THE EARTHRISE DIARY 7/10 (July, 2010)

THE EARTHRISE DIARY 7/10 (July, 2010)

Don Diespecker

I went to meditate on the lookout at Double Head this morning and watched the sun rise. The wind was cool but the sun brought her warmth to balance things out. I spotted two loggerhead turtles feeding way down below dangerously close to the whitewash of seawater pounding the headland rocks. They bobbed around grabbing some air when they could then disappeared into the jade opaque waters to surface again unsuspectingly somewhere new! I breathed in deeply and gave thanks for the expansiveness I found there high above the world where the plants cling onto the dry earth and the kestrels call and dive like arrows in search of food.

Petra Meer (July 2010)

Sunday, July 11 2010. It’s been one of those weeks in one of those winter months. There have been (as if I had nothing to do with any of it) computer and printer difficulties and umpteen chores Inside and a myriad of difficulties Outside: off/on nuisance showers with consequent overcast drippy skies, damp cold, mist rising, mud, mud, mud and not enough sunny breaks to enhance my sunny disposition department. Yesterday, for example, after a tricky time (for me, of course, nobody else) and having farewelled my old printer (not a person, but a reliable piece of computer compatible machinery) I brought home a new machine. I was deeply suspicious of this thing because it looked so much like a glass aquarium in places and I was very doubtful about it ever living up to expectations. Fortunately for me, good friend Kerry Smith said he’d help settle my doubts and would telephone the next day, which he did, indicating that a switch to Skype would be helpful and keep down the phone bills. We shared a full screen at K’s suggestion, i.e., down on the coast he could see my moves on his screen while I fumbled at the controls here in the distant bush. He was able to shortcut a way to get the new printer to do its thing and I was grateful and not a little astonished at how efficiently this was achieved (not by myself) at a distance. I was delighted.

I was so pleased that on Saturday morning I looked at the weather, took a chance and hauled out the fire fighter’s pump because my stored water needs replenishing. The pump has a carrying handle but it’s heavy. I opened the tank from the top of my ladder and popped in the inlet pipe then wheelbarrowed the pump over to the riverbank now wet and covered in tradescantia and sundry other weeds. I even used part of a terrazzo ‘pretend marble’ slab (once a coffee table) to set the pump on a level platform in a recess dug on the bank, part primed the inlet pipe through the foot valve, connected the delivery pipe, finished priming by adding water from a watering can, and got the machine going and pumping nicely. If that all looks mundane, it isn’t, quite: it requires some muscle to wrench water-filled pipes on a steep riverbank, to say nothing of carrying the pump riverward without slipping, breaking the anatomy or drowning the carrier before he gets to first base; for old blokes like me, it’s a hot, sweaty tiring exercise—and is sweetly rewarded when the pump runs properly and the river water tumbles noisily into the depleted tank. I was so pleased with myself that I fetched the radio and something to read and sat in the sun (not far from the pump) listening to ABC FM Classics. Very nice, because the weather was not at all wintery and not quite spring-like, but was somewhere between the two seasons, or so it seemed to me. Alas, the pump conked out after an hour and a half. I won’t go any further with that except to say that the micro switch that cuts off the power when the oil level is low has been disconnected and I’ve even changed the oil and cleaned the sparkplug—but gave up (wisely) before going nuts and so ended the operation prematurely; a great disappointment. I switched to other sanity-restoring initiatives (like adding a few more stones to the new anti-flood wall adjacent to the belvedere).

*

Windowed Views.

I recently email-invited some of my readers (old friends lifelong friends and new friends) to write a few words—a short par, two or three sentences—describing the view through a window where they write, or where they were reading my message. These are some of their responses:

The bare spindly winter limbs of a liquidambar are the first objects in view from the kitchen window. Behind them: the bifurcated trunk of a large gum, gray in the early evening light. These two superimposed on the bay. The water shows a faint gold tinge and the ripples flow in my direction from a light sou’westerly. Paddling slowly against the breeze is a solitary swan. On the far side of the water, tree-covered hills usually green but now almost black in the fading light, above them a faintly glowing sky and three long strands of mauve and purple clouds.

Bruce Furner. Fennell Bay, Lake Macquarie, NSW.

From my window I can see my 1-acre garden, my lemon tree laden with golden globes of fruit, the three chick mafia, and the stretch of brown lawn sloping down to the boundary wall where trees over 20-metres tall separate my garden from the outer world.

The birds--crested barbet (yellow, black with a blotch of red on his tail), the hoopoes, the louries and weavers building nests in the thorn trees—complete my view.

Julie Craig. Sandton (Johannesburg), RSA.

Looking up from the small dining-room table I see the spreading branches of a date tree bending and swaying over my tiny balcony. The bright orange dates are still not ripe but the birds seem not to mind and pluck them hungrily perching on the edge of the granite veranda nibbling nervously. Here in Tel Aviv it is 3.30pm and the basil that we planted two months ago in boxes beside the sage and verbena is just beginning to droop.

Sharon Snir. Tel Aviv, Israel.

A few lines from the view from where I write:

Frail mesh is a filter

sky arches everything

light bounces

casting negative shapes

that catch my mind.

Lyn Thiry. Valla, NSW.

I am at my desk once more after driving a full circle of 6000-km. Even though my body is now seated in this old cushioned office chair, much of who I am is yet to be reconfigured. I feel as though I have left small pieces of my being scattered all along the way and in addition to this I continue to carry an unsettling sense of motion somewhere within. As I look out this night over the town, I catch my own image reflected in the glass windowpane. The street lamp and the half moon, the tiny house lights glowing in the valley below are patterned over my own familiar form. I am only half here, flat and transparent and floating in a background of night. It’s winter in my room and in the valley, our house lights are also on and glowing yellow but I feel cold. I'm remembering my journey that spanned latitudes and those times where I tasted the warmth of the tropical north...now I am left wanting more. The cold has heightened my longing for the sun, which seems lost to me now in this half state, less light and more melancholy. In this moment my view leaves me steeped in a cold winter’s night with an intense desire for the dawn.

