Maddie
When Henry closed the door, I wept like a lost four-year-old who had become detached from my parents in a crowded place. The urge to run out the door to search for him and cling to him was unbearable. It was a shocking feeling, A feeling of loss that I imagine was like him having died. Henry had talked about this for months. His obsession with wanting to get out and record what he called the re-birthing. For years he had left behind the dangers of his journalistic career, where he once was brave enough to expose himself to the threat of being shot at, kidnapped or blown up. The inherent dangers of preserving his tenuous trappings of Press neutrality in a war zone where he could bring news and gruesome images to the world in the name of reportage.
I humoured him back then in those months of his planning and research. His old creased maps of places that were once retreats of pleasure. Memories of vineyard visits and walks in the once-dense Karri and Marri forests. Now these places were like cemeteries. Where there were forests, there are now blackened, withered stumps and barren dirt that fed dust storms that blew North to the cities. The South had become a wasteland. Henry had heard that things were starting to grow again. There were enclaves and oases of life and sprouts of green emerging like germinating seeds after a bushfire. This was Henry’s swansong, his last great adventure… I never thought he would walk out the door and start that journey.
I recall saying I would go with him, but he insisted I stay behind. ‘I will be back in a few weeks. You’ll see. Then I promise to hang up my shingle and never leave again. So keep the home fires burning for my homecoming.’
One part of me wanted to be with him, to keep him safe and nurtured. Henry was not a young man anymore. It seemed his brain was misleading him into believing he was still that younger man that could stride through the land and survive the worst that could be dished out to him. The other part of me cringed at the thought of leaving our home. It was hard enough these days. We had some money and lived as comfortably as possible despite the rationing. The world around us has changed in the last couple of decades. I remember twenty years ago, we laughed at people hoarding toilet paper during the COVID pandemic; how stupid and short-sighted we were back then.
I thought back to my younger years. I grew up in Perth. My parents were middle class. My mom was a traditional stay-at-home wife, and my dad was a policeman. He worked hard but loved both me and my sister. There was always plenty to eat and plenty to do. I went to university and studied law, and got a job with a mid-tier law firm. That’s when I met Henry. I was Second Chair in representing clients in a class action against a large corporation dumping pollutant waste and contaminating farmland. Henry had just returned from an assignment in the Middle East and was a guest speaker at a Press Club dinner. I remember seeing him on the stage silhouetted against his large grainy black and white photos of a war zone projected on the screen behind him. I remember sitting in awe of him as he described the plight of families whose lives had been upended by the warring parties on both sides of the conflict. Mutual friends introduced us, and we naturally melded together and became a couple almost as soon as we met. Henry was interested in everything I did. He offered to help with leg work and research, turning my case into a project. Our teamwork went a long way to conclude the class action satisfactorily. Henry and I became darlings of the local environmental lobby, and we went on to co-write a couple of books and speak at public forums.
We never married, but we might as well have been as we have been together ever since. We did not have children, something I partially regret. We made that decision because we could see what was happening to the world around us. It would be a terrible time to bring children into the world. We decided to wait to see if things might change, but with the sinking feeling of certainty, we knew the ship of the world was sinking like the Titanic. This is not the legacy we would like our children to inherit.
Henry was forty-five when Europe exploded into war. Russia had been posturing for years and swearing to avenge its defeat by Ukraine. Russia blatantly led troops into Finland, which had won membership in Nato only a few years earlier. The Russian leadership believed they’d called NATO’s bluff, but that backfired badly. Germany and America reacted swiftly, joined by Poland and the NATO countries. They led an air war targeting Russian troop incursions into Finland and Ukraine. Bellaruse industrial complexes were also targeted in these airstrikes. Ukraine attempted to remain neutral for a while, but even this neutrality evaporated as Russia sought to re-invade. A fanatical Russian commander let loose two tactical nuclear ballistic missiles into the Ukraine heartland. Thousands died. There was no retreating now. The Third World War was now in full swing.
Our comfortable lives were transformed over the days that the conflict unfolded. Henry was on the phone in endless conversation with Reuters, with whom he was in great demand. Arrangements were being made to fly him on military aircraft to Poland. Their hunger for news was insatiable. My heart froze every time the phone rang. Henry was energised and ready to go as soon as arrangements could be made. Then this all changed.
China decided it was time to take sides and strategically aligned itself with Russia, like the tenuous German-Russian alliance at the beginning of World War Two. China aimed to take advantage of the chaos and use its economic might to subsume Russia into its borders. Russia let the wolf into the door and then found itself embattled on all sides. America reintroduced the draft, as did many first-world countries. India and North Africa fell into famine as Ukraine’s breadbasket became compromised. An energy crisis like nothing before afflicted Europe as gas supplies came to a grinding halt. What were minor conflicts in the Middle East ignited into total warfare as Iran and Syria attempted to usurp Israel. Reuters abandoned plans to fly Henry to the war zone. Apart from the fact that it had now become far too dangerous to send anyone to a certain death, all military resources were diverted to the war effort, and only those journalists that happened to be in the war zone were available for reporting.
Henry and I joined forces in synthesising reports, co-writing and editing copy for news agencies. For me, having Henry safe at home was a huge relief. It was the beginning of a new and more challenging existence for us. Overnight petrol prices soared, supermarket shelves were quickly depleted, and the chains had great difficulty resupplying. Australia relied on trade with China, and this all but dried up. The economic disruption and scarcity threw family life into chaos. People were accustomed to plenty and did not have the experiences of previous generations who lived through the shortages of World War Two. People began to migrate South into the semi-rural areas, believing they would have an easier chance of survival outside suburbia. Society was transforming in the worst possible way. Henry and I were fortunate we did not have children unless you count our cat. We had been prudent, and even with inflation, skyrocketing prices, and rationing, we got by better than most.
As the world was consumed by war, the alarm bell rang on nature’s geological clock. Tectonic plates shifted, and Yellowstone National Park erupted in a volcanic event that made Krakatoa look like a firecracker. The effect was dramatic. Soldiers on the front lines instantly stopped fighting. All sides looked over their shoulders as if a new enemy had entered the arena and fighting with each other would be better served by joining forces against an unconquerable new enemy. It was too late. The war had destroyed the once modern habitable cities and left ruin and deprivation all over Europe. China held the world in a vicelike grip, exerted its economic power over all nations, and applied sanctions to any force that tried to resist, and then the sun disappeared.
Henry and I watched glorious sunsets, deep carmine and blood-red skies every evening as ash and toxic gases vented from the Yellowstone volcanic zone. The International Space Station images showed the Earth shrouded in grey and yellow clouds, and the long Winter began.
