tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21455580512196262492024-03-22T05:02:39.649+11:00strange fruitfifihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06946945635726214503noreply@blogger.comBlogger221125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2145558051219626249.post-56698489698517419932015-11-29T14:34:00.000+11:002015-11-29T14:42:33.174+11:00In which the fish discerns her friend in the darkness<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3T8bJb1-322QsZ9zNCtuKxHsMvHEFx6MmYnPoCtDHdyzrcgiozJCgyhLaNOQ-yucmTgg7wiEZbQN10LtSBJ0X2-Qjge7PhYNzJ2nZ99pXieGP_801lx8Xmv-t_0ANvoGLHDkMeKXguC4/s1600/%255Eblurry+shark.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" height="280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3T8bJb1-322QsZ9zNCtuKxHsMvHEFx6MmYnPoCtDHdyzrcgiozJCgyhLaNOQ-yucmTgg7wiEZbQN10LtSBJ0X2-Qjge7PhYNzJ2nZ99pXieGP_801lx8Xmv-t_0ANvoGLHDkMeKXguC4/s320/%255Eblurry+shark.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">I'm not sure when it became usual to have endless stretches of dull grey weather in summer. Today is yet another one: flat light, mean grey skies and churned water. The wind and the sea endlessly bickering and throwing themselves against each other in an ugly way.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">The surf runs out, taking sand and froth with it, in a half hearted tantrum, and I catch the rip out to the point, noting that the rhythm is uneven and fast. Not the time signature of human breathing today but short sharp gasps. Hanks of weed hang suspended from the surface and eddies of sand drift up from beneath. It's hard to get a rhythm here today, it's all chin tucked in and exaggerated body roll so that every few seconds I am gaping up at the dull sky.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">In the pale</span> olive dimness I think I see something move, though I can't be sure. Whatever it is, it moves quickly away from me, decisively spooked. As I peer into the murk I run into a huge clump of weed and am startled, shifting my focus from far to near. I continue on, and again a shadow. I look hard, and make out the familiar shape of a shark, barely visible against the sand.</span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>There you are, my friend</i>, I say. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">My pale-eyed friend fades into the shadows, causing me to wonder what else might be nearby, unseen. In the deepest part of the bay, the waves are colliding from different directions, so that as I raise my arm I am tipped right over, spinning like a fishing lure. Below is just opaque darkness.</span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">I muse that Great White Sharks don't approach shallow enclosed areas, whereas this place was deep enough that mother whale once came to safely hide her calf. </span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">I think about that whale, and wish she would come back.</span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">I am still waiting for her to return.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">There are humpbacks in my ocean, travelling home. Last week on a long journey swim along the coast, past headlands and cliffs, I could hear them. Just off the Freshwater Headland, where the water was luminous and deep and the colour of pale aquamarine, I suddenly sensed that there were humpbacks around. Right at that moment my friend bumped into me, and I pretended we were humpbacks. </span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Later from home I saw the whale watch boat heading out, so I had not been mistaken.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">I swam across the bay and turned around with my head down against the rolling chop. Back across the darkness, back through the bouncing waves a sole kingfish swam around like an overconfident bully, not flinching one bit as I swam over it. Having the urge to scare it, whispering <i>hey Hiramasa, what do you think of sashimi?</i> It merely rolled its eyes and waved its yellow tail, resolute in its efforts to ignore me.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Heading for the point, I finally saw the shark just a metre below me. </span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Its large pectoral fins like cat's ears, its pale gaze fixed firmly ahead. I followed it quietly, watching it sway back and forth. </span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Where have you been</i>? I asked. <i>Where are the rest of you</i>?</span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">I wished to wrap my arms around her and rest my face on her rough skin and let her carry me to the darkest part of the ocean.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Between myself and the shore an expanse of white water, chopped and ripped. Hordes of small children in their nipper hats were running, marching and swimming distantly on the sand. Following the shark until it faded into sandy opacity, it occurred to me that were my shark friend not so well hidden by impenetrable water, all hell may well break loose on shore. Sirens would wail, parents would scream.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Stay hidden</i>, friend. I said. <i>Stay safe.</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">She disappeared then, and I tucked my chin in, swam hard, in battle against a sea trying to do its best to drag me backwards and outwards, but today that was not to be. </span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Emerging from the water the silence vanished, and all the noise roared in.</span><br />
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fifihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06946945635726214503noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2145558051219626249.post-39961702245113173832012-09-04T14:31:00.000+10:002012-09-04T14:36:45.053+10:00In Which The Fish Regards the Sea in Spring<div style="text-align: center;">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #999999; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">My first Winter here has just ended, but Spring seems not to know what is expected, and lets the cold come creeping in. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #999999; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">You see, it isn't the rolling Southerlies from the Antarctic one has to worry about, but the irresponsible rudeness of the Nor'easter: bickering with the surface of the sea with no grace whatever. Slapping coldness, stirring up the quiet deepness, chilling me. My fingers act of their own accord and I find my hands are less like fins and more like claws: so troublesome when one needs to glide through the water.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #999999; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">The solitary experience of swimming in a trance is over these days. There are lots of us, to and fro across the bay. The early lap is quiet, almost soundless: the later lap a party of arms and caps and trails of kicked froth. Banter and chatter, we are a school of fish.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieOyhrXqEC3SQ6Zkls4lsY-H-DOjK0PqgPT46UXCbeht6p12PNoBu6_0Rtuf_mPMpM9D1Sjj72mbhoyeP3dzuyUFIhpbiWm1fYHJOC26NXj8Asv_GA4PBN1mDHmDGBjiJvbGzA1kHM7Rw/s1600/yellowtail+small.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #999999; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieOyhrXqEC3SQ6Zkls4lsY-H-DOjK0PqgPT46UXCbeht6p12PNoBu6_0Rtuf_mPMpM9D1Sjj72mbhoyeP3dzuyUFIhpbiWm1fYHJOC26NXj8Asv_GA4PBN1mDHmDGBjiJvbGzA1kHM7Rw/s320/yellowtail+small.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #999999; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Each day I swim with the usual silver fish, assembled quietly on the bottom, or soaring along just beneath the surface canopy. The Luderick with their small smiles, the Whiting with their anxious eyes. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #999999; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">The Morwong with its painted face, the yellowtail scad in a cloud of a thousand, all moving about, catching the light in the green water of the bay.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #999999; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">I count the days until the sharks return...is it seven days, or more? One day I will look down and the mothers will be there, and tiny miniature sharks will pace around just above the wrinkled sand far below. In the meantime, I take stock...</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3qhrtaWBpmw7jxsucSlkIGMVSGoY5mRENgVwh7p60AWu1eh54maaRd1-0STyrhjMtcVXtW4_A3BOzK0jojrEouPTT1ZFHoAe8ifENCfCSdd2rhNFQrGB29gaGRS4DA4PSxmyuKc3yUGQ/s1600/fish+rocks+small.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #999999; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3qhrtaWBpmw7jxsucSlkIGMVSGoY5mRENgVwh7p60AWu1eh54maaRd1-0STyrhjMtcVXtW4_A3BOzK0jojrEouPTT1ZFHoAe8ifENCfCSdd2rhNFQrGB29gaGRS4DA4PSxmyuKc3yUGQ/s320/fish+rocks+small.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #999999; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Beneath the calm surface of the icy sea today, </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #999999; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"> Six pipefish like a pile of pencils dropped</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #999999; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Still in their pyjamas.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #999999; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">The usual rabble </span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #999999; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">of long nosed Whiting and the other silver friends,</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #999999; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;">And Big Blue, poking at the urchins with his bony blue lips.</span> </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #999999; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">I wish one time</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #999999; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Big Blue might come and bite me</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #999999; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">with his little peg teeth</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #999999; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">just so I can look into the impossible meniscus</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #999999; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">of his </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #999999; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">big blue eye.</span></div>
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fifihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06946945635726214503noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2145558051219626249.post-38175543351982904822012-05-21T12:17:00.004+10:002012-05-21T13:18:16.171+10:00<br />
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Century; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">Memory in an Earthen shell</span><br />
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Century; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"><b>Edmund de Waal at the Sydney Writers' Festival</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Century; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">Sydney Opera House, May 20, 2012</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Century; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"> I
know it was the Sydney <i>Writers</i> Festival, but as Edmund de Waal has repeatedly
stated, he is ‘a potter who writes.’ So I arrived with the expectation that some conversation might be had about objects, their making and their presence. In some ways this was so, but I feel that any artists' dialogue was overtaken by a discussion of cultural history and religion. It was, however, a wonderful experience, as was reading his most recent book, The Hare with Amber Eyes, in which he traces the history of his family's ownership of the 264 Japanese netsuke of which he finds himself custodian. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Century; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">I have long been fascinated by this
man, the creator of such quiet forms, of installations of objects possessing a measure of silence almost defiant of their own materiality. But it is their materiality which holds our gaze, and reveals these hidden connections and threads of memory. In his work, in the spaces reside both the silences of loss, and the notion of empty space as potentiality rather than nothingness.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Century; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">It has been said that the handmade
holds memory in a stable shell. </span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Century; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">The very tactility and presence of such
objects and the way they demand to be held asserts a particular force within our
increasingly screen based, un-present existence. This is what has prompted
Edmund De Waal's great journey into his own family history: a sense of touch, of
connecting, of feeling. </span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Century; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">Of making visible the unseen through the material presence of the
netsuke, holding them within the palm of his hand. It is the object itself
which has made the connections for him.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Century; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">He appeared on stage at the Opera
House before a packed house. In the middle of the stage was a small table, a
cosy table lamp, a rug, two chairs.
The backdrop was black, but the speakers were flanked by the vermilion
banners of the Sydney Writers' Festival, two bright vertical shapes bracketing the figures within the dark void. Edmund de
Waal wore a dark grey suit, black shoes and a white shirt, so that he was
almost invisible against the
darkness: just his luminous face and his hands caught the light. His face. A vertical slash of white shirt. His
hands.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Century; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">And what hands they were: they
were singularly the most extraordinary hands I may have ever seen. He sat, and shifted his long
limbs in his seat in that self-deprecating English way, at times almost curling
his back to the overwhelming sight of the audience, then knock-kneed and sitting on his hands
like a schoolboy. He was of the most interesting proportion: elongated, lithe.
And his hands were just enormous. Made for surrounding and enveloping around the growing sides of a ceramic form.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Century; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"> </span><br />
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Century; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">As he sat, and spoke so
beautifully, his hands gestured like two rather large pale birds. His knees
jutted out, his long spine curved over. And all I could see was a man sitting throwing pots on the
wheel, his long straight arms firm
and balanced, his face poised above, coaxing, with these uncommonly large hands, forms of great
beauty from wet earth. Regarding with a zen fixedness the appearance of a
vessel. A shape.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Century; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">So I was, somewhat
disturbed by the way the discussion proceeded. Caroline Baum, competently leading the dialogue, seemed (to me) to be on the wrong track. I know that people will own a story, that they will receive it as if it has been written just for them. A book will become
the property of the reader, and once a text or a work has been released into the
world it becomes, in a sense, an audiences’ thing, to do with what they
wish. But I could not help thinking
that Caroline, and the audience who were asking questions, had missed the point.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Century; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">It became about Jewishness. It
became about everybody else’s family history and connection with the Jewish
diaspora. It became about history. It became about everybody else’s sense of
faith, and at least the audience groaned in solidarity when the ubiquitous (catholic) stepped up to the
microphone wanting a discussion on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">faith</i>,
presumably to shore up or affirm her own. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Century; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">But it should have been about <i>things</i>: the feel of
them, the tactility, the making, the holding, the drawing out of formlessness
to form. About fingers, palms. About the scent of wet earth, about sculpting
and pinching and creating a thing. About the way the sensation of that object
prompts feeling and thought. About the way history and memory will come to
reside within.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Century; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">De Waal answered this question
beautifully, saying his faith
manifested in a jewish-zen-quaker-protestant
way….which is perfectly evident if you actually <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">look</i> at his work. His
work is peaceful, silent, contemplative. It exists, within the context of the florid, almost baroque family history of
which he writes as a pause, a caesura, an almost-absence. </span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Century; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">An immaterial materiality,
so to speak, a pause in the concerto,
a breath between arias. The
collections, the vast castles, the pattern, colour and gold of the culture, experience and possessions
of which he speaks and his family owned and lost is transcended by the purity and quiet of his own practice.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Century; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">There was a point when Edmund de
Waal lost his composure and commenced weeping. Naturally, I was compelled to
weep along with him, as he
explained about finding that the records of his Viennese ancestors had literally been
erased by some SS minion. It was this that undid him, and he had to curl his
body into a shape which excluded the sight of hundreds of people watching
on. Tears poured from my eyes. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Century; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">I had not been expecting this
emotion, although I should have. Edmund de Waal spoke in such a kindly affirming
way, despite his evident emotional fragility and his jet-lagged state. I felt sad that this man had been
separated from his clay, his wheel, his pots, his family, his house, yet he continued to share his thoughts for
an hour and a half with grace.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Century; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">He left the stage and finally
allowed himself to look at the audience, most of whom were standing,
applauding. He paused for a millisecond, taking it in, raised his luminous
hand, and suddenly waved, like a child getting on the schoolbus, before being hustled through the darkened corridors to the signing table. It is this sudden, guileless waving which provides the punctum to the picture, the thorn that pierces my heart. Still.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Century; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">I joined the long, long line, and
waited my turn, clutching my copy of his book, <i>The Hare with Amber Eyes</i>. Not
<i>The Pot Book</i>, which I had considered bringing. I hadn’t actually brought it to
be signed, but just to flick through on the ferry, and to look at the pictures,
but I stood nonetheless on the end of the vast line of people, feeling like a groupie.
Feeling that I was in fact utterly different to all the other people on the
queue, when in fact I was not, all of us feeling that he had spoken particularly to each of us. A professorial kindness, politeness couched in a genuine sense of giving.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Century; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">When It came my turn I was struck
by the effort Edmund de Waal was making, in his tired and jet lagged state. I
considered for a moment whether I could reach out and feel the tips of his
fingers, but I straightened up, smiled, and handed him my book. <i>Your hands...</i></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Century; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"> I began</span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Century; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"><i>must be tired</i> </span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Century; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"> He sat up,
looked me in the eyes, and spoke. </span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Century; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"><i>Oh, yes, they</i> <i>are!</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Thank
you for coming, glad you enjoyed
it. </i></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Century; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><br /></i></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Century; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">And he smiled then, leaned forward, <o:p></o:p></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Century; font-size: 19px; line-height: 28px;">committing his entire body to the gesture</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Century; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">and using his great big hand, crossed out the printed version of his name in my book, and signed his own.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Century; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">Postscript.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Century; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">Later that night, after I had
journeyed home in the late evening light, eaten my dinner and spoken to
friends, I stood at the basin in the bathroom to wash my face for bed, and
there on my face were black crusty tearmarks, fanned down my cheeks like the Nile
Delta. So I wonder if Edmund de Waal wondered who the chimney sweep with the wild hair and blackened face was at the
Sydney Opera House, proffering her book.<o:p></o:p></span></div>fifihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06946945635726214503noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2145558051219626249.post-49169835774507140872011-09-05T12:51:00.000+10:002011-09-05T12:51:25.000+10:00In which the fish returns to the sea<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnaDMALTHsbQPYgh0R523GjY3SYSg8gLv65w1wegwtRXw_XkKMiD5oJprg_lmTU1-OYKfK6WxasPe82Z8j7DwJA3Ju8y_yeoqQYQwtvPiGrHhOIbNF8Jk0FyeCc9gmEbFda8JaXeUdD7c/s1600/dawn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnaDMALTHsbQPYgh0R523GjY3SYSg8gLv65w1wegwtRXw_XkKMiD5oJprg_lmTU1-OYKfK6WxasPe82Z8j7DwJA3Ju8y_yeoqQYQwtvPiGrHhOIbNF8Jk0FyeCc9gmEbFda8JaXeUdD7c/s320/dawn.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"> I had a think about it, and I could not remember a time for over two decades when I did not swim. Every day, wind, rain or shine.</div><div style="text-align: center;"> For a few years, it was at 4pm when the shadows began to lengthen and the light lay obliquely on the surface of the sea. </div><div style="text-align: center;">Gradually, necessity dictated that I rise at dawn and greet the ocean as the sun rose. </div><div style="text-align: center;">Life is like that, always changing the rules of engagement.</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFn3r_kFYMiBiK9al19iBcDWBsc1q4JmrKZ5ZSHKAE9eaxtrAv-Xc8XahLNwC_QI7P6kIkGLYIL2Zsp27Kx0qS1IC-RONUOhnW1ofIdKJ4Z0f2S4YRZHY7EjqHnvd4tHLYX_nmJ_7UumY/s1600/dawn3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFn3r_kFYMiBiK9al19iBcDWBsc1q4JmrKZ5ZSHKAE9eaxtrAv-Xc8XahLNwC_QI7P6kIkGLYIL2Zsp27Kx0qS1IC-RONUOhnW1ofIdKJ4Z0f2S4YRZHY7EjqHnvd4tHLYX_nmJ_7UumY/s320/dawn3.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"> For most of my life, the idea of not swimming was unthinkable, and at times the thought of doing without it was something incomprehensible and distressing.</div><div style="text-align: center;"> I would feel physically ill at the prospect of a day with no swim. </div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAaRcdGj2gc7haRnkaFmUQqvL3an-PJLoJkhKdV60luKt58dUJ3OyzHuSbskPAB8_9e0GwpRQKt3Ef8xe06fYuEhvIV2O-hnp9_NKvemc_T0HP1AAcWN2nGuE1CKhHMyDWE7sKhiNc4uA/s1600/dawn5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAaRcdGj2gc7haRnkaFmUQqvL3an-PJLoJkhKdV60luKt58dUJ3OyzHuSbskPAB8_9e0GwpRQKt3Ef8xe06fYuEhvIV2O-hnp9_NKvemc_T0HP1AAcWN2nGuE1CKhHMyDWE7sKhiNc4uA/s320/dawn5.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Everything in life has the potential to become an addiction, I suppose. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Swimming was mine.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Thankfully, it was legal.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9H6B0NDV7wbv4NmFkmA5BW1cbpZlkMEvKPPlTZyasola3YKfpu9UwS4MyEEySVlV3O3wXpwTtUKN4lV4Ll_S6VcoQvb7GK5pf74TD3ObkMGlNJ-hqqv6HJwWzNoi35irU2he7IEb5Ers/s1600/293905_2347505084955_1169906566_32890052_5349060_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9H6B0NDV7wbv4NmFkmA5BW1cbpZlkMEvKPPlTZyasola3YKfpu9UwS4MyEEySVlV3O3wXpwTtUKN4lV4Ll_S6VcoQvb7GK5pf74TD3ObkMGlNJ-hqqv6HJwWzNoi35irU2he7IEb5Ers/s320/293905_2347505084955_1169906566_32890052_5349060_n.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: center;"> Like all addictions, one will go to great lengths to obtain a hit. </div><div style="text-align: center;">I once swam 2km in 10C water one winter by tricking myself that I was about to get out. I just kept going, saying I'd just do another few meters...</div><div style="text-align: center;">and another...</div><div style="text-align: center;">and another.</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiD_6zgvyuCLZrit7ckWjO2YeyBtrxlukczbOkYt_H6XK4KX28HHcfDl6iAs5nb1MDdMjURle7dzQ5yI4ssa4wazN78W6dx8gyehloygXdV_FlnCCkAC2DEZVNALZ7ba8_UzAT3V8Sgqfc/s1600/296124_2357933425657_1169906566_32903090_816045_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiD_6zgvyuCLZrit7ckWjO2YeyBtrxlukczbOkYt_H6XK4KX28HHcfDl6iAs5nb1MDdMjURle7dzQ5yI4ssa4wazN78W6dx8gyehloygXdV_FlnCCkAC2DEZVNALZ7ba8_UzAT3V8Sgqfc/s320/296124_2357933425657_1169906566_32903090_816045_n.