Earthrise Diary 1209
© text Don Diespecker 2009
The Earthrise Diary (December 2009)
Don Diespecker
Dec 5 ’09: For one reason or another at this time of the year and during this particular week, there have been surprisingly few vehicles rumbling past here (leaving behind them the usual clouds of, cough, splutter, dust). Perhaps people are reading, writing, watching TV or possibly they’re staying home (I know I’ll regret these foolish remarks within days or even within hours). It’s certainly not quiet here: the cicadas are painfully loud, possibly the loudest in the world, so loud that if I’m watching early news on TV with the doors and windows open (it’s very warm upstairs where the TV is) I must necessarily turn the volume up in order to hear anything clearly—and my hearing is good. If we were cicadas, what would we gain by making this enveloping noise? Picture me tottering around with my hands to my ears (are you reminded of that painting by Munch? That’s me).
And while it’s in my mind: the Christmas orchids began flowering at the end of November.
I’m posting the Diary early this month because of Xmas and Hanukkah. No matter how much we pretend that these great festivals are generally for Others, my bet is that at this time of the year every one of us thinks of different times, times long ago when we were children. Yes? Now I’m remembering a ceiling-high Xmas tree in Victoria, BC, in the early Thirties. My sister Deirdre always made a star from cardboard and covered it with cigarette package ‘silver paper’ and that was attached to the top of the tree. Dad and Deirdre always dressed the tree with tinsel and coloured lights and there were always presents, beautifully wrapped. I don’t quite know how my parents managed to provide all of that during the Depression, but they always did and I guess I always took those magnificent Xmas trees for granted in childhood.
Interested readers will be pleased to know that I’ve survived the collapse of yet another Big Tree (this one fell directly behind and above the house on Wednesday arvo, Dec 2) with a crash that shook the building. Big trees, when they fall here make hair-raising sounds in phases. Often, like this: phase 1: a horribly LOUD gunshot crack that makes you gasp and paralyses the possibility of rapid flight because it seems so close; phase two: an increasingly growing enormous SWISHING noise (the leafy crown accelerating downward and rapidly producing phase 3: an air blast (if close) or shock wave resulting from a mass of air suddenly being pushed in a particular direction (in this instance, over the roof of the house); phase 4: the growing volume of noise made when the heaviest parts of the tree hit the ground (that pushes an additional volume of air and debris, including dead leaves on the roof) in the same direction as the first blast of air—more or less. In other words, the collapse of a big tree, especially when it is close by and can be seen, is frightening. The collapse seems to take several seconds; the noises and air blasts are so considerable as to stop you in your tracks and cause you to watch a very fast review of your life in the theatre of your mind. I was sitting at the computer when this occurred and phase 1 sounded weirdly like a 50-tonnes truck being dropped from a height of a thousand metres directly on to the deck of the nearby bridge (I’m probably exaggerating a little, but that was close to my first thought). In the next few milliseconds I realised that it was a tree crashing directly above the house and was alarmed that the house and I would be crushed. Whew!
Dec 8 ’09. After I’d discarded litres of sweat when raking leaves and debris into elongated heaps to be reduced by mowing—during hot, humid days, a windstorm tore down swathes of loose bark, twigs, big branches, and many leaves. The wind, as always, was a worry. Although living trees often fall when least expected, deadwood is susceptible to powerful winds (I’m thinking of a 2-tonner dead brush-box tree that seems likely to crash at any moment, yet has hung threateningly for years; it will likely destroy the car and carport if it comes down in one giant piece). I prepare for a lot more raking.
I’m seriously thinking of writing about the virtue of certain ‘weeds’ like European privet and the groundcover, tradescantia, widely known as ‘the wandering Jew’). The privet has tenacious roots and will withstand battering by floods (the older the shrub/tree the stronger). Without the old privet along the water’s edge, ‘my’ 40-m or so of riverbank would be severely scoured and washed down in a high flood; although I prune them occasionally, I wouldn’t dream of trying to eliminate them. Without the privet the higher and steeper parts of the riverbank would be undercut and the big riverside eucalypts would collapse into the stream probably with fatal consequences for swimmers, fishers, sailors and dozing gardeners pretending to read in the shade. The tradescantia is an amazing colonizer although its structure is fragile—if you grab a handful of the delicate-looking ground creeper and hastily yank, most of the plants will break away with little resistance thus leaving much of the structure still in the soil. If you take a little more time and tease more gently at single strands, most or all the strand (and the roots) will come free effortlessly. This groundcover will, almost in the blink of an eye, set up business in a shady area and begin to spread. More than 20 years ago I built in situ gravity walls at the top (edge) of the riverbank to prevent the top edges from collapsing. Overgrown tradescantia has covered and protected these edges to such an extent that when I recently raked back the groundcover to remove other weeds, I found silt/flood loam had accumulated to a depth of about 0.5-m; the groundcover had resisted all but the most violent flood turbulence and trapped the richly nutritious loam, some of which I can export to roses or dahlias in more distant gardens. Tradescantia knows how to grab the best soil for its territorial expansion and doesn’t seem to mind me taking my cut; it’s a good partnership.
Of the other weeds thriving here, bible or ragweed is now growing strongly and rapidly. These weeds pull easily, fortunately, particularly after rain or showers, but they are profuse, quickly covering the riverbank and reaching down the embankment to the road. The storm rains have made everything grow profusely, including the grasses. I’m surprised to see how quickly the newly sown grass seeds have grown and matured: the thriving kikuyu is now differentiating from the Japanese millet and the millet is seeding. I’ll mow it soon.
I found a discarded snakeskin on the stones supporting the Belvedere (small snakes like it in side the wall, but it must be dangerously hot near the exposed walls in summer. There have been very few snakes this season; water dragons, strangely, hang about more often in the harsh sunlight between the water and the shady lawn (the lawn being a good stinging fly hunting ground); and goannas have been seen more frequently. One goanna ambled to within a couple of metres of where I was reading (without noticing me, it seemed) until I leaped out of my chair. The handsome black reptile wasn’t the least bit ruffled. I presented my compliments from behind my chair, not wishing to encourage the lithe hunter (as long as I am tall) to race up to my head while removing bits of me on the way up).
Dec 17 ‘09. Part of another breaking tree crashed near the house early last night; there was no wind; the night was starry. It was the major limb of an old cheese tree (Glochidion firdinandi), so named because the small fruits are said to resemble Dutch cheeses in appearance and I took some time to trim off the branches with a machete before cutting the bigger branch with an axe. I now have large piles of dismembered tree to dispose of and a crook back. A branch or a tree takes only seconds to break and crash, but hours to deconstruct and to dispose of.
Later last night at 10:30 I was enjoying watching ‘The Eagle’ (a Danish crime thriller) when the power failed for no apparent reason.
The night marauders continue to snack on newly budding and flowering dahlias in the Theatre Garden. Clumsily. I heard possums loudly squabbling a couple of nights ago so perhaps possums are the culprits. Whatever creatures are enjoying these attacks they’re obliged to go over my 1-m + wire fence (from the impressive bounding I’ve seen possums do in the old cheese trees next to the house, perhaps the possums can take the fence in their stride, laughing). I picked the first strong dahlia bloom (Mrs Rees) on Dec 1 and have three others that I cloned, each now flowering. Thanks Tracey for minding them in your garden! Because all of the roses were damaged last month (several were blooming) by the night critters I replanted them all in the Dog’s Garden and may have lost several. Five of 10 are going to be OK, though (if they can withstand the move and the heat).
The next Fabled Anecdote will appear, touch wood, in the January Diary. I’ve collected the first fables and offered them (a book proposal) to a publisher.
I’m working on the second part of ‘A room of her own,’ a midge narrative that offers a tongue in cheek explanation of what I wrote about the budding novelist last month (Morgana is arguably the first midge novelist to write about human protagonists)... The new piece is titled ‘Along the white begonia flyway.’
A happy and safe holiday to you all from Don!
Friday, December 18, 2009
Thursday, November 26, 2009
The Earthrise Diaries November 2009
© text Don Diespecker 2009
The Earthrise Diary (November 2009)
Don Diespecker
Nov 1 2009. Black Cormorants. There’s a fresh in the river. It’s dwindling now, some days after the soaking rains, but it still looks good. Apparently this mainstream surge also looks good to a couple of black cormorants (they’re a larger bird than the much smaller black and white Little Cormorants like Clarrie who generally works the Pool in front of the house). I’m sitting in the shade behind the Belvedere reading Lee Siegel’s essays and spying on the cormorants. The cormorants are riding down the glinting mainstream, side by side on this Sunday morning and I don’t think they’re working. The river is quite full too. They go down (I like to think) cheerfully, good naturedly and when they reach the Pool they ease away from the flow and drift more slowly toward the far bank where they turn to look back. When they turn their heads their bodies are lifted a little by the torrent’s flow and so you can see something of their slightly inclined backs sloping to their slightly pert tails. But when they’re drifting downstream through the mainstream’s channel all you can see of them is the black heads and the black necks because their bulk is under water. Strangely, when they drift down like that I’m reminded of surfers drifting in to a beach as they sit nonchalantly astride their boards that are invisible beneath the water. Now the cormorants are sunning on a dry bedrock slab next to the riverbank, quite motionless, but always with eyes monitoring the lively water.
Before sunrise on this Sunday I found that the first sprouts from the new grass seed I’d sown on the Belvedere (in loam imported from nearby deposits) was up. I’d been checking for this first appearance for two or three days so I can confidently report that these emerging new blades all appeared above ground uniformly, the blade heights: 25-mm.
Nov 2. Spangled Drongos. Sunday arvo. I’m in the shade behind the Belvedere reading and writing when I see two widely separated dark birds further down the Right Bank; the binoculars confirm a couple of spangled drongos each of them aloft in young flood-wrecked casuarinas. Drongos tend to get around in small groups, socially, or to make solo adventures in familiar territory close to the nests. The two birds were separated by 40-m or so, each drongo at the top of his tree. They then took turns (or so it seemed) to dive down and out almost to midstream, there to splash on, rather than into, the surface, then bounce or skip to make a second similar splash half a metre further before lifting and wheeling about to return to the treetop. Was this an example of drongo bathing, I wondered? From their perches they had good views down and into the water; both repeated this behaviour several times. Thus, each had a good field of view, their target areas were safely in clear but not deep water and there were no predators like snakes and goannas to harass them. Kingfishers make such flights too, but they move at speed and hunt their prey in water that’s not very deep and then withdraw, quickly. The drongos were definitely not hunting (most of their food consists of flying insects taken in flight). Also, they nest high in big trees and combine to attack snakes or goannas that risk climbing high to reach their eggs. (The new Belvedere grass was 40-mm high, approx, at sunrise).
Nov 3. Invisible Cicadas. I’m upstairs at dusk and hear yet again the unsettling sound of a nearby cicada orchestra warming up. The volume and pitch seems varied and on this occasion the warm-up lasts for a minute or so. The drummers were heard two or three times last month but for brief periods and then forgotten about. This will certainly be a noisy summer. (The new Belvedere grass was approx 50-mm high before sunrise).
Nov 4. Grey Dragon. The new grass sprouting on the cleared flat bends to the morning sun. The medium-sized water dragon sits motionless, head up, in a patch of shade (I’m watching idly from the house). I’m reminded of yesterday’s hot afternoon when I sat comfortably in the shade at the back of the Belvedere and an inquisitive dragon’s head was up in the air. I expect he or she was scanning for insect movements. Dragons are at a disadvantage in even 75-mm of sparse grass because they’re so low-slung. That afternoon dragon then came up to the small garden next to me, the one with stones surrounding the white cedar, and shimmied up a metre-high tomato stake (marking a Bloodshot dahlia). From that grand height, elegant claws across the squared top of the stake, he could survey all of the Belvedere, presently a very popular hunting ground. Perhaps he was also curious to see me reading Lee Siegel’s essays, Falling Upwards (‘I say, Blanche, I was up the stake, spotting hunting targets, you know, when I noticed Agdor was reading an Up book. Curious, eh what?’).
Nov 5. Bellinger Flood-watch. Again. More storms, showers—and even rain—having been forecast for today I chose early Outside Work as a priority. Not that it matters, but the Big Lawn was nicely ready for a good trim: the weeds were standing high (you can’t enthusiastically chip weeds unendingly: the mower effects more rapid change). First some important emails (rels are heading to these parts), following daybreak clearing and some further revetment in front of the Belvedere, some writing decisions, then The (radio) Bookshow and then I took the mower down and started cutting on damp soil. No dust. Wonderful. In two one-hour sessions I gave Big Lawn the attention it deserved and she looked almost beautiful again (lawns are female, I’ve decided). Storms had been predicted. Some spitting showers pattered lightly as I was finishing. Later, violent electrical storms cut short the writing plans and the computer was turned off for safety. Then much rain fell. Within minutes Big Lawn began disappearing as ponding and streaming developed in front of the house. Some of the loam I’ve spread across the revetment will have been washed out. The new grass should hold. Early news bulletins indicated three rivers were on flood-watch, including the Bellinger, naturally. Having not quite had a recent flood here, despite some flash flooding in the Bellingen area, I knew we’d all need a lot of luck to avoid yet another flood (the local newspaper headline indicated a fourth flood for the year despite the Lavender Bridge being only partly submerged; in the Darkwood the adjacent bridge deck stayed almost a metre above the rising river). Storm rains transforming to what looks like the start of Flood Rain followed. All night. Is this to be the fair dinkum Fourth Flood (or possibly the Fifth, for some?).
Nov 6. No flood here, for once, but yet again a flood in Bellingen and Coffs Harbour—with evacuations and rescues in the Coffs Creek area.
Nov 9. I meet Chris and Kerry at Sapphire. All’s well but it’s another hot day.
Nov 16. A v warm day and the temperature at about 30˚C as I arrive home to ‘my’ blessed shading trees. As I totter along the path to the house I almost take a couple of steps too many: a dramatically handsome carpet snake lies across my path. ‘Oh, er, ah, g’day,’ I murmur. The snake moves not and I see a disdainful right eye survey me briefly. This fellow is about 2-m long and gleaming with rude good health, but s-he doesn’t look at all like your usual local python—this one has the striking carpet patterning, but the colours, instead of being rather dull and yellowish are much more contrasty; there are reds and I think, blues. I hope it was a python and not some nightmarish ‘new’ hybrid critter with venomous fangs as well as python’s teeth). Sigh. –And I took the trouble to walk respectfully behind him at a distance to reach the front door. Then I returned to watch him/her move like an oiled and v colourful tube (reminding me of a Klimt painting for some exotic reason) up and over the broken shale wall lining the path and it wafted away into the scrub between the path and the cliff face. Surely it wasn’t a rock python? Such snakes are reputedly very dark in colour. Also, and this is peculiar, this is only the second or third snake of any respectable size that I’ve met all season. Dashed odd, what?
And then I strove mightily to locate my 60-odd digital pics and change several into emails. I wonder did they arrive as intended? I have high hopes of eventually learning how to get one of these into or onto the Diary blogsite. To my surprise ALL of these new pics look good to me: no blurring or camera wobble evident.
Nov 18/19. Sharon and Oren visit and we eat, drink and talk. The weather behaves nicely but the temperature is rising and there are dangerous fire warnings in many areas (& a total fire ban in NSW).
Nov 23. I take the iMac and visit my friend Kerry at Moonee. It’s hot and windy. Cicadas everywhere. The computer is quite well but requires about 3 hours to download updated software. I learn a little more about photo arrangements from K and he deftly demonstrates the placing of one of my new pics on the blogsite. K lends me Alan Furst’s The Spies of Warsaw, a thriller set in one of my favourite years: 1937. Isn’t it strange how the symbols for 1937 stick in one’s mind. It was the year we left Vancouver Island, signed on as crew and sailed to S Africa/Mozambique on the SS Bencleugh—and the many tons of lumber that filled her holds and also was stacked bridge-high and secured with enormous chains. Unsinkable. The Year of the Cabin Boy.
Nov 19. After several discussions about the Council’s Heritage-listing of properties, I attend a public info session at the BSC. I’m able to ask questions of a Council officer. Penelope arrives and we learn more about Heritage listing. It’s yet another hot day.
Nov 26. It’s again hot and breezy. Some night creature has further attacked the roses and the budding dahlias in the fenced part of the Theatre Garden. What a mess. The roses are all dying because they’ve been savagely pruned (tips and buds). I decide to start moving the roses (they’re otherwise doomed) back to the Dog’s Garden. Naturally, it’s a hot morning but I begin before sunrise. The dahlias may be less attractive to the Creature so I’ll leave them there, next to the lantana and the forest. There is perhaps a slightly better than 50-50 chance that the roses may recover. All the other plants in the Dog’s Garden are thriving, especially the red salvia.
The river is falling quickly again.
If you have got this far I offer another midge story for your entertainment (if the narrative seems, also, to be an unsolvable mystery, please send me an email and I’ll explain)...
© text Don Diespecker 2009
A Room Of Her Own
Don Diespecker
Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.
Virginia Woolf: A Room of One’s Own
Midges are of course known to each other by their World names and as everybody now knows, World names can only be learned, i.e., acquired, intuitively. Even the human, the Old Gardener was able to learn his acronym-based World name, Agdor, the learning made easier with the good-natured cooperation of the Local Assembly Speaker, an old mosquito who invariably swished and squelched with Agdor’s blood (Agdor from ‘A Good Drop Of Red’). For the benefit of curious readers, the acquisition of World names is a Traditional Midge Ritual. For those humans desirous of learning their World names it is necessary to do as the midges do: pairs of humans must stand respectfully quiet without swatting or scratching for precisely 7 seconds while fixing on each other. The fixing interval is based on the Universal Time of 7 seconds (a magical number in all realms). During the fixing interval personnel remain silent, respectful and absolutely peaceful (viz, totally without rancour while emanating only positive thoughts no matter how, when or where they may have encountered one another). Waves of intuitive curiosity then flow from each living organism and at the nexus of these emanations a glow of golden light quickly grows brighter until it displays the World names of each ‘protagonist’. Thus Agdor, was always able to learn the names of midges by applying this simple and gracious principle. It should be noted by any living being reading these words that The 7 Seconds Principle is also a necessary First Step in learning not only Midgespeak Local Dialects, but of acquiring a noble proficiency, if not a fluency, in the Universal Language, or Lingo, (UL) such that even humans are able to comprehend all insect and animal communications: they can also converse in UL with all creatures and do so, like all creatures, majestically and without the hindrance of local or regional accents—a coveted accomplishment (especially of humans) guaranteeing all living organisms such neutral-sounding speech that it almost perfectly resembles BBC English in its speaking qualities and so much so that the profession of comedian in all realms requires comics to communicate either in local or regional and sometimes in national speech.
*
After the untimely passing of Raoul Socrates Midge during the harrowing and unfinished Project, Fix and Pitch mission of the Local Big Mind, of which Raoul had been the Director, there was gloom and despondency in the Local Sector of Midgeworld. It lasted for weeks. In due course a new Director was elected: Salvador Plato Midge, and there was rejoicing in the Local Sector because Sal, as he was popularly known, was not only a most cognitive midge—a thinker—he was also a creative artist, despite, at times also being sorely troubled by the conflict between thinking rationally and the creative ruminating that afforded him his most artistic moments. In moments of creative relaxation Sal also created jigsaw puzzles that he bartered for found objects. And he also welcomed his colleagues to his Fine Arts Gallery, playfully called Objets Trouvés. Although the Gallery adjoined Salvador’s modest home it was entirely separate from Sal’s quarters.
Although a distinguished midge Salvador Plato was also an odd sort of a chap, for not only was he a philosopher and a deep thinker who had (like his august human namesake) founded the nearby Midgeworld Academy of Arts, Sciences and Consciousness, but he was acknowledged throughout the known World as THE Midgeworld Academy founder such that all of the world’s Midge Academies were subsequently founded and constructed along the lines specified by Sal who lived peacefully in the Darkwood Forest of New South Wales, Australia and as the human Plato had himself announced in bold letters above the door of his own house so long ago, Sal had arranged for Local termites to carve, as inscription, the provocative epigram, Let no one enter who does not know geometry. And although it was never openly argued, some of Salvador Plato Midge’s critics insisted that the ancient (human) Plato inscription ended, not with the word geometry, but with the word mathematics, while the majority of Locals simply shrugged their wings and suggested that the inscription’s last word was nothing more than a moot point; however, so many Local Sector midges were puzzled by this remarkable inscription that they very soon came to believe that there was some metaphysical benefit to be obtained by each and every midge who would contrive a saw or saying or epigram or epigraph—almost any kind of inscription, they decided, would do—such that considerable numbers of midges of both genders determinedly went out of their ways each to display a pithy saying over the entrance to their dwelling. Although his predecessor, the esteemed Raoul Socrates Midge, had distinguished himself by exploring the many possibilities of acquiring genuine knowledge he had neglected to record in writing, all forms of writing being a desirable but extremely difficult process to achieve, any of his remarkably well argued views. It was a chap’s memory, Raoul Socrates asserted, that counted.
Thus it was that Salvador Plato Midge considered himself honour-bound to dutifully record, somehow, in writing, as many of his predecessor’s words as could be remembered, not only by his own efforts, but also by soliciting the memories of his many friends and acquaintances; however (there is always a ‘however’ with these philosophical fellows), and because the ancient human Socrates did not himself write a word (for heaven’s sakes) it should be borne in mind that when the human Plato was writing either about or of Socrates he was actually voicing his own (Plato’s) views… and Salvador Plato Midge considered this to be so very droll! And then there were all the modern-day critics who insisted that as it was with the human Socrates and the human Plato, so it was too with the eponymously named midges (in other words, the midges were all supposedly pragmatic and somewhat rigid). The greatest difficulty in Salvador’s life was the haunting awareness of his inability to invent a reliable method of writing or printing; thus, memory and memorizing was of paramount importance to the entire community. And as much as Sal appreciated the undeniable veracity of midge memory, his inability to record anything in writing had also provoked what was now a chronic and ineffable sadness. And because Sal also suffered from a lifelong attraction to honesty he put a second and very different motto above his little-used rear door, ars longa vita brevis. Had he been completely honest he would have made the sign in English, rather than in Latin (art is long, life is short.)
And there was that other oddity about the contemporary Salvador Plato Midge: he was essentially also an artist in a community that almost perversely presumed itself to be pragmatic and conservative. Sal’s art gallery and his modest lifestyle occasioned little comment; he was Salvador Plato Midge, a very decent fellow who was everybody’s friend.
*
Late on a splendid spring day, and with the sun westering over the Darkwood, Salvador Plato was taking his ease in his favourite web hammock (Sal was on very good terms with his neighbour, the female Huntsman spider, sometimes known locally as Apocalypse Now (or AN, for short) although as Sal’s friend, she was ‘Betty’ and both creatures remained cooperative and peaceful neighbours following the negotiation of their joint non-aggression pact. From where he reclined in his hammock Sal had a wonderful Downstream View of the green and gold shining river gleaming in the late afternoon light, for his home and all the way to Farewell Bend was pleasantly located high in a Bird’s Nest Fern growing from a crevice in the shale cliff face above and behind Earthrise, as Agador called his home at Midgeworld. Birds were wary of the midge house in the fern because both seemed suspended in the air surrounding the cliff of weathered shale on the forested slope behind Agdor’s house (where birds occasionally landed in foliage at speed and these unfortunate flyers sometimes crashed into Agdor’s glass windows and doors and even into the stone cliff, usually with fatal results). Salvador was also able to enjoy part of the Upstream View to Hello Bend, the Rapids and The Pool in front of the Old Gardener’s house. The views from this safe eyrie were unsurpassed and inspirational.