Before the flood. A very short story
Truth be known, I have never really liked fence-sitters. I value decisiveness and action. On the other hand, I want to think I am fair, non-judgemental, and willing to give the benefit of the doubt. That’s a contradiction for me, a contention that I deal with on a moment-by-moment basis all of the time; we all do that, don’t we? I am trying to convince my good little friend to get off the fence. It is raining, and it is not worth getting drenched. She is stubborn and relentless in her belief that her point of view requires respect. For her staying on the fence is her choice, a dignified choice, even though she might catch her death on this cold and wet afternoon.
I could cut my losses and let it go. I go through the lousy self-talk and down the rabbit hole of trying to figure out the ‘why’ of her stubborn unwillingness to accept my request to move off the fence. To decide, hopefully, to seek safety and shelter. Why am I surprised by her unwavering attitude? Her friends and family have been her stalwart trusted companions since her birth. Why trust a creepy bloke who has a weird reason? But I am compelled to give it my best shot.
Wisdom tells me I can’t save everyone. I do get that. But there are some worth the effort. If I were able, I would save as many as I could. Of course, that is not going to happen. Sadly, I have to accept that I can’t be responsible for the decisions of others. Their choices will dictate the direction of their lives. All I can do is tell the story and hope for the best.
At last, with a deep sigh, she turns her back on me, wiggles her arse and flies off. Time to herd the cats.
Noah x
Positive Space: a taster to the working title Sylvan
I am getting old, and Maddie scolds me for contemplating getting out. Getting out into the wasteland, into the danger of places we once cherished as calm oases of respite far from the city’s concrete jungle.
‘you old bastard! You will die out there! Alone, in the dark. What would I do without you? And what for? To satisfy a foolish whim?’ Bitter words laced with the sweetness of old love.
Being the cranky old fool I am, I turn away from the words but twist to face her. Tears bead the corners of her eyes. I smile weakly and shrug. I am committed. No turning back now.
I used to be a photojournalist back in the day, always chasing a big story. Someone’s war, someone’s famine, someone’s catastrophe. The urge to capture and show off, to reveal, to warn, all in the hope that compelling imagery and the economy of words would disrupt and turn the hearts of men away from their race toward apocalyptic doom.
I never had the honour of winning the Walkley. I was a good journalist, but I knew in my heart that I was labelled just another Casandra, showcasing terrifying inevitabilities.
What does inevitability look like? It is not the sudden shock and awe of a cataclysmic life-changing event. It is more like the story of the frogs minding their business while slowly being boiled alive. Change in the big scheme of things moves gradually. Summers get warmer, Winters colder, and storms fiercer. We ignore, adapt, and pump more hot air from our homes while chewing through energy to keep cool. We release poison into the air while our engines idle on traffic-choked roads heading for our notion of work. The water we swim in gets hotter, and our pale flesh turns blistering red.
I heard stories about enclaves where people stood their ground and defied crises. People who survived the long winter and demise of the forests. These were the people I wanted to and needed to see. Record their stories like in the old days, and release their words and images to a rebuilding world. For me, there was a sense of hope that we desperately needed to experience—a salve for our self-inflicted wounds.
I gather an assortment of things. The red plastic is cracked on one of the Swiss Army knives, and the blade tip is slightly bent. The other is in better nick. I run my thumb along the crack, feeling the edges, a reminder of use.
On the table sit three cameras, one ancient Nikon film camera, one even older Leica and my Fuji digital rangefinder. Which one to take? Pros and cons, decisions are an extra burden. Practicality dictates choice, sentiment rebels. The heft of the Nikon, a small dent on its base. A tough old bastard of a camera, I feel the gaze of the Leica, an angry cyclops. Its baleful one-eyed stare challenges me to choose the Nikon. The Fuji faces the wall, embarrassed by my poor judgement for a simple decision.
Maps, all of them old, with tears along the creases, pinholes in the corners, hand-drawn lines and pencilled illegible scribbles near places once visited. I choose the South West Department of Defence topographical map. The date in the citation is 1987. No new roads after 1987. It will do the job.
I bunch up a dozen HB pencils and twist a rubber band around them. Two notebooks and one sketchbook.
The pencils and notebooks are the only new items. Everything else advertises my age. I think I have them more for the comfort of their familiar companionship than their usefulness.
Maddie bluntly refuses to help me pack. A knot of panic twists my bowels. I push its insistent pain down. I am ready to leave. Only have to open the door and step out. Instead, I stand facing it, a dumb old bull, a silly old man. Maddie fiercely hugs me, I thumb away her tears. We both cry. ‘I will come home. I promise.’ I let go, the skin of my palms soaking up her scent. Blinking into the morning light, I step out and don’t look back.
Intersection
In April 1943, my father, Hersz Josef Szmekura, fought in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. He was 29 years old. He was the father of three young children. His wife Rose and their children perished before 1943 in the Ghetto. He never considered himself as anything other than an ordinary man defending his family, his dignity and the lives of his comrades. He and my mother, pictured in the background, whom he met when the war ended, survived the horror of the Holocaust but could never erase the memories. This self-portrait will never do them the justice they deserve.
(© Max Szmekura 17/09/2021 www.personalpronoun.net)
Character building
Here is how the characters in my story are developed. In Intersection, I introduce the main character.
One foot in the forest, one in the city. I am not a hero. Heroes are fabrications of others’ minds. I am not the Colossus of Rhodes guarding the harbour, standing astride with each footed planted on either side of the sea gate. The monolith of the Colossus lies broken and drowned beneath the waves.
My childhood memories are contained in vivid events that stay imprinted for posterity.
When I was six, a young woman brought a horse to the park across the road from where I lived. The horse was grey and white. I was afraid of it. It was huge and shat straw. Its eyes were like giant brown glass marbles. The lady dismounted and offered children in the crowd gathering around us, a ride. With her was a young man wearing jeans and a cowboy shirt. Just like the cowboys in the Saturday matinee. Wow! What a sight. This was the real thing. The only things missing were the guns and hats.
Karen, the girl from next door, volunteered and was lifted onto the horse. The woman cradled her in front. They walked a lazy circle around the park The other children all yelled their approval and desire for a ride. I held back, I was unashamedly afraid.
Back then, my world was made of concrete and bitumen. Sure, we had a huge park across the road with manicured lawn and playground equipment. I learned my first lessons in tribal politics in that park. One morning sitting on the swings, I was approached by a group of children one of which said, “Get off the swing! You’re not allowed on these swings unless Bossy says you can.” Who the fuck was Bossy?