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"> I began to realise a kind of useful philosophy. </div><div style="text-align: center;">when people asked with horror how I managed to swim so far in the cold at that hour,</div><div style="text-align: center;"> I would try and explain that it is all a matter of the mind: that actual sensation of being so cold, and the burning on the skin is all transient. It disappears in minutes and your skin tingles and burns, so that you don't feel the cold at all. </div><div style="text-align: center;">And at dawn there is no warm sun to feel on your body, so the water seems a lovely prospect since it is often warmer than the air anyway.</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEginJct4S3MGH8cAq-Nzec3mq9pw2i80XFIF517g86p_vD3t1n4UpepCvp3T_YKTjt2ekNlwUOoxqVCxc5CgL-gS0VUgtQwH094HWGJE2lNNLpD4vyIMLDPNeVMc66gNLCjFXKhA4IfXOI/s1600/296852_2322005927492_1169906566_32856073_5591621_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEginJct4S3MGH8cAq-Nzec3mq9pw2i80XFIF517g86p_vD3t1n4UpepCvp3T_YKTjt2ekNlwUOoxqVCxc5CgL-gS0VUgtQwH094HWGJE2lNNLpD4vyIMLDPNeVMc66gNLCjFXKhA4IfXOI/s320/296852_2322005927492_1169906566_32856073_5591621_n.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"> I began to think of this idea in relation to things that made me anxious: </div><div style="text-align: center;">it will pass, it will change, these things are transient.</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCAB5O5kzaB4X8b62aGi6uMnsx8bQfPsKVxBIjdjpMIv4pC5BpLMOrjEFYcjRPr8NdUOO9jjatiIL8gCiWa2EoqbjBO_WuK657xUrH8kFPhoBcZPoMJftw0VrKO9_5bHY9fnmFSDhYgYo/s1600/298809_2357935305704_1169906566_32903094_7858608_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCAB5O5kzaB4X8b62aGi6uMnsx8bQfPsKVxBIjdjpMIv4pC5BpLMOrjEFYcjRPr8NdUOO9jjatiIL8gCiWa2EoqbjBO_WuK657xUrH8kFPhoBcZPoMJftw0VrKO9_5bHY9fnmFSDhYgYo/s320/298809_2357935305704_1169906566_32903094_7858608_n.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: center;"> But this winter, because of reasons, it became harder to swim. </div><div style="text-align: center;">The ocean pool was demolished to be renovated, which ruled out dawn swims among the predators having their breakfast in the wine dark sea.</div><div style="text-align: center;">Work interfered with daytime swims, and my lovely sojourn in golden-hot Venice seemed to render me vulnerable to the cold. The sea spent the southern winter in a state of fury, waves lashing and rolling and thundering, making it particularly hard for the ocean swimmer to make any headway at all. I did my best, but I almost had my pelt flayed off by rushing columns of sand.</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_gGLjftn-19cmzKaQPgC65BuqpBWBlLD5I79KQtELgb9LXjdGJIkI3cqvh-qnOACyHwZ22x0O31jYQXU5Ubzqisv9Ji1wfCjen10S3Ya30nuWKY2vUgCPbcnrCtR1fwTS4c69tL0CuUY/s1600/300033_2344931100607_1169906566_32887187_7895913_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_gGLjftn-19cmzKaQPgC65BuqpBWBlLD5I79KQtELgb9LXjdGJIkI3cqvh-qnOACyHwZ22x0O31jYQXU5Ubzqisv9Ji1wfCjen10S3Ya30nuWKY2vUgCPbcnrCtR1fwTS4c69tL0CuUY/s320/300033_2344931100607_1169906566_32887187_7895913_n.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: center;"> I was indeed a smelly and rotting dried up old fish out of water.</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSCoQ_yhkglUc_CAb_GGozR6WAD9Xg_RPfM8hqMeTJklgLLIKsrEwqNenslpwJbIhKaMz1Enip1YTXucl3pNtwA6edN94glS6u2rM1cqoGAtcyaAAUfFLuZb0tDeJVt52zZn8N9XpYGug/s1600/306868_2344934780699_1169906566_32887190_3993219_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSCoQ_yhkglUc_CAb_GGozR6WAD9Xg_RPfM8hqMeTJklgLLIKsrEwqNenslpwJbIhKaMz1Enip1YTXucl3pNtwA6edN94glS6u2rM1cqoGAtcyaAAUfFLuZb0tDeJVt52zZn8N9XpYGug/s320/306868_2344934780699_1169906566_32887190_3993219_n.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: center;"> Until one day someone suggested I join her swim group, two beaches away.</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWrakqKFc77yUP5PDR0J8lmXL9cBaYZkA2J4GPVLd-cyYWk4uLaWhTorKPRja_ke6KXkynLc3Dmntye00LVPpcuUapijf0Ws8ChqZeDiM8BzuJEevKza_iTAJ53xR2kxHx-F9H74UBb2U/s1600/308397_2344932140633_1169906566_32887188_4085766_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWrakqKFc77yUP5PDR0J8lmXL9cBaYZkA2J4GPVLd-cyYWk4uLaWhTorKPRja_ke6KXkynLc3Dmntye00LVPpcuUapijf0Ws8ChqZeDiM8BzuJEevKza_iTAJ53xR2kxHx-F9H74UBb2U/s320/308397_2344932140633_1169906566_32887188_4085766_n.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: center;"> Everybody is very loyal to their own territory, and at first I declined. But I began to think I might just have a try. I hadnt quite known where and when this bunch actually swam, so she ordered me to meet up and come along. </div><div style="text-align: center;">So,</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFsAVWLwbwp2423UL6Vd-hruKsKsmScGgujv71YmtUhj6yIt8slLMYwpE4nXjZDsHzPyfpV_F-ljunAtGomBqkNnTgDytBri-_6H0A63ypzRZYy1IhD5EoD_5xukiUYGG9HXLuMQwhvZ4/s1600/310735_2331423442924_1169906566_32868475_4895504_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFsAVWLwbwp2423UL6Vd-hruKsKsmScGgujv71YmtUhj6yIt8slLMYwpE4nXjZDsHzPyfpV_F-ljunAtGomBqkNnTgDytBri-_6H0A63ypzRZYy1IhD5EoD_5xukiUYGG9HXLuMQwhvZ4/s320/310735_2331423442924_1169906566_32868475_4895504_n.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: center;"> I did.</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmvsnmnQDuU0ArbMJ3sHlKFklZO8F-aGsKGxCpwsL5oD4rgZYSxeTIm0IkKQF6BSVb-YJEpflgxb36Lyd66Clu5tK1Jcm3cswIe_nWp6U8MEWXPSjs5mr5EcbHWcWxNM3eAMFndB5nIi4/s1600/313980_2331567206518_1169906566_32868603_7061698_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmvsnmnQDuU0ArbMJ3sHlKFklZO8F-aGsKGxCpwsL5oD4rgZYSxeTIm0IkKQF6BSVb-YJEpflgxb36Lyd66Clu5tK1Jcm3cswIe_nWp6U8MEWXPSjs5mr5EcbHWcWxNM3eAMFndB5nIi4/s320/313980_2331567206518_1169906566_32868603_7061698_n.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;">We swim across a marine reserve, out to a headland which shelters the bay from the heavier waves rolling in from the sea. </div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirDBu7xVHvM1maKYhtU0e4YP4MwbT8s8BZ7pq4bRLxBDTNYgM0FtGs1OjTFcuLWEVPzFJMYvj_D5BsyExdXu8lcz9WVUAVACTaqrTGmI9Jaqx8v9vxLgXsg0DEBCOrHRhJ3Rxq4RUyN9I/s1600/317748_2322007927542_1169906566_32856084_272920_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirDBu7xVHvM1maKYhtU0e4YP4MwbT8s8BZ7pq4bRLxBDTNYgM0FtGs1OjTFcuLWEVPzFJMYvj_D5BsyExdXu8lcz9WVUAVACTaqrTGmI9Jaqx8v9vxLgXsg0DEBCOrHRhJ3Rxq4RUyN9I/s320/317748_2322007927542_1169906566_32856084_272920_n.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="240" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: center;">Creatures breed in this bay. They are all protected: </div><div style="text-align: center;">Sharks, Rays, Eastern Blue gropers, Wrasse, Luderick,</div><div style="text-align: center;"> Whiting, Squid, Cuttlefish, </div><div style="text-align: center;">Old Wives, Silver Bream. </div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOV9MRi2kQDrb06JFea6U8ZjhJlxKOxPQUXPERRuwhtWmEGMpxmdTECfw_gUbxSkjE6HRGOuxgGe0PTWyugMNkFeOIFsYeuoMfPb6jIX5jjV-scKSsZj0Zg-kIOVoQ2VQXISgHtufzIPM/s1600/316403_2331424842959_1169906566_32868477_1591911_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOV9MRi2kQDrb06JFea6U8ZjhJlxKOxPQUXPERRuwhtWmEGMpxmdTECfw_gUbxSkjE6HRGOuxgGe0PTWyugMNkFeOIFsYeuoMfPb6jIX5jjV-scKSsZj0Zg-kIOVoQ2VQXISgHtufzIPM/s320/316403_2331424842959_1169906566_32868477_1591911_n.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="240" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: center;">and last spring, I am told (and have seen pictures)</div><div style="text-align: center;">a baby humpback whale joined in. </div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: center;"> So the fish has migrated, and now swims in the bay in a shoal.</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgURIHk7tJ2qzROZS3ZrPpKopYMcKkIiLrqy3vll-ccXVjew6nDUencA-JlnHJ3Lkggv5qHQ1vNBxyo0vQTqfyvGwhtG7HnTZlsfdr-82YdX2uH6IoY70ZK3ucOK4nOrfhykuq4lc7WwUc/s1600/320057_2347504284935_1169906566_32890051_6787151_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgURIHk7tJ2qzROZS3ZrPpKopYMcKkIiLrqy3vll-ccXVjew6nDUencA-JlnHJ3Lkggv5qHQ1vNBxyo0vQTqfyvGwhtG7HnTZlsfdr-82YdX2uH6IoY70ZK3ucOK4nOrfhykuq4lc7WwUc/s320/320057_2347504284935_1169906566_32890051_6787151_n.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;">and every day now, </div><div style="text-align: center;"> says hello to the Gropers, the Rays and the Sharks, </div><div style="text-align: center;">the Wrasse and the Luderick, </div><div style="text-align: center;">the Spotty Catfish, the Old Wives, </div><div style="text-align: center;">the Sand Whiting and the Silver Bream, </div><div style="text-align: center;">and the salt soaks into her gills, enlivens her scales, illuminates her big fish eyes</div><div style="text-align: center;">and she says to herself when she thinks of the woes in the world:</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;">this too will pass</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;">and swims boldly across the bay: into the ocean, </div><div style="text-align: center;">home at last.</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
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</div>fifihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06946945635726214503noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2145558051219626249.post-91228800467882414612011-07-22T18:04:00.001+10:002011-07-22T18:05:16.935+10:00North and South: Strange times in the Life of the Fish<div style="text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: center;"> So.</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: center;">I become a salted fish head in a box, </div><div style="text-align: center;">all staring eyes and hard scales sticking out every which way, </div><div style="text-align: center;">fins hard and encrusted. Smelling like some rotten piece of flotsam, </div><div style="text-align: center;">of marine life too long in the air, a rank and briny stink.</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: center;">The winter has whipped the ocean into a frenzy, and the pool is boarded up. </div><div style="text-align: center;">Look at me, a salty fish head in a box. Nowhere to swim! Too much to do! I may as well be dead!</div><div style="text-align: center;">Too much going on in the world, thinks the fish brain in its limited and smelly way. </div><div style="text-align: center;">Too much in the world! </div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;">The sea says nothing for quite some time, because it is occupied having the mother of all seizures,</div><div style="text-align: center;">always seems to be mid-convulsion. </div><div style="text-align: center;">The fish, rolling out of its box, tosses to and fro at the edge of the howling sea, all staring eyes and stiff </div><div style="text-align: center;">fins, all clouded scales poking every way. The silver of its cheeks is worn dull, and it gathers a crusting </div><div style="text-align: center;">of sand, small barnacles, and the dried fronds of seaweed.</div><div style="text-align: center;">The sea, in a small moment between fits, reaches out a frilled and creamy wave, and rolls the stiff-finned creature swiftly into the deep.</div><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i>you had better wake up</i>, </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">said the sea, as it worked its way into the cracks.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">Things float vast distances in the ocean,</div><div style="text-align: center;">strange currents circle and pull.</div><div style="text-align: center;">The outgoing tide pulls you under, where the sunlight is a mere green whisper,</div><div style="text-align: center;">submerges you in shadows.</div><div style="text-align: center;">When the waves lift up at last, you get to see the view. Who knows where you will be?</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">I opened my eyes,</div><div style="text-align: center;"> and was back in the city of water.</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOoytrWrzwnZOWEdPnS-tUqjQl_79uVE-w_lo5VR3HtjQF57dBxOyNo6z2eBQn-AfOw9InrGSwxSx6Peg7qPchF6HHQzyhS_jC_QIDvaOxcLxJ6djhQJwvlp0BuNKT99NTiWuZqO37ZKM/s1600/giudecca+window.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOoytrWrzwnZOWEdPnS-tUqjQl_79uVE-w_lo5VR3HtjQF57dBxOyNo6z2eBQn-AfOw9InrGSwxSx6Peg7qPchF6HHQzyhS_jC_QIDvaOxcLxJ6djhQJwvlp0BuNKT99NTiWuZqO37ZKM/s320/giudecca+window.jpg" width="236" /></a></div><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">And so the tidal pull takes me back to Venice, </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">where the sun breaks into a million pieces and reflects onto the palazzo walls,</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">where a hundred boats make their ways this way and that, weaving webs upon the malachite waters,</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> here, look at this one: lights strung across the deck, </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">or that one, carrying a little crane, </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">or this one, bigger than every island of Venice put together...</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNEj6Hzk4z5iv7NlDf8Gfa9nCQKBRT4y1_lNse-C-I_CQpYZ1ZjiuqUOCVAuKbkLEXy2DDKEtoyBrsG4siUZ6-6KsuKEmfEFKOJwsDSDe4riKz_GfmALh60yFBLM-pmgXflWLHpwQm18Y/s1600/IMG_6608.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNEj6Hzk4z5iv7NlDf8Gfa9nCQKBRT4y1_lNse-C-I_CQpYZ1ZjiuqUOCVAuKbkLEXy2DDKEtoyBrsG4siUZ6-6KsuKEmfEFKOJwsDSDe4riKz_GfmALh60yFBLM-pmgXflWLHpwQm18Y/s320/IMG_6608.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">This fish from the south finds itself in the summer of the north, </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">in a summer hot and bright,</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">where the water is benign and silent,</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">and all around is colour: shifting with the fluid light.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvhioBBA3uX_vzY90k3EQGBY-E0tXC4RoPDJWKCrx9JYkTOQ4z98uOJsIKwGG4EklOF1n0vAz34TMw-uOTvv7xgufsbagNP2v00xO3SBP2mdW2PaWtqmoQsVhbqmxWjmTruaqOEU-I-4I/s1600/san+giorgio.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvhioBBA3uX_vzY90k3EQGBY-E0tXC4RoPDJWKCrx9JYkTOQ4z98uOJsIKwGG4EklOF1n0vAz34TMw-uOTvv7xgufsbagNP2v00xO3SBP2mdW2PaWtqmoQsVhbqmxWjmTruaqOEU-I-4I/s320/san+giorgio.jpg" width="236" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMpzQFt5qmGo3O4EiazWKS5jvHlANA1vdzExXOqA1pyUtLqmTlAP6oRsSsfONUaLPEY7BVGyajiGlsM37lRawJ_64nfcPShOitkCbPkov7W_XiBnUS6xAY7cN5XM5f8iFLhoL3hAJPULg/s1600/towards+st+marks.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMpzQFt5qmGo3O4EiazWKS5jvHlANA1vdzExXOqA1pyUtLqmTlAP6oRsSsfONUaLPEY7BVGyajiGlsM37lRawJ_64nfcPShOitkCbPkov7W_XiBnUS6xAY7cN5XM5f8iFLhoL3hAJPULg/s320/towards+st+marks.jpg" width="236" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;">And the salty fish leaps into the air, </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;">all silver and lithe,</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;">and lives awhile in the city of water,</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;">taking deep breaths,</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;">and looking with great round fish eyes,</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;">happy as can be. </div><br />
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</div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirjK1nasdnnWZgqikuWpy40bkFo4DxR38et_b1UGAo2ghE-axVNmq7YeHGOIr9HXxWERHI5g4SMZKtMXDRM-d1WPvPvJD0QmXa53N3H3xY9y8lnIC_cN-bGDK8jptYZDOy8bwBYo1dFuo/s1600/paradise+table.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirjK1nasdnnWZgqikuWpy40bkFo4DxR38et_b1UGAo2ghE-axVNmq7YeHGOIr9HXxWERHI5g4SMZKtMXDRM-d1WPvPvJD0QmXa53N3H3xY9y8lnIC_cN-bGDK8jptYZDOy8bwBYo1dFuo/s320/paradise+table.jpg" width="236" /></a><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Am I dreaming? asks the fish.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i>No, no</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSXblEJwlWYMLNofOo0ErNxuIxuBbr18BfktXIcHJCAldzdHkvDOd8oj1t8MetW3RnWVywOGRamLrC8WNp_50w7IxKs6ND7IP0gChKmXHizwdUOUg-m7rMD5oH1n1jpvqD8_zizkaEvWQ/s1600/IMG_6254.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSXblEJwlWYMLNofOo0ErNxuIxuBbr18BfktXIcHJCAldzdHkvDOd8oj1t8MetW3RnWVywOGRamLrC8WNp_50w7IxKs6ND7IP0gChKmXHizwdUOUg-m7rMD5oH1n1jpvqD8_zizkaEvWQ/s320/IMG_6254.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">says the sea.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i>You are not.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
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</div>fifihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06946945635726214503noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2145558051219626249.post-55022787702729525622011-04-25T16:35:00.001+10:002011-04-25T22:21:39.184+10:00In which the fish greets Easter Sunday<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbEbu1sn7xefW-7zVngQAlKD0PUZthxbv7oydrkQjEFbD3BfX3Cl6iXYnylky6zBFVEq2z30ItwiR1sOslaxk3rAhtAyU7W8InX87SGePNJ_RcsvtYgkoconf41dmlnOtSmsxBI1qPjew/s1600/isabella+underwater.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbEbu1sn7xefW-7zVngQAlKD0PUZthxbv7oydrkQjEFbD3BfX3Cl6iXYnylky6zBFVEq2z30ItwiR1sOslaxk3rAhtAyU7W8InX87SGePNJ_RcsvtYgkoconf41dmlnOtSmsxBI1qPjew/s320/isabella+underwater.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: center;">We were all there, on Easter Sunday. </div><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqdTnwiBm2H_epFpwwKyjkFRiLVE91L7rmLmj5fLGolappIFp0BL0CK8ZtnBoymkCBMPjhwi5Jz2oQ-zSyPqh2mQPiEwQ_QBJ140AsOdxiN68dY4GrRxnNbHZVN5ezo3TIFY_Zy5e2szE/s1600/surfing.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqdTnwiBm2H_epFpwwKyjkFRiLVE91L7rmLmj5fLGolappIFp0BL0CK8ZtnBoymkCBMPjhwi5Jz2oQ-zSyPqh2mQPiEwQ_QBJ140AsOdxiN68dY4GrRxnNbHZVN5ezo3TIFY_Zy5e2szE/s320/surfing.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">The sea, warm as my blood, rocked and danced quietly </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">under an immense and luminous dome of blue.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">I slipped out on the current and watched the heads of my offspring, sleek and shining with light, darting and bobbing over and under the waves. The seagrass below waved</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> like a field of green, a forgotten world.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3iQApKNoY8ykNSKtQNUHRfd7NH9Nww6jtTfzvACiRVuoOK-Oz6at6EzfUXkxMv2uzMndaTIiXTj1vTBAs0dcyENk495leFMVGJlBLnbPpJPTYDFyQgbYxIfFQdr6a96aUUCWjNldwefY/s1600/waves.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3iQApKNoY8ykNSKtQNUHRfd7NH9Nww6jtTfzvACiRVuoOK-Oz6at6EzfUXkxMv2uzMndaTIiXTj1vTBAs0dcyENk495leFMVGJlBLnbPpJPTYDFyQgbYxIfFQdr6a96aUUCWjNldwefY/s320/waves.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">I swam past them, and drifted awhile in the calm of the open water, breathing in and out slowly, drawing saltness and blueness deep into the heart of me. Folks sat on boards and chatted quietly waiting for waves, or dipped cupped hands along the surface, going here and there, looking for the best place. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">The ocean was soft and green out here, far from the tangle and thrust of life. I floated with my hair down like tentacles.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> I wondered what I might snare.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">After some time I raised my head, and saw the horizon tilt. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i>For Me?</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">I asked the sea.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPoI2YwGefhFdA1s9Uo2CLsK1nefmrNt41oy9uiWN5_wReXxcL0Ekp8dvX-yXPZ69aiQlTvfjrCknpTf7noyI6YlcCRzxW_4TQ5pBqDLa8K6tz-8dtnXGegtGlm6JPTqPRHugW4JxoAio/s1600/underwater.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPoI2YwGefhFdA1s9Uo2CLsK1nefmrNt41oy9uiWN5_wReXxcL0Ekp8dvX-yXPZ69aiQlTvfjrCknpTf7noyI6YlcCRzxW_4TQ5pBqDLa8K6tz-8dtnXGegtGlm6JPTqPRHugW4JxoAio/s320/underwater.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">I flipped my fins and the sea picked me up on its wavering lip. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">I stretched out my hand, holding the heel of my palm against the surface of the wave which had turned to glass as the sea rolled forward.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">I was so high that I raised my head and watched the water speed beneath my hand, the froth and foam rushing, spitting out onto the dark green of itself.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">I flew in like some strange heraldic sea creature all the way to the sand, where I stood up, flicked my hair from my face, and breathed once more</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">the salt of the sea, </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">into every small corner of my heart.</div>fifihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06946945635726214503noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2145558051219626249.post-18287026226984733002011-04-22T10:16:00.000+10:002011-04-22T10:16:35.069+10:00fish on good friday<div style="text-align: left;"><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: left;">Yesterday</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: left;">I did not want to leave to go to work. </div><div style="text-align: left;">I wanted to stay home, </div><div style="text-align: left;">sit on the red chair with the cat, </div><div style="text-align: left;">then go to the sea.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: left;">Today</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2EjvUl25xS2XEE7dNlQuoGaBX0WAO9LgloKQ4LEWGH824gkO2yTO0IT7zOtWkpzJy3s04me2oQ5wvyooegA0_DwPFGjsM_VaJ_a6UaJ3nC8wkdXwZq3s2jqxWTWOz_Vz8hZNmrZTtB-0/s1600/table+1.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2EjvUl25xS2XEE7dNlQuoGaBX0WAO9LgloKQ4LEWGH824gkO2yTO0IT7zOtWkpzJy3s04me2oQ5wvyooegA0_DwPFGjsM_VaJ_a6UaJ3nC8wkdXwZq3s2jqxWTWOz_Vz8hZNmrZTtB-0/s320/table+1.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: left;">I can.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: left;">Happy Easter everyone.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
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</div>fifihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06946945635726214503noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2145558051219626249.post-86892867060972417292011-04-17T14:37:00.000+10:002011-04-17T14:37:32.110+10:00the fish in the phone<div style="text-align: left;"><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: left;">Having contracted myself this semester to an unseemly number of classes, I have found little time to do much else, and thankfully I am now more than half way through the semester.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">As can be expected when one works nine hour days, the family chooses to all have simultaneous breakdowns and issues, which contributes to all the excitement. There is not a lot of time to do much else at the moment: when I am not teaching, I am reading up for the two postgraduate classes I was breaking my neck to have. This week I am reading up on Bourdieu, Elliot Eisner, and pictorial conventions in Venetian portraiture. I am very thankful for this, as some of the other things I have had to read were very annoying. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Interestingly I looked at the photos on my iphone and found it had become a little journal of sorts, a record of my life in phone photos.</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>Classes</b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;">They are many classes. Lots and lots, so it is fortunate I actually like them.</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;">Here are some students drawing a few weeks ago.</div><div style="text-align: center;">At the moment they are painting. All 180 of them...<br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">thankfully not all at once.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>Driving</b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;">I spend a lot of time in my car thinking about things. I look at the sky a lot because I go up and down a few big hills. This was on my way home.</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEil-ZBRLysoutpdv3sQT75njGd4aEElOZUFkGNoQLS3pnlcpuX86zsKbneDC1ROTxpRtGxd98MURBooIklPeeZ8_OoM3yJ-DxSqRr9Ng5XKkXE1FOWqqQAtamj9A81GvYjkK2AT8Edqg_I/s1600/clouds.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEil-ZBRLysoutpdv3sQT75njGd4aEElOZUFkGNoQLS3pnlcpuX86zsKbneDC1ROTxpRtGxd98MURBooIklPeeZ8_OoM3yJ-DxSqRr9Ng5XKkXE1FOWqqQAtamj9A81GvYjkK2AT8Edqg_I/s320/clouds.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
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Some days are of course nicer than others. This is Sydney, City of four seasons in one day.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixpiizmAwJCg3ouFRY8DSeFErZu1DCMdOPkok-5jp8DvwHW6r1nNVvG83hKmz7yvNqARKgUKJ4wW56qUctQGEqw_1f4ZUBjOAz8QxUbPwsjX2EVhunZSlR0RypS1cDEm4XQium3Y3k1Ts/s1600/rainy+traffic.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixpiizmAwJCg3ouFRY8DSeFErZu1DCMdOPkok-5jp8DvwHW6r1nNVvG83hKmz7yvNqARKgUKJ4wW56qUctQGEqw_1f4ZUBjOAz8QxUbPwsjX2EVhunZSlR0RypS1cDEm4XQium3Y3k1Ts/s320/rainy+traffic.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><b><br />
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<b>The band</b><br />
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</b></div><div class="" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">The Husbands band plays quite a bit, and here they were playing down the coast a bit and I drove down to watch.<br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjcYiclpdaQpQzjFzvpg7EdnRVPqnPYQHAeXTxlbSEhUD_u-6NknP7xklDwAjbYfEJ3QCMM91YRU8r1Nzprh0LVPin0RFagdkX-XnMLhwYf-p9Be_a2zbHmIQU68w9yKtQVErDJ1GGP1g/s1600/band+down+south.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjcYiclpdaQpQzjFzvpg7EdnRVPqnPYQHAeXTxlbSEhUD_u-6NknP7xklDwAjbYfEJ3QCMM91YRU8r1Nzprh0LVPin0RFagdkX-XnMLhwYf-p9Be_a2zbHmIQU68w9yKtQVErDJ1GGP1g/s320/band+down+south.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div class="" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">I drove home in a rather melancholic state, because of reasons, and played Einaudi all the way home, looking at the scenery. It is an emotionally-laden landscape, full of nostalgia, change, and remembered other lives that I have led.<br />
