Homeland calling

Yolngu friends tell me without hesitation; “The place your mother carried you, the place of your gestation and birth is your home”. (There are other lands you can belong to but that place has a special primacy) I have no idea where my mum went while she was carrying me but for sure I was born in the old Hospital at Greensborough On Wurundjeri land in Victoria, I lived in that area the first 26 years of my life, it is part of me. I grew up on that land and always wondered about the people who belonged there but in all that time I don't believe I'd ever been introduced to a Wurundjeri person. It's possible I've met some but with the shame put on Aboriginal people when I was growing up who would dare say!

My folks place... Once an outpost of native shrubs they now prefer the cottage garden. No lawn for 30 years!

When I was a kid I spent a lot of time playing in the earth around my family home, must have eaten my share too! Grass bomb wars with neighborhood kids in the paddock across the road were a regular event in primary school days, much soil and some stones were absorbed one way or another. Plucking raw food from my parents garden all that stuff.

As I grew I hit the dirt slightly further afield, sometimes literally (rough play and bike crashes), eating cherry plums from derelict fruit trees, cow pat mushroom picking along the old aqueduct, camping in local bush-land, eating roasted rabbit, greasy fried eel, swimming in the swollen Plenty Rive and swallowing too much of it’s muddy brown wash… 

Plenty River below Western Ring Road bridge

Whenever I return to my childhood home all those memories engulf me in a homecoming melancholic delight that is sometimes overwhelming, the angle of the sun, the scent of foliage in the heat or the rain, the wild grassy weeds, everyting! I want to share it all with my kids!

So regardless of how it happens, I have a very strong connection with my childhood home and I believe ‘it’ is quite literally in my blood. 

Roos in the Janefield paddocks, Plenty River

Visiting my parents last week was the perfect opportunity to share my ‘homeland’ with my kids, who were born on Larrakia land in the North. 

As I write this I know I must have told the same story before, here, maybe the same, maybe slightly different but most likely retelling the same basic narrative of my origins. I tend to tell over the story, as I recall it maybe as a way of affirming some kind of identity, belonging to somewhere....

 

Riding across the Partington Flat Swing Bridge

This visit was perfect, we cycled a lot of my old haunts and visited many of the special places. We breathed in the cool dry air, took note of all the different animals and birds, Rosellas, sparrows, roos, maggies, hover flies and bees... Rainbow lorikeets and starlings.

Invasive species trashing Feijoa flowers

Mum's Feijoa tree is in full bloom but has fallen victim to the latest wave of invasive species. The otherwise beautiful Rainbow Lorrikeet who appears to have replaced the Starlings and Minahs as usurper and thief of breeding hollows from the local species such as Red-rumped parrots and Eastern Rosellas.


Mid week we traveled down to Barwon Heads (Wadawurrung country), somewhere I'd always wanted to spend time. When I was young I used to pass through this way often, seeking excitement on my motorbike along the Great Ocean Road. I did happen to sleep in a cave on the bluff one New Years Eave but left at dawn. This was my first stay at Barwon Heads, during the off peak season it's a beautiful quiet place. We had a great time here and the kids got to chill out with their grandparents.

Barwon Bluff

Returning to Melbourne we had a wonderful day with my Nieces and Nephews celebrating three birthdays in one. 

Fishing off the jetty at Barwon Heads - Ship entering Port Philip Bay in the distance

Now I'm back in the NT and back at work. It's hot and feeling kind of foreign to me. I have a few connections here and have become fairly familiar with the land and environment. This place has it's own rhythm and pace, The bush is alive and Yolngu know it's seasons and ways intimately. I have learned only a little about these things but it equates to a lot more that what I know about my own country, yet somehow. Regardless of my ignorance, my heart and blood remains tied to the land where I grew up. 

Maybe one day I will live there again?

Hothouse Flowers - #NoDAPL

Yesterday The US Army Corps of Engineers has denied easement for the Dakota Access Pipeline. Water Protectors are celebrating this as a victory and it is in a sense, however this situation will be far from over since corporations have routinely ignored the law with regard to drilling with or without permission. With the world watching it seems to me we are at a threshold moment where the US Government will be put to the test to see if they defend the rights of the people over the ambitions of a corporation. Fining Energy Transfer Partners for noncompliance will not be an acceptable outcome. Knowing their intention to drill regardless of law, surely police should be deployed to stop them. What happens next will define the credibility of the US democracy and what level of action will be necessary for ‘The People’ to be heard.

This situation is very exciting!

