THE EARTHRISE DIARY
(Feb 2013)
Don Diespecker
© text Don Diespecker 2013;all other writers retain their ©
We don’t have to look far to see
how rare it is, nowadays, for people to communicate by putting pen to paper. It
is not only those born into the computer age who don’t think of doing it. Even
very old people, including me, have friends whose handwriting they have never
seen. We all communicate, of course (tweet, tweet, tweet, and yack yack yack on
the mobile, but not by pen and ink. Does it matter?
Diana
Athill reviewing a new book by Philip Hensher, The Missing Ink: The Lost Art of
Handwriting, and Why it Still Matters in Literary Review, October
2012.
It is some time since I wrote a
letter such as this and I am quite surprised at the deterioration of my writing
‘hand;’ at primary school in Adamstown I was quite proud of my writing prowess.
Using a slope card and carefully formed letters I was often commended for my
skill. Of course, today I am not threatened with several strokes of the cane if
I inadvertently blotted the page or made a spelling mistake. I learned to write
through fear of repercussions!
Sometimes I was the ink monitor
and granted the privilege of mixing the ink powder into a jug and transferring
the watered contents into the ceramic inkwells that sat in their holes on each
desk. The tops of the desks were, I remember, marked by generations of
students: scratches, dents and occasional initials. These, I imagine, were only
inscribed on the last day of a student’s attendance at the school (a daring
student indeed, as I am sure if he—it
was an all male school—was caught, that the result would be at least six very
painful cuts of the cane).
Bruce Furner discussing in a hand-written
letter his first use of a gifted new fountain pen, February 5 2013.
My first draft of this February Diary began below, on January 27, with
‘The flood rises slowly.’ Today,
February 22, and yet again, I use those same words, ‘The flood rises slowly,’ but before responding to the latest
playfulness of the whimsical Bellinger (unless interrupted by the even more
mischievous electricity supply abruptly failing), some further words about
hand-written writings that may strike chords for each of you now reading this
machine- and technology- enabled text.
I’ll start with handwriting (today, on February 22), then revert to the
January 27 text, then return to the present J
When first I read the Athill review and Bruce’s letter I also enjoyed (during these readings as well as after the readings) the spontaneous
images that arose in my mind. Images, however we may describe them are newly
created or generated in the mind (or, if you prefer, the central nervous
system, the CNS): they are not old pictures, permanent and unchanged, that we
have secured in some deep storage repository. If images were kept unchanged for
decades the mind would surely recall and view them as original memories. If you
want to quibble about this, simply close your eyes and recall (for example) the
last time that you swam in a river. What is
that image and what is it that
you see? You will almost certainly see
your self swimming as if seen by another and this is an image of something you can never physically have
experienced (I will forever be grateful to Julian Jaynes who wrote
about that in his remarkable book, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown
of the Bicameral Mind. See?
Reading texts about almost
anything will magically encourage us to remember people, events, scenes from
the past in this way: we are magical animals that visualize. Bruce’s letter
enabled me to remember some of my schooldays experiences of using a pen and
learning to write by hand (and you,
dear reader, may now be doing that, too). Also, Athill accurately puts her
finger on some of the handwriting mystique when she writes, ‘It is the pleasure of handwriting that
Philip Hensher sets out to evoke—the strange, even mysterious pleasure of it,
the thing about it that makes me, for example, discover in detail what I feel
about something only when I begin to see the words for it appearing on paper,
written by my hand.’ We do not all have to be esteemed writers to
appreciate the sweet beauty of that sentiment: it rings so true.
Earlier
January 27 2013. Sunday
afternoon. The flood rises slowly.
Branches falling from stressed trees now breaking (plus the freshening wind and
driving rain) fall resoundingly on the cathedral roof upstairs and bounce down
to the lounge room roof over my head. I’m jumpy. The electricity is still OK so
I can hear music and bulletins and don’t yet need to use the battery/dynamo
radio. The flood situation in SE Qld is dire: that system is moving south into
northern NSW. At 3pm there’s water on the bridge; three hours later when I go
down again to check the water on the bridge it looks the same: very unusual. It’s raining but not
steadily: it’s not flood rain, not
yet. I’m wearing shorts and wellingtons, my yellow waterproof top and my blue
Oz floppy hat and hold one of the big umbrellas over my head. As I walk back up
the road I decide to stop, turn and wade along the overflowing concreted
drainage ditch to scuff through branches and debris. The mess is now causing
the draining waters in what used to be an open ditch to overflow and spill into
the road and the bridge approach. The concreted ditch now also contains debris
from recent bank slashing by Council workers; the overflow spillage tears up
the metalled road and bridge approach. Then I return up the road. I can smell
the wonderful scent of the flowering clumps of wild ginger at my gate.