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</div><div style="text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQHsDYxlg1RaGCtkljpCtNIODvZ1HkEjyvoa01Zy9SBFdH_1mN9GmMA-mK4opbLaHDJkGgROZ6HgyoeuiMiO0vaqPbbrquwdJtKcCTSsJi-3nafY5ihe16ev11UvB2i-x1MdLPiEikAq4/s1600/grass.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQHsDYxlg1RaGCtkljpCtNIODvZ1HkEjyvoa01Zy9SBFdH_1mN9GmMA-mK4opbLaHDJkGgROZ6HgyoeuiMiO0vaqPbbrquwdJtKcCTSsJi-3nafY5ihe16ev11UvB2i-x1MdLPiEikAq4/s320/grass.jpg" width="237" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div class="" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">In contrast, they played at an inner city pub, which was fun even though I think that day I was fretting over some reading for that week, which was not Bourdieu but something very tedious if I remember correctly. It was good to get out and watch. the proprietor said it was his biggest crowd ever.</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjElVLjvLehrV_1rgJ7gZMAXJWbsXuh4ipwpBE678s2Yp5yykXFnZ9msHzw7sAEo3F9pZGYuji_XMY1kHq8XHmo1ePCzw5AVdV1z3AaI9vufVuw_Q0HlMp_jsbxQ9w_BsORiXrCYTnESrE/s1600/band+redfern.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjElVLjvLehrV_1rgJ7gZMAXJWbsXuh4ipwpBE678s2Yp5yykXFnZ9msHzw7sAEo3F9pZGYuji_XMY1kHq8XHmo1ePCzw5AVdV1z3AaI9vufVuw_Q0HlMp_jsbxQ9w_BsORiXrCYTnESrE/s320/band+redfern.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
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</b></div><div class="" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b>The Archibald, Wynne and Sulman Prizes Opening Night at the AGNSW</b><br />
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<b><div class="" style="clear: both; font-weight: normal; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Here I am with My friend Ben in front of his artwork. That room resembled, as Ben described it, a zoo.</div></div><div class="" style="clear: both; font-weight: normal; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">As you can see I remembered to take my favourite bling (in the form of silver coral) to work, but NOT my hairbrush. </div></div><div class="" style="clear: both; font-weight: normal; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Pity.</div></div></b><br />
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</b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh64drlmSBIxMSdmegS_FskXFk2Rl-wMLjmWI803ewX3KbM3p1k2h_097Hid5uVJQvarGGKF81rk06TbjPt2Nq_yMeSFb8JZ_iScFyqlYGTN88fMwE5kAYrDg35TGalpWUufoMcU2poT0U/s1600/ben.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh64drlmSBIxMSdmegS_FskXFk2Rl-wMLjmWI803ewX3KbM3p1k2h_097Hid5uVJQvarGGKF81rk06TbjPt2Nq_yMeSFb8JZ_iScFyqlYGTN88fMwE5kAYrDg35TGalpWUufoMcU2poT0U/s320/ben.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Here is Lucy Culliton's painting of Ray Hughes. She is a great girl, and I have a few of her paintings here in the house, one is of cakes.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjI-xJDF_TGFO33tr6vMjXxZYVk8G0KGqV4EJJ7-85XBBynFINMUMTqxOZzvr7ZlVRFiVhK_KzMe6f_uZ3e5kWuyw0_3wUNwJ5zlJtXLhJdSGTqZPKYjTntebFu5HBsgsnXMZEHLk48an8/s1600/ray.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjI-xJDF_TGFO33tr6vMjXxZYVk8G0KGqV4EJJ7-85XBBynFINMUMTqxOZzvr7ZlVRFiVhK_KzMe6f_uZ3e5kWuyw0_3wUNwJ5zlJtXLhJdSGTqZPKYjTntebFu5HBsgsnXMZEHLk48an8/s320/ray.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZ1DFYlqV4nKkAabger2T6O3a6Jn8cEUtuia07gapL7LSQ5S6zCc-K4pMl5Vo_QE5Tb0maUjswVSwGNjWkkbd8tbIkM2e_In5Aw-oMySM59vkf2NneRIzyiJlNgeVVNbu_96aS66oLn4s/s1600/quilty.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZ1DFYlqV4nKkAabger2T6O3a6Jn8cEUtuia07gapL7LSQ5S6zCc-K4pMl5Vo_QE5Tb0maUjswVSwGNjWkkbd8tbIkM2e_In5Aw-oMySM59vkf2NneRIzyiJlNgeVVNbu_96aS66oLn4s/s320/quilty.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Here is the winning Ben (Quilty), with whom I have had the pleasure of speaking a number of times and been impressed by the depth of his feelings on various issues such as indigenous rights, australian history and identity, and the way young men in the outer suburbs enact various suburban rituals. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">He seems a very generous guy, and before he moved to the southern highlands from Sydney, was happy to accomodate my painting students, and give them talks on his work and ideas for nothing. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">In his speech at the opening, he gave a pasting to sportspeople who dont pay their HECS debts. Culture, he said, is the glue that sticks us together, and in hard economic times it was culture which provided social cohesion. He then questioned the legitimacy of famous swimmers who did not have to pay university fees, whereas others who made important contributions to life, still had to. He included in this equation his own brother who had just attained a doctorate in soil rehabilitation, rather than just swimming up and down a pool. It was interesting.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b>Peace and Quiet</b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg87cizZ0HYv6tm9-bXsH_FjfaN_hjVAQHuSboDyOmu8mvPQqpplMLFki1gKA16Zn_CztwCkYtCpULGwTAQOUHKIP5nckmv9ExxhHVNBXYSIYAfLwmjfrbyUW40HTS5l4boQWyRLiq3bWw/s1600/table.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg87cizZ0HYv6tm9-bXsH_FjfaN_hjVAQHuSboDyOmu8mvPQqpplMLFki1gKA16Zn_CztwCkYtCpULGwTAQOUHKIP5nckmv9ExxhHVNBXYSIYAfLwmjfrbyUW40HTS5l4boQWyRLiq3bWw/s320/table.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">The boys of the family spent some time on a surf trip. This meant that after I cleaned the house, it stayed that way. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Sadly, they have decided to return and fill my life with chaos.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b>Weather</b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj513-r6o6XHaJ1z4bnfi90O3-aUFZpIqx5VeXIuCRJhszVeRzCNFTgJ7LEWDGkKH2Bnz8iLN9u5TyMRsLBmG82G8IAplJlH8YsIQ4JTky3WTiPMbzljxff7McaydXaMJU39VpiU2el-3c/s1600/sunny+beach.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj513-r6o6XHaJ1z4bnfi90O3-aUFZpIqx5VeXIuCRJhszVeRzCNFTgJ7LEWDGkKH2Bnz8iLN9u5TyMRsLBmG82G8IAplJlH8YsIQ4JTky3WTiPMbzljxff7McaydXaMJU39VpiU2el-3c/s320/sunny+beach.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Some days commence in spectacular fashion</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeFLItNXmv_dlSajboZQlloqcsDb_fG88kxWR5ygGCZPL-V5MagGQcsoUV3T922_kbgw2LLUSXAHtNRZQzW5v5zwaONSZtWvS8_XIbs3GuXdMGRDZ192wtQCaAp-g1JQuJZrqel_PNEFA/s1600/tsunami+3.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeFLItNXmv_dlSajboZQlloqcsDb_fG88kxWR5ygGCZPL-V5MagGQcsoUV3T922_kbgw2LLUSXAHtNRZQzW5v5zwaONSZtWvS8_XIbs3GuXdMGRDZ192wtQCaAp-g1JQuJZrqel_PNEFA/s320/tsunami+3.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">and finish with a tsunami of sorts, right above my house.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiECN-uzn2gLjEX6HyMpNMHuTIrpI80VZTop2DFX8hnWtUqfPiQ6oSWiq-SqqBO_kNkziqXcceHaEbWi8U2_6SuZB-_v90_r3xWnXhvemIcZ8L8Z88xa9l61Xg5uY3jegSN6mdM8tfJfN8/s1600/tsunami1.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiECN-uzn2gLjEX6HyMpNMHuTIrpI80VZTop2DFX8hnWtUqfPiQ6oSWiq-SqqBO_kNkziqXcceHaEbWi8U2_6SuZB-_v90_r3xWnXhvemIcZ8L8Z88xa9l61Xg5uY3jegSN6mdM8tfJfN8/s320/tsunami1.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjT_lKgFUp9XwrZMTSXPwzpZCPAGCbcYYOQ3zzufxLIBnnPSHt-z3MmIm9BvygBTDad8iHEUnsO47EmzgkBIzqDugkHACqi23hp6sl8k4-HW31VBISR0s71ElYhkI5egtDOn4AivKbWfwM/s1600/tsunami2.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjT_lKgFUp9XwrZMTSXPwzpZCPAGCbcYYOQ3zzufxLIBnnPSHt-z3MmIm9BvygBTDad8iHEUnsO47EmzgkBIzqDugkHACqi23hp6sl8k4-HW31VBISR0s71ElYhkI5egtDOn4AivKbWfwM/s320/tsunami2.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">And such is the life of the fish, whio ha managed only fragments of time in the water, and is hoping very soon to be spending far more time in the salty deep.</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
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</div>fifihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06946945635726214503noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2145558051219626249.post-27179870262570193852011-03-20T16:07:00.002+11:002011-03-20T16:19:31.895+11:00Tectonic chaos: In which the fish swims at the feet of The Buddha<div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">So.</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">That was more than a just a shiver in the spine of the fish</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">as it passed through the deep waters far away.</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWHzQFmQQq-Y0KxxGd-nnFJ0kFGyy7gD46SzWVy4y9M94OrbReUg0xrYQmZ2Oto6cb-b28IwlCb9y1nPK06l29E1Scx5P9OH5EHvgj7OWJtqFZl35jLw3kDdIRAMHf06PSHmTh3COJiDw/s1600/P1260625.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWHzQFmQQq-Y0KxxGd-nnFJ0kFGyy7gD46SzWVy4y9M94OrbReUg0xrYQmZ2Oto6cb-b28IwlCb9y1nPK06l29E1Scx5P9OH5EHvgj7OWJtqFZl35jLw3kDdIRAMHf06PSHmTh3COJiDw/s320/P1260625.JPG" width="320" /></span></span></span></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">After I returned home from Japan, the tectonic plates gave an unholy shudder,</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">after which, the ocean broke it bounds, came flooding in,</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">erasing lives and places. </span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">So fragile, that border between sea-and-not-sea. </span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">And how cruel the huge surge that came shouldering its way inland.</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilF1VD6JGh_FYPzMBnBqZd4-9whsiermmSx1pF46scJddnSwTJW7j8wEQlWo9kudj4LFVxL9naYM5tKhj7r_wt009HDfmxJyNWkNzfiLxP3oZ6dgEzqPy369PNODooQjfaE7SN0y0hYms/s1600/P1260621.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilF1VD6JGh_FYPzMBnBqZd4-9whsiermmSx1pF46scJddnSwTJW7j8wEQlWo9kudj4LFVxL9naYM5tKhj7r_wt009HDfmxJyNWkNzfiLxP3oZ6dgEzqPy369PNODooQjfaE7SN0y0hYms/s320/P1260621.JPG" width="320" /></span></span></span></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></span></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjS3Nksua46zYohY9WseZzZxdIbctCHXxVNBDrpDe1Ss2O1E9Ba50-lSe33l-oe1e_XwsedPf4qaIE0-oVILG7-Y6tizVKtVFnyKPE8206FRO2xCNeomup8twtUO604cEMa1SxhkMfABqc/s1600/3487770-great_buddha_of_kamakura-Kamakura.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjS3Nksua46zYohY9WseZzZxdIbctCHXxVNBDrpDe1Ss2O1E9Ba50-lSe33l-oe1e_XwsedPf4qaIE0-oVILG7-Y6tizVKtVFnyKPE8206FRO2xCNeomup8twtUO604cEMa1SxhkMfABqc/s320/3487770-great_buddha_of_kamakura-Kamakura.jpg" width="211" /></span></span></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The Buddha of Kamakura</span></span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The Great Buddha at Kamakura has survived a tsunami before, and I imagine it sitting there serenely as the ocean rises up to meet it</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">but the little potters studio I visited, and the shop with the antique indigo cloth, are likely to have been inundated.</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiorgPSmxg26IC6VrmYFFe7I0RYjXKOds9NhiWuJzPD5q2r84tEO9ZkV_L-isecjw6eFoNyinZdvTL_UZRhOJxbvMM8apEekZ_y0jV8PqSlweMlsNFsjPCqF_DbbC7s776-3Pfoe1vtOng/s1600/photo-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiorgPSmxg26IC6VrmYFFe7I0RYjXKOds9NhiWuJzPD5q2r84tEO9ZkV_L-isecjw6eFoNyinZdvTL_UZRhOJxbvMM8apEekZ_y0jV8PqSlweMlsNFsjPCqF_DbbC7s776-3Pfoe1vtOng/s320/photo-1.jpg" width="239" /></span></span></span></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I remember lingering to watch the potter, noticing the trays of damp, chocolatey pots awaiting his hand. </span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I complimented him and spontaneously bowed in deference to his craftmanship, as you do.</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">He was very pleased, and grinned as he bowed in return.</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">He then continued to work on his pots.</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I think now the way that, underwater and untransformed by fire, that tray of unfinished bowls may well have reverted back to the earth from which they came.</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKRi9RFzZJ1GiZboeqp6XMKh2kWGHKQi2YvbOlm2QN8by9I-iuvJPmL1awWNqLoUBRQOJPy2rTDi-Mbtc4-sQU-ifhylhrpjulaL2oqqe4r0ICczfymAqrK4TQG39gwCJMEWMWJX95q2E/s1600/photo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKRi9RFzZJ1GiZboeqp6XMKh2kWGHKQi2YvbOlm2QN8by9I-iuvJPmL1awWNqLoUBRQOJPy2rTDi-Mbtc4-sQU-ifhylhrpjulaL2oqqe4r0ICczfymAqrK4TQG39gwCJMEWMWJX95q2E/s320/photo.jpg" width="239" /></span></span></span></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I only bought a couple of his small pieces, as I was worried about carrying them. I have now set up a litle shrine, for Japan. The incense is from the Temple at Kamakura, where I visited the shrine of the goddess of the sea.</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCBI93E0dOM2A_dge4wzJQ6qJNWDZzdB8_YMXdM7ucYYDH5FHxHwcZpyU3-94td5mSmKF6G6iPUn5_DeNAILtT7JnkmvuXCsGeIOc2o2OOcHcTCOTSQSmyD_syNMDDi247T5nQw5c6sXQ/s1600/photo-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCBI93E0dOM2A_dge4wzJQ6qJNWDZzdB8_YMXdM7ucYYDH5FHxHwcZpyU3-94td5mSmKF6G6iPUn5_DeNAILtT7JnkmvuXCsGeIOc2o2OOcHcTCOTSQSmyD_syNMDDi247T5nQw5c6sXQ/s320/photo-2.jpg" width="239" /></span></span></span></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></span></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhldMScLx13rNZzNACEi-abewD7nBYWIh-xtyTSF9CZ0l2XYBzJTF-SZx4NXor2eGxhOYjP7YcMgS3C6pG30ft5oO3ZJ7nyws9eEhgNbSbTdA0mLqWwMvvrANFz7uEXCv5RF73QYkemEpc/s1600/P1260643.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhldMScLx13rNZzNACEi-abewD7nBYWIh-xtyTSF9CZ0l2XYBzJTF-SZx4NXor2eGxhOYjP7YcMgS3C6pG30ft5oO3ZJ7nyws9eEhgNbSbTdA0mLqWwMvvrANFz7uEXCv5RF73QYkemEpc/s320/P1260643.JPG" width="320" /></span></span></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Where the sea meets the shore, Hasedera, near Kamakura.<br />
<br />
</span></span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In the temple of the Kannon at Hasedera,</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">the statue of the 11-headed kannon, or Boddhisatva of Compassion, has a story which is entwined with the sea also. It seems it was one of twins, and was thrown into the sea, where it stayed for many years:</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></span></div><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">"According to legend, in 721 AD. the pious monk Tokudo Shonin</span></span></span></i></div><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> discovered a large camphor tree in the mountain forests </span></span></span></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">near the village of Hase in the Nara region. He realized the trunk</span></span></span></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> of the tree was so large that it provided enough material for carving</span></span></span></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> two statues of the eleven-headed Kannon. The statue he </span></span></span></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">commissioned to be carved from the lower part of the truck </span></span></span></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">was enshrined in Hasedera Temple near Nara; the statue from the upper half </span></span></span></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(actually the larger of the two) was thrown into the sea with a prayer that it </span></span></span></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">would reappear to save the people. Fifteen years later in 736 </span></span></span></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">on the night of June 18, it washed ashore at Nagai Beach</span></span></span></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> on the Miura Peninsula not far from Kamakura,</span></span></span></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> sending out rays of light as it did. The statue was then brought to</span></span></span></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Kamakura and a temple was constructed to honor it."</span></span></span></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></span></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(from the story of Hasedera Kannon)</span></span></span></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhf9aL5ZzhAMu99UheN3rXqtRgF02pLj7y4fvRuwDnCf5bDThe10BUUBBJVNMmX-Cy7gpkUj9MW4jVo__Pd9zdQQP_pRoRLK8ZjjWeiKylnRr1_roGLKpI5346smNgzYVj840w8-48Cegw/s1600/kannon17.GIF" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhf9aL5ZzhAMu99UheN3rXqtRgF02pLj7y4fvRuwDnCf5bDThe10BUUBBJVNMmX-Cy7gpkUj9MW4jVo__Pd9zdQQP_pRoRLK8ZjjWeiKylnRr1_roGLKpI5346smNgzYVj840w8-48Cegw/s200/kannon17.GIF" width="163" /></span></span></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The Boddhisatva of Compassion</span></span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">II</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">This Earthly Realm.</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Because of reasons, </span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I am currently teaching nine courses at the university</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Both undergraduate and postgraduate.</span></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In one of the courses I had chosen to look at this Hokusai print, and my voice would waver just the tiniest bit, and I would have to stop speaking just for a moment</span></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">when I showed it.</span></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></span><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9bgOZegsNhhhxmW4HEvU3q4E38uvvoYLo3rWn_oDi9mR07co7_zU8g0sMXcme0Tm1zHhoGNJxz-P9SCaljdQynp7576HWbk_TfxhywRZcYxRZTDsE29kSLuf0mTQb5wQHqHFOIj9hZm4/s1600/0789204789-1.interior02.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="210" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9bgOZegsNhhhxmW4HEvU3q4E38uvvoYLo3rWn_oDi9mR07co7_zU8g0sMXcme0Tm1zHhoGNJxz-P9SCaljdQynp7576HWbk_TfxhywRZcYxRZTDsE29kSLuf0mTQb5wQHqHFOIj9hZm4/s320/0789204789-1.interior02.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Katsushkia Hokusai, "A Sudden Gust of Wind" <br />
woodblock, 1820's</td></tr>
</tbody></table><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It seems that every second of my week is occupied with </span></span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">something,</span></span></span></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">and I work long days, getting home at 7pm.</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Needless to say, my home is chaos, but easter isnt far away....</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">During this time, I try to imagine</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">the Great Buddha sending me serenity</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">as the waves of chaos lap at its feet,</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">just as they are lapping at mine.</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi797A2HtW_Wkw0MVZOFnrmLZTx6cqvlc2gmIwD1CeBvSgy2k6a4XxTna2Lrgvaoe5PcATZ7ZHED-JyVy-IIzFgY8riQRKlAJyr0VAgF3O3R_3BoIZTs3zlixID1S_aQkZSgWj-QzQBuKs/s1600/images.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi797A2HtW_Wkw0MVZOFnrmLZTx6cqvlc2gmIwD1CeBvSgy2k6a4XxTna2Lrgvaoe5PcATZ7ZHED-JyVy-IIzFgY8riQRKlAJyr0VAgF3O3R_3BoIZTs3zlixID1S_aQkZSgWj-QzQBuKs/s1600/images.jpeg" /></span></span></span></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Our family company has made a generous donation to japan Relief</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">if you would also like to make one, big or small, </span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">please go </span></span><a href="http://www.redcross.org.au/japan2011.htm"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">here</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">.</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The devastation there is beyond imagining.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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</div>fifihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06946945635726214503noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2145558051219626249.post-70869301903791931632011-02-16T10:53:00.000+11:002011-02-16T10:53:40.335+11:00in which the fish regards the blue, the brown and all the white<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLqSM-BqlmKRNqx5T0BSpq1Af5B6ztSkQEdaQeJuqXFWqy1VoSaSgO3p_Ymn614vZiuVm0qBhxiZKdqrjt0w3WQVy_AFnuLZgrbn9R0DyYACv_hzZOMiQLXMvgBW6nnV8_uwTxUfnrefY/s1600/view+day+1+.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLqSM-BqlmKRNqx5T0BSpq1Af5B6ztSkQEdaQeJuqXFWqy1VoSaSgO3p_Ymn614vZiuVm0qBhxiZKdqrjt0w3WQVy_AFnuLZgrbn9R0DyYACv_hzZOMiQLXMvgBW6nnV8_uwTxUfnrefY/s320/view+day+1+.jpg" width="225" /></span></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">It is a long journey by sea, even for this fish.</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">This fish,</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">who, with a mighty and muscular sweep of the tail,</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">launches out into the open sea.</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">At this, the sea merely raises one salty brow and shrugs.</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">So be it.</span></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Says the sea,</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">If you insist on spinning way beyond your normal trajectory, you will find what you wish. </span></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">So.</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">This fish</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">spins out past the known lands and grows and grows, spinning like a translucent thing through the vast depths where the sea becomes the darkest of greens, where the dried echoes of humpbacks still hang suspended like curtains of air, and heads north.</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The sea is silent, shrugging a turquoise shoulder as the fish spins on, further, like a torpedo through a cloud of ribbon fish, as the waters warm. The sea speaks only once again:</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">You will see much that you like not, fish, but you will see also much that you love.</span></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span> </i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
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</span></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The fish finds itself in clouds of brown, where no brown should be, and the realms of land and water become blurred. A crowd of frightened black and white cows, hoofs kicking, rolls their eyes as they float out a river delta. Chairs and boxes and shoes tumble through the clouds.</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">At one point the fish feels the salt disappar altogether and sees the buried matte of grass, a field, fences.</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Huge petals of soils spread out into the sea, where land and water do not seem to be able to tell each oter apart any longer and boundaries dissolve. Ribbon fish attempt to be civil to swimming cows, but the cows roll their eyes in terror. </span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The fish flees the silting of her gills and continues even further north, through vast archipeligos, past huge and friendly turtles and ever diminishing schools of other silver fish. The fish takes the shape now of some huge hybrid creature, with silvery scales the size of saucers, and long, thin, translucent teeth like those of a cat. The fish travels through brightly illumined azure waters of the equatorial seas, all the while heading north. All the while, spinning and dipping with great sweeps of the huge transparent tail, the fish swims so far, so far all the while, until the waters grow cold and dark again.</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">How to proceed, how to proceed,</span></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> laughs the sea to itself, as the fish considers its position and the iciness of the viridian depths into which it has arrived.</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> </span></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">There are the Straights Of Korea to consider, and the murderous bays and troughs along the southern coast of Honshu: perhaps this absurd fragment of fishbone, foolishness and fish-meat will head into northerer waters.</span></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">face to face with vladivostok. Within sniffing distnace of Siberia...</span></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span> </i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">And the fish considers this, because all the oceanic considerations are felt by the fish deep in her fish bones, that skeletal leaf-frond detecting all the thoughts of the sea itself.</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> And the fish, despite having felt the mighty cold of Russia once before, nonetheless turns its pointed silver face northwards away from Honshu, and up towards Hokkaido.</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">And here is the most dangerous realm in all the sea </span></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">for any kind of fish. </span></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Casting her large fish head to one side, she listens out for the mournful sounds of slaughtered cetaceans, and creeps to the north, away from this southernmost isle of japan, and slithers her bulk past the Sakharin islands, around the tip,</span></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> and into the </span></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Sea of Japan.</span></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Japan....</span></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
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</i></div>fifihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06946945635726214503noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2145558051219626249.post-72640368660301301222010-12-22T21:35:00.001+11:002010-12-22T21:38:35.322+11:00In which the fish speaks of stones and bones and silence.<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
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Fish,</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">in case you were not aware, </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">have no ears.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">It would be foolish to expect a fish to offer access to their heads via holes,</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">they have smooth heads stretched with silver drums of skin and scale. Fish swim like torpedoes, along the path of no resistance.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">What use have they of flapping ears, to cause drag and all manner of problem? None at all, I would think.</div><br />
