May to August 2012

August

It's going to be a bad fire season.

Urunga

Spring

Forget Sept 1, spring begins each day afresh, with a fly buzzing round me last week,

a Monarch butterfly whispering through the Blady Grass on Sunday, or this morning's Greenhood orchids.

Saturday 11am 25th - I will be giving a poetry reading at Matilda St Gallery in conjunction with Worth Words, and it is being recorded by Ian Newcombe for local radio.

KOALAS

"In key parts of Australia, koalas are dying in big numbers. In Queensland, New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory the attrition rate has been so high the Federal Government responded by placing koalas on the Threatened Species "at risk" list. Why is this happening? The answer is simple. Development, cars, dogs, disease and climate change are making life tough for these fascinating creatures." Marian Wilkinson, Koala Crunch Time, Four Corners Monday 20th August

Thursday I see my first koala up here in Bellingen >

The fur trade decimated the koala and the remnant populations are still low as a result of that slaughter. Genetic studies in Victoria show that by and large all Victorian koalas, except those in the eastern part, are all pretty much genetically identical which means the future is bleak for conservation. Some of them even have testicles missing. On Kangaroo Island, some research suggests that as many as 29 per cent may have this affliction. Deborah Tabart, ‘Koalas deserve full protection’, ABC Environment, 21 August.

It is estimated that in the 20-year period between 1990 and 2010 the number of koalas in New South Wales had dropped by a third, and in Queensland the numbers were down by as much as 43 per cent. ‘Koala numbers dive on east coast’, Four Corners, August 21.

17th 6pm Matilda St Gallery, Macksville, show with Bron - my poetry & photographs (see here)

Palm world in the Anthropocene, near Smoky Cape

Black shafts mine earth’s nutrients renewed

by the urgency of fire circling the landscape

uncoordinated since Botany Bay.

Slender gothic columns stencil early morning,

the library of leaves open up accepting light once more

climbing for the attention of the sun god.

Life remodels ruins extensively, opportunity knocks

a natural process of competition with significant global impact.

After five mass extinctions we are living the sixth right now.

Jet lag for a week - great to be back, a Swamp Wallaby with joey makes a rare appearance, they normally stick to the forest.

One thing about being up here is the lack of movies and theatre: "As the result of a childhood wish, John Bennett's teddy bear, Ted, came to life and has been by John's side ever since."

JULY

The best beer in London - though I was surpised on entering by being accosted by a drunk north American wearing a Jacksonville Jaguars T and shouting 'Are you Ernest Hemingway'?

After viewing Constable's Cloud Sketches at the V&A

Rubens is a painter whose work never held mine,

I disliked his nudes, then discovered his late landscapes

worked when he had retired to his grand house Het Steen

with his young trophy wife, Helene, such happiness!

I buy the postcard, a larger one, costing more, and

when I get it home I notice that the herd’s reflection

has been cropped to save the anaemic rainbow.

The Wallace Collection

In the National Gallery, guides taking groups always appear to talk of paintings in terms of iconography. Kant argued that ‘A beauty of nature is a beautiful thing, beauty of art is a beautiful representation of a thing . . . in estimating the beauty the beauty of art the perfection of the thing must also be taken into account.’ (meaning both mimesis and subject). Of course since R. Mutt neither holds - art practice changes art theory.

The Courtauld

Seurat painted all kinds of fields and landscapes, not the picturesque. Two of my favourite art works in the Courtauld, are the Roger Campin (attrib) with so many wonderful details luminous in the earliest mastery of oil paint, such as the crucified companions to Jesus and the weeping angels- and small oil sketches by Seurat hung in a very narrow corridor.