Petra Meer. Warburton, VIC.

Blue-green with white tips—energy on the loose—kinetic as they roll, potential as they hover, kinetic once more as they crash. A transform of light and sound and the ultra violet rockets off the swirling patches as they gain momentum for a repeat. How do I relate to this? Does E =mc squared make it all relevant or do I luxuriate in the quality of the dance? My Buddha says "Ummmm."

John Morris. Looking northeast through my picture windows 60-m above the sea at Kiama, NSW.

July 25 2010. A soft day here: not too cold but much humidity in the cool air and overcast sky. The expression ‘soft day’ isn’t heard much in these parts; I remember often hearing the words during my years in the UK and Eire; it has always seemed an Irish expression to me (if it wasn’t exactly raining in Eire and if there was a glimmer of sunshine or a patch of blue, a ‘soft day’ was an appropriate description of a ‘pleasant’ day). And it seems we have now all grown accustomed to expressions not heard 30, 40 or 50 years ago: climate change, global warming.

On my drives to Bellingen or to Coffs Harbour/Park Beach this month I’ve seen the jacarandas bronzing in the cool air and the yellow flowers of wattles have been prominent for weeks (the scent of wattles can be detected in some places along the highway—even at 100-km/hr). Up here in the Darkwood and Upper Thora, the red cedars are producing new shoots and flowering trees like magnolia are in full bloom. The leggy azaleas in the Cedar Grove have started flowering, too, so there’s more than a hint of spring—in mid-winter. I wanted to clear around the circular wall of the Dog’s Garden and used the mower (in June) to do that: the grass has continued growing all winter (including new kikuyu grown from seed). I’ve seen no frost here (on the ‘home’ paddock near the house: too many trees shade the area all year, but there certainly have been frosty mornings elsewhere in the Valley this season).

As often happens, I’m again surrounded by new and old books most of which I want to read all at the same time, but I’ve hindered my reading this month because I’ve been writing, re-writing, drafting and re-drafting fiction as well as nonfiction narratives for submission to editors and publishers; writers professional as well as amateur have to be in it to win it. A new Alberto Manguel is ordered and on the way (A reader on reading). I’m itching to read The best Australian stories 2009 (Black Inc. (Ed) Delia Falconer—her introduction is as attractive a read as the stories in the anthology, and New Australian stories, Aviva Tuffield’s (Scribe 2009 anthology). A re-read of Annie Proulx’s Postcards is jostling for a place in the queue. I haven’t yet finished the intriguing Reality hunger, a manifesto (David Shields), nor Arundhati Roy’s The god of small things. I’m months behind in reading the Literary Review magazines. I have finished reading Sarah Hall’s The Carhullan army (a good dystopian read but dark, at least for me). And there are recent copies of HEAT and also Griffith Review that that I’ve not completely read. I was at Russell Atkinson’s recent book launch in Bellingen and now have his double (two collections) book of short stories to read. –And I mention another South American-written book, the translation of a Adolfo Bioy Casares novella, The invention of Morel (1964) but more recently published by the NY Review of Books in 2003. There’s a prologue by Jorge Luis Borges who declared [this book] “a masterpiece of plotting comparable to The turn of the screw.” Borges has also described it as a ‘perfect’ novel. It was the model for the film, Last year at Marienbad (Resnais, 1961). The Casares book, btw, I bought for a modest price from Clouston and Hall’s Academic Remainders (see their catalogues on line)

I’m reminded of a short vacation I once took in Vanuatu to catch up on my reading. Most of my luggage was books.

July 27 2010. The new stonewall, originally intended as being wider and lower, has ambitions, it seems, to be the same height as it’s adjacent Belvedere wall. Shall I call it: the cormorant’s wall; the river lawn wall; the fern garden wall, the Big Whirlpool Wall? In the centre of this almost-enclosed area stands an old cheese tree, much battered by the debris of logs dumped by high floods (the Big Swirl comes into play here when there’s a flood running: a sometimes very big eddy or whirlpool of destructive debris that generally comes ashore if the river is high enough, smashing its way around the central area of Big Lawn and adjoining gardens). In front of the tree: partly buried big stones that protect the tree, and a thicket of giant maidenhair and bracken covering an understorey of tradescantia that catches loam and raises the area when the flooding river washes through). I’m demolishing the old circular wall immediately in front of the house because it contains many useful building stones and because the old wall serves no useful purpose. Unfortunately it also contains many small stones that have been covered with loam by successive floods: a problem for the mower in spring and summer; some of this material will edge the river lawn and build up the riverbank. Some of the giant maidenhair within this enclosed area is more than 1-m high and there are also some new bleeding heart tree seedlings in there. When logs and other debris come ashore here all the ferns will be crushed and all will regenerate when I have the strength to clear the debris. Which reminds me: the night creatures have been digging all over the lawns, Big Lawn, the new river lawn, the Dog’s Garden and even the recovering Cedar Grove lawn. I suspect bandicoots and/or possums (I must check on their diets) and either the same creatures or some mystery animal has also a taste for young bleeding heart tree seedlings or saplings. What a mess. Clearing debris following floods implies the new wall won’t be substantial enough to repulse the logs (I’ll then have the pleasure of rebuilding this wall in a somewhat different style; the adjacent Belvedere has never been knocked down; being monolithic it contains tonnes of dense river stones beneath a top layer of soil and lawn, i.e., the Belvedere has oodles of structural integrity; the new wall will have little. The log debris comes downstream because property owners dump unwanted material or stack it on river flats where floods will conveniently remove it (at least as far as near neighbour’s riverbanks). There is little I can do about that, but I persevere and enjoy building and rebuilding gravity walls when the debris has been returned to the river…

Another month is waning. I remind myself of how busy a time retirement can be. Not that I mind that. The difficulty lies in struggling to maintain a good work schedule inside, writing, and outside, gardening or wall building. Petra’s epigraph at the beginning of this Diary, Bruce’s and John’s contemplative windowed views also imply that slowing down and simply being present is often the way to go (I suspect I may not be the only person in the world trying to maintain balance and pace). And I remind myself that the three poems I recently sent off to an editor are each about here, Earthrise: one about a perceived cormorant air race that seemingly I was part of; another about the (now dismantled) round stone ‘table’ on the Belvedere that skinks and lizards regarded as their high rise apartments; and one about ‘pictographs’ or silhouettes cast by the setting sun on the flooded gums trunks (shadow pictures showing projections of other trees and sometimes, birds). Meditations on water and in gardens and on riverbanks are good for one’s health.

