Mind Lost

Gender adjusted - so sick of the majority of memes being addressed to men.

The Curate's Egg

Lately life has been a lot like the Curate's Egg. For anyone who doesn't know, a curate's egg is something that is both good and bad. The phrase was first used in a Punch cartoon (1895) depicting "a meek curate who, given a stale egg at the bishop's table, assures his host that ‘parts of it are excellent.’" I think of it as something you might say if you didn't want to sound like a total whinger and were trying to find something positive in amongst all the bad shit. It strikes me that since COVID came on the scene - life is a lot like the Curate's Egg.

Something good: the WA government agreed to stop logging native forests in our state. This is a milestone and a huge victory for environmental activists who have been fighting hard for decades - chaining themselves to bulldozers, protesting, engaging politicians. These people deserve our gratitude. They have done a truly wonderful thing. 

Something bad: there's always the fine print. Logging doesn't cease until 2024, so I guess a lot more damage can be done by then. But that's not the worst part. Exemptions for mining will remain in place. The cynic in me knows that the decision to end logging was a sensible economic one that just happened to win the government some Brownie points. The industry has been propped up with tax payers money for decades so it's basically unviable. What really worries me is that there are already approvals for mining exploration and several are ongoing.

This bloody country only ever makes money from ripping up the earth and selling off raw materials. So the fight isn't over. Not by a long shot - especially when you look at how they are burning the crap out of the bush. The paranoid part of my brain thinks the burning is the precursor to the mining. If they wreck the environment so it looks bad, nobody will care about a few big holes.

Something good: my boss has allowed me to make up the 3 days I missed when I had to stay home with a cold. I'm a casual so if I don't work, I don't get paid. Missing 3 days is a big hit to my small income so it is very kind of him. I'm not blowing my own trumpet but I think he also wants to keep me. Not a week goes by that I don't think of leaving and I think he knows. Like all the education staff I do a bloody good job in very difficult circumstances.

Something bad: I will be working 3 days a week for 3 weeks. I'm already knackered and I have 2 more weeks of that regime to get through. The sinus issue that forced me take the time off is hanging around and I still get terrible headaches.

I'll finish off with something good. No bad.

Images: 

1. Author. New FaBWA header

2. 'Captain Scratchy' on Instagram (screen shot)

'Pretty' stuff

I promised I would do a more positive post so I've included some 'pretty' things. The deadline for our petition calling for a review into prescribed burning expired on 2 September. I created this meme to remind people to send them in by snail mail so we can submit to parliament in time. Although our small team of 5-6 people is pretty exhausted, we are making headway. Members of parliament and possibly even the government agencies we are scrutinising are starting to take note. Our Facebook group is becoming more widely known in cyberspace and the local community. 

I am now a committee member for the Denmark Environment Centre as well. I guess being involved with FaBWA and designing the flyer below for DEC it was inevitable I would get roped in. I went to my first meeting last Monday and it was 3 hours long! I spend a lot of time in meetings lately but unfortunately there are processes we have to engage in to get results. 

The DEC has grown in membership lately too - seems a lot of the city folk moving here to escape the rat race are environmentally minded. This is a positive and unexpected consolation for having my small coastal town invaded by sea-changers. Many local farmers, tradies and rednecks don't give a toss for the environment and work actively against it. If city people want to preserve the environment - I mean that's probably why they are moving here - I'm more than happy to have them on board. They are interested (and cashed up too). The DEC organised a nocturnal fauna spotting excursion last week and 100 people turned up! That's unheard of.

The next pretty image was taken by Terry Dunham. Terry is the admin. of the Stirling Range National Park Recovery Group. I met Terry 20 years ago when I was living in a caravan at a beachside park. He popped up again recently on Facebook when he became a member of our Fire & Biodiversity group.

This is a tricky photo because although it was taken onsite in an undisclosed location, the background is actually a poster of another of Terry's photos. He explained that he did this because he wanted to hide the location. Pretty clever and makes for a stunning pic. The plant is Darwinia meeboldii (Cranbrook Bell). 

I'll finish off with a cute fluffy marsupial. This is a Mardo (Antechinus). I showcased this little guy in another Facebook post. The photographer is Lyn Alcock and she takes some of the most amazing photos of Numbats, Echidnas and Mardos in the Dryandra forest. I can't believe she got this shot - these guys are quick!

Australia has some of the most unusual and stunning species of flora and fauna, and we are fighting really hard to preserve them.

New Variant?

 

Despite what some people think about me (my once-closest friend included) - I'm not a vaccine Nazi. I respect free choice and I understand vaccine hesitancy - from a medical, not a conspiracy theory perspective. 

But this virus seems hell bent on reducing our presence on the planet. The longer a virus hangs around, the more chance it has to mutate. The new C1.2. variant is possibly more infectious and mutates twice as fast. It has now mutated a fair way from the original Wuhan variant.

So it isn't a matter of individual choice - those of us who are vaccinated may still be in a precarious position. I for one am pretty unhappy about that because I have tried to do the right thing and other people are still putting me at risk. 

Tinkering at the edges will only get more of us killed or with long term health issues. Whilst that might be a good thing for the planet, none of us want it to be us, or our families and friends that succumb. 

It always seemed inevitable to me that our insistence on exercising our democratic right to choice would be our undoing.

