Stationary

 

The surprise closure this year of the Apollo Bay Newsagency left pretty vacant the shop floor of its aisles of magazines, postcard racks, Scandinavian noir, and biros. Gamblers must seek elsewhere for their latest credit dock. A solitary sign on the windows of the empty premises requests, ‘Do not lean bicycles against the glass.’ Glass that reflects the ocean across the way. Enterprisingly, the clothes shop down the main street, specialising in Akubra hats ® and Ugg Boots ® has converted into that classic mainstay of old-fashioned country towns, the General Store. Daily newspapers now compete for space with racks of Great Ocean Road tee-shirts and surfie baggies. Necessity is the mother of reinvention. Some of the new stock, however, is noticeably slow-moving. Item: Ranks of next year’s diary rest against last year’s diary, waiting for events that time has forgot. They await the efflorescence of the well-coifed ancient hippie resident in her beatified beach bungalow, the catch-of-the-day records of the tanned angler and particularly his catch-of-the-night straight from the Strait, the personal planner procession of the frazzled councillor and minute secretary, decisions, revisions, divisions. Perhaps everyone uses laptops these days, though who’s to know? If true, it’s one simple delete that time alas will forget. Item: Blocks of A4 will not budge that could all too readily convert into the new Apollonian novel, there to augment Isobelle Carmody and Gregory Day and Bruce Pascoe. The fiery reflection of a burning warship in a window, for example, opens the sole witness account of the 1941 invasion of the Otways, under suppression by the Australian government though not the author’s imagination. Or there’s the John Clarke-like history of the region told in laconic one-liners by a grey power surfer in dialogue with a Gadubanud elder, some of it chronological. Then there’s the new wave story from the echidna’s point of view, the chapters are called waves, living cheap under the millionaire’s sea view acquisition, watching the Antarctic come to the doorstep in instalments. Item: Boxes of map pins await their purpose on quiet ledges. Item: Derwents remain encased, that in future could redraw the crags of the Cumberland, wind patterns of sand middens, and the blue of the wren. Item: Unmoved compasses that once imagined the world’s corners yearn for a turning circle. Perhaps the whole world has come to a standstill watched from screens at the edge of the fingertips’ halfmoons. Or maybe it’s just a slow day in the middle of the week in December, again.  Just me and my dog.

Train

 

Zigzag and speckle and prism are the new scrapers’ windows, passing by the ‘quiet carriage’ windows out of Southern Cross, one by one catch the sun. Miles of bluestone chips hem the rails they embank and support, perfectly poured by sleeper-fitters through clunk hours of work crush; same bedrock bluestone the ancient memory engendering Melbourne Black. Peppercorn and pampas spears and yellow fennel meet grandiose amongst other random flora on rail islands no gardener can reach; bristle as our windows rush past. White flour mills and set-square warehouses and glintiest apartments rise overseen by the Goddess of Footscray high and happy and calm as multiculturalism amidst her billabong of curly pavilions. Underpasses and freeway barriers and buckled old-wave fences spread transformed by the night prowlers’ calligraphic spray cans; brighten the morning with colours of many hands. Thousands of thistles full-grown full extent seed any crevice on offer, their land grab impregnable as barb-wire railyards. Cars in driveways of houses with their clotheslines and satellite dishes and sheds stay squared by palings from here to eternity; new suburbs adjacent still but a name on a noticeboard in a field. The way the tin barn is patchwork of old brown rained-through corrugated sheets overlapping grey sheets and two or three bright new silver sheets, weed-lined, the same way every time. New classy glassy rail station inside the concrete-sprayed trench takes everyone alighted by sensible lift and diagonal ramp up, up to the grassland view again. You Yangs mirror the low soft-sloping roofs of slate-grey tile across the paddock estates, treed overseeing the treeless, with many a free-floating cloud for good measure. Tower in a fence in a field transmits who knows what cornucopia of civilization through high-up boxes on windless days, silently. Next season’s greetings Christmas trees jet up green diamond rows behind gnarled windbreaks, furry green not yet ready for sale, quiet earners all. Someone’s couch finally finds its way to the side of a farm road, a $2 shop for bird’s nests, sniffing stop for foxes, sight to see as we hurtle towards Lara; sun and rain and wind will end its days. Palaces of stacked pallets line the forecourts of mighty warehouses, the forbidding cities of reinforced steel, storing the future with grains and machinery and ‘units’; such overnight sensations as add yet more concentric rings to outer Geelong.