I was roughly shoved off the swing and pushed to the ground. I got up. These kids circled me. One of them broke the circle and came in to face me. Was this Bossy? Unlike feeling scared of the horse, I did not feel the same fear. This was a boy around my height, probably the same age. He was just like me or so I thought. He lashed out with a straight fist which caught me on the side of the face. I was surprised but it did not hurt. I had never been in a fight. I only knew about fist fighting from watching movies. I hit back. We rolled to the ground grappling each other until Bossy landed a punch to my eye. I screamed in rage and grabbed his hair, and he screamed back. The other boys all started to run off as some adults alerted by our shrill yells came running over. Bossy struggled to get up but I caught his shorts and then to my surprise they came down and lo and behold, he had a second pair of shorts underneath. He managed to scramble up and ran off leaving his outer pair of shorts in the grass. I got up and ran home.
My mother alarmed at my crying and snotty face yelled at me, “What happened!” Through my tears, I told her. “The boy with the two pairs of pants punched me.” I could not understand why my mom was angry with me. She sent me to the kitchen where she cleaned me up. I never saw Bossy and his gang again. I guess facing him, not running was enough to weaken his short-lived dominance. Of course, at the age of six, I had no notion of politics or the tribal urge to assert leadership. I just wanted to be left alone and enjoy the swing.
My parents were immigrants. They sought refuge in a country full of foreigners. Some of these foreigners were transported here as convicts over a century earlier and took the land from the traditional owners. Over seven generations they built towns and cities and engaged in commerce and nation-building.
Hersz Josef Szmekura 1947 age 33
Sarah Szmekura (nee Milewski) 1947 age 22
My father worked as a tailor making women’s coats. My mom looked after the house and the four of us children. Friday nights when dad came home from work, he would always bring a gift. A puzzle or a comic. We looked forward to that time even though my older brother would greedily hog the gift, asserting his standing as the oldest boy. I hero-worshipped Jack back then. To me, he was handsome and adventurous. He once broke his leg and had been in a cast for months because he fell down some stairs. Having a broken leg in a cast and crutches looked very heroic to me of a wounded soldier.I
I did not have much to do with my younger siblings. My younger brother and my infant sister were somewhat of a mystery to me. I followed Jack and his mates everywhere they went when I could. Jack didn’t seem to mind. I guess he was pleased that I looked up to him.
The real hero was my dad. In my parent’s bedroom, a pair of old very worn leather jackboots stood in the never used fireplace. On the dressing table, a photograph of dad wearing those boots. He was dressed in jodhpurs and had an automatic pistol. On the door hung a gaberdine raincoat like the ones we associate with old spy stories. I looked at my dad sitting at the treadle-powered Singer sewing machine and could not equate him to the man in that photograph.
Mum was always in conflict. I am not saying she was unloving. But she was always yelling at dad. Accusing him of sleeping with other women and gambling. Dad also had a short fuse and they both would engage in domestic combat on a daily basis. I remember clearly thinking back then that one day I would leave all that behind and live a more peaceful life.
My parents were surrounded by horror before they arrived in Australia and lived in constant terror. They were subjected to some of the worst things imaginable during the war, including losing their families. Coming to a land where they were free of victimisation must have been very difficult for them to adjust to. Back then there was no recognition of post-traumatic stress. We, kids, became their sounding board. It was on us they imprinted their fears and terrifying experiences.
https://time.com/5245019/warsaw-ghetto-uprising-memory/
Creator: Keystone | Credit: Getty Images
“Don’t play with the gentiles, they will betray you!”
As a child, I heard their words in very simple terms. I did not hear the fear burned into the words back then. Their words were walls and fences to keep the world out. They would never trust anything or anyone ever again. So, I did what some children do. I became a runner. Every opportunity to leave I took only to be apprehended by a posse of my parent’s friends and neighbours.
As I opened the door to adolescence I stepped away one night and did not return. I left my childishness, but it did not leave me. I wore a new set of clothes to hide the frightened kid who I locked away inside my bones.
Recognition often comes late in life. Understanding who my parents were and how they came to be the way they were, also made me realise how they were embedded in my soul. My work ethic came from them. They worked every day of their lives, up at dawn and late to bed. They opened my eyes to the injustice in the world, for them back then, and for others today. I am at the intersection. Facing a maze of pathways and confounded by too many choices. All I can do is keep choosing and let the chaotic consequence of my decisions lead me. So, here I am, in the forest looking back at the boundary and the distant mist-filled city skyline.
Urban
Introduction
I first thought of writing about the difference between the sylvan and urban environments. But the more I thought about both environments, the more I realised that nothing is cut and dried. There is so much overlap and complexity to consider here. There is only one environment, we are all part of it. The environment is not some place we visit.
Human-built places are a product of our desire to live where we believe we can somehow protect ourselves by forming a functioning community. I realised that in nature all things do this. Humans and non-humans alike all build things and stay together as active communities. Just as we can imagine a thinking forest where there is a relationship between all living and seemingly non-living things, cities are also infused with networks we have woven into the fabric of everything we build.
I thought about displacement. Displacement is a very real thing. As we develop human living spaces we transform the natural environment. Plants and animals lose their domain and either adapt or die. The energy we voraciously consume to light our lives, cook our food, control our microclimates and travel change the very air we breathe. It is changing our planet in ways that threaten the survival of not only mankind but all living things.
There is an abundance of current literature and media that bring the current state of our environment into sharp focus. Despite this ever-increasing awareness, many of us remain oblivious and some of us are optimistic about the future providing that there is a tangible change in human behaviour.
Urban
Remembering my last trip to New York to visit my sister (sitting on the left), she took me through Manhattan. I was overwhelmed by the sheer size and the number of people.
At the top of the iconic Empire State Building, I took a handheld shot of the city as night was falling just to try and capture its vastness.
All of this was made by human hands using stone, wood, metal, glass and plastic. We took the stone, wood and metal from the earth and remoulded them to create these structures. We transformed elements to create glass and plastic.
For us humans, symmetry is an aesthetic we pursue in our designs. Where possible roads and streets are straight so that we can move between the built environment as easily as possible.
Before European settlement and only a few hundred years ago, this was all forest. A sylvan realm. The first nations of the Americas only took from the earth what they needed and lived in harmony with the forest. Nature also incorporates symmetry in its organic design.
Manhattan early evening.
From the windy rooftop of the Empire State Building, I imagine I am an ant wandering with my comrades along a meandering pathway ever compelled to bring my burden home. The headlights of cars are like my eyes searching through the gloom created by the shadows of the tall buildings. My family are with me. We are of one mind. We move in harmony toward our home. our subterranean space of safety where we nurture our young and feed our mother. There are no homeless amongst our kind.
Liverpool Street Station 12 December 2018. She sleeps just outside the entrance.
The entrance to Liverpool Street Station and the irony of welcome.