There is intermittent rain through the night.
Jan 28 2013. Monday. A happy
‘Australia Day’ holiday to all. Australia Day was yesterday: this is the official (weekday) celebration of that.
A little after dawn I look out to see that the lawns haven’t yet been invaded
but the bridge is well under because I can see 1-m waves rolling down over the
now invisible deck. In the tight corner of the river near the house the early
morning river is now bouncing against the flow where it runs directly into the
riverbank. I’m out again early to clear branches and wrestle my polypipe line
sections further up the access track (the line is already secured to a tree,
but incoming floods bearing logs can easily wreck such measures). The water
shed from high ground on the south side of the road hasn’t yet started my
little local creek running (it fills up like a river between my carport and the
house during heavy local rain and becomes deep enough to force me around it on
a detour to the electricity box near the front gate). No sign of Jason
brushturkey. The car is up the road at Dreamtime (still safe, I hope on high
ground). There’s no car roof available here for Jason to camp on. I slip out
the front gate and meet Monica and Paul from Dreamtime holding on to their very
cheerful dog, Wombat that wants very much to leap into the river. We chat in
the rain. Robert, from across the road, joins us with Mauser on a lead. Both
dogs love to get in the river and seem almost to need a tranquilizer shot to
calm them down (local dogs will sometimes dash into a flood because some fool
throws a stick in the water and the dog is killed either by being dragged under
a bridge and battered or more simply by drowning). I return by way of Big Lawn,
removing fallen branches. I measure the distance between the Riverside Lawn and
the rising flood in the corner: about an octave plus one or maybe two. The
adjacent tops of old buried poles of my ‘underground fence’ in that corner are
about a metre above the flood, markers that I glance at from time to time. To
my left I see rafts of logs and debris bobbing and slowly swirling next to the
belvedere: circling in the eddy. Before coming up to the house to remove
leeches and start writing I have a look over the edge of the belvedere: the big
pink lilies I planted on the riverbank, the ones that have the scent of ripe
peaches in summer, are submerging and still scenting. Later I watch the edge of
the lawn being covered and the flood impatiently pushing to get in with its
Sargasso rafts of logs and flotsam. Eventually the brown surge loses patience
and barges in, rising all the time. I see that it rises to within a hand’s
width—let’s call it an octave and two again—of the top of a buried pole close
to the Riverside Lawn and seems to hold
there and this has me blinking in surprise. There is no streaming of local rain
through the property. The flood has indeed breached the outer defences here and
I hope is clawing away to remove the log tangle left there from a year or so
ago. I see the incoming flood shove its way in for 20 or 30-m and stop. I
totter around to the belvedere and peer across through light rain to where I
think I can see a ‘tidal’ mark across the road where it rises up from the
far-side concrete approach to Doug and Mandy’s place. The flood is peaking and the
river level falling!
And at 14:15 I hear a loud crack followed by an almighty crash as a big
tree falls (somewhere between the crack and the crash my heart skips a beat or
two and my hot blood inclines toward freezing). I get into my gear, grab a
machete and start looking for the crash site but fail to find it because the
tree fell not here but across the river in front of Doug and Mandy’s place. I
can see it from the belvedere: what a monster! I learn from Doug by phone that
the tree has brought down the power lines. Extreme danger is likely anywhere
near the tree and its foliage.
Jan 29 2013. Tuesday.
Through much of the night I listen critically for the sounds of rain but the
rain holds off. And I attempt to clear up near the front of the belvedere where
there is damage to its retaining wall. I see the couple, new neighbours at
Marilyn’s place and we wave. They have a small b/w dog on a lead. How have they
avoided the live wires? I still have electricity here but when I get back to
the house, pleased to have had some work/exercise I see that my sleeping
computer is more than a little unconscious: the electricity is off. I talk to
Doug on the phone and then to the Electricity folks who are unsure as to
whether I was ‘officially’ switched off as a precaution and because many others
were indeed ‘officially’ deprived of power, as a precaution, I guess I am too,
but I go outside again to establish that my incoming power line is secure. On
another visit to the road I meet M who is with her family. She says they will
drive upstream to visit others, if it’s possible.