Salvador was in his hammock this late afternoon and partly outside, suspended above his top-floor deck. He was close to nodding off as he swung gently while smiling at the Downstream View. He buzzed his wings briefly to salute Betty nearby who eye-winked in return. There were all the current ‘writing’ projects (i.e., memories to be processed by special teams of very cognitive midges known locally as The Cognoscenti), Sal thought. There were revisions of My Grounded Republic and Midgeworld’s Flying Laws to be considered. There were Governmental meetings to be organised and they would also have to be recorded by appropriately trained journalists; and there were—what was that? The Huntsman tugged the warning thread that waved and rustled the leaf alarm and when Sal looked directly upwards he became aware of the clamorous rattling of many leaves and twigs heralding the arrival of a large midge. It was one of the most powerful of the Local Sector Council members (The Council of Ten), Baron Scarpia Midge, the Police Chief who appeared to be landing aggressively. In a trice Sal launched upward to touch feelers with The Chief.
‘My dear Salvador,’ gasped the overweight Scarpia ‘forgive my unannounced arrival,’ and he slowly descended to the covered or interior section of Salvador’s deck asking, as he descended, for permission to land.
‘Of course, yes and welcome. Let us hang our wings out to dry and relax. –I don’t understand, Chief. What’s going on?’
‘This is urgent. There was no time to call ahead. We have a problem, we the leaders of the community, I mean. It’s the Hon Morgana.’
‘Morgana!’ said the amazed Salvador. ‘Has she broken a law?’
‘I do hope not, but the evidence suggests otherwise. She is leaving home,’ whispered the Baron.
‘What? Why on Earth would she even think of doing such a thing when we all know that Sir Gawain, her most protective brother, would never allow it? Could it be a secret lover? Is that it?’
Baron Scarpia Midge rolled his eyes, snorted and took a very deep breath. ‘Sir Gawain knows who all her friends are and most of his lady friends are widely known, also. And we all know that Sir G has a reputation as a dangerous philanderer.’
‘All of the midge folk are well known to you, I think, Baron? Why might you be concerned if she were to leave her brother’s care?’
‘Dash it all, Salvador, it’s because she’s allegedly becoming subversive! There’s evidence!’
‘What? The Hon Morgana is the sweetest—‘
‘Forgive my interrupting you, SP, but there have been reports. The Hon Morgana plans an abrupt Left Turn and if her friends and admirers are not able to protect her she may very well stray into, ugh, the Dark Side, alas.’
‘Great Sky!’ exclaimed an appalled Salvador. ‘This is astounding information, Baron! I simply cannot imagine—‘
‘SP,’ whispered Baron Scarpia Midge, bending conspiratorially toward Sal, ‘one of my agents has had her under surveillance for some time now—‘
‘But why, Baron, why?’
The Chief sighed lengthily (while an increasingly puzzled Salvador Plato realised that the Chief was now looking decidedly anxious). This was certainly becoming a difficult conversation for both midges. ‘Evidence that Morgana (and here the Baron Scarpia leaned forward to stare piercingly into Salvador’s eyes) has intentions to be a writer.’
‘A writer!’ gasped Salvador. ‘And that, you suggest, is a very bad thing? We all try our best to write, somehow, or at least to record our compositions thoughtfully…unless—‘
‘Exactly,’ the Baron replied, ‘it isn’t just writing, qua writing, for the sake of it—‘
‘You don’t mean—‘
‘I’m afraid so, my dear Sal. The rumours and gossip are that the Hon Morgana intends to write fiction and to become a novelist!’
‘Fiction? But, but—‘
‘Yes quite. Unthinkable. Unnatural. Disharmonious and dangerous and it will lead to unrest in the Local Sector.’
Sal’s antennae drooped instantly and asymmetrically, indeed the starboard feeler literally dangled. His head fell forward and he weakly raised a foreleg to shield his eyes as he said in despair: ‘I cannot believe it; it simply cannot be true!’
‘It’s true, SP. Another of my agents has been filing, so to say, reports that describe Morgana’s attempts to record her fictions on leaves.’
‘Fire and Water! The narratives couldn’t possibly be feuilletons, could they?’
‘No, we’re talking printing. She’s become friendly with the Americans who recently arrived by Human Collar from California in one of the human Flying Machines and they’re—all of this dangerous little group—using raindrops as lenses for our Sun to burn notational holes in gum leaves.’
‘Ciphers and punctate or punched hole printing,’ gasped Sal. ‘They can actually do that now?’
‘It seems so,’ said the Chief grimly.
‘This is too much,’ said Sal, reeling. ‘Fictions? Novelist? We simply do not do that in Midgeworld, why, it’s unheard of!’
‘And also iconoclastic and probably treacherous.’
‘Oh my goodness! I say Baron, have you somehow been making Notes?
‘Indeed I have, yes, and more than that, I plan to draft a report and hope to employ our best Dictionary Personnel while composing the report. I only wish it could be printed by the new method but then I would become subversive and you might have to arrest me.’
‘Oh!’ wailed Salvador, ‘ what have we come to and how have we so miserably failed Morgana? Our education program and all of our teachings have always emphasised truth, right practice, pragmatism and er, ah, the objective, um, approach to correctly composing or writing nonfiction. Journalism would be a good example and we do need another journalist to work on the Midgeworld Local Sector Express. Surely, Chief, you could encourage Morgana to be our next reporter or even our rapporteur or would that be rapporteuse?’
‘No, it’s too late for that, SP. The second part of my bad news is that Morgana not only intends to leave home, she is about to do so or may already have done so—steady on, old man, or you’ll fall into the forest!’
Salvador Plato Midge groaned and clutched at his fevered brow.
‘Look, SP, I must leave you now—many urgent matters pending—there’s a rumour that this group of—how shall I describe them—these storytellers and writers—are seeking a safe house. Forgive me if this information is upsetting. I absolutely must take my leave now; no, no, I’ll see myself up, thank you and now, farewell.’ As the philosopher stared in surprise the Baron Scarpia Midge revved his nicely dried wings and arose very much as a human police helicopter might do: directly into the luxuriant cover of the forest canopy, leaving below a very puzzled Sal.
*
The doughty Salvador now struggled to compose himself. His dulled wings had crinkled at the leading edges; he strained to properly unfurl his drooping antennae and to will renewed feeling and sensitivity into them. He knew that he must urge himself to a rapid recovery or fail as both philosopher and leader. Now he focussed his awareness on motivating the restoration of what had seemed lost: his wholeness, his integrity. Suddenly, there was a small downdraft sufficient to dramatically alert his feelers to near-perfect sensitivity. Peering upwards he saw the tiny form of the Hon Morgana descending. Warm air from the cliff face made her descent wobbly and even dangerous, but she persevered and soon was able to directly signal her intention to Salvador.
‘Sir, it is Morgana. Have I your permission to land, please? Betty told me to ask you directly.’
‘Of course, yes, Morgana,’ Salvador Plato Midge replied nervously. ‘Such a busy time, yet you are always welcome here. Please settle.’
‘Thank you, Salvador Plato,’ said Morgana. She touched down lightly a respectful 30-mm from the philosopher. ‘I saw the Baron Scarpia moments ago. He seemed most preoccupied and was unaware of me starting my descent. I’m sure I know why he’s been visiting you here.’
‘It’s because you want to be a writer and even to leave home to write,’ Salvador said as calmly as possible while discretely urging micro movements and proto-stretches to restore vitality to his muscles and joints.
‘It’s so complex a story that I can’t yet explain it all but what you have just said is largely true,’ said Morgana. ‘I felt I had to leave the powerful influence of my brother in order to work towards becoming the writer I know I may one day be. Dear Gawain has always fussed so. He over protected me. I had to leave, I had to.’
‘You have already left home?’
‘I have, yes.’
‘But what has your brother said to you about this? Life is so short, Morgana.’
Morgana paused. ‘Sir Gawain agrees. May I explain later? I have come to you, Salvador Plato to ask if you would allow me to rent studio space in your safe house so that I could work and live quietly while enjoying your protection. No one would dare to attack or attempt to influence me here. Please say yes. I could repay such kindness by assisting you in your home or in the art gallery. Please, please, dear Salvador Plato, our lives are so short because we are midges; all is so ephemeral. I do so wish to make written writings before I die.’
‘Er, and fiction writing, I believe.’ SP took a very deep breath and without quite appreciating the epoch-making and hugely radical moment, he added, ‘Of course you may stay here. Will you require a Memorising Team?’
‘No, my mind is clear and thank you, dear Salvador Plato; you are a true friend. Both fiction and literary nonfiction and gonzo journalism currently motivate me. I am eager to begin! Where may I settle and work, please?’
‘Why, exactly right here, if you wish. There is a splendid view and with Betty on one side and myself, so to say, on this other side, you should be secure. Betty, by the way, would not dream of eating us; we are far too tiny to make a meal and, she has told me, with wry good humour that only her late husbands were of a nourishing size. You are most welcome to use my web-hammock if you wish.’
Morgana smiled. ‘Thank you kindly, Salvador Plato. I shall always remember this. And please don’t be concerned about Sir Gawain. He is in the middle of everything and wildly distracted. If I may, I’ll start work now. Please say when you want my assistance and I’ll help. I have everything I need inside my head; only humans have baggage, ha ha.’
*
When Sal had left to work in his Gallery, Morgana perched between the hammock and the edge of a fern leaf. She wasted no time in examining her new writing space for there was much to be done and she knew that all of her work must necessarily be accessed from within her mind and then spoken, however softly, for the notions, the themes, and the resultant narratives to come into the world and to then be recognised and remembered. The view was indeed extraordinary. She watched the silvery surface of the river flow sweetly past toward Farewell Bend. There were suggestions of themes that she imagined might now, with some good fortune, become manifest.
Morgana focussed calmly on the river and began composing. Unlike humans who generally needed to hold a pen or pencil or to press keys and to see where they placed symbols and arranged the ordered structures of their writings, Morgana was entirely unhampered and able to compose her narratives by speaking them while viewing the wavering surface of the green river that flowed past so majestically. She titled her first piece Beginnings:
As an infant midge changing to a child midge nested within the Home Leaf I remember seeing only the family there being nothing either outside or beyond and being thus contained within meant that our home was my world entire and there was nothing else in my world save those who nurtured me until such time as I was able to understand that our leaf house infrequently contained us all together at the same time and that members would come and go to find nourishment in the Greater World while I so newly arrived must necessarily be provided for by those who had brought me to the Home Leaf for I was then a foundling orphan something not much known in our Local Sector and so much so that I knew nothing of myself nor who I was nor how I had come to be or had come to this Home and yet none of that matters because here I am now and seeing and hearing and tasting and smelling the great river while also balancing harmoniously in the wing-beaten air adjacent all of it my home always or so I thought and even though I asked before they passed away no-one in the family not even Gawain would ever fully explain to me how I came to be or had come at first as a stranger so tiny and helpless and newly sprung it seemed and unattended in the stream this same shimmering river this torrent this great mystery of Water that allows me to remember and to dream and even enables my imagination to see from within these tiny memories of the early family days and all those who saved me and grew me and in my images too there are also those other even smaller images of an older time a time that was earlier than my family an era that I think surely held lightly my very own nuclear family who may have lost me or not known how I vanished from them in a distant time when I was likely stolen but there is no-one now who can say how I came to be on a leaf on the waters floating past this place although now it seems that that there was truly a family from nearby who Started me and they too were loving and nourishing and I fear they may have perished in a great flood though they lived high in a very great e.grandis tree above us all on the mountain the tree so high that the family could see for miles see for miles see the ocean distantly the sea and I seeing as I presently am seeing the fragments now…
Morgana completed the voicing of the draft and sighed. ‘Again I almost remembered something I thought was lost or forgotten,’ she said aloud and then was startled by Betty’s voice nearby.
‘I don’t know that I got all of that,’ said the spider, millimetres away, ‘but I can read it back to you if you like. It’s all coded into that part of this web closest to where you are now. Your writing voice, by the way, is terribly faint.’
‘Thank you Betty but I too can recall it all.’
‘OK. Can I hear some more, then? It’s pretty quiet up here most of the time. You don’t mind? I could even offer feedback. –And I once was a line editor on the old Arachnidworld Chronicles and was their Foreign Correspondent before that.’
‘I don’t mind. It was only a fragmentary interior monologue. Tell you what, you can record the next part if you like. The rhetoric is trickier for me to write. You’d be doing me a favour.’
‘You’re doing me a favour,’ said Betty. ‘It’s not exactly Actionville here these days.’
Morgana closed her eyes briefly before starting a new narrative. ‘Here we go. I’m calling this Country Seat.’
A barefoot Princess Fleur walked slowly through the Great Park, shoes in hand then she paused and stopped. It was probably a great foolishness, no doubt about it. The word would get out. Not that it mattered. Who cared, really, what people might say? People, what people? Oh damn! Everyone would know by now anyway. Everybody could see. It was all so obvious. It would be another calamity like the one here at Insight all those years ago. The passenger seat of all places was it? Almost had to marry him. But what a time it was! Those wonderful summer days so endlessly long so marvellously filled with bright young people! Girls in summer dresses. Straw hats. Parasols. How discretely the girls laughed and giggled. How boisterous were the young fellows. So bold so dashing. Can never forget him winning in our Humber Snipe racing at Brooklands and Monza. Such a dasher the chauffeur was. Such a close thing it was too and all so absurd. Remember his name? Striped blazers. White flannels. Boating. The chaps sometimes fell in. It was all such a game. Showing off really to impress us. Young once.
So young and foolish all of us were. Yet we had so much pleasure then. Thought we’d stay forever young. We’d all live forever. And now? An older and less wise Princess considers her destiny. The moneyed aristocrat awaits my afternoon arrival. Possibly will propose. Would suit me yet probably he won’t. The entire household given the weekend off and there shall be champagne and caviar. No doubt. We shall make do fending and foraging for ourselves. Ahead there shall be just the two of us romping through that rambling great pile. Even his sister notably absent shall be. Had she run away to make her fortune, join the circus fulfil her dreams? Incomplete: my princely brother planning dark vengeance against my incautious lover and what if he should kill him or worse kill him before we’re wed? One way or the other each man maddened by power by ambition. It’s too late now. The grass feels so good. But put my shoes on again.
Princesses should go forward determined. How else to get what I want?
‘Aha! Yes I see. Cute,’ said Betty. ‘Any more?’
‘Yes last one now. Let me see. This I shall call Understated.
‘May I offer you a drink your Highness?’
‘I say steady on Thomas!’
‘Forgive me Ma’am. I do apologize.’
‘Oh do give over. Is there another glass?’
‘Yes Ma’am the cocktail cabinet inside the seat back.’
‘You did so well today. You won! Pour.’
‘Say when.’
‘What is this stuff?’
‘Best Cognac Ma’am.’
‘Mine no doubt.’
‘Yes Ma’am sorry it’s just a little for the race.’
‘Do stop apologizing! Take more next time. What’s your first name?’
‘Len Ma’am, Leonard Thomas.’
‘Then kiss me Leonard!’
Betty laughed, wheezing a little. ‘Just say if you want feedback or an edit.’
Morgana buzzed her wings at low revs to convey her thanks and to signal her farewell before bouncing up to the hammock. She had made a good start, she thought. She would take a nap and then pop down and offer to assist Sal. Perhaps later this evening she would explain herself further; possibly she might not need to. What was it she’d been told by the Cognoscenti, something Whitehead had written in his Dialogues: Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience, and our aesthetic enjoyment is recognition of the pattern.
Below in the Gallery Salvador Plato was considering the placement of a new twig to hold an old holed leaf in such a way that when a Placement Crew had set it all up for viewing the viewer would see (as it were) a circular framed view of the afternoon river at about 16:30 hours for the next two days when the reflected light of the setting sun shining from the forested mountainside down onto the water would gleam like old gold. The visitors would enjoy it, he was sure. He remembered something his human namesake had written long, long ago; perhaps he would mention it to Morgana: Our object in the construction of the state is the greatest happiness of the whole, and not that of any one class.
Plato (Republic, Bk 4)
The Earthrise Diary (November 2009)
Don Diespecker
Nov 1 2009. Black Cormorants. There’s a fresh in the river. It’s dwindling now, some days after the soaking rains, but it still looks good. Apparently this mainstream surge also looks good to a couple of black cormorants (they’re a larger bird than the much smaller black and white Little Cormorants like Clarrie who generally works the Pool in front of the house). I’m sitting in the shade behind the Belvedere reading Lee Siegel’s essays and spying on the cormorants. The cormorants are riding down the glinting mainstream, side by side on this Sunday morning and I don’t think they’re working. The river is quite full too. They go down (I like to think) cheerfully, good naturedly and when they reach the Pool they ease away from the flow and drift more slowly toward the far bank where they turn to look back. When they turn their heads their bodies are lifted a little by the torrent’s flow and so you can see something of their slightly inclined backs sloping to their slightly pert tails. But when they’re drifting downstream through the mainstream’s channel all you can see of them is the black heads and the black necks because their bulk is under water. Strangely, when they drift down like that I’m reminded of surfers drifting in to a beach as they sit nonchalantly astride their boards that are invisible beneath the water. Now the cormorants are sunning on a dry bedrock slab next to the riverbank, quite motionless, but always with eyes monitoring the lively water.
Before sunrise on this Sunday I found that the first sprouts from the new grass seed I’d sown on the Belvedere (in loam imported from nearby deposits) was up. I’d been checking for this first appearance for two or three days so I can confidently report that these emerging new blades all appeared above ground uniformly, the blade heights: 25-mm.
Nov 2. Spangled Drongos. Sunday arvo. I’m in the shade behind the Belvedere reading and writing when I see two widely separated dark birds further down the Right Bank; the binoculars confirm a couple of spangled drongos each of them aloft in young flood-wrecked casuarinas. Drongos tend to get around in small groups, socially, or to make solo adventures in familiar territory close to the nests. The two birds were separated by 40-m or so, each drongo at the top of his tree. They then took turns (or so it seemed) to dive down and out almost to midstream, there to splash on, rather than into, the surface, then bounce or skip to make a second similar splash half a metre further before lifting and wheeling about to return to the treetop. Was this an example of drongo bathing, I wondered? From their perches they had good views down and into the water; both repeated this behaviour several times. Thus, each had a good field of view, their target areas were safely in clear but not deep water and there were no predators like snakes and goannas to harass them. Kingfishers make such flights too, but they move at speed and hunt their prey in water that’s not very deep and then withdraw, quickly. The drongos were definitely not hunting (most of their food consists of flying insects taken in flight). Also, they nest high in big trees and combine to attack snakes or goannas that risk climbing high to reach their eggs. (The new Belvedere grass was 40-mm high, approx, at sunrise).
Nov 3. Invisible Cicadas. I’m upstairs at dusk and hear yet again the unsettling sound of a nearby cicada orchestra warming up. The volume and pitch seems varied and on this occasion the warm-up lasts for a minute or so. The drummers were heard two or three times last month but for brief periods and then forgotten about. This will certainly be a noisy summer. (The new Belvedere grass was approx 50-mm high before sunrise).
Nov 4. Grey Dragon. The new grass sprouting on the cleared flat bends to the morning sun. The medium-sized water dragon sits motionless, head up, in a patch of shade (I’m watching idly from the house). I’m reminded of yesterday’s hot afternoon when I sat comfortably in the shade at the back of the Belvedere and an inquisitive dragon’s head was up in the air. I expect he or she was scanning for insect movements. Dragons are at a disadvantage in even 75-mm of sparse grass because they’re so low-slung. That afternoon dragon then came up to the small garden next to me, the one with stones surrounding the white cedar, and shimmied up a metre-high tomato stake (marking a Bloodshot dahlia). From that grand height, elegant claws across the squared top of the stake, he could survey all of the Belvedere, presently a very popular hunting ground. Perhaps he was also curious to see me reading Lee Siegel’s essays, Falling Upwards (‘I say, Blanche, I was up the stake, spotting hunting targets, you know, when I noticed Agdor was reading an Up book. Curious, eh what?’).
Nov 5. Bellinger Flood-watch. Again. More storms, showers—and even rain—having been forecast for today I chose early Outside Work as a priority. Not that it matters, but the Big Lawn was nicely ready for a good trim: the weeds were standing high (you can’t enthusiastically chip weeds unendingly: the mower effects more rapid change). First some important emails (rels are heading to these parts), following daybreak clearing and some further revetment in front of the Belvedere, some writing decisions, then The (radio) Bookshow and then I took the mower down and started cutting on damp soil. No dust. Wonderful. In two one-hour sessions I gave Big Lawn the attention it deserved and she looked almost beautiful again (lawns are female, I’ve decided). Storms had been predicted. Some spitting showers pattered lightly as I was finishing. Later, violent electrical storms cut short the writing plans and the computer was turned off for safety. Then much rain fell. Within minutes Big Lawn began disappearing as ponding and streaming developed in front of the house. Some of the loam I’ve spread across the revetment will have been washed out. The new grass should hold. Early news bulletins indicated three rivers were on flood-watch, including the Bellinger, naturally. Having not quite had a recent flood here, despite some flash flooding in the Bellingen area, I knew we’d all need a lot of luck to avoid yet another flood (the local newspaper headline indicated a fourth flood for the year despite the Lavender Bridge being only partly submerged; in the Darkwood the adjacent bridge deck stayed almost a metre above the rising river). Storm rains transforming to what looks like the start of Flood Rain followed. All night. Is this to be the fair dinkum Fourth Flood (or possibly the Fifth, for some?).
Nov 6. No flood here, for once, but yet again a flood in Bellingen and Coffs Harbour—with evacuations and rescues in the Coffs Creek area.
Nov 9. I meet Chris and Kerry at Sapphire. All’s well but it’s another hot day.
Nov 16. A v warm day and the temperature at about 30˚C as I arrive home to ‘my’ blessed shading trees. As I totter along the path to the house I almost take a couple of steps too many: a dramatically handsome carpet snake lies across my path. ‘Oh, er, ah, g’day,’ I murmur. The snake moves not and I see a disdainful right eye survey me briefly. This fellow is about 2-m long and gleaming with rude good health, but s-he doesn’t look at all like your usual local python—this one has the striking carpet patterning, but the colours, instead of being rather dull and yellowish are much more contrasty; there are reds and I think, blues. I hope it was a python and not some nightmarish ‘new’ hybrid critter with venomous fangs as well as python’s teeth). Sigh. –And I took the trouble to walk respectfully behind him at a distance to reach the front door. Then I returned to watch him/her move like an oiled and v colourful tube (reminding me of a Klimt painting for some exotic reason) up and over the broken shale wall lining the path and it wafted away into the scrub between the path and the cliff face. Surely it wasn’t a rock python? Such snakes are reputedly very dark in colour. Also, and this is peculiar, this is only the second or third snake of any respectable size that I’ve met all season. Dashed odd, what?