Time to get some firewood before another shower dampens everything again.

Later: so I got wet and the leeches were barking, but I got the wood and split it. Last Sunday I had the gardener up on the roof to remove the top of the stovepipe then clean the inside, freeing it of a mass of carbon. Inside and downstairs one of the footmen removed the steel deflector from inside the heater and cleaned out the ash and carbon; finally I had the gardener and a gamekeeper sequester the cinders in the area of the new wall. My carbon footprint is taken care of for a few days. The firewood is wet but we’ll get it going, never fear. Not that it’s especially cold today: I like a fire to take the edge off the chill and damp.

Later still: the butler having anticipated my wetness and leech wounds brings me a glass of wine. I sit in front of the slow combustion heater, moodily sipping. Sharon said it’s 40˚ plus in Tel Aviv, but here it’s chilly and misty and the low river is rising in the rain.

Almost all the dahlias are up and snoozing in one of my file cabinets (wrapped in newspaper and used postal packages). There are a few tubers at the back of the Theatre Garden; I’d better get them inside before The Creatures tear them to shreds.

Out there on Big Lawn there’s a big patch of emerald green moss; it looks it’s best in midwinter and it’s recycling exhaust fumes from passing traffic and the wood-smoke from my fire and presumably coughing up oxygen—as do the enormous trees. I can’t quite see the native violets in the grass but they’re there too and flowering. There’s a brown carpet of discarded leaves around the Japanese maple and a collection of yellow grapefruit on the edge of the lawn. Bowerbirds have removed the remaining oranges and left only shells of zest. The downstream view is of a grey river in rain, some mist rises through the high forest, and there are streams within the stream that puzzle the eye on the surface of the river. Winter hinting at spring.

THE EARTHRISE DIARY 6/10 (June, 2010)

THE EARTHRISE DIARY 6/10 (June, 2010)

Don Diespecker

Looking is a gift, but seeing is a power.

Jeff Berner: The Photographic Experience

Saturday, June 26 2010. The first month of winter here has seemed strange: green and gold is the dominant colouring and most of the Best Views suggest spring, not winter. The red cedars further down Darkwood Road are hinting strongly at new growth because the weather has been surprisingly mild, there has been an abundance of annoying and soaking showers, and everything that grows, it seems to me, has a reluctance to slow down (as in autumn slow-downs) and to face the reality of winter. It’s all very strange. And although it is winter, and there is, this morning, a palpable cold blast from the South and the skiers are skiing in the Snowy Mountains, the views from inside my house and from most parts of the gardens, are not at all wintery. The Very Tall pear tree in the Cedar Grove is displaying autumn colours (seen for only a few days each year) and the Japanese maple at the edge of Big Lawn has orange/red/brown foliage (winter hasn’t yet occurred to these trees, perhaps) and, the West African Tulip Tree, of all things, continues its summer flowering. Dashed odd, what?

I mention these unexpected states of trees because I’ve been writing about sundry aspects of Earthrise Views. For those who have not seen this place, it is a place of views and it has (at least it has for me) powers of enchantment such that most visitors seem compelled to see particular views. I’m sure I’ve previously mentioned Berner’s observation; it continues to be a potent reminder for me. In the present context it has implications about seeing what is obvious. Yesterday at lunchtime I was able to sit comfortably outside in the sunshine, reading; today the sky is largely overcast and sitting outside reading has no appeal at all.

Sitting and seeing, which I do as often as I dare, certainly makes me think. There are so many notions and even themes in writing essays about The view from Earthrise, or Seeing the view, or The best view. Because a favourite view is generally always there, seemingly unchanged and almost static, there is the tendency to believe that those things are true when the startling truth is that everything constantly changes, everything. Photography of one kind or another would enable us to see many of the changes as they occur. The point I often mull over is that even though some changes are imperceptible or minute we can see changes in a riverscape view from day to day provided we focus. And I suggest that we are also motivated to look for or to seek what we most want to see or enjoy seeing, thus enhancing the probability of our truly seeing those features provided they exist in the view. In other words, if we want to see features of a view we know are rewarding (having learned to know what we like), we’re more likely than not to see those features if they are present either in the usual way or in a similar way. When we are focused elsewhere (fantasies, memories) or muddled or over-concerned about trivial and mundane matters we will be more likely to see an otherwise favourite view as normal, as unchanged because it is the (learned) usual or expected view that is always where it should be. To not focus is to largely ignore, thus the view will apparently be unchanged from day to day. It follows too, I dare say, that if something obvious has changed significantly (water level of the river, a landslip, a fallen tree) even the dreamiest viewer will probably become aware of the significant change.

Sorry! I sometimes forget that I used to be an academic (in an alternate reality) on occasion and thinking in these ways recurs when I grow pensive. Here’s another thing about favourite views: the longer I look at them over time the more I appreciate that views have their own calendars (the view changes colour, e.g., with the weather, the seasons, the time of day). Or certain view features are enhanced (the forest bloodwoods generally flower in February; riverside plants and weeds change colour, wither and sometimes die in autumn months or new growth will appear in the spring months).