Source: Eric Feigi-Ding on Twitter, Epidemiologist & health economist. Senior Fellow, @FAScientists. Former 16 yrs, @Harvard. @JohnsHopkinsalum. Health & social justice. COVID updates since Jan’20

Fully Vaxxed

 

For better or worse, I'm fully vaxxed - at least for 8 months when I guess I'll need a booster. Despite the cartoon, I'm not really smug about it either. I've said it before - I made what I thought was the best of a bad choice. 

I posted this on Facebook too. I considered not doing it because I know it will be a trigger for some people and I may lose more friends over it, but I think it's important to keep a sense of humour - even if 200 people a day are dying of COVID in Florida. It's not funny that people are dying, it's not even funny that many have chosen to go the way of conspiracy theories. I'm just sick of treading on eggshells. And I'm also sick of feeling as though I should apologise for the choice I have made. Like I've sold out or something. ME! The quintessential rebel.

I still have my doubts about the vaccine and I'm certainly not a sheep that follows meekly behind the flock. I also have a real distrust of medicine, science and the government. We don't really know what the long term consequences of this vaccine are and I have taken a leap of faith in getting it. So much about life is unknown but in reality - it always was. 

28 Minutes

I've got my writing mojo back and since sending the latest draft of the first article to get more feedback, I've moved onto the second. I hope the institute still want it but if they don't, nothing lost. I think it's good to rewrite the second while the first is still fresh in my mind.

I've posted this before and Sarah Toa may remember it because we both knew Melusina*. I'm posting it again because I hope this time it will be published. I had to remove it from my thesis but I think it should have been included. At some point though you just need to stop because you have enough words and your supervisor tells you to!

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

I hardly knew her - an artist - like me. In death she looms larger than she ever did in life. The manner of her dying tragic, poetic - terrifying. Drowned in the deep wild cauldron of blue-black sea. 

I couldn’t go to The Gap for months after her suicide. When I finally gazed into the beckoning throat I saw her struggling there, the cast shadow of her desperation wavering in my own.

She had tried many times to end her life. This time the slab-stone sentinel guarded the way out - the arms of the deep chasm held her. Cruel Mother-sea swallowed her soul - silently, whole. Into the Void.

The story unfolded in disembodied anecdotes. An image formed, imprinted itself savagely on my mind - and never left. She had woven, hurried, between the ubiquitous tourists, threatening to knock them down in her drugged and drunken haste, staggered with grim resolve towards the gaping wound in the granite. No one saw her step off the edge of the world, but they peered into the abyss to see where she had gone.

And they saw her trying to swim.

Jesus.

She swam for 28 exhausting minutes in the gently heaving maelstrom - from the time the call went out, until, only just too late, someone leaned from the rescue boat to grasp a handful of long red-floating locks, already turned to soft brown seaweed.

Perhaps her movements were just residual shreds of instinct, that she hadn’t really changed her mind. I imagine how she felt and what she saw: the hole of the sky framed by sheer black towering granite, white limbs darting like silver fish over the abyss.

Melusina still swims in the dark sea of my unconscious.

Image: Author. Oil on board. Study.

*Melusina is a pseudonym for an artist I knew who 'apparently' suicided at The Gap. I have not sought permission to use her real name, preferring instead to protect her identity. In one version of a German myth Melusina is a creature, half fish and half human. http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/melusina.html

What Does it Mean to Get Published?

Study 5-4, (2011). Digital print from mixed media painting, 22.0 cm x 21.29 cm.

A week ago I received another email from the executive director of the CG Jung Institute of LA saying:

'We were planning on publishing your article at the end of 2021, which means that we would need the final manuscript in September. Do you think it would work? Please let me know. It’s such a special dissertation that I would like to encourage you to publish it with us'.

Eeeek!!! In the midst of juggling too many things this had completely slipped off my radar. Once again I was surprised at the interest. Anyone who has dared to step into the murky depths of my thesis will understand why. It's such an obscure topic - an intense and uncomfortable tale of a personal journey into the depths of depression and the Jungian unconscious. I never expected anyone apart from my supervisor and the examiners to read it. But here I am in the midst of apocalyptic times - a pandemic that won't go away, fires and floods and more global chaos than usual - being asked to focus on a self-indulgent piece of research that even my supervisor cautioned was in danger of descending into solipsism*.

With a head completely befuddled by the flu I'm still struggling to appreciate that being published might be an excellent thing. I'm not a career academic. I fell into it by default. It was the inevitable destination for someone with an obsession to find the very core of their own psyche. I tried Googling: what does it mean to get an article published?' but that didn't help.

Writing an article is quite different to writing a thesis. I've never written an article. Initially the executive thought his organisation could publish my thesis in sections to save me rewriting. He seems to want to publish the whole thing and that is a massive job, but he needs it in readable chunks for the journal. Having divided it into 4 chunks it is clear it will need a bit more rearranging than that - and some abstracts, bios and summary/linking paragraphs. I'm well into that process and it's having some side effects.

Revisiting the trauma that motivated me to do the thesis in the first place, going back into the process and revisiting the images I created as part of the research, is like experiencing PTS. But there is an up side. At what might be a critical time in our lives on a dying planet I am reminded that life isn't just material. This is important because in the face of physical annihilation it is possible the essence of our existence will live on - somewhere, somehow.

* The view or theory that the self is all that can be known to exist. The quality of being self-centred or selfish.

Image: Author, original artwork.