The city is full of sound. Music, from all directions accompanied by the honking of car horns. Wind whistling between buildings. A confused riot of the sound of people laughing, crying, yelling, and talking. Musicians playing in sheltered doorways seeking reward. While I walk I see everyone moving with a singular purpose as they plot their course. They seek their own shelter, their fenced-off walled homes where they nurture their young and feed each other. Some of us are homeless.
Outside the Empire State Building 20 W 34th Street Manahattan.
There is no doubt that from a human perspective, where possible, we build what we consider pleasing to our eye. We borrow our design from the natural world. Our human acts of transformation consume the forests of the earth. If unchecked, our acts of creation are ultimately acts of destruction.
Sylvan
Introduction and Acknowledgement
The word ‘“sylvan” refers to all things associated with woodlands and forests including the forests themselves. Often this is used to describe the beauty of forests and to evoke a sense of peace as a quality of pastoral and woodland images.
For a few years, I have been assembling the ingredients of a story and in recent times I have had the great fortune to have become acquainted with people, writing, and along with experiencing the wilderness and forest areas of Australia and in particular Western Australia, I am now more confident in creating this story.
Story creation can be simple and probably that is the best kind. The raw spontaneous creation that can be told, written, or seen. What appears simple on the surface is actually complex like the tip of an iceberg, what is visible is only a very small portion of the larger submerged body of ice below the water. So it is with story creation, what appears as a “rolling off the tongue” spontaneity, is actually the product of imagination that has been fuelled by experience and time. I am now able to bring together the main ingredients of my story and hopefully, I will be able to tell it in a way that will engage you and leave you transformed (even if only a little bit).
I want to acknowledge Dr. Eduardo Kohn, Associate Professor of Anthropology at McGill University. A man I do not personally know and have never met or spoken to. I am now in the second reading of his book HOW FORESTS THINK Toward an anthropology beyond the human. I came upon Eduardo’s work accidentally while researching material to assist with narrative content for my photography. How could I not be drawn in by the title? My first reading of Eduardo’s book unlocked a whole new way for me to view and relate my presence in the world and how it is inextricably connected with everyone and everything.
HOW FORESTS THINK is controversial as it describes the ability of non-humans and inanimate objects to participate in a community of thought. If you are interested, HOW FORESTS THINK is available as an audiobook as well as in hard copy. There are also various YouTube videos of lectures given by Eduardo at various Universities. Here is a link to a YouTube video that will introduce both Eduardo and his HOW FORESTS THINK, https://youtu.be/mSdrdY6vmDo
What follows is a representation of an idea. It is not a finished product but, in itself, it is story-like… more like a recipe that has not yet been tried.
Sylvan
Walking a well-trod path, the dense forest on either side of me, I have tunnel vision. I am on this journey, forever vigilant, scanning the water-eroded gravel edges of the track for an orchid or one of the wildflowers that flourish for a brief time during this season. Recollecting this journey and biased by my exposure to Dr. Eduardo Kohn’s HOW FORESTS THINK, I do my best to search memories for feelings and thoughts experienced on that trip. Over time those intimate memories fade, anything I say now is mostly fantasy, I can’t pretend to describe anything other than the most vivid motes of memory dust about that time.
What can I tell you…
I can tell you about the pull… The enticement to leave the track and penetrate the dense forest. I look into the forest and the forest looks back at me. I am invited to walk in the spaces between trees, tread the untrodden leaf litter, and be caressed by leafy bush and grass. There are small windows between branch and leaf letting in the light of a blue cloud-flecked sky… tiny patches… nature’s patchwork quilt.
At first glance, I see nothing but plant life so dense it hides the earth in which it is rooted. The sky backlights the canopy of tree branches. Looking more closely there is a life of another kind. A skink poised in stillness on an exposed rock warmed by a stray ray of sunlight is startled by a shift in the air and the crack of a twig. It is gone, just a fleeting ghost of a skink.
Ants are everywhere, marching in their own organised and seemingly planned direction. Unseen cicadas chirp their mate-seeking song. The forest is very much alive… it is not just the forest that looks back at me but all of its creatures also look, listen and taste the air with tongues and noses. They hear the voices of each other, the voices of air moving and vibrating the leaves alive and desiccated, suspended by silken threads of the spiders who wait for entrapped prey. The forest is alive with voice and song. Birdsong is everywhere… I have to search for them, they remain unseen until they take flight when for a moment, they become seen as well as heard.
Somewhere the rhythm section of nature’s orchestra provides the beat of tympanic percussion and the rushing melody of water from a nearby stream.
On that still spring day the voices of the forest were neither loud nor subtle… more like an atmospheric vibrance, a warm bath of sound in which I am immersed.
Reflecting on this I recognise my conscious separateness from the forest and all of the living things I was engaged with on that day. I see this as a contradiction… surely my presence makes me as much part of the forest as everything else. It is only my consciousness that marginalises me, my ability to be aware of myself as distinct from everything around me. How can I know that the forest is also self-aware?
Awareness, as a skink, I am aware of the warmth and the absence of warmth, of movement, of the scent on my tongue of prey and danger. A change in the pressure of the air, a vibration in the rock… I am quick to move… I am the colour of grass and stone. I am absent from your sight.
Awareness as a cicada. I am aware of my brothers’ songs. I have slept for so long in the damp earth sucking the sap of the tree that shields me from your sight… I am aware of you when you close the distance between us… I will stop my song in hope that you will not see me.
Awareness as a bird. I am watchful… scanning as you do for your floral prize, I scan for a morsel of food… you cannot reach me up here… You are flightless… you are not my enemy. I seek prey in other places… looking down I see all and hear my brothers and sisters sing their songs.
Awareness as an ant. The earth beneath me is continuously moving… I am moving with it… I feel the pitch more than hear it, a different tonal scale… a staccato, a different cadence, “go this way, my queen awaits…”
When I come back here I will know my place… I will accept and listen. I will forego separation for a time and what I will take away with me will be far richer than what I brought with me.
I am a visitor here… I have chosen a different home full of artifice and pretense or is it a much deeper thing? I leave nearby parcels of your wildness where I build my home to assuage the guilt of my trespass.
Tempest in the key of C
My storm rages for you
I wrapped it in sheets of rain
I wrote aria and chorus for its voice
A libretto for sylphs
Accompanied by thunder.
My storm rages for you
It is centred in my heart
Held at bay by gum scented breeze
Chains of air, and
Links of wood.
My storm rages for you
Wrapped in rain
In patience it waits
For your gentle hands
To loosen the chain
…and dance in its wind.
The Ancient Art of Questing
Bibbulmun Track 15 September 2015 06:27 am
Unwinding from my workday , drifting into hazy moments of inventiveness. Pushing away nagging self-talk of ‘should do’ and staying in the seductive place of ‘do this, everything else can wait’. I fear if I leave now, I will, and so will you, witness the disintegration of ideas… hard to get my head around how that even looks… you can’t see them until they are formed, made concrete and visible. How would you even miss them if you were never aware of the moment I am in?