Sorry again! This is simply a way of indicating that because I’m fortunate to have good views I use my eyes to enjoy changing patterns of light, of shade, of movements. The seeing of a loved view is good for my health and depriving myself of not seeing these things when I have to be elsewhere may be unsettling…

And if you have read this far with a mounting sense of desperation, here is something less difficult that I also do that you might like to try at home. The Bellinger in front of my house is a serpentine river with impressive bends and it flows through a varied landscape: dense forest that includes tributary subtropical rainforest creeks, steeply wooded slopes, and birds, animals, reptiles, fish and amphibians. The river with or without all the extras is also similar in several ways to other rivers that I’ve known (other Australian rivers like the Gloucester and a range of trout streams in the Snowy Mountains) and in particular, the Cowichan on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, and the Blyde in the Drakensberg of the old Transvaal and to a lesser extent, the Jordan in Israel and Jordan). When sitting idly seeing the downstream prospect of the Bellinger I sometimes realise I am also reminding myself of other similar rivers: the rapids and pool in front of my house are not unlike similar aspects of the Cowichan and the Blyde—these three rivers are small to medium streams (except when they flood or are diminished by drought). ‘Looking at’ the Bellinger, at light or shade or during certain weather may remind me of (similarly viewed) memories arising from similar experiences of the Cowichan or the Blyde (**). Seeing the single river in front of me also enables my seeing, as image (and sometimes, if I may use a little hyperbole, as an ‘overlaid image’) one of those other rivers. I’m not suggesting I can see two different images at the same time, but that it is possible to experience an alternating of ‘the actual river here’ and ‘the newly produced imaged of a more distant river’). –We do not have to limit such ‘remembrance of times past’ exclusively to rivers, of course. When we see a face on TV, say, and are reminded of someone we know who looks like that ‘other’ person, we may become sharply aware of alternating images and perceptions.

If you doubt these perceptual excursions, try this (you can do it anywhere, but please, not ever when driving or operating machinery): think of (or introspect) “when you last went swimming.”

Re swimming: it is probable that you have enabled the making of a new image of an old memory and seen, as image, a viewed representation of yourself: a glimpsed image in your mind, so to speak, of yourself swimming and which curiously ‘represents’ something you did not, could not actually have done, namely, observe yourself swimming (see Jaynes). You can retrospect on many other experiences in the same way and so see yourself; the memory need not be of swimming, of course. Come to think of it, you and I are able to ‘see ourselves’ in one place while being in a distant place, can’t we?

And now it’s raining lightly, again and I’m thinking of the Seine in Paris in the snow and the Pont des Arts. Now I’m remembering the Dordogne in summer! We’re all parts of a universe that sees itself!

What else has been memorable this winter month? There has been a small attempt at a Rodent Coup here at Earthrise: very small mice, about four, found their ways inside and have been a concern. Their numbers have been reduced. I rescued a fish- or leaf-tailed gecko from the bathroom washbasin. Have you ever seen, close up, the feet of these little beauties? I rescue them respectfully by urging each small creature with a towel from basin to a bucket and deposit him or her outside. They always manifest at night. Other night creatures have denuded as many of the bleeding heart tree seedlings as could be found. They leave no footprints so I imagine they’re small (not deer) and are perhaps possums or bandicoots.

The new anti-flood wall progresses slowly and it now is enclosing several bleeding heart seedlings… I’ve also imported from the Dog’s Garden, some grass runners (mondo grass) and put them into the new walled garden too, together with cloned lomandra. Some of the giant maidenhair ferns in this area when I remove the tradescantia groundcovers are more than a metre high.

What else? The roof has been swept, again. The slow combustion heater stove pipes, on the roof, have been tweaked for removal of soot and improved drawing of the fire below. And I’ve been raking between showers. Raking is one of my favourite pastimes: maximum results for gentle and minimal work.

Inside: I continue writing narratives fictional and nonfictional; outside, I try to use sunny times in which to read The art of the personal essay (Pillip Lopate, Ed) (all essays are in English, fortunately), The Carhullan Army (a dystopia by Sarah Hall), Reality Hunger, a manifesto, by David Shields and a memoir by Tim Jeal, Swimming with my father.

If you were here, dear reader, I would offer you some of my splendid grapefruit, an excess of them now are ripe and falling on Big Lawn. Oh yes, and there is now a new scented rose in the Dog’s Garden waiting for spring; it’s name is Smooth Friendship.

References:

Berner, J. (1975): The Photographic Experience. (New York, Doubleday). Quoted in Gross and Shapiro, 1996 p.185. Gross, P.L. and Shapiro, S.I. (1996): “Characteristics of the Taoist Sage in The Chuang-tzu and the Creative Photographer.” Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 1996, 28, pp. 175-192.

Jaynes, Julian. (1976): The origin of consciousness in the breakdown of the bicameral mind. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, p. 28.

Excerpt:

From an unpublished essay, “Cowichan”:

“The Cowichan is his primary river of memory and the precursor of all loved rivers; it powerfully signifies early childhood, the family and trout fishing. He was too young to fish the Cowichan in 1932, but he remembers watching Durbyn and his father’s brothers fishing then, well before he could stand in a fast stream with a trout rod. It wasn’t until 1937, after the family returned to Africa, that Dad taught him how to fly-cast on the Blyde, the river that flowed through Pilgrims Rest up in the Drakensberg. “Blyde,” from the old Dutch blij, then into Afrikaans, means joy or happiness and there was plenty of that: swims with the other kids at Flat Rock, picnics and camping and that place under the suspension bridge at First Drift where he could lie still, inches above the crystal river to see rainbow trout hanging in the stream, their fins moving like flowers in a faint breeze.

“But the Cowichan came first in his childhood. “Cowichan,” from a Salish word means ‘land warmed by the sun.’ Early in his Cowichan days he was too young to know beyond those sunny times. Much later in time he discovered other rivers, like those loved French beauties, the Dordogne and the Vézère at Montignac, and the Seine. Living in Paris and watching the Seine had allowed him memories of elegant bridges, eye-catching barges and leafy trees along the quays.