The power outage or switch-off is depressing for the ace frontline
reporter at the smoking keyboard and it being a warm and sunny afternoon by now
(there is clean and fresh and the sky bright blue with big fluffy clouds, the
river having decidedly peaked and now falling beautifully) I decide to sulk and
fret for a token five minutes and to lie still with eyes closed for another 55
minutes. I am nicely approaching a near blissful state when the phone rings:
Darcey asks about the level of water on the bridge. I am able to report
accurately, having shortly before been at the bridge and now can confirm from
my horizontal position (because I can see through the window next to my bed the
water pouring from the bridge) that crossing in an appropriate vehicle will now
be possible and even more so within the next hour. Darcey advises that Billy
will lead Telstra electricians up to and along the Yo-Yo Road (a forestry track
along the high ridge), then down to Darkwood Road via Dreamtime next door and
so arrive at my end of the bridge thus enabling a crossing in relative safety.
I go down to the bridge again so as to be the on the spot reporter and whilst
waiting for more history to unfold and while I am also gazing moodily at the
falling flood and the relatively big torrent pouring over the bridge I’m joined
by a near neighbour, G, driving a Land Rover. We chat. He tells me that the next two upstream bridges are
quite passable. He wants to get to Bellingen. I suggest the Yo-Yo Road because
I’m uncertain about the bridges downstream. We discuss saws, tree lopping and
Land Rovers with V-8 engines. I am reminded of my long-ago stint in Iran before
the Revolution (1956/57 when Company rules required that all of our vehicles
had to be driven by Iranian drivers, it being legally dangerous for any of us
UK-based personnel to risk being involved in an accident with an Iranian
because litigation would be horrendous and we likely would need lifetimes to
get out of the country… We are joined by H driving a ute and he has a sleek
black dog with him. By now, with the river level visibly decreasing as we
watch, G decides to cross the bridge to see what might lie ahead and does so in
perfect safety. As he is returning, Billy driving a quad bike arrives with two
Telstra trucks and their crews. There is a wee bit of uncertainty until I
reassure the new arrivals that this is undoubtedly the best and one of the
highest of the valley bridges (its strength having been increased by an extra
stringer in recent years and the timber deck having also been replaced by
reinforced concrete slabs). At the end of the day I hear the recovering cicadas
and a few crickets re-start their music. And see birds close to the water again
and am uplifted when a cormorant flies along the torrent, climbing.
Jan 30 2013. Wednesday. I
sleep from about 12:30 to 05:00 and can see easily that the beautiful moonlight
night has disappeared and there’s now a gloomy overcast implying more rain. I
lift my head from the pillow to see the river moving comfortably down toward
the next bend in dawn’s early light: no waves. I’m sure now that there’s been
no further rain in the night. Good. Through the little window to my left I see
the long black line of the dark and wet bridge: there’s definitely a good
chance that the weather will clear and in daylight the concrete deck and
baluster rail will gleam white in the sun, but not yet. I want to get going
soon. I check inside and out, switch the computer on and wait for the security
to allow me to find messages, and to also enable me to write again. And I want
to get over the bridge and up to where the Big Tree lies smashed in the road.
Downstairs in the bathroom I study the upstream view in the grey light while
shaving (yes, I shave in the dark because I like the early light on the water).
No waves, but a hint of the white water rapids at the first upstream bend from
here. The wide grey very wide river rolls down directly at me: it’s like seeing
a grey lake apparently tilted 45ยบ and about to spill over catastrophically; it
doesn’t of course but it’s one hell of a morning view. The ability to see, I
remind myself is magical.
I have plenty of tinned and dry food (well past its best) and I’d like
to get out and do some fresh food shopping and get some medical stuff, but the
road beyond my bridge will be blocked by the tree and stay blocked until the
Council road crew arrives. A neighbour phones while I’m writing emails. I have
the camera battery on charge. As soon as I can I leave the house with camera,
phone and little pocket diary with phone numbers and a favourite pen clipped in
the front of a battered old Gestalt Therapy T-shirt head across the wet grass:
it’s almost too high now to mow in one sweet pass and will have to be achieved in
stages when it’s dry. Hours ago the sunshine was brilliant: now that’s all
changed. Again.
There’s still a river mist over the water as I cross the wet bridge
tossing back debris into the torrent. The remains of my river wall as I pass
are lesser than previously: the wall has withstood bigger floods but is
progressively breaking down as the ‘centre’ stream has shifted to my side of
the river and has been undercutting the banks these last few years. It’s too
bad. The river is well down, lower than the concrete slab deck by more than a
metre and the torrent still roaring. When I look downstream I see the
bloodwoods flowering in the higher part of the forest above the water. Those
poor devils who live in cities!
