infer natural movements with overlays. That’s how Leonardo drew agapanthus. I just took a picture on my phone. 

Dietes

A rhizome-tangled clump dumped tidily enough beside nestled rocks and canopy debris is left a year, far from other thoughts. Whatever growth is, dreaming or travelling, started under humus, where colours are anonymous and keep to themselves. Too wet or too dry isn’t so serious, daylight sorts something out, and night is quiet time at ground level. Far from other thoughts, [dietes] grandiflora have burst to attract the eye, unexpectedly. They got this far. We are incidental, playing our game of gardening. Some massive force of nature, bee or wind or sun, will do the trick, exactly what’s called for.

Omicron

Omicron is the new word game for adults and children. It slowly bubbles up into conversation. Not Omigod, Omicron. Before impressing with a high wordcount, floating through the house in invisible numbers. Hard-won freedoms find new-won perspective. Protests lie forlorn before the anticipated variant. Round in circles we go, meeting our Alpha days again for the first time. Little-o is hard to see. The world doesn’t want to see it at all. Big talkers need to hold their breath for little-o. A mask helps. Legion is [Omicron], even as we speak, a strain spreading like a delta across our conversations.

Banana

Thus far the public has not embraced the banana. Berate the banana. Deplore the banana. Behead the banana. Same-old same-old, as the public excoriates the cost of the banana. Let the artist starve. Let him live on bananas. Excess consumerism is the point of the banana. Well, chop it off! The public doesn’t mind excess consumerism. Recently erected, already almost decapitated, the banana stands firm. A nibble leaves a skull shape. The public will come around. Footy beanie and scarf in winter will warm the [banana]. Priapic tokens will dangle. The same-old public will mount its Save the Banana Campaign.

Hours

I got a phone call at the library this week. It was a computer, wanting to know the hours. I asked to whom was I speaking only to get the same American voice, “Hi, I’m calling about the library hours over there in Richardson Street.” Over there? It was Google Maps. This time I recited them, clearly, twice, otherwise the [hours] stay on Google’s default setting of midnight. Once someone rang at 4.50 Friday to ask if she could study in the library. Google Maps said we were open to midnight. What Melbourne library is open at midnight, on Fridays?

Amado

Re-reading ‘En una noche oscura’ for next Wednesday’s zoom session. The seven translations in front of me lay different emphases and meanings on the words of St. John of the Cross. For example, “oh noche que juntaste/ Amado con amada/ Amada en el [Amado] transformada!” Campbell has “Oh night that joined the lover/ to the beloved bride/ transfiguring them each into the other.” Though spouse language only shows in John’s commentary and gender is grammatical but not fixed. Or Nims: “O night, drawing side to side/ the loved and the lover,/ the loved one wholly ensouling in the lover.” &c.

 

Reading

Digressions and daring diacritics have become my [reading] habits, our hero thought, chasing clickbait down a whirlpool. Laughs on everyone, tiktok hobbyhorses, unconventional sermons. Outside his screen, domestic life intervened. Chance occasions, minor upsets, relative realtime. On screen, noses projected, sex elected, insults corrected. Siege warfare toggled with youtubers, originality with plagiarism as our hero rolled the scroll. He noted yesterday was Laurence Sterne’s birthday. “Not things, but opinions about things, trouble man.” Our hero clicked Like, cracked Yorick-like puns, scratching his ostensible skull. Plethora, that means a lot. Some days were plotless, as he merged into the marbled endpapers.

 

People

Books and computers, catalogues and orders, the return to work restarts the displaced patterns. Circulation and shelving, emails and requests, yet the greatest reassurance is the [people].  They remind us of what this is all about. Their stories and queries, personalities and voices, it is the people there in person who make it worthwhile. Vaccinated and unvaccinated, masks or no masks, whole new sets of regulations evolve out of two years of pandemic. People know how to behave, they go along with the pattern, likewise more interested in other people, and the literature, in this ‘post-pandemic’ period of the pandemic.