And then I strove mightily to locate my 60-odd digital pics and change several into emails. I wonder did they arrive as intended? I have high hopes of eventually learning how to get one of these into or onto the Diary blogsite. To my surprise ALL of these new pics look good to me: no blurring or camera wobble evident.
Nov 18/19. Sharon and Oren visit and we eat, drink and talk. The weather behaves nicely but the temperature is rising and there are dangerous fire warnings in many areas (& a total fire ban in NSW).
Nov 23. I take the iMac and visit my friend Kerry at Moonee. It’s hot and windy. Cicadas everywhere. The computer is quite well but requires about 3 hours to download updated software. I learn a little more about photo arrangements from K and he deftly demonstrates the placing of one of my new pics on the blogsite. K lends me Alan Furst’s The Spies of Warsaw, a thriller set in one of my favourite years: 1937. Isn’t it strange how the symbols for 1937 stick in one’s mind. It was the year we left Vancouver Island, signed on as crew and sailed to S Africa/Mozambique on the SS Bencleugh—and the many tons of lumber that filled her holds and also was stacked bridge-high and secured with enormous chains. Unsinkable. The Year of the Cabin Boy.
Nov 19. After several discussions about the Council’s Heritage-listing of properties, I attend a public info session at the BSC. I’m able to ask questions of a Council officer. Penelope arrives and we learn more about Heritage listing. It’s yet another hot day.
Nov 26. It’s again hot and breezy. Some night creature has further attacked the roses and the budding dahlias in the fenced part of the Theatre Garden. What a mess. The roses are all dying because they’ve been savagely pruned (tips and buds). I decide to start moving the roses (they’re otherwise doomed) back to the Dog’s Garden. Naturally, it’s a hot morning but I begin before sunrise. The dahlias may be less attractive to the Creature so I’ll leave them there, next to the lantana and the forest. There is perhaps a slightly better than 50-50 chance that the roses may recover. All the other plants in the Dog’s Garden are thriving, especially the red salvia.
The river is falling quickly again.
If you have got this far I offer another midge story for your entertainment (if the narrative seems, also, to be an unsolvable mystery, please send me an email and I’ll explain)...
© text Don Diespecker 2009
A Room Of Her Own
Don Diespecker
Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.
Virginia Woolf: A Room of One’s Own
Midges are of course known to each other by their World names and as everybody now knows, World names can only be learned, i.e., acquired, intuitively. Even the human, the Old Gardener was able to learn his acronym-based World name, Agdor, the learning made easier with the good-natured cooperation of the Local Assembly Speaker, an old mosquito who invariably swished and squelched with Agdor’s blood (Agdor from ‘A Good Drop Of Red’). For the benefit of curious readers, the acquisition of World names is a Traditional Midge Ritual. For those humans desirous of learning their World names it is necessary to do as the midges do: pairs of humans must stand respectfully quiet without swatting or scratching for precisely 7 seconds while fixing on each other. The fixing interval is based on the Universal Time of 7 seconds (a magical number in all realms). During the fixing interval personnel remain silent, respectful and absolutely peaceful (viz, totally without rancour while emanating only positive thoughts no matter how, when or where they may have encountered one another). Waves of intuitive curiosity then flow from each living organism and at the nexus of these emanations a glow of golden light quickly grows brighter until it displays the World names of each ‘protagonist’. Thus Agdor, was always able to learn the names of midges by applying this simple and gracious principle. It should be noted by any living being reading these words that The 7 Seconds Principle is also a necessary First Step in learning not only Midgespeak Local Dialects, but of acquiring a noble proficiency, if not a fluency, in the Universal Language, or Lingo, (UL) such that even humans are able to comprehend all insect and animal communications: they can also converse in UL with all creatures and do so, like all creatures, majestically and without the hindrance of local or regional accents—a coveted accomplishment (especially of humans) guaranteeing all living organisms such neutral-sounding speech that it almost perfectly resembles BBC English in its speaking qualities and so much so that the profession of comedian in all realms requires comics to communicate either in local or regional and sometimes in national speech.
*
After the untimely passing of Raoul Socrates Midge during the harrowing and unfinished Project, Fix and Pitch mission of the Local Big Mind, of which Raoul had been the Director, there was gloom and despondency in the Local Sector of Midgeworld. It lasted for weeks. In due course a new Director was elected: Salvador Plato Midge, and there was rejoicing in the Local Sector because Sal, as he was popularly known, was not only a most cognitive midge—a thinker—he was also a creative artist, despite, at times also being sorely troubled by the conflict between thinking rationally and the creative ruminating that afforded him his most artistic moments. In moments of creative relaxation Sal also created jigsaw puzzles that he bartered for found objects. And he also welcomed his colleagues to his Fine Arts Gallery, playfully called Objets Trouvés. Although the Gallery adjoined Salvador’s modest home it was entirely separate from Sal’s quarters.
Although a distinguished midge Salvador Plato was also an odd sort of a chap, for not only was he a philosopher and a deep thinker who had (like his august human namesake) founded the nearby Midgeworld Academy of Arts, Sciences and Consciousness, but he was acknowledged throughout the known World as THE Midgeworld Academy founder such that all of the world’s Midge Academies were subsequently founded and constructed along the lines specified by Sal who lived peacefully in the Darkwood Forest of New South Wales, Australia and as the human Plato had himself announced in bold letters above the door of his own house so long ago, Sal had arranged for Local termites to carve, as inscription, the provocative epigram, Let no one enter who does not know geometry. And although it was never openly argued, some of Salvador Plato Midge’s critics insisted that the ancient (human) Plato inscription ended, not with the word geometry, but with the word mathematics, while the majority of Locals simply shrugged their wings and suggested that the inscription’s last word was nothing more than a moot point; however, so many Local Sector midges were puzzled by this remarkable inscription that they very soon came to believe that there was some metaphysical benefit to be obtained by each and every midge who would contrive a saw or saying or epigram or epigraph—almost any kind of inscription, they decided, would do—such that considerable numbers of midges of both genders determinedly went out of their ways each to display a pithy saying over the entrance to their dwelling. Although his predecessor, the esteemed Raoul Socrates Midge, had distinguished himself by exploring the many possibilities of acquiring genuine knowledge he had neglected to record in writing, all forms of writing being a desirable but extremely difficult process to achieve, any of his remarkably well argued views. It was a chap’s memory, Raoul Socrates asserted, that counted.
Thus it was that Salvador Plato Midge considered himself honour-bound to dutifully record, somehow, in writing, as many of his predecessor’s words as could be remembered, not only by his own efforts, but also by soliciting the memories of his many friends and acquaintances; however (there is always a ‘however’ with these philosophical fellows), and because the ancient human Socrates did not himself write a word (for heaven’s sakes) it should be borne in mind that when the human Plato was writing either about or of Socrates he was actually voicing his own (Plato’s) views… and Salvador Plato Midge considered this to be so very droll! And then there were all the modern-day critics who insisted that as it was with the human Socrates and the human Plato, so it was too with the eponymously named midges (in other words, the midges were all supposedly pragmatic and somewhat rigid). The greatest difficulty in Salvador’s life was the haunting awareness of his inability to invent a reliable method of writing or printing; thus, memory and memorizing was of paramount importance to the entire community. And as much as Sal appreciated the undeniable veracity of midge memory, his inability to record anything in writing had also provoked what was now a chronic and ineffable sadness. And because Sal also suffered from a lifelong attraction to honesty he put a second and very different motto above his little-used rear door, ars longa vita brevis. Had he been completely honest he would have made the sign in English, rather than in Latin (art is long, life is short.)
And there was that other oddity about the contemporary Salvador Plato Midge: he was essentially also an artist in a community that almost perversely presumed itself to be pragmatic and conservative. Sal’s art gallery and his modest lifestyle occasioned little comment; he was Salvador Plato Midge, a very decent fellow who was everybody’s friend.
*
Late on a splendid spring day, and with the sun westering over the Darkwood, Salvador Plato was taking his ease in his favourite web hammock (Sal was on very good terms with his neighbour, the female Huntsman spider, sometimes known locally as Apocalypse Now (or AN, for short) although as Sal’s friend, she was ‘Betty’ and both creatures remained cooperative and peaceful neighbours following the negotiation of their joint non-aggression pact. From where he reclined in his hammock Sal had a wonderful Downstream View of the green and gold shining river gleaming in the late afternoon light, for his home and all the way to Farewell Bend was pleasantly located high in a Bird’s Nest Fern growing from a crevice in the shale cliff face above and behind Earthrise, as Agador called his home at Midgeworld. Birds were wary of the midge house in the fern because both seemed suspended in the air surrounding the cliff of weathered shale on the forested slope behind Agdor’s house (where birds occasionally landed in foliage at speed and these unfortunate flyers sometimes crashed into Agdor’s glass windows and doors and even into the stone cliff, usually with fatal results). Salvador was also able to enjoy part of the Upstream View to Hello Bend, the Rapids and The Pool in front of the Old Gardener’s house. The views from this safe eyrie were unsurpassed and inspirational.
Salvador was in his hammock this late afternoon and partly outside, suspended above his top-floor deck. He was close to nodding off as he swung gently while smiling at the Downstream View. He buzzed his wings briefly to salute Betty nearby who eye-winked in return. There were all the current ‘writing’ projects (i.e., memories to be processed by special teams of very cognitive midges known locally as The Cognoscenti), Sal thought. There were revisions of My Grounded Republic and Midgeworld’s Flying Laws to be considered. There were Governmental meetings to be organised and they would also have to be recorded by appropriately trained journalists; and there were—what was that? The Huntsman tugged the warning thread that waved and rustled the leaf alarm and when Sal looked directly upwards he became aware of the clamorous rattling of many leaves and twigs heralding the arrival of a large midge. It was one of the most powerful of the Local Sector Council members (The Council of Ten), Baron Scarpia Midge, the Police Chief who appeared to be landing aggressively. In a trice Sal launched upward to touch feelers with The Chief.
‘My dear Salvador,’ gasped the overweight Scarpia ‘forgive my unannounced arrival,’ and he slowly descended to the covered or interior section of Salvador’s deck asking, as he descended, for permission to land.
‘Of course, yes and welcome. Let us hang our wings out to dry and relax. –I don’t understand, Chief. What’s going on?’
‘This is urgent. There was no time to call ahead. We have a problem, we the leaders of the community, I mean. It’s the Hon Morgana.’
‘Morgana!’ said the amazed Salvador. ‘Has she broken a law?’
‘I do hope not, but the evidence suggests otherwise. She is leaving home,’ whispered the Baron.
‘What? Why on Earth would she even think of doing such a thing when we all know that Sir Gawain, her most protective brother, would never allow it? Could it be a secret lover? Is that it?’
Baron Scarpia Midge rolled his eyes, snorted and took a very deep breath. ‘Sir Gawain knows who all her friends are and most of his lady friends are widely known, also. And we all know that Sir G has a reputation as a dangerous philanderer.’
‘All of the midge folk are well known to you, I think, Baron? Why might you be concerned if she were to leave her brother’s care?’
‘Dash it all, Salvador, it’s because she’s allegedly becoming subversive! There’s evidence!’
‘What? The Hon Morgana is the sweetest—‘
‘Forgive my interrupting you, SP, but there have been reports. The Hon Morgana plans an abrupt Left Turn and if her friends and admirers are not able to protect her she may very well stray into, ugh, the Dark Side, alas.’
‘Great Sky!’ exclaimed an appalled Salvador. ‘This is astounding information, Baron! I simply cannot imagine—‘
‘SP,’ whispered Baron Scarpia Midge, bending conspiratorially toward Sal, ‘one of my agents has had her under surveillance for some time now—‘
‘But why, Baron, why?’
The Chief sighed lengthily (while an increasingly puzzled Salvador Plato realised that the Chief was now looking decidedly anxious). This was certainly becoming a difficult conversation for both midges. ‘Evidence that Morgana (and here the Baron Scarpia leaned forward to stare piercingly into Salvador’s eyes) has intentions to be a writer.’
‘A writer!’ gasped Salvador. ‘And that, you suggest, is a very bad thing? We all try our best to write, somehow, or at least to record our compositions thoughtfully…unless—‘
‘Exactly,’ the Baron replied, ‘it isn’t just writing, qua writing, for the sake of it—‘
‘You don’t mean—‘
‘I’m afraid so, my dear Sal. The rumours and gossip are that the Hon Morgana intends to write fiction and to become a novelist!’
‘Fiction? But, but—‘
‘Yes quite. Unthinkable. Unnatural. Disharmonious and dangerous and it will lead to unrest in the Local Sector.’
Sal’s antennae drooped instantly and asymmetrically, indeed the starboard feeler literally dangled. His head fell forward and he weakly raised a foreleg to shield his eyes as he said in despair: ‘I cannot believe it; it simply cannot be true!’
‘It’s true, SP. Another of my agents has been filing, so to say, reports that describe Morgana’s attempts to record her fictions on leaves.’
‘Fire and Water! The narratives couldn’t possibly be feuilletons, could they?’
‘No, we’re talking printing. She’s become friendly with the Americans who recently arrived by Human Collar from California in one of the human Flying Machines and they’re—all of this dangerous little group—using raindrops as lenses for our Sun to burn notational holes in gum leaves.’
‘Ciphers and punctate or punched hole printing,’ gasped Sal. ‘They can actually do that now?’
‘It seems so,’ said the Chief grimly.
‘This is too much,’ said Sal, reeling. ‘Fictions? Novelist? We simply do not do that in Midgeworld, why, it’s unheard of!’
‘And also iconoclastic and probably treacherous.’
‘Oh my goodness! I say Baron, have you somehow been making Notes?
‘Indeed I have, yes, and more than that, I plan to draft a report and hope to employ our best Dictionary Personnel while composing the report. I only wish it could be printed by the new method but then I would become subversive and you might have to arrest me.’
‘Oh!’ wailed Salvador, ‘ what have we come to and how have we so miserably failed Morgana? Our education program and all of our teachings have always emphasised truth, right practice, pragmatism and er, ah, the objective, um, approach to correctly composing or writing nonfiction. Journalism would be a good example and we do need another journalist to work on the Midgeworld Local Sector Express. Surely, Chief, you could encourage Morgana to be our next reporter or even our rapporteur or would that be rapporteuse?’
‘No, it’s too late for that, SP. The second part of my bad news is that Morgana not only intends to leave home, she is about to do so or may already have done so—steady on, old man, or you’ll fall into the forest!’
Salvador Plato Midge groaned and clutched at his fevered brow.
‘Look, SP, I must leave you now—many urgent matters pending—there’s a rumour that this group of—how shall I describe them—these storytellers and writers—are seeking a safe house. Forgive me if this information is upsetting. I absolutely must take my leave now; no, no, I’ll see myself up, thank you and now, farewell.’ As the philosopher stared in surprise the Baron Scarpia Midge revved his nicely dried wings and arose very much as a human police helicopter might do: directly into the luxuriant cover of the forest canopy, leaving below a very puzzled Sal.
*
The doughty Salvador now struggled to compose himself. His dulled wings had crinkled at the leading edges; he strained to properly unfurl his drooping antennae and to will renewed feeling and sensitivity into them. He knew that he must urge himself to a rapid recovery or fail as both philosopher and leader. Now he focussed his awareness on motivating the restoration of what had seemed lost: his wholeness, his integrity. Suddenly, there was a small downdraft sufficient to dramatically alert his feelers to near-perfect sensitivity. Peering upwards he saw the tiny form of the Hon Morgana descending. Warm air from the cliff face made her descent wobbly and even dangerous, but she persevered and soon was able to directly signal her intention to Salvador.
‘Sir, it is Morgana. Have I your permission to land, please? Betty told me to ask you directly.’
‘Of course, yes, Morgana,’ Salvador Plato Midge replied nervously. ‘Such a busy time, yet you are always welcome here. Please settle.’
‘Thank you, Salvador Plato,’ said Morgana. She touched down lightly a respectful 30-mm from the philosopher. ‘I saw the Baron Scarpia moments ago. He seemed most preoccupied and was unaware of me starting my descent. I’m sure I know why he’s been visiting you here.’
‘It’s because you want to be a writer and even to leave home to write,’ Salvador said as calmly as possible while discretely urging micro movements and proto-stretches to restore vitality to his muscles and joints.
‘It’s so complex a story that I can’t yet explain it all but what you have just said is largely true,’ said Morgana. ‘I felt I had to leave the powerful influence of my brother in order to work towards becoming the writer I know I may one day be. Dear Gawain has always fussed so. He over protected me. I had to leave, I had to.’
‘You have already left home?’
‘I have, yes.’
‘But what has your brother said to you about this? Life is so short, Morgana.’
Morgana paused. ‘Sir Gawain agrees. May I explain later? I have come to you, Salvador Plato to ask if you would allow me to rent studio space in your safe house so that I could work and live quietly while enjoying your protection. No one would dare to attack or attempt to influence me here. Please say yes. I could repay such kindness by assisting you in your home or in the art gallery. Please, please, dear Salvador Plato, our lives are so short because we are midges; all is so ephemeral. I do so wish to make written writings before I die.’
‘Er, and fiction writing, I believe.’ SP took a very deep breath and without quite appreciating the epoch-making and hugely radical moment, he added, ‘Of course you may stay here. Will you require a Memorising Team?’
‘No, my mind is clear and thank you, dear Salvador Plato; you are a true friend. Both fiction and literary nonfiction and gonzo journalism currently motivate me. I am eager to begin! Where may I settle and work, please?’
‘Why, exactly right here, if you wish. There is a splendid view and with Betty on one side and myself, so to say, on this other side, you should be secure. Betty, by the way, would not dream of eating us; we are far too tiny to make a meal and, she has told me, with wry good humour that only her late husbands were of a nourishing size. You are most welcome to use my web-hammock if you wish.’
Morgana smiled. ‘Thank you kindly, Salvador Plato. I shall always remember this. And please don’t be concerned about Sir Gawain. He is in the middle of everything and wildly distracted. If I may, I’ll start work now. Please say when you want my assistance and I’ll help. I have everything I need inside my head; only humans have baggage, ha ha.’
*
When Sal had left to work in his Gallery, Morgana perched between the hammock and the edge of a fern leaf. She wasted no time in examining her new writing space for there was much to be done and she knew that all of her work must necessarily be accessed from within her mind and then spoken, however softly, for the notions, the themes, and the resultant narratives to come into the world and to then be recognised and remembered. The view was indeed extraordinary. She watched the silvery surface of the river flow sweetly past toward Farewell Bend. There were suggestions of themes that she imagined might now, with some good fortune, become manifest.
Morgana focussed calmly on the river and began composing. Unlike humans who generally needed to hold a pen or pencil or to press keys and to see where they placed symbols and arranged the ordered structures of their writings, Morgana was entirely unhampered and able to compose her narratives by speaking them while viewing the wavering surface of the green river that flowed past so majestically. She titled her first piece Beginnings:
As an infant midge changing to a child midge nested within the Home Leaf I remember seeing only the family there being nothing either outside or beyond and being thus contained within meant that our home was my world entire and there was nothing else in my world save those who nurtured me until such time as I was able to understand that our leaf house infrequently contained us all together at the same time and that members would come and go to find nourishment in the Greater World while I so newly arrived must necessarily be provided for by those who had brought me to the Home Leaf for I was then a foundling orphan something not much known in our Local Sector and so much so that I knew nothing of myself nor who I was nor how I had come to be or had come to this Home and yet none of that matters because here I am now and seeing and hearing and tasting and smelling the great river while also balancing harmoniously in the wing-beaten air adjacent all of it my home always or so I thought and even though I asked before they passed away no-one in the family not even Gawain would ever fully explain to me how I came to be or had come at first as a stranger so tiny and helpless and newly sprung it seemed and unattended in the stream this same shimmering river this torrent this great mystery of Water that allows me to remember and to dream and even enables my imagination to see from within these tiny memories of the early family days and all those who saved me and grew me and in my images too there are also those other even smaller images of an older time a time that was earlier than my family an era that I think surely held lightly my very own nuclear family who may have lost me or not known how I vanished from them in a distant time when I was likely stolen but there is no-one now who can say how I came to be on a leaf on the waters floating past this place although now it seems that that there was truly a family from nearby who Started me and they too were loving and nourishing and I fear they may have perished in a great flood though they lived high in a very great e.grandis tree above us all on the mountain the tree so high that the family could see for miles see for miles see the ocean distantly the sea and I seeing as I presently am seeing the fragments now…
Morgana completed the voicing of the draft and sighed. ‘Again I almost remembered something I thought was lost or forgotten,’ she said aloud and then was startled by Betty’s voice nearby.
‘I don’t know that I got all of that,’ said the spider, millimetres away, ‘but I can read it back to you if you like. It’s all coded into that part of this web closest to where you are now. Your writing voice, by the way, is terribly faint.’
‘Thank you Betty but I too can recall it all.’
‘OK. Can I hear some more, then? It’s pretty quiet up here most of the time. You don’t mind? I could even offer feedback. –And I once was a line editor on the old Arachnidworld Chronicles and was their Foreign Correspondent before that.’
‘I don’t mind. It was only a fragmentary interior monologue. Tell you what, you can record the next part if you like. The rhetoric is trickier for me to write. You’d be doing me a favour.’
‘You’re doing me a favour,’ said Betty. ‘It’s not exactly Actionville here these days.’
Morgana closed her eyes briefly before starting a new narrative. ‘Here we go. I’m calling this Country Seat.’
A barefoot Princess Fleur walked slowly through the Great Park, shoes in hand then she paused and stopped. It was probably a great foolishness, no doubt about it. The word would get out. Not that it mattered. Who cared, really, what people might say? People, what people? Oh damn! Everyone would know by now anyway. Everybody could see. It was all so obvious. It would be another calamity like the one here at Insight all those years ago. The passenger seat of all places was it? Almost had to marry him. But what a time it was! Those wonderful summer days so endlessly long so marvellously filled with bright young people! Girls in summer dresses. Straw hats. Parasols. How discretely the girls laughed and giggled. How boisterous were the young fellows. So bold so dashing. Can never forget him winning in our Humber Snipe racing at Brooklands and Monza. Such a dasher the chauffeur was. Such a close thing it was too and all so absurd. Remember his name? Striped blazers. White flannels. Boating. The chaps sometimes fell in. It was all such a game. Showing off really to impress us. Young once.
So young and foolish all of us were. Yet we had so much pleasure then. Thought we’d stay forever young. We’d all live forever. And now? An older and less wise Princess considers her destiny. The moneyed aristocrat awaits my afternoon arrival. Possibly will propose. Would suit me yet probably he won’t. The entire household given the weekend off and there shall be champagne and caviar. No doubt. We shall make do fending and foraging for ourselves. Ahead there shall be just the two of us romping through that rambling great pile. Even his sister notably absent shall be. Had she run away to make her fortune, join the circus fulfil her dreams? Incomplete: my princely brother planning dark vengeance against my incautious lover and what if he should kill him or worse kill him before we’re wed? One way or the other each man maddened by power by ambition. It’s too late now. The grass feels so good. But put my shoes on again.
Princesses should go forward determined. How else to get what I want?
‘Aha! Yes I see. Cute,’ said Betty. ‘Any more?’
‘Yes last one now. Let me see. This I shall call Understated.