I go to my cabinet of captured dreams. Images gathering digital dust and unseen for the longest of times. These images are solid when I coax them out into the light. Fragile images that could disappear in the fury of an electromagnetic storm… blown from their home to join their uncountable sibling photons all swimming upstream like home-going salmon.
I am compelled and propelled to find my holy grail of images, something to make you smile deeply, something to imprint itself like the electric blue afterimage of a sudden glaring flash of light. Unforgettable, my face hidden behind the idea of the image, an invisible trademark that is the image and me all at once. That makes the memory whole. I made this, I put it away and kept it for the day I would wrap it up in the finest of invisible rice paper, so I could let you see it… and with a deep hope, keep and long for more. It is a small fragment, one of the myriad ingredients of love.
All at once it is a small thing and a thing larger than the volume of the universe, a question seeking an answer, an unintended imposition in anticipation of response, where the quality of all answers is subject to their polar state. Yes and no are such tiny words that punch impossibly above their weight.
Evening has come, I am unwound, the quest is done, the image found. The words are written, and the gift, wrapped. The floor needs sweeping… it can wait…
We’ll both wait together… not for long I hope.
Breaking Ground
Early morning light on the banks of the Blackwood at Nannup 20 November 2022 05:00 am
Birdsong at 4:30 in the morning… the light of a glimmering some what overcast morning. Sleep evaporates in the confines of my little dome, I see nothing but suffused light filtered through the fly cover… spatters of rain punctuate the raucous mocking laughter of Kookaburras and other winged creatures… the sound of a new morning.
I am still for a while, thoughts as diffuse as the light, running in a dreamlike commentary behind my eyes. My body feels its years… I feel privileged to breath the still air and be serenaded by the birds.
I am awkward in my movements in this tiny space… arms and legs moving to unite me with clothing… then on all fours like like a cornered fox, I back out into the light… a breech birth into the new day.
Standing in the cool air… I am surrounded by sleepers… if they are conscious they choose to keep their eyes closed, and try to recapture their own dreams, at least for a little while longer… I do the things my my body demands and then prepare to be a thief and steal the souls of tree and river… and imprison them in nets of light. Colours of the Earth, all greens, yellows, the palest of blues tinged with pink of daylight, the deep darkness that is the undefinable colour of shadow on water… Yes I am privileged to breath and be immersed in all of this… and I cry silently in its overwhelming embrace. comforted by the slow song of wind on wood and water on stone.
Light on the still water from the East…
After we broke bread, we set out to break ground… One Tree Bridge, late morning, a good day to walk. A few nights before I wrote to my friend and said, “It is not how far we walk, it is what we breath, taste and feel as we receive the gifts of the earth.” So it crystallises… a soft reality, leaf littered ground, sounds of the river… an ancient tree once fell here bridging the banks of the river… now replaced by a swing bridge swaying with the weight and cadence of our walk.
We are are alone here for a time… both separately absorbed in memory creation… planting the seeds and cultivating the meat of stories and painting with light.
A view from One Tree Bridge…
“What are these?”… a type of creeper? Probably a type of Clematis…
A bright slender yellow flax has its soul captured…
There is no better curator than nature in this gallery… these are small nurturing visual meals to remind us of fragility …
It is exactly where I want to be right now with our souls embraced by the spirit of this place. With our sweat and the dust and fragrance of the Earth… surrounded by living and dying life… I see you as that tree … slowly growing, suckling on the life giving water locked in the warm Earth… home to life, cooled by the night, cleansed by rain and seared by fire… that is a real life… a life freed in the stillness of a calm unknowable and wise mind…
Sublime
Once someone told me that unless you taste sugar, no amount of description no matter how fancy and intricate will suffice, you will never know the taste of anything unless you simply put it in your mouth. Nothing mysterious, just plain simple and sensible logic. Same goes for just about everything else… I can tell you about the banded rocks, all yellows oranges and reds. These magnificent gorges shaped by wind and water over eons. I can tell about and show you photographs that make you oooh and aaaah, but I can’t gift you the experience of heat shimmer or the scent of dry earth or for that matter the deep and mystical aroma of rain wet earth.
Those are the things I never knew as a child growing up in the big city. When I moved away in my early twenties it was like having a bucket of cold water thrown over me when I took up residence in he North West of Tasmania. It was a small town of around 1,200 people who tunneled into the mountain extracting zinc, lead and silver. From the outside looking in, you did not see that in Rosebery, it was hidden beneath the mountain. What was visible were snow capped jagged peaks carpeted in green, grey and white. One of the most rained on places in Tasmania. I can tell you about the button grass stained tap water that we bathed in, or the tiny sweet wild strawberries that grew in the backyard along with ferns that made me feel like I lived in a prehistoric wilderness… but you will not really know it unless you lived it, tasted it, smelled it and breathed it.
There is a whole narrative in my head that is deeply embedded and is part of the fabric of my psyche. Dry heat at Python Pool in the East Pilbara or red granite monoliths like giants’ bowing balls abandoned in a stunted forest of sandal wood. These places hostile to the unprepared have surrounded the walls of my dwellings capped by a blackest of skies bejeweled by a billion suns. Sometimes I bury myself in nostalgia and wonder why I am not still there… The weight of memory is both a stone in my guts and an arc lamp in my brain… heavy and blindingly bright!
Here is a short list of pain and pleasure, a rant of the sublime…
Sitting on a rock near the Ring river on the side of the road, my exposed ears are bathed in agonising pain as the chill winter wind blew from snow capped mountains;
The taste of ash as I watched through eye stinging smoke as the summer fire surrounded and engulfed our little town;
The adrenaline rush and clammy fear as I almost stepped on a snake slowly wending its way into a corrugated culvert pipe;
Sitting surrounded by terrified children as widow panes bulge in cyclonic gusts;
Orgasm in our little tent in the dark on the banks of Lake St Clair;
Communing with porridge eating emus;
Wading waste deep through the incoming tide with a hessian sack of mud crabs and a terrified 13 year old at Hearsons Cove;
Coober Pedy, stting in the pub where you could buy a beer only if you ordered minestrone soup… don’t eat the fish I was told… you’re to far from the coast;
Leaning back on an old Land Rover on the shores of Lake Eyre and day dreaming about the ocean that was once upon a time; and
Climbing, back in the day when I still could, up Frenchmen Peak to look if I could see Pink Lake from there… I could not… but hey, I was still blown away…
Enough for now… sleep beckons!
Preston River 2015
Mordechai Ben Yosef is my Hebrew birth name… in case you’re wondering.
