Flashed flowers #7

3 wattles from Canberra and Namadgee National Park. The last vase was too heavy to hold up.

Flashed flowers #6

Ornamental blossom trees outside the front of the Music School ANU.

List keeper

Two still from the video I have been working on. It will be in the National artist's self portrait prize at the University of Queensland Art Museum.

Shop lifting bird

A short video of a seagull taking advantage of the chaos during the London riots to do a bit of looting of his own. My feeling is that he might have done a bit of shop lifting before or at least was used to people emerging with food from this door. I love the way he "runs" away.

There is a few seconds of black before the start.

Thanks to Peter for the link!

flashed flowers #5

A green Cooks River wattles-I think acacia falcata based on the leave shape and the pattern of the flower pom-poms. It was in the bouquet from last week as well. The acacia longifolia have just about finished flowering, and the Sydney green wattle - acacia decurrens, are just about to come out. 
Gleaned from the Cooks River walk.

Ruben's magnolia

is flowering again.

On a recent trip to my parents I dug through a box of books and found some of my collection of artists books including one by Lucas Ihlein.

Lucas and Ruben. photo by Lizzy from 2008

Lucas and I where co-owners (? fans? carers?) of Ruben. The book was of some of Lucas's writing from 1998-1999 when Ruben was a kitten, and includes two Ruben poems/ stories. The first one is about his naming and the second a dream. Reading them really took me back to that moment in time. I could see the room we where sitting in when we had the below conversation and the bed we shared where the dream occurred.

click to make bigger to read.

Remembering Nagasaki

Nagasaki Days

by Allen Ginsberg
I -- A Pleasant Afternoon
  for Michael Brownstein and Dick Gallup

One day 3 poets and 60 ears sat under a green-striped Chau-
        tauqua tent in Aurora
listening to Black spirituals, tapping their feet, appreciating
        words singing by in mountain winds
on a pleasant sunny day of rest -- the wild wind blew thru
        blue Heavens
filled with fluffy clouds stretched from Central City to Rocky
        Flats, Plutonium sizzled in its secret bed,
hot dogs sizzled in the Lion's Club lunchwagon microwave
        mouth, orangeade bubbled over in waxen cups
Traffic moved along Colefax, meditators silent in the Diamond
        Castle shrine-room at Boulder followed the breath going
        out of their nostrils,
Nobody could remember anything, spirits flew out of mouths
        & noses, out of the sky, across Colorado plains & the
        tent flapped happily open spacious & didn't fall down.
      
                                                        June 18, 1978


II -- Peace Protest


Cumulus clouds float across blue sky
        over the white-walled Rockwell Corporation factory
                                        -- am I going to stop that?
                                
Rocky Mountains rising behind us
        Denver shining in morning light
-- Led away from the crowd by police and photographers

                                
Middleaged Ginsberg and Ellsberg taken down the road
        to the greyhaired Sheriff's van --
But what about Einstein? What about Einstein? Hey, Einstein
                                Come back!


III -- Golden Courthouse


Waiting for the Judge, breathing silent
        Prisoners, witnesses, Police --
the stenographer yawns into her palms.


                                        August 9, 1978


IV -- Everybody's Fantasy


I walked outside & the bomb'd
        dropped lots of plutonium
        all over the Lower East Side
There weren't any buildings left just
        iron skeletons
groceries burned, potholes open to
        stinking sewer waters


There were people starving and crawling
        across the desert
the Martian UFOs with blue
        Light destroyer rays
passed over and dried up all the
        waters


Charred Amazon palmtrees for
        hundreds of miles on both sides
        of the river


                                August 10, 1978


V -- Waiting Room at the Rocky Flats Plutonium Plant


"Give us the weapons we need to protect ourselves!"
        the bareheaded guard lifts his flyswatter above the desk
                                                -- whap!


                                *


A green-letter'd shield on the pressboard wall!
        "Life is fragile.  Handle with care" --
My Goodness! here's where they make the nuclear bomb
                                  triggers.


                                        August 17, 1978


VI -- Numbers in Red Notebook


2,000,000 killed in Vietnam
13,000,000 refugees in Indochina 1972
200,000,000 years for the Galaxy to revolve on its core
24,000 the Babylonian Great Year
24,000 half life of plutonium
2,000 the most I ever got for a poetry reading
80,000 dolphins killed in the dragnet
4,000,000,000 years earth been born
                                                Summer 1978

You can listen to Ginsberg reading this last section as it was one of the songs in the work Hydrogen Jukebox by Phillip Glass.

Remembering the many killed by nuclear bombs and accidents, sending peace and love to all. 

daylight owl #2

From the Sydney Morning Herald today:

BARNEY'S DAY OUT

A beautiful but disoriented barn owl was discovered on the Fairfax Media balcony yesterday before it flew across the park to the Google building, where Barry Alexander from the Australian Wildlife Rescue Organisation (WIRES) rescued it with a net, and some patience and not a little tenderness (which, when we put it like that, sounds rather like the title of a sweet, if maudlin, country and western song). Anyway, we called WIRES to ask why the owl was pottering about in Pyrmont, and found ourselves talking to their Sydney raptor co-ordinator, Caroline Enfield. ''The first thing to remember is at this time of year you've got some young males about who are not quite as savvy as the adults, and they end up perching in the wrong places, and, when the sun comes up, it becomes hard for them to re-orient to the warehouses they might normally live [in].'' We would like to reinforce at this point Enfield is talking about young male owls. When we spoke to her she was on her way to give an assessment of his health. ''We'll keep an eye for a couple of days,'' she said, ''and let it go at night, probably at the casino, as it's near the water, and its feed supply - rats and mice.'' (Again: we are talking about young male owls.) Enfield added people were often surprised such birds were so near the city. ''There are peregrine falcons at the airport and on the Westfield buildings in Bondi, because their food source - pigeons - is close by. They are around us all the time, but people don't look up.'' Stay tuned for an update on ''Barney''. Or send in a better name should you think of one.

flashed flowers #4

Three different kinds of Cooks River wattles- Acacia longifolia is one of them, the other two have been hard to identify. I have done a search on the wattles listed as local but the combination of flower and leaf structure didn't seem quiet right. There are about 700 Australian acacia.
All gleaned from the neighbourhood and the Cooks River walk.

sunrise this morning

From my bedroom- looking towards Mt Ainslie, Canberra.

It was a wonderful mild week with the local green wattles starting to bloom. A relief after last week with everynight going below -3 and frost hanging around till  9:30.

For more picturesque images of frost on plants, rather than the back window of the car just before the 8:30 dash to work, check out Mart's pictures on his blog about the nature on his property in the Canberra district.

The robin is the one

The robin is the one 

That interrupts the morn

With hurried, few, express reports

When March is scarcely on.

The robin is the one 

That overflows the noon

With her cherubic quantity, 

An April but begun.

The robin is the one 

That speechless from her nest

Submits that home and certainty

And sanctity are best.

I went out to visit my parents today and took the chance to dig through some boxes to find some poetry books that I was into when I was a student. I have a student at the moment who is writing poetry and so I wanted to find the sorts of things I was reading when I was her age. (which the time in my life that I now think of as when I was not a birdwatcher, or sometimes I think of it as the time when I didn't realise I was a bird watcher, as I have some many bird associated memories.)

One of the books was a collection of Emily Dickinson poems and flicking through in on the train home I found this one about a robin, a nice synchronicity with my current project.