‘Man Painting a Boat’ c1883, an oil sketch for its own sake, not merely a preparatory sketch. It is so casual and sunny, such a ‘happy’ work.

detail of painting

Kant also argued that art is produced by genius (not just the extraordinary but also the natural, what cannot be simply learnt or explained - but he still wants an academic rule that follow necessary conditions for good art). Again, art practice has subverted this from all angles.

c1888-1890, this is painting in his pointillistic style, which I have never fathomed - incidentally the woman was his mistress, not known to his friends until his death in 1891.

In A la recherche du temps perdu, (Vol V), the novelist Bergotte who inspired Proust (modelled on Anatole France), but in person was a disapointment ("uncouth, thickset and myopic little man, with a red nose curled like a snail-shell and a goatee beard) eats a meal of potatoes then leaves home and staggers to the gallery to view for the last time Vermeer's View of Delft (“an art critic having written somewhere that . . . a little patch of yellow wall (which he could not remember) was so well painted that it was, if one looked at it by itself, like some priceless specimen of Chinese art, of a beauty that was sufficient in itself . . . thanks to the critic's article, he noticed for the first time some small figures in blue, that the sand was pink, and, finally, the precious substance of the tiny patch of yellow wall. His dizziness increased; he fixed his gaze, like a child upon a yellow butterfly that it wants to catch, on the precious little patch of wall.”

I recall seeing John Constable's 'The Lock' in Madrid and thinking that the timber was painted with more life than the trees, expressive and finely worked as they are. Three weeks ago it was sold for £22.4m - one of the most expensive British paintings ever - to a private buyer, so it may disppear from public view.

Zero Harm Champion

I was taking a photo of an amazingly healthy Big Red Kangaroo Paw (from Western Australia) in a narrow building site beneath Blackfriars, about to start a walk up to Parliament Hill, when this Security guy told me to stop taking photographs. His English was broken - I said I was just taking pictures of flowers. He said ‘You can’t’ - then walked away. You may have heard about the security shambles over the Olympics!!

‘The Met officer, who spent 35 years in uniform, took up a security manager role in April but left after two days. He said only one in ten people at his Security Industry Authority (SIA) training could speak English and classes were overflowing with up to 80 people.’ Stephen Wright, ‘So how did this chaos ever happen? Olympics security started going wrong months ago thanks to cost-cutting and woeful lack of preparation,’ 14 July 2012

Following a prolonged campaign, including a series of demonstrations by photographers abused by Police Officers and PCSOs, the Metropolitan Police was forced to issue updated legal advice which now confirms that 'Members of the public and the media do not need a permit to film or photograph in public places and police have no power to stop them filming or photographing incidents or police personnel' and that 'The power to stop and search someone under Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 no longer exists.' Wikipedia

The UK is the most spied upon nation in the world - why doesn't it have the lowest crime rate? http://www.no-cctv.org.uk/

Writing Britain: Wastelands to Wonderlands

Shenley Church End - end of the path

JUNE

Yoko Ono's Wishing Tree, Serpentine Gallery

(& a sentiment I share)

Flame Proof Moth in the rain, Thames Beach

PEN International day at Poetry Parnassus

Wednesday (27th June), spent the day at Free the Word, PEN International at Poetry Parnassus – part of the London cultural Olympics. I relayed the BRWF commitment to the empty chair (which they didn’t have as it happened).

Interesting discussions and poems enriched the day. A common themefrom the poets (204 from 204 countries) was the difficulty of acting as spokesperson for a country a) as a poet, where much of the creative process is irrational and below the reach of conscious thought and b) from a country which may have tens of millions of people, and many different languages and poetries.

Robert Macfarlane and Francis Spufford, Brirish Library, 26 June

discussed his new book 'The old ways' and how writers affect the landscape and how landscape makes people and vice versa. Edward Thomas a guiding light. 'the great poet of paths.'

After a day of sun back to the wettest June on record

Brownsea Island

Korea

Dream City, Seoul

From our thirteenth floor we see that the small wetland is defended

by slogans on hoarding, the map marks the site 'On the Construction'.