Sedona Arizona November 2014
Bibbulmun Track October 2013
Composition and composure.
Clare c1985 Karratha
I think it was in 1979 that I purchased my first SLR camera. It was a Praktica MTL3 and it came with a standard 50mm Pentacon lense. At that time my interest in photography was more about recording family events. My photography was reactive and totally unconstrained by which I mean that I knew next to nothing about the fundamentals of photography. As long as the exposure needle was in the centre of the viewfinder exposure meter, I knew that my shot would at least be correctly exposed. Back then film dictated the ISO which was then labeled ASA (100 for the Kodak colour negative film I used). It was intuitive to me to adjust the shutter speed to adjust exposure and I do recall that I left my lens aperture at f5.6… luck really. I liked this image of my daughter so much I had it enlarged to poster size and framed. I still have it but the colour has faded over the years since then. This is actually a photograph of the photograph re-rendered in black and white.
Much earlier than this, around 1968, I was a student at the newly built Prahran Institute of Technology. I had this naive belief that I wanted to pursue fine arts and I enrolled in the first-year Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. I lasted all of one semester. My parents refused to fund what they considered to be a frivolous excursion into insanity… their ideal was a son who would join the ranks of Lawyers or Doctors, much more fitting socially acceptable professions. I did my best but art supplies and travel to the institute were expensive and I could not sustain this and also pay my rent… I had left home a year earlier and was on the dole and fending for myself in the concrete suburban jungle of Melbourne. The starving artist was my existential reality. This dust mote of history might have played a role in my future photography exploits only in as much as the fundamentals of design I had learned in that first semester stuck with me… a bit like muscle memory for the brain that influenced the framing of the shot… admittedly this is a long bow to draw and it is more likely just pure luck that I jagged the image composition. My daughter, Clare, did not purposely pose for the shot and it was taken off the cuff so to speak.
My adventures in photography evolved over many years. There were more times when the camera gathered dust as I meandered through life’s Gordian knot of tangled paths but I always somehow managed at important times to rescue the camera from its dusty cache and resume taking photos. In the early 90’s I decided my interest was justification to upgrade my camera to a second hand Nikon EM 1979 vintage SLR, a more substantial and solid upgrade to the Praktica which was put out to pasture, I also purchased a second-hand lens, a 50mm f1.4. This became my go-to camera and I started to dabble in taking more interesting shots. I have many negatives but unfortunately, no prints that I can find from that time. A burglary in 1997 resulted in the loss of all my cameras, not many but still a sore blow. Fortunately, I was insured and replaced the ME with Nikon F80 and two autofocus lenses. I also obtained my first digital camera, an Olympus Stylus mju 400 that boasted 4 megapixels of resolution… It was to me at the time an amazing piece of technology. It was tiny and took what I considered lovely pictures. Back then I had not heard of Lightroom and the camera only produced JPG images.
Anyway, I am wandering away from the central theme and by now I have probably put you to sleep. What I really want to talk about is the important fundamental artistic process of composition.
Composition refers to the way things are organised so that we can make some sort of sense of them. When I refer to things, I include all things that we can sense. Mainly things we can hear and see but that doesn’t exclude our other senses as there is an immutable relationship between how things are arranged and their utility. Humans evolved with binocular vision and polyphonic hearing. Our sense of smell and touch are equally important in the array of senses all working in concert to help us make meaning of and navigate through the world around us. Binocular vision allows us to perceive the world and everything in it in three dimensions. Vision allows us to make judgments about scale, volume, and distance as well as identifying things. Sound enhances vision enriching our experience of the world as do all our senses. When our senses are impaired and damaged, our other senses strengthen to compensate for the loss. Blind people have demonstrably more acute hearing and touch sensitivity. When we lose our sense of smell we also lose our sense of taste as these are integral to each other. That is a very challenging and sad state of affairs. Our senses are vital to ensuring our safe survival throughout our lives and with aging, many of us acutely notice their degradation.
From an organic perspective, nature has its own way of organising things. The natural environment left to its own will of course be organised in accordance with the ambient conditions that allow for growth. Vegetation will thrive where there is sunlight and water, even in the arid desert we find either sparse growth or abundant clusters of oases. Forest will have clusters of similar species trees and plants. Wherever we look, nature has organised itself in accordance with the conditions that allow it to thrive. So, there is an organic composition to the world around us all predicated on survival and the prevailing conditions for organic survival. If we stretch our imaginations, we can see this organic order in the universe as we know it. The cosmos is composed of galaxies, stars, and planets. There is a composite order to everything in the natural universe. It goes without saying that there is still so much to discover but we can be certain that what we can sense of the universe and the world we live in, there is organisation and composition.
The English word composition contains the word position. As humans, we have the capability to arrange and re-arrange the physical placement of things. This includes natural as well as man-made things. Animals also do this. Beavers construct dams, birds build nests or mounds, other animals burrow and construct tunnels… all of these activities are about re-arranging things and are all motivated by desires to survive and use our environment. From a purely human perspective, we are endowed with the ability to not only re-arrange our environment for survival but also have the ability to arrange things because their placement in a particular way makes them attractive. The technical term is “aesthetic”, a term that relates to beauty and how beauty is perceived.
The fleeting moment when nature is the master composer.
Lonely Mesquite, Sedona Arizona, November 2014
Some rambling thoughts about art and photography.
The Leang Tedongnge cave is located in a remote valley on the island of Sulawesi and was discovered to contain what might be the world’s oldest known cave painting: a life-sized picture of a wild pig that was made at least 45,500 years ago.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/jan/13/worlds-oldest-known-cave-painting-found-in-indonesia
Research co-author Maxime Aubert, of Australia’s Griffith University, reported that it was found in 2017 by doctoral student Basran Burhan, as part of surveys the team was carrying out with Indonesian authorities. What an amazing experience that would have been… I have referenced the Article in the caption if you are interested in reading it.
There are other famed examples of cave art found in Australia, Spain, and France… in fact where ever there have been modern humans, there are artifacts and evidence of their historic presence. Yes, modern humans have been around for tens of thousands of years, and the term modern just means Homo Sapiens as distinct from Neanderthal and Denisovan humans who are no longer with us. Imagine then that current day Graffiti will one day in a distant future be regarded as the ancient art of long lost generations.
Wall art in East Victoria Park… celebrating the wearing of masks…by Edgar (Saner) Flores 2014
I did share this image in a previous weblog and please note that the title is of my own making as seeing this coincided with a week of mandatory mask-wearing to ward off the dreaded Covid 19…
The whole point here is that as humans we will at some stage in our lives create images. Making marks on paper, rock, or anything that will allow us to render and record an image is an intrinsic part of the way in which we communicate. The earliest writings were pictographic for example, Chinese characters or Egyptian hieroglyphics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_hieroglyphs
Childrens’ artwork displayed in an office window in Victoria Park.
