This is a sad and compelling something, encountered by Polly on our driveway.
"I don't know what it is," she said. "But if I look at it again, I'll vomit."
In a night or two I will have finished reading her Enid Blyton's Faraway Tree trilogy. Next will be Arabel's Raven.
Down at the Grey Creek, since the rain, there is a super-abundance of dragonflies and their smaller cousins the damselflies. In my experience, there have never been so many. They are hovering, flashing bolts of iridescence, almost surreal in their variety, like echoes from J G Ballard’s The Crystal World. They are hypnotic, suggestive of fairy tales, and cousins to the butterflies in that they bring fanciful unexpected colour to the world. At times, as I sit observing them, I feel a shimmer of magic, glimpses of another world briefly seen and then gone.
I’ve set about cataloguing them. Thus far, among the damsel flies, blue ringtails are by far the most common, tails striped with sky blue and black. There are common flatwings, a dark metallic green with a lightning bolt on the thorax, and tiny prismatic aurora ringtails. The most populous dragonfly is the tiger-striped tau emerald with its bold green face. There are blue skimmers. And red wandering perchers.
I’m beginning to see variations in their behaviour. Their mode of flight and their habits can be used to identify them, but I’m not quite an oder yet. Oder? Oding is the habit of dragonfly watching. Many of them flit by too fast for my eye to track (They are among the fastest insects) and few stay still long enough for a photo, but I lucked out with this common flatwing ...
and this wondrous spider, which I’ve been unable to identify. Perhaps, if there is an arachnophile reading this, he or she may be so good as to shine a light on my ignorance ...?
Walking Polly to school today, there were more musk lorikeets than I have ever seen in Mt Waverley. I love these birds - so much sweeter and gentler than the brash, squawking rainbow lorikeets who vastly outnumber them.
This is the best I could do by way of photos.
About a month ago, the house was burgled while we were taking Polly to school. My camera was taken, and my ipod - two things I find it hard to live without - despite their being in such poor condition I doubt if our robber would have got a penny for them. Indeed, I cannot think of one item of loot he might have recouped on. Jenny’s wisdom tooth? My back pack? My car keys...?
People say the sense of invasion is the worst thing about house robberies. For me, it was the vision of what went on in the guy’s head ... the soulless machinations ... the utter lack of empathy ... Why did (he) give Polly’s room such particular treatment...? It would have been blatantly obvious that our household was low on valuables ... but still he went for the very little there was ... It’s saddening to me that such dismal creatures live amongst us.
The bright side, however, is that I’ve replaced my camera - and can resume my record of Mt Waverley’s most meagre denizens. It continues to amaze me how such a cheap little device can reap such results ...
First, a blue-tail damselfly ...
an orchid dupe wasp ...
Though I may have crystallised my brain in the aftermath, Thursday’s show came off pretty well. Perhaps there weren’t quite enough people there to deal entirely with Steve Lucas’s chronic back, but it was fulsome nevertheless. Every time I saw him, Lucas lay entirely prone on in one of the upstairs band rooms, his voice growly with painkillers, barely lifting his head as he pursued quiet conversation with his girlfriend, the singer of Dollsquad, who like the couch on which he lay was clothed head to toe in black vinyl. How he made it up the Geidi Prime-style industrial stairs to get there, I cannot imagine.
It was good to play a grungy down-to-earth gig. Morgen and Jane were there, and Nurin and Chrissie ... but there were lots of faces who haven’t seen us yet, in this latter day incarnation. Like every one of these new Ears shows it was ridiculously enjoyable, liberating, soul-lifting ... someone in the band-room pinned a badge on me that read ‘Music is Love’. It is love indeed, despite an occasional world shattering 120K hum on stage
And we got some of the most interesting reactions. Someone, it may have been Charlie Owen, said that when he arrived, during the Ears set, his interest was piqued by what he thought was some young interesting new band - that was until he saw the grey hair. Someone else excused the Nick Cave influence in my stage movements when he realised that everyone must have moved like that back then. Someone said we sounded like Muse but without the annoying whine. Even the enigmatic ‘Donald’ said he was ‘surprised’ and that he ‘didn’t mean it as an insult’. Kerry (Simpson), who has been filling in when Cathy McQuade can’t make it down from Sydney to do vocals, also got some really good reports.
Ashton Davey, who organised the show, deserves a word too.
My head feels full of cotton wool and I’m going to give up trying to string words together. A final thanks to Simon Polinski who during these past week has finished the masters of The Ears and Beargarden material now available for download on Bandcamp. It’s a satisfying feeling, a sense of resolution, making that music available again. It’s no longer orphaned, half-forgotten. And it’s about time The Ears released an album.
Below is a picture of me 'fixing up' some vocals at Simon's place. On Thursday someone actually asked me if I use botox! People say the weirdest things.
