Articulated

So because of a combination of illness, poverty, and family stuff, I was unable to spend much time visiting Dark MOFO this year. This is not to be taken as a criticism of ticket prices, as they seemed quite reasonable considering what was on offer. No this is much more a comment on my own inability to look after myself. Surely a topic for later essay.

I did get to see the Memoriam by Amelia Rowe, which I wrote about here.

If you lived anywhere in the area you were able to see the light installation Articulated Intersect. An artwork by the Mexican-Canadian artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer. Living in Dodges Ferry we could see the dancing beams of light from our back yard.

The family went to Okines Community House to take part in the Okines Community Gardens Winter Feast. This too could be seen as a festival of light. Hundreds of glass jars were turned into lanterns and decorated by the local children. The kids paraded down to the the aptly, if unsurprisingly, named Okines Beach. Local husband and wife duo Serena and Andy How killed it with a cover of “Ramble On”, while later Bigger Than Bill played. In the distance, searchlights danced and intersected in the waning crone moon solstice darkness. Fairy lights hung, like a failed spider web, from gum trees. Fires burnt in 44 gallon drums which had holes punched to create intersected patterns of rusting metal and flame. Light was all around; candles and flashlights, mobile phones, the flames in the hand built, bread roll baking, oven. And the light that was brought to life was overwhelmed, while teasing and dancing with the endless, bottomless, darkness of the sky, of the ocean.

In an interview with the Guardian the light installation artist noted that search lights were used as propaganda by Nazi's as part their infamous Nuremberg Rallies. As I was wandered, with the children, about Sullivans Cove, we chatted about the use of search lights in other situations. I noted that search lights were used by the Red Army in the climactic, apocalyptic battles which ended the rule of Nazi Germany. Red Army Commander Zhukov described the use of searchlights in the famous night attack by the First Byelorussian Front. “We concentrated a huge striking force on the bank of the Oder: the supply of shells alone enough for a million artillery rounds on the first day of the storming. To stun the German defenses immediately, it was decided to begin storming at night with the use of powerful searchlights. Finally the famous night of April 16 began. No one could sleep. Three minutes before zero hour we left our dugout and took up places at our observation posts. To my dying day I will remember the land along the Oder, blanketed in Aprii fog. At 500 A.M. [0300 Berlin time] sharp it all began. The Matyushas struck, over 20,000 guns opened fire, hundreds of bomber planes roared overhead. . . and after 30 minutes of fierce bombing and shelling, 140 anti-aircraft searchlights employed every 650 feet in a line, were turned on. A sea of light swept over the enemy, blinding them, and pointing out in the darkness the objects of attack for our tanks and infantry.”

We meandered along the waterfront, and stumbled upon the work by Chinese contemporary artist Yin Xiuzhen, [URL] Washing River 2014. Blocks of ice were made from the polluted water of the Derwent River. Passersby were invited to, using a variety of cleaning implements, clean the water, as the ice melted and the water returned to the river, to the barren ocean. This artwork highlights the need to clean the river.

So, after my Okine and my MONA experiences, I thought a lot about light, and noted the many relationships with light and dark and colour. As I walked around the city I noted the reflections of the traffic lights in the windows of the ships and offices, and how this light was distorted by the imperfections in the glass. I noted how the light smeared and spread in the puddles on the ground, in the darkness of river stretching out, how the lights of the houses on the mountain spread up the ridge, and then fell away into the deep frightful darkness of the unsettled forest. I noted the dust and small insects flying in and out and around and about the bright searchlight beams. And the light warming my hands in front of the burning fire in the oil drums.

Omnia quae sunt, lumina sunt. Eriugena. All things that are, are light. And I thought of light and how much we depend upon and are light. From the burning of the sun, to energy converting single celled algae.

Sou’easter

---

Three days windy rain.
Three days rainy wind.
Leaf twig stripping.
Wave crest spindrift.
Foam gathers dirty the strand
Battered of wind and rain days.
Crashing sea spray and salt
Thin covers cars and houses.

Rain and wind
Rattling windows
Tin night roof drumming
Dreaming. I am disturbed.
Roused sleep, broken branches,
Troubling dreams.
My child
My ten year old son dead.
On the street. His face bruised,
So much so I can not tell
Him, save by his feet.

It seems. So real.
My heart races.
My gut heaves
I feel ill.
Retching reaching
Stumbling stairs.
I can not sleep.
I listen his
Ten year old
Reassuring rhythmic
Sleep breathing.

Chamomile tea
To sleep settle.
I close my eyes
That image
Again and again.
I see.
Again the image.