“The serpentine Bellinger meandering through the Darkwood Forest is the stream of the present, the end stream of memory, the river that so readily allows recalls of other rivers he knows. The rising sun glints on the torrent and the sunset reflections of the forest’s steep slopes are green and gold. The surface shines in the moonlight. Living on her banks is a privilege.”

Earthrise Diary 5-10 (May 2010)

Earthrise Diary 5-10 (May 2010)

Don Diespecker

Golden, golden, the woods are golden now. The days stretch on into Indian summer, the air gone plummy with woodsmoke and windfall apples, Stradivari air.

John Jerome

(Stone Work, 1989, p. 139)

Much of this 2010 autumn has been green, gold, mild and pleasant and this has made for plenty of sunshine and temperatures allowing the older gardener types like me to sit basking sleepily outside while pretending to read and even to write. There has also been the continuing attack on Big Grass in the Cedar Grove (now interrupted by damper weather), the construction (which sounds grander than mere building) of a new defensive flood wall with old-wall stones on the river lawn, discussing a proposed book with a fellow author, the often uncomfortable writing/re-writing/editing/re-thinking of two essays and two long (fiction) stories (uncomfortable because of sundry interruptive chores and so-called Writer’s Block {a notion I scarcely believe in, normally}). Worst of all, I efficiently trapped myself in the middle of an email software difficulty (a long story which I’ll happily save you from). I’ve been wringing my hands, cringing and wincing—as one does when anything in the computer ‘goes wrong;’ things that ‘go wrong’ being a self-deceiving euphemism for (‘I messed up—AGAIN!’). Who would have thought that computer difficulties would affect so much else in one’s life? There was a time when I wrote everything by hand –let us not forget the pen and the pencil—but in the present era most of what I write is composed on the computer’s keyboard.

Nonetheless, part of the pleasures of autumn has consisted in some reading, usually in the fresh air at lunchtime. Out there, at the back of the belvedere I can keep an eye on the river and the birds. There are always plenty of books for me to read and re-read. Reading is always a matter of priorities: chores at every turn, writing, exercise and times for reading). I recently bought a BIG pb, The art of the personal essay. An anthology from the classical era to the present (ed.: Phillip Lopate) and would like nothing better than to sit down and read it right through, but can only afford brief readings…you know how it is: chores have a priority too.

Recently I was becoming so accustomed to the almost summery riverbank pleasure that I looked for further excuses to stay outside, reading and playing with stones, but on that particular afternoon and having promised myself I’d go back inside and telephone one of the mighty Telstra fixer uppers I reluctantly tore myself away from my aestivating repose and went up to the house. Just as well. While I was stoically following the directions of the Telstra guy (in the far-off Philippines) I heard the crack of either a tree or a branch breaking. Later I discovered that a deadwood branch from the old white cedar above my chairs on the belvedere had broken and fallen 15-m or so, wrecking the bleeding heart tree and scattering the chairs. There was enough Heavy Wood to have ended my career as a belvedere sitter. These things happen. It’s not possible to live amidst very big and high trees for 26 years without sometimes having to run for it or to duck for cover. Trees here, e.g., the eucalypts, whatever their charms and graces, frequently shed leaves, barks and limbs; a weighty branch falling from high above may kill the unwary. Rural or rustic older garden persons all have to run like hell if their hearing is good enough to detect trees cracking or breaking in the near vicinity of their heads—and as one practiced in this manoeuvre, I assure readers everywhere that it’s essential to develop an agility of posture so as to escape serious injury or death from above. Believe me, dear reader, running from a sitting position is the only way to go although such action generally has a deleterious effect on many parts of the anatomy; but to not instantly run is to risk being permanently erased.

While suffering the exaggerated effects of the malfunctioning email computer settings I’ve also been mining some of my archives for River Stuff. Two sources of such material are the Australian Gestalt Journal (AGJ) and The International Journal of Transpersonal Studies (IJTS). I’ve been surprised to see again and to re-read materials that I wrote less than 10 years ago because some of the writings seem to me to be so much older—perhaps an effect of my growing older by the minute.

The reason I’m waffling about these sundry distractions in an otherwise reasonably well-ordered rural life is that I’ve also been re-reading some articles in last year’s Literary Reviews (‘proof’ of how long it takes to thoroughly read certain publications because I seldom manage to read the Lit Rev so thoroughly that it’s OK to speedily pass it on to a Lit Friend). The Lit Rev always begins with an overview (‘From the Pulpit’) opinion piece that reads as a personal essay rather than an editorial and these distinctive one-pagers are generally written by a distinguished specialist UK writer, editor or publisher. One of these that I was speed reading was tilted Golden Notebooks, by Richard Davenport-Hines who discussed Somerset Maugham’s (1949) A Writer’s Notebook. The writer mentioned some of Maugham’s pithy sayings and quotes; this one surprised me: ‘to imagine is to fail; for it is the acknowledgment of defeat in the encounter with reality.’ I take the point and disagree. Maugham would surely have admitted to having used his imagination to write his stories, yet he assigns the word a pejorative meaning that it doesn’t deserve, in my opinion.

Being a poor sleeper I frequently shift realities by visualising characters in the fictional and nonfiction narratives that I’m working on. My view is that the so-called ‘stream of consciousness’ that William James wrote about is filled to a great extent with visual images that we each may access: thus, I see the scenes or actions or characters that I want to write about, i.e., I visualise these images. Sometimes I focus on the stream; sometimes the stream delivers whether I’m focused or not. That may not be much of an explanation of imagination or of imagining, but it works for me.