Bird

 

In Wye River before Christmas, I sit at the picture windows re-reading ‘The Pillow Book of Sei Shōnagon’. My eye revisits Entry no. 28: Birds. Looking up on Saturday I watch from the same windows the flight of a sulphur-crested cockatoo over the river, backdrop the sea. Its plumage is pure white as the wave crests. In the evening, kookaburras chortle from the park. They will ‘laugh’ at unexpected times, not just at daybreak: heartening surprise. Next day blue fairy wrens dart onto the decking. Their waltzing is like fidgeting, then they skedaddle. At sunset, a small flock of currawongs fly across the ridge towards night home. One has food in its beak,  but what is it? Monday, a magpie lands and stands on a nearby roof. Its head strikes the classical heroic pose renowned of magpies, counterpoint to the neighbour’s abstract off-centre antenna. Garden birds, unidentifiable, swim through dusk air catching midges in the fading heat. On Tuesday Bridie sees a large bird on a low branch above the river. Binoculars improve things, but we cannot agree if it’s an egret or heron, or petrel even. The beak is orange, neck is too short, it’s more black than white. Answers hang in the air, but when we magnify the lenses again, the bird has flown. Next day discussion continues about petrels, their likeness to shearwaters, their relative size. We watch petrels from the safety of the car, as we drive into Apollo Bay for lunch. Out from the clifftops they ride on the thermals, backdrop the sea, magnificent and defiant. Wednesday is the first occasion this week we sight king parrots. Their glossy green plumage and orange heads are most familiar up at the house. Perhaps weeks of rain have kept them inland. Crimson rosellas inspect a woodheap: charming. Later they inspect our decking for seeds and crumbs. A flock flying through the trees at full speed is an event. BoM said it would rain on Thursday and here it is, raining on Thursday. Later in the morning rain clears and I continue reading Sei Shōnagon above the gully, its expansive view of inlet and sea, outside at the back of the house. Rosellas. Thrushes. Wattlebirds. Cockatoos. They come and go in their own ways. At tea time we observe birds flying down to eat seed scattered on the decking table. Bridie and I agree that rosellas are polite eaters, while cockatoos are garrulous. I notice on the last day of our stay how conspicuous by their absence are satin bowerbirds. Perhaps scrub clearances have forced them over to Separation Creek. Is that likely? Also, firetails, I haven’t seen any firetails for a while, wishing the finches hopping on a distant branch were such. We laugh at the friendly whistle of the rosella pecking at its breakfast. Cute, we call the whistle, but what does cute mean? It seems a synonym for lovely, or companionable. Sweet, as the Italians say, and Fitzroy baristas.

Park

 

Image: Fitzroy Gardens, a photograph taken by my great uncle John Henry Harvey (1855-1938), probably in the 1890s.

One of the great urban revivals in Melbourne was the planning and setting out of green belts and green corridors into the centre of the metropolis during the 1970s. Silver firs were no longer the suburbanite’s statement of status, as silver wattles weaved again through old gullies, rediscovered meadows, and along riverbanks; the Western Australian ‘silver princess’ eucalypt became today’s favourite ornamental. Landscapes were reclaimed from Edwardian Europeanisation, native birdlife returned in abundance and proper ecosystems developed. The exceedingly cheerful sound of lorikeets and galahs all across town is a result of this change of mind about our use of space and flora. Though more like a wake-up call than a change of mind, as Melburnians grew to understand their interconnectedness with the local natural environment. It is hard to imagine the city ever going back to the pre-raucous caucus days of street-by-street exoticism, even as we order in our well-shaped pine tree for Christmas at home. It is very hard, though, to believe the same city now permits sprawling new suburbs with vast square houses that take up each block, no gardens to speak of, let alone parks. Developments edge down to gullies that overlook creeks, where greenery is left to the imagination of the new home buyer. These jigsaw miles of brick and tile scarcely allow a sprout to show between the joins. They are Templestowe temples converted into Sicilian compounds, fully reliant on cooling systems for survival; the future could entail one hell of a summer. And curiously, each residence still gets to be separated by that quintessential Melbourne feature, the paling fence. The sheer waste of timber resources expended on this unnecessary add-on is itself a scandal. Parks and garden aerate the mind, stretch the limbs, deliver relief. Getting-out-of-the-house-a-bit is not just an impulse, it’s a prerequisite for both dog and human. It’s why gardens, parks, green corners were mapped in such number and size by the makers of Melbourne. The temporary escape from rooms and grids are the green swathes, spacious and shaded wherever the eye explores. For Marvellous Melburnians, ‘green shades’ are necessary for ‘green thoughts’, and especially those who have adopted the apartment for their existence. European apartment living has gone from eccentricity to solitude solution to fad to style choice to force for change in just a few years. And as any European knows, a nearby park or garden held in common is about community, refreshment, and sane living. An hour, or half a day, may be spent there. Quite simply, each new apartment estate on the landscape should plan equal space for a park, within easy walking distance. Legislation should be put in place this third term in the interests of all of us, those with a home and those without, dogs, lorikeets, the list goes on.