I meet my neighbour on the bridge: she’s walking her dog in the clean
wet air. Not much mud on either side for once because the local rain hasn’t
been heavy and the Deer Park paddocks haven’t spilled into the road opposite my
gate—with hundreds of tonnes of violent water tearing up the metalled road. We
stroll past the log and its root system and up to the downed tree, Darcey and
Pauline have come up to see (so the next downstream bridges, Richardson’s and
Guesses, are passable again) and there are cheerful schoolchildren clambering
over the twin trunks of the fallen tree and then Paul from Dreamtime arrives
behind us with his usually cheerful dog, and ‘Wombat,’ not on a leash and Lil,
straining at her leash, bark differences at each other and this is all so
remarkably like an Australian movie set in the country. Several of us are
re-meeting (flood events are also for local socialising) and swapping
information. A light rain starts falling; we all have the aplomb to laugh it
off. The back-story to that enormous tree crashing down is like another movie but
one I’d better not tell here. The tree was expected to fall and was close to
being removed and the expected direction of its falling had been in quite the
opposite direction: it might have but did not come down and demolish the house
and Doug and Mandy are unharmed and the utility pole and transformer and the
power lines tangled still in the giant tree’s foliage that might have fried
everyone to a crisp hurt no-one.
Here it’s near midday again and there’s the sound of chainsaws buzzing
the air. I half wanted to recover the Honda and perhaps go in to Bellingen but
there’s too much busy traffic and drivers (not all of them feeling sublime but
possibly vexed and aggressive, rather) for me to drive through, so I’ll wait,
I’ll bide my time another few hours.
By 13:00 and the river level still falling, the surface area over the
rapids just upstream of the belvedere erupts in turbulent white water as the
broken stone rapids assert their right to fussily re-emerge: very noisily.
Downstream in front of the River Lawn the small oily-looking rolling swells
where the whirling eddy runs when the flood is higher there now are modest
whitecaps and no noise from them at all: swimming there now would be worrying;
at least the rapids upstream by the belvedere would give you a battering but
they’re less likely to spin you under into drowning. Kayakers will understand
that better than I do but nobody is attempting that exercise today. As I turn
my head away from the keyboard there now is only white water at the tail end of
the rapids there, though the rapids aren’t at all visible.
There’s a big floating Sargasso of logs in front of the belvedere. Some
happy dragons are running over the tangle. The pink lilies look good on the
riverbank. At Dreamtime, Victoria’s phone service has improved after Telstra
workers removed a fried snake from the overhead electricity wires. Canoeists
have returned to use the river: the rapids are tumultuous and will test them.
Every centimetre of flood height makes a difference. The clamour of chainsaws
is loud on the wet air. One truck and a front-end loader are moving sawn
sections of the big tree and dumping them in capacious trucks. I walk up to
Dreamtime to the rain-clean Honda. Victoria has persuaded Council to remove yet
another of the elephant trees on the road at Dreamtime. The weather is rainy at
first and sunny later.
It is again, February 22 2013
and the wishfully cool diarist returns to the contemporary time of the present.
So much of the above description also applies to the past few days here: this
flood is very much like the previous one but two floods in less than a month
seems a bit rich. I’ve been writing and watching the river from inside. I’ve
completed a better draft of “An Annotated Elizabeth” and recovered more TSS
from their hiding places in the house (including more novels!) to prepare them
for further self-publishing via Kindle Direct Publishing: more about that next
month—with luck. My hope is that I’ll be able to post this Diary soon, maybe
today, six days before the end of the month: the electricity often fails in
very severe weather (so far so good). Now I can hear thunder, thunder in the
rain!
This afternoon: the Sargasso of logs that fetched up here three weeks
ago has shipped out bound for other exotic ports downstream. I haven’t see
Jason brushturkey for days: he’s officially missing. And I’m ready to cringe as
the cyclonic low-pressure system is crossing the coast near Coffs Harbour and
dumping enormous amounts of rain in this area. The bridge deck from centre
stream to the approach on my side became impassable at about 13:15 hours. The
stormwater ditches are racing to the river and the big brown river, seen
through a curtain of big-drop rain is whirling away through the bends like a
runaway liquid train. You ought to see it—it might make the hairs on the back
of your neck stand up! And through the falling rain you would see too, the
beauty of the bloodwoods flowering on the slopes and the mist going up through
the trees like wet smoke.
All the best wherever you are from Don at the flooding Earthrise GHQ
beneath the booming thunder. Feb 22 2013.