Water Protectors, you have exposed the Achilles Heel of this and all corporations! This is important! This latest news is  a  victory but it will lay bare just how desperate and vulnerable their system is!

The corporation are desperate to flex their muscles but what you have revealed is that their Power is actually their weakness! They are a Goliath who can be brought down!

We see corporations functioning on an illogical model of perpetual growth that is ultimately doomed to failure.  They amass huge wealth by convincing people that they can continue to expand their wealth exponentially year by year, yet the resources they rely upon are finite and dwindling, they seek to cut costs by reducing environmental safeguards and lowering employment standards and pay.

Corporations depend on posting record annual profits just to maintain shareholder confidence. The problem is that they have often white anted their own value by reducing quality of service and overestimating the value of their stock. Although they are experts at shuffling resources around to cover deficits, I reckon it must leave them fairly vulnerable to a combination of loss of revenue and bad press (lack of consumer confidence)

The stock market is based entirely on consumption and is devoid of humanity, shareholders have no loyalty they are interested only in profit, the ideology is entirely greed based. Greed and amassed wealth has been the strength of corporations but is the very thing that will bring them down.

Through their investment in lobbyists and the favours they buy via political donations they have created an artificial environment which they depend on for their survival. Fossil fuel Corporations may appear robust and invincible but in fact they are like hot house flowers sheltered from the realities of the real world. The world which ordinary people inhabit, an environment which is much leaner, requires prudence, resilience, and the ability to survive on very little materially. We are hungry for change, and the cost of continuing with Oil has already proven far too costly!

 When we (people) stand up for our family, our friends and our land we find ourselves in a situation that we are compelled, no matter what our belief systems, to turn to a source of strength beyond what we can summon on our own. We draw on our spiritual resources which when accessed can withstand hardship beyond the discomfort any ‘shareholder’ is willing to endure.

Bravo to the Water Protectors at Standing Rock! With a disciplined and peaceful approach you have managed to avoid giving ‘Law enforcement’ officers a mandate to openly attack you, something I imagine the company, and government might have hoped to happen. You have delayed the progress of their pipeline adding unplanned expense to their project which will cost them the confidence of shareholders and affect the profitability of the company; It will make them look bad. You have disrupted their financial supply chain through divestment… and you have applied pressure to your elected representatives, which I imagine embarrassed the hell out of them and caused them to backflip in the face of huge public backlash.

You have stood toe to toe with men and women who would use violence against you and you have been a mirror into their own souls. Your courage has turned hearts and will haunt those who have committed shameful acts against you.

I am sure the corporation will do all it can to ensure the pipeline continues despite the declaration by the State not to approve the easement. The corporation may even turn on the Government since they expect full compliance from politicians to grease the tracks for them. What happens next could make all the difference. It’s likely Government officials are looking for every way possible not to upset the company. You have shaken the foundations of their towers! They now know how dangerous you are and they will likely retaliate and lash out in their desperation. Do not lose hope! Be brave! God bless you. We are with you!

(Disclaimer, I have no credentials or professional expertise in the area of politics or finance, everything I’ve written is from my naïve perspective as a person caught between the wheels of a corporatized world. I am just a human watching the world implode around himself, who has caught a glimpse of something miraculous!)

Sitting

Sometimes I sit and think

Sometimes I sit and pray

Sometimes I just sit and watch
(But mostly I don't sit at all! Mostly I rush around like a frantic machination of expectant fury and distraction)

Sometimes my eyes and my mind are struck by a thing of beauty

Some.... Something... Grand! or Some Thing small.

Creation speaks.

Contemplating world events, Global warming, Earth systems under pressure, fresh water lost!

Spirits ignited into action at Standing Rock Sioux Reservation

The forces piled against truth met with the power of life!

Spirits ignited!

A call to action.

My mind glides across all these issues and conflicting emotions and responsibilities collide within me In my heart there is a constant drum beating! Find the dhukar! Find the right path! Act!

All this is going on as I work and eat and commute to work and try to be present with my family, constant thoughts of What I should do, where I should be??? 

Then, when my mind and spirit were at their most confused, depressed and disillusioned by the sham of politics and all that STUFF!, while riding to work one morning I sensed something large. I stopped and looked up and saw the most unusually tall and completely red Poinciana.

I stopped, got off my bike, I breathed deeply in and let all the air out of my lungs and I said a prayer of thanks. The answers will come.

Counting Birds

My family and I have had a great time participating in the Aussie Backyard Bird Count 

I installed the app on my phone and have really enjoyed trying to squeeze as many species as I can into the 20 minutes allocated for each count session.

