Aussie Journal
Since I haven't been writing anything fit to post on the kitten, I thought I would post a few things that are thouroughly unfit. The following are exerpts from my travel journal.
Rainforest night 19.08.06
The rushing rainwater that carves this narrow creek channel deeper and deeper each rainy season is gone. Water is scarce this season. It pools in small, muddy pockets, dripping and trickling its way from pool to pool, filling up one and spilling into the next, making the occasional audible tinkle of running water as it leaks its way slowly down the hill to the river. The red ochre of the clay walls leading up from the creek bed to the eucalypt forest above is invisible through the darkness of the bush. Not even stars break the canopy.
Bluegreen lights of glowworms, indistinguishable from the light of stars but for their colour, pulse in their tiny pockets in the clay walls. Their tiny filaments, like sticky and translucent, beaded necklaces hang from the ceilings of their pinhole caverns, ready to adhere to any of the nearly microscopic insects that flap their way through the nights, navigating by starlight.
The chirping of bat’s high frequency pulsations mix with the incessant whine of insects, calling to each other across the creek. “Here I am,” they say. Or, “Stay away,” or “come and give me your DNA.” The insect noise is broken only by the water, and interludes of shrieking nocturnal mammals.
The mild smell of fungus wafts from the spongy gum wood that rests across the creek. It fills the air with the spore of rot, and life, and a brief reminder that it will be a cool night like this in which you too will decay.
Life is a haiku 24.07.06
The fruit bats were waking up as the sun dropped behind orange and purple clouds. They shuffled and flapped in the trees, awaiting darkness. A large flock of parrots sang in a tree near the beach, mixing their calls with the mammalian screams of the bats. The sound was not loud, but was all encompassing, as though a ten thousand piece orchestra was warming up in the sand. The only noise to be heard through the nearly tangible wall of sound were the waves breaking on the black, igneous outcropping that leaned and weathered over the beach.
A few ofJuly’s cold rain clouds passed through nearly an hour before, leaving behind a mist that refracted pale rainbows over the mountains across Byron Bay. Dark purple pillars of rain were visible many kilometers in the distance, forming a pillow for the sun to rest upon. And as the sun continued to sink, its final rays shone through the waves, illuminating them, making them turquoise, and so transparent the shapes of other waves were visible behind them. The liquid hills peeled away softly across the sandy bottom, breaking two or three times before reaching the end of the bay. I paddled into a wave, stood, and slipped quickly down its glassy surface.
As I lay, paddling out again, a gray fin slid through a wave rolling toward me. At first I thought it was a shark, but as I looked I could see a pod of nearly ten dolphins all around me. They bobbed their heads up, close enough to touch, and looked at me, talking to one another, before they left the bay in search of more delicious fish.
I sat on the surface of the water as the waves rolled beneath me, and I turned, and stood, and rode away, and tried to make up a poem about it, and couldn‘t.
Rainforest night 19.08.06
The rushing rainwater that carves this narrow creek channel deeper and deeper each rainy season is gone. Water is scarce this season. It pools in small, muddy pockets, dripping and trickling its way from pool to pool, filling up one and spilling into the next, making the occasional audible tinkle of running water as it leaks its way slowly down the hill to the river. The red ochre of the clay walls leading up from the creek bed to the eucalypt forest above is invisible through the darkness of the bush. Not even stars break the canopy.
Bluegreen lights of glowworms, indistinguishable from the light of stars but for their colour, pulse in their tiny pockets in the clay walls. Their tiny filaments, like sticky and translucent, beaded necklaces hang from the ceilings of their pinhole caverns, ready to adhere to any of the nearly microscopic insects that flap their way through the nights, navigating by starlight.
The chirping of bat’s high frequency pulsations mix with the incessant whine of insects, calling to each other across the creek. “Here I am,” they say. Or, “Stay away,” or “come and give me your DNA.” The insect noise is broken only by the water, and interludes of shrieking nocturnal mammals.
The mild smell of fungus wafts from the spongy gum wood that rests across the creek. It fills the air with the spore of rot, and life, and a brief reminder that it will be a cool night like this in which you too will decay.
Life is a haiku 24.07.06
The fruit bats were waking up as the sun dropped behind orange and purple clouds. They shuffled and flapped in the trees, awaiting darkness. A large flock of parrots sang in a tree near the beach, mixing their calls with the mammalian screams of the bats. The sound was not loud, but was all encompassing, as though a ten thousand piece orchestra was warming up in the sand. The only noise to be heard through the nearly tangible wall of sound were the waves breaking on the black, igneous outcropping that leaned and weathered over the beach.
A few ofJuly’s cold rain clouds passed through nearly an hour before, leaving behind a mist that refracted pale rainbows over the mountains across Byron Bay. Dark purple pillars of rain were visible many kilometers in the distance, forming a pillow for the sun to rest upon. And as the sun continued to sink, its final rays shone through the waves, illuminating them, making them turquoise, and so transparent the shapes of other waves were visible behind them. The liquid hills peeled away softly across the sandy bottom, breaking two or three times before reaching the end of the bay. I paddled into a wave, stood, and slipped quickly down its glassy surface.
As I lay, paddling out again, a gray fin slid through a wave rolling toward me. At first I thought it was a shark, but as I looked I could see a pod of nearly ten dolphins all around me. They bobbed their heads up, close enough to touch, and looked at me, talking to one another, before they left the bay in search of more delicious fish.
I sat on the surface of the water as the waves rolled beneath me, and I turned, and stood, and rode away, and tried to make up a poem about it, and couldn‘t.
posted by sean_garmire at 6:57 AM
1 comments