‘May I offer you a drink your Highness?’
‘I say steady on Thomas!’
‘Forgive me Ma’am. I do apologize.’
‘Oh do give over. Is there another glass?’
‘Yes Ma’am the cocktail cabinet inside the seat back.’
‘You did so well today. You won! Pour.’
‘Say when.’
‘What is this stuff?’
‘Best Cognac Ma’am.’
‘Mine no doubt.’
‘Yes Ma’am sorry it’s just a little for the race.’
‘Do stop apologizing! Take more next time. What’s your first name?’
‘Len Ma’am, Leonard Thomas.’
‘Then kiss me Leonard!’
Betty laughed, wheezing a little. ‘Just say if you want feedback or an edit.’
Morgana buzzed her wings at low revs to convey her thanks and to signal her farewell before bouncing up to the hammock. She had made a good start, she thought. She would take a nap and then pop down and offer to assist Sal. Perhaps later this evening she would explain herself further; possibly she might not need to. What was it she’d been told by the Cognoscenti, something Whitehead had written in his Dialogues: Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience, and our aesthetic enjoyment is recognition of the pattern.
Below in the Gallery Salvador Plato was considering the placement of a new twig to hold an old holed leaf in such a way that when a Placement Crew had set it all up for viewing the viewer would see (as it were) a circular framed view of the afternoon river at about 16:30 hours for the next two days when the reflected light of the setting sun shining from the forested mountainside down onto the water would gleam like old gold. The visitors would enjoy it, he was sure. He remembered something his human namesake had written long, long ago; perhaps he would mention it to Morgana: Our object in the construction of the state is the greatest happiness of the whole, and not that of any one class.
Plato (Republic, Bk 4)
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
© text Don Diespecker 2009
The Earthrise Diary (1009, Oct.)
Don Diespecker
Midmonth. The goannas are out and about and the water dragons have returned from their vacations and now defend territory on the riverside flat that I’ve cleared and re-seeded (no doubt the dragons consider me useful in having cleaned up their flat).
This October has been fast, very fast indeed, and I feel as though the world has not only been whirling through space at an impressive velocity, but that the home planet has also been spinning and wobbling to such an extent that it’s all I can do to prevent myself being flung off. I’ve been working outside a great deal. The weather has been warm to hot with a few dull and somewhat cooler days and there were even showers on a couple of occasions. Big Lawn is emerging from the flood loam (which in places is as hard as clay pan; mowing produces horrendous dust clouds); regiments of weeds have leaped up in many places to compete with grasses struggling against suffocation; the Valley has had more than is fair share of smoke and dust and sometimes mixes of both at the same time; the river appears so meagre that it seems to be dying—although there is a wondrous great pool directly in front of my house—and the countryside, despite drought conditions, looks colourfully magnificent.
Oct. 26 2009. Some rain at last! There were storm showers several days ago and that got the plants squeaking for more. The sprouting new grass (kikuyu) on the flat to the right of the Belvedere (recently cleared of flood debris) grows apace perhaps because I watch it each day and murmur encouragement. Yesterday, a storm brewed and finally broke in the afternoon; it included hail that did its best to wreck the foliage of new plants like emerging dahlias.
Oct. 27: Breaking News: Lots more RAIN! The river has risen to within less than 1-m from the Plains Crossing Bridge deck. Although the storms and showers are now forecast to decrease, the present situation is close to that preceding a flash flood (the sweet/sour riverbank smells associated with a rising flood underline that possibility). I went to Coffs Harbour and to Park Beach early yesterday and drove in heavy rain on the way back, particularly along the return approach to Bellingen. I won’t be surprised to learn that there will have been low-level flooding around the town. How quickly everything changes! Not long after sunrise, when I was going down Darkwood Road, a young fox ran from, I think, road-kill of some kind and stood watching me with dark eyes as I went past.
The Belvedere has been raked and most of it re-seeded; the ‘old’ stone table has been re-birthed as parts of the stonewall surrounding the Dog’s Garden (recently completed). A new Paradise rose was carefully planted with the other roses in the Theatre Garden and in soil imported friable ‘new’ soil part-made from lawn clippings. Strangely, some leaves have yellowed and new pink leaves have also appeared. I’ve enlarged this garden, which now contains dahlias and roses, following further attacks on dahlia tubers by some night time intruder and one of the new p/t jobs is the removal of the menacing (Queensland?) broad leafed grass (it grows metres high) with a mattock; the grass, nettles and groundcovers are then separated, removed to the flat between the lawn and the walls in front of the house to dry in the sun where some will eventually be mowed into fragments and then burned, and some will become new soil. I’ve ‘stored’ the large diameter pipeline, minus its foot-valve, behind the Theatre Garden where it loops through the trees like a gigantic snake (and where it might deter the dahlia eaters, an area where goannas like to hang out and perhaps there to playfully ambush me. There has been much hand watering of plants (and I intend some dramatic bush plumbing to save me from that dawn or dusk job). I’ve disconnected the electric pump main line and plan to sell it; a new line from storage tank to the riverbank lies in a trench across Big Lawn (the scar now healing nicely), which means that I’ll rely on the fire-fighting pump in future. The f-f pump is heavy to lug around (I use the wheelbarrow for part of the lift) but easier to prime and to use. I’ve also begun demolishing the big decorative wall between the Belvedere and a resurgent Big Lawn (the wall traps flotsam during floods) and I’ll use the heavier stones along the fence line to (hopefully) ‘deflect’ some of the invading logs that batter their way over the road in high floods entering from the Deer Park. The mistflower/Crofton weed (a gift of the high 2001 flood) still grows everywhere—it’s particularly well established on the downstream bank (over my boundary) from where it generously distributes its tiny seeds in every direction. I’m also using heavy quarry stone fragments as revetment on the bank below the Belvedere overlooking Flotsam Bay; and this gives me better control of that area, including the Belvedere wall that has withstood floods for more than 20 years. As I write, the showers continue and the river rises higher; some of the logs and debris in Flotsam Bay are floating and beginning to swirl or eddy in the Pool.
A few weeks ago it seemed that the High Rise or Eiger ants as I rudely call them (small, black, always incredibly busy and apparently addicted to astonishingly high climbs in the big (hybrid) flooded gum in front of the house {the one with huge branches} had either died off or disappeared in the last three floods; however: these little fellows have reappeared and are as busy as ever. (‘Hey Bruce, let’s see how high we can get today?’ ‘OK Soames, what’s up there?’ ‘A bonzer view, mate!’ ‘Goodoh!’)
(Channelling insects is always informative, I say).
I’ve avoided using the power mower in windstorms: it’s too dangerous because I can’t hear branches breaking while wearing earmuffs. I saw a BIG branch drop at the edge of the re-emerging lawn below the campsite, viz, at the base of the Ancient Riverbank (it would have finished me off, without a doubt).
In the rain: there are new patterns on the river surface in front of the Belvedere.
I was looking idly at the early morning river recently—swirls of vapour drifting off the surface—drinking coffee and remembering something that Germaine Greer had mentioned on the TV program, Q and A; that something had to do with trees and with falling out of trees when we were kids. She may have mentioned, too, tree houses, but I’m uncertain. As I moved to put my coffee mug down I glanced at the Steven Noble jacket illustration on Alberto Manguel’s book, A Reading Diary. The design shows a young chap engrossed in a book while sitting languidly in a tree (although one arm is intelligently clasped around a stout branch). The book reader wears a striped suit, collar and tie and (I think) knickerbockers and lace-up boots; his hair is formally parted and he gives an impression of being a young fellow of perhaps the 1920s or thereabouts. And I remembered tree houses.
At about the time when I became a schoolboy in 1935/36 in Victoria, BC, I used also to roam the neighbourhood streets. 1129 Oxford Street was off Cook Street where the streetcar ran from the City. Sir James Douglas Primary School was 10-15 minutes walk in one direction and about the same distance from the ocean in another direction. I was on neighbourhood greeting terms with some kids around the first turn left from Oxford Street (we lived in the first block off Cook Street) which was on the way to school (the next turn right took me straight up the road to school). One of that family’s daughters was a classmate. Her older brothers were two of the neighbourhood Big Guys (one of them was licensed to drive a motor car) and they had built an excellent tree house. Being a school colleague of Dorothy I was tolerated as a sort of part time member of the tree-house gang. The tree house was disconcertingly located directly over the concrete sidewalk: tree house personnel had to be able to climb the tree (an old chestnut, I seem to remember). Nobody ever fell out of or from the well-constructed tree house that was, I’m sure, at least 5- or 6-m above ground.
The brothers also took us on safari to what in those days was a very big grassy vacant block up on Cook Street, there to hunt rats and mice with a Daisy air rifle (more accurately, they used a wire cage to catch the rodents then dispatched them with the rifle). Rodents were skinned and the corpses discarded. The skins were taken in triumph to the tree house where we tacked them to boards to dry (if dry is the word). I often wondered about the value of such skins. Fortunately for the wild life we grew tired of such murderous hunting and abandoned it (we were very young, after all).
The next tree houses were in the dense stands of black wattle that grew along the Blyde River* near the Joubert Bridge in Pilgrims Rest. I’m sorry to say that those Old Transvaal structures were less like houses and more like timbered platforms; they were also higher in the trees and at least one of them was built in the canopies of two trees. In those days (c 1940) I was as good a tree climber as anyone I knew. Each of us had carefully watched the Big Guys before they left Pilgrims to fight the Italians in Abyssinia and then the Germans in the Western Desert: we had learned how to take ropes to the seriously high branches of certain big trees that grew alongside the TGME** swimming pool and to use them to launch ourselves out and over the water. It was essential to Let Go of the rope at the furthest reach of the launch (in order to drop into the deepest parts The Pool from a great height). The alternative to not Letting Go was very nearly Unthinkable: there was the risk of returning, uncontrolled, into tree branches and then of slowly coming to a state of rest before risking broken limbs to drop on the softest part of the grassy banks.
Our house/launching platforms further downstream enabled us to construct alarmingly big catapults made from the thick inner tubes of old truck tyres. These medieval-looking war engines were capable of ‘firing’ missiles as big as half bricks over (or through) some of the trees and into the relatively distant river. These long-range shots required two cattie operators to load, draw and then discharge the missiles. Strangely, no one was ever injured, other than the canopies of trees. *The Blyde River, in these areas was downstream of the TGME Reduction works and the discharge pipe of cyanide tailings…and was lifeless, I should think, all the way to the Limpopo and probably beyond. In Afrikaans Blyde means happy or joyful (from the Dutch blij). The river was so-named when Voortrekkers received news of friends and families (believed to have perished) who had survived. **Transvaal Gold Mining Estates.
That reminds me of another childhood horror story: as a little kid between 1937 and 1942 I and other gang members used to ride our bikes to the local abattoir which was situated on Pilgrims Creek *** near its confluence with the (already polluted Blyde River). There we would watch the unfortunate cattle, sheep and pigs being slaughtered and dressed for the butcher. You may imagine where the unwanted animal parts were disposed of. ***Pilgrims Creek was successfully prospected and panned for gold in the 1870s; my paternal grandfather was then one of the First Era prospectors and diggers on the Creek. Pilgrims Rest is the oldest continuously mined (gold) area in South Africa (production ceased some years ago); mining of the Witwatersrand (Johannesburg) did not begin until 1886). Dear Readers: it was a long time ago and during the apartheid regime. I’m pleased to say that not all childhood memories are entirely of sombre days; some of those times in Pilgrims Rest were among the happiest of my life. For example, the Blyde upstream of the Reduction Works, was crystal clear; we used to swim (and drop from ropes) at Black Rock in water that was clean and beautiful; further upstream we used to picnic and swim and fish for rainbow trout…I could go on. Pilgrims Rest is in the Drakensberg, magnificent mountain country that my grandfather described as ‘the jewel of Africa.’
Fabled Anecdote (4)
© text Don Diespecker 2009
La Jolla Dreaming
Don Diespecker
Two senior water dragons, Darius and Dinny were taking their ease in the late afternoon and resting comfortably near the Old Gardener’s (aka ‘Agdor’) rose’s for the very good reason that they were well-placed to overhear confidential midge conversations. These conversations were of course privileged and very private indeed; however, Dinny and Darius had become the forerunners of what they believed was fast becoming a most sophisticated Intelligence-gathering network (one that, so far, consisted entirely of themselves) and one, they asserted, was entirely unknown and even unsuspected in Midgeworld; and surely not even the Midgeworld Secret Intelligence Service (the MSIS) had any inkling of the existence of the Water Dragon Secret Intelligence Service (the WDSIS). In their cheery self-deprecating way the dragons sometimes referred to the WDSIS as the Water Police. Thus, while Darius and Dinny lounged about enjoying the late afternoon spring sunshine they were also honing their fast-growing tradecraft skills while simultaneously and shamelessly practising the dark art of spying. However, and despite their dragon reasoning, virtually all the Local Life Forms—including the far from subtle humans—rigorously maintained their own Secret Services: Darius and Dinny were themselves being watched by a myriad of LLF Secret Service organisations simply for being what they were: a water dragon proto Intel-gathering group of—thus far—two water dragons.
‘Din, you remember the strange conversations we, er, accidentally overheard during the spring festival?’
‘Um, yes, old boy, why?’
‘I forgot to mention that I heard one of the midges, Rick I think he was named, farewell his friend with a peculiar saying—and I’m sure that you’d fallen asleep at the time. Rick said, “Here’s looking at you, kid.”’
‘Old man, a chap has to snatch 40 winks when and where he can, you know. “Here’s looking at you, kid” is an intimate sort of Hello or Good-bye. And although some human males say it affectionately to lovers or to certain other of their female friends the greeting seems also to have pejorative shades or implications, to whit, it may also be a somewhat chauvinistic expression.’
‘Oh, OK I’ll try to remember,’ Darius murmured. ‘Returning to the sleeping thing, we really ought to be awake and fully conscious when we’re both supposedly on duty gathering Intel, eh what?’
‘Darius, old horse, together we make the rules, you and I make the rules together; nobody else because it’s our very own Secret Service.’
‘That perhaps suggests that we may never become fully fledged as an Official Local Midge Secret Service because there will be only two of us.’
‘You want more agents?’
‘More Indians would be nice—so long as we remain the chiefs.’
‘Heh, heh, jolly good and of course yes, absolutely. Hang on, I think I can hear sub rosa midge voices again but not the same ones we heard previously—listen.’
And this is what the two dragons heard:
‘Greetings and I wish you good health, Comrade. I don’t believe we’ve met? I am Cochise Marcello Midge.’
‘Great Scott! Surely we’re related? I, my dear sir, am Geronimo Cavaradossi Midge, of this Local Sector. I’ve lived here all my life. And if you are not a Local, may I ask how you came here, pray?’
Cochise seemed worried and confused. ‘I wish I could explain,’ he said nervously, ‘but I seem to have been on a long journey and I’m having great difficulty in remembering the details; I fear I may be wind- and air-lagged. But I do hear what you’re saying and it’s clear to me that we both have Apache backgrounds.’
‘Rest easy, Cochise. It’s possible you accidentally boarded one of those human flying machine things and were transported,’ said Geronimo soothingly. ‘You’re among friends here and we’re awfully well organised; we’re in Australia, you know. Does that help?’
Cochise was astounded. ‘Australia! Holy cow! Australia’s on the other side of the planet, on the tomorrow side of the Dateline!’
‘You’re truly from the yesterday side? Are you perhaps an American midge?’
‘Yeah, but only in human terms right? I mean, we’re all One in The Greater Midgeworld,’ said Cochise forcefully. ‘Say, how came you by your middle name?’
‘Cavaradossi? Your mentioning it is a huge coincidence because I have an appointment to meet our Local Big Mind and they promise to figure it out for me—you know, to grokk the fullness of any life mystery affecting me. We’ve got some really good Intel people here.’
‘I see. May I stay for a while, at least until I get my bearings and work out how to navigate homeward again?’ Cochise asked respectfully.
‘Of course, yes! Be my guest. I’ll show you around and explain our Big Mind—it’s quite the envy of all the local Life Forms.’
‘G’day, Geronimo, you’re a little early for your Discovery Appointment,’ said Raoul Socrates Midge, the Local Big Mind Director. ‘I’ve compiled a beaut program of questions for our Mind people. We’ll start early if you like; anything to oblige.’
‘Thank you, Director,’ said Geronimo, ‘I accept. May I present our new American colleague, Cochise Marcello Midge? I rather think we’re related.’
‘We are all One,’ said the Director with a winning smile. ‘Welcome Cochise—I say, you seem a little spaced out; no doubt you’ve been, er flying with humans, eh? I tell you what: if you’d care to sit and link with Geronimo we might be able to project, pitch and track you and Geronimo together. What say you?’
‘Sir! I’m honoured to meet you, and thank you it will be a great pleasure to participate. Forgive me; I’m uncertain as to how I came to be here, although, yes, it was probably in one of those flying machines.’
‘Jolly good!’ the Director said enthusiastically. ‘We’ll do our utmost to straighten everything out for you. Follow me. I’ll take you up the Big Mind Tree and the chaps will prep you.’
The Local Big Mind was quietly and efficiently assembling at the top of the Very High Flooded Gum: the Mind comprised ten thousand of the fittest, the most excitingly cognitive and astute of the Local Sector male and female midges. The gigantic group were attaching themselves with spider silk lifelines to the tree’s limbs and then linking their antennae.
‘First,’ said Raoul holding out a eucalypt leaf containing several drops of a clear liquid in a crease, ‘get this into you. It’s not, ha ha, hemlock of any kind; it’s Happy Juice—mostly squeezed ground-cover liquids laced with year-old lantana crushing’s and the mixture buried in emptied human-made Shiraz bottles and covered by damp earth for six months. Drink it up and rub some into your antennae, that’s it. Now if you’ll slip on a lifeline and sit next to these ladies here…that’s it, alternate genders all the way. –It’s a ripper view, don’t you think, eh what?
The Director shouted through a leaf megaphone. ‘Listen up boys and girls! We have an American visitor, Cochise Marcello Midge, the guest of our very own Geronimo Cavaradossi Midge. You’ve been briefed on Geronimo. Cochise isn’t sure how he got here—do you know the name of your local sector, Cochise?’
‘Sir, yes sir! It’s named La Jolla, California, sir!’
‘That’s a cracker of a name,’ said Raoul cheerfully. ‘I’ve often wondered how to pronounce that: like Lah Hoyah, eh what? OK. Everybody ready, yes? All you two have to do is watch the river in the direction of America, remain linked and keep your minds opportunistically open. Everybody else: Eyes closed for these next few moments! Feel the vibrations, Mind! Feel the vibes of Geronimo and Cochise! Their energies know where to go so follow the energies!’
From their magnificent vantage point Geronimo and Cochise stared out at the beautiful serpentine river, parts of which were already in sunset and there were other glowing parts that reflected the green and gold colours of Midgeworld. Below the very high tree in the Local Sector thousands of awed midge spectators on the ground stared up to see their Local Big Mind begin its work; and even Agdor, the Old Gardener, awoke from his nap when he saw the waves of golden light begin shining from the top of the great tree and he also could hear what sounded like a most energetic dynamo-like humming as if a mighty power station had begun producing electrical power. Raoul now moved his tiny head slowly from left to right and with his eyes wide open. The sunset light shone on the river below and then Raoul took a deep breath and winged his way to a high point on a branch overhanging the river where he settled (without a lifeline). Bracing himself on a leaf that pointed to the northeast the Director fixed on an unseen target and he pointed so unerringly that both of his antennae quivered and then coiled dramatically together. ‘Project the names! Now sight and fix on me,’ he shrilled. ‘Fix now and pitch!’ The ten thousand midges opened their eyes, tracked with their antenna and together they cognitively pitched to an over-the-horizon target. ‘We’ll start with La Jolla Local Signal Station and they’ll patch us through to…let’s see now—to Arizona Central! OK Mind. On my mark, count of three then push out a Big One for me boys and girls! Here we go: One, two, three MARK!’
Cochise saw the golden waves emanating from his surrounding colleagues: the line of energy flashed out above the river, above the surrounding hills and travelling at the speed of light went directly to a stand-by crew of Intel midges on the roof of the University of California at San Diego where the transmission was split, one half going directly to a restaurant at La Jolla Cove, the other to a cave in Arizona—but the beam of cognitive energy was instantly deflected by the midge crew in Arizona in such a way that it bounced back directly to La Jolla! Raoul’s antennae unfurled; he staggered backwards; he reeled; he clutched at his whirling head with both antennae! Despite the low moans, shrieks and wailing sounds from the (Earthrise/Midgeworld) spectators (all of whom shrank back in horror), the Local Big Mind above them kept stoically to their task and the transmissions continued unabated!
‘Uh, ugh!’ gasped Raoul, falling to his knees at the edge of the leaf. The images that flashed through the Local Big Mind and through the Director’s mind were startling: individual minds saw, in sequence, horses with humans on their backs riding fiercely and hard in the strong light of the American plains, heard the war cries of the human warriors, saw, too, the dense clouds of midges high above the horses and men, when suddenly the images changed from day to night pictures of a restaurant in La Jolla. Pictures of a middle-aged man and woman emerged strongly; he was dark and battered-looking, she was blonde and beautiful; the female was blue-eyed, the man’s eyes were grey, and accompanying the pictures was the enchanting sounds of Claude Debussy’s music: an unseen orchestra played ‘The girl with the flaxen hair.’ Raoul struggled to stand. He placed his feelers on both sides of his head and swivelled ever so slightly, then he yelled: ‘It’s OK everybody! Continue! Our targets are all in the same place! Continue please! Situation is normal. I repeat situation is normal! We’re going to enhance now and look for our people. Stand by; stand by all stations! Focus on the tops of the two human heads! Enhancing now! Yes. There they are! Two of our kind: two midges. Let’s bring up the sound, please!’
‘Hey, Mimi, this is a bit different to the University basement—and I can smell food, good food!’
‘Take it easy, Musetta, these two humans are interesting. My feeling is that we can learn something from their interactions’.
‘Learn from humans? Hey, this girl is hungry. Oh, those two Dudes who were stalking us all day at the workshop have followed us in and Mim, what’s the big deal about this Gestalt therapy thing, anyway?’
’It’s good for learning about yourself, Mu…and…and relationships, you know?’
‘Mim, I already know what’s good for me. These two guys flying around us want to learn about us.’
‘No Mu, they’re trouble and they’re flying too close to the humans.’
‘This is a swell place, don’t you think?’ he says.
‘Sure it is. But Americans don’t say, “swell” any more; they haven’t for years,’ she says crossly.
‘I know they don’t, but I do and I like the word,’ he insists, smiling.
‘This place is called La Belle Aurore. What’s it mean?’
‘It means, I think, The Beautiful Daybreak, but I could be wrong. From the movie, you know?’
‘What movie?’
‘Casablanca, remember?’
‘Oh, no, I didn’t see it; I was learning to be a brain surgeon in those days. And you?’
‘I was looking for Paris.’
‘And, I seem to remember, you found it.’
‘Sure,’ he says. He smiles wistfully. ‘We don’t need to get into back-stories, you know. The workshop’s over now and I want you to come to Australia with me.’
‘You know I can’t do that, Rod. I’m an old married lady; settled, kids grown, my wealthy husband retiring.’