Consider some of these scribbles (mine) from the Australian Gestalt Journal:

“ In the early autumn the air turned warm and humid and the valley was lush and green from storm rains and thundery showers that followed the long hot summer. The river was high and grey-green and after sunrise flashes of light glinted endlessly on the surface of each new fresh running through the rapids and into the pool. In the gardens most of the tall dahlias not flattened by storms continued blooming and the night animals that ate the flowers in the dry summer stopped visiting. The scented red hybrid tea roses grew lustily inside their enclosure and flowered profusely through the wet and the rainforest creek started flowing once more. In the bleeding heart trees next to the house plump brown fruit pigeons fed on the berries, sometimes hanging upside down to reach the fruits.” (The Epistolary Earthrise) (AGJ Vol 7 2003, p7)

“Those of you who have visited Earthrise will easily imagine the place. Those who have never been here and who read my scribbles will easily imagine the place whether they want to or not. We can’t but help using our imaginations, or thinking in images, or creatively allowing stories to unfold as if the stories and scripts and scenarios and therapy had been there all the time, just waiting, as it were, for us to unfold them. When I write ‘At sunrise the herd of buffalo on the slopes started to move through the tall khaki-coloured grass and the light glinted on their horns,’ your image of that will be different to mine and not because I was there and saw what I now share with you, but because we’re all magical creatures who so readily make pictures in the mind.” (Vol 7 2003, p 9)

“Here are the opening lines of two of my stories that may never be movies. One of them is true.

“It was early morning on the fortieth birthday of the fado singer Elvira Tomes. She wore an old cotton robe and stood alone next to the north-facing window of the big room where she and Jules had lived during the war. Daybreak was always her favourite time in Mozambique because the air was cool and fresh. She sipped black coffee hoping for a clear day so she could paint and she watched the light strengthen on the long misted Bay. As the light grew stronger sounds from the street and the markets and the quayside grew louder. Soon she distinguished dark-hulled freighters swinging at anchor and could see some of their flags moving a little in the small breeze coming down Delagoa Bay.” (Lourenço Marques) (Vol 7 2003, p 9-10)

“Most of the hotels were closed for the autumn but were scheduled to reopen in December for the winter season. In early November many of the trees remained leafed and the forests were a rich red and gold. There were still some grapes hanging on vines trained on the sunny walls of the houses and above the tree line there was some early snow. On a small island there was a church with an onion-shaped top to its spire and the high mountains were reflected in the still waters of Lake Bled. A man and a woman sat outside on the timber balcony and below them two army officers had a table brought out on the terrace and ate their lunch in the sunshine. The sun shining through autumn leaves made dappled patterns on the terrace. Later the man and the woman joined the officers for drinks: dark red wine diluted with splashes from a soda siphon.” (Slovenia) (Vol 7 2003, p 10)

“Like many of my ancestors I enjoy sitting in my garden and seeing what there is to be seen. Some of that is in the so-called outer zone and some of what can be seen is in the middle zone. Sometimes I write or make notes or fantasize about the wildlife and the natural world and I know that actual text and fictional narratives and even biographical notes in historical documents are all merely words yet they can all also inspire imagery, if you see what I mean.” (Vol 7 2003, p 10)

A point I’m trying to make is that all writing surely requires that the imagination be engaged. I’ve seen many fine examples of writing, including manuscripts of novels in museums and two are truly memorable. In 1954 at Sounion a bus ride from Athens, there were the remains of a column, lapped by the ocean, and chiseled darkly into the stone was the inelegant but artistic word BYRON. The other writing, also a chiseled inscription, was made long before Lord Byron’s autograph and is also more artistic: in 1956 at Bisitoun in Iran, I climbed steep rock to see where Darius I (The Great) (558-486 BC) had cut, (or probably had an artist/chiseler do his bidding), The mighty Darius passed this way, or words to that effect. Much more had been inscribed because the message was also an account of his reign.

Writers write because they cannot help but write and when Byron or Darius paused and looked hopefully to the skies, we can be sure they each pondered what to write in stone. We can also be sure that when they did that they also would have visualized the finished work by imagining how it would look when finished.

Autumn at Earthrise continues. The weather is damper now and there are nuisance showers, yet there are also sunny breaks. Damp soil makes for easy weeding and although stonewall building is a muddy job in wet weather the stones also get washed by rain.

Last words on this May afternoon from the late John Jerome:

Here and there in the woods I come across such beautiful rocks, covered with such soft green mosses that they make me want to lay my face against them (Jerome, 1989, p 143).

Best from Don.

References

Diespecker, Don (2004). Surfing the Absolute. The International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 23, 125-128 (contains references to Jerome).

Diespecker, Don (2004). Lourenço Marques. In: The Agreement. Phillip ACT, Australia: Homosapien Books, 112.

Jerome, John. (1989). Stone work, Reflections on serious play and other aspects of country life. New York: Viking Penguin.

Earthrise Diary (March 2010)

Earthrise Diary (March 2010)

Don Diespecker

Saturday, March 13 2010. Today, when I reflected on yesterday’s events, only hours behind me, I encouraged my mind to sift and to quickly sort so that I could satisfy my curiosity as to the most compelling event, the most vivid experience of the day. This is never easy. My mind is old and many items clamour for attention, not the least of those being remembered occasions, startling experiences and hours-old memories and those memories from Years Ago that persuasively persist.

I’m going to begin with Carol Bly. I have an unerring talent for being drawn to second hand bookshops and therein finding magnetizing books: their covers, the titles and the names of authors I’ve not yet (knowingly) read. The Bellinger Book Nook has copies of old Penguins and in that always interesting and rewarding cramped space I espied Letters from the country. The cover photo by Lawrence Frank depicts a wintry scene: a building (surely a barn) with a steeply pitched snow roof, and I well remember such buildings if only because I was born in Canada. Carol Bly, an American, is notably absent from my reference books, but her work has appeared in The New Yorker and American Review. I live in the country; this looked to be my kind of book. It is, indeed.