 

Spring

Broad beans, another good crop this year, swaying with wind and rain. Artichokes, their huge scimitar leaves. Lemon tree, stripped of lemons just as new white flowers blossom all over the branches. Satsumas, green under the leaves, purple by January, ready for jam, bottling, and Japanese salted plums. Rhubarb, prolific. Tomatoes, soaking it up. Strawberries, round or walnut-shaped and soft, starting up in profusion. Zucchinis, their light orange flowers lolling in dirt and sun. Silverbeet, new leaf bunches firing up from last year’s roots, hidden by sprawling daisies. Cherry tree, fruiting through [Spring] but concern about bat visitors at night.

A

A arrived unannounced. An argosy of vessels. An outpost camp as a row of tents. An avenue into a wilderness. Alphabet books, Strand London. A for effort. Longing for Avalon. A was the initial of the captain. An envelope crammed with lettering A. posted to the Admiralty. Arguments about criminals and wilderness turned into officialese. Another ship on the horizon. A was for aboriginal, small-a. Accents were addressed adroitly. Misunderstandings arose. Actually, arrogance. Alphas drew lines on A4. Called them a nullius roadmap. Aimed and fired. Maimed, misfired. Adventure, misadventure. But then signposts. Next left, Auburn. [A] for Terra Australis.

Macedonia

At the ice-cream shop last week, I order macedonia. “You mean macadamia,” laughs Bridie. Without my glasses, I’ve misread. Makes me realise, parts of my mind live in Italy, where macedonia is a scoop of fruit salad ice-cream. Parts of our mind involuntarily reside in places unvisited for years. Obviously the macadamia tub does not have flecks of glacé cherry and orange zest. Philip’s never been to Macedonia, but has enjoyed his share of [macedonia]. I order a cone with vanilla and macadamia. Mansplaining macedonia to Bridie leaves the usual delible imprint. She’s too busy checking out the other flavours.

Disappeared

A vaccine syringe is not a weapon of war. The vaccine syringe is designed to save life, not take it away. This is the cartoon’s conceptual error, nor is it humourously ambiguous. The googily-eyed Leunig man has a choice. His is not an anonymous silent protest, a Tiananmen stand-off in front of a tank. He is not a victim of state suppression. He won’t be [disappeared] in the middle of the night. Unless perhaps he’s in ICU. Michael Leunig has his off days. He’s no saint, but why sack him? Expect cartoons about getting fired over the phone, with duck.

App

To app, or not to app. There is no perhaps. The technologists on the committee snapped the social solution the committee desired. Science apportions access to those with the app, who can afford it. The [app] is mightier than the pen. Science alone opens the doors to freedom. Others will find an alternative. The committee may now sleep at nights, who slept through the meeting. Their application is perfection, or your money back. This appendix is a living part of you (just avoid pain), an appendage you can’t do without, an approximation to the sum of all applicable knowledge. Apparently.

Fruitcake

Does anyone actually eat fruitcake? Yes or no. I tried it once, round at Sean’s place. There was him, Heather, Heather’s friend something Mary, and Andrew was there, of course. Mary wanted to know, is that legal? There’s no law against it, said Sean, with all the bravado of a 19-year-old. A large square block of this stuff was actually just there on a plate. It was very sticky, with sultanas big as our googily eyes. No one in those days called it [fruitcake]; our code word was ‘Christmas’. It wasn’t for me. Never touched it since. Amazed you ask.

Snail

Dear Vita, morning spent with orchid pot cluster. Not much happening, but it’s snug. Had to drag myself away. Perfect weather. Rained for three days. Every footpath has a silver lining. Generally agreeable under the violets. Then a bird took an interest in me. Had to go back inside my shell. Pretended to be a pebble. There’s no place like home. Lunch at Letterbox Café. Always something new on the menu. Though find can no longer digest gloss. Anyway, today a high-quality envelope. Made a meal of it. Afternoon, worked on ‘Call Me [Snail]’, my new slow-moving faction. Yours Virginia.

 

Chin-shiner

Chin-shiners, in florid flashback, medical blue, and Melbourne black, are the new season’s fashion sensation. Strung from the ears by elastic or ribbon, they rest easily along the jawline, adding an extra layer of support for the loquacious and contagious alike. Breathe easier knowing you meet the government requirements for wearing a fitted [chin-shiner]. Dazzle your friends. Be the bright light at the party. Smile equally upon vaccinated and unvaccinated alike. Chin-shiners, for those who are in charge of their own destiny, and everyone else’s. They second as single ear-ring dangling, or ear-muff in inclement weather. Be seen, be unsafe.

