And I've not spent all my time here writing. Most of it has been spent sitting on a rock watching the water, watching the sky, stars, clouds, sky. Cleaning out my belly button in the sun. Listening to Radio National on my mobile phone. Thinking about my life, how to let things slide off me, how to get laid, how to be a better person. Making coffee. Picking my toenails. Singing to astounded, smelly seals. Crashing through waist high scrub. Falling down muttonbird burrows. Looking at rocks. Wondering how the island was made. Watching the water ...
I discovered that five days existing outside with very little shelter means you can watch the water and the sky all around the non-existent clock, track the sun and the moon and the stars, watch the light change on the water and see the subtle difference in the swell that rolls in from the East, the way it curls around granite and sucks in deep, readying itself for the next surge.
Counting the flashes of the lighthouse, her solar powered glow the same yellow as the rising moon. Finding a green penny, Queen Victoria. 1892.
Watching the schools of fish tracked by the petrels and the turning wind that stands up waves and turn the tips all creamy. A loose piece of tin. Eating that plain brand fruit cake 'til I tripped out on sugar. A rock that rocks (klonk) with every rush of water. Lichen. Learning it.
Sounds like an absolute beautiful experience!
ReplyDeleteYou know Tasmania will be looking for 2010 applicates for a light house keeper soon.. Sorry, shouldn't tease.
:)
ON the beach at night alone,
ReplyDeleteAs the old mother sways her to and fro singing her husky song,
As I watch the bright stars shining, I think a thought of the clef of the universes and of the future.
A vast similitude interlocks all,
All spheres, grown, ungrown, small, large, suns, moons, planets,
All distances of place however wide,
All distances of time, all inanimate forms,
All souls, all living bodies though they be ever so different, or in different worlds,
All gaseous, watery, vegetable, mineral processes, the fishes, the brutes,
All nations, colors, barbarisms, civilizations, languages,
All identities that have existed or may exist on this globe, or any globe,
All lives and deaths, all of the past, present, future,
This vast similitude spans them, and always has spann'd,
And shall forever span them and compactly hold and enclose them.
from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass....
last published in 1892
a green penny for your thoughts?
That says it, C.Q.
ReplyDeleteMy thoughts are right at this moment that who needs to ever write anything again when it has been written so. (Sigh)
It's a postmodern condition that makes me feel sad sometimes. You have an uncanny ability to find these pieces (like the blue dot), I like that.
Juice, why aren't you applying? Don't you wanna see those chickens blown away for real?
I hadn't really thought about it yet, still a few months before you can apply though.
ReplyDeleteI did fly over the island just recently actually in a small six seater. Was a beautiful place.. But COLD!