Transformation

 

Reflection for the Third Sunday in Advent (Gaudete), the 11^th of December 2022, in the pew notes at St Peter’s, Eastern Hill, Melbourne.  Written by Philip Harvey. 

Jesus answers questions with return questions. He gets you to think about what you’re asking. Other times he answers questions with wise circumlocutions. Asked if he’s the Messiah, he replies with a stack of events that must add up to Yes, you’d think, but leaves you then to make up your own mind. ‘The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.’ 

These happenings contradict all the empirical norms, yet no one disputes that they are happening. Inasmuch as he is riffing the prophet Isaiah, if that’s what he’s doing, Jesus is making clear that the moment has arrived. 

What is happening is personal transformation. Those who encounter Jesus, his words and actions, are spoken to. They are healed according to their need, given new life in ways not previously conceivable. His reply to the question are you the Messiah is not a brag sheet of attributes and achievements. He is showing what happens when we encounter the transformative love of God. There are none so insightful as those whose sight has been restored. To overcome the powers of death is to see and live existence anew. To be on side with those who have nothing is to begin to offer hope in a state of pure necessity. Such transformation is available to anyone at all, everyone in fact. 

As both Jesus and his cousin John the Baptist say, transformation comes first with repentance. It’s personal. It starts with us. He confirms John’s ministry in the process. 

Jesus’s astonishing circumlocution comes with an unusual blessing. ‘And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.’ Is this a form of advance forgiveness? The blessing comes from a knowledge of contradiction, that not everyone is going to adopt his way immediately. There are those who will give up on his teaching, who find it doesn’t meet their expectations whether high or low, doesn’t suit their lifestyle, or is just too hard to handle. Yet for all that, his way remains open at any time. Transformation is available. 

Isaiah 35: 1-6, 10. Psalm 146: 6-10. James 5: 7-10. Matthew 11: 2-11.

 

Twentieth

 

Horseless and hungry, the twentieth century automobile rolls from production line, its shining plate reads COURAGE, a kind of tiger that burns bright in the forest cities of night, Arabian gazillions in its tank. Heroic is its on-the-road journey to a future no satnav can imagine. Obsolescence enflames its fearful symmetry, a trust in rust its makers do not declare. Sunrisen and sunset, the twentieth century empires fight back, that all-red self-destructed; change their names, that burnished their crowns. Empires umpire treaties they live to regret, sell up nations they once boasted with titles and boulevards, devise management strategies from new formed departments of ANGER, their futures sunroasted, sunbesetted. Pineapple-shirted and tropical blue, the twentieth century tourist travels with a mental AVERSION list, paying for the sights and leaving a deposit, a holy smoke destination where yesterday’s pollution can take care of itself. Physical and chemical, the twentieth century proof of energy plays with fire, children with a Little Boy toy they throw in the ring. This is the ring and this is the split, this is the drop and this is the fire, they cannot resist. It comes in a black box, a game box labelled FEAR, a throw of the dice and atoms divide, the only rule: mutually assured destruction. Plummeted and pulleying, the twentieth century elevator is going up, avoiding unnecessary steps, pushing the right buttons, fun at so many levels. Where might it end if not on the whitest of moons, taking childish steps across a sea of tranquillity, collecting lunacies to store in good ship MIRTH, watching earthrise again, a unique opportunity. Motioning and pictured, the twentieth century arcade makes the case for AMAZEMENT in corridors of showcases. Feathered archdukes motion flickeringly into the oblivion of trenches. Flying Scotsmen break land speed records in brief seconds of film. Crystal clear Fabs and Top Ten girls shimmer golden up the scale, singing their youngest words to digitised eternity. Machine-driven and revolving, the twentieth century turntable says over and over again Nobody Told Me, needling listeners with forgotten truths and unfamiliar longings green from long ago. The box-set LOVE warbles birdlike through rooms, whispers pillow-talk over rooftops the central message of postcard and pulpit, now this very minute. Heating and powering, the twentieth century fossils breathe smokestack lightning, beating blue sky thinking to airy nothing, a greyer shade of pale. Gaze turns to glaze upon that which seems normal, personal satisfactions consuming product at all-time highs go gangbusters all four quarters. Vapour trails read SORROW, what’s done cannot be undone.