A book. Maybe.
Read to nod.
Dozing off. Sleep.
Diverting mind
Void restless
Away false powers.
The dark cloudy night
Howls moonless.
Swaying dancing
Trees lash the roof.
Cracking creaking
Sounds of stress.
Leaves and branches
Scatter the garden.
Gather the garden.

shadows and sighs

Long streaks of early morning shadows
Fall right to left across the paddocks
And they shrink each time I turn my head
To look out the window, clear and windy.
Overnight the wind howled and groaned.
And I thought, no one happy until death
Can the dead be happy? And then my son
Said, be careful for what you wish for.
What? I was just thinking, well I thought
About spiders and they are creepy
And then I thought about this cartoon
And it is a bit creepy,
And the moral of the cartoon is
Be careful for what you wish for

And I was reading from the Oxford
Illustrated History of Greece
And the Hellenic World.

Child? Why do you cry?
Why is your heart so full of grief?
Speak now! Do not conceal!
These things in fact came from Zeus,
After you prayed.
Arms outstretched.
Palms up supplication.
You prayed all the sons of the Achaeans
To be hard pressed, huddling sterns of ships.
Wanting for you, suffering shamefully.

With deep sighs and groans swift footed Achilleus spoke
O my mother, all these things have been granted of Zeus;
But what pleasure is there now that my love has died?

After The Rain

---

After three or four days of on and off rain
I step into the gloomy night to dormouse wise 
Feed my head and take the dog to walk; 
So as to not embarrass his doggy self, 
And damage the carpets, to relieve himself.

Like many small bits of paper, or plastic bags
That are caught up the wind and forced to dance
In wild Matisse lines of random arabesque 
Across the land; like the trees which bend and bow
To the strong winds, or walkers who are bent over
To fight pedestrian the blurting blasting gales. 
So to it seems as if mighty Orion is caught up 
And sent tumbling cartwheeling (caterwauling?) 
By the windy roaring insensate fourties
Across the night, one arm outstretched, 
His hand on the top of hill, pushing off. 

In the morning I organise my young daughter.
Back to school after holidays. I struggle
To wake and get myself into the groove,
Back into the beat after a lazy fortnight.
Make her breakfast, and serve it to her.
And while she chatterboxes away
Anticipating her new day at school,
I listen and make her lunch, spreading peanut 
Butter across the bread. A piece of fruit,
A little tub of yoghurt, home made cookies. 
I wash her face and hands, get her dressed.
As she watches Sesame Street, I dress myself.

And we leave the house, opening the door, 
Flooding the lounge room with the streaming
Sun, the excited, twittering songs of birds.
The rains are over, the water tank is full 
To overflowing, two, three snails crawl
The potted plants the porch. The wind 
Has blown away the wet spongy clouds.
There is and optimism is on the rise. 

Penna Mona Penna

---

The three girls were sick, that left us boys to go to see Theatre of the World at MONA by ourselves. Nothing too bad, just colds and general sleepy day dreamy lethargy.

I had no reason to set the GPS. I did it, more than anything, out of habit, and a childish love of all things geek. When I glanced at the clock for the first time it was 12:34. Adding to ten this is my favourite time of the day. A cheery wizard omen. The theatre of clearing and forgetting. The second part of The Beatles White Album looms exactly to fit into the ride from Penna to MONA. From Birthday to Good Night.

And the divine divide is almost as beautiful as the study and the seat of the Muse is in some ways more beautiful, less beautiful, more disturbed by human hand, lest disrobed. Clear and disturbing obscure as uncensored night time visions. Coal Valley. Duck Hole Rivulet. Grasstree Hill Road. Sad jet faced microbe slow eating constant chewing fat black daughters of Hathor. On the side of the road they strand watching dozy dreamy wise the cars slowly fade into the past. The valley rich in sheep . Dull brown native hens greedy scratch at new sown fields green. And the valley rich in grape vines opens out from the crest of the ridge bright yellow and belligerent green new and fertile sweet and rich in abounding mechanic fields of industrial onion and lettuce and potato and the shiny green glade of fresh shown newly rained rapidly will to power to the sun loving grasping striving unto the sun and the former and shaper of life one earth and we are but interlopers and the wind through the trees and Henry Reynolds tells us the cries of dead rattle the trees. Without integrity...not a nation , but a community of thieves to listen to Xavier Herbert.

Mountains rise dreamy sheer a curtain wall of fear of multistoried green multihued mystery winding gear grinding curves of wide sweeping turns from the bend of the cutting. Deep dark gullies of eternal winter cold and damp and moss and the hilltops open to the warmth and the hilltops are drier. Round and round slow and lazy like time to observe and reveal all things hawks gliding to the swerve of the rising warm air and helical. And she missiles down from out of the sun talons extended and flashing bright and shinysharp and uncaring to kill the rabbit. For the weak must die. She has her own fingerlings to consider.

The factions and parties and elements are slipping apart and some called for civil union but equality like the call of accretion must be universal and absolute, or it shall not be at all. There can be no second rate no back of the bus no separate but equal and some brag of more or better morals the antiother.