‘Norma, I’m the crazy university teacher, looking to retire happily, looking to find the love of my life at my side when I do.’
‘And we’re both getting older by the minute while you play the artful opportunist. Oh the music! It’s Debussy, isn’t it?’ she asks.
‘Yes. When I first saw you in the group I wanted…you; I mean, forgive me, I wanted to—‘
‘We both got what we wanted. Let’s listen to the music.’
‘Let’s be honest.’
‘I am being honest. You’ve never explained how you got from Paris to La Jolla Cove in a restaurant with a French name.’
‘I’m a romantic. I still want to be a writer. And I have a weakness,’ he says carefully, ‘for beautiful women, for art, for life.’
‘Paris is your beautiful woman. Or maybe La Jolla is.’
‘No, you are; you’re everything to me. I went to Paris because I read The Sun Also Rises when I was a teenager and knew I’d be a writer but I got involved and married and changed directions and then there was a family—‘
‘And you diverged into psychology so you could learn to write better but it didn’t work. You don’t want to get involved with me; I’m an old married woman who once wanted to sing, to be a diva.’
‘Maybe La Jolla is the place for your heart. Are you mad because you’re a famous and wealthy surgeon and I’m a university teacher?’
‘I’ve made lots of bad choices,’ she says gently, her tone softening. ‘I’m angry because I’m middle-aged and wealthy and well married and respectable and all because I changed direction.’
‘Norma, where are you heading, right now?’ he asks intensely.
‘Here come our drinks, very dry Martini for you, Manhattan for me.’
‘Just like in the movies,’ he says. ‘Where the hell are you heading?
‘Into obscurity.’ She manages to sound bitter and anxious at the same time.
‘Damn, there are mozzies flying around my head.’
‘What?’
‘Bugs,’ he says, suddenly annoyed and irrational. ‘Flying critters are hunting me.’
‘They’re all God’s creatures,’ she says laughing. ‘If you’re really who you believe yourself to be and have the guts for it, stay here in California!’
‘To hell with your glitzy California! Come with me tonight and we’ll fly to Australia!’
‘Damn you, you know I can’t!’
‘I know you can! I’ll get the waiter over and we’ll leave!’‘
‘All right then, you fool! Take me to Australia!’
‘Musetta! Stand by! We’re going where they’re going!’
‘Mimi! WHAT is going on with you?’
‘Mu, we’re going to Australia! I can feel it! We’ll slip under the collar of his jacket and be protected there. We’ll hitch a ride and be safe. Humans spray chemicals in their machines. I know about humans flying! He’s going to fly and he’ll take her with him!’
‘Oh my goodness Mim you’re nuts, but what the heck! Life is short! OK. Let’s do it!’
‘Where are those two creepy guys who were stalking us, Mu?’
‘There’s no need to worry about them, Mim. The human guy whacked them both.’
‘I think I may have dozed off,’ said Dinny. ‘Did I miss anything?’
‘Not a lot, old boy and I’m sorry to tell you this but this Local Sector of Midgeworld has lost it’s Local Big Mind Director. Old Raoul Socrates was sorting out a local problem for a Local, Geronimo and a visiting American named Cochise and it must have been too much for him. He succumbed to the cognitive exertions, is what I heard.’
‘Is there any good news, Darius?’
‘Sure, Din. A couple of humans turned up to meet Agdor—he’d been asleep also—and guess what? Two American midges were with them and they both dropped off here just before old Raoul fell off the twig. They’re Mimi and Musetta and they’ve been meeting some of the Locals. If only we could open a dossier, but we’ll just have to remember the details.’
‘Let me guess,’ murmured Dinny. ‘I’ll bet they met the local Geronimo Cavaradossi Midge and the American Cochise Marcello Midge and a colourful time was had by all.’
‘I say! I thought you were asleep?’ said an amazed Darius.
‘The good Intel agent never sleeps, old boy, not entirely anyway, although I seem to remember exploring parts of a graphically interesting dream.’
‘Well done, indeed, old chap!’
‘We’ve heard it said, remember, that fair dinkum knowledge emerges with good dialogue and fair dinkum questioning,’ Dinny murmured.
‘Indeed we have, yes. And awareness is all, eh what? And sleeping with one eye open could be our motto,’ suggested Darius.
‘That’s a splendid notion old man. We may have reptilian brains but they still work splendidly.’
‘What’s more, Din, the midges lost one and gained three.’
‘And we have two more humans in the area now, Dar. That’s another four legs and four feet we can hunt from!’
‘This sure is one fine day, Din, old buddy!’
‘Just swell, Dar old pal!’
This is the 109 October 2009 Diary. DDD October 27 2009.
The Earthrise Diary (1009, Oct.)
Don Diespecker
Midmonth. The goannas are out and about and the water dragons have returned from their vacations and now defend territory on the riverside flat that I’ve cleared and re-seeded (no doubt the dragons consider me useful in having cleaned up their flat).
This October has been fast, very fast indeed, and I feel as though the world has not only been whirling through space at an impressive velocity, but that the home planet has also been spinning and wobbling to such an extent that it’s all I can do to prevent myself being flung off. I’ve been working outside a great deal. The weather has been warm to hot with a few dull and somewhat cooler days and there were even showers on a couple of occasions. Big Lawn is emerging from the flood loam (which in places is as hard as clay pan; mowing produces horrendous dust clouds); regiments of weeds have leaped up in many places to compete with grasses struggling against suffocation; the Valley has had more than is fair share of smoke and dust and sometimes mixes of both at the same time; the river appears so meagre that it seems to be dying—although there is a wondrous great pool directly in front of my house—and the countryside, despite drought conditions, looks colourfully magnificent.
Oct. 26 2009. Some rain at last! There were storm showers several days ago and that got the plants squeaking for more. The sprouting new grass (kikuyu) on the flat to the right of the Belvedere (recently cleared of flood debris) grows apace perhaps because I watch it each day and murmur encouragement. Yesterday, a storm brewed and finally broke in the afternoon; it included hail that did its best to wreck the foliage of new plants like emerging dahlias.
Oct. 27: Breaking News: Lots more RAIN! The river has risen to within less than 1-m from the Plains Crossing Bridge deck. Although the storms and showers are now forecast to decrease, the present situation is close to that preceding a flash flood (the sweet/sour riverbank smells associated with a rising flood underline that possibility). I went to Coffs Harbour and to Park Beach early yesterday and drove in heavy rain on the way back, particularly along the return approach to Bellingen. I won’t be surprised to learn that there will have been low-level flooding around the town. How quickly everything changes! Not long after sunrise, when I was going down Darkwood Road, a young fox ran from, I think, road-kill of some kind and stood watching me with dark eyes as I went past.
The Belvedere has been raked and most of it re-seeded; the ‘old’ stone table has been re-birthed as parts of the stonewall surrounding the Dog’s Garden (recently completed). A new Paradise rose was carefully planted with the other roses in the Theatre Garden and in soil imported friable ‘new’ soil part-made from lawn clippings. Strangely, some leaves have yellowed and new pink leaves have also appeared. I’ve enlarged this garden, which now contains dahlias and roses, following further attacks on dahlia tubers by some night time intruder and one of the new p/t jobs is the removal of the menacing (Queensland?) broad leafed grass (it grows metres high) with a mattock; the grass, nettles and groundcovers are then separated, removed to the flat between the lawn and the walls in front of the house to dry in the sun where some will eventually be mowed into fragments and then burned, and some will become new soil. I’ve ‘stored’ the large diameter pipeline, minus its foot-valve, behind the Theatre Garden where it loops through the trees like a gigantic snake (and where it might deter the dahlia eaters, an area where goannas like to hang out and perhaps there to playfully ambush me. There has been much hand watering of plants (and I intend some dramatic bush plumbing to save me from that dawn or dusk job). I’ve disconnected the electric pump main line and plan to sell it; a new line from storage tank to the riverbank lies in a trench across Big Lawn (the scar now healing nicely), which means that I’ll rely on the fire-fighting pump in future. The f-f pump is heavy to lug around (I use the wheelbarrow for part of the lift) but easier to prime and to use. I’ve also begun demolishing the big decorative wall between the Belvedere and a resurgent Big Lawn (the wall traps flotsam during floods) and I’ll use the heavier stones along the fence line to (hopefully) ‘deflect’ some of the invading logs that batter their way over the road in high floods entering from the Deer Park. The mistflower/Crofton weed (a gift of the high 2001 flood) still grows everywhere—it’s particularly well established on the downstream bank (over my boundary) from where it generously distributes its tiny seeds in every direction. I’m also using heavy quarry stone fragments as revetment on the bank below the Belvedere overlooking Flotsam Bay; and this gives me better control of that area, including the Belvedere wall that has withstood floods for more than 20 years. As I write, the showers continue and the river rises higher; some of the logs and debris in Flotsam Bay are floating and beginning to swirl or eddy in the Pool.
A few weeks ago it seemed that the High Rise or Eiger ants as I rudely call them (small, black, always incredibly busy and apparently addicted to astonishingly high climbs in the big (hybrid) flooded gum in front of the house {the one with huge branches} had either died off or disappeared in the last three floods; however: these little fellows have reappeared and are as busy as ever. (‘Hey Bruce, let’s see how high we can get today?’ ‘OK Soames, what’s up there?’ ‘A bonzer view, mate!’ ‘Goodoh!’)
(Channelling insects is always informative, I say).
I’ve avoided using the power mower in windstorms: it’s too dangerous because I can’t hear branches breaking while wearing earmuffs. I saw a BIG branch drop at the edge of the re-emerging lawn below the campsite, viz, at the base of the Ancient Riverbank (it would have finished me off, without a doubt).
In the rain: there are new patterns on the river surface in front of the Belvedere.
I was looking idly at the early morning river recently—swirls of vapour drifting off the surface—drinking coffee and remembering something that Germaine Greer had mentioned on the TV program, Q and A; that something had to do with trees and with falling out of trees when we were kids. She may have mentioned, too, tree houses, but I’m uncertain. As I moved to put my coffee mug down I glanced at the Steven Noble jacket illustration on Alberto Manguel’s book, A Reading Diary. The design shows a young chap engrossed in a book while sitting languidly in a tree (although one arm is intelligently clasped around a stout branch). The book reader wears a striped suit, collar and tie and (I think) knickerbockers and lace-up boots; his hair is formally parted and he gives an impression of being a young fellow of perhaps the 1920s or thereabouts. And I remembered tree houses.
At about the time when I became a schoolboy in 1935/36 in Victoria, BC, I used also to roam the neighbourhood streets. 1129 Oxford Street was off Cook Street where the streetcar ran from the City. Sir James Douglas Primary School was 10-15 minutes walk in one direction and about the same distance from the ocean in another direction. I was on neighbourhood greeting terms with some kids around the first turn left from Oxford Street (we lived in the first block off Cook Street) which was on the way to school (the next turn right took me straight up the road to school). One of that family’s daughters was a classmate. Her older brothers were two of the neighbourhood Big Guys (one of them was licensed to drive a motor car) and they had built an excellent tree house. Being a school colleague of Dorothy I was tolerated as a sort of part time member of the tree-house gang. The tree house was disconcertingly located directly over the concrete sidewalk: tree house personnel had to be able to climb the tree (an old chestnut, I seem to remember). Nobody ever fell out of or from the well-constructed tree house that was, I’m sure, at least 5- or 6-m above ground.
The brothers also took us on safari to what in those days was a very big grassy vacant block up on Cook Street, there to hunt rats and mice with a Daisy air rifle (more accurately, they used a wire cage to catch the rodents then dispatched them with the rifle). Rodents were skinned and the corpses discarded. The skins were taken in triumph to the tree house where we tacked them to boards to dry (if dry is the word). I often wondered about the value of such skins. Fortunately for the wild life we grew tired of such murderous hunting and abandoned it (we were very young, after all).
The next tree houses were in the dense stands of black wattle that grew along the Blyde River* near the Joubert Bridge in Pilgrims Rest. I’m sorry to say that those Old Transvaal structures were less like houses and more like timbered platforms; they were also higher in the trees and at least one of them was built in the canopies of two trees. In those days (c 1940) I was as good a tree climber as anyone I knew. Each of us had carefully watched the Big Guys before they left Pilgrims to fight the Italians in Abyssinia and then the Germans in the Western Desert: we had learned how to take ropes to the seriously high branches of certain big trees that grew alongside the TGME** swimming pool and to use them to launch ourselves out and over the water. It was essential to Let Go of the rope at the furthest reach of the launch (in order to drop into the deepest parts The Pool from a great height). The alternative to not Letting Go was very nearly Unthinkable: there was the risk of returning, uncontrolled, into tree branches and then of slowly coming to a state of rest before risking broken limbs to drop on the softest part of the grassy banks.
Our house/launching platforms further downstream enabled us to construct alarmingly big catapults made from the thick inner tubes of old truck tyres. These medieval-looking war engines were capable of ‘firing’ missiles as big as half bricks over (or through) some of the trees and into the relatively distant river. These long-range shots required two cattie operators to load, draw and then discharge the missiles. Strangely, no one was ever injured, other than the canopies of trees. *The Blyde River, in these areas was downstream of the TGME Reduction works and the discharge pipe of cyanide tailings…and was lifeless, I should think, all the way to the Limpopo and probably beyond. In Afrikaans Blyde means happy or joyful (from the Dutch blij). The river was so-named when Voortrekkers received news of friends and families (believed to have perished) who had survived. **Transvaal Gold Mining Estates.
That reminds me of another childhood horror story: as a little kid between 1937 and 1942 I and other gang members used to ride our bikes to the local abattoir which was situated on Pilgrims Creek *** near its confluence with the (already polluted Blyde River). There we would watch the unfortunate cattle, sheep and pigs being slaughtered and dressed for the butcher. You may imagine where the unwanted animal parts were disposed of. ***Pilgrims Creek was successfully prospected and panned for gold in the 1870s; my paternal grandfather was then one of the First Era prospectors and diggers on the Creek. Pilgrims Rest is the oldest continuously mined (gold) area in South Africa (production ceased some years ago); mining of the Witwatersrand (Johannesburg) did not begin until 1886). Dear Readers: it was a long time ago and during the apartheid regime. I’m pleased to say that not all childhood memories are entirely of sombre days; some of those times in Pilgrims Rest were among the happiest of my life. For example, the Blyde upstream of the Reduction Works, was crystal clear; we used to swim (and drop from ropes) at Black Rock in water that was clean and beautiful; further upstream we used to picnic and swim and fish for rainbow trout…I could go on. Pilgrims Rest is in the Drakensberg, magnificent mountain country that my grandfather described as ‘the jewel of Africa.’
Fabled Anecdote (4)
© text Don Diespecker 2009
La Jolla Dreaming
Don Diespecker
Two senior water dragons, Darius and Dinny were taking their ease in the late afternoon and resting comfortably near the Old Gardener’s (aka ‘Agdor’) rose’s for the very good reason that they were well-placed to overhear confidential midge conversations. These conversations were of course privileged and very private indeed; however, Dinny and Darius had become the forerunners of what they believed was fast becoming a most sophisticated Intelligence-gathering network (one that, so far, consisted entirely of themselves) and one, they asserted, was entirely unknown and even unsuspected in Midgeworld; and surely not even the Midgeworld Secret Intelligence Service (the MSIS) had any inkling of the existence of the Water Dragon Secret Intelligence Service (the WDSIS). In their cheery self-deprecating way the dragons sometimes referred to the WDSIS as the Water Police. Thus, while Darius and Dinny lounged about enjoying the late afternoon spring sunshine they were also honing their fast-growing tradecraft skills while simultaneously and shamelessly practising the dark art of spying. However, and despite their dragon reasoning, virtually all the Local Life Forms—including the far from subtle humans—rigorously maintained their own Secret Services: Darius and Dinny were themselves being watched by a myriad of LLF Secret Service organisations simply for being what they were: a water dragon proto Intel-gathering group of—thus far—two water dragons.
‘Din, you remember the strange conversations we, er, accidentally overheard during the spring festival?’
‘Um, yes, old boy, why?’
‘I forgot to mention that I heard one of the midges, Rick I think he was named, farewell his friend with a peculiar saying—and I’m sure that you’d fallen asleep at the time. Rick said, “Here’s looking at you, kid.”’
‘Old man, a chap has to snatch 40 winks when and where he can, you know. “Here’s looking at you, kid” is an intimate sort of Hello or Good-bye. And although some human males say it affectionately to lovers or to certain other of their female friends the greeting seems also to have pejorative shades or implications, to whit, it may also be a somewhat chauvinistic expression.’
‘Oh, OK I’ll try to remember,’ Darius murmured. ‘Returning to the sleeping thing, we really ought to be awake and fully conscious when we’re both supposedly on duty gathering Intel, eh what?’
‘Darius, old horse, together we make the rules, you and I make the rules together; nobody else because it’s our very own Secret Service.’
‘That perhaps suggests that we may never become fully fledged as an Official Local Midge Secret Service because there will be only two of us.’
‘You want more agents?’
‘More Indians would be nice—so long as we remain the chiefs.’
‘Heh, heh, jolly good and of course yes, absolutely. Hang on, I think I can hear sub rosa midge voices again but not the same ones we heard previously—listen.’
And this is what the two dragons heard:
‘Greetings and I wish you good health, Comrade. I don’t believe we’ve met? I am Cochise Marcello Midge.’
‘Great Scott! Surely we’re related? I, my dear sir, am Geronimo Cavaradossi Midge, of this Local Sector. I’ve lived here all my life. And if you are not a Local, may I ask how you came here, pray?’
Cochise seemed worried and confused. ‘I wish I could explain,’ he said nervously, ‘but I seem to have been on a long journey and I’m having great difficulty in remembering the details; I fear I may be wind- and air-lagged. But I do hear what you’re saying and it’s clear to me that we both have Apache backgrounds.’
‘Rest easy, Cochise. It’s possible you accidentally boarded one of those human flying machine things and were transported,’ said Geronimo soothingly. ‘You’re among friends here and we’re awfully well organised; we’re in Australia, you know. Does that help?’
Cochise was astounded. ‘Australia! Holy cow! Australia’s on the other side of the planet, on the tomorrow side of the Dateline!’
‘You’re truly from the yesterday side? Are you perhaps an American midge?’
‘Yeah, but only in human terms right? I mean, we’re all One in The Greater Midgeworld,’ said Cochise forcefully. ‘Say, how came you by your middle name?’
‘Cavaradossi? Your mentioning it is a huge coincidence because I have an appointment to meet our Local Big Mind and they promise to figure it out for me—you know, to grokk the fullness of any life mystery affecting me. We’ve got some really good Intel people here.’
‘I see. May I stay for a while, at least until I get my bearings and work out how to navigate homeward again?’ Cochise asked respectfully.
‘Of course, yes! Be my guest. I’ll show you around and explain our Big Mind—it’s quite the envy of all the local Life Forms.’
‘G’day, Geronimo, you’re a little early for your Discovery Appointment,’ said Raoul Socrates Midge, the Local Big Mind Director. ‘I’ve compiled a beaut program of questions for our Mind people. We’ll start early if you like; anything to oblige.’
‘Thank you, Director,’ said Geronimo, ‘I accept. May I present our new American colleague, Cochise Marcello Midge? I rather think we’re related.’
‘We are all One,’ said the Director with a winning smile. ‘Welcome Cochise—I say, you seem a little spaced out; no doubt you’ve been, er flying with humans, eh? I tell you what: if you’d care to sit and link with Geronimo we might be able to project, pitch and track you and Geronimo together. What say you?’
‘Sir! I’m honoured to meet you, and thank you it will be a great pleasure to participate. Forgive me; I’m uncertain as to how I came to be here, although, yes, it was probably in one of those flying machines.’
‘Jolly good!’ the Director said enthusiastically. ‘We’ll do our utmost to straighten everything out for you. Follow me. I’ll take you up the Big Mind Tree and the chaps will prep you.’
The Local Big Mind was quietly and efficiently assembling at the top of the Very High Flooded Gum: the Mind comprised ten thousand of the fittest, the most excitingly cognitive and astute of the Local Sector male and female midges. The gigantic group were attaching themselves with spider silk lifelines to the tree’s limbs and then linking their antennae.
‘First,’ said Raoul holding out a eucalypt leaf containing several drops of a clear liquid in a crease, ‘get this into you. It’s not, ha ha, hemlock of any kind; it’s Happy Juice—mostly squeezed ground-cover liquids laced with year-old lantana crushing’s and the mixture buried in emptied human-made Shiraz bottles and covered by damp earth for six months. Drink it up and rub some into your antennae, that’s it. Now if you’ll slip on a lifeline and sit next to these ladies here…that’s it, alternate genders all the way. –It’s a ripper view, don’t you think, eh what?
The Director shouted through a leaf megaphone. ‘Listen up boys and girls! We have an American visitor, Cochise Marcello Midge, the guest of our very own Geronimo Cavaradossi Midge. You’ve been briefed on Geronimo. Cochise isn’t sure how he got here—do you know the name of your local sector, Cochise?’
‘Sir, yes sir! It’s named La Jolla, California, sir!’
‘That’s a cracker of a name,’ said Raoul cheerfully. ‘I’ve often wondered how to pronounce that: like Lah Hoyah, eh what? OK. Everybody ready, yes? All you two have to do is watch the river in the direction of America, remain linked and keep your minds opportunistically open. Everybody else: Eyes closed for these next few moments! Feel the vibrations, Mind! Feel the vibes of Geronimo and Cochise! Their energies know where to go so follow the energies!’
From their magnificent vantage point Geronimo and Cochise stared out at the beautiful serpentine river, parts of which were already in sunset and there were other glowing parts that reflected the green and gold colours of Midgeworld. Below the very high tree in the Local Sector thousands of awed midge spectators on the ground stared up to see their Local Big Mind begin its work; and even Agdor, the Old Gardener, awoke from his nap when he saw the waves of golden light begin shining from the top of the great tree and he also could hear what sounded like a most energetic dynamo-like humming as if a mighty power station had begun producing electrical power. Raoul now moved his tiny head slowly from left to right and with his eyes wide open. The sunset light shone on the river below and then Raoul took a deep breath and winged his way to a high point on a branch overhanging the river where he settled (without a lifeline). Bracing himself on a leaf that pointed to the northeast the Director fixed on an unseen target and he pointed so unerringly that both of his antennae quivered and then coiled dramatically together. ‘Project the names! Now sight and fix on me,’ he shrilled. ‘Fix now and pitch!’ The ten thousand midges opened their eyes, tracked with their antenna and together they cognitively pitched to an over-the-horizon target. ‘We’ll start with La Jolla Local Signal Station and they’ll patch us through to…let’s see now—to Arizona Central! OK Mind. On my mark, count of three then push out a Big One for me boys and girls! Here we go: One, two, three MARK!’
Cochise saw the golden waves emanating from his surrounding colleagues: the line of energy flashed out above the river, above the surrounding hills and travelling at the speed of light went directly to a stand-by crew of Intel midges on the roof of the University of California at San Diego where the transmission was split, one half going directly to a restaurant at La Jolla Cove, the other to a cave in Arizona—but the beam of cognitive energy was instantly deflected by the midge crew in Arizona in such a way that it bounced back directly to La Jolla! Raoul’s antennae unfurled; he staggered backwards; he reeled; he clutched at his whirling head with both antennae! Despite the low moans, shrieks and wailing sounds from the (Earthrise/Midgeworld) spectators (all of whom shrank back in horror), the Local Big Mind above them kept stoically to their task and the transmissions continued unabated!