 

Ocean

Write and rewrite and rewrite [ocean] a grey width that dazzles in pools when sun casts between cloud, then shadows again as if a vast creature loomed just below, only in an hour turns dark green of  a forest crown or sapphire if sky opens out for the day and wind stays its presence, unlike yesterday afternoon when zigzags bristled the width eyes could reach, when hail sheered waves, lapsing into cold torrents for hours, where all was outlines again of grey headlands, bleak horizon, the housetop all sound tones of sweeping rain as ocean whites and rewhites and rewhites.

River

Write and rewrite and rewrite [river] unreachable upper reaches where fish and mammal swerve under insect surfaces down spraying falls along thickening currents towards leaf-topped floods birds dip, then the cut banks and stony edges toward bends over flats minuscule bubbles and sky-shining corners feeding roots into shining sky again upward where before falling black fell with fire’s lightness of touch, wondering sometimes with seas rising turn the mouth tidal as waters transport salt upstream then out again with rains tempestuous soothing, then humans contouring an imagined solution to what end as river days turn night and respite and reignite

Forest

Write and rewrite and rewrite [forest] longest forced long into air and into earth it shades and surfaces with cumulus of leaves and sticks, multi-levelled where birds tick off the months of replenishment, only how heat increasing is known to force conditions to a showdown where fire takes hold and sweeps everywhere in sounds of colossal magnitude, speeds of unavoidable catastrophe as all living succumbs to irradiation, falling turmoil buried in forest’s memory, only now we don’t think about heat only a blue breeze, a green canopy a wet walk below such might as forest heightens and reunites and recites  

 

Tomorrow

Let’s face it. Tomorrow has been coming for a few years now. Tomorrow asks unresolved questions for the next-to-last time. It’s pure technicality to say [tomorrow] is repeatedly deferred. It’s repeatedly experienced. Best to be prepared. At dinner I was told that tomorrow never happens. That’s another way of looking at it. Tomorrow, as we find again and again, does not always live up to expectations. Still, we flag our words for tomorrow, as though they were more pressing than today. We expect things to be pretty much all in order. Tomorrow delivers on that promise. Only one more sleep.

 

Roundabout

Where are you going, Monsieur Hulot? You walk through glass doors. Empty your pipe to fill it again. American tourists, a horde, rush past. Where are they going, Monsieur Hulot? Around the corner in pursuit of a sight. The sight, a mirage in floor-to-ceiling windows. Every city of the world’s a destination, every destination, its own skyscraper. Let’s go to Montparnasse then, dance the unending speed machine. Why say in English what you can say in French? Années soixante the 1960s, dancing all-night, falling off barstools. Watching screens for hours. Where’s it all going, Monsieur Hulot? Stuck on the [roundabout].

Modem

“I’ve never seen ‘modem’ used in a poem,” says a friend of Anne Fadiman in her book ‘Ex Libris’ (1998), lamenting the beauties of lost English. Which is about the time ‘modem’ became common English, as connectivity took over. Remember ‘OK Computer’? Twenty years later we find whole sites of modem poetry. Arguably, today modems deliver more poetry to readers than print, but who can prove it? One could compose a captivating concrete poem ‘Ode to the Modem’ by accenting ODE between the two mediums: M ODE M. Google Search still asks though, ‘Did you mean: modern poetry.’ Only connect.

Multiverse

Is the universe rose-shaped? Blowed if I know, but why not? One minute all compact, minding its own business, then rain and light and heat and rose. Isn’t the universe showing us something? All those layers exploded, or omni-umbrella’d somehow. I mean, is the universe all petals? Or the multiverse, if it’s a [multiverse]? One home expert says it’s amoeba-shaped. Sorry, I misheard, a Möbius strip, but expanding. And what about black holes? Are they black, and why do they crash into one another, if they’re holes? Another expert says it’s a smudgy sphere expanding. Rose-like? They agree on expanding.