The land is flat, reclaimed, stretched, often empty, waiting for the flood,

nearly nine and a half billion humans with enormous appetites

will crowd this planet mid-century, Baskin Robbins and Dunkin

Donuts are shrouded in the gauze of pollution to the north.

We cross the wide empty road to ground-truth the dream,

a metal grate imprisoning one of hundreds of conifers

rooted by triangular wooden supports with hessian sacking

protecting the impact welcomes us to 'Business Utopia'.

Steel and glass cloud piercers lean from the haze over Central Park,

the sky is drained of pleasure. We climb the zig-zag staircase

missing the monumentality of Persepolis, inexhaustible weeds

break though the fine gravel. 'Tomorrow City' parks a huge

polished globe, indented, reflecting any light it can get its hands on,

the corner building site implores 'Go to the Future'.

We come to a lake lined by leisure craft sits in this empty plantation,

so still I think of photographing the black-headed terns upside down

in the water. Across Strolling Garden Bridge is the past, an older woman

stands bowing to exercise, beside a wooden pavilion a silver haired gentleman

performs Chi Kung then pampers his golf swing. What looks like

a beach hut by the water is a public lavatory, goat tracks are developing

into this custom-built habitat of hostas, irises, azelias, small perennials

stocked with cheeky chirpy sparrows and three lucid magpies.

Joggers pass at intervals, three caucasians to one Korean,

exercise machines line up behind a small locked kiosk, a library

to exercise the mind. No sign of ice cream, or the steel mills,

glass factories, or labour, or any pretence of a sustainable future,

we may all come together on the wallaby track.

Go

Sydney very cold, very wet

The elusive Joseph Beuys

Cooks River

Gingko Leaves, Botanic Gardens

World Environment Day, June 5

I spoke to Mary White his evening, she is very pleased - has just added a large swathe of forest to her beautiful covenanted area by Middle Brother Mountain for the future of all Australians. Such generosity.

Six roos in our front garden - a new joey appearing

and saw our first whales of the season and the lunar eclipse

UNESCO report scathing of Great Barrier Reef management - was always on the cards.

Early morning, Valla Beach, south

Coffs Council have been conducting an online forum, now closed, on the cultural opportunities and potential of the Coffs Coast region. Clearly there are major opportunities Council can facilitate - and major infrastructure needs, for example: a new art gallery and a performance space, that in the current financial climate are problematic.

Today, Thursday May 24th: “Women on the move . . . with the emphasis on a good time . . . Bus trip to Coffs Harbour visiting Buddha’s garden and Op shops in the area.”

Monday 21st – the first Humpback was spotted off Sydney.

In June and July up to 200 whales pass by Letter Box Beach every day heading to Queensland for winter and calving.

Lewin's Honeyeater; flew into one of our windows, just one of many dangers birds face: cats, cars, foxes, pesticides, guns, other birds,habitat loss.A birder told us silhouettes don't work, hanging reflective materials may be the answer.

http://www.getup.org.au/campaigns

one of their latest is to stop mining export projects currently planned along the Great Barrier Reef already under threat from run off (nutrients, fertilisers, pesticides, toxic chemicals, sewage, rubbish, detergents, heavy metals and oil) and global warming.

Sarsaparilla, Lawyer Vine;

Woman hit with stick

13 May 2012

“If you can hold on to and repeat to yourself the simplest fact of existence—atoms and void and nothing else, atoms and void and nothing else—your life will change.”

Stephen Greenblatt summarising Lucretius

A Lewins chuckles from the screen of Banksias

launching the forest and the radio tells you

there’s no turning back. The taps and lights

are de rigueur, like the Sunday roast - lamb,

potatoes and pumpkin just picked from the garden

with the local headline ‘Woman hit with stick’.

It’s a Sabbath, just another waltz around our star

for the planets, plants and animals, roos graze

the slope towards the sea slumped into glow.

I thank Wyn and the dead sheep and the marvellous

taste and solidity of sticks and stones and love and flesh,

the way things don't change and the way things don't last.

