Spring

May I say, right at the start, I'm having trouble with blogging. Can't find the full 'compose' view. The only help I have available to me are the spellchecker and the image icon. No linkmaker, no block quotes function, no html. One of these days a red-legged goddess will pop in and all my technical problems will be solved; until then I intend to continue on with words and hope readers will bear with me. I can only give you link addresses. (I suspect all this may have to do with the way Safari is operating on my machine) - but then, maybe not.

Ahem. As I was about to say before I was so rudely interrupted by all this techno whatnot, it's spring!

Two days ago it was the Spring Equinox which means from now on in south-eastern Australia our hours of sunlight will be increasing until we come to the Summer Solstice which falls on December 21 this year. The meaning of this is clearly explained and illustrated in a one page document at the Victoria Museum's website at www.museumvictoria.com.au/discoverycentre/infosheets/Planets/The-Sun-and-the-Seasons - just Google it.

On the day of the equinox I stuck a small stake in the ground out the back of my house to mark the point of shadow from the back veranda at noon. The sun is getting closer to the house and I know this for a fact because the equinox stake is much closer than the one we (me and my scientific adviser) put in at the time of the Winter Solstice - around about 7 feet closer (what's that in metres?). I'm not sure what we can do with this 'knowledge' - or should I say 'data'?- but it all looks good alongside the rain gauge where we also do some measuring.

Meanwhile in the animal kingdom the possums are showing themselves in the evening and junior is on her mother's back as they spring from the roof onto the walnut tree, then woodshed and a leisurely stroll to the compost heap to snack on juicy leftovers.

Over at the lake the Wood Ducks (aka Maned Goose or Chenonetta jubata), are bringing out their babies. Mum and dad stand guard as the little ones feed on the grasses round the lake. The parents hiss at passing cars and the whole family group heads back into the water at any sign of danger. Smart animals.

In the garden blossoms abound and the camellia tree is showing its brilliant red flowers. They were always out for mum's birthday. During winter I wrote about them in this poem for my mother. I called it 'Spring'.

Spring will come
and mother's tree will glow
dark red
again.

She liked a bit of colour:
polka dots on crisp cotton,
simple dresses
pressed into service with a hot iron
spitting onto a damp cloth.
Primped and pleated and hung.

She loved to see the sun.
Let the sun shine through
to make her day:
a cup of tea, a splash of colour
and the sun peeping through.

Now mother's tree
is dressed in serious green
flashed with clusters of crimson flowers,
petals falling to make for her
a thick red carpet
on the earth.

Just Macbeth!

I'm crazy about Shakespeare and I'm also crazy about Bell Shakespeare, Australia's own Shakespeare acting company. I love watching them act in the big theatre, the Playhouse, in Melbourne's Arts Centre. I usually go there twice a year to see the two new plays in the subscription season.

This year I made an extra trip to the theatre to see them do Andy Griffith's Just Macbeth! in the school holidays.


Andy Griffiths is also the author of a number of very funny books for kids including The Bum Series.

Bums and all their noisy and smelly manifestations feature quite prominently in Just Macbeth! Just the thing for a people of refined tastes such as myself and Badger, my seven-year-old companion.

Bum jokes, wee wee, snot, stuff poked up your nose and into your mouth (and out the other end), wizz fizz potions that send you and your mates reeling from a boring classroom lesson into the mayhem of Macbeth's world. Onto the dark side with daggers and dripping blood, ghosts, witches and madness. And poetry.

The juxtaposition of evil and brutal action alongside sublime poetry is one of Shakespeare's greatest achievements in Macbeth. As Macbeth slashes his way to absolute power he horrifies the audience, but also entrances us with the beauty of his words:

I am in blood
Stepp'd in so far that, should I wade no more,
Returning were as tedious as go o'er.

Nightmares of guilt send Lady Macbeth right over the top into madness and have Macbeth lilting on the balm of sleep now lost to him:

Macbeth does murder sleep - the innocent sleep,
Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleave of care,
The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course,
Chief nourisher in life's feast.

In silly Just Macbeth!, the brilliant poetry of many of Shakespeare's best lines emerge through the veil of Macbeth's dark deeds and the riotous comedy on the stage. In this context their beauty is even more stark and amazing.

Poetry

This week my writing group met to share their thoughts about travel.

I wrote a poem:


Stasis and movement
ebb and flow
mountain and sea.
I move from the centre
to the periphery.

At rest I draw my
outlines of the world.
In movement I fill spaces
of crazy colours mixing.
My lines are reconfigured
or erased.

Thought and action
concept and experience.

India filled in worlds
my mind imagined-
but I did not think
the world might be
so crumpled-
I saw Jane Austen's hedgerows
from the highroad near the paddy
and Dickens' close-by houses
nodding in streets
of working beasts-
Dostoyevsky also
made flesh
around the books upon my shelf.

Grand Final

A couple of weeks ago I was awarded my first sporting trophy - for table tennis. The inscription reads: '2008 B Grade Premiers'.

The final series ran over three weeks at the local club. Each week I sighed with relief that this would be the last night I'd be required to turn up at the hall to negotiate my way through a few rubbers of table tennis while trying not to look like a complete idiot. Vain hope! I won few games in the finals, few in the season proper for that matter, but still my team prospered.

I joined the table tennis club three years ago when I had a bit more freedom from marking essays at night as a part of my job as a high school English teacher. I'd enjoyed table tennis games at friends' places before that and wanted to learn more about the game. Naively,I had not even contemplated the possibility that the club would be competitive. Competitive sport was anathema to me except from the vantage point of a couch potato viewer of aussie rules football. Now here I was in a thicket of gradings, a truly hierarchical order of abilities with me at the bottom with a massive handicap.

Hierarchy was one thing but the saving grace was -I was not alone, I was part of a team. I found that I liked playing doubles best; I felt more confident and able to contribute more as one half of a doubles pair. Added to that was the extra strength gained as part of the team when our top players raised the overall team score and dragged the rest of us along to victory.

Now I'm part of a winning team and I have a trophy to prove it.

Australia Felix

Driving the camel loaded with books, southwest from Ballarat to the coast.

Nice country down that way. Green, loaded with crops at the start of spring. Fat merino sheep, contented herds of cows on their haunches dreaming the day away. Prosperous farmhouses and long driveways leading to mansions in the bush.

When Major Thomas Mitchell travelled through that part of the country in 1836 he called it 'Australia Felix', a term that's still in currency and which might be translated as 'Fortunate Australia', 'Favoured Australia' or even 'The Lucky Country' as Stephen Murray-Smith explained in his wonderful book about the Australian language, Right Words.

Murray-Smith included this passage from Mitchell, where he describes the western district of Victoria:

We traversed it in two directions with heavy carts, meeting no other obstruction than the softness of the rich soil; and, in returning, over flowery plains and green hills, fanned by the breezes of early spring. I named this region Australia Felix, the better to distinguish it from the parched deserts of the interior country, where we had wandered so unprofitably and so long.

The quote is from Mitchell's account of his journeys in Australia, Three Expeditions... , London 1839.

Book Fair

I've loaded the camel with more than twenty boxes of books. I'm headed to Port Fairy on the coast where they're holding a book fair this coming weekend.

I'll be selling books in the Reardon Theatre on Saturday and Sunday (Sept. 6 & 7). There will be writers talking about their books around the town.

Can't wait to get on the road and see that great country rolling down south from up here near Mt. Macedon. Wanna see Koroit again.