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Fish ears stretched like tympani on either side of the fish's long head, silver and smooth. You may have seen them, nacreous ovoids, turning apricot this way, mauve that way, depending on the tilt of the fish. There is no hole, no tunnel into the fish's head, no entrance into which the sea might pour and fill the fish with brine, flood its dreams, drown its thoughts. There is only tightly sealed silver fish skin.<br />
Beneath the silver discs lie bones they call hearing stones. Stones to collect the sounds of the sea. The stone which orients us, much like, as <a href="http://cabinetmagazine.org/issues/31/burnett.php"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">Graeme Burnett</span></a> points out, the Islamic <i>qibla</i>, the stone to which all Muslims turn and face for prayer. Our inner stones tell us which way is up, which way is down, and how far beneath the ocean you are swimming.<br />
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<i>Otoliths:</i><br />
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Pebbles in the head, pearls with which to gather music, safely inside the head of the fish. It is said that a sea-bass has huge pebbles but humans have microscopic ones, a sac of tiny pebbles hanging inside the head.<br />
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As the years go by this fish's head strains and creaks to keep the sea out. My head works hard to close the entrance to my brain, to shut the sea out. The sea continues to poke long slithery fingers into my ears and tamper coldly with my brain, to softly clack against my ear stones, rattle them softly with a whispery rumpled sound. When I am back on land, the sea hides cunningly inside the ever-narrowing passages which lead to my ear stones. Walls of bone slowly close.<br />
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<center style="color: #222222; font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px;"><img src="http://cabinetmagazine.org/issues/31/assets/images/burnett2.jpg" /></center><center style="color: #222222; font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px;"><span class="caption" style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 8pt;"><em>Cyprinus carpio</em> (Common carp)</span></center><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18px;"> (Doug Ferrell, New South Wales Department of Primary Industries.)</span><br />
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I try to seal my ears, to keep the sea out of my head, since having small oceans in one's ears is not a pleasant thing: it will whisper things to you as you go about your business, and distract you from the world of air. Every now and again an aquatic shift will echo largely as you reach across the table, or navigate your way across town, far from the conforting thrum of the restless ocean in which you swim.<br />
No, I stuff my ears with waxes and plugs and wads of silicone, but the sea has become very cunning and contrives to pick them out in silent glee. I even took to using fluorescent orange wads of stuff which glowed brightly when they sank to the bottom and I was able to retrieve them, but gradually my supply was depleted. My bones continue to shift , and it becomes harder and harder to poke anything in them at all.<br />
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The stones in my head are drowning.<br />
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">The sea worries the rocks underwater, tosses and pokes them as they are revealed by the great sucking of tide against sand. rock shelf and boulder, pebble and shard: all are the palest of green, like naked things untouched by the sun.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">The rocks settle in the faintest of hollows, and roll about, from one edge to another, swirling and tossing, around and around, the sound of rock against rock agreeable aquatic clunk, an undewater percussion, travelling through the pale green like an orchestra of sorts. After some time, they create a lovely round rock pool.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">The sea stirs and worries the stones on their rock plates, and the hollows grow larger and deeper. the stones grow rounder and become, in time, like eggs in a basket, worn and beautiful: a nest of stone eggs. When the sea runs out these pale clusters sit in the sunlight and children play in them, lifting out the stones before parents call to them the dangers of blue-ringed octopi, the sharpness of urchin spines. Children lift out the stones, and rub them against the rockshelf, to see what happens: the rockshelf, unused to such reatment and more used to slumbering beneath a blanket of snad and the weight of the sea, is brittle and soft. The children dip their fingers in the wet powdered rock and draw with it. The sea-stones carve holes in the rocks.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">My world grows quiet, the sounds in my world, it seems, have taken on the aquatic softness of sounds far beneath the surface of the sea. I peer into faces and watch them speak. I worry that they will suddenly discern, just beneath my translucent skin, my scales, my fins, the silver of my surface, the strangeness of my bones. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
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<center style="color: #222222; font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px;"><img src="http://cabinetmagazine.org/issues/31/assets/images/burnett3.jpg" /></center><center style="color: #222222; font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px;"><span class="caption" style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 8pt;"><em>Epinephelus lanceolatus</em> (Giant grouper)</span></center><br />
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">It is almost Christmas. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">I am standing, with all the other parents at the formal speech night, all of us singing. I can hear my own singing in my head, ringing agreeably. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">I like to sing, and I like to sing amongst other singing voices, so I sing clearly and strongly. Suddenly I worry that I am singing tooo loudly, and dart my gaze from side to side, but nobody is looking. Emboldened, I continue. I pretend I am in a grand cathedral, until the carol finishes, and I must be seated with all the others. I watch and endless stream of royal blue blazers filing past, and listen to speeches. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">To my surprise, one of them makes me cry. A tale of kindness and generosity in an Indian orphanage run by an ex-student. Afterwards I walk through magnolias and gardenias in the warm dark air. I walk away from the sounds of father asking son to work harder, study harder, listen harder. the dark swallows me up like a tropical pond and I am glad for the way my fish ears filter sounds so well these days.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Next day at home, I sing. I sing and wonder what I sound like, since I am no longer sure. I walk down to the sea and find it as flat s anything I have ever seen and I poke my newest earplugs far into my narrow ear canals, to cushion my ear stones, to keep out the sea.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"> I swim all the way to the headland, but when I turn around to swim home I find a headwind has sprung up, and I have the devil's own time getting back.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
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</div>fifihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06946945635726214503noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2145558051219626249.post-46988470843764025402010-11-09T13:24:00.000+11:002010-11-09T13:24:22.601+11:00in which the fish is hot, the fish is cold<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKyPqgPMb0g8-tDLDAE9Vu1NPGYcdym02r-GJ6GF2zAcZfuPioOGuPpwyAKIxwFsmHFMIn6nNPanroNhKlweUWFsUR3iGRBXVSU5tf7Cu6Pv27iTvTK5hWAh2Wdo1pR1tlNSMZwzeB72E/s1600/P4050132.JPG" imageanchor="1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKyPqgPMb0g8-tDLDAE9Vu1NPGYcdym02r-GJ6GF2zAcZfuPioOGuPpwyAKIxwFsmHFMIn6nNPanroNhKlweUWFsUR3iGRBXVSU5tf7Cu6Pv27iTvTK5hWAh2Wdo1pR1tlNSMZwzeB72E/s320/P4050132.JPG" width="320" /></span></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I am at Hot Yoga.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I am looking in the mirror, focusing on just one point, as I am told.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Not at the point between my eyes, as I am told, but at a point lower, where things are black and indistinct, just near my waist. I focus my gaze there, that is a good point to gaze, I think, because it is just a patch of black, and indistinct.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The mirror is vast, and runs the entire length of the front of the room.</span><br />
<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It is the cosmic mirror</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">, they say, and there are many of us gazing into it. None of us look at each other, we are just </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">aware</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">. I try ever so hard to be present, to chase thoughts out of my head, but</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">of course, my gaze flickers around before I can still it. My vision briefly registers the presence of so many bodies. The one next to me, like all the other women, features a pale and slender waist, an uninterrupted stare. Today I note also that I am surrounded by men, which is unusual. We all begin, moving, just as we are told, as one entity, listening to the words, trying to join together mind, body, breathing.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When I first came, I couldn't look at the mirror at all. I hid behind others and stared at their reflection instead of mine, because I am the only person in this room who does not have a slim physique. My body rolls and pouts and sticks out at all angles and the bags beneath my eyes catch the light and make shadows. I began by staring at the reflection of the pretty girl next to me, and pretended I was her. At the end of the first week I was right behind a very gorgeous young lady, all in white, with her boyfriend. I am sure her poise was shaken when, in the middle of triangle pose, she let out a small, but distinct fart. I felt for her, but I laughed silently all the same. That's what farts are for, after all: laughing at. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">She was mortified.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When I first came, I covered myself up with long tights and baggy tops but the heat was dreadful, and my whole body went into a kind of distress. All around me was pale, shining skin, sparkling with moisture from the infernal heat. Waves of panic invaded me from time to time as I stolidly enacted the motions, trying my best to balance, trying my best just to stay in the room, the heat was terrible: sweat flowed like rivers from my every limb, my face so red I looked like a scarlet jellyfish. The first time I went there was with my friend, The Little Hen, who was very good at yoga and I watched her from the corner of my eye, realising quickly that talking and looking were not permitted. I watched her stand on one leg and place her head on the knee of her outstretched other. She never wavered, though I could barely manage a few seconds on one leg, and stumbled repeatedly, sweat running into my eyes. I'd hoped this yoga might be a way of fixing my badly assembled skeleton, fixing my crooked little feet, making me straighter, but that first time I thought I would die and could not look in the mirror.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Next day I went back.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And the next. I was immediately hooked.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It would not defeat me, but I didn't look into the mirror for six months. It's been a year and a half now, and I am working my way to looking myself in the face.</span><br />
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Strange how you are so extreme</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">, said Kath. </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You're either swimming in icy water or poaching yourself in that diabolical room. Can't be good for you. </span></i><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Eija said: </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You look great, and I am coming too.</span></i><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">She did. She still does.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I am looking in the mirror, focusing on just one point.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The young man just ahead of me, to my right, wears small blue trunks, his hair in a ponytail and is just on the edge of my vision. A young girl is ahead of me, just to my left. Her ponytail is long and shining, her waist tiny, her tummy neat and flat. Directly ahead is me myself, in small shorts and a singlet, both black, my dimply tummy beneath, hidden, my lumpy physique looking just a touch more petite than usual, because this bit of the cosmic mirror is slightly concave.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I smile to myself: I am right at the front, gazing into the mirror, people all around me. We begin and everybody moves in time: breathing, stretching, bending. Names in sanskrit, instructions, the same every day. The words of the guru over and over, we enact the most strenuous of poses, compressing this, stretching that. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Standing Bow.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The first time I tried </span><a href="http://www.tgoetel.com/POMstandingbow.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">standing bow</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> I fell and almost knocked someone over and had to stand side on to all the others and hold the ballet bar, because it was impossible to balance. I had to show my body what it might feel like if we ever got this right. Today I lean forward towards the cosmic mirror with one arm outstretched, my other arm behind me, holding my foot and drawing my it above my head: I am a bow. I pull my self taut and stand strong, and I hold this and breathe. I pull air into my lungs and hold my foot high above my head, willing my foot not to move. None of us fall.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I look into the mirror.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">That's the thing: I look into the mirror.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I am the biggest woman here and I am looking into the mirror and my foot is as high over my head as the </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">beautiful girl with the ponytail. I stand perfectly still and taut, foot above my head, arm outstretched.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I used to see swimming in the icy sea in the winter dawn as a test, a challenge. I thought if I could do that, I could face anything, and I suppose I was right in many ways. It taught me that pain is brief and that everything is in the mind. The cold only lasts a minute and after that it's like a wonderful buzzing of the skin, a rushing of blood, blowing strings of air into the pale morning water and listening to the sounds.</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTPnwaz_gwRtw1zGptiURjHMb07xaHljNAvwDeDO07FbfLRshseBjkSvdBhIT4L3Bz3vQi900HnkuEhBwT7OytiFMevLmtgu-EoT5R1hvTRm_VqJxyFj8MfGLUDaz5ZYhq71mKV7U1TjY/s1600/P4050161.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTPnwaz_gwRtw1zGptiURjHMb07xaHljNAvwDeDO07FbfLRshseBjkSvdBhIT4L3Bz3vQi900HnkuEhBwT7OytiFMevLmtgu-EoT5R1hvTRm_VqJxyFj8MfGLUDaz5ZYhq71mKV7U1TjY/s320/P4050161.JPG" width="320" /></span></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I am looking in the mirror, thinking of cold water. I see myself, misshapen but cheerful, hopeful, looking back. I can hold my ankles and place my face onto the floor. I can bend backwards and almost see the floor, but most of all, I can look into the mirror. Soon, I will look into my own eyes. One day soon.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">when I am finished I race down to the sea and throw myself in like a blob of molten lava. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The sea hisses. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The sea grips my scalp and flings my air about as I stay submerged, looking for a grip on the sea floor so I might hang head-down for hours, but there is only sand so I dive down and down and down until the sea has cooled my flaming cheeks. The sea does not know what to say about this, and keeps silent when I am on my long hauls through the water these days, though I do know that the sea has enough trouble at the moment with all the storms and the whale migration. There is so much to occupy a body of water at this time of year that I hadn't considered my steaming hot dumpling act would attract too much oceanic attention, but I still get a good slap on the head to remind me who's boss.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So, my small triumphs buoy me along. The sea in my hair, my gaze in the mirror. My faultless backstroke, my motionless Standing Bow. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I cannot help marvelling in the miracle of breathing. Of taking breath, and letting it go. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In, and out again, pulling air down into my body, where it travels through tiny branches into my blood, into the sea of me. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Of releasing great soft cushions of air at the bottom of the sea and watch them wobble upward until they break that quivering meniscus,</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and disappear.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I am looking into the mirror and I am taking no notice of my fat little legs and the bags beneath my eyes. Instead, I luxuriate in the fact that i can stand here at all, and that I can breathe. I am looking into the cosmic mirror pulling air into myself.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Endlessly, happily: </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">in, out, in.</span>fifihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06946945635726214503noreply@blogger.com20tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2145558051219626249.post-91451405314309850132010-09-20T15:18:00.020+10:002010-09-20T15:34:56.642+10:00or, in which the fish reveals the whereabouts of the lost children.<div class="Style2" style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><i>Marin</i></b></span></div></div><div class="Style2" style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><i>(an extract) </i></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><i><o:p></o:p></i></b></span></div></div><div class="Style2" style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><i><br />
</i></b></span></div></div><div class="Style2" style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="Style2" style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">My body healed up, days marched on, and nights reassuringly appeared as they always had. </span></span></div></div><div class="Style2" style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">After all, I am a champion fish, a strong fish, a winning fish.</span></span></div></div><div class="Style2" style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span> </span></div></div><div class="Style2" style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Not such a fast fish perhaps, but a steady fish, a fish which goes the distance. A heads-down, fins-spinning sort of a fish, a fish who leaps at the starter’s gun and is capable of endless miles, full of baby or not. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="Style2" style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span> </span></div></div><div class="Style2" style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I have trained furiously for the race in which I find myself, but even so, my cheeks are plum coloured and my lungs twin sacs of burning lace . It is a few kilometres long, this race, out over the kelp beds and out towards the dark playground of Bronze Whalers and the other darker, shyer sharks off Long Reef. Through the roiling surf and out and away, through numerous clouds of jellies which pulse mindlessly like small milky geometries, Tall orange buoys appear from time to time to guide me, for me to shoulder around in these abstract unmarked trails in the ocean. I have a need to win, a need to overcome something.</span></span></div></div><div class="Style2" style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span> </span></div></div><div class="Style2" style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I pull myself through salt water, with my hands my feet, my fins. My chest heaves, my face burns and the cracking thump of my heart echoes into the bones of my head. Below me all is blue-inked shadow, above me sky glimpsed as I steal silver loaves of air from the sky and hold them hard in my chest then before exhaling them, fragmented, in molten blobs to spin in my wake.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="Style2" style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span> </span></div></div><div class="Style2" style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I must win, but it’s such a long stretch of ocean, a long long distance. I am wearing my face like a mask. At the start it is all fragments of kelp in a turquoise toss of foam, and later, in the dark of the deep somebody is catching a free ride in my wake, touching my toes as I thunder along. I am unable to shake them off, but they disturb me, lurking there just behind, waiting to chase and pounce. I steady my breathing and try not to lose my rhythmic stroke-stroke-stroke, my lungs smouldering. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="Style2" style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> I have passed into another reality, one in which I am nothing but air and light and salt and movement.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="Style2" style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="Style2" style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">As I look down in to the deep and watch the silver bubbles trail from my endlessly digging hands, I suddenly think of Marin, of silver light and lost pieces of love. Then suddenly, it seems, every one of her little extinguished heartbeats is with me, surging along on a cloud of light. In fact there are hundreds of them: all of those tiny lights, all the tiny souls who never made it into the bright light of day are now ere in my sea, like tiny fish, like beams of light, buoying me along. The sun catches them: fragments of light, tiny beating hearts, clouds of bubbles, a bouquet of air. I am swimming on a cloud of souls, here they all are, out here in the kingdom of salt and loneliness, in my aquatic domain: all the love and hope, the energy of all and everything. And I am here, amongst it, stroking the blue with long fingers and strong arms.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="Style2" style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="Style2" style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I put the love I had for Marin out into the world, although she never came to be, and like the light from far away stars in distant constellations, that love continues on. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="Style2" style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Love ends up somewhere, love ends up here, in the salty indigo depths. In the luminous foam of the waves, in the dancing currents, in the dip and swell of the open sea. In every sparkle on the ocean dwells the love and hope invested in those brief existences, and every one of them forms a deep bloom of happiness upon my heart.</span></span></div></div><div class="Style2" style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="Style2" style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Marin carried me, like a mandala-shaped raft. A raft made from all those little silver specks of love, those beginnings of hope, those hearts now stilled, those tears.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="Style2" style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="Style2" style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I won the race, although it didn’t matter,</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">not really.</span></span></div></div><div class="Style2" style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><br />
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</i></span></div><div class="Style2" style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><i>from "Marin", a short story</i></span></div><div class="Style2" style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><i>By Fiona E.D</i></span></div><div class="Style2" style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><i>2006</i></span></div>fifihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06946945635726214503noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2145558051219626249.post-52271662012321349142010-09-18T12:01:00.007+10:002010-09-18T15:27:06.157+10:00Ultrasound<div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">I</span><span class="Apple-style-span">t is difficult to see underwater without some kind of intervention, some kind of separation between eyes and water. Even my shortsighted fish-eyes need help, though most of my childhood was spent gazing at some blurry submarine landscape, and bearing the sting afterwards.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><br />
</span> </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span">The first time I saw the bottom of the sea I got a fright, and drew saltwater into my lungs with the sudden intake of breath. I coughed a bit, and then went down for more keeping my feet raised in order to push my head down, to stop it floating up and out. I was wearing a huge hard plastic underwater mask, like a piece of cartoon headgear, which flared from my face towards the clear oval of vision in a swathe of sharp green plastic. The world of the sea was suddenly revealed to me, and I saw with a shock </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span">that it went on forever and ever and ever.</span></span></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><br />
