THE BEACH REPORT, #5 Half an hour in the swim before the Change arrives, long enough to douse the days accumulated heat with the best of the Bay. Not quite jumping the waves --image of our little family late 70s, early 80s, at St Kilda, son delightedly screaming in between parents, their balance hardly better than his own --large crashing whites --boom-rush-gurgle & wash of drowning tides, --whirlpool crush, --bodies, boards, beach-ball, tennis-balls, trailing nets of seaweed, jellyfish, inflated tyre, lost togs, & large bounding dogs fit to fetch the whole sea at their humans behest. Similarly remember first time at St Kilda after three years back in England, accompanied by Ian Robertson, one of the La Mama poets inner circle of 68/9 (La Mama sisters & brothers as Ken Taylor enthusiastically coined), there for us despite the scenes general dissolution, more or less as wed known him --big frame, big heart, beard, hair, deep voice & laughter, with dancer-muse, Libby, now, & also Secret Indias life-change within him --matching ones own journey more or less? Hmm, no --rather less! --less radical at the core… Three years in England, tuning in to the variety of the New culture, the poetry & music & different political perspectives, altogether gentler than the psychic & metabolic blast we understood Ian to have received at the Aurobindo ashram at Pondicherry, in the white gleam of The Mothers light, after which the continuing symbiosis of Vietnam War & counter-culture… Three years of correspondence --Ians fulsome epistles written or typed on his share, perhaps, of Dr Williams legendary wedding dowry of yellow paper-- preceded our reunion. Turning over all of this history & experience in his little cabin at the back of Mirka Moras garden, --and didnt the Symes come with us that day? Colin & Frances, on the wing of our stories in Southampton of Melbournes New World, --culture & climate-shocked from Bognor Regis to Sydney? They met Ian, certainly, and found in his exquisite wooden painted sculpture/assemblages the first Australian creation they could rise to which linked them to their longed for Europe. Somehow, though, I dont visualise them swimming with us that time --a fiery Melbourne day, a gale of northerlies, the most cobalt-blue sky & tumultuous sea… Our own gift it was back then, leaping & laughing, & swallowing one waves evil gut-full! Repeat, much smaller seas this day… After Med-like placidity, another mood welcome --the take-it-or-leave-it chop muddling soles-of-feets sense of the variegated depth. Cautious steps into the sea. Take it, --then haul out of it back across hot sand to the kiosks protection from the wind, --and its mug of tea & punnet of hot chips… Large seagulls hang in the air, eying off humans food, momentarily recalling Alfred Hitchcocks demented flock, but also Richard Grossingers novel warning from the Sixties, which still rattles me, that the clamouring birds, squawking over the inland booty, prophecy the oceans inexorable depletion… Homeward bound on the eccentrically time-tabled bus, skin cooled by the Change but ahead of it all along the 246 route, seaside through city-edge to suburb. And tramp from the Clifton Hill junction through the heat, back to the house of reverie. [January 29/ February 2nd, 14]
Posted on: Sun, 02 Feb 2014 06:39:13 +0000
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