Shell on black

Core

Spiral

All photos taken with Chamonix 045F1, Rodenstock Ysaron 75mm and Apo-Sironar-S 150mm lenses, on Fomapan 100 film, and developed in a mix of Xtol(1.3)+paRodinal(1.160).

“I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas” – TS Eliot

Walking the shoreline at low tide, crab claws abandoned near a child’s sandcastle remind me of J. Alfred Prufrock. It pains me to see broken claws discarded on a beach when these could be scuttling across the ocean floor.

Homage to J. Alfred Prufrock

As I grow older, I identify more strongly with J. Alfred Prufock. These days I would rather stroll the beach with pants rolled, and know if mermaids or sirens call from across the waves it is not for me. I am no Odysseus tied to a masthead, or adventurer, but more often than not feel that human voices and illness drowned my dreams.

When I look back, there is the shyness of youth hidden limpet like behind a hard shell. Longing always to be hip, cool, and…

Indolence tracks its weary feet into long hot languid days to find its natural repose in the shade.

Flowers shrivel, and bush undergrowth starts to dry after a few scorching days. Moisture quickly disappears, and if the heat continues, soon the forest will look parched.

Summer means spring days spent looking for wildflowers have come to an end. Soon it will be hot almost every day, and the risk of fires, makes it too dangerous to stray far into the bush.

Spring turns to summer

As spring turns to summer, I visit a favourite tree on the Bugong plateau, which seems to stands at a portal not just to the wilderness, but other times and places.

I look forward to cooler months to spend a few moments here again under the arch looking yonder .

Arched

Photos taken with Chamonix 045F1 view camera, Skink 0.4mm f.214 pinhole in Copal #0…

Queenslanders have always seemed a little different. There is Queensland, and then there is the rest of Australia.

I remember visiting in the early 1980’s and being in a bank. When the teller rang my branch in Victoria, and started by saying, “Good morning, this is Queensland calling!”

On the rugby field their state team still has only one battle cry and it is “Queenslander.”

Queensland has always been a land of milk and honey, a paradise of winter crops, sugar cane, rum and cattle. A place where women can be women, and men are men. Even their unique style of houses built on high stumps are called Queenslanders. Houses are mostly freshly painted, churches full on Sundays, governments conservative, and sin confined to the Gold Coast.

Of course I was completely suspect and tarred as a Mexican from south of the border. My car had Victorian number plates, it…

‘Cause how many times can you wake up in this comic book and plant flowers? – Rodriguez

Flowers have their own personalities. Whenever I chance upon fuchsia heath I am reminded of a ballet, and see a chorus line of bells dancing along a twig.

Fuchsia heath

Daisies always look rather quaint, never out of place, and call out for attention even from close to the ground.

Toothed daisy-bush

The drumstick seems incongruous with its tiny batons and mass of flowers marching across open plateaus.

Drumstick

Exploding into space, the heath kunzea, is a vision of fireworks and celebration.

Heath kunzea

Appearing like a crystal, the rush fringe-lily looks lonely, hard and strong.

Rush fringe-lily

Flowers can evoke powerful sensations, and where there are shadows, happily bring light. With sorrow and mourning,  blooms and buds soften our hearts, and can regenerate our spirits with reminders of faith, hope and love.

“A man is ‘called’ to nothing, and has no ‘calling’, no ‘destiny’ as little as a plant or a beast has ‘calling.’ The flower does not follow the calling to complete itself, but it spends all its forces to enjoy and consume the world as it can – it sucks in as much of the juices of the earth, as much air of the ether, as much light of the sun, as it can get and lodge. The bird lives up to no calling, but it uses its forces as much as practicable; it catches beetles and sings to its heart’s delight. But the forces of the flower and the bird are slight in comparison to those of a man, and a man who applies his forces will affect the world much more powerfully than the flower and beast. A calling he has not, but he has forces that manifest…

Monsters lurk in shadows, filtered by memories and imaginings out of the light.

In shadows

In some places gargoyles peer from their perches.

Gargoyles

Across dank damp walls lichens spread their crusty textures.

Lichens

Mossy ferns drape rocks ready to spout seed into the moisture laden humus beneath.

Mossy fern

A stalk grows quickly on a rock face, standing erect like Priapus, perhaps signifying sinister stories hidden within.

Stalk

Reaching the plateau out of the gloom, joy greets a sea of pink petals facing the sunlight. In the dark, consciousness sometimes defers to fear and hesitation, letting apparitions and torments out to play.

Petals

Looking across the canopy from the 12 Mile Peg towards the coast, the skeleton of a dead tree rises from beneath, conceivably waving its limbs ironically in farewell to the monsters momentarily freed from the deep.

Across the canopy

All photos taken with Chamonix 045F1 View…

Lately I find myself pondering eternity.

For me eternity is neither nothingness or void. Nor do I find myself abjectly contemplating a Nietzschean eternal recurrence of this life by daily sublimation and surrender to the possibility of endless reincarnation.

With the Kantian destruction of ontological arguments for the proof of a god whose existence relies on being posited by human contemplation and acceptance in faith, I find myself looking for clues to an eternity that is instead limitless, and only constrained by the will to liberate an eternal imagination without beginning or end.

I find myself wondering the colour of eternity? Is it orange as my friend responds because he has been bad, dislikes this hue, and it will subsequently torment him till after the end of time, or because for me it is simply the colour of dawn. The sun rises every day, and its recurrence over eons suggests…

Every day we stand at the edge of uncertainty, but spring and its impact on circadian rhythms brings forth plenitude. The longer days encourage plants to shoot, flowers to bloom, animals to multiply, and assures our existence with the promise of an abundant harvest.

On the edge of a tilled field it is not hard to imagine forever. Verdant fields with endless sheaths of wheat vanishing into the distance, or elsewhere, canola brightly turning yellow across gently rolling hills.

Verdure

Four trees

Spring is marked by regularity. Fields furrowed with precision, orchards pruned neatly in rows, and sheep ready to lamb. It is the season of grace. Nothing is out of place. Even where a few trees remain, it is mostly out of utility. When fields are fallow, or animals graze after harvest on the stubble, shade is needed from the harsh summer sun yet to come.

There is a…

There are times when I fall into a deep reverie floating through ideas, or slip into an almost trance like state listening to music, losing all sense of time, space and place. This can be quite awkward sometimes. Not knowing how one has arrived somewhere, but having an awareness that it might have just been the most beautiful piece of music one has ever listened too.

Whether it is listening to Schubert’s Rosamunde, the celtic harp, or a jazz trumpet, I sometimes slip into a world of dreams, visions or thoughts where ideas become depicted by imagery, or just sense sheer ecstasy. When younger I was often described as rather serious, a dreamer, and even once called a sensualist. Not in an erotic sense, but rather as a depiction of a person enjoying experiences coming from pure appreciation of one’s senses. It is only as I have grown older…