Carol Bly’s first essay, ‘From the Lost Swede Towns,’ also serves as introduction or preface to the essays that follow. Here are some of her words, picked because they look good: ‘This is the prairie country of the Louisiana Purchase, the endless, fainting fields, with the dusty rivers hooded by cottonwoods. As your eye sweeps this landscape you can see five or six farmers’ “groves” (windbreaks around the farmhouses). At dawn and dusk the groves look like the silent, major ships of someone else’s navy, standing well spaced, well out to sea’ (p1). Doesn’t that make you feel you want to read on? It does me.

Another old book I picked up there is Henry Miller’s: The colossus of Maroussi, This is an old favourite of mine, not least because I once owned a copy, had given that away, and wanted to replace the book (and also because it’s the account of travels in Greece with Miller’s good friend, the then young Lawrence Durrell—and because Pam and I once spent a winter in the Greek islands—a time and place when we also learned of Durrell’s books). This morning, and still in reflective mood, I stopped to read the handwritten message on the inside cover, that was written by a previous owner to her mother. The message referred to a quote from Miller’s book, ‘It is the morning of the first day of the great peace, the peace of the heart, which comes with surrender. I never knew the meaning of peace until I arrived at Epidaurus.’

And prior to the Book Nook I’d visited Bellingen’s other (second hand) bookshop- café and found, for the first time, an old book by Gilbert Frankau. My mother used to read novels by Gilbert and by Pamela Frankau—I always look out for old copies of those books—also, the Frankau’s hailed from the same part of the world as did some of my ancestors at or near Diespeck, a small town near Neustadt and Nürnberg in Bavaria.

In case you may be wondering about ‘yesterday’s events’ I had necessarily to remain a full day in Bellingen while a new windscreen was fitted to the poor old Honda. It would be easy for me to say how boring that was, but it wasn’t boring at all: it was tiring because 80-year olds tend to tire (or even to fall down) more easily than 20- or 40- or even 60-year olds. If you haven’t yet reached the ninth decade I can advise that you don’t rush in to it. A newspaper helps and coffee in a café, and chatting with strangers, acquaintances and an occasional friend. Persistent rain makes it all more difficult. I won’t bore you with the details except to say that I learned some interesting things and got home, eventually, exhausted and pleased with myself because the entire day had seemed like a trial. One of the best of these experiences came from sitting chatting with David on a public bench in the main street—the traffic barging by, rain falling. Another was sitting and seeing in a café. Another was in the new Bellingen Library—and so on. I was well out of my rural or rustic comfort zone, but by remaining more or less fully conscious in the hustle and bustle of the busy market place and by using my eyes and ears, I was able to observe, to learn and to ponder some ideas about my interrupted writing.

From ‘At the Library’:

“The new library closes for lunch on Fridays. I sit on the leaf-strewn surrounding steps. A mother with two children (one in a perambulator, one walking) arrives. I point out the bird droppings adjacent to where the pram stops. The baby has shoes with Canadian maple leaf emblems. We chat briefly, the mother and I. Inside the library I meet someone I know. We chat. I sit to rest with the prestigious Coetzee, but his writing begins with an accident and serious injury and doesn’t appeal. I exchange the Prize Winner for Alan Furst. I like the return to an old Europe in the year of 1938. The library is far from quiet. The librarian had said, ‘You can talk and even eat in here.’ This is unsettling for me. Cautiously I listen for sounds of eating. Before leaving and as an afterthought, I look for and find a copy of my book and am gratified to see that it has been borrowed (and, I hope, read) a number of times. When I leave the precinct I reflect on my reviving ego.”

From ‘At the Bookshop Café’:

“The proprietor is chatting with visitors/customers. At the counter I enquire about gluten-free foods. I’m a little out of luck but choose a Greek salad. This is a curious (for me) bookshop because associated eating and drinking and chatting is implied and encouraged. After browsing and finding the Frankau book I see the salad arriving and unwisely choose a table in the centre of everything, an in medias res location that reminds me of shyness experienced in public. The social swirl goes on around me. I eat carefully. No olive seeds slip or fly about the shop. Nobody falls over my shopping bag. I chew carefully and without making undue grazing sounds. People are chatting close by. Nobody is reading or browsing. I finish my meal, pay and slip away into the rain. The next second hand bookshop across the park beckons.”

I was thinking of birthdays in May and the draft of a story I’d just written. I have the bad habit of writing unfashionably long stories of about 20-k words, thus handicapping myself mercilessly from the viewpoints of editors and publishers. Perhaps with several such lengthy pieces I may be able to offer a small collection of longer stories to the world. Anyway. I had given the story the provisional title “One morning in May” and then realised I was again glimpsing images of childhood friends who, like me, had May birthdays. In the 1930s there were the two Leonard’s in Pilgrims Rest¹: Leonard Franck and Leonard Frankish, May 3 and May 6, as best I can remember. Both of those family names now suggest to me that my friends will have had ancestors in Franconia—like mine who were more or less from the same region, now more generally known as Bavaria in modern Germany. And there was Richard Scott, too. Each of us had been born in 1929 and I carelessly thought, how carefree we were in those days, and although that was true, it was only partly true: childhood had its junior moments, some of them fraught.

The more I thought about those far-off days, the more I remembered that childhood had both good and not so good days; I could write a book about that, but that would now be a digression. These days I know of other May birthdays, but it’s the childhood remembered ones that are presently in my mind.

When we remember, as imagery, friends and family that we care about, sometimes we may glimpse an image of a particular person and sometimes, too we may be (just) aware of the imaged self as well, in the frame, so to say: there I am with my pals, or there I am, also; or there I am in this good or this bad situation again (one that was significant at the time and that now seems in danger of not surviving as a memory).

Sometimes, and especially when we carefully remember childhood, we glimpse somebody that we remember clearly but have never known personally—famous and infamous people, celebrities and villains alike—and so we tend to not include the person we deserve to care about: one’s self. I’ll mention a particular celebrity shortly, but before I do that, I’ll offer a quotation that may surprise many.

