Notes in profile - more about a boy

Less of the usual self obsessed meanderings - these tend to short visual thought chapters about the world out there and the life experience so far because although we live life forwards - we understand it backwards, if we make sense of it at all. Entries evolve & change often, it's a movable feast...that's life - to change and to grow is to live and who wants to be predictable anyway. By the way they're the other kind of tarts in the interests panel - not the pastries - much more interesting & socially important I think - see also courtesans; this is not to pour scorn on those folks who list the pastry sort and there are plenty of them.!

And it's The Zombies (musical group) in the musical interests, not the other creepy kind because we need a Z - "She's not there" - what a song, not forgetting "Summertime" by Sidney Bechet or Jimi's "Catfish Blues" or Jussi Bjorling and Robert Merrill's "Solenne in Quest'ora" or Elvis' eerie falsetto keening on Sam Phillips' recording of "Blue Moon" 1956 or the gorgeous Della Reese on "Someday you'll want me to want you" and Kathleen Ferrier's "Blow the Wind Southerly"- hear a human body sing not just a voice box, last but not least: Son House' Death Letter Blues. More content is coming, yes we know so is Xmas, actually it's just been but will come again as May West would say. I've just discovered the "British invasion" subject heading which covers our Zombie pals, thanks to Littleverses' blog, not forgetting Frank Zappa.

We notice it's getting harder (stop it May!) to find like minded people of less than a few hundred when one clicks on a movie title, but not impossible: just find more obscure movies or Australian ones, we have only three kindred spirits for some titles and just us for others, ah the joys of solitude.

Personal interests are easier although just as likely to result in some surprising blog companions, zombies being a good example, and courtesans, but what did we expect; still it is a reminder once again of the individual variability of meaning and perception...What does Mister Bennett call himself in Pride and Prejudice - "a connoisseur of human folly". Perhaps, along with Socrates, we are being too hard on ourselves; the unexamined life is still worth something, I'm just not sure exactly what that is...

But I digress, although digression is the spice of life, didn't Oscar Wilde say that, as well as: “Ambition is the last refuge of the failure", "Only the shallow know themselves", "The well-bred contradict other people, the wise contradict themselves" and “Those who are faithful know only the trivial side of love"; it is the faithless who know love’s tragedies” and so on... by the way all the dots mean this isn't the whole story but then nothing ever is I suppose...and yes the blog title is at least partly ironic...actually they are self obsessed meanderings, ah well...

Every new morning and every sunset is a wonder - we see it because a random genetic event of conception following our 3 million year evolutionary past that began with a cosmic event 13.7 billion years ago brings us to this moment of existence...carpe diem!
Achieve immortality through sharing love and knowledge.
Learn to cook without recipes.
Life is lived forward but understood backwards - so save some time for thought every day and find solitude where you can.

A generation apart

Dad and me 1950s; me with my son Inigo in the back yard at Wooloomooloo 1970s. When we returned from London we found an old mid-Victorian terrace house for $14 a week in Riley St under the new railway over pass, the place had been operating as a brothel with partitions and filthy matresses in the rooms; we cleaned it up, emptied the piles of used tissues and rubbers into the garden, painted the walls and hung up our old kilims from Turkey and Afganistan, batiks from Jakarta and shadow puppets from Bali. I salvaged some young banana trees from deserted gardens due for demolition and planted them in the tiny backyard, they grew well and the fruit was sweet, is it any wonder...

Wambuwany Stands His Ground

Wambuwany Stands His Ground

Picture if you will: it's early Spring, I'm pottering around the bottom paddock, head down, bit of pruning, checking fruit trees, clearing irrigation drippers, weeding, spraying a few thistles, mmm quite a bit of fresh 'roo dung around, some grass has been eaten down too, hang on what's that grunting noise...whoa!

He's standing two metres high and giving me the eye, he takes a deep breath and as his chest expands his muscular arms open showing claws like eagle talons, then he exhales in a series of deep grunts, I'm blinking, he isn't. Then he starts to sway back on his tail, getting ready to transfer his weight and kick out with those great hind feet, the big toes have nails like daggers, so I back off and he calms slightly but stands his ground.

This is his favourite spot in the olive grove and he's not happy with any disturbance.  His poor condition especially around the hind quarters, reflects the current drought conditions.

This is Wiradjuri tribal land so his local name is Wambuwany.