The word “art” is derived from Latin and literally means skill or craft hence words like “artisan” and “artifact” describe people who use their skills to make things. Of course, other sentient beings like insects and apes also spend a great deal of their lives making things and the making of things is all purposeful. We live in a world enriched by human and non-human artists.
If I look at my untidy and cluttered workspace, everything I see that was manufactured is a work of art designed by and made by a skilled human being, an artisan. Every artificial thing is a form of art. I hope I have your attention now… because I can with some confidence suggest that organic things such as plants also within their generative life spans are creations of art in themselves. That to me is not a mind stretching concept.
Even as it wilts this bloom has beautiful artistic form… From Ruth’s garden, Colchester, UK, May 10, 2017
What distinguishes visual art from other forms of art such as writing, is that it is visual. Most things that are labeled as art are representations of real world objects and living things. Commonly when we speak about art we are more than likely talking about paintings or sculpture. There has historically been controversy as whether photography is “art” in the context of the types of art I am talking about. In my opinion it is a form of art and in fact some of the most renowned photographers of the last century such as Henri Cartier- Bresson were painters before they embraced photography.
“…Toward the end of his career, Cartier-Bresson cut ties with Magnum to return to drawing and painting. “Photography is an immediate reaction, drawing is a meditation,” he once described of his dual practices….”
https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-henri-cartier-bresson-remains-one-photographys-figures
The art created on cave walls by early modern humans is priceless. It is amazing good fortune that it has survived for millennia so that today we can continue to be privileged to see and enjoy it. So since those early times and spanning through to the present, there has been continuous artistic creation. Since around 1830, photography has become and evolved into its own branch of art and as I said earlier on even though there remains controversy about photography as an art form, we would be narrow-minded to believe that in some fundamental sense that it isn’t art.
Click on these images to enlarge.
Exposure
A fundamental element of photography is achieving correct exposure which in very simplistic terms means capturing the light in a way that will record all of the tones from light to dark in a photographic image. But this article is not about exposure in the technical context of making a photograph. It is about personal exposure… being observed as our most authentic selves.
What do I mean about being one’s authentic self… a difficult and perplexing subject to say the least. Speaking purely from my own experience, being my authentic self means acknowledging all of what I consider are the good and not so good things about myself and letting others know and see those things about me. This also means that in action I conduct myself, (hopefully responsibly), in a way that allows others to “see” me as I am, warts and all… exposing myself so that others see all of my tones from light to dark.
As you read this, reflect on what this means… all living things, plants and animals, are endowed with the capacity and ability to hide their true nature. I can hear you say, “but, a tree is a tree, it is authentically a tree, it can be nothing else…” and that is sort of true from many points of view… but, even a tree may camouflage its true nature to protect itself from predators. For example, “The Araliaceae tree which has several defences which…[are suggested] to be linked to the historic presence of moa [a giant extinct bird]. Seedlings produce small narrow leaves, which appear mottled to the human eye. Saplings meanwhile produce larger, more elongated leaves with thorn-like dentitions… The mottled colours of seedling leaves are similar to the appearance of leaf litter, which would have made them difficult for a moa to distinguish. The unusual colouring may also reduce the probability of leaf outlines and help camouflage leaves against the sunlight-draped forest floor.” [1]
There are numrous examples of other living things that have evolved overtime to show themselves as other than what they really are. The intent being protection, usually from other living creatures that want to do them harm or eat them. Another example is animals that play dead to mislead predators into leaving them alone. So, although some of these characteristics are fixed and others are instinct driven behavours, they all in their own way hide the true nature of the being that employs them. Human beings are acknowledged to be fair game to most predators including other humans. We, as humans, have developed a sophistocated bag of tricks and subterfuges to hopefully protect ourselves from physical and emotion harm and also, to use offensively when we are in “hunting” mode… competing for survival as we have done throughout history.
Today we have developed a multitude of industries devoted to promoting the ability to help us hide… to make ourselves prominent in terms of our standing in society… to be other than what we truly are in the face of our peers so that we have a better chance of being accepted as part of the tribe and not be outcast, ostracised and isolated. We have also created and devoted ourselves in profound research to attempt to study and understand this evasive behaviour we have evloved over millenia. In my opinion, humans were their most authentic selves at the dawn of time when we were purely hunters and gatherers. The saddest thing about this is, that all this industry despite the understanding we have gleaned thtough research, is leading us like lemmings to our self destruction. I am ever hopeful though that we will embrace the hard earned knowledge and apply wisdom and start the journey of moderating how we apply ourselves in being our authentic selves.
I am tempted to say more here about stuff like the affect on our mental health resulting fom the constant inner conflict of maintaining our armour to disable being observed in all our naked authentic glory, hopefully by now you get the drift.
In art there are also famous examples where personal characteristics are purposely hidden, portraits of Oliver Cromwell come to mind where in one he is shown as youthful and without blemish and in another he is shown warts and all, a more authentic representation. Contemporary photography is a tool used to promote, fashion, food, and anything that will induce us to believe we will enhance our standing… models are selected for their symmetry, their slimness, their tallness… etc. These atributes evolve over time. In Victorian times it was attractive to be seen as plump and curvy… a statement that you were part of the upper crust… a 15th century term describing a member of the highest class of society.
Putting on my almost worn out and very scratched rose coloured glasses, I want see the world full of people freeing themselves from artifice and as much as is practical for them, living as authentically as they can… and being more content with life. Yep, guilty as charged… I am a hopeless romantic and idealist…
For me… and probably like everyone else, I struggle daily to maintain my authentic self and allow others to see me as I am… all my tones from light to dark…
[1] Fadzly et al. Ontogenetic colour changes in an insular tree species: signalling to extinct browsing birds? New Phytologist, 2009; DOI: 10.1111/j.1469-8137.2009.02926.x
A wind in the twilight
Aroma of dry red sand and the softening edges of rock and scrub
The memory of it brings softness to my heart
A place to be once again
In the slowing coolness of night set
Nothing like this living space where I stand now
Nothing like it in the whole universe
But I still have my hat and a stone from that time
A gift from the desert floor
Pitted and ageless echoing the topography of my life
I will in time disappear there and embrace the land… become its breathe
My memory folded into its memory.
28 May 2020
Do not go gently into that good rain…
With great respect and profuse apologies to Dylan Thomas whose iconic poem Do not go gently into that night I have butchered to introduce today’s journal…
Do not go gentle into that good rain,
Old age should burn and rave at rainy days;
Rage, rage against the rain drops in the light.[1]
In my previous blog I complained somewhat about having to take a rain check on this weekend’s planned photographic activity. Instead a meeting over coffee seemed a good substitute. Of course the universe had other plans, the famous Norn sisters, (see Norns in Wikipedia), who are notorious for shaping the fate of mankind, decided that those of us who looked forward to coffee and friendly chatting would be influenced by other events. So like the old United States postal workers informal motto "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds" , I went out alone into the rain and looked for photo opportunities.