“Or, introspect on when you last went swimming: I suspect you have an image of a seashore, lake, or pool which is largely a retrospection, but when it comes to yourself swimming, lo! Like Nijinsky in his dance, you are seeing yourself swim, something that you have never observed at all!”²

Each time we remember something from the past and glimpse it as an image, our remarkable brains somehow contrive to access an old memory, to freshen it and show us a new image of a remembered event and of course, of people (rather like a renewed or replacement photographic print, perhaps). Here’s another rich quote (for me, I mean):

“Such [photographic] images are indeed able to usurp reality because first of all a photograph is not only an image (as a painting is an image), an interpretation of the real; it is also a trace, something directly stencilled off the real, like a footprint or a death mask.”³

When I remembered childhood friends and Pilgrims Rest I also remembered myself as a child and, as Jaynes has explained, I again glimpsed an ‘old’ image of myself—and then I remembered an associated image from the 1938 film, The Great Waltz: a black and white ‘picture’ of the coloratura soprano, Miliza Korjus. In that image, a medium close-up shot, she was looking up at the camera, her eyes shining, and she was singing the song, “One day when we were young, that wonderful morning in May…” Movie prints were generally black and white in the 1930s (a few, like the Robin Hood films were in Technicolor) and all such motion pictures reached South Africa by sea, were distributed in, I think, Johannesburg, and eventually arrived in Pilgrims after a train journey to nearby Graskop and a final 9 or 10 miles journey by one of the motor vehicles from the Paul Ahlers Garage. We would not always have seen a 1938 picture in 1938, so the screenings in Pilgrims were probably in 1939. Miliza singing (she was not unlike Mae West in appearance) made a gigantic impression on me and I can still see that marvellous image of the singer in my mind, as if the experience had been yesterday. I’ve been surprised to learn that some of my friends have had similar Miliza Korjus memories.

1. Pilgrims Rest is (geographically) in the ‘Middleveld’ of the (old) Transvaal, gloriously enfolded by the Drakensberg. My paternal grandfather, who was a first-era prospector and digger along Pilgrims Creek in the 1870s, described the area as ‘the jewel of Africa.’ I entirely agree; I’m unable to remember the place without experiencing deep feelings. Pilgrims, as we used to refer to the village not quite a town, was a ‘Company Town’ (part of The Transvaal Gold Mining Estates) and was the oldest continuously mined goldfield in South Africa. Gold is no longer produced, the reduction works no longer function, the Blyde, the happy river, runs clean and sweet once more and Pilgrims is listed as a historical/heritage centre. And I care deeply for the place. In the era when I lived there nobody bothered about the apostrophe s in ‘Pilgrims’.

2. Jaynes, Julian (1976). The origin of consciousness in the breakdown of the bicameral mind. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, p 29.

3. Sontag, Susan (1971). On photography. London: Penguin, p 154.

And that’s how I came to call my story, ‘One morning in May’ and should you be wondering, it is an Australian story set in the area where I live although paradoxically most of the scenes are set in Canberra, Paris and Lisbon.

The year 1938 is also a reminder that I recently saw a newspaper reference to the first issue of the old Superman comic: it was allegedly sold at auction for $1M. In Pilgrims Rest in that year, as I recall, Harry Meyer and, I think, Mervyn Steckel may have been the first to acquire copies. The cost in those days was, I think, 6d (sixpence or 5 cents, more or less, which was also my total weekly pocket money). I was later enabled to buy a British comic/story tabloid, but am now uncertain of the name—anyway—one of these ‘boys papers’ then contained serial yarns about ‘Rockfist Rogan’ and also ‘Mad Carew’. Mad Carew was a fighter pilot ace who had flown biplanes in WW1 (as did my uncle, Louis Diespecker, who, as a member of the Royal Flying Corps (the RFC was the forerunner or precursor to the RAF) flew a Sopwith Camel in the Defence of London, his job was to attack German Zeppelins). Mad Carew, being a fictitious hero, later flew with the Finns against the Russians, but was superseded (if that’s the way to put it) by Rockfist Rogan when WW 11 began. I wonder if any of my old school mates might have copies of those old comics and papers in some dusty garage or attic (particularly the first Superman comic). Strangely, I’ve been reading the beginning of Koch’s The memory room and have been surprised to see that that author has also discussed some of the characters in the old comics (Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, Dick Tracy and of course, Superman).

In those distant times, the 1930s, kids in the UK went to ‘the pictures,’ and in the US and Canada, they went to ‘the movies.’ In South Africa we used to go to ‘the Bio,’ bio being the accepted South African abbreviation of ‘biograph.’ The original Biograph Cinema was more or less across the road from us when Pam and I lived in Vauxhall Bridge Road, near Victoria Station in London. I wonder if that has survived? The (Saturday) Bio in Pilgrims Rest cost, I think, 6d (six pence) for matinee shows and about a shilling at night. I always went to the matinees (as did my parents, so I had to behave because I was part of the mob of kids who generally sat at the back).

I’d intended writing much more about my day in rainy Bellingen on Friday March 12, but that will have to wait: I’m in the middle of a bad experience: changing to Broadband. Staggering around Bellingen in the rain while waiting for repairs to my car compares in magnitude and emotions to the difficulties surrounding The Internet Access via a Wet String Phone Line. Now there’s another difficulty to overcome: the necessity of having to provide a medical report certifying that I’m fit to drive a motorcar. Old age offers a variety of emotional excitements; it is also a time when reading and writing can be a therapy.

The rain and showers have ended…for now, and the days have been sunny and bright. The relatively simple acts of lawn mowing, raking and seeding new lawn grass are a pleasure when the weather is fine. It is as though summer has returned. There is nothing quite so refreshing as sunny mornings early at Earthrise: the air is like crystal and the sun shines through leaves and makes the garden glow with a holy light. The river sparkles as it rolls by. Cormorants demonstrate how much joy we might have if we could fly as they do.

More later. Best from Don.