Saturday, November 24, 2012

Never Never Land

The cicadas have begun singing, at a pitch so high you can hear almost nothing else.
Up in the tree-tops where the bark is peeling, the cicadas sing. It was 35 degrees Celsius in Melbourne today, an early start to to the coming summer.
I've just read this, "The Runaway," a children's book, by Ruth Morris, published in 1961. In it, the heroine, disconnected from family, makes her way with horse, cart and dog across the many empty miles of southern Queensland. She'd felt she had nowhere to go but away. In the end, of course, she finds a home away from home.
Place, the place we're born and raised in, is supposed to play a significant part in the creation of our character. I have been raised in a dry, open country, where the birds spin like flashlights and anywhere you take the time to look, there are sanctuaries.
Above, an unfinished ringtailed possum's nest, dislodged, unfortunately, by a neighbour. This photo doesn't suggest well enough the perfect globe shape within.
I found this blurred photo of a ringtail in an vintage book about the Melbourne Zoo. But a blurred picture might be the best you will get, being, as they are, shy creatures of the night.
I've noticed that many native animals orient towards native plants, whatever has been planted in what had been their habitat. Eucalypts are favoured... when they peel, they reveal an Impressionist's palette.
Or warts, rivers, footprints, time itself.
From the same book, again blurred, as life itself can so often be, a finished ringtailed possum's nest. We are all interpreters of needs and feelings and directions.
Now, among others things, I am reading this. In it the author traverses an Australia way out beyond the cities, where my heart wants to go.  ( Traveller's Tracks, by George Farwell, published by Melbourne University Press, 1949. )
Until that day I sing with my brothers and sisters the trees, or rather, hear their singing. Don't fence me in, let me flow, let my flowing go onwards, and do not let me halt, but let all the rain and all the rivers of life run.
 I am getting crookeder now, with bones and flesh needing to take their time to recover. Old and new: we are both at once, are we not?
I was trying to commemorate, today, the life of the bark of the trees of the world as I know them. To commemorate means to care and to go onwards.
Above is not a post-Expressionist work. The planet has been doing post-Expressionist a long time before we copied the idea.
Now I realise I've brought up both Impressionism and post-Expressionism. The world, however, is an artwork that can't be categorised...in all of its gestures it signifies a never-ending alive-ness.
 

20 comments:

  1. Dear Faisal,
    I am rather taken by your first photograph. The different colours, and layers of the bark, together with the warty, rough bit in the middle there where a twig has broken off, reminded me of our lives. We too are multi layered with different tones and shades. We have our broken off 'bits' that stand out like an old scar.
    I think that that is the sort of photograph I would have framed or at least keep inside a favourite book so that I could look at it every now and then.
    Kirk

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    1. Dear Kirk,
      I'd been thinking myself how many of the sections of bark I was seeing were working for me as paintings. I almost wouldn't mind some huge photo panels of bark, blown up in size, as a house exterior, if, that was, I could do whatever I wanted.
      Dreamy, to me, they are.

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  2. 'The world however, is an artwork that can't be categorised..' Yes ! Love the post expressionist bark !

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    1. Hi Paul. Like me you maybe recognise in the world around us the workings of patterns and order that are impossible to define, that come from some sort of divine interplay and which seem to come before our own efforts. Everything expresses itself does it not?

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  3. The more I see of eucalypts, Faisal the more I like them. A snow gum I've planted has been brutalised by deer and pretty much ring-barked; I do hope it survives but I fear it won't. (The cover for 'The Runaway' is marvellous. I feel rather jealous that I'm not in that pony and trap myself). Dave

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    1. Thanks Dave. The variety of Eucalypts is amazing; I prefer some to others. They're not always handsome and wonderful! Lately there's been an oubreak of scale insect affecting one of the species I've got here, more or less ruining them.
      If only I had that horse and cart myself, I could get away from them!

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  4. the nest, was deliberately dislodged by your neighbour? Are the creatures unwelcome?

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    1. No, Diana, the nest wasn't deliberately dislodged. It happened during pruning, and as far as I know, had been left vacant by its builders anyway. Ringtail possums are especially charming, and I don't know of anyone who dislikes them.

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  5. Great Post. I have taken many photos of tree bark, thinking also that it looks like a piece of artwork, I can see it framed and hung on a wall somewhere.

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    1. Hi Matthew. Thankyou. There's alot more that could be done with Eucalypt bark as a visual basis. I mentioned in a reply above how I'd like to see it used in a sort of photo panel ( like Sam Newman's Pamela Anderson house ) on a building's exterior. Or somehow transferred, photographically/digitally to interior walls. Fabrics too.
      There's something about Eucalypt bark I can't put my finger on that has some evocative aesthetic.

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  6. I love this time of year when the gums shed their bark. Magnificent art works right here in my garden. Your photos capture it beautifully. My recent trips away have covered thousands of kilometres and everywhere I found trees to make my heart sing. Now home, I'm just enjoying my garden and the surrounding bushland.

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    1. Hi Carol. It's ineffable, isn't it, this apprehension/sensation, of being in a beautiful natural space that makes us feel we're in a gallery, but also deliciously alive? Nothing that ideal space we regard as home.

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  7. One of my favorite things to explore is the truck of tree. Each has its own rhythm of change. What may seem a deformity to someone else is usually what I find most intriguing. I sometimes try (feebly) to capture the bark of trees with my paints, but I can never do it justice.

    We have our opossums here. I am not for certain how shy they are. I often come face to face with one and they do scare me a bit. He is usually on the fence looking down on me. A little intimidating. I am not for sure what their range of leaping might be....I would just as soon allow it to go on it's merry way.

    Have a wonderful week. As winter approaches my side of the world I know you are ready to walk into summer. Enjoy!


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    1. Yes, like you, Bonnie, I'm often spellbound and speechless in natural places. I regard my own efforts to capture an impression of it as inadequate.
      In suburban Melbourne, there are two species of possum, the Ringtail, above, which is dainty and shy and utterly harmless, and the Brushtail, noisy, famous for running across rooves and nesting under them and for munching on garden flowers and fruit. Both are protected by law.
      You too, Bonnie, have a wonderful week! I wouldn't mind a bit of northern chill to be honest!

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  8. oh! I do miss the spring Faisal! It seems llike you are observing it and taking it all in.
    Lovely books, trees, warmth. Enjoy : )

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    1. I hope it's not too long, Demie, before a little ray of sunshine warms your world. I have to say, though, that I would love to experience a northern, snowy winter; the heat can be stultifying!

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  9. The Runaway recalls to my memory a wonderful movie of an Australian woman, My Brilliant Career. Do you know it?

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  10. James, Miles Franklin and her books have always been big here. Yeah, a good comparison. She wrote another called My Career Goes Bung!

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  11. bark has a special quality I find it hard to put words to, but i find it very moving emotionally and spiritually and aesthetically. I love this post, i love the colours of the pictures. I love the idea of nature as an artwork that can't be categorized.

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