Some drivers have a Jekyll and Hyde attitude toward wet weather. When rain pours from the heavens, from sedate and safety conscious drivers, respectful of others, they become speed fiends who believe the freeway has become a Grande Prix race track. So, after avoiding injury and maybe even death, I arrived in East Victoria Park. Victoria Park once an undesirable part of town, has in recent years become a vibrant destination for people who want to enjoy a day out for good food and coffee. Despite the inclement weather, Albany Highway, the main drag through Vic Park, was teeming with people and cars looking for parking. Mandatory mask wearing lent a mardi gras atmosphere to the scene. I went to the appointed coffee house where our meeting was to have taken place and enjoyed a solo long black coffee while I made loose plans about what I might shoot.
After coffee, I donned my favourite hat and masked up and ventured into the street. There were as I thought a select number of photo opportunities. Not too many though. I try hard to not take lots of photographs instead, I take my time to find something of interest. You will find those shots in my Gallery… A wet afternoon in Perth
[1] Adapted from The Poems of Dylan Thomas, published by New Directions. Copyright © 1952, 1953 Dylan Thomas. Copyright © 1937, 1945, 1955, 1962, 1966, 1967 the Trustees for the Copyrights of Dylan Thomas. Copyright © 1938, 1939, 1943, 1946, 1971 New Directions Publishing Corp.
Wall art in East Victoria Park… celebrating the wearing of masks…by Edgar (Saner) Flores 2014
Rain check
The best of intentions are often thwarted by events beyond our human control. Rain, while ultimately a life preserving necessity without which we’d soon wither and disintegrate, also can at times prevent us from doing stuff… like going on a photo walk with friends.
Some of my cameras are weather resistant… but, that doesn’t guarantee that they are proof against a deluge and so it is with respectful regret and understanding that we are literally taking a rain check on this weekend’s photography adventures.
A rainy day indoors on the back end of a week of Covid lock down, also provides an opportunity to skim through old photos.
Going through and reviewing old photos was and is a very interesting journey back through time… I was very, pleasantly surprised to find quite a few that I liked… why had I ignored them in the past? One major reason is that I discovered that there over 30,000 images I have stored. Mind boggling… There are quite a few that were not taken by me… and quite a few weird images that were some how planted, by my son I think, as they seem to be saved screenshots from his past collection of computer games… So, rather than use this free time to spring clean and delete all of these mysterious, unwanted images, I instead went though the years and selected some for the gallery.… see my Gallery “Rain.. a blessing and a curse” to view some images I pulled kicking and screaming from their comfortable sleep in the dry warmth of my computer’s hard drive.
Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son
And where have you been, my darling young one
I've stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains
I've walked and I've crawled on six crooked highways
I've stepped in the middle of seven sad forests
I've been out in front of a dozen dead oceans
I've been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard
And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, and it's a hard
It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall
Excerpt from A Hard Rains a-gonna Fall, Bob Dylan… recorded 6 December 1962.
Poetic Licence
I only know you by the threads you reveal
Sometimes stuck on one thread… pulling it through your hand
And reversing it to only show me again… the same thread just from a different twist of the fingers or shape of the palm.
I know you from the distance between us… you standing … or maybe sitting
On the horizon… a silhouette, or pale almost albino white against charcoal night…
I know you from the angle of a tilted head or a grimace or a dimpled smile…
No up or down… just like being in free fall… reaching and sometimes touching.
I only know you because you allow it… in small measures… never large bites…
Knowing of and about you is just a few random pages…
A paragraph at the start… two pages of childhood.. lost pages of adulthood or maybe just hidden in a locked drawer… pages I am allowed to read… a censored version… history revised…you write your story… you tangle your threads… you move like a tide…
I only know you because you allow it… small measures… never large bites…
…and I am so hungry for more.
Dance me to the end of love… Leonard Cohen… Bridgetown Blues Festival November 2017
Introduction to Personal Pronoun
When you consider the past and immerse yourself in deep memories it is difficult to not experience the emotional attachment you have to those memories. Feelings are an intrinsic part of the fabric of memory, emotion is a consequence that comes unbidden and completes the picture.
Through the medium of photography we are able to capture moments which help us to visualise an historical event. The content of that moment is all contained in the image… people surrounded by familiar objects, landscapes, wild flowers, destinations we have traveled to and just about anything we see in any given moment. So when you think about it there is always a back story associated with that image. The photo by its nature and depending on your relationship to that photo, is either your memory or someone else’s. If it is yours, then it will inevitably result in an emotional response because you know the back story… a wedding, a birth, a death… all of the events and situations that span your life are potential material… subject matter so to speak to help you recount that moment. If it is someone else’s photograph then you are left with your imagination… you will never be indifferent because even if the image is not of interest to you, your decision not to engage is the result of responding in the first instance.
So with all of that said… this is the story of Itta and Isaac Wolf Milewsky. I did not know them. Itta and Isaac were my mother’s sister and brother, my uncle and aunt. This photograph was taken somewhere between 1935 and 1938. Itta and Isaac lived in a town called Lowicz which is in Poland. They were quite poor. Their father, Favel Milewski lost a hand during the first world war and did the best he could to provide for his family. His extended family had emigrated to the USA and Great Britain after the Great War but because of Favel’s disability he was ineligible to be accepted as a citizen in these countries… so, he remained with his wife Masha and his three daughters and son.
Some time in early 1940, the Milewski family including my mother, were transported to the Warsaw Ghetto along with four hundred and fifty thousand other Jewish families. The Warsaw Ghetto comprised an area of around three square kilometres. Sanitation was almost non-existent, families were crammed together in the limited accommodation… many perished through starvation and disease. Most of the other perished during and after transportation to extermination camps, Majdnek, Treblinka and Auschwitz.
My mother and Itta escaped from the Ghetto shortly after they were interned. My mother spent the remainder of world war two in a German slave camp which manufactured rubber. Itta spent some time as a governess until she was betrayed and shot. Isaac died in the Ghetto, he suffered form acute asthma.
This is a sad and distressing story…. these images were taken at a happier time in the lives of Itta and Isaac and remain a poignant reminder of their short lived lives. So, when you consider the past and immerse yourself in deep memories it is difficult to not experience the emotional attachment you have to those memories. Feelings are an intrinsic part of the fabric of memory, emotion is a consequence that comes unbidden and completes the picture.
Itta and Isaac Wof Milewski circa 1935-1938