</span> </span></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span">The huge mask was problematic when swimming in the waves, as one's head was tossed about like a large and bouyant bucket by the ceaseless pull and push. But I have never forgotten the lure of that world stretching out before me, where the pale ocean floor continued forever into infinity, the bright dancing canopy of the ocean overhead. I thought to myself with a thrill of fear: I want to swim forever.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><br />
</span> </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span">My mother hauled me out by the straps of my swimmers.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><br />
</span> </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span">*</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><br />
</span> </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7tBetOfw2Vx3VCXRuYL9rLNk4kRhCJWZ0qrGyP3JpsJk2_uoWAb8V-9mVDaOUo5R7BazflA-MUMxwJqGKYqcpQ8HGTH5MEA9erj94JXOfwzZIevDAu5Y4nZDz1hgWd30c_zmsBfgoRUY/s1600/inner+sea.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7tBetOfw2Vx3VCXRuYL9rLNk4kRhCJWZ0qrGyP3JpsJk2_uoWAb8V-9mVDaOUo5R7BazflA-MUMxwJqGKYqcpQ8HGTH5MEA9erj94JXOfwzZIevDAu5Y4nZDz1hgWd30c_zmsBfgoRUY/s320/inner+sea.jpg" /></span></span></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><br />
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</span> </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span">Around the edge of the rock pool is where the rip leaps in and around, and creates a flurry of sand and small bits of weed. The ever present flock of spotted toadfish seem to exist solely to swim against the in and out of it, turning this way and that in charming unison, their wide spaced goat-like eyes unblinking. When the tide is low, deep turquoise pools are laid open, disempowered and benign, full of stranded toadies, but the tide comes back in and they revert to spinning hollows of light, dark, and fragments tossed about in endlessly moving water. The rocks hunch in their secretive manner, clothed in cloaks of dark red weed knitted by the tide, flecked with sand here and there. Down low it is dim and dark, it is hard to see.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><br />
</span> </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><br />
</span> </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span">*</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><br />
</span> </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span">I have rinsed the salt from my hair and driven across town, keeping my attention upon the roads, the directions. I am right on time for my appointment, and I sit down on a blue chair and cross my ankles. The hair at the back of my neck is damp: I realize that I have done nothing but twist it into a wet knot, leaving it uncombed, but I think also that nobody is really looking since these rooms are part of the Sydney IVF clinic, and everybody preoccupied with their own private hopes and sorrows. I am able to watch, as closely as I wish, the actions of everybody in the room, before I am shown into my own room, with a large screen above the chair, waiting to map me out. It is a larger, clearer screen than any I recall. The nurse asks a few questions, how many children do I have. </span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><br />
</span> </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span">Two, I answer.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> I am compelled at that moment to explain that I have been through this four times. </span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span">Four times, she says. Four times pregnant but only two children?</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span">Thats right, I answer.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><br />
</span> </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span">I do not elaborate, thinking instead of the time I saw a heartbeat glinting like a lighthouse, the time I saw those little hands flex and startle, and finally let myself exhale and love. I do not explain seeing that inert shape at fourteen weeks, like a stone at the bottom of a pond, lying still, no beating heart, no trace of light. I keep myself quiet and watch the sea inside of me, up there on the screen and say nothing. The blunt white muzzle of a very clever camera becomes a pair of underwater eyes, revealing my hidden ocean.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span">The shapes and hollows are aquatic and submarine, with flecks of light and dark shadows. Waves of sound mark the beat of my heart and the tides of my blood, so eerie and strange to see this space unoccupied, like watching the empty flow of the tide after the storm.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span">The nurse maps my inner fronds, the darker spaces. We listen to my blood, the soft thud of waves, moving in a fluid fashion from place to place. My chest tightens. My body cannot help but remember the joy, the looking, the finding. Those tiny fingers, all of them with their thumbs in their tiny aquatic mouths, the rolling and the turning. Those two creatures who are so formed and loud and airborne now, those other two that shine endlessly in the quieter stretches of the ocean, silent and bright.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span">It is strange, to be so uninhabited.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><br />
</span> </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span">Incredibly, a newborn howls through the partition wall, followed by muted adult voices. I look quizzically at the nurse, who smiles and shakes her head.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span">That's pretty hard for some people in here, she says. </span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span">The crying is protracted. If it continues, I think, I will begin to lactate.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><br />
</span> </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjjDJCiMH_vfnfaCsgn_vPgtDZckL45PEx-Pp-v7pFYTk740wXuPy7UFGypwDH71AYp83VRWItfZxw9I0tafdHEyb-qp7QL27Spe1t-SjYigtbAn2gMdHOMZNDM4gcbpNTAVjfzJ9WaLk/s1600/inner+sea+3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjjDJCiMH_vfnfaCsgn_vPgtDZckL45PEx-Pp-v7pFYTk740wXuPy7UFGypwDH71AYp83VRWItfZxw9I0tafdHEyb-qp7QL27Spe1t-SjYigtbAn2gMdHOMZNDM4gcbpNTAVjfzJ9WaLk/s320/inner+sea+3.jpg" /></span></span></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><br />
</span> </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><br />
</span> </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span">I lie there with my thickened chest, the shape of a flood of tears forming in my heart. I am remembering something else which often threatens to fall out of the edges. I remember being alone, watching all those hearts, those fingers. I remember greeting them all: my daughter like a small bear, my son who flung his hand up high, that bold soul leaping with arms raised to be the youngest then deciding to remain undersea, and the last one, who stayed incredibly for so long, whom I almost managed to convince that the world was a wonderful place, but who held her breath, and fell asleep on my ocean floor.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span">I remember it was only me who greeted them. Just me, their mother. I wonder now if I should have insisted, rather than ask, for company and be refused. Too busy, no time, no interest.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><br />
</span> </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span">It is said to be churlish to bring up such things: that I was always alone.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> But the fact was, it defined everything. It made me set back my shoulders, bear the solitary acts with as much grace as I could manage. Nobody else but me even so much as glimpsed the sea inside of me, when there were creatures furled in there. There was no "we loved him" or "we loved her". </span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span">Twas just me.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span">I'd not thought I had tears left for that, but I was wrong. In this unexpected moment in which I gaze into my own oceanic depths, and listen to the solitary beat of my own blood, this overcomes me.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><br />
</span> </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><br />
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</span> </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjW0RaZ-B3KZwCGHu_YEs58dQ2bVY0AE02Jn4U_HMxzeqTEk5NFo_CGJiiLX_23KmU75k-l0at3qAJ3euRLP0on-o73Mqw876B-TFY7ROwKL_dj23QDdDNY-aJOaIgW0L8nrG18i6mDTK8/s1600/inner+sea+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjW0RaZ-B3KZwCGHu_YEs58dQ2bVY0AE02Jn4U_HMxzeqTEk5NFo_CGJiiLX_23KmU75k-l0at3qAJ3euRLP0on-o73Mqw876B-TFY7ROwKL_dj23QDdDNY-aJOaIgW0L8nrG18i6mDTK8/s320/inner+sea+2.jpg" /></span></span></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><br />
</span> </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><br />
</span> </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span">Of course, there are many courses in life that I have not had to manage. I swim out into the open sea along the furrow next to the pool, the rip carrying me beyond the hunched woolly shoulders of the rock platforms, past the deeper pools and out to where the waves grow high like sharp blue dorsal fins trembling in the sun. I think of Katie, who was deserted with two babies, I think of Mary who was deserted at 36 with none, and of Jane who left empty handed. I think of Anne and her brand new breasts, her harvested eggs waiting in some dark storage for just in case...and I think of the fine babies they might have had for me to hold, to talk to. </span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span">I think of Georgie, whose firstborn leapt from a clifftop aged 17, a few months ago. I think of the hopeful eyes of the women hovering in wait for a scan to tell them that, somewhere in their private watery hollow, new life has been persuaded to take hold. I think of those who will never see anything but emptiness and silence in that underwater place up there on the screen.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><br />
</span> </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> Everything is relative, I think, as I head out towards the looming dark shape of the headland. I look at the small fronds of seaweed as I swim, at all the tiny points of light which trail from my moving hands as I disappear into the sea inside of me. I hope to myself that all these aquatic maps will, this time, be empty, and that what they find</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span">is nothing. </span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span">Nothing but everything as it should be.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><br />
</span> </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><br />
</span> </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span">The sea tries half-heartedly push me under, but I'm not having any of it.I swim on: the points of light are buoying me up. Against the horizon my son hunches over his bright yellow board, gives me a wave.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><br />
</span> </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span">I swim forever.</span></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span"><br />
</span> <br />
<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">Postscript:</span></i><br />
<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">I am not having IVF, just a thorough look-over.</span></i><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span"><br />
</span> <br />
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<i>Paintings from Body of Water, 2010</i>fifihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06946945635726214503noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2145558051219626249.post-36994471578098557492010-08-28T22:03:00.001+10:002010-08-29T14:04:42.223+10:00in which the fish is herded into shoreWhen the sea is breathing in such great sucking breaths I do sometimes worry what on earth will be dragged up from the bottom.<br />
Sometimes it is dark, cold water from far below: from the domain of deep silent creatures whose blood is fixed at icy levels, whose fins fan currents which are viridian green and frosty. Other times, it is just sand, and the battered fragments of olive brown kelp.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYVjWqXazfCM9rbhJL4IWMiPz-lNsGM-29z_d2MRio8rx231ab1wBO0aIcLoqP_HL1QGUg7V-m2Vh0BYBJWKJYiOyxuOabNEFBxC440urAZT-pQbFgyabZacjr-xkXT-EVklY86m8FLSU/s1600/stormy" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYVjWqXazfCM9rbhJL4IWMiPz-lNsGM-29z_d2MRio8rx231ab1wBO0aIcLoqP_HL1QGUg7V-m2Vh0BYBJWKJYiOyxuOabNEFBxC440urAZT-pQbFgyabZacjr-xkXT-EVklY86m8FLSU/s320/stormy" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div>When last the high seas came, huge rolling furrows of might marched in even rows from across the Southern Ocean, roaring and howling, foam dripping from salty lips. The cormorants headed inland and pelicans sought shelter in the lagoon in flocks like squat clergymen, the old geysers with oversunned pelts sat on their bench as always, waiting silently to pick a fight, the words hanging off their chins, waiting for me to slap. they restrain themselves mostly, as do I as I snap on my little swimming cap, adjust my goggles, daring them to make a stupid comment. Homophobia, misogyny, climate change...<br />
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<br />
On the first day of the swell I had to do nothing, for as I watched, my eyes round, my mouth open, the sea rose like the great wave off Kanagawa and reached up in an incredible arc, unbroken. Unbroken, it raced up the beach, unbroken it slapped the wall, and reached all the way to the beach house and slapped the old bastards right off the bench and strewing sand all the way up the car park. Up they jumped in fright, scrambling to stand on the wooden bench, drenched and grazed with sand and water. I watched, laughed silently, and gave the sea a knowing smile which it staunchly pretended not to see.<br />
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Never have I seen the like! They talk of that wave still, a week later. I smile at the memory of looking down the road and seeing the tops of the waves as if they were dancing over the houses like enormous muscular entities, the wind whipping the foam into plumes the size of trees. I swam in the rock pool that same day with my heart thumping like crazy, the sea desperately feeling round in the crevices of rocks with grasping fingers to toss me out or crush my bones. Folks, spying me there in my pink cap cutting through the slabs of storm foam, sure and solid, fancied they might join me, but soon retreated when faced with the walls of water.<br />
<i>I cant help being here</i>, i feel like saying to them, <i>I really can't.</i><br />
<i>And I know exactly what to do and where to go, where to hide from a thumping, how not to get flung out onto the rocks upon my head.</i><br />
But i don't. They just shake their heads and scramble out. The Old Geezers laugh at them.<br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div> The next day after that the wind gave up and had a rest, so the sea had nowt to do except jostle and fret, its body muscling and rolling, curtains of sand rising from the ocean floor and foam like torn lace washing this way and that. Lively water it was too, sizzling with life, with things. It was this day. the day after the day of the Great Waves, that the dolphins came back.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihSd7yBOj2dKpWU_c-FkaWgBuITWHuSLFRLMXMeZteg7lgTV-XjSBOdn1m2gbB8tXDCWdaKOs3FRsnBzNO8sbiwcrGHWUDfffcZHjU1TyuylCo3BQSrrL6kyM9xL4stMNOsi5oCrSIxqQ/s1600/morning+waves.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihSd7yBOj2dKpWU_c-FkaWgBuITWHuSLFRLMXMeZteg7lgTV-XjSBOdn1m2gbB8tXDCWdaKOs3FRsnBzNO8sbiwcrGHWUDfffcZHjU1TyuylCo3BQSrrL6kyM9xL4stMNOsi5oCrSIxqQ/s320/morning+waves.jpg" /></a></div><br />
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I had not seen them for a month or two, but here they were, just off the back of the ocean pool, and the pod had grown by at least a third. The biggest one was there, that I call Two-fin, because it appears there are two dorsal fins, or one with a large slash out of the middle. Two-fin is always in the lead, purposefully leading the others around and around in that strange little love-knotty dance, tighter and tighter they embroider the surface of the sea until they all break free and fling themselves jumping into the air on the crest of a wave. Moving in circles. Revealing themselvs suddenly, amongst the surfers, their huge bodies silhouetted, silent, gliding.<br />
<br />
It seems it is winter when you see them most here. They often arrive and circle and hunt for an hour or so and then at some secret sign all head off, leaping back out to sea, out towards North head. One dark winter day when the ocean was stirred much like this week I was in the middle of the beach at sunrise when they appeared. Quietly I put on my goggles and slipped in, alone, feet-first off the sand bank as they were so close to shore, and watched them from underwater, weaving and circling through the weed strewn water.<br />
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It is no small thing though, to be in water with such large creatures, face to face. For they are huge, muscled and dark: they are like water made solid, they are silent and full of purpose. One holiday, up on the North Coast, I swam in the ocean at the unpatrolled beach on which we camp. I am timid of this ocean, as it is warm and busy with creatures large and small. It is unknown, unwatched. I swam parallel to the beach with long hard strokes, looking below at the shadows in the ridges of sand, and the occasional stream of whiting pouring along them from time to time,<br />
when suddenly a huge black shape appeared at my side,<br />
then another,<br />
then many.<br />
<br />
I was surrounded by dolphins.<br />
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The sudden appearance, when one is out to sea, of an animal of equal size in very close proximity, is a terrifying thing. At eye level, you are vulnerable: it is an entirely different psychological perspective than to be at sitting height, with the relative safety of a piece of floating fibreglass from which to view the world.<br />
They swam at me, around me, not quite touchingme until I realised I was being herded to shore.<br />
They kept urging me into the shallows, swimming closer and closer around me in a tight and thrashing circle, until I could stand, at a depth I never imagined a dolphin would even swim. Still they herded me ashore, further, until I stood ankle deep, and then they all turned and headed back to sea.<br />
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The beach was deserted and I had to walk quite some way back, heart thumping, trying to make sense of it all. The fishermen dragging their tinny up at the end of the beach, gutting fish and spangling the sand with scales, remarked that they had seen a shark, which is nothing new.<br />
<i> It might have been a dolphin</i>, I said, but they squinted at me briefly, shaking their heads.<br />
I paddled out every day after that on a board, desperate for them to come again, but they did not reveal themselves to me again, not face to face, not from my board.<br />
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<br />
It was not until I had returned home and was watching a news report that I had a fancy as to what my rounding up by dolphins might have meant. A group of swimmers in New Zealand were herded together buy a pod of dolphins, which <a href="http://www.timeenoughforlove.org/saved/dolphin_newzealand041124.html">swam around them in a tight circle and herded them towards shore</a>. They were protecting the swimmers from a large shark which was circling beneath the surface, by screening and bunching them together.<br />
<br />
I have always wondered if those dolphins had surrounded me to protect me from an unseen shark.<br />
I like to think they did, getting me safely to shore. Finding me alone out there, they gathered about and took me home.<br />
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</div>The local dolphin pod stayed for a week, hunting and circling. Folks sat on the cliffs and paths above to watch them. I tried to swim out and join them, but the sea grabbed me by the head and threw me back, giving me a good slap on the way, so I pretended I had no intention of heading out the back throught he huge dark green channels and over the vast peaks. I made like I was merely rinsing my hair, making the most dignified exit I could muster, before hearing the sea say to me<br />
<i>leave them be, let them alone</i><br />
and I stood dripping on the wind blown sand and watched them from there.<br />
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***<br />
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The wind made a good show of things at night, pushing the sea into submission, blunting the sharp edges, wrinkling the oily slick surfaces with icy vigour. After only four days, the sea had tired, and gave up. So did the wind, sitting back breathless and watching the sea become a hard flat millpond beneath a luminous sky.<br />
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I swam in the rockpool with burning skin, concentrating on my stroke, imagining the cold to be fire until I could not feel it anymore. Until my skin had turned to scales, silver and moonlit and impervious to the cold. All I feel is the soft breathing of the sea, shifting next to me, held back by rock.<br />
I swim and swim and swim like a shard of ice.<br />
<br />
It is a week since the Great Waves came, and the dolphins have returned to wherever it is that Two-fin always takes them: somewhere just out past the Heads, I imagine. They could be anywhere in my dark and vasty sea: I can never see as far as I would like beneath its shining skin. There is still a sandy<br />
tide-mark and driftwood beneath the bench from when the sea told the Old Geezers to hush their mouths, and smacked them soundly.<br />
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I slip in now, and feel how the wind cannot defeat the great body of the ocean: it is warm and clear and full of life. The sun dances in patterns across the ocean floor, and blow as hard as the wind might, it can chill the rock pool, but not the sea.<br />
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I head towards the horizon. There is nothing but light, salt, and water.<br />
Nothing but me, and the sea. And somewhere, not too far away, stitching together the endless shadows of the vasty ocean, Two-Fin and the dolphins swim wreaths in their endless dance,<br />
round and round and round.fifihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06946945635726214503noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2145558051219626249.post-36505044200824479322010-07-14T14:20:00.001+10:002010-07-14T14:30:24.182+10:00In which the fish speaks of dark glass<div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">The fish will speak today.</div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
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</div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">Even though the sky is low and sitting on my shoulders, and crows strut on the damp sand pecking and throwing their beaks into the air, even though the horizon looks dull and dim, I will speak, because I fear I may lose my voice entirely if I don't. So today will be the day that the fish will speak. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
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</div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">Six months is a long time in the life of a fish. Six months, to some, is longer than a lifetime. The last six months have brought me to an almost-halt, but not quite, and so I will speak myself back into existence. words will draw me back into visibility.</div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">Its just i am so tired, tired beyond imagining. Even the sea knows this. It slapped me hard yesterday and I barely reacted. But I think I will wake soon, let me see.</div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
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</div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">I have woken in a film. I think the director may be sometimes Lasse Hallstrom, but sometimes others must step in and alter the tone slightly. The film is about a dysfunctional family, all of whom seem to exist in their own small spheres, and to whom any semblance of normal family life seem alien. It is as if I stepped on the wrong train and did not notice until now, thousands of kilometers later, barely able to remember where it is that I was supposed to be heading.</div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
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</div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">Nobody can have it all.</div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">It is a conundrum, isn't it?</div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">If I do not enact my self, paint my pictures, imagine things, make my way in what has been my life since I was seventeen, I may as well cease to exist altogether. But putting together my exhibition was all-consuming, and for the first time I realised that i could not do such things alone anymore. I could not rely only upon myself to haul paintings, plan catalogues, hang things and the many other things required just like I used to. That art does not fit into a neat space which allows you to drop children off at 8am and collect them at 3pm. Art wants to occupy your thoughts entirely and lucidly, with passion and imagination in equal measure. Art stomps on the shopping list in your head and banishes the phone numbers of the tradesmen you need to fix your creaky house, the dates of deadlines and visits to teachers. But still it presses in and you rear up</div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><i>I have been putting everything else ahead of this for too long. i cant stop now</i></div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br />
</i></div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">and on you clatter with your project and your thoughts.</div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