‘Uh, ugh!’ gasped Raoul, falling to his knees at the edge of the leaf. The images that flashed through the Local Big Mind and through the Director’s mind were startling: individual minds saw, in sequence, horses with humans on their backs riding fiercely and hard in the strong light of the American plains, heard the war cries of the human warriors, saw, too, the dense clouds of midges high above the horses and men, when suddenly the images changed from day to night pictures of a restaurant in La Jolla. Pictures of a middle-aged man and woman emerged strongly; he was dark and battered-looking, she was blonde and beautiful; the female was blue-eyed, the man’s eyes were grey, and accompanying the pictures was the enchanting sounds of Claude Debussy’s music: an unseen orchestra played ‘The girl with the flaxen hair.’ Raoul struggled to stand. He placed his feelers on both sides of his head and swivelled ever so slightly, then he yelled: ‘It’s OK everybody! Continue! Our targets are all in the same place! Continue please! Situation is normal. I repeat situation is normal! We’re going to enhance now and look for our people. Stand by; stand by all stations! Focus on the tops of the two human heads! Enhancing now! Yes. There they are! Two of our kind: two midges. Let’s bring up the sound, please!’
‘Hey, Mimi, this is a bit different to the University basement—and I can smell food, good food!’
‘Take it easy, Musetta, these two humans are interesting. My feeling is that we can learn something from their interactions’.
‘Learn from humans? Hey, this girl is hungry. Oh, those two Dudes who were stalking us all day at the workshop have followed us in and Mim, what’s the big deal about this Gestalt therapy thing, anyway?’
’It’s good for learning about yourself, Mu…and…and relationships, you know?’
‘Mim, I already know what’s good for me. These two guys flying around us want to learn about us.’
‘No Mu, they’re trouble and they’re flying too close to the humans.’
‘This is a swell place, don’t you think?’ he says.
‘Sure it is. But Americans don’t say, “swell” any more; they haven’t for years,’ she says crossly.
‘I know they don’t, but I do and I like the word,’ he insists, smiling.
‘This place is called La Belle Aurore. What’s it mean?’
‘It means, I think, The Beautiful Daybreak, but I could be wrong. From the movie, you know?’
‘What movie?’
‘Casablanca, remember?’
‘Oh, no, I didn’t see it; I was learning to be a brain surgeon in those days. And you?’
‘I was looking for Paris.’
‘And, I seem to remember, you found it.’
‘Sure,’ he says. He smiles wistfully. ‘We don’t need to get into back-stories, you know. The workshop’s over now and I want you to come to Australia with me.’
‘You know I can’t do that, Rod. I’m an old married lady; settled, kids grown, my wealthy husband retiring.’
‘Norma, I’m the crazy university teacher, looking to retire happily, looking to find the love of my life at my side when I do.’
‘And we’re both getting older by the minute while you play the artful opportunist. Oh the music! It’s Debussy, isn’t it?’ she asks.
‘Yes. When I first saw you in the group I wanted…you; I mean, forgive me, I wanted to—‘
‘We both got what we wanted. Let’s listen to the music.’
‘Let’s be honest.’
‘I am being honest. You’ve never explained how you got from Paris to La Jolla Cove in a restaurant with a French name.’
‘I’m a romantic. I still want to be a writer. And I have a weakness,’ he says carefully, ‘for beautiful women, for art, for life.’
‘Paris is your beautiful woman. Or maybe La Jolla is.’
‘No, you are; you’re everything to me. I went to Paris because I read The Sun Also Rises when I was a teenager and knew I’d be a writer but I got involved and married and changed directions and then there was a family—‘
‘And you diverged into psychology so you could learn to write better but it didn’t work. You don’t want to get involved with me; I’m an old married woman who once wanted to sing, to be a diva.’
‘Maybe La Jolla is the place for your heart. Are you mad because you’re a famous and wealthy surgeon and I’m a university teacher?’
‘I’ve made lots of bad choices,’ she says gently, her tone softening. ‘I’m angry because I’m middle-aged and wealthy and well married and respectable and all because I changed direction.’
‘Norma, where are you heading, right now?’ he asks intensely.
‘Here come our drinks, very dry Martini for you, Manhattan for me.’
‘Just like in the movies,’ he says. ‘Where the hell are you heading?
‘Into obscurity.’ She manages to sound bitter and anxious at the same time.
‘Damn, there are mozzies flying around my head.’
‘What?’
‘Bugs,’ he says, suddenly annoyed and irrational. ‘Flying critters are hunting me.’
‘They’re all God’s creatures,’ she says laughing. ‘If you’re really who you believe yourself to be and have the guts for it, stay here in California!’
‘To hell with your glitzy California! Come with me tonight and we’ll fly to Australia!’
‘Damn you, you know I can’t!’
‘I know you can! I’ll get the waiter over and we’ll leave!’‘
‘All right then, you fool! Take me to Australia!’
‘Musetta! Stand by! We’re going where they’re going!’
‘Mimi! WHAT is going on with you?’
‘Mu, we’re going to Australia! I can feel it! We’ll slip under the collar of his jacket and be protected there. We’ll hitch a ride and be safe. Humans spray chemicals in their machines. I know about humans flying! He’s going to fly and he’ll take her with him!’
‘Oh my goodness Mim you’re nuts, but what the heck! Life is short! OK. Let’s do it!’
‘Where are those two creepy guys who were stalking us, Mu?’
‘There’s no need to worry about them, Mim. The human guy whacked them both.’
‘I think I may have dozed off,’ said Dinny. ‘Did I miss anything?’
‘Not a lot, old boy and I’m sorry to tell you this but this Local Sector of Midgeworld has lost it’s Local Big Mind Director. Old Raoul Socrates was sorting out a local problem for a Local, Geronimo and a visiting American named Cochise and it must have been too much for him. He succumbed to the cognitive exertions, is what I heard.’
‘Is there any good news, Darius?’
‘Sure, Din. A couple of humans turned up to meet Agdor—he’d been asleep also—and guess what? Two American midges were with them and they both dropped off here just before old Raoul fell off the twig. They’re Mimi and Musetta and they’ve been meeting some of the Locals. If only we could open a dossier, but we’ll just have to remember the details.’
‘Let me guess,’ murmured Dinny. ‘I’ll bet they met the local Geronimo Cavaradossi Midge and the American Cochise Marcello Midge and a colourful time was had by all.’
‘I say! I thought you were asleep?’ said an amazed Darius.
‘The good Intel agent never sleeps, old boy, not entirely anyway, although I seem to remember exploring parts of a graphically interesting dream.’
‘Well done, indeed, old chap!’
‘We’ve heard it said, remember, that fair dinkum knowledge emerges with good dialogue and fair dinkum questioning,’ Dinny murmured.
‘Indeed we have, yes. And awareness is all, eh what? And sleeping with one eye open could be our motto,’ suggested Darius.
‘That’s a splendid notion old man. We may have reptilian brains but they still work splendidly.’
‘What’s more, Din, the midges lost one and gained three.’
‘And we have two more humans in the area now, Dar. That’s another four legs and four feet we can hunt from!’
‘This sure is one fine day, Din, old buddy!’
‘Just swell, Dar old pal!’
This is the 109 October 2009 Diary. DDD October 27 2009.
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Earthrise Diary (909)
© text Don Diespecker 2009
The Earthrise Diary
Don Diespecker
The typical plumed midge, Chironomus plumosus, swarms in the summer air, its short, soft, non-piercing proboscis distinguishing it from gnats; its larvae are colloquially called blood-worms. The black midge which bites the hand is a Ceratopogon. Some, e.g., the pear-midge, are destructive.
The New Standard Encyclopaedia and World Atlas (1936).
In Rhodes the days drop as softly as fruit from trees.
Lawrence Durrell: Reflections on a Marine Venus, a companion to the landscape of Rhodes (1953).
It’s difficult to resist reference books like dictionaries (in a range of languages) and encyclopaedias, particularly oldish encyclopaedias published in the era of my childhood.
I’m sometimes unsettled by midges as they’re commonly called here, but I’m always impressed by their power because combating their persistent adventures on my skin is always very difficult: the more I swat at them the more they’re enabled by whirling air to escape.
I quote Lawrence Durrell because I’ve always admired his uses of language in both prose and verse (and to almost name-drop ever so slightly, because we also have mutual friends and acquaintances).
September 11 2009. The last days of August and the first days of September are colourful here and along the Waterfall Way to Bellingen: the jacarandas bronzing before losing their foliage; Virgilia trees pink-flowered (a South African tree to 10-m and known in SA as keurboom); yellow tabebuia (aka the Golden Trumpet tree from the tropical Americas), a bright yellow.
After returning from Coffs Harbour on this warm day I began my recovery and the return to sanity with an intended stroll in the riverside garden but was halted by a reptilian rustling directly ahead: a medium-sized goanna that glanced disdainfully at me and then walked onto the chicken wire covering some dahlia tubers in the Theatre Garden (very unhurried s-he was, too). I watched the forked-tongued critter demonstrating it’s territorial ownership to the animal kingdom (including me, but no brush turkeys that might have benefitted from the display). I replotted my course, muttering, and got as far as the Belvedere where further rustling in the crackling dry leaves warned me a second time: a second goanna, smaller, and yes, performing his or her circus number on yet more chicken wire (covering more dahlia tubers) before daintily stepping off the wire and dashing up the big white cedar that overlooks that place. Spring at Earthrise often includes coincidences.
On Saturday night (9/12) drowsing between NRL Qualifying Finals and a One-Day cricket International and violent movies (all via my TV set) I heard a ruckus possibly from under the house, so went downstairs with torch and pick handle to investigate. When I switched on the front door deck light I saw two handsome possums leaving the building in their proficient way by walking precisely along the poly-pipeline that runs, suspended, through the old trees on the Ancient Riverbank**from the pump (east side deck) to the water storage tank adjacent to the carport. I’d seen this professional high wire act a couple of times previously and their pipeline walk, although the possums make it look easy, surely requires great skill and perfect balance; the line (nominal 1-in ID) is narrow and smooth. And the pipeline swings, being unstable. I greeted the possums and applauded (as one does). The lead possum leaped from the line to the tree trunk and in three stunning claw-climbing bounds was high in the canopy. These little furs are breath-takingly fast and agile and I like to think that such elevating speed-runs are probably equivalent to the hunting sprints and charges of a cheetah. Seriously. Or a striking snake, possibly. Amazing.
September 14 2009. I’ve been expecting the spangled drongos to arrive, but they’re later than usual (September 12 in 2008 and 2007). As I left the house this morning to drive to Bellingen I was greeted by the familiar drongo chattering, creaking and groaning; Dicrurus bracteatus, the spangled drongo, is again residence. According to the bird book, this is a migratory species ‘…arriving in October and leaving in March’. Perhaps these families of beautiful iridescent birds are advance guards (they always arrive in September); they often leave early for unknown reasons, sometimes in mid-summer.
Today is a summery day, although the days have been bright and warm for about three weeks, it’s warmer than usual. A few water dragons have reappeared and so have the skinks. The colours are made more splendid when I wear Polaroid glasses. Cedar Grove is marked by the display of five dark pink azaleas and a sixth, lighter azalea (an old 4.5-m wide bush at the gate). The citrus trees are flowering; the heaviest scent is from a flood-battered grapefruit on Big Lawn and an old navel orange tree adjacent to it is putting out a great spread of blossom (most of the blossom is from very thorny rootstock).
Jasmine is flowering too. In the Dog’s Garden, well covered by brush-turkey-defeating chicken wire, red salvia and kalenchoe flower determinedly in the heat and dust. These and several other beds are being hand-watered after sunset. For much of this time I hear the music of early crickets harmonising (it seems) with the small frogs that cleverly live beneath the piles of still-damp flood debris. For company I have a host of inquisitive fireflies flashing about the garden. September is a lively time. A few snakes have appeared and goannas seem bent on dominating all the areas that I’ve long considered ‘my’ private space.
On Wednesday, Sept 23, some 5-million tonnes of fine topsoil (i.e., dust) were blown from west to east across the State in gale force winds. NSWs worst dust storm in 70 years, the dense orange-red dust ‘system’ was some 2,000-km long and moved about 16,000-tonnes of soil each hour across the State. Some of the dust crossed the Tasman and fell to earth in New Zealand. There was a second such storm on the 26th—neighbour Leif and I sat in a relatively ‘safe’ part of the garden while the accompanying wind brought down more deadwood. Apparently the day may have originated in the Queensland floods earlier this year and then was washed down river systems as silt that then dried out before being raised by strong winds—thus, rain-inspired dust storms.
And again this morning (27th), there is more wind, more dust and more smoke in the Bellinger Valley. Recent hazard reduction burns plus unlawfully set fires in the forests have made much of the Valley dangerous. I was up early to cut up and move branches from the road along side this property.
On a more peaceful note I’ve been ‘observing’ (i.e., invading the privacy) of the small cormorant who enjoys drying his or her wings on the bedrock near the Belvedere. Lately the little bird has been hassled by two much larger cormorants (a different species). It seems that Clarrie’s ‘territory’ is being intentionally invaded by visiting toughs as it were. To be fair, I frequently see Clarrie (‘playfully’ or ‘aggressively’?) interfering with a heron enjoying wading the shallows along the opposite bank. When the heron arrives, Clarrie dives in and pops up next to the heron. The heron turns and wades in the opposite direction; Clarrie dives again and pops up adjacent to the bigger bird &c &c. Can this be a bird game and how territorial are water birds in this area? The river is low and continues to fall in the very warm spring weather. Rain or showers are sorely needed (there has been only one period of thundery showers this month).
Fabled Anecdote (2)
© text Don Diespecker 2009
The Press Conference
Firefly, a beetle nearly related to the click beetle and famous for its luminosity, which is mainly emitted by two organs on the thorax, visible as yellow spots when not in use. Parts of the abdomen, however, are also luminous. The light is so intense it is possible to read by its aid, and the sight of a swarm of these glowing insects dancing in the S. American forest at night greatly impressed the earliest travellers.
The Modern World Encyclopaedia (1935)
There were chance occasions when he’d glanced out the window and seen fireflies in the soft September dusk flickering upwards in easeful spirals.
‘Darkwood’ (unpublished MS)
Early September and the Spring Session of the Midgeworld Local Assembly has come to order. Sir Gawain Midge, having cancelled Question Time (on the grounds of there being far too many Members using the sessions for snatched dozes and sometimes for distinctly heavy slumbering), is holding his late winter/early spring press conference on the lawn-edge-riverbank at Midgeworld (aka Earthrise to humans). The little fellow is flanked by 1000 or so of the renowned Humming Dipterenes, two gender-distinct groups of backing midges bouncing alternately in the adjacent air on either side of the minute knight (presently also the de facto Midgeworld Prime Minister following the bloodless coup of the recent summer and who also is assisting as {temporary} Squadron Leader of the 99th Fighter Squadron of the Royal Midgeworld Air Force (the RMAF) when he is not harmonising {there being no Attack Missions presently being flown by the 99th and there being only tedious Plotting Room Exercises for him to avoid, Sir Gawain would just as soon be rhythmically bouncing and singing, for he is also a part-time Midgeworld Music Producer, and the Backing Groups Choirmaster, and a renowned local composer}).
One of Sir Gawain’s passionate pleasures, it should be added, is the choreographing of single mixed-gender and varied Diptera backing groups in such ways that the groups most strongly resemble schools of so-called bait fish, his inspiration having come from the rustic human gardener’s reading-over-the-shoulder (ROTS) watching of TV Nature Programs presented by Sir Richard Attenborough (Sir G insists he has a matey affinity with that much larger human knight, one bordering on brotherhood and in which there are presented marvellous images of sardines whirling in the Indian Ocean off the East Coast of the Republic of South Africa. Sir G has, for some months, been so enamoured of the gyratory whirling of these distant and alien little fishes that whirling qua whirling, has become the leitmotif enabling him to lead the valiant 99th to success {he scrupulously avoids using or even thinking of missions as ‘victories’ against the enormous space-demanding humans, rustic and otherwise}).
Those who similarly are lofty-minded and who studiously follow the career of Sir G know him to be always positive in outlook and of a sunny disposition (although there are very large ROTS squadrons of tertiary Intel Students flying above, behind and to each side of the Old Gardener 24 hours a day, Sir G likes to see some of the readings and writings and of course the TV programs for himself {all of which are collectively known in the Midgeworld Local Sector as The Source, Sir G being a celebrated Speed Reader who has won a great many Midge Educational Awards}).
To the surprise of many midges, those both high and low in Midgeworld Society, Sir G currently practises Base Jumping from a particular jump-off platform on a partly hidden branch in the Highest Flooded Gum and he does this with an intensity of purpose that he, so far, has not discussed with his sister, the Hon Morgana, and only with a select few of his colleagues. On this auspicious occasion, however, and Sir Gawain being an honourable midge and having reached a somewhat startling decision, he has decided to partly use this evening’s Press Conference to announce his breakthrough discovery (a scientific phenomenon of global importance, one revealed to him in a moment of serendipity such that he immediately intuited an epiphany half way through a majestic Base Jump). Sir G has resolved to impart his amazing news in some detail during the Press Conference (or possibly at the end of the Conference) prior to tabling his comprehensive report to the Assembly.
Meanwhile, the literati of Midgeworld are in turmoil, it having been rumoured that Sir G and the 99th have been converted to subduing the humans entirely by peaceful means rather than by frontal assaults and the more bookish midges, used to practising deadly forms of the martial arts to stimulate their creativity, are deeply concerned that Midgeworld is becoming overly effete; these midges (often known in the Local Areas as The High Beings and sometimes as The Intellectual Samurai) hope desperately for some encouraging news because they intend the overthrow Sir G and those closest to him, his fellow officers of the 99th Squadron of the RMAF).
The gallant little knight, famed as the sage and courteous Sir Gawain, generally attempts to speak diplomatically or as diplomatically as his little used French would allow. ‘Mm Speaker, my Lords and Lady Midges of Wide Pool in Midgeworld—and all associated Life, including the bumbling great humans who persistently obstruct Local Weather! Attendez mes enfants! It is again my great pleasure to present to you my brilliant sister, the Hon Morgana Midge, Bobber and Backer Extraordinaire, popularly known, too, as The Darkwood Diva and who is additionally, the Honorary Music Teacher of the Ladies Harmony Backing Choir.’
The Speaker (an old mosquito) quickly interposed. ‘Thank you, Prime Minister, the Hon Morgana will now present the preliminary program announcement for the Midgeworld Annual September Festival in the Local Sector,’ Mm Speaker said in a thin voice, ‘and before anybody gets any ideas about meals or even about snacking during any part of this meeting, I remind you most stringently that this is also a Ceasefire and Moratorium and anyone, anyone eating anyone else will be expelled and banished for life from the Sector. The Member for Morgana has the Floor.’
The wind having been taken, so to say, from his sails by the Speaker, Sir G swallowed his pride and bowed graciously to Morgana. His turn would soon come and there remained ample time for him to make his Discovery Statement.
The Hon Morgana Midge bounced sublimely through the balmy air of late afternoon to settle next to the Speaker now waiting heavily on a new pink red cedar leaf. Turning her splendidly clear dipterous wings to the mellow rays of the approaching sunset Morgana began to go through her notes, which is to say she intuited her program from the cloud of bobbing Intel Info Locals (popularly known by less exalted Locals as The Infointelfocals of whose Sector Mind she was a most valued part). Her brother took the opportunity to begin an elaborate to-and-fro darting above and between the thousands of assembled midges and daringly shrilled warnings not only to all midges but to all and sundry, which is to say, to all the hugely varied other locals—and he was particularly insistent toward the goannas, water dragons and snakes, all of whom were strategically scattered in defensive groups.
Morgana, about to speak, has managed only a demure ‘My Lords— when she is rudely interrupted by a lone housefly on a shaded leaf at the edge of the great gathering. ‘On a point of order, Mm Speaker.’
The Speaker, being a weary old mosquito suffering from arthritis (having once been knocked down by a stray molecule of chemical repellent), is nudged by several members of the Dipterenes and stands up swashingly, having sipped to excess soft-target blood drawn from the old human gardener, for she simply cannot ever say No to a good drop of red. ‘What do you mean, sir and who are you?’
‘Mm Speaker, I am Gustavo Thong, presently of the 5th Local Sector and I want to know, please, why the Hon Morgana has or is possibly still being presented to the assembly by her brother, Sir Gawain, he having called us together to attend a Press Conference. This is becoming a confusing Press Conference. One expects appropriate announcements and hopes for opportunities to ask questions. Your ruling, please.’
‘I’m coming to that,’ shrills Sir G.
‘The Member for Thong and Sir Gawain will remain still and be entirely silent,’ says the Speaker in an excruciatingly thin voice. ‘I shall confer with colleagues and make my ruling at the end of the press conference.’
‘But, look here!’ shrieks Gustavo Thong.
‘But me no buts, sir; you have my preliminary ruling and that will have to be enough to be going on with.’
‘I say, steady on! You can’t do that. I want a ruling now!’ the housefly cries.
‘I’ve told you to be still. My ruling now is that you risk being taken away to a more exposed place where, despite the prevailing Cease-fire and Moratorium and Press Conference, you will be at considerably more risk of being ingested by one of the water dragons whose patience is not unlimited.’
There is a second housefly interruption from the Floor. ‘I am Maurice Fondue, also of the 5th Local Sector. May I say something, Mm Speaker?’
‘No, but say it, anyway.’
The second fly, enraptured by the mingled scents of so much varied prey present in the Assembly speaks out: ‘I, too have a point of order. I object to Sir Gawain’s assumed use of the ridiculously named 99th Fighter Squadron of the RMAF when we all know that midges cannot, in any circumstances, defeat, in any manner whatsoever, a single human, conscious, semi conscious or asleep!’
‘Oh pish, sir, and bosh!’ yells an enraged Sir Gawain. ‘Mm Speaker: may I talk to that?’
‘Oh, I suppose so, if you must.’
‘Then I shall do so the moment the Hon Morgana is allowed to complete her announcement of the Spring Festival Festivities. Thank you, Mm Speaker.’
‘Yes very well and thank you, Prime Minister. The Members for Fondue and Thong will resume their perches and be silent. I want to hear details of the program. The Hon Morgana Midge.’
But the Member for Thong will not obey the rules and suddenly splutters, ‘Aha! Clearly this Press Conference is an utter sham! Are we or are we not the audience for the Festivities of the Spring Festival?’
‘Member for Thong: you’re on notice. Not another word!’