Down down downity. Down shifting the hill glistening of the engine car ear aware of the sounds of human hand and mind made solidreal. The latest and the greatest. Down to Risdon Cove flat spongy sword beach of genocide invasion landing place. Flat past the sea historic ghost storey whipping post Richmond captive fictional Ikey Fagin named Artful Oliver oil twist and my baby girl not five years old was too scared to visit the gaol winding roads whaling rows windy ways sky sea sandy land matrix free hand mountain line steam smoke nickel smelter steam snow mountain cloud gathering oaken river wide and windy white capped waves  medieval tortured winter mandatory grapes cut down to silent size put in their prayerplace Mt Wellington gloomy table top overseeing Father cape town stern block head wooden top Pertrloo hero fire and smoke and soft spreading bullets tearing. And as we climb down the hill helter skelter the thin smelter yellowing mould wound in the corner of the we got trouble river city. The glue turns dry and brittle and the wall paper comes away from the wall and extends slow slowly. It lives. A nightmare of history. Unable to awake.

All for one and one for all for we are the mighty talon mighty  extending sweeping eagle eyed from silent down the sky unseen unheard hawks. And it all went off down urine one sixty pint of glumness rock on and bright orange vomit sort of an evening now a night of the book and a book of the night. Of dreams and absurd history culture 20 000 years and more and we are now fine again awake. The heartening of dreams and forgetting of horseshoe crab nightmares and turtles and stuffed open mouthed talon flashing fury of idioms messaging owls and glassy eyed Whiteley stare starting out opium calendar bay blue laden whirly surrealist shapes and pig cashable Normandy battle brash smooth stones loved. Hunks of hacked hair felt and simulated. Conversing with a stranger passion and the bluest cobalt blue excitement.

The Beatles White Album, the watusi second half from Birthday to Good Night almost the twist exact equity the time my house to old and new. Walking running playing dafter and son giggling imaging extending the iron work cement truck and here is where the rockets go. They make the truck go fast. Waiting Ticketing. High ceiling entrance. Down dark circle cycle stairs descending Dantesque subversive divine adult Disneyland comedy the walls hewn from bedrock the sewage tunnel hallway. Dystrophic future exoplanet factory setting. Addams family Gomez Cara Mia Crimea love house of rooms and arsenic and old lace old timey duchess and cabinets milk and ice cream mixed merchant seaman ti jean would scrapyard understand garage sale helter skelter football pell mell bob tail and tag rag and bone man Steptoe Sanford salvage and sons big fat timey wimey wibbly wobbly of next to next of side by side contrast and compare kaleidoscope that got away from me...

Radical harkening back to old stool timey museums set commode of the muses receding the circles of hell deep and deep dark dank past Tantalus...dug the ell-square pitkin. Poured we libations unto each the dead. Ply upon ply. Speaking to the shades shaking afore the shadows of what once was shades of long gone languages and spirits and gods and spirits and nymphs and each one alive and with a soul the river the tree the rock the prey the corn plundered gold rush the rubber terror or the sheep's back land grab given away not legal and the sealers mad the whalers and sooners and guano diggers and the carpet bagging money grubbers seizers of power and diverters of language. And now no more, so much no more. Never again. No more stories nor dreams. At the heart of this terror of smallpox gonorrhoea the bible bile and the boozy beggar bottle cheater of the ruse flag of the crafty one. No one despondent of Calypso pour libations and for the great king of the world of the world of protective mother and wavy cephalopod love unto fiery death no more and the pope sits in the frozen circle plug of icy cold hell as the mutinous angel Lucifer squats and farts for all time. No more. Gone for all time. Theatre of forgetting and bringing back to life with blood and wine to dialogue and which hand held this and painted this and concerned this. What maker?

Old skool nauseam and sacred silent place of dreamy wavy gravy chaired learners with pinned horseshoe crabs from boyhood home and crucified butterflies and great busted open shingle crystalline random slabs of geology and taxonomy on mortified branches well practiced taxidermy twittering birds of shimmering garish colour. The ordered shiny bugs the squatting ghouls and luck bringing fetish. Next to the this very afternoon up to date.  The cataloguing of the rapidly changing diving world the voice stifled the songs no longer sung. The craft left to gather dust of disuse. Lonely in drying drawers of humidity contoured basements. The counting and cataloguing of bumps and blemishes and gall shaped wounds to separate the ocean from the insane. The moving forward.