 

Empath

 

Are you a narcissist or an empath? To play this social media quiz question you click three colours and hope you don’t come up trump. How this divides statistically is hard to gauge. Are there more empaths per capita in the city or the regional and rural areas? Which political party has the most narcissists? Hard to gauge while the determining judge is artificial intelligence, one that is trained up to colour matching but not emotional range. It is hard to take the word ‘empath’ seriously. It originates in science fiction, a person with the paranormal ability to perceive the mental or emotional state of an individual. This has to be an improvement on seeing through said individual using X-ray vision, though it’s a question what it says about the emotional range of science fiction itself. Somehow in very recent times ‘empath’ has spread into common currency, meaning someone who identifies with another’s feelings and experience. However, ‘empath’ sounds like a type, raising the potential dilemma of infinite variables. There could be the active empath, by contrast with the passive empath. Can someone be a part-time empath? I imagine it happens all the time. Maybe one could work towards a doctorate. Or become the world’s leading empath. Though how would you know? Some variables have, in fact, already been identified, only one of them being emotional empath: physical empath, intuitive empath, dream empath, plant empath, Earth empath, animal empath. Can an empath love? we are asked, only to be told yes, with anyone but it is better if it’s with someone who expresses emotion, possibly because empaths are described as “emotional sponges”. Marrying an empath is preferable to marrying a narcissist, needless to say, though are the words antonyms? We are even told of the presence of toxic empaths, who over-identify with others’ problems and adopt them as their own. (Why this is toxic and how ‘toxic’ is today’s omnipresent negative adjective, is another story.) About the best-known empathy story in our culture is the Good Samaritan, a man who according to the Greek has a gut reaction to finding this man beaten up in the middle of nowhere. I have yet to hear a sermon in which he is called an empath, but is it only a matter of time? The implication is that those who passed by on the other side of the road knew about empathy, were even taught to be empathic, but one thing or another stopped them. It was the wrong person who did the right thing, in fact a person so outside proper society that it never occurred to the listeners (then or now) to extend empathy to them. Figures are not in for those who chose the colours of the narcissist, but we may assume that the figures for empath are pretty high, of whatever scale of empathy. Only how can we tell?

Image:  Wood engraving of the Good Samaritan, copied from the work of the German painter Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld (1794-1872). published in Paris in 1860

Planet

 

Ascending the curving staircase inside his mind, the staircase that puts him that much closer to the heavens, he peers through the telescope of his imagination at Mercury.  It is quite the blackest thing he’s ever seen, if almost imperceptible, before the full face of the sun. Fear is the astronomer’s first instinct. Can anything survive such heat extremes? Will the great blast absorb this morsel at an unknown hour? How does it keep on going year after year? It appears to contain all the finality of a full-stop. Yet continues, like an ellipsis. Turning the lens towards Venus, he is surprised to find it’s saffron. This is not how the planet is pictured in books. He double-checks the telescope’s satnav. Sure, Venus. Who knows, it takes courage to be up at work first thing in the morning. Still up and at it as night falls. Courage to be taken for granted, courage to be misunderstood. Most of what can be said about Venus still hasn’t been written down. Saffron. Tilting the instrument by accident he finds everything’s gone green. All manner of green. Green leaves, green eyes … O! it’s Earth. Growth reproduces growth in such profusion his language proliferates to breaking point. Clouds pure to sight are born to rainbow and to green upon continents where love is spoken of every day. Home. Reascending the whorls of stairs to stare at worlds, the astronomer is reassured by the anger of Mars. His books see red in this regard with tireless consistency. Who is he to argue? It must get exhausting being angry all the time in permanent cycles and for what reason? He wishes Mars would get over its cliché behaviour, but who will stop it? Who wants to go there? Better to turn to the wonder of Jupiter, that keeps red to one corner midst unending bursts and resolutions, firsts and revolutions of yellow. The odd thing about wonders is how words have their limits. What to say? And what to say of mirth-inspiring Saturn, a planet that could float in a bath, leaving a ring? Dazzling white in its dark night of eternal delight, that will never occur. Its humour lies in never standing still. What’s not to like? He pays attention to Saturn’s effortless ability to please. He brightens to its unique distinction. The astronomer however wishes he could avoid Uranus, grey and alone at the edge of the party. Sorrow will try its best to keep up appearances that all the time is an appearance of sorrow. Can anything be done? While Neptune elicits aversion, its bluest blue sunk with stories words deny, music cannot delve, psychology banishes to the end of the ward. Out where the known stares at the unknown for hours, long since empty of questions that could make any sense. Only its tenuous orbit gives some purpose to its baffling solitude. Time to close the telescope and reconnect with green. Or dream anon, when stars come out at night.