Bron's wonderful 'Mary White's Waterfall' is a finalist in the inaugural Flannery Centre Art Prize - the guiding criterion was: Humanity is now living in ways which outstrip the capacity to provide an equitable, healthy lifestyle for future generations. With 7 billion people a number of planetary boundaries have been reached which will drive fundamental changes to the way we live and work.

Bron/Wyn entering Jagun

Large Bracket fungus, Oyster Creek

David Bromley and Kiyomi at his opening - his linocuts are so detailed, his paintings have a different mood. Top left you can see a painting of his family in Sierra Leone - I must have seen it a dozen times now and it still haunts me.

Letter Box Beach

Pandanus and Shark's egg

For your diary Bron is giving a reading and talk on e-publishing at Coffs Library this Wednesday 9th, 6pm

Monday

Garden theory - Hugh Possingham on the radio today talked of “an extinction crisis in some sense.” In any sense I would have thought. He suggests that National Parks can’t do the job of protecting all species and habitats given economic realities and concludes that “not all the conservation of Australia’s wildlife needs to be done not by the Government.”[i] There must be more support by governments who proclaim national parks as media release then don’t provide resources to manage them. On the other hand, we should all be responsible, and gardens are one part of an overall conservation strategy.

The oldest garden in the archaeological record (The Hanging Gardens of Babylon were 100 years earlier) is Persian from 500BC. One can still see remains of the geometric plan, its white columns, can trace pavilions and the archaeologists have revealed waterwheels. We know where Cyrus the Great used to sit on his throne. They grew some bulbs, tulips and hyacinths, but mainly figs, palms, and pomegranates.

The ideal Garden in the classical tradition is benevolent and generous and grants a dynamic variety of enjoyable perceptions and sensations. Poets from Ovid and before had established an ideal landscape of gentle hills, streams, shading trees, cool fragrant breezes, birdsong and blooms

Milton’s Eden is an English Arcadia in the classical tradition with flowery banks, shaded bowers and ‘‘pleasant walks’’ under magnificent trees and yet this garden remains wild.

A Wilderness of sweets; for Nature here

Wanton’d as in her prime, and play’d at will

Her Virgin Fancies, pouring forth more sweet,

Wild above Rule or Art, enormous bliss. (5.294–97 )[ii]

John Dixon Hunt believed Milton was recalling the Italian Renaissance gardens he visited with their variety of landscape features and mixing formal with the informal and the boschetti (wild woods).[iii]

How does that affect us gardeners here? Jane Drakard comments, “Italy itself has often been compared to a garden paradise, and the major European gardening styles have all been influenced, at least in part, by the great Italian Renaissance gardens, which were themselves conceived as a return to classical ideals. This influence finds expression even in contemporary Australian suburban gardens with their turn to formality and to what are often described as ‘Italianate’ styles. . . In this respect the current vogue for Italian gardens is nothing new.”^[iv]

Drakard quotes Edna Walling (1895–1973) who wrote: “There is little doubt that as we advance in the designing of our garden in Australia, we shall derive more and more inspiration from the old gardens of Italy [...]. The chief elements of the Italian garden – stone, water and trees – are most appropriate to the conditions governing the construction of gardens in Australia.”

This is on the wrong track if gardens are to become an important part of conserving Australian flora and fauna. Last year I visited Villa d’Este and heard or saw only two species of birds. It is a very formal garden, the world’s preeminent water garden and a marvellous visual experience, but one that lacks the variety that Milton celebrated and that our flora and fauna needs.

[i] Tom Nightingale, The World Today, ABC RN Monday, May 7, 2012

[ii] Very different to the slopes below Eden where Satan finds ‘‘a steep wilderness, whose hairy sides / With thicket overgrown, grotesque and wild, / Access deni’d’’ (4.135–37).