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</div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">Six months. </div><div style="text-align: left;">Eight half baked blog posts. Fingers that resist the keyboard, nothing to say.</div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
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</div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">I wrote a thesis.</div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">i was terribly behind, and stayed at home while the family went on holiday without me. I woke at 6am and sat all day at the table typing the thoughts of the last two years into a large jumble and sculpted them into a vague shape. My hand ached and my shoulder acquired sensations, a pain when I swam. I competed in only three races, limping along slowly like a moth with one burnt wing. Thankfully my old art school friend was also typing in unison just as neurotically neurotically, on a similar project, and we kept in touch via panic-stricken email. She is represented in the Australian National Gallery and appears on the Art School website as a shining example. She wins big grants, she is a superstar, but still she cried and struggled with self doubt. I helped her with her work. She panicked about her husband and son. We both discussed the guilt of staying at home while the others go on holiday without us. </div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">In late January she was hospitalised for five days, they thought she had a <i>stroke</i>. I knew immediately the sensation: the burning nerves in the face, the paralysed arms, the headache. Touch-pad itis. Worry. She even outdid me on the neurosis. This made me laugh.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
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</div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbgdlGrw-rGk0W8Yg9oMcifiU-FunEDWta6qcClXf180TjXcEy38ZtisVPQDNBqv6zcivKji_BqSwuMTJm_IrfPQpLKDMZP_DMyQTUApD_oFiGs3bPnOidU05kwopwlezEl9lzR8lLcYc/s1600/pete+looking+stunned.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbgdlGrw-rGk0W8Yg9oMcifiU-FunEDWta6qcClXf180TjXcEy38ZtisVPQDNBqv6zcivKji_BqSwuMTJm_IrfPQpLKDMZP_DMyQTUApD_oFiGs3bPnOidU05kwopwlezEl9lzR8lLcYc/s320/pete+looking+stunned.jpg" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
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</div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">In my head, there is a table.</div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">It used to be a large and beautiful table with things piled elegantly upon it. Volumes of history, books, art. Ideas about the garden, ideologies on parenting. Opinions. Large silver antique compotiers filled with enthusiasm and joy, large paper chains of bits of philosophy, pomegranates, pictures, passion and desire. Platters of still lifes, the recipes for painting with oils stroke by stroke. Ink-marbled copies of half finished poetry, calendars and schedules. All piled up on that table.</div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">But now the table seems to have shrunk to the size of a Parisian cafe table. Naturally, I am grateful that the table, tiny as it is, retains some charm in its european aesthetic. But the piles of <i>things </i>don't fit on very well, and I am only able to see one pile at a time. If i want something else, I must hunt endlessly through reams of tangled items which have fallen on the floor, rummaging endlessly. So all those grand ideas one retains in one's head in those glorious moments of lucidity seem destined not to return. Once they drop from the tiny table into that great chaos at my feet I have to struggle to find them. After a wile I forget to look. It makes writing things like theses rather difficult, makes remebering day to day things just as hard, and to make matters worse, this hunting is usually acompanied by the same refrain <i>if you werent so precoccupied with your art.</i></div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br />
</i></div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">But that is the thing: the art perches on the edge of this tiny table, waiting eternally. The pile in front of me is always the same tedious work books, shopping lists and parent-teacher schedules. Objections to council, appointments for Xrays. If i drag the art pile towards me, the other things crash down upon it. I hold firm to a small volume, and peek into it whenever i can. I keep my hand on it, so I can feel it when I am unable to see.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
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</div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> With one of my very favourite ocean swimmers, Glistening Dave</span></div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
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</div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">We passed, both of us. My friend and I.</div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">I sent my thesis to the most wonderful person in the world who raked through it like a fine silver comb through the tangles hair of a flea-ridden wolf. He removed all the fleas, and helped me untangle the knots. It took two days. I submitted it at last, all tideied and neat. The report returned <i>no corrections.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i></i>A miracle.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
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</div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">My daughter, for the past six months, could be said to have a <i>condition.</i></div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">Yes, let me put it like that: a condition.</div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">It is easy to put it in a neat single-word box like that. The condition makes me miserable and makes me doubt my own existence. The condition has changed her into someone I can barely recognise and with whom I am running out of energy to deal with. I read of warm mother-daughter moments and wish to cry, wondering what i did wrong, accusations of an art preoccupation ringing in my ears.</div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">But I cast my mind back and find myself seing the beginnings of it all. Words knock around in my head <i>no such things as bad children only bad parents. </i></div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">Reading stories to her does not work. I can no longer lure her to my bed and the Water Babies lies unfinished. I wonder what i should have done, and look at my own isolation within everything. I wonder. I wonder how other people experience happiness, and whether I understand this at all. Throughout my days this eats at me, eternally. Perhaps i should have phoned teachers at school more often, insisted on that hard-won appintment with professionals that she refused to attend. Perhaps i was <i>preoccupied.</i> Perhaps I missed the boat altogether.</div><div style="text-align: left;">She throws a fit at her grades, 89%, because she has not attained over 90%. I tell her this might be due to the fact that she did not sleep during her exams. She hisses at me.</div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
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</div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">My exhibition fell in the middle of term. The students gave me their third assessment task and I promptly threw all 149 of them into various baskets and threw myself into organising my exhibition. </div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">Paintings seemed to me unfinished, not properly considered, but they were hung. I thought they looked quite good. It was so peculiar to see them somewhere else than the Nest of Fish on my easels.</div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
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</div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">It is the strangest thing, an exhibition opening: I wish in some ways i could have levitated above it all and watched all the people who had come. Had a good look at them from my position up in the air. Marvelled at the existence of them.</div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">People that come to your openings are loved and treasured forever. Friendsips can be made and broken on opening night, honour among thieves and all that. But I smile to myself to think of the folks who came. I store all of them like dolls in my silver compotier, lovingly. I received such a thrill to see beloved persons from my past.</div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">The swimmers came, in hordes, surprising me on a cold dark night far away from home. They all came and stood in the space and all of us were underwater together. All of us.</div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">I was barely able to speak to so many people at once. I struggle to talk to people face to face one at a time sometimes, let alone everyone I know simultaneously, and so was sure to have offended at least <i>somebody</i>.</div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">I remember once going to a friend's show, at which I knew nobody and was not spoken to, and I hated her for a year. After driving an hour and a half through traffic, I was handed a price list, listened to her husband hustling for sales, and made my escape as soon as I could. This came back to me as I considered the handful of people I must have neglected to speak to. </div><div style="text-align: left;">Offended indeed was the friend whose invitation remained in my bag for want of a postcode till the show was finished. He will not return my apologetic emails.</div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">Oh well.</div><div style="text-align: left;">Folks ask, <i>Did you exhibtion go well?</i></div><div style="text-align: left;">and I reply that it did, it went very well. But there was a payoff. It was a hard-wrung success.</div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">One of the very best things was the presence of two of my favourite girls, <a href="http://eleanorfromthecommentbox.blogspot.com/">Eleanor</a> and <a href="http://edition-9.blogspot.com/">Ulrike</a>, like a dream come true. I am desperate to find my photo of Eleanor, but it continues to evade me. My laptop is a jumble of files in which it is hard to locate anything...but it is strange I cannot find the very photo I want the most.</div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">I did, however, find this picture of <a href="http://oldblack.wordpress.com/2010/05/13/i-dont-know-much-about-art-but/">Old Black</a>, who came, silently and left without speaking. I guessed who he was later, when looking through the pictures. He put a photo of me up on his blog. You might know him, but maybe not. he is very quiet, but it is interesting to read about his life in Sydney which is quite different to mine. Strangely he also works at the same place I do, but I have never seen him there.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Old Black, bless him</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
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</div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">For the rest of the term I continued to lecture, and for one day of the week I lectured for a straight six hours. The Faculty, in its administrative wisdom, also decided to schedule most of my year's allocation in the one semester, which meant I taught six courses instead of the usual three or four. For each of these 149 students, there were approximately eight more items per student each to assess and record. Those baskets of projects came back to haunt me with a vengeance. They took me two weeks, night and day to read and grade. Then I assessed all the painting, the sculptures, the digital media, the drawings, the essays, the journals. At one point I was so tired I was crawling along the piles of work on my knees because there just wasnt enough room on tables to place them. The projects were so deadly dull I would lose concentration often and have to stop.</div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">Naturally the shy student to whom I had given an extension seemed to appear a regular intevals, and I was too disinclined to send him off. The resident snake did not appear, presumably because of the cold, which is a pity, because I'd have liked the snake to poke its little head in and say hello instead of forced conversation with extended students.</div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
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</div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">Meanwhile, my son continued to fail at school. His new, expensive school.</div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">I am given a schedule to help with homework but he is as slippery as that snake and evades me. I arrive home from work and commence on the cooking, distracted by thoughts</div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><i>if I make a nice dinner everything will be alright</i></div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">As i chop and cut and juggle pans I try to ascertain what it is that my son must do. Usually his homework book is missing, or he spins me a tale about having none, or that he has done it. I hold his homework up above the saucepan and examine it for clues as he tells me that the teachers have told him how well he is doing, but this may be his fancy. He appears not to retain spoken words in his head,</div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"> like me, needing words to look at. I bark orders to learn his maths, write his history. He says he is working, listening, concetrating. we have im assessed at a professional outfit for such things. Sometimes when I arrive home from work he is still out in the surf. he returnd and I nag him, knife poised above yet more sliced onions, to get out his homework. I am trying yet another dish, I am chopping parsley, carrots, garlic. </div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><i>More often than not my dinners are barely eaten. Excuses, absences, picky eaters, late nights. I slide the food off the plates and into the bin.</i></div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">He contracts a virus and is laid in bed for ten days. I have to go to work and leave him with a pile of comforts. He falls further behind. I struggle to do my work, to teach, and to mark papers. I am not entitled to sick pay or leave. I receive letters about my own results, and do not read them for a week. I rush into the market and emerge with food, which I cart home and cook. Often it is uneaten. After that I keep on with my grading. I stare into space and more and more things fall into the chaos beneath my parisian cafe table. I have to phone teachers, sign detention slips, find socks, iron schoolshirts. Uniform demerits pile up on the kitchen bench, but not on my brain-table. I forget them. He receives even more. I iron faster, harder, higher. </div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Youre so distracted by your art</i></div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">My studio is unvisited, the brushes gone hard, my life conducted at a run: I submit the university grades six hours after the deadline, feeling numbed. My touch-pad-itis makes me slower than ever to type them in.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
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</div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">We travelled to the snowy mountains almost the moment I finished everything and sent it in just outside the deadline. No failures, lots of splendid results. I barely managed to pack, and the house, after six months, resembles the cafe table, except with real life dust and dirt. I call our cleaner, let go months ago, and she agrees for a large sum to clean it. I spend six hours cleaning, and for 24 hours, our house is able to breathe. We are going on a Family Holiday. I am going too. I will be there, rather than typing at home.</div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">We leave the house cleaned. First time in six months.</div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
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</div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">In the mountains we ski. I watch my daughter from a distance, sweeping down the mountain at astonishing speed with astonishing grace. She is the first one down the mountain, the snow untracked, and i see her from above, sitting on the chairlift. Folks exclaim and point at her, so spectacular is she.</div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">Then she catches an edge, and falls. As spectacularly as she skiied.</div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">She plummets twenty meters, a plume of snow rising behind her like a volcano. </div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">The mountain is silenced.When she stops, she is completely still.</div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">I watch her then, standing up and laughing, raising her arms above her head in victory.</div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">I watch her from a distance, from above, from the sky in my chairlift. If I catch her I am left standing in her wake, watching her tracks. People talk for the rest of the week about that girl on Mount Perisher, the first run down. </div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">Every day the sun beats down as if we are in another world, except for one morning when a cloud drift obscures everything and makes me giddy. Some hours I feel the sense of flying, of shooting along the frozen air in arcs, as if I am a star in the sea or a fish in the sky and I remember something of myself, of my body but I feel heavy and earthbound much of the time. Normally at this time of year the Ski lub holds its training sessions for the juniors, but seemingly they have been abandoned now that a good portion of them are on sports scholarships at Mountains Grammar. There, they ski and train every day.</div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">I drink Caprioskas in the bar and read in the afternoons. I fight with my daughter. she torments her brother and backchats me.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">My body aches from fallout with her.</div><div style="text-align: left;">There is not enough snow to get to the other side of the mountain, </div><div style="text-align: left;">and many trails are closed. Rocks and grass protrude in places.</div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">This time last year I was on my way to Venice.</div><div style="text-align: left;">The thought makes me groan unbecomingly.</div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
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</div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">On a day such as today the ocean floor seems untroubled by anything but its own large watery movements. No light plays in flickering lines, nothing is suspended in the water, no shadows, no weed and no creatures. There is no wind and little light at all, in the sky above the thick violet banks of liquid cloud flow from deep in the flatlands until, reaching the edge of the country and meeting the sea, they fall like waves from the sky, unruffled, smooth, oppressive. The water is a smoky turquoise, to watch the ocean floor so pale and quiet.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">It is like looking through dark glass. </div><div style="text-align: left;">I am swimming with my friend Mal, with whom I swam through the cold winter of 1993 with the furled bud of my girl still stored inside me. we remeber it. We agree, yes, that winter was an icy one and the seapool got down to 10 degrees, but i felt nothing, warmed as I was by the presence of that girl and a network of bloodvessels.</div><div style="text-align: left;">On such a dark still day it was good to head to the deep still water with my old friend. A solitary group of bream scatter as we glide silently over them, heading towards the open sea.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
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</div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">Just past the break where the water became that green glass colour, the sea gave me a very hard and unexpected slap. I pretended it didn't hurt, righted myself and pushed on, without saying a word.</div></div>fifihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06946945635726214503noreply@blogger.com26tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2145558051219626249.post-33167505537731074092010-06-08T09:20:00.002+10:002010-06-08T13:52:47.738+10:00In which the fish speaks on her exhibition and two small scraps of home<div style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"></span></i><br />
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<i><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">The fish has been unable to write:</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">Perhaps there are still folks who call by this quiet place, and, finding it empty, move on?</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">So here are some times in the </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">life of the fish, in the event I can induce you to stay a moment.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><b><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;">It was a rather big job to suddenly have to empty out my nest</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYLOJEq9wBFzoEoReD6PVdO6cA2Qd8Otc9bZDSXBSkDW2d6G1gAn-jYPDqfHK-dtVw7w9YXVkxZdjmFri9VvzmNytZTxSfHmdLU9RbvGy4jO-ugO3mRzIEJPfWt4u5yqaZN2-Tiobfh8I/s1600/paintings+lined+up.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmEbtcB8dFLbjCbCUJIFGHsQu_y894eisiVZkRiTc6MK9Ze7Q-oWA82LJQhYsv1NthAJTOLuh0oT7x3IJ2DnTA1sIQhRRjwGPQ6Zb6ucEoq1IgJWiG-HcSIpCTNug0eKUPTHaY1Y-lsTE/s1600/truck.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmEbtcB8dFLbjCbCUJIFGHsQu_y894eisiVZkRiTc6MK9Ze7Q-oWA82LJQhYsv1NthAJTOLuh0oT7x3IJ2DnTA1sIQhRRjwGPQ6Zb6ucEoq1IgJWiG-HcSIpCTNug0eKUPTHaY1Y-lsTE/s320/truck.jpg" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;">and take it somewhere new</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigiaovJrdth3ztg5kpbIwmCFSEDWLdUfiHK06NnVcBkrJkp7EPUgsdlqPit6-fEa1BXSepzQVwKNoTiWBBsXvhZkewFJE3zjmVGhWxv7dk1vS7lx8AP8zgrwjPVkkCuvFXMlo-FHK6WmQ/s1600/ladder.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigiaovJrdth3ztg5kpbIwmCFSEDWLdUfiHK06NnVcBkrJkp7EPUgsdlqPit6-fEa1BXSepzQVwKNoTiWBBsXvhZkewFJE3zjmVGhWxv7dk1vS7lx8AP8zgrwjPVkkCuvFXMlo-FHK6WmQ/s320/ladder.jpg" /></a><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;">and hang it up, all in the light rather than in stacks around the wall.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"> </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikPFrUTgZZtGfc7KZK8168T0VSr-D-_KThr5DCQt5wkuD-RIFFAAO31lXIP2lgKtz0oEKAHXIpP_alkSDJqgXv0SrYFZ5PiZ6mlsB3zVJMgxSWgLSPHhUEMOq9fJVRTahtAvYlwAFjB6o/s1600/gallery1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikPFrUTgZZtGfc7KZK8168T0VSr-D-_KThr5DCQt5wkuD-RIFFAAO31lXIP2lgKtz0oEKAHXIpP_alkSDJqgXv0SrYFZ5PiZ6mlsB3zVJMgxSWgLSPHhUEMOq9fJVRTahtAvYlwAFjB6o/s320/gallery1.jpg" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;">after two days it was nearly done.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglfjoIfXEGbKun4g84fx27J37gXV7ptzYpR10YSfK8scdWb1unc9pfNWpz0wzi-50bfknN5TPuX_4ZHCiiJRjy9OFJp2c7or_ViZ80rSHSr6iHL8FQLuIN37QnenGszEBdXIoToAF77_g/s1600/dogs.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglfjoIfXEGbKun4g84fx27J37gXV7ptzYpR10YSfK8scdWb1unc9pfNWpz0wzi-50bfknN5TPuX_4ZHCiiJRjy9OFJp2c7or_ViZ80rSHSr6iHL8FQLuIN37QnenGszEBdXIoToAF77_g/s320/dogs.jpg" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;">Upon which a herd of dogs raced in to see what was going on.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;">Either that or they knew there as a fish in the vicinity: you know what dogs are like.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><i><b>Domestics (1)</b></i></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><i><br />