The total number of species I counted, just within the immediate vicinity of my house was:

Three species of finches we've sighted in our garden
(drawing courtesy of D. Baxstar 'Outside The Box'

Having taken the time to sit for 20 minutes each morning and just look at the birds around me, I know I am blessed! Australia has so much wildlife but for a capital city (OK a very small one) Darwin has a lot more species diversity than many people would realise. 
During my 20 minute bird counts spending most of my time sitting on a chair at my front porch I managed to count 26 species of birds! 

Screenshot of my stats... unfortunately I couldn't include the full list.

  
I have learned a few things during this bird count. Firstly, in the long period between now and my enthusiastic days of regular bird watching my ability to identify bird species has diminished monstrously! My eyesight isn't what it used to be so I am having to get the binoculars out in order to correctly identify birds I should know at a glance and I have found that I can hear the very distinctive calls and songs of birds all around me, just out of sight which I can't for the life of me identify! It's a disgrace!

So! That's it! I've decided to get serious! I'm reading up on all my local species and am looking for a good birdsong database to download, apparently they now make some pretty decent apps to put on your phone! Oh yeh and for inspiration the whole family is going to sit down and watch that awesome birding movie The Big Year. COOL!

As it is

"...As strange as it is, someday I'll rot away and leave behind these bones that my mother made..."

(Prophetic words from the irrepressible Phat Bollard) 

"...Coz one of these days you're gonna wake up dead!"

However in the sagely words of Snoopy the dog:

"...but on all the other days, we will not." 

 

Place Title: Here (with care)

So last week while I was out of the office my roaming vagabond one man theatre, vexatious litigant mate rocked up with another inside out shopping bag full of offerings... (I never know what he's going to bring, sometimes a flattened dead cane toad and some water damaged books, sometimes discarded electronic devices, leaves, some wire maybe some seeds?)

Well this time some very interesting books, He's well read, my mate and he usually knows what I like, through his hands I have received the better part of my education in classic literature! Including, Grapes of wrath, How to make Gravy, Concordance to the Bible, books on community organising and the odd poetry book. This time he brought to me a copy of :  

Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

 (Translated by Edward FitzGerald)

The book had been given to someone as a gift in 1977, It is old, a little bit moldy and the pages are the thick rough kind, which had turned yellow and become fairly brittle. I have no idea when it was published, as I had learned in library studies, sometimes publishers left out all the important details like that...

I dived into the book reading the forward and then onto the oddly shapen four lined poems. 

I'm not big on reading poetry. I love and respect it and think in terms of poetic reason but I don't always like reading other peoples ramblings... I read several pages and found it awkward. Apparently a Rubaiyat will have the first two lines rhyming followed by a line which doesn't rhyme and ending with a line whose last word rhymes with the first two... Whatever! So I read a bunch of them and got used to the style but still felt a bit lost in the message of some of the poems, It felt a bit schitzoid, like there were two different messages or the poems held a shadow... then, Thick as a brick, it dawned on me. How can these be the poems of Omar Khayyam? He was Persian and wrote in Farsi (or the Persian Language) I am reading these poems in English!

So I did a google search basically asking "How the F-ck can a poem be translated into another language and still Rhyme?" As the spheres often collide in my world I was thrilled but not too shocked that the very first hit I got for my question turned directly to the very translation I am holding in my hand! RUB'AIY'AT OF OMAR KHAYY'AM. Wow.

After discovering that there's a lot of the 'Translator' embedded in any translation and to convey all that makes a poem great in a single translation quite a bit of liberty must be take with the original text... I realized what I'm reading can't strictly be called the writing of Omar Khayyam.

I remember finding a copy of 'The Arabian Nights' in the street shortly after having read a reference to it in a book written by a guy I know. I felt sure that finding the book was some kind of message... When I told my friend about the amazing find, he laughed and asked if it was the Richard Burton translation. "I don't flipping know! Who cares it's the same story right?"

"NO!" (Fool) "It's not the same story! They are not the same stories!"

What did I know, I thought having that title I had the same product, but I did not. Apparently there are numerous tales bound together into books called 'The Arabian Nights', they are not all the same, not the same stories, not the same quality of translation, not in or of the same Order. Oh well at least my find availed me of an education in the fine art of divining quality from crud. Of course having found a dud copy with that title, lying auspiciously in a gutter, I can't help equating it's mediocrity to the quality of my very self.. 

Which brings me to one of my favorite poems credited to Khayyam under pen of Fitzgerald

 "The Moving Finger writes: and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it."

Khayyam must be in there somewhere, maybe a nihilistic fatalist drunk but this poem I get.