[iii] John Dixon Hunt, ‘‘Milton and the Making of the English Landscape Garden,’’ Milton Studies 15 (1981): 81–105.

[iv] Jane Drakard, ‘Elusive landscapes: Australians and ‘the Italian garden’’, in Australians in Italy : contemporary lives and impressions, Ed Bill Kent, Ros Pesman and Cynthia Troup, Monash University ePress, 2008. The English garden (giardino inglese) became popular in Italy in the early 19^th C from Como in the north down to Sicily, it’s main them being naturalistic, no geometry.

Sunday Full Perigee Moon Day

Started very early with a pretty good FA Cup final, then a walk at Bonville Creek.

Then on to the wonderful Coff's Botanic Gardens (much under utlised) to the bird hide:

melting Brahminy Kite

and for the Japanese Children's festival:

Action calligraphy by Ren (a larger more visceral display than the Buddhist artist Tsai Yu-Long - see bottom of May 2011), including a dance attack on the interface of brush and paper with loud ejaculations.

Koi flags and very tasty Okonomiyaki by Kiyomi

the drumming group from the Gold Coast

then lost two games of table tennis and caught up with an old friend at the Federal in Bello - then back home for the moon

Deep Creek, a distracting osprey circled overhead as I took this.

The moon's perigee

Full moon creature

"This presumptive anchorage of the photograph to the real provides an opportunity for photographic fakers to take advantage of us . . . much as sixteenth-century entrepreneurs manufactured specimens of mermen and mermaids, furry fish, sea bishops, unicorn horns, and griffin claws and their nineteenth-century counterparts produced grotesque "medieval" torture devices and sinister-looking chastity belts to satisfy expectations aroused by gothic tales. (Conversely, when a specimen of the unlikely looking platypus was first carried back to Europe, it was widely suspected of being an assembled fake. Nobody thought that anything would look like that!) . . . These sorts of images function as pseudo-acheiropoietoi--ersatz relics used to create belief that something existed on earth."

William J. Mitchell, The Reconfigured Eye: Visual Truth in the Post-Photographic Era, (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1994), Chapter Nine, ‘How to Do Things with Pictures’.

Saturday - big moon tonight (99%)

An osprey flew heavily from right to left, it carried a large fish hanging like a bomb - and was attacked by another raptor - playing that amazing upside-down talons-out trick, perhaps trying to steal the catch, which dropped back into the sea.

Wedding with mixed bouqet

at 1pm

an unusually low tide

7am. Gathering Seaweed, Letter Box Beach

Poetry is so much more important than sport in Arabic and Muslim counties. Journalist David Rohde, who was held hostage by a Taliban faction for more than seven months, said poetry was part of his captors' daily lives. "They would sing and recite poems every night after dinner," he said, who is now a commentator for the Reuters news agency. "Privately they would sing love poems, but when their commanders were around, they would only sing war poems. "

Friday. Power off today - forgot to get the car out - so were locked in - read, weeded the garden, read a wonderful pamphlet by Ross Macleay questioning the genre of nature writing, wrote a poem and imagined life without electricity - quieter, more difficult especially at night - and now we are bound to technology, even though it distances us from our natural environments. (Georges Bataille thought technology is the cause for our dissatisfaction, for our searching for ‘a lost intimacy’).

Dusk Friday from our top deck

The weekend moon coincides with the moon's perigee - its closest approach to Earth (356,955 ks away) as 14% bigger and 30% brighter than usual and likely to lead to coastal erosion from a two-metre high tide.

I am scoping a book on natural aesthetics - attention to the world around us and creatively working/playing with it is rewarding/ important.

Attention to the patterns, the seasons, the fauna and flora - now is fungus time - but why were the mosquitoes today the worst ever experienced in the forest? Saw more Fan-tailed Cuckoos, singing a single note with tremelo, not their downward trilling.

Three overlapping parasol mushrooms (Macrolepiota procera) thanks Mick).