the fish thinks of flying

I can tell when it is snowing in the Snowy Mountains, although I am a good 6 hours drive away.

It is the colour of the sea: dark steel blue,fading to pale malachite near the shore, the raft of cloud sitting on the southern horizon large and flat; that arctic breeze whispering through, and the sun: pale yellow like dead grass.

Even with the air temp 10deg, the sea is 20deg. I dont like the getting out: I peer at the world, nose deep in the water.
I was reminded of this:

"At night every river has a secret twin a ghost of air washing above the living water down toward the sea" *

There is a ghost, above the sea, betraying the secret of its warmth.


I checked my hunch on the snow-cam: hah! yes indeedy.
This is what I like to see.
Or not see.

A snowy blanket being woven for the fish to fly in.


Perisher Valley Snow cam

* peter carey "The True History of the Kelly Gang"

bitten

I am currently overwhelmed by processes and needing all my energy to keep from stepping on landmines.
Negotiating my way through life can be a complicated thing.

I'm rather glad that nothing creeeped up behind me and bit my a*** off, like this poor little guy who landed at my feet this morning.
Always some reason to be thankful...



oh, and "The Art Life" blog has bloomed into a TV show.
Its good: watch it.
10pm tuesday abc.

cuttlefish and other glories

Just off the headland, yesterday, I saw a little shark eating up a big cuttlefish.

A giant cuttlefish, it was.

The sea, while pretending to ignore me, is in fact putting on quite some show.
There is no use in me feigning false ignorance, otherwise I get shown a predator eating its prey. Or bump into something that is about-to-be-prey, which is almost as bad.
The Dolphins curl over and around like horizontal commas,the sharks are always an imperative exclamation.
Still, it isnt punctuation that comes to mind when a large shape emerges: the fins look the same enough.


So, the sea-lion enclosure is the safest place to be. Trouble for some, is that the water in here cools down quite rapidly during the night, as opposed to the sea temperature, which stays warm.

Oh, but I love it, the cold of winter water.

It rinses the gills and provides clarity of thought. And here, safe, one can dream undisturbed by predators and prey alike.

The sea has stopped sulking, I gather.
Whether or not this is a plot with which to cure one of wanderlust I can't be sure, but
the whales appeared today, four Southern Right Whales.
They gave themselves away not only with their spouting, but the sun reflecting off their bodies, briefly, as they jumped about.
Some cuttlefish bodies have been presented to me on the tideline, just to remind me who is the uber-being around here. They are rather large, and don't think for a minute I am ignorant as to what the teethmarks mean.

I just pretend that I'm not scared.


(cuttlefish 32cm long)

the idea of flight

Only once in my life,
have I seen an albatross flying.
It was early, and something made me turn my face to the sky,as it passed directly above. It was enormous, wing tip to wingtip, white mottled with brown. Large beak, curved down at the end. It seemed as if those few seconds were longer than normal, but it was cruising at speed, and disappeared.
Later, at the wildlife hospital with a little shearwater, I asked if I could raise it , instead of having it euthanased. The doctor explained that seabirds never come to land, except to breed. They spend their entire lives at sea, flying, fishing, resting on the surface of the water.
I imagined all those big albatrosses endlessly soaring over the oceans, and never coming to land. You just have to believe that they are there, for you'll not ever see one, (unless you are a longline fisherperson and catch one nastily on your line )
or unless you have a fortunate moment. like me. A sort of "act of faith" in believing that the birds even exist at all, given the lack of evidence.

I found an expired albatross, washed up on the shore last week. It was wet, and bedraggled. Fish had eaten its innards, right out of its chest cavity, but the rest was there. The feathers hung like string.
I dragged it up onto the dry , where the white sand shone with endless sun and ghost crabs hid from the heat.
By noon, it was dry and clean, and with a brief closing of eyes in apology, I took its wing bones.

They were long and white, hollow like pieces of bound air, hardly like bones at all.
The next day, the ghost crabs had cleaned the rest. I took its head,like a barbarian crouching over the vanquished, I took its skull, and all its feathers.

The bones were white , hollow and flute-like, speaking to me of the weightlessness of flight. The curving beak told me of its albatross-pedigree, and the chest feathers, gleaming like snow, remembered their own reflection on the icy surface of the Southern ocean.

Empty eyes showed me a landless horizon, whitecaps all around, and the memory of endless flight. Evidence, in my hands, of elsewhere

'There are moments when the past has a force so strong it seems one might be annihilated by it"

John Banville, "The Sea"