One (January)

Photograph of Mirka Mora exhibition at Heide Gallery, taken by Carol O'Connor

 

Here is Mirka Mora’s drawing of a rhythm. Or perhaps it’s a concrete poem. ONE-TWO-THREE-ONE-TWO-THREE (HARD) It could be the beach at Aspendale after a winter storm. Or perhaps the trees and chimneys of Richmond viewed from Pelaco Hill. Her first job after arrival in Melbourne was making shirtfronts at Georges in Collins Street, with a ONE-TWO-THREE-ONE-TWO-THREE. In her memoirs she complains how she came to speak in English while still thinking in French. The rhythms of her drawings are rythmes, curving and flourishing like free spirits running across the January beach, all wiggles and whoops, into the lovely water.   

Fifteen (August)

You have fifteen minutes in which to reflect on your actions. Fifteen minutes in which to fill out the form. Fifteen minutes in which to enter the bunker. Fifteen minutes at two hundred degrees. Fifteen secrets of very successful entrepreneurs. Fifteen-letter words. Fifteen Eighty-Eight the Spanish Armada. Fifteen: Taylor Swift. Fifteen minutes of fame. You have fifteen minutes to calm down. Fifteen minutes in which to chill. Fifteen minutes to forget about all of that. Fifteen minutes of breathing exercises. Fifteen words to meditate with: Blue. Harmony. Bend. Laughter. Peace. Home. August. Wonder. Sometimes. Open. Sounds. Sunday. Another. Samaritan. Healing.

Cockroach (February)

Whole suburbs awake to kafkas scuttling away from the light. Open the scrumptious pages, their bedsit, and they scrabble rapidly towards no-words-land. They are overgrown full-stops, made monstrous on a menu of German thought. But to us a fright, slight in flight, self-serving gourmets of decay. February is a good month for landscape architecture. We are capabilitybrowns of our own postage stamp, kick over picturesque boulders to find carparks of them, driving in all directions. Their livery is so 2018, metallic black, impersonal. How easily we crush them under heel: them all feeler, us no feeling at all. Full-stop. Period.

Billion (January)

It’s one small step for a man, out the backdoor into the stars. One giant leap for mankind, the humility required learning serenity prayers. Seven fruit trees in January’s starlit garden, seventeen tomato plants, one relaxed cat: these are numerals we understand. But that dot of light above the redundant television aerial is a galaxy four billion light years away. Four seasons, four suits, four musketeers: four is something we can get our head around. Astronomy books talk of objects only 20,000 light years away, as though ‘only’ was comprehensible, reasonable. One sits with one’s billions of cells, learning differences.

Nine (January)

Number Nine, Number Nine the voice repeats, mechanically, methodically, longingly, indifferently, quizzically. Who’s to say? Then, 1968, Pluto was Planet Nine, its year of revolution 248 years. Now Pluto is demoted to a dwarf, a trans-Neptunian, a Kuiper rock. It was Planet X, now it’s Planet Ex. Our revolutionary year goes January to December, played backwards December-January. Our solar system goes Sun to Planet Nine, and according to many since 2014 there is another Planet Nine, on the other side of Pluto, bigger than Neptune, invisible, searched for repeatedly, mechanically, methodically, longingly, indifferently, quizzically; X playing backwards to the Sun.

The Beatles, ‘Revolution 9’ (1968): https://vimeo.com/13361163

One (February)

One has never seen anything quite like it. One can never be quite sure, can one? We have never been one to avoid a challenge. We know one when we see one. It takes one to know one. One has been here before. One example will have to suffice. One heard saxophone in the laneway. One noticed red lettering on the skyline. One has spoken with Thou and Herself endlessly. One is at the end of one’s tether. One has had a gutful. One should quit while one is ahead. One February all of this will be a bad dream.