Dark and sharp labyrinth. Dedalus crafty artificer. The beast born of god ordained insane bestial coupling. Dedalus built wide shining apparatus Pasiphae Hathor white armed fine ankled cow eyed Hera. Kandinsky abreast side by side by Sondheim. Limestone CO2 hieroglyphics magic writing who carved and penned and concealed sanctified symbols and independent totem colour. Here Picasso and his mistress Dora Maar are the unwobling pivot. The masques of differing volume and intent and the modern up to date.  Rootless? Nihil tradition bebound to Beefheart repeat or to Stardust shock or simply to bore Joe six pack. Glad dark not glade gas candle optic illusion. Illusory sphere of light to passion and to touch to put out ones mind hand. Cretan octopus sarcophagus motif wide brawny curvy lines likes the roads that curve and wonder and switchblade jack knife through low hanging fruit mountain cutting hills.

Countless flies stuck to canvas thick and glittering bright in the light french polish of beetle wings cracking gold like the flowers like the darling daughter of Psapfo. Three photos put together a naked man lining down. Headless. A tiger on the prowl Flashman glaring at the Victorian viewer muggings ready to pounce. A group of world war soldiers shooting at an unseen enemy. The shoddier comrades all behind a quick thrown together barricade. Haystacks like the ones Monet painted, now lit by rifle shot and the angry flames jumping from seventy five millimetre hell mouth rapid fire cannon. A foot stool of a young woman crouched foetal ball disturbed the boy and resulted in a quick move to view the hand made Mercedes Benz  inspired coffin.

Cackle my unknown subscription to the redirection pleasures binary and cuneiform next to next face to face toe to toe heart to heart lumber up limbo down absorbing the beauty with my locked embrace stumble round eyes. Ancient some 4000 years ago what hand held and made what school boy held the stylus and when did she cut the shapes and words meaning numbers Krypteia secret codes of the precision caste. To dominate and monopolise knowledge of things that are and are not.

Tales of the ATO MONA send the messages atwitter and face book abuzz with abused bit and bytes and I let my small voice be heard in supporting the gallery.   And this. For the exhibit spoke to many of the things I hold close. The Greeks Joyce Hegel the helix the making of connections the tendrils of chemical interplay stretching and grasping one anointer skipping and sliding away and deforming in an instant and voices like my name being called in the wind. So the drunken liberal rush of drooling words and the droogy eruptions and wandering cul-de-sac rocks and the curves and the winding roads. This should not be viewed as criticism, I am not in a position to discuss the works from any sort of a mechanical point of view. However I can embellish the passage I made with my son through the gallery. I have tried to use words to dissemble the key features of the exhibit. This is a document of my impressions of the exhibit. The words are meant to convey the synaptic freeing of firing connections, to show the ramshackle exploration of making. Content and connection yet lacking in context notably a political narrative.

The grand knock 'em down fight to the finish no hold barred nature nurture. For we are, the philosopher wrote a species whose nature it is to be artificial. The great and melancholic Dane, sobbing into frigid Elsinore blasts. Down the generations down the centuries. if at the foundation of all there lay only a wildly seething power which writhing with obscure passions produced everything that is great and everything that is insignificant, if a bottomless void never satiated lay hidden beneath all -- what then would life be but despair? It is up to use to make the connections for ourselves, Theatre of the World invites us to, nay compels us to make connections.

The nine year old boy was able to pronounce the exhibit wizard.  As the mind of the child is still growing still plastic and striving after connection, how better to wander an exhibit of connections, but with a child.

My concerns are small and relate to context in the main. No political thread to allow us to return from the depth of the Minotaur born of sexual perversion and madness entombing labyrinth.

None to follow. The artists have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it. We are left wondering, what is to be done?

Back to home threading the narrow town streets helter skelter smelter and the bridge and the airport and the pitt water and the mountains reflecting the sunset lagoon pinks and blues and browns and greens blurring the marriage of heaven and hell.

---

Living in the Regions.

What is a boy,
A noise
Covered with dirt.

Strange animal noises and cries
Come from out the darkness.

In the morning
The strong sun
Makes clear
The trails
Belly crawling
Snails.

Holding hands
Chatting mindless
My son
Goes around the back
Of the house
To check the level
Of the water tank.

I strike the tank
And he listens
For the echos.

Seems low, I say.
I guess you do not
Have to have
A bath today.

This fills him with
Little boy dirt joy.

Domestic Sorrow and Joy

Blind Boy Grunt used to write finger pointing songs. This is a self pitying song. Enjoy or not at your leisure, feel free to use it, add to it, take away etc. just link back to the original.

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I step into the velvet night
Biting cold slap across my face.
Lights of cars flash and reflect
Dust and home fire aerosol.

I step into the velvet night
And light up a days end joint
Far off an animal screams once
And is silent. Dew falls on grass.

I win, in my dreams, a trophy
Golden cup brimming luscious trifle.
I meet dream shades of long ago
Fumbling backseat inept lovers.

Old shoes tattered shuffle across
Well groomed rocking Zen gardens.
Is that old man me? In my dreams?
Endless sorrow gray wells up within.

Until our youngest, full of energy
And endless love and joy climbs our bed
And begs, her throat cut, for morning toast
With honey and apple juice and love.