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</i></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;">Upon receiving a note such as this one that I was given </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">one might be forgiven for puzzlement.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Unless you knew that the writer of the note</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">had been reading the Aberdeen Bestiary</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">and you knew it meant "good luck mum"</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">in an obscur and little-known dialect.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">The above author also penned the following advice</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhK60HPIlglO1mj21lRDnHvVuXvzjHgXOtqndERdXaRDlM7erQcq_1Wk_oJznz_gilBtdOoO9W1Ejk5mSA3VkShJVEWhsoy0-Y1WBsfy29NGrwAI1h0pn2xd7_aXIcD9BoWo30wiNA_VG4/s1600/spirit.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhK60HPIlglO1mj21lRDnHvVuXvzjHgXOtqndERdXaRDlM7erQcq_1Wk_oJznz_gilBtdOoO9W1Ejk5mSA3VkShJVEWhsoy0-Y1WBsfy29NGrwAI1h0pn2xd7_aXIcD9BoWo30wiNA_VG4/s320/spirit.jpg" /></a><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">To</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Let you spirit Sore</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i>I will try my best...</i></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><i>Exhibition (2)</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5EgKVhUDZ_kf7x9X-H7LaJj15sod5iV-zAzo90yN5YRE6j2YeEF4vFmoQUHFBBBn5R8wX9UTk7h4oxvrsdQFLSiscpFxMTGYdhdbG5Fda6N0iCvm56A0z2n_a2UqjRUctIBL7VuOUAHk/s1600/showdiv+and+con+sml.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5EgKVhUDZ_kf7x9X-H7LaJj15sod5iV-zAzo90yN5YRE6j2YeEF4vFmoQUHFBBBn5R8wX9UTk7h4oxvrsdQFLSiscpFxMTGYdhdbG5Fda6N0iCvm56A0z2n_a2UqjRUctIBL7VuOUAHk/s320/showdiv+and+con+sml.jpg" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">At last the fish has hung the paintings up on the wall</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">in the sea-grotto</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">with the shiny white floor.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">And look, someone has come early.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"> </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVAy6DSFjdR97UKk6pCl3VyuS-a4ykhG0op0ZADJdXbBzhMXA4Zzk8JD7zbYYTqQOk8AWNHRAI9vRqUJKpq79oqXumyPTIS_h1uIvEfEEGp0zF-h494NXqkSKUwEECAvtvBVOlDM7bOc4/s1600/show+conmesmall.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVAy6DSFjdR97UKk6pCl3VyuS-a4ykhG0op0ZADJdXbBzhMXA4Zzk8JD7zbYYTqQOk8AWNHRAI9vRqUJKpq79oqXumyPTIS_h1uIvEfEEGp0zF-h494NXqkSKUwEECAvtvBVOlDM7bOc4/s320/show+conmesmall.jpg" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;">It's Constantine.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigV7ByowC5Zw-ECd_llaI2XbgIi4-feVRkF5C-JeqUEcVSD6OYdmPn_7ai5OHZ_fuHHzz1yqGjB-HaCP9PhyphenhyphenzLHyWgtbrJPfLK2BAHyLlX1Z-wNe5sspOubUgnOcm09RDqMUZdDePtgXs/s1600/emr+opening.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigV7ByowC5Zw-ECd_llaI2XbgIi4-feVRkF5C-JeqUEcVSD6OYdmPn_7ai5OHZ_fuHHzz1yqGjB-HaCP9PhyphenhyphenzLHyWgtbrJPfLK2BAHyLlX1Z-wNe5sspOubUgnOcm09RDqMUZdDePtgXs/s320/emr+opening.jpg" /></a></div> </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">Here is Constantine and the fish about a century ago</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">at another of the fish's exhibition openings</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">only about 200m away from where this years one is held.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">My, we look different.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">Well the fish does. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">Annoyingly, Constantine does not.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7aD63qgGUrtMTvozc1VJ54kapgTCT0Tz9GSlxsVXVeWrX5IBlt2m8jr1Ekv_YK04VzzyT0cjJv04TbVDw7ULUZ7si7B6646Js2l2tBQ7AS9AsroWQimyMvXdArLQGqNgLio1RKgHrthQ/s1600/redfern.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7aD63qgGUrtMTvozc1VJ54kapgTCT0Tz9GSlxsVXVeWrX5IBlt2m8jr1Ekv_YK04VzzyT0cjJv04TbVDw7ULUZ7si7B6646Js2l2tBQ7AS9AsroWQimyMvXdArLQGqNgLio1RKgHrthQ/s320/redfern.jpg" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">Here is a local who makes the fish laugh, and on doing so, laughs himself.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">So we all laugh loudly and it rings in the grotto. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">Even Div laughs out there in the street.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgpwR1_p2rcovbWr0SalI4Rs7qJZS6RhqjdT3IF-RpxxPG2k4pZVx6k5aU7c_dbJf-jHX_7OV8OHyfkmR_8zgYtTL6ivt67cxRY1WXxZ-PEDOOX_RL_P5Hhs14qc_1shT1w9mHdCL9yCA/s1600/con+and+i.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgpwR1_p2rcovbWr0SalI4Rs7qJZS6RhqjdT3IF-RpxxPG2k4pZVx6k5aU7c_dbJf-jHX_7OV8OHyfkmR_8zgYtTL6ivt67cxRY1WXxZ-PEDOOX_RL_P5Hhs14qc_1shT1w9mHdCL9yCA/s320/con+and+i.jpg" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;">and it continues.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;">The hour before a show opens is not much fun. It is usually as quiet and scary as anything you can imagine.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;">I m glad Div and Con have come early. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;">But Div is not good on advising me on how to do my hair.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;">It gets dark</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;">And the fish swims in the grotto</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;">and waits for guests to arrive.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzXwMtc0awgyuFOyy8JhXOPEu59FNnn6uaiEFOSJ_KkJM_CpwD3aPhb3p-g0-bKY4ZtrHIWlskWi58IAlEx_Ongt6VgG-S3Y9RzCNxVzyxju-GIhaxRCE016rWfv8kqnWXBt9xZhBsG_E/s1600/grotto.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzXwMtc0awgyuFOyy8JhXOPEu59FNnn6uaiEFOSJ_KkJM_CpwD3aPhb3p-g0-bKY4ZtrHIWlskWi58IAlEx_Ongt6VgG-S3Y9RzCNxVzyxju-GIhaxRCE016rWfv8kqnWXBt9xZhBsG_E/s320/grotto.jpg" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;">*</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><br />
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<i><b>Domestics</b><b> (2)</b></i><br />
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My daughter has issues at present. </div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;">She is 16.</div><div style="text-align: center;">It seems she has often has issues</div><div style="text-align: center;"> but at the moment, it is quite distressing.</div><div style="text-align: center;">I develop anxiety pains at times like this,</div><div style="text-align: center;">when things seem to overwhelm me.</div><div style="text-align: center;">She seemed so distressed it got me wondering</div><div style="text-align: center;">what I would have done if she were a small girl.</div><div style="text-align: center;">In fact I looked at a photo of her as a little gitl and wondered where on earth </div><div style="text-align: center;">her baby face had got to, but there you go.</div><div style="text-align: center;">If she were small I would have cuddled her up in bed with a story.</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;">So that is what I have done, cuddled her up in bed with a story, </div><div style="text-align: center;">which means I have to go to bed early and I bundle her up in my bed </div><div style="text-align: center;">and I read to her. I cram her and her puffy tear stained face and her smeary make up </div><div style="text-align: center;">and her big limbs into my bed and give her a bit of a pat on the back for a while and then read.</div><div style="text-align: center;">She thinks its very funny, and she thinks the story is <i>boring</i>.</div><div style="text-align: center;">But I pin her down tightly and I read a chapter of The Water Babies every night. </div><div style="text-align: center;">Persistently.</div><div style="text-align: center;">She falls asleep very quickly, in fact, I had to prise open one of her eyeballs last night and hold up the book closely</div><div style="text-align: center;">because she was going to miss the picture of Tom</div><div style="text-align: center;"> with the beautiful Water Fairy. </div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;">Already she looks a lot better.</div><div style="text-align: center;">In fact she laughed when I marched into her room, turned off her computer </div><div style="text-align: center;">and said <i>story time</i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i></i> instead of screaming at me, and she trotted on into my bed.</div><div style="text-align: center;">and curled up ready for the book.<br />
She later said it was the most<br />
silly story ever.<br />
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<br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifcRhzmTexsVy5JJlAhEW8SsAZ92w0yp5a9m6jk_VRhyphenhyphent9tkpROHfJZ-nJoefoDoU40P832ebx7tKq-XVTYcSvXHGlCPic-QWERwQtlZUBXe1SoSyxRob8DSVYzqxU215FhpzG9ppTR0M/s1600/photo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifcRhzmTexsVy5JJlAhEW8SsAZ92w0yp5a9m6jk_VRhyphenhyphent9tkpROHfJZ-nJoefoDoU40P832ebx7tKq-XVTYcSvXHGlCPic-QWERwQtlZUBXe1SoSyxRob8DSVYzqxU215FhpzG9ppTR0M/s320/photo.jpg" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">but the cats thought this was a grand idea too.</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;">Her father does not like this at all.</div><div style="text-align: center;">He has been banished to her bed</div><div style="text-align: center;">and his feet get tangled in her wrought iron bedstead.</div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>But look</i></div><div style="text-align: center;">I say,</div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>You can see the improvement.</i></div><div style="text-align: center;">Indeed, she looks much better, with roses in her cheeks and </div><div style="text-align: center;">at least I know she is not on chat all night</div><div style="text-align: center;">or crying</div><div style="text-align: center;">till after midnight.</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;">Her father says</div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>I think I'll have to get her a bigger bed.</i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><br />
</i></div><div style="text-align: center;">I say</div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Good idea.</i><br />
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<i><b>Sea</b></i><br />
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and all the while<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsoGv5d_ayrIMuDDIfXaeqj90VpLfuk6xp9eleghZwCgkcsNtQHbXfbjXWR2QGVIS6K-vAadkwCpW2WghyQPkfYFd9Xi3Yn3bOWIO29oGm3jgU8Tq0fLjdBekaXPDrCvEBnshkyVAuky4/s1600/curlcurl2" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsoGv5d_ayrIMuDDIfXaeqj90VpLfuk6xp9eleghZwCgkcsNtQHbXfbjXWR2QGVIS6K-vAadkwCpW2WghyQPkfYFd9Xi3Yn3bOWIO29oGm3jgU8Tq0fLjdBekaXPDrCvEBnshkyVAuky4/s320/curlcurl2" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">the fish swims in the vasty ocean:</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">where the fish belongs.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
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</i></b></div>fifihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06946945635726214503noreply@blogger.com29tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2145558051219626249.post-22306434918348943102010-05-12T07:38:00.000+10:002010-05-12T07:38:50.662+10:00in which this fish is swimming as hard as she can<div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHBe0gV-xIapYPem4cAJQSK0P3akAZl074OhMcRnHuz7jJb40FH8cpSssVT0CnA4Sd5t7lBGR6pQj4D_1hNzs4rGns-H_nJzpUAqujbveyNecRb_kXFn-QWJbj80E0i9SsxKZpX6gIm-g/s1600/%5Enest3.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHBe0gV-xIapYPem4cAJQSK0P3akAZl074OhMcRnHuz7jJb40FH8cpSssVT0CnA4Sd5t7lBGR6pQj4D_1hNzs4rGns-H_nJzpUAqujbveyNecRb_kXFn-QWJbj80E0i9SsxKZpX6gIm-g/s320/%5Enest3.JPG" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;">and fixing pictures to walls,</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;">and hoping to see lots of you</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;">very very soon.</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWzmfLl4rlxYiAHIxEoT18UNqBzo2y73vqbzS64w_ULOjElFIHuQWVogv-jO_jkg3aBm08wnOKJGL5IXZjdh3AKsv3Cofj2oM7kYZuiHvCejAw_lGvHlxX0Yl4oxoEGpyLW1omZKeI5a4/s1600/%5Enest2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWzmfLl4rlxYiAHIxEoT18UNqBzo2y73vqbzS64w_ULOjElFIHuQWVogv-jO_jkg3aBm08wnOKJGL5IXZjdh3AKsv3Cofj2oM7kYZuiHvCejAw_lGvHlxX0Yl4oxoEGpyLW1omZKeI5a4/s320/%5Enest2.JPG" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: center;">Thank you all of you for your good wishes, and </div><div style="text-align: center;">those of you coming tonight</div><div style="text-align: center;">I look forward to seeing you</div><div style="text-align: center;">very much.</div>fifihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06946945635726214503noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2145558051219626249.post-73548259773085327982010-04-18T13:48:00.000+10:002010-04-18T13:48:13.998+10:00In which the fish is on the wall<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSyO-o0qH_Ja0ngFF4MHpiSYmGRQdjmbSCu2qMwfmWOGy5N1_70RcqIMRQrXs3v_OocrJudH0J-B4KikPS535ffX1N3esMoyfOVfdBBRtK0Q3Msa6P1Q3YcAMCA22eGihmMHlZ5iDhm-E/s1600/red+dress+floating.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSyO-o0qH_Ja0ngFF4MHpiSYmGRQdjmbSCu2qMwfmWOGy5N1_70RcqIMRQrXs3v_OocrJudH0J-B4KikPS535ffX1N3esMoyfOVfdBBRtK0Q3Msa6P1Q3YcAMCA22eGihmMHlZ5iDhm-E/s320/red+dress+floating.jpg" /></a></div><br />
<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">Oh, the fish has been busy, yes she has. Days are a blur. She drowns in things other than the ocean.</div><br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">If you would like to come to my exhibition, please email me and I will send you an invitation. </div><div style="text-align: center;">It begins on the 12th of May.</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div>fifihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06946945635726214503noreply@blogger.com20tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2145558051219626249.post-54866365121346968912010-04-03T08:58:00.000+11:002010-04-03T08:58:07.470+11:00the fish lately<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">The life of the fish has been caught up in a strange and turbulent tide.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> Here are some fragments of it, the bits that I can navigate quite well, </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">for there are other parts that I cannot.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4C_xdeigz6PP6hAA_ST89SwxHTzZv9u7SlhOyoHlRYEWBh2BeUF-9JDVBKUI7xOLe06vOMX9VP6RxHClvM6PKluObNAFyhEA5HtgiRIBRUfwVlsjB92_QiRv-kciW1NowelNa-y3IVsU/s1600/~~~~cake+13.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4C_xdeigz6PP6hAA_ST89SwxHTzZv9u7SlhOyoHlRYEWBh2BeUF-9JDVBKUI7xOLe06vOMX9VP6RxHClvM6PKluObNAFyhEA5HtgiRIBRUfwVlsjB92_QiRv-kciW1NowelNa-y3IVsU/s320/~~~~cake+13.jpg" /></a></div>fifihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06946945635726214503noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2145558051219626249.post-90212942281927665572010-04-03T06:53:00.001+11:002010-04-03T09:18:25.878+11:00the fish at nine<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">For <a href="http://in-this.blogspot.com/">Isabelle</a>, and her flowers</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
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</div> What was I like when I was nine?<br />
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I lived in the beachside suburb of Merewether, in Newcastle. In a white timber house with a bay window and a typical coastal backyard with tough saltproof grass, and terrifying prickly pear over the fence. Lined up along the silvered wood of the paling fence were the white skeletons of coral and shells, collected over decades. When it was hot, the saltbush smelt like blackberry, and shells peered up from the sandy soil, no matter where you looked, there would always be one or two, even in the grass along the flat pathways to school. My mother used to pull snails off the daisies and drop them into a jar of salt to kill them: I remember having hysterics, and her laughing. I still think it is cruel and nasty.<br />
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My brother was younger, and I played with him when I emerged from my reading, but he was pliable and a bit too complicit. I bored with him easily, even though he was sweet enough. Sometimes we fought. One time we fought like the two cats of Kilkenny <i>in public</i> and my mother never recovered. Lots of hair pulling and slapping: she was so mortified I thought she would abandon us, but no, she was stuck with us.<br />
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My best friend was Lisa, who was pretty with green eyes and gleaming blond hair. She was very popular, and I was always amazed at her loyalty to me, so quiet and easily bewildered. Once I ran to the teacher to tell on someone who had dropped a paper at lunch, just so I could be rid of her and have Lisa to myself. My other favourite was Alice, who had large, pale blue dreamy eyes and long white plaits with ribbons, like a fairy person. She still looks like that.<br />
Lisa married a very rich Italian lawyer. He was my landlord when I was at art school. Even later, her daughters turned up in my class at the posh school I worked at as an art teacher.<br />
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<br />
But me, at nine.<br />
I was given a watch for my birthday, but I really think I could not tell the time, even then, because time was an abstract concept of which I had no grasp. Time meant nothing.<br />
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I loved Classical Mythology with a passion.<br />
I preferred the Greek to the Roman, and my favourite was Persephone. Thanks to Volume 4 of Richards' Topical Encyclopedia, which I stole from my Grandma and still have, I actually believed the illustrations were photographs. They were, in fact black, and white reproductions of paintings by the likes of Ingres and Bougereau, and convinced me utterly of the truth behind these stories.<br />
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I loved my Derwent Pencils, their scent, their rich colours with names like Imperial Purple, Prussian Blue, Spring Green, Crimson Lake. I used them incessantly, going into raptures at the experience of using one freshly sharpened, or shading two colours together.<br />
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After school, I was only allowed to go to the beach if I was with with Lisa. Never alone. We used to go to the secret beach and find huge abalone shells, the likes of which I never see today. They looked so ugly from the outside, but their inner secret rainbows were so beautiful. I coveted the colossal shell that Lisa spied first one day, it would have covered my whole face. The biggest abalone I have found in recent times on my morning walk on the beach was almost the size of my ear, and usually they are much smaller.<br />
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Lisa and I used to swim in the ocean pool, silently, with only our eyes and nose above water level. We would noiselessly swim to the green net bags tied to the side by the fishermen and unpick the knots with our nimble fingers.<br />
Out would swim whiting, bream and blackfish, freed from their bonds, and away we would all swim, fish and children, the silent liberators. We would and slip up and over into the surf, unseen, the fish would head for the safety of the dark shadows until the tide came up. The Merewether Baths are the largest ocean baths in the whole wide world.<br />
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At school they were strict with uniform and one day I wore pink underpants instead of regulation Navy Blue. I was ordered off the monkey bars, and had to play alone. At home I was always occupied with drawing, or books. I read endlessly, setting the stories in the coves along the beach with their towering darkness and sandy inlets: Ivan Southall, for example.<br />
I went years later to that beach and was stupefied to note how small and low it seemed.<br />
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<br />
So, Isabelle, myself at nine?<br />
Living in my imagination, swimming in the sea, collecting shells, setting free the fish, making up stories, drawing coloured pictures...<br />
Sounds very much like...me!<br />
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</span></span></div>fifihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06946945635726214503noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2145558051219626249.post-75408822310517555262010-02-14T21:36:00.003+11:002010-02-15T07:20:58.708+11:00in which the sky is sea, and the sea is a basket of sticks.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRvsJExBI1HixSGGSp9Va0gjgWGb-7tU0izAjFGqjc62RzVhM9nUY_eVKipqULCu022zwX2zScICBhjT3apdU3zVwDl4VNQnUs0ej7IFvaB6XrQXLjERisN0bJDTigtoD6eHXI4VIgHsc/s1600-h/cumulus.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRvsJExBI1HixSGGSp9Va0gjgWGb-7tU0izAjFGqjc62RzVhM9nUY_eVKipqULCu022zwX2zScICBhjT3apdU3zVwDl4VNQnUs0ej7IFvaB6XrQXLjERisN0bJDTigtoD6eHXI4VIgHsc/s320/cumulus.jpg" /></span></span></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><br />
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</span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;">Solidity:</span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;">There is no such thing.</span></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;">Even our bones are merely clever things that seem to hold us up through sheer belief. Fluted columns as light as bird breath. Things which seemed solid become inevitably swept away, washed away by time. Even time itself seems completely abstract.</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;">Nothing is forever.</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;">When I was small I had such faith in things, in objects, in structures, in the slow and steady march of time. Now I just marvel at my own tenacity in hanging on to beliefs at all. Babies disappear and become complete other persons. Persons disappear altogether. A place evolves into somewhere unknown. Concrete things just melt away. Lose their meaning.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;">The sky is low today, and it showers at regular intervals in long wet breaths. The sea has pushed the sand into a hump, so that the beach stretches out a long way, rising in a long low incline then falling away steeply at the waters' edge. When the tide recedes, small lakes are left in the hollow of the sand. Here, small children sit and dig and play. I watch a father carefully construct a dam, his backside in the air, his small daughter, in four shades of pink, throws her spadeful of wet sand at the very moment he raises his head.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;">My daughter is on patrol. She watches the edge of the water with pale eyes, her hair in long wet strands from the wet air and the salt. The sea lifts itself up, and she narrows her eyes, watching and waiting. New lifeguards chatter excitedly around her; they have just passed their exam. There are so many of them, all eager to be watching, waiting, prowling at the edge of the ocean in brand-new yellow and red. They stand about with their hair in sheets, sand spattered on the backs of their legs. My daughter has removed her emergency toned lifeguard clothes, and hovers, pale skinned, in blue, silent and barely visible. Yet the small children follow in her shadow when she swims, then they follow her out again, like little doctor-fish. They sit nearby, cross legged. She moves, and they move with her. Looking at her in her blue club costume, I can almost glimpse her as a tiny girl, in the smaller version. Same colours, new girl.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;">It is warm and inky. Eveyone sits on the rain-pocked sand happily, playing in the tidal puddles, in the strange light. I can smell the base note of salt and the wetness of the sand in the warm air.</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;">The sea beats itself on the steep incline of sand at low tide, snarling in a froth of flung sand like a serpent flicking its tail in its sleep. Beyond this, it is smooth between the sets of waves. Knots of people negotiate the wild rhythms at the edge, reluctant to step into the deep.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;">I wonder about the things I hang onto, I wonder about the things that disappear and I dont even notice.</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;">I count the things which remain as a constant, forming a rhythm to my life and thoughts. Something that bundles me together, me, creature of salt and blood and bones and hair, all too ready to wash away. Dissolve.</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;">The hard sloping bank of sand is pleasant to walk on and the low sky like dark watercolour seeping into the air just above my head. I enter the water, bracing myself for the onslaught, trying to look nonchalant, my goggles around my neck.</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;">I have to drop quickly to the sandy floor as a nasty cracking wave curls swiftly out of nowhere, and I am immediately blasted with sand. Before I have time to so much as brush it from my face, I am forced to commando-roll beneath another two before I escape along the bottom and dart out across the deep.</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;">Still the waves dance their vigorous waltz.</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;">It is so dark beneath the blanket of wet inky sky that the ocean floor is rendered a dark green. It is cloudy from the rains, and shapes shift beneath me, yet the water feels like soft warm silk: so seductive, so beautiful, achingly alluring. Out here I am washed clean of sand, am nervously eyeing the shadows far below where indistinct swarms of fish move about in the swirl. The summer sea is filled with small animalcules, little lively swimming things, blue sea lizards. Transparent, spent carapace, small, soft and shaped like clawed hands drift and float, wave like tiny fingers. Tiny unseen creatures hover and dance. Nestle near to my skin, preparing to leave their constellation of pink marks on my body. My own body, without a carapace, without a bunch of claws, without a cloudy bag of ink to expel.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;">All are netted into my swimming costume, a harvest of sorts. I move through this lively soup like a whale shark on Ningaloo, sifting the water. Only a thin skin separates my inner body from my outer, the sea as warm as my blood, too warm to seize my head by the temples and knock sense in to my brain. Too warm to enliven my slow and bedevilled dreams. I feel as if I move slowly and fill myelf with a mad bevy of microscopic monsters.</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;">It has rained so much that the lagoon has burst its banks, and leaves swirl past me. Casuarina needles poke at me, needle my arms. Large brown eucalyptus leaves flap past like huge moths in the dark green waters. The sea is laughing quietly to itself, like some demented thing, toying with folks at the edge and flinging them about. I keep silent and as still as possible, gliding through the depths, trying not to stare, pop-eyed at every thing that moves, trying not to shudder at the sensation of the clouds of casuarina needles, the flapping moth leaves. The dark indigo shadows</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;">When the lagoon bursts into the ocean it carves a huge river into the sand. Out of the dark the water rushes, pale blue in the blackness of a rainy night, and empties into the sea. In the morning there are just the mudflats, inspected by a team of concerned pelican, walking seriously from puddle to puddle, inspecting the flat chocolatey silt with their beaks. All the lagoon dwellers have been expelled into the sea: tortoises, mullet, plovers, flushed from the rushes and the reeds at the foot of the casuarinas. Sometimes ducks and their ducklings, their striped fluff spiked by a sea-dunking, scooped up in cupped hands quickly and saved from the waves.</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;">Along the shore lie reeds in bundles, a handful facing one way, the next another, all along. Tennis balls, odd shoes. Strange things knitted along the edge of the sea.</span></span><br />
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</span></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;">Now the sea has gathered everything, the lagoon contents, and fashioned a kind of floating raft of rushes, pointing this way and that, woven in between with small pieces of bark, pine needles, branches, and has placed me in the middle like some archetypal foundling. Jostled among the flotsam and the creepy jabbing reeds.</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><br />
</span></span><br />
<i><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;">Enough</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;">, I say,</span></span><br />