Big males like this have specially thickened skin on the belly to protect them from kicks by rivals in territorial fights, and will easily kill or badly injure a dog or man who comes too close. I notice the flattened grass where he has been lying up in the shade and realise I'm in his territory, safe from dogs behind the paddock fences and close to water in the gully below. 

If cornered near a river or stream they will clasp a dog in their arms and jump into deep water, the front claws attack the opponent's head and eyes, and they bite. Then the poodles get his scent and race across baying like mini blood hounds, dancing round him like Squirrel Nutkin, me yelling at them to stop, this is too much and he turns his head disdainfully and takes off, up and over the barbed wire fence in a bound and is gone. However this is his territory so he'll be back...

Fishing therapy - on the water, Lake Lyell

`Nice? It's the only thing,' said the Water Rat solemnly, as he leant forward for his stroke. `Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing -- absolute nothing -- half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats. Simply messing,' he went on dreamily: `messing -- about -- in -- boats; messing -- -- '
`Look ahead, Rat!' cried the Mole suddenly.
It was too late. The boat struck the bank full tilt. The dreamer, the joyous oarsman, lay on his back at the bottom of the boat, his heels in the air.
` -- about in boats -- or with boats,' the Rat went on composedly, picking himself up with a pleasant laugh. `In or out of 'em, it doesn't matter. Nothing seems really to matter, that's the charm of it. Whether you get away, or whether you don't; whether you arrive at your destination or whether you reach somewhere else, or whether you never get anywhere at all, you're always busy, and you never do anything in particular; and when you've done it there's always something else to do, and you can do it if you like, but you'd much better not. Look here! If you've really nothing else on hand this morning, supposing we drop down the river together, and have a long day of it?'

from The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame, 1908

Her Privates We

The lady and her lover have had a run as our personal picture for while, the den was being rearranged so they came down from the wall to lay gently on the scanner; little did they realise just where they would end up...

On a related matter:

HAMLET
My excellent good friends! How dost thou, Guildenstern? Ah, Rosencrantz! Good lads, how do ye both?
ROSENCRANTZ
As the indifferent children of the earth.
GUILDENSTERN
Happy, in that we are not over-happy; On fortune's cap we are not the very button.
HAMLET
Nor the soles of her shoe?
ROSENCRANTZ
Neither, my lord.
HAMLET
Then you live about her waist, or in the middle of her favours?
GUILDENSTERN
'Faith, her privates we.
HAMLET
In the secret parts of fortune? O, most true; she is a strumpet. What's the news?
ROSENCRANTZ
None, my lord, but that the world's grown honest.

***

Of course Her Privates We is also the title of the great autobiographical novel of the First World War by Frederick Manning, a book that Hemingway called the finest and noblest book of men in war. Originally censored in the 1920s for its anti-war and sexual content, Manning published an expurgated version titled The Middle Parts of Fortune, but we and the Bard know what he meant...

On the Six Foot Track, with a poet and a piebald.

The six foot track was originally developed as a bridle path six feet wide, covering the 26 miles from Katoomba to Jenolan Caves in 1884. Lord Carrington, then Governor General, and Lady Carrington, traveled the track in September 1887 in company with the noted local guide Harry Peckman, known from his versifying as the Poetical Whip, who entertained them along the way with his songs and recitations. When Lady Carrington found it hard going, Harry told her to catch hold of his piebald horse's tail, she at first refused until her husband remarked, "Now then, Lil', do as the guide tells you", her ladyship took the advice and from then on she was alright. They camped at Little River and broke out the champagne and other good things, Harry gave them billy tea and finished off the bubbly with his brother. Some time later the piebald died, Harry cut off the tail and kept it as a souvenir of Lady Carrington. The track passes through some of the most beautiful, rugged and inaccessible country of the southern Blue Mountains National Park and may take up to 4 days to traverse or as little as 5-6 hours for runners in the six foot track marathon, definitely not me. My younger son and I drove in along the fire trail from the Jenolan end as far as the Cox's River and camped overnight at Little River. I photographed these wild ponies as they grazed on fresh pasture after rain. They probably descend from pit ponies released by the miners after the Katoomba coal mines closed in the 1930s. The rivers were still low with no spawn run fish showing, although a few smaller resident fish showed interest in a dry fly. A school group arrived and took over the Cox's camp ground, they had walked in from the Katoomba end, so we left early and headed back the way we came. No sign of old Harry, just the ponies, there was a piebald one.