Abashed and near tears, the Hon Morgana bounces lightly, whirring her wings. ‘Mm Speaker and as I was about to say, the Spring Ceasefire and General Moratorium will be acknowledged and our Spring Celebrations will begin shortly, just before sunset which is now only minutes away. This Press Conference and these Festivities, these Spring Celebrations shall last through the night to end at sunrise; however, the Ceasefire and Moratorium will continue for another full day. My Lords and Ladies and all creatures here assembled, I am happy to announce that after long discussions at a High Level, the Local Area Cicadidae Chapter has arranged, wait for it, for the entire Northern Region of the New South Wales Massed Male Cicada Choirs to perform so as to be heard throughout the entire region—you may imagine the exquisitely sophisticated synchronization required. The big four-wingers have agreed to present Rachmaninoff’s ‘Vocalese,’ but only after we had agreed to them following that with Ravel’s ‘Bolero.’ They drive a hard bargain, I must say; on the other hand any of our colleagues obliged to live underground in darkness for so much of their lives deserve our compassion and cooperation, and they’re awfully good musically.’
‘I say!’ said shrilled Mm Speaker, ‘Surely the humans will have something to say about that; why, they can’t even tolerate our muted hunting songs! They’ll be driven insane and do desperate things and we’ll all be in dire peril!’
‘No, no,’ interposed Sir G, ‘we won’t worry about that and I shall take care of everything!’ The assembled creatures exchanged startled glances. What could one midge do against such odds?
Sir G would say no more; instead, he frowned at his sister who then continued her announcement. ‘And there will be dancing in the intervals during the night when our firefly colleagues will provide lighting at many points around the gardens. And there is to be a demonstration, too, by The Midgeworld Carlos Gardel Grand Tango Dance Group!’
Morgana’s announcement was greeted with cheers and applause but the applause was dramatically cut short by a violently loud C-r-a-c-k! A very old Mountain Oak broke and crashed down nearby to cries of consternation and alarm. The shock wave of rushing air caused by the gigantic tree hitting the lawn sent the entire Assembly hurtling through the air, running, swirling, leaping…
(to be continued)…
Fabled Anecdote (3)
© text Don Diespecker 2009
The Spring Ding
The hills are alive with the sound of music
With the songs they have sung
For a thousand years.
Oscar Hammerstein: The Sound of Music (1959)
Cicada, an insect of the group Homoptera, with a big head and large membranous wings. It is notorious for the deafening sounds emitted by the males, the sounding organs consisting of a pair of shell-like drums situated at the base of the abdomen and operated by special muscles.
The Modern World Encyclopaedia (1935)
When the giant Mountain Oak broke and crashed to Earth on Big Lawn at Earthrise (more correctly, at Midgeworld) thousands of small creatures like the myriad midges and several hundred larger insects and animals (and acknowledging, of course, Much Smaller Life) were struck by the shock wave: an enormous rush of air flung the smallest insects in whirling clouds across the lawn, over the rose bushes, up above the lawn edge and out over the gleaming river. Two of the ultra-conservative old intellectual ‘Samurai’ midges, Denny (‘The Mandarin’) Diderot (not to be confused with the much larger water dragon, Dinny (short for ‘Dinosaur’) and Sam (‘Doc’) Johnson, recognising the blast of air for what it was—a natural phenomenon—managed to resume their interrupted conversation while enjoying the wild ride and the remarkably changing views.
‘Quite a feeling, this, eh, Doc: flying free, lots of air under the wings, no effort required, what?’
‘Oh! Such whirling views and how the world tilts so and then tumbles, roaring, yet I have to declare, the effects are dizzying in the extreme but, Denny, I fear I may have to lie down soon if I am to recover.’
‘Courage mon brave! All will shortly slow, including us,’ shouted Denny. ‘Hold to the riverway course and if you feel faint I can provide some lift, my left wing beneath your right; see, we’re now slowing!’
‘Yes, thank you, old fellow, I can certainly use some lift; perhaps we could together attempt a wide turn soon and hopefully land close to the Festival Site—which, regrettably will surely now be an accident scene.’
‘Better yet, Doc, stay close and we’ll do an Immelmann from on high, save heaps of energy and with good fortune smiling, touch down close to the reassembling colleagues.’
‘I’m not entirely sure that I’m up to it, Denny, but, of course, you’re right and we would save energy so, yes, should I be up to it I shall definitely be up for it.’
‘Jolly good, Doc; preparing for course change, then; stand by; sensing a damp upwelling billow from the Creek Air; here we go; starting half loop…now!’
The tiny flyers lifted together abreast of the cool damp air at the confluence of river and creek, Denny Diderot strongly supporting his friend’s right wing with his own left wing and they soared magnificently above the golden light of the shining river, the hills and forest and the riverscape seemingly tilting as they climbed boldly to the High Point, then began their combined half roll nearly 50-m above the water from where they were able to see most splendidly the crowns of the big flooded gums at Midgeworld, the rays of the setting sun flashing toward them at the higher altitude and, as they levelled out and the world view settled they steadfastly locked in their guidance systems and flew confidently on a course that was the reverse of the outward blast-path and very soon saw directly ahead, the Big Lawn, part in shadow, part in dappled light, such that the bold little midges began shouting sharply in unison, ‘We’re on the glide-path, and only seven seconds to touch-down! Bravo us! Hooray and formidable and jolly astounding fortitude!’
And so it was; the two flyers landed without mishap—and surprisingly close to where they were perching when the great tree fell; they had successfully called on their very best flying and navigation skills and used them to great effect. The huge audience of insects and other animals was indeed reassembling and the combined sounds of small frogs and crickets could now be distinctly heard as they began their Local Prelude to the performance of the Massed Choirs of millions of cicadas.
‘Thank you, Denny.’
‘I knew we could make it, Doc. –I say you look a little green. Are you OK?’
‘No, I fear I shall be obliged to consult a health care professional, old chap,’ Doc murmured.
‘Oh, I’m so sorry.’
‘Alas, an old-age malady slows both my pace and progress and I must find, with assistance, the best way in which to proceed or I shall never complete my work here.’
‘You mean—
‘My intended Midgeworld Encyclopaedic Dictionary, yes.’
‘Perhaps you already know the best way, Doc, because you’re the best expert we have on you.’
‘Ah, thank you old friend, yes, you refer to the Gestalt Approach workshops here and to many other Group Process, I’m sure, but alas, I now have grave doubts about intensive psychotherapeutic learning groups and similar approaches to enlightenment—‘
‘Great heavens! –But why, Doc, why?’
Sam Johnson nervously saw from the corner of his eye that Sir Gawain was bouncing furiously while in animated discussion with his sister, the Hon Morgana, and that the Speaker was about to interrupt, so he whispered hastily to Denny Diderot, ‘I was on a ROTS special project mission inside the Old Gardener’s house and saw an alarming item in the Diary the human was compiling, a most significant copyrighted piece titled The Japanese Workshop by the Gardener’s human friend and colleague, Sharon Snir, in which that writer had allegedly stated:
‘In all my workshops I provide chocolate treats for the students. I was told, many years ago, that spiritual work can be tiring and that chocolate contains minerals that boosts the system and replenishes the soul. I believe it completely. I had brought a couple of packets of Allen’s Snakes from Australia for myself and put them out on the table too. In the first choco break one woman tried a snake and yummed in delight. Before I knew it, twelve participants also wanted to try a snake. I showed them how the children in Australia stretch them as long as they can without breaking them and suddenly there was an informal competition to see who could stretch it the longest; so much laughter, so much fun.’
Denny Diderot paled. ‘Good grief! In intensive learning groups humans now eat snakes and their children stretch them? I’m astonished, Doc!’
‘Yes, well, there it is; of course, there is the possibility that the snakes may be artificial in some way, perhaps a confection, sweetmeats you know like the chocolate confections made from cocoa seeds—oh, we’ll talk later old boy. Sir G is once again attempting to complete an announcement.’
Denny whispered quickly, ‘What does ‘yummed’ mean, do you imagine?’ and Sam whispered back: It’s a human feeding expression, one of deliciousness, or, as we would say of sucking on citrus blossom nectar, bloody bonzer grub.’ A shaken Diderot peered uneasily into the quickening dusk and fortunately became happily distracted by the antics of the local fireflies playfully bringing the Assembly to order. The two friends strained to hear Sir Gawain over the increasing choral preludes until the cicadas came in on cue, quite softly at first and then began to rise from pianissimo to moderato to allegro—and continued to rise alarmingly. The immense volume of sound reached resonance and was so powerful as to cause small waves to dance on the river’s surface and to make everything at the Assembly site vibrate so unpleasantly that it was difficult for any of the small creatures to see what was in front of them except as indeterminate blurs.
Then Denny Diderot said, ‘Relax now, old friend; close your eyes and I’ll keep watch. A tout a l’heure.’
A grateful Sam Johnson closed his eyes and lay back against a twig. The cicadas played so skilfully that their music sounded to Doc Johnson uncannily like the various sections of an enormous symphony orchestra (although for Doc there was also a distinctly significant dominance by the second violins and violas, the cellos and the bass players). Despite the great Musical Forces In Play Throughout The Landscape, Doc drifted into a healing sleep.
*
It was during the First Interval, the cicada choirs having paused for a few minutes, that Sir Gawain seized the opportunity to cut through the red tape, as it were, and to plunge into his Discovery Announcement. With Morgana at his side he bounced to the top of the season’s first red rose, stood confidently on the edge of the highest petal and began. ‘My friends, I am not a militant military flyer at all. The 99th Squadron, RMAF is militarily named because we wish to be adventurous, well motivated, entirely positive and absolutely determined to move Midgeworld forward. Although there are certain intellectuals among us, those ultra conservative bookish types, the Royal Upstarts of the Local Sectors, who would have us all take arms against the humans I am happy to announce that their desperate measures will never be needed, never.
‘My colleagues and I have been free falling and sky diving and base jumping from the Highest Flooded Gum and learned that the more of us who act together the more air, both hot and cold, we are able to move. These relatively small drafts of air may often be experienced, too, by our backing groups when they bounce as dense dancing and singing groups: because we are so many! The ROTS groups and the Intel groups and the Memory groups will confirm these observations. Therefore, when we approach humans, it is imperative that we do so en masse and in such ways that the human person will wave frantically in order to prevent us from annoying them. That is how we control them! Peacefully! Given a hundred humans and a million midges, do you see, we can make the humans move so much air that these drafts waft up into our river cloud formations where they CHANGE THE WEATHER! Is that astonishing, or what?’
Sir Gawain was quite out of breath and slid down the inside of the rose petal where he rested gratefully against a wonderfully scented stamen. Morgana slid down next to him and said, ‘My dear brother, that was jolly well said, but I have to tell you, my dear, that when our colleagues began to tango at the start of the Interval, they had eyes and of course ears only for each other: they seem not to have heard you because they were enraptured by other sounds, other voices. And the spectators were so weary from the cicada music that they immediately began falling asleep. You’ll have to do it all again, my dear, but not now, later!’
*
The two water dragons, Darius and Dinny (and, again, not to be confused with the miniscule midge Denny Diderot) were resting in the area close to Doc Johnson and Denny Diderot, uncomfortable because the cicada choirs were beating not only in perfect time, but altogether too loudly and the dragons had been struggling to follow the Speaker’s interventions and rulings, as well as Sir G and the Hon Morgana’s ‘announcements’ and the daring interruptions of the Members for Thong and Fondue and also, remembering the falling tree—and they had inadvertently dozed off when Sir G made his Discovery Announcement. The very strong scent of jasmine now drifted toward the river and became mixed with the powerful aromas of the citrus blossom flowering in the old trees on Big Lawn. Almost all the dragons present at the Festival were eager to relax and to close their eyes—with the exception of two particular dragons that remained wide awake.
‘I say, Darius, old boy, I think the Speaker rather has it in for us, don’t you?’
‘Oh, don’t worry, Dinny, she does need to warn everybody about the Ceasefire.’
‘Oh, I suppose so; fortunately I ate earlier,’ Dinny murmured.
‘I say, Din there’s something odd going on here. Can you hear it?’
‘Hear what, old boy?’
‘I can hear a sotto voce conversation and it’s coming from that rosebush, it seems. It’s only just audible. No, no, I don’t mean Sir Gawain and the Hon Morgana up there; their voices are barely detectable. Let’s sidle over a little closer. Ah yes. Can you hear it now; two quite distinctly different midge voices, I think?’
‘Indeed yes; let’s listen.’
The two dragons moved into the shade of a Camp David Hybrid Tea Rose where they adjusted and then focused their acute hearing. They moved their heads close to a tiny hole beneath the rose bush and were able to hear a sub rosa discussion between two midges:
‘Ilsa we can talk now; the Dipterenes backing groups will cover anything we say.’
‘Rick, what is it?’
‘MSIS, you know, the Secret Intelligence Service, has discovered what Sir Gawain and his pals have been up to.’
‘But how?’
‘MSIS have an agent in the big grandis tree where Sir G practises base jumps. Sir G had his mates with him, those from the 99th. He was heard to say that he accidentally discovered the power of humans to change the weather—‘
‘But how and what does it mean for us, Rick?’
‘Ah, when you speak like that Ilsa I remember our Secret Place, the Creek and that cold and wet day when we first met there. You were blue; the mozzies were grey. We’ll always have the Creek. Here’s the thing, Ilsa. Although we’re tiny, our movements create wind drafts. If a million midges jump at the same time they make a measureable downdraft, a pressure wind that swirls in this corner of the river and one much larger than a single swipe made by the Old Gardener against one of us. Thus, Sir G realised that with little effort, humans could be made by us midges to make the weather change. Here in Rum Corner updrafts and downdrafts cause damp air to rise, swirl and to make clouds. Think of it, Ilsa: when we annoy humans and they swipe at us, we can control the weather because we can control humans!’
‘Rick, that’s so wonderful! Who else knows this?’
‘Maybe the dragons.’
‘That’s a worry.’
‘Nah, all our worries don’t amount to a hill of discarded wings. Dragons are only interested in catching flies.’
‘Rick, what do you mean?’
‘I mean that with this knowledge, Ilsa, we can rule Midgeworld.’
The attentive dragons turned to each other and sighed and then Dinny said sotto voce, ‘Darius, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship with these two midges.’
*
At the beginning of the month I spotted the reappearance of the native violet in the dusty flood loam (on the west side of the broken white cedar and it’s garden). I’d raked there several times. It goes without saying, almost, that the groundcover, tradescantia, as green as ever and despite the raking, has been happily spreading itself in all the usual places and does its best to colonize vacant spaces in the loam over the entire area. I know what to do about that, but the ambitious groundcover can wait; it has a lower priority.
**(The house is founded on an old riverbank that for vague reasons of my own I think of as ‘ancient.’ It may be nothing of the kind; however, aerial views and geological information (&c and so forth) will be helpful in determining when the Bellinger ran consistently against this bank. The first (1984) campsite and our subsequent caravan sites were supported by this relatively high riverbank. Here, the bank now supports the carport and the concrete water storage tank and is covered by big trees. The same bank runs in a sweeping curve ‘upstream’ and is crossed by Darkwood Road near my gate, and then extends along the Deer Park paddocks next door (where it may be seen supporting large trees).
At any time outside (not only in spring, but much more so in spring), provided one is fully conscious, it’s possible to see, hear and smell change: a brown butterfly rises north from the lower end of the track and is followed by a blue one (the Ulysses?) and I can now hear unseen whistlers and at least three other bird species. The shower of dead leaves falls without the benefit of breeze on a warm day and there’s a background shush-rattle from the nearby rapids. There’s lots of life here. How much more noise might bacteria make, I wonder?
Finally, I’ve cleared part of the riverbank that was covered by flood debris, raked and levelled it (more or less) and added some kikuyu grass seed and Japanese millet seed. We’ll see. Some rain would help.
This is the 909 September 2009 Diary. DDD September 27 2009.
The Earthrise Diary
Don Diespecker
The typical plumed midge, Chironomus plumosus, swarms in the summer air, its short, soft, non-piercing proboscis distinguishing it from gnats; its larvae are colloquially called blood-worms. The black midge which bites the hand is a Ceratopogon. Some, e.g., the pear-midge, are destructive.
The New Standard Encyclopaedia and World Atlas (1936).
In Rhodes the days drop as softly as fruit from trees.
Lawrence Durrell: Reflections on a Marine Venus, a companion to the landscape of Rhodes (1953).
It’s difficult to resist reference books like dictionaries (in a range of languages) and encyclopaedias, particularly oldish encyclopaedias published in the era of my childhood.
I’m sometimes unsettled by midges as they’re commonly called here, but I’m always impressed by their power because combating their persistent adventures on my skin is always very difficult: the more I swat at them the more they’re enabled by whirling air to escape.
I quote Lawrence Durrell because I’ve always admired his uses of language in both prose and verse (and to almost name-drop ever so slightly, because we also have mutual friends and acquaintances).
September 11 2009. The last days of August and the first days of September are colourful here and along the Waterfall Way to Bellingen: the jacarandas bronzing before losing their foliage; Virgilia trees pink-flowered (a South African tree to 10-m and known in SA as keurboom); yellow tabebuia (aka the Golden Trumpet tree from the tropical Americas), a bright yellow.
After returning from Coffs Harbour on this warm day I began my recovery and the return to sanity with an intended stroll in the riverside garden but was halted by a reptilian rustling directly ahead: a medium-sized goanna that glanced disdainfully at me and then walked onto the chicken wire covering some dahlia tubers in the Theatre Garden (very unhurried s-he was, too). I watched the forked-tongued critter demonstrating it’s territorial ownership to the animal kingdom (including me, but no brush turkeys that might have benefitted from the display). I replotted my course, muttering, and got as far as the Belvedere where further rustling in the crackling dry leaves warned me a second time: a second goanna, smaller, and yes, performing his or her circus number on yet more chicken wire (covering more dahlia tubers) before daintily stepping off the wire and dashing up the big white cedar that overlooks that place. Spring at Earthrise often includes coincidences.
On Saturday night (9/12) drowsing between NRL Qualifying Finals and a One-Day cricket International and violent movies (all via my TV set) I heard a ruckus possibly from under the house, so went downstairs with torch and pick handle to investigate. When I switched on the front door deck light I saw two handsome possums leaving the building in their proficient way by walking precisely along the poly-pipeline that runs, suspended, through the old trees on the Ancient Riverbank**from the pump (east side deck) to the water storage tank adjacent to the carport. I’d seen this professional high wire act a couple of times previously and their pipeline walk, although the possums make it look easy, surely requires great skill and perfect balance; the line (nominal 1-in ID) is narrow and smooth. And the pipeline swings, being unstable. I greeted the possums and applauded (as one does). The lead possum leaped from the line to the tree trunk and in three stunning claw-climbing bounds was high in the canopy. These little furs are breath-takingly fast and agile and I like to think that such elevating speed-runs are probably equivalent to the hunting sprints and charges of a cheetah. Seriously. Or a striking snake, possibly. Amazing.
September 14 2009. I’ve been expecting the spangled drongos to arrive, but they’re later than usual (September 12 in 2008 and 2007). As I left the house this morning to drive to Bellingen I was greeted by the familiar drongo chattering, creaking and groaning; Dicrurus bracteatus, the spangled drongo, is again residence. According to the bird book, this is a migratory species ‘…arriving in October and leaving in March’. Perhaps these families of beautiful iridescent birds are advance guards (they always arrive in September); they often leave early for unknown reasons, sometimes in mid-summer.
Today is a summery day, although the days have been bright and warm for about three weeks, it’s warmer than usual. A few water dragons have reappeared and so have the skinks. The colours are made more splendid when I wear Polaroid glasses. Cedar Grove is marked by the display of five dark pink azaleas and a sixth, lighter azalea (an old 4.5-m wide bush at the gate). The citrus trees are flowering; the heaviest scent is from a flood-battered grapefruit on Big Lawn and an old navel orange tree adjacent to it is putting out a great spread of blossom (most of the blossom is from very thorny rootstock).
Jasmine is flowering too. In the Dog’s Garden, well covered by brush-turkey-defeating chicken wire, red salvia and kalenchoe flower determinedly in the heat and dust. These and several other beds are being hand-watered after sunset. For much of this time I hear the music of early crickets harmonising (it seems) with the small frogs that cleverly live beneath the piles of still-damp flood debris. For company I have a host of inquisitive fireflies flashing about the garden. September is a lively time. A few snakes have appeared and goannas seem bent on dominating all the areas that I’ve long considered ‘my’ private space.
On Wednesday, Sept 23, some 5-million tonnes of fine topsoil (i.e., dust) were blown from west to east across the State in gale force winds. NSWs worst dust storm in 70 years, the dense orange-red dust ‘system’ was some 2,000-km long and moved about 16,000-tonnes of soil each hour across the State. Some of the dust crossed the Tasman and fell to earth in New Zealand. There was a second such storm on the 26th—neighbour Leif and I sat in a relatively ‘safe’ part of the garden while the accompanying wind brought down more deadwood. Apparently the day may have originated in the Queensland floods earlier this year and then was washed down river systems as silt that then dried out before being raised by strong winds—thus, rain-inspired dust storms.
And again this morning (27th), there is more wind, more dust and more smoke in the Bellinger Valley. Recent hazard reduction burns plus unlawfully set fires in the forests have made much of the Valley dangerous. I was up early to cut up and move branches from the road along side this property.
On a more peaceful note I’ve been ‘observing’ (i.e., invading the privacy) of the small cormorant who enjoys drying his or her wings on the bedrock near the Belvedere. Lately the little bird has been hassled by two much larger cormorants (a different species). It seems that Clarrie’s ‘territory’ is being intentionally invaded by visiting toughs as it were. To be fair, I frequently see Clarrie (‘playfully’ or ‘aggressively’?) interfering with a heron enjoying wading the shallows along the opposite bank. When the heron arrives, Clarrie dives in and pops up next to the heron. The heron turns and wades in the opposite direction; Clarrie dives again and pops up adjacent to the bigger bird &c &c. Can this be a bird game and how territorial are water birds in this area? The river is low and continues to fall in the very warm spring weather. Rain or showers are sorely needed (there has been only one period of thundery showers this month).
Fabled Anecdote (2)
© text Don Diespecker 2009
The Press Conference
Firefly, a beetle nearly related to the click beetle and famous for its luminosity, which is mainly emitted by two organs on the thorax, visible as yellow spots when not in use. Parts of the abdomen, however, are also luminous. The light is so intense it is possible to read by its aid, and the sight of a swarm of these glowing insects dancing in the S. American forest at night greatly impressed the earliest travellers.
The Modern World Encyclopaedia (1935)
There were chance occasions when he’d glanced out the window and seen fireflies in the soft September dusk flickering upwards in easeful spirals.
‘Darkwood’ (unpublished MS)
Early September and the Spring Session of the Midgeworld Local Assembly has come to order. Sir Gawain Midge, having cancelled Question Time (on the grounds of there being far too many Members using the sessions for snatched dozes and sometimes for distinctly heavy slumbering), is holding his late winter/early spring press conference on the lawn-edge-riverbank at Midgeworld (aka Earthrise to humans). The little fellow is flanked by 1000 or so of the renowned Humming Dipterenes, two gender-distinct groups of backing midges bouncing alternately in the adjacent air on either side of the minute knight (presently also the de facto Midgeworld Prime Minister following the bloodless coup of the recent summer and who also is assisting as {temporary} Squadron Leader of the 99th Fighter Squadron of the Royal Midgeworld Air Force (the RMAF) when he is not harmonising {there being no Attack Missions presently being flown by the 99th and there being only tedious Plotting Room Exercises for him to avoid, Sir Gawain would just as soon be rhythmically bouncing and singing, for he is also a part-time Midgeworld Music Producer, and the Backing Groups Choirmaster, and a renowned local composer}).