Alphabet

Early morning [alphabet], waiting for a train: “Avians busily chant daybreak evocations, flitting gracefully hither inspecting judiciously king-size larvae, mice, nits; or perch quietly, rainy surrounding train-track underneath view: wooden xylophones, yardstick zones.” In the afternoon, family event in Altona: “Altona’s banished clusters delight effervescent family’s get-together, how irrepressibly joyous kids lick marvellous niceties, oldies prefer quite rich smorgasbord, toast universe’s victories with x-marked year-round Zeneca.” At night, checks film guide: “Alone bachelor calms desperate escapee fleeing gaol, however incidentally jealous katatonic lover messes noxiously over plans, quits romantic shadow to unleash very wilful x-rated yellow zombies.” Reads book instead.

Clock

Us stuck in traffic, minutes’ small stumbling block. All well at home, or homesick. Eh, what’s up, Doc? The sound is slick, a gift or shock. Give it the flick, it will sit and mock. The moment it picks, solid as a rock. As surely it out-tricks footfalls’ lock-step lock. Then, again there’s a click. For whom does it knock? Metal verbal schtick, oscillator’s schlock, nitpicker’s frolic, Time Lord’s phonebox. Pendulum’s uptick, pendulum’s downtock. It makes sticklers sick, timeserver’s take stock. Seconds servings forensic, hours unlocked, locked. Hands perfectly quick, a face just like a [clock], stopped or not stopped.  

Us stuck in traffic

Minutes’ small stumbling block.

All well at home, or homesick.

Eh, what’s up, Doc?

The sound is slick

A gift or shock,

Give it the flick

It will sit and mock.

The moment it picks

Solid as a rock.

As surely it out-tricks

Footfalls’ lock-step lock.  

Then, again there’s a click

For whom does it knock?

Metal verbal schtick

Oscillator’s schlock,

Nitpicker’s frolic

Time Lord’s phonebox.

Pendulum’s uptick

Pendulum’s downtock.  

It makes sticklers sick,

Timeserver’s take stock.

Seconds servings forensic,

Hours unlocked, locked.

Hands perfectly quick,

A face just like a [clock]

Stopped or not stopped.

 

 

 

U

Unvaccinated, unwelcome. Is that true? That’s not true. Why don’t they just do it? Like everyone else. Reasons not to scarcely count when set against public good. Unvacation. A non-word enters the mind. Then, uncertainty. Uncertainty unending. That’s the real experience, the mood, expectation. Whatever’s the word for personal states. Our collective wits see through deceits of leaders, their staged plans. Undoubtedly. Indubitably, even, you could say. Undertakings. On hold, undecided. The mind goes, Undertaker? Unlikely! Still, the future is not a U-Turn. You mean your turn. Or is it? How to [U]? As for understanding. Always it’s available, unfinished.

Perth

In 1967, Iris Murdoch tours here. “Australia seems all right. There is an awful lot of it. Every city seems to despise every other city. We got rather fond of little [Perth] which lives all by itself over on the West Coast. But have heard nothing but anti-Perth jokes since coming east (‘in the midst of life we are in Perth’ etc.’)” Alas, the pandemic has only exposed this latent parochialism. Or is it true of all countries? In the midst of life we are Minsk. Iris went to a writer’s conference there entitled ‘Why have we got no literature?’

Difference

Reading letters of Iris Murdoch. “The structuralist scene is such a mess- clever old Derrida, stupid messy critics, each man for himself. Motives, motives.” (5 May 1985) My experience too, and note the date, her awareness of Theory’s onset, her perception of the [difference] between Derrida and the Derrideans. Contrast this with her frustrations about left-wing novelists of the thirties, caught between “an indeterminate cloudy notion of Something or Other” and “political Apocalypse stuff”: “James Joyce used always to ask of some new writer ‘Is he trying to express something he has understood?’” (16 August 1942) Clever old James Joyce.

Sweep

Carol rakes in $30 in this year’s home sweep, for a win and a place. She has the brown mare Verry Elleegant, the way the name is pronounced inside the Enclosure after five glasses of Moët & Chandon. But also then, Spanish Mission, a much more circumspect name, unsurprisingly one of her six choices. Obsidian, who slept through the whole thing, goes home with $10 thanks to Incentivise. Conversation centres on what treat to buy Obsidian with $10 and are cats capable of incentivization. Our [sweep] mocks gambling, with Bridie and Philip paying the debts and deincentivised to bother again.