<i><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;">I cant stand you today. </span></span></i><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><br />
</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;">And I make some mutter about summer water, how the soft silkiness of it is so beguiling, but just so unrewarding. And so populous. How I am bedecked with a tiny bestiary and a collection of lagoon items. How nasty the prickling of casuarina needles, the prickling of tiny things.</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;">And I am unashamed to say it, and rush to the edge, prepared for by sandblasting, prepared to be knocked this way and that, to drop to my belly and let the nasty flapping curl of snad filled water pass above me.</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><br />
</span></span><br />
<i><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;">I can't bear you today.</span></span></i><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><br />
</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;">I look up from my raft of rushes, poked this way and that incessantly by pieces of rush and reed, and the world has changed again, like the magic faraway tree. Folks have shifted, children have grown, the sky has fallen and there are trees in the sea.</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><br />
</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><br />
</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;">There is only one constant in this world of flux, there is only one thing. Endless. Constantly changing, but always there. I shall enter its summer self, among the frenzy of seaweed bits and mad swarms of fish, its raft of needling rushes and the red sand which tosses in plumes beneath the sudden violet storms. I shall spread my arms and lie on my back, watch the cumulus clouds pile up on the horizon, and the sea will say</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><br />
</span></span><br />
<i><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;">shh shh shh!</span></span></i><br />
<i><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><br />
</span></span> </i><br />
<i><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;">such utter nonsense you always speak:</span></span></i><br />
<i><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><br />
</span></span> </i><br />
<i><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;">shh shh shh!</span></span></i><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><br />
</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;">and as it throw one last spray of sand on to the backs of my sorry legs it shouts again:</span></span><br />
<i><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><br />
</span></span> </i><br />
<i><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;">Nonsense!</span></span></i>fifihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06946945635726214503noreply@blogger.com24tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2145558051219626249.post-27645692052738787332010-01-26T12:40:00.002+11:002021-01-28T15:21:10.579+11:00on drowning<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiH3x5bx7D_82PTQGE_y-v552OWbatsWftNHmwUK5ihQEreb-uw5BJUu2dEJ0CtE862ObQfa-Ru5eJrtr7cn7VZibQAW89mVkg4OpdDkB_HsUcse0uXhwyOrFGGpTf3MJ-uIjMOlsjloyQ/s1600-h/PC150974.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiH3x5bx7D_82PTQGE_y-v552OWbatsWftNHmwUK5ihQEreb-uw5BJUu2dEJ0CtE862ObQfa-Ru5eJrtr7cn7VZibQAW89mVkg4OpdDkB_HsUcse0uXhwyOrFGGpTf3MJ-uIjMOlsjloyQ/s320/PC150974.JPG" /></a><br />
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I have spent the last two years seriously considering the notion of drowning.<br />
I have made pictures of it, read about it, considered it in cultural terms, in aesthetic terms. How drowning is considered a feminine death, a womanly thing. The relationship of madness and drowning.<br /><br />
But the reality of drowning here and now, in the real world, intrudes upon my considerations. The secret truth of drowning, not the paintings of Ophelia, of female martyrs, the literary drownings of Edna Pontellier, of Maggie Tulliver. The truth is it is men who drown, men who overestimate their capabilities, who are reckless.<br />
Four people have drowned this week, three men and one woman. Three of whom went in to retrieve children, three of them on unpatrolled beaches.</span><br />
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I swim in rips. I swim when the beach is closed, I swim when the surf is outrageously huge. I can do that, because I know intimately every breath the ocean, here in my small stretch, will take. I know each bump and runnel of sand beneath. Every artery of pulling water. I have competed in marathons swims of up to 10 kilometers. I have swum in the ocean every day for at least twenty years.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Quicksand;"><br />
Even so, I rarely swim at unpatrolled beaches and when I do it is usually at a very shallow depth. Unknown waters make me nervous, edgy. Who knows what secret rips lie beneath? what unmet creatures? If I swim I wear fins, in case I need to sprint to shore. I holiday at a remote and lonely beach, where the cicadas are shrill and the dry heat bites, and I am always cautious. Dolphins once herded me to shore when I set off to do a swim along the beach. They circled me and drove me in until I was knee deep.<br />
<br />Dolphins, as benign as they are, are still colossal great mammals, dark and sleek. To have them suddenly appear at eye level is disconcerting at the very least: a fin is a fin at half a meter away. To have a whole <i>bunch</i> of them appear and shuffle you to shore is alarming, and I wonder to this day whether it was a shark they were herding me away from, or their babies. The pod is a familiar sight at that beach, and they delight in catching waves next to surfers. As I said, it is vastly different to see dolphins from the relative safety of a board from seeing one eye to eye with no warning. With nothing between you.<br />
<br />I think of that pod often, the way they appeared, how huge they looked, how close they came and how insistently they urged me to the shallows before departing themselves back to the deep. It was an overcast day, and few people were around. The water, as is usual up there, was the temperature of bathwater, and full of fish. I was swimming parallel to the shore, in not too deep water, nervously trying to concentrate on my stroke, when the dolphins appeared and sent me out. I remember standing knee deep in the surf, incredulous at their cheek.<br />
There was a shark the next day, though to be sure, there are always sharks. </span><br />
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<br /><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Quicksand; font-size: medium;">It only takes twelve seconds to drown.</span></h3><div><span style="font-family: Quicksand;">
I remember one time leaping over rockpools so I could reach three five-year-olds who, washing their feet, had spilled into one of the waterholes were drifting in the rip. </span><div><span style="font-family: Quicksand;">Drifting very quickly. Nonchalantly, the sea had reached a hand and hooked the children to itself.<br />
<br />
It is hard to hold three children at once, the thing is to make it a game. A chain, holding hands <i>hold tight, children ring a ring a rosy ocean in your nosy</i><br />
Twelve seconds. </span><div><span style="font-family: Quicksand;">The lifeguard had gone home.</span><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Quicksand;">The pull of the ocean against their small hollow chests. The weight of them, needing strength to pull them in, this little chain of bodies, laughing. Had the water been even two inches deeper when I reached them, I would have lost them to the muscled pull of the ocean. Heard the crack of heavy water against frail clavicle, and even frailer lungs.</span><br /><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjT7AvHMWh-mfhTUMGkI57YC7VnShvIKaAd_sxgtXTjJ-HylYsIcL6hiW8gSxknJ9czaU6NAAKk0S5ER_IqRxUXamc_RUCYxyYrsAXK0ysvv7vazAB_p4Y-eMrEz4j8OGQjVWfg2dVSj-c/s1600-h/P6060167.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjT7AvHMWh-mfhTUMGkI57YC7VnShvIKaAd_sxgtXTjJ-HylYsIcL6hiW8gSxknJ9czaU6NAAKk0S5ER_IqRxUXamc_RUCYxyYrsAXK0ysvv7vazAB_p4Y-eMrEz4j8OGQjVWfg2dVSj-c/s320/P6060167.JPG" /></a><br />
</div><br /><br /></div><div><br /><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Quicksand;">Once when I was sixteen, </span></h3><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Quicksand;">I was surfing at an out of town beach with my then beloved. </span></div></div><div><span style="font-family: Quicksand;">The wetsuit he gave me to wear was archaic, and meant for a boy. Girls back then, didn't go surfing, </span><span style="font-family: Quicksand;">and my physiology made the suit too tight in places and loose in others. It had no zip, just a wide neckhole.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: Quicksand;">
<br />Way out to sea, the beloved sat in his usual position, hands on thighs, nonchalantly watching waves and ignoring me. Was I an embarrassment? Or too capable a sea creature to be watched over? Girls were supposed to be looked after, but I was a top class swimmer, better than him and he knew it.</span></div><div><br /></div><div>
<span style="font-family: Quicksand;">I took off on a wave, stood up, and nosedived immediately.<br /> The board washed in and left me stranded in the deep with a whole nation of waves and channels through which to travel.<br />I set off towards shore, quite a way, but, you know. Swimming was my thing.<br /> <br /> <br /> What I had not accounted for were the binding qualities of wetsuit rubber, the weight of the water and the way the sea entered the suit, filling it with a weight and inflexibility I was far too slight to fight against.<br /> Unable to escape, the water made me sink to the ocean floor. I could barely raise my arms.<br /> The beloved rose and fell from view, still looking out to sea, flicking his hair in the sunlight.<br /> <br /> <br /> I sank to the bottom.<br /> And had an idea. I ran along and then pushed as hard as I could to the surface, like a seal. Took a breath, sank again, ran again, and pushed. So I was running along the seafloor, and then rocketing up for air. All the way to shore.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Quicksand;"><br />When I made it to the sand, I lolled and flapped there like a sea lion.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: Quicksand;"> A bunch of boys sitting on the sand clapped and grinned and hooted, catcalling and whistling. I tried to remove myself from the wretched wetsuit to find that I couldn't budge it and was wedged inside. Self consciousness, the default setting of the teenage girl, made me weak, and hot in the face</span></div><div><span style="font-family: Quicksand;">I writhed and twisted and pulled. I used feet hands teeth rolling this way and that in a fury, wedging it up over my head, blinding myself. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: Quicksand;">With wetsuit stuck between chest and upraised elbows, I pulled it with my nails with superhuman strength, millimeter by millimeter, until finally my face was free with a loud sucking plop.<br />
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I flung the wetsuit onto the ground and collapsed onto the sand by the waters edge, exhausted. The boys still hooted and clapped. I stood up, adorned with tatters of my own dignity, and arranged my bikini into a logical order, trying to ignore them.<br />
<br />Mute with rage when the beloved finally sauntered in, I watched as he flicked his hair, glanced at my audience, and gave me a look, as if to say, <i>have you been flirting?</i><br />I wanted to say <i>I have been drowning,</i></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Quicksand;"><i>I sank to the bottom of the sea and you didn't save me. All you care about is that I have attracted attention from other males.<br /></i>Words evaporated on their way out of my mouth, and I said nothing. The tightening of his lips, in the very corners, gave it all away. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: Quicksand;">He was not beloved for very long.</span></div><div><br /></div><div>***<br />
<br /><span style="font-family: Quicksand;">Here and now, among the crowds of holiday swimmers, twelve people on the beach are staring out to sea. I can hear them calling out to swimmers who stray, I can see them circling the swimmers on their yellow boards. I can see also those invisible folks on the beach, who will leap to their feet and go to the rescue of anyone who looks like they may be in the wrong place, whose eyes , like mine, will see these things, who cannot help but watch. I can see the dawn patrol who saved the bipolar man from heaving surf one morning at 5am: myself, the vet and the dentist. And I know in those deserted places all along the coast, far away from here, the only watching eyes are those of birds, of dingoes, of dolphins, of silver bream.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: Quicksand;"><br />
No doubt one day the sea will get the better of me. It will capture me and I will become a part of it forever. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: Quicksand;">But for now I am watchful of myself and of others. The ocean is a vastness and a terrifying force: this week has proved that so.</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXrAFuiSo7InNzf9A7augXFV4d7X5opcfVbmKJ2pCZQquCuprTcubYIhCqQvTMZXI3omdNq97ze8WUkn0czGMpyeW0K0aLUkDYeyvKLLhyphenhyphenat7mvwNSAU7GW2rTKb1moQWbYw88Tiu5vAM/s1600-h/oceanic.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXrAFuiSo7InNzf9A7augXFV4d7X5opcfVbmKJ2pCZQquCuprTcubYIhCqQvTMZXI3omdNq97ze8WUkn0czGMpyeW0K0aLUkDYeyvKLLhyphenhyphenat7mvwNSAU7GW2rTKb1moQWbYw88Tiu5vAM/s320/oceanic.jpg" /></a><br />
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</span></div><span style="font-family: Quicksand;">I am going now to be in the sea, to have a few words, to pay my respects.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: Quicksand;"> Buy myself some time.</span><br />
<i><br />
</i></div></div></div>fifihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06946945635726214503noreply@blogger.com25tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2145558051219626249.post-18675804049437820622010-01-09T22:55:00.000+11:002010-01-09T22:55:04.553+11:00the year of the fish thus far<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">This is the story of my life so far in 2010.<br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Somebody got on a plane.<br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">leaving this<br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">to arrive in this<br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">as for me,<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_8WEDEx28FSAVDlOoYOIy85-cJmgHDbKeyPC8eeiSRytyG_Th_6oTHWOPRLaBmZ0qE-EDKgWlvGQ4GP8O7w9__CVLEFzl8_cr31EejocsahhhjjG7sfQkXJfzGM-UzmwUZRKuX7w0CVc/s1600-h/P1091747.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_8WEDEx28FSAVDlOoYOIy85-cJmgHDbKeyPC8eeiSRytyG_Th_6oTHWOPRLaBmZ0qE-EDKgWlvGQ4GP8O7w9__CVLEFzl8_cr31EejocsahhhjjG7sfQkXJfzGM-UzmwUZRKuX7w0CVc/s320/P1091747.JPG" /></a><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">I myself have had quite enough of this<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg19rBrehZQSDBDrOGVb8IMahFJBNRst-x9noAoc3lfo9h098XAsi4NxaSXL_lyFCYVPd9_r8X-3VuMmN5zb6kg1DCpr_IzdRECeJd4_6wquJsY5giuvYPTXDxk6980GSiDVQtnyMFM2_k/s1600-h/P1091746.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg19rBrehZQSDBDrOGVb8IMahFJBNRst-x9noAoc3lfo9h098XAsi4NxaSXL_lyFCYVPd9_r8X-3VuMmN5zb6kg1DCpr_IzdRECeJd4_6wquJsY5giuvYPTXDxk6980GSiDVQtnyMFM2_k/s320/P1091746.JPG" /></a><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">and more than enough of this<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpSJEmFyGEoFCshLWFBx0EjD8vmgYk93d1lIxK5G7kMBVv4n8daYQ_OMG6p2vxjzAH7VLAxtbUdGwVmGpIEcECfA5kte-oHa5FiF7iLdx5-HR01qLwiz0T7zrcXLdB4RlETFyl7o82h7E/s1600-h/P1091750.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpSJEmFyGEoFCshLWFBx0EjD8vmgYk93d1lIxK5G7kMBVv4n8daYQ_OMG6p2vxjzAH7VLAxtbUdGwVmGpIEcECfA5kte-oHa5FiF7iLdx5-HR01qLwiz0T7zrcXLdB4RlETFyl7o82h7E/s320/P1091750.JPG" /></a><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">and this<br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">(abandoned finery)<br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">and certainly<br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> not enough<br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">of this<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3Ro9cWQwmq1KvSeiNe9LHktO5awzdrpy6iVSP6nCnd5BSuOrO8tMNf90fHkmTtGbzTR8zgmbDLUp257kzGAdGwUZGrWyCocytRHilSSVCQBtW0JPPEBsxzLl4qfJUmhqV9UEPVN25mZE/s1600-h/PC221672.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3Ro9cWQwmq1KvSeiNe9LHktO5awzdrpy6iVSP6nCnd5BSuOrO8tMNf90fHkmTtGbzTR8zgmbDLUp257kzGAdGwUZGrWyCocytRHilSSVCQBtW0JPPEBsxzLl4qfJUmhqV9UEPVN25mZE/s320/PC221672.JPG" /></a><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">May your new decade be prosperous and fruitful.<br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Happy 2010<br />
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<div><br />
</div><div><span style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 11px;"><br />
</span></span></div>fifihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06946945635726214503noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2145558051219626249.post-10898935431920806402009-12-23T13:44:00.000+11:002009-12-23T13:44:32.153+11:00in which the sea demands an explanation<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjICbtq5M2XfFuD2iFSoSOT-jkM5WRyEuxwVNc7UTAl9b8ercgcdPNqgs89kzdeJviqDIWm-xiIk1iHc6joSKkRiymnmZBA1IMCUULuzaEgkZKrrzh9eWHDdt7YyEgC5y0JZ_4tiNy0QxU/s1600-h/dec+22+8am.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjICbtq5M2XfFuD2iFSoSOT-jkM5WRyEuxwVNc7UTAl9b8ercgcdPNqgs89kzdeJviqDIWm-xiIk1iHc6joSKkRiymnmZBA1IMCUULuzaEgkZKrrzh9eWHDdt7YyEgC5y0JZ_4tiNy0QxU/s320/dec+22+8am.jpg" /></a><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;">I dipped down, slithering out through the runnels under and under, weaving my way seamlessly, out to the blue. It was the brightest, hardest, bluest part of the day, and part of me was chattering quietly about how I ought to have been and gone hours ago, and should have gone to the markets.<br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;">But the rest of me just let that thought go, and I stretched out my arm, tucked my face to my shoulder, and sailed through another wave beneath a surging plume of turquoise foam.<br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;">The sea surprised me then by speaking first. Quite directly, startling me with its sudden and unexpected voice, unheard for so long that I thought it lost.<br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Where have you been?</i><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;">I stopped still. A cormorant flew low, almost directly above my head, as I rocked up and down. A fizz of salt burned my nose. I felt myself giving over to the utter sensuality of this, my eyelids dropping, my feet floating upwards.<br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>I've been here.</i> <br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;">I said to the sea,<br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Here and there. Around.</span><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;">I felt the sea turn me this way and that. I put my head back and let my hair hang down, allowing this scrutiny.<br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Where have you been?</i> said the sea.<br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Y</i><i>ou've not really been here.</i><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Just last night, and the night before, I was here till the light bled from the sky</i>, I answered.<br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;">A<i>nd you know it. </i><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>I danced a mad dance in the lowtide push and pull, and you covered me with brick red sand as I danced so hard I could hardly breathe.</i><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;">The sea remained silent then, waiting. Waiting for the right answer.<br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Alright then, </i><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><i></i>I said,<br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>I have been places, and I have done things. I have been distracted. And I have not been out here.</i><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><br />
</i><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;">and as I said this I did indeed realise that I had not been out into the deep, to think and dream, for quite some time. That my world seemed different. That I have been in far places, and that my dreams have washed me into different waters.<br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;">I<i> have swum in an icy lake, beneath snow covered mountains, </i><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>where the water is as clear and green as the ice that feeds it,</i><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;">I told the sea.<br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>I know</i><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;">said the sea.<br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>I know all these things,</i><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;">said the sea.<br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>All water is me.</i><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;">I swam a bit then, heading north. I could see Charlie Taylor and the three Miss Bennets out on their boards, Charlie glancing over the waves to see who I was. I dived down deep to say hello to the enormous crowd of snapper that had gathered far below me, but they all flicked their silver tails and fled: it is an error to approach Snapper from above in such a fashion. I had forgotten. I said hello to their disappearing forms, shadowy in the plumes of sand rising from the dappled sea floor.<br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Some things</i>, I explained to the sea,<br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>are just too big to talk about. You know that. I don't have to explain.</i><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>I still love you</i>,<br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;">I told the sea.<br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;">which now held me suspended in a deep blue silence,<br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;">just the breaking of the waves further into shore, and began to swim in long strokes,<br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;">rolling with each stroke, pulling hard through the water till the bubbles flew in wispy illumined trails.<br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;">It was then I realised that the whole beach was one gigantic rip, and I wasn't moving except seawards. Charlie Taylor was a speck in the distance. My own son was around the next headland on his board with his friend, if I tried I could probably spot him from out here.<br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;">I took a long slow breath, and put my head down, carfully hiding my thoughts. The sea was holding on, quite firmly. I continued to swim north, so as to conceal the fact that I was being dragged eastwards. This was no usual rip, but one enormous, continuous surge, like an ongoing intake of breath. I maintained my lazy pace, my even stroke.<br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;">I could see the Taylor boy now, looking over, sitting on the Rescue board. The two older miss Bennets not far away, I could call them, and escape. But I don't. I turn over and backstroke, my hair hanging down, my body suspended.<br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>See? I am not afraid</i>. <i>I can stay all day, forever if I choose. I will not flee, I will stay.</i><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><br />
</i><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;">I dived down again, but there were no snapper in sight. Indeed, the ocean floor was so much further away. The sun sparkled on the water and the sea held on. A tiny helicopter passed overhead and three more cormorants so low I could see the downy feathers beneath their outstretched wings.<br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;">I swam. A piece of ribbon grass entwined itself into my hair. Some unknown fish flashed silver and disappeared. Dark blue swell lifted on the horizon.<br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>I must go now</i>, I told the sea. <i>But I am here, I am always here.</i><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;">the sea said nothing.<br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;">The dark blue swell picked up, and I began to swim hard, beating my feeet, pulling in long hard strokes, hearing the sigh as the wave picked up beneath me, tucking my head down, soaring. Soaring.<br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;">Until I am waist deep, then I stand, still feeling that firm strong pull heaving against my legs, coaxing me back. I am mere steps away from rejoining the world with its clatter and clamor and seasonal nonsense.<br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;">I turn around to face the horizon, and dive one more time in an arc beneath the waves.<br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;">Then I walk towrds the edge and up onto the slick wet sand, flinging my wet hair and feeling the sun on my feet.<br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>I'm still here</i>, <i>always</i>, I tell the sea before I climb the stairs.<br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;">I'm here.<br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEht-UPLkY2dsjsb0mYMi8uXIIkimgUvYvr7ODjjSUDpm5ygiR_-L1hwURSY9nqjooKlXoh9VE32y5Sx8c90REXLtTE-WVYZOLg2iMcxwx2zVraRHDkd_FHp-Pt7xkcIt1bnF9N2tBca4_I/s1600-h/dec+22+9am.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEht-UPLkY2dsjsb0mYMi8uXIIkimgUvYvr7ODjjSUDpm5ygiR_-L1hwURSY9nqjooKlXoh9VE32y5Sx8c90REXLtTE-WVYZOLg2iMcxwx2zVraRHDkd_FHp-Pt7xkcIt1bnF9N2tBca4_I/s320/dec+22+9am.jpg" /></a><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;">Wishing everybody happiness, love and light, wherever they may be. <br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;">xxxx<br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div>fifihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06946945635726214503noreply@blogger.com12