One of Sir Gawain’s passionate pleasures, it should be added, is the choreographing of single mixed-gender and varied Diptera backing groups in such ways that the groups most strongly resemble schools of so-called bait fish, his inspiration having come from the rustic human gardener’s reading-over-the-shoulder (ROTS) watching of TV Nature Programs presented by Sir Richard Attenborough (Sir G insists he has a matey affinity with that much larger human knight, one bordering on brotherhood and in which there are presented marvellous images of sardines whirling in the Indian Ocean off the East Coast of the Republic of South Africa. Sir G has, for some months, been so enamoured of the gyratory whirling of these distant and alien little fishes that whirling qua whirling, has become the leitmotif enabling him to lead the valiant 99th to success {he scrupulously avoids using or even thinking of missions as ‘victories’ against the enormous space-demanding humans, rustic and otherwise}).
Those who similarly are lofty-minded and who studiously follow the career of Sir G know him to be always positive in outlook and of a sunny disposition (although there are very large ROTS squadrons of tertiary Intel Students flying above, behind and to each side of the Old Gardener 24 hours a day, Sir G likes to see some of the readings and writings and of course the TV programs for himself {all of which are collectively known in the Midgeworld Local Sector as The Source, Sir G being a celebrated Speed Reader who has won a great many Midge Educational Awards}).
To the surprise of many midges, those both high and low in Midgeworld Society, Sir G currently practises Base Jumping from a particular jump-off platform on a partly hidden branch in the Highest Flooded Gum and he does this with an intensity of purpose that he, so far, has not discussed with his sister, the Hon Morgana, and only with a select few of his colleagues. On this auspicious occasion, however, and Sir Gawain being an honourable midge and having reached a somewhat startling decision, he has decided to partly use this evening’s Press Conference to announce his breakthrough discovery (a scientific phenomenon of global importance, one revealed to him in a moment of serendipity such that he immediately intuited an epiphany half way through a majestic Base Jump). Sir G has resolved to impart his amazing news in some detail during the Press Conference (or possibly at the end of the Conference) prior to tabling his comprehensive report to the Assembly.
Meanwhile, the literati of Midgeworld are in turmoil, it having been rumoured that Sir G and the 99th have been converted to subduing the humans entirely by peaceful means rather than by frontal assaults and the more bookish midges, used to practising deadly forms of the martial arts to stimulate their creativity, are deeply concerned that Midgeworld is becoming overly effete; these midges (often known in the Local Areas as The High Beings and sometimes as The Intellectual Samurai) hope desperately for some encouraging news because they intend the overthrow Sir G and those closest to him, his fellow officers of the 99th Squadron of the RMAF).
The gallant little knight, famed as the sage and courteous Sir Gawain, generally attempts to speak diplomatically or as diplomatically as his little used French would allow. ‘Mm Speaker, my Lords and Lady Midges of Wide Pool in Midgeworld—and all associated Life, including the bumbling great humans who persistently obstruct Local Weather! Attendez mes enfants! It is again my great pleasure to present to you my brilliant sister, the Hon Morgana Midge, Bobber and Backer Extraordinaire, popularly known, too, as The Darkwood Diva and who is additionally, the Honorary Music Teacher of the Ladies Harmony Backing Choir.’
The Speaker (an old mosquito) quickly interposed. ‘Thank you, Prime Minister, the Hon Morgana will now present the preliminary program announcement for the Midgeworld Annual September Festival in the Local Sector,’ Mm Speaker said in a thin voice, ‘and before anybody gets any ideas about meals or even about snacking during any part of this meeting, I remind you most stringently that this is also a Ceasefire and Moratorium and anyone, anyone eating anyone else will be expelled and banished for life from the Sector. The Member for Morgana has the Floor.’
The wind having been taken, so to say, from his sails by the Speaker, Sir G swallowed his pride and bowed graciously to Morgana. His turn would soon come and there remained ample time for him to make his Discovery Statement.
The Hon Morgana Midge bounced sublimely through the balmy air of late afternoon to settle next to the Speaker now waiting heavily on a new pink red cedar leaf. Turning her splendidly clear dipterous wings to the mellow rays of the approaching sunset Morgana began to go through her notes, which is to say she intuited her program from the cloud of bobbing Intel Info Locals (popularly known by less exalted Locals as The Infointelfocals of whose Sector Mind she was a most valued part). Her brother took the opportunity to begin an elaborate to-and-fro darting above and between the thousands of assembled midges and daringly shrilled warnings not only to all midges but to all and sundry, which is to say, to all the hugely varied other locals—and he was particularly insistent toward the goannas, water dragons and snakes, all of whom were strategically scattered in defensive groups.
Morgana, about to speak, has managed only a demure ‘My Lords— when she is rudely interrupted by a lone housefly on a shaded leaf at the edge of the great gathering. ‘On a point of order, Mm Speaker.’
The Speaker, being a weary old mosquito suffering from arthritis (having once been knocked down by a stray molecule of chemical repellent), is nudged by several members of the Dipterenes and stands up swashingly, having sipped to excess soft-target blood drawn from the old human gardener, for she simply cannot ever say No to a good drop of red. ‘What do you mean, sir and who are you?’
‘Mm Speaker, I am Gustavo Thong, presently of the 5th Local Sector and I want to know, please, why the Hon Morgana has or is possibly still being presented to the assembly by her brother, Sir Gawain, he having called us together to attend a Press Conference. This is becoming a confusing Press Conference. One expects appropriate announcements and hopes for opportunities to ask questions. Your ruling, please.’
‘I’m coming to that,’ shrills Sir G.
‘The Member for Thong and Sir Gawain will remain still and be entirely silent,’ says the Speaker in an excruciatingly thin voice. ‘I shall confer with colleagues and make my ruling at the end of the press conference.’
‘But, look here!’ shrieks Gustavo Thong.
‘But me no buts, sir; you have my preliminary ruling and that will have to be enough to be going on with.’
‘I say, steady on! You can’t do that. I want a ruling now!’ the housefly cries.
‘I’ve told you to be still. My ruling now is that you risk being taken away to a more exposed place where, despite the prevailing Cease-fire and Moratorium and Press Conference, you will be at considerably more risk of being ingested by one of the water dragons whose patience is not unlimited.’
There is a second housefly interruption from the Floor. ‘I am Maurice Fondue, also of the 5th Local Sector. May I say something, Mm Speaker?’
‘No, but say it, anyway.’
The second fly, enraptured by the mingled scents of so much varied prey present in the Assembly speaks out: ‘I, too have a point of order. I object to Sir Gawain’s assumed use of the ridiculously named 99th Fighter Squadron of the RMAF when we all know that midges cannot, in any circumstances, defeat, in any manner whatsoever, a single human, conscious, semi conscious or asleep!’
‘Oh pish, sir, and bosh!’ yells an enraged Sir Gawain. ‘Mm Speaker: may I talk to that?’
‘Oh, I suppose so, if you must.’
‘Then I shall do so the moment the Hon Morgana is allowed to complete her announcement of the Spring Festival Festivities. Thank you, Mm Speaker.’
‘Yes very well and thank you, Prime Minister. The Members for Fondue and Thong will resume their perches and be silent. I want to hear details of the program. The Hon Morgana Midge.’
But the Member for Thong will not obey the rules and suddenly splutters, ‘Aha! Clearly this Press Conference is an utter sham! Are we or are we not the audience for the Festivities of the Spring Festival?’
‘Member for Thong: you’re on notice. Not another word!’
Abashed and near tears, the Hon Morgana bounces lightly, whirring her wings. ‘Mm Speaker and as I was about to say, the Spring Ceasefire and General Moratorium will be acknowledged and our Spring Celebrations will begin shortly, just before sunset which is now only minutes away. This Press Conference and these Festivities, these Spring Celebrations shall last through the night to end at sunrise; however, the Ceasefire and Moratorium will continue for another full day. My Lords and Ladies and all creatures here assembled, I am happy to announce that after long discussions at a High Level, the Local Area Cicadidae Chapter has arranged, wait for it, for the entire Northern Region of the New South Wales Massed Male Cicada Choirs to perform so as to be heard throughout the entire region—you may imagine the exquisitely sophisticated synchronization required. The big four-wingers have agreed to present Rachmaninoff’s ‘Vocalese,’ but only after we had agreed to them following that with Ravel’s ‘Bolero.’ They drive a hard bargain, I must say; on the other hand any of our colleagues obliged to live underground in darkness for so much of their lives deserve our compassion and cooperation, and they’re awfully good musically.’
‘I say!’ said shrilled Mm Speaker, ‘Surely the humans will have something to say about that; why, they can’t even tolerate our muted hunting songs! They’ll be driven insane and do desperate things and we’ll all be in dire peril!’
‘No, no,’ interposed Sir G, ‘we won’t worry about that and I shall take care of everything!’ The assembled creatures exchanged startled glances. What could one midge do against such odds?
Sir G would say no more; instead, he frowned at his sister who then continued her announcement. ‘And there will be dancing in the intervals during the night when our firefly colleagues will provide lighting at many points around the gardens. And there is to be a demonstration, too, by The Midgeworld Carlos Gardel Grand Tango Dance Group!’
Morgana’s announcement was greeted with cheers and applause but the applause was dramatically cut short by a violently loud C-r-a-c-k! A very old Mountain Oak broke and crashed down nearby to cries of consternation and alarm. The shock wave of rushing air caused by the gigantic tree hitting the lawn sent the entire Assembly hurtling through the air, running, swirling, leaping…
(to be continued)…
Fabled Anecdote (3)
© text Don Diespecker 2009
The Spring Ding
The hills are alive with the sound of music
With the songs they have sung
For a thousand years.
Oscar Hammerstein: The Sound of Music (1959)
Cicada, an insect of the group Homoptera, with a big head and large membranous wings. It is notorious for the deafening sounds emitted by the males, the sounding organs consisting of a pair of shell-like drums situated at the base of the abdomen and operated by special muscles.
The Modern World Encyclopaedia (1935)
When the giant Mountain Oak broke and crashed to Earth on Big Lawn at Earthrise (more correctly, at Midgeworld) thousands of small creatures like the myriad midges and several hundred larger insects and animals (and acknowledging, of course, Much Smaller Life) were struck by the shock wave: an enormous rush of air flung the smallest insects in whirling clouds across the lawn, over the rose bushes, up above the lawn edge and out over the gleaming river. Two of the ultra-conservative old intellectual ‘Samurai’ midges, Denny (‘The Mandarin’) Diderot (not to be confused with the much larger water dragon, Dinny (short for ‘Dinosaur’) and Sam (‘Doc’) Johnson, recognising the blast of air for what it was—a natural phenomenon—managed to resume their interrupted conversation while enjoying the wild ride and the remarkably changing views.
‘Quite a feeling, this, eh, Doc: flying free, lots of air under the wings, no effort required, what?’
‘Oh! Such whirling views and how the world tilts so and then tumbles, roaring, yet I have to declare, the effects are dizzying in the extreme but, Denny, I fear I may have to lie down soon if I am to recover.’
‘Courage mon brave! All will shortly slow, including us,’ shouted Denny. ‘Hold to the riverway course and if you feel faint I can provide some lift, my left wing beneath your right; see, we’re now slowing!’
‘Yes, thank you, old fellow, I can certainly use some lift; perhaps we could together attempt a wide turn soon and hopefully land close to the Festival Site—which, regrettably will surely now be an accident scene.’
‘Better yet, Doc, stay close and we’ll do an Immelmann from on high, save heaps of energy and with good fortune smiling, touch down close to the reassembling colleagues.’
‘I’m not entirely sure that I’m up to it, Denny, but, of course, you’re right and we would save energy so, yes, should I be up to it I shall definitely be up for it.’
‘Jolly good, Doc; preparing for course change, then; stand by; sensing a damp upwelling billow from the Creek Air; here we go; starting half loop…now!’
The tiny flyers lifted together abreast of the cool damp air at the confluence of river and creek, Denny Diderot strongly supporting his friend’s right wing with his own left wing and they soared magnificently above the golden light of the shining river, the hills and forest and the riverscape seemingly tilting as they climbed boldly to the High Point, then began their combined half roll nearly 50-m above the water from where they were able to see most splendidly the crowns of the big flooded gums at Midgeworld, the rays of the setting sun flashing toward them at the higher altitude and, as they levelled out and the world view settled they steadfastly locked in their guidance systems and flew confidently on a course that was the reverse of the outward blast-path and very soon saw directly ahead, the Big Lawn, part in shadow, part in dappled light, such that the bold little midges began shouting sharply in unison, ‘We’re on the glide-path, and only seven seconds to touch-down! Bravo us! Hooray and formidable and jolly astounding fortitude!’
And so it was; the two flyers landed without mishap—and surprisingly close to where they were perching when the great tree fell; they had successfully called on their very best flying and navigation skills and used them to great effect. The huge audience of insects and other animals was indeed reassembling and the combined sounds of small frogs and crickets could now be distinctly heard as they began their Local Prelude to the performance of the Massed Choirs of millions of cicadas.
‘Thank you, Denny.’
‘I knew we could make it, Doc. –I say you look a little green. Are you OK?’
‘No, I fear I shall be obliged to consult a health care professional, old chap,’ Doc murmured.
‘Oh, I’m so sorry.’
‘Alas, an old-age malady slows both my pace and progress and I must find, with assistance, the best way in which to proceed or I shall never complete my work here.’
‘You mean—
‘My intended Midgeworld Encyclopaedic Dictionary, yes.’
‘Perhaps you already know the best way, Doc, because you’re the best expert we have on you.’
‘Ah, thank you old friend, yes, you refer to the Gestalt Approach workshops here and to many other Group Process, I’m sure, but alas, I now have grave doubts about intensive psychotherapeutic learning groups and similar approaches to enlightenment—‘
‘Great heavens! –But why, Doc, why?’
Sam Johnson nervously saw from the corner of his eye that Sir Gawain was bouncing furiously while in animated discussion with his sister, the Hon Morgana, and that the Speaker was about to interrupt, so he whispered hastily to Denny Diderot, ‘I was on a ROTS special project mission inside the Old Gardener’s house and saw an alarming item in the Diary the human was compiling, a most significant copyrighted piece titled The Japanese Workshop by the Gardener’s human friend and colleague, Sharon Snir, in which that writer had allegedly stated:
‘In all my workshops I provide chocolate treats for the students. I was told, many years ago, that spiritual work can be tiring and that chocolate contains minerals that boosts the system and replenishes the soul. I believe it completely. I had brought a couple of packets of Allen’s Snakes from Australia for myself and put them out on the table too. In the first choco break one woman tried a snake and yummed in delight. Before I knew it, twelve participants also wanted to try a snake. I showed them how the children in Australia stretch them as long as they can without breaking them and suddenly there was an informal competition to see who could stretch it the longest; so much laughter, so much fun.’
Denny Diderot paled. ‘Good grief! In intensive learning groups humans now eat snakes and their children stretch them? I’m astonished, Doc!’
‘Yes, well, there it is; of course, there is the possibility that the snakes may be artificial in some way, perhaps a confection, sweetmeats you know like the chocolate confections made from cocoa seeds—oh, we’ll talk later old boy. Sir G is once again attempting to complete an announcement.’
Denny whispered quickly, ‘What does ‘yummed’ mean, do you imagine?’ and Sam whispered back: It’s a human feeding expression, one of deliciousness, or, as we would say of sucking on citrus blossom nectar, bloody bonzer grub.’ A shaken Diderot peered uneasily into the quickening dusk and fortunately became happily distracted by the antics of the local fireflies playfully bringing the Assembly to order. The two friends strained to hear Sir Gawain over the increasing choral preludes until the cicadas came in on cue, quite softly at first and then began to rise from pianissimo to moderato to allegro—and continued to rise alarmingly. The immense volume of sound reached resonance and was so powerful as to cause small waves to dance on the river’s surface and to make everything at the Assembly site vibrate so unpleasantly that it was difficult for any of the small creatures to see what was in front of them except as indeterminate blurs.
Then Denny Diderot said, ‘Relax now, old friend; close your eyes and I’ll keep watch. A tout a l’heure.’
A grateful Sam Johnson closed his eyes and lay back against a twig. The cicadas played so skilfully that their music sounded to Doc Johnson uncannily like the various sections of an enormous symphony orchestra (although for Doc there was also a distinctly significant dominance by the second violins and violas, the cellos and the bass players). Despite the great Musical Forces In Play Throughout The Landscape, Doc drifted into a healing sleep.
*
It was during the First Interval, the cicada choirs having paused for a few minutes, that Sir Gawain seized the opportunity to cut through the red tape, as it were, and to plunge into his Discovery Announcement. With Morgana at his side he bounced to the top of the season’s first red rose, stood confidently on the edge of the highest petal and began. ‘My friends, I am not a militant military flyer at all. The 99th Squadron, RMAF is militarily named because we wish to be adventurous, well motivated, entirely positive and absolutely determined to move Midgeworld forward. Although there are certain intellectuals among us, those ultra conservative bookish types, the Royal Upstarts of the Local Sectors, who would have us all take arms against the humans I am happy to announce that their desperate measures will never be needed, never.
‘My colleagues and I have been free falling and sky diving and base jumping from the Highest Flooded Gum and learned that the more of us who act together the more air, both hot and cold, we are able to move. These relatively small drafts of air may often be experienced, too, by our backing groups when they bounce as dense dancing and singing groups: because we are so many! The ROTS groups and the Intel groups and the Memory groups will confirm these observations. Therefore, when we approach humans, it is imperative that we do so en masse and in such ways that the human person will wave frantically in order to prevent us from annoying them. That is how we control them! Peacefully! Given a hundred humans and a million midges, do you see, we can make the humans move so much air that these drafts waft up into our river cloud formations where they CHANGE THE WEATHER! Is that astonishing, or what?’
Sir Gawain was quite out of breath and slid down the inside of the rose petal where he rested gratefully against a wonderfully scented stamen. Morgana slid down next to him and said, ‘My dear brother, that was jolly well said, but I have to tell you, my dear, that when our colleagues began to tango at the start of the Interval, they had eyes and of course ears only for each other: they seem not to have heard you because they were enraptured by other sounds, other voices. And the spectators were so weary from the cicada music that they immediately began falling asleep. You’ll have to do it all again, my dear, but not now, later!’
*
The two water dragons, Darius and Dinny (and, again, not to be confused with the miniscule midge Denny Diderot) were resting in the area close to Doc Johnson and Denny Diderot, uncomfortable because the cicada choirs were beating not only in perfect time, but altogether too loudly and the dragons had been struggling to follow the Speaker’s interventions and rulings, as well as Sir G and the Hon Morgana’s ‘announcements’ and the daring interruptions of the Members for Thong and Fondue and also, remembering the falling tree—and they had inadvertently dozed off when Sir G made his Discovery Announcement. The very strong scent of jasmine now drifted toward the river and became mixed with the powerful aromas of the citrus blossom flowering in the old trees on Big Lawn. Almost all the dragons present at the Festival were eager to relax and to close their eyes—with the exception of two particular dragons that remained wide awake.
‘I say, Darius, old boy, I think the Speaker rather has it in for us, don’t you?’
‘Oh, don’t worry, Dinny, she does need to warn everybody about the Ceasefire.’
‘Oh, I suppose so; fortunately I ate earlier,’ Dinny murmured.
‘I say, Din there’s something odd going on here. Can you hear it?’
‘Hear what, old boy?’
‘I can hear a sotto voce conversation and it’s coming from that rosebush, it seems. It’s only just audible. No, no, I don’t mean Sir Gawain and the Hon Morgana up there; their voices are barely detectable. Let’s sidle over a little closer. Ah yes. Can you hear it now; two quite distinctly different midge voices, I think?’
‘Indeed yes; let’s listen.’
The two dragons moved into the shade of a Camp David Hybrid Tea Rose where they adjusted and then focused their acute hearing. They moved their heads close to a tiny hole beneath the rose bush and were able to hear a sub rosa discussion between two midges:
‘Ilsa we can talk now; the Dipterenes backing groups will cover anything we say.’
‘Rick, what is it?’
‘MSIS, you know, the Secret Intelligence Service, has discovered what Sir Gawain and his pals have been up to.’
‘But how?’
‘MSIS have an agent in the big grandis tree where Sir G practises base jumps. Sir G had his mates with him, those from the 99th. He was heard to say that he accidentally discovered the power of humans to change the weather—‘
‘But how and what does it mean for us, Rick?’
‘Ah, when you speak like that Ilsa I remember our Secret Place, the Creek and that cold and wet day when we first met there. You were blue; the mozzies were grey. We’ll always have the Creek. Here’s the thing, Ilsa. Although we’re tiny, our movements create wind drafts. If a million midges jump at the same time they make a measureable downdraft, a pressure wind that swirls in this corner of the river and one much larger than a single swipe made by the Old Gardener against one of us. Thus, Sir G realised that with little effort, humans could be made by us midges to make the weather change. Here in Rum Corner updrafts and downdrafts cause damp air to rise, swirl and to make clouds. Think of it, Ilsa: when we annoy humans and they swipe at us, we can control the weather because we can control humans!’
‘Rick, that’s so wonderful! Who else knows this?’
‘Maybe the dragons.’
‘That’s a worry.’
‘Nah, all our worries don’t amount to a hill of discarded wings. Dragons are only interested in catching flies.’
‘Rick, what do you mean?’
‘I mean that with this knowledge, Ilsa, we can rule Midgeworld.’
The attentive dragons turned to each other and sighed and then Dinny said sotto voce, ‘Darius, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship with these two midges.’
*
At the beginning of the month I spotted the reappearance of the native violet in the dusty flood loam (on the west side of the broken white cedar and it’s garden). I’d raked there several times. It goes without saying, almost, that the groundcover, tradescantia, as green as ever and despite the raking, has been happily spreading itself in all the usual places and does its best to colonize vacant spaces in the loam over the entire area. I know what to do about that, but the ambitious groundcover can wait; it has a lower priority.
**(The house is founded on an old riverbank that for vague reasons of my own I think of as ‘ancient.’ It may be nothing of the kind; however, aerial views and geological information (&c and so forth) will be helpful in determining when the Bellinger ran consistently against this bank. The first (1984) campsite and our subsequent caravan sites were supported by this relatively high riverbank. Here, the bank now supports the carport and the concrete water storage tank and is covered by big trees. The same bank runs in a sweeping curve ‘upstream’ and is crossed by Darkwood Road near my gate, and then extends along the Deer Park paddocks next door (where it may be seen supporting large trees).
At any time outside (not only in spring, but much more so in spring), provided one is fully conscious, it’s possible to see, hear and smell change: a brown butterfly rises north from the lower end of the track and is followed by a blue one (the Ulysses?) and I can now hear unseen whistlers and at least three other bird species. The shower of dead leaves falls without the benefit of breeze on a warm day and there’s a background shush-rattle from the nearby rapids. There’s lots of life here. How much more noise might bacteria make, I wonder?
Finally, I’ve cleared part of the riverbank that was covered by flood debris, raked and levelled it (more or less) and added some kikuyu grass seed and Japanese millet seed. We’ll see. Some rain would help.
This is the 909 September 2009 Diary. DDD September 27 2009.
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