Redroom Company

On the far table at Lou & Jack’s a spirited coven of women, the P&C club, discussed playground cleanliness and a range of other topics not necessarily PG. Yet the majority of my attention was on the objects and Tree of Lost and Found workshop plans I had devised with Gareth and Camilla for the Year 6 kids at Newtown Public School.  We unlatched the playground gate and impish hands ate impish snacks from impish lunch boxes in impish school uniforms. We made our way to the classroom where that familiar smell of crayons and salty wetness permeated the atmosphere. Bright plastic tables, wooden chairs and a sink littered with paint brushes and dirt had this memory lost in a London classroom, age about 4, painting the petals of a pink flower blue.

Gareth and I had fifty minutes to excite the kids to write poems for their Lost and Found tree and for these poems to be inspired by special, talismanic objects they were asked to bring in. One by one the children presented  us with their treasures - photographs of dogs with floppy ears, stitched together, falling apart dolls and a eucalyptus leaf were some of the many objects they wrote their poems about.

The children were adventurous and gentle, willing to write tales of their families, their wishes and their own questions. These words, poetic in their lyricism, flow and honesty were hand written onto tags and in  a few weeks will wave from the limbs of a tree in the urban jungle of King Street, Newtown.

(I miss the concrete under-croft, the tuck-shop queue and being asked to wait outside in the empty playground until I was ready to apologies to Lynda for throwing orange pips at her hair.)

Tomorrow, Gareth and I will be making poems out of tree leaves with students at Newtown Public. The leaves will be attached to a magical tree for display along King Street during September.

Outside the day is getting older. My trees, that are yours but not yours, are bent with such sadness it is as if they can’t believe one day they won’t exist. Strange, because earlier in the day these same bark beauties were powerful in their shape.

Flicking through a book on trees I found a quote I wrote down not so long ago. This quote seems to speak the space I write in, the space which grows and grows from content not contempt.

All it has experienced, tasted, suffered:
The course of years, generations of animals,
Oppression, recovery, friendship of sun and - Wind
Will pour forth each day in the song
Of its rustling foliage, in the friendly
Gesture of its gently swaying crown,
In the delicate sweet scent of resinous
Sap moistening the sleep-glued buds,
And the eternal game of lights and
Shadows it plays with itself, content.

Herman Hesse, 1877 - 1962

The Jessamine revolution has begun. White lobes of perfume the circling of earth around sun and tilt of earth. For me this is day one of Spring no matter what cynic bemoans this Australian season begins when the sun crosses the equator (which is late September in our South). Viewing the Indigenous Weather Knowledge Spring is intricate, subtle and linked to world weather patterns and locations throughout the country. Spring here is not spring there, upstairs is more humid than downstairs.

I was just downstairs admiring the pendant light in leather and nickle crafted by Sam. The leather is illuminated in light bulbs and all those who pass our 583 space gaze at the object curiously. Currently I am searching for a light for our Red Room. Down with the incessant fluroucent white buzz and up with some other light hood. I do like chandeliers but too grand for this space, I’m see metal with a sun set flush, subtle medallion (oxymoronic, I know) 10 beautiful blue tear drop pendeloques. It isn’t quite a hock we have in the Red Room, but there are a series of ropes that could be used to hoist and light the object.

Now, the cost of owning these lux gems are horrendous. Even on E-bay a single droplet is about a million pounds. So, if anyone reading this has a chandelier collecting webs and insect nests in their garage and would like to be rid of such a medieval exaggeration, please email me and, I, or a pigeon, will come and collect the light.

I began to blog in with my single soul mission to update you on Ivy Ireland’s progress on her Papercuts workshop plans, to expand on the Fitzroy cabinet and to invite you to Channel Red Room. But, it is spring and all I can do is listen to the light.

Solidarity in sickness. Many of my close friends are trapped between one cough and the next. My knees too weak to be wet in the chlorine. I felt worse for the chemist who told me she only talks to customers if they are more than two meters away from her otherwise she shouts or asks them to cover their mouth.

The bed connects to the ether and so I cushion up and install our recent video materials on line. and planning the Newtown Lost and Found workshop for Wednesday.

My planets are still abuzz with Fitzroy memories - the library full of candles when most other schools would have banned all forms of fire in the place of many books. Not at Fitzroy - poems came well before insurance policies and risk was embraced in the poem and beyond it.

I feel my skin and bones beg me to take them to bed but this weekend was a series of meaningful birthday celebrations with friends that matter (what are the others for?) There was one cocktail and lemon lime event at which I farewelled my dear friend, flying out on Tuesday for Japan and I look at the empty chair already. The curse of caring is the feeling of abandonment. Some of my closest pals are scattering their selves about the earth whilst I wave hello to the same mirror each morning. (The quest to serve a country or the quest to serve a self. I am sure one follows the other then rewinds to the former.)

Friends.

Dear me, Dear you, Dear all of us, these thoughts of being placed in the one place by choice is leading to a feeling of displacement, questioning of origin and desire to read about expeditions to Iceland or listen to Elizabeth Bishop.

The unveiling of the Cabinet of Lost and Found in the library of Melbourne’s Fitzroy High was the rich unveiling of multiple cabinets each one holding the personalities, quirks, questions and imaginations of an exceptional Year 9 class. The students and teacher have been crafting their cabinets and studying their poetry unit for just over a term. During these weeks the students work-shopped their poems with Briony Doyle (who starred in Red Room’s ‘Poetry Picture Show) and then with their fellow classmates. The class set up a Red Bubble website which successfully encouraged them to post their poems to one another and then offer careful, supportive feedback. The end result is a series of poems for each student that is remarkable to the poem familiar or unfamiliar set of eyes and a class of eager minds relishing the act and art of writing, reading and publishing poems in all types of spaces.

In the next few blogs I’ll attempt to recreate the evening which featured poem readings, parent discussions, teacher reports and a lot of cup cakes. I’ll also include some comments from participating students and teachers and next week we’ll publish the final poems on the site.

To tempt you with cabinet exploring here are a few cabinet snaps:

Dedication: When all the students Year 9 students as Fitzroy High journey into school on their designated day off to decorate their cabinet and make final changes to their poems. Dedication: When a teacher works into the night responding via email and phone to student questions about their poems. Dedication: When a student-teacher designs a poetry performance class, at last minute, to assist the nervous poetry readers in being confident reciters of their work. Dedication: When teachers and students host a cabinet unveiling, bake cakes for their fellows and invite parents, friends and poets because poems have inspired poets.

Plane delays meant Don Quixote has ridden on triumphantly his experiences of being knighted, trodden on and ignored. As Spain opens up to he and his horse so do the hilarious anecdotes of a delusional yet good hearted poet.

I’m in the dusk in Victoria. I’m wondering about faraway friends. I am about to pile my limbs, bags, books and bottles into a trusty Triumph and venture to the coast. Yes, I’d like to think the world of Cabinets, Trees and Ethics will let me be for at least two days. I know this will be impossible as the unveiling of Fitzroy‘s mind is on Thursday, our Tree is being armed and branched on Sunday and by Friday of next week I shall have completed chapter one of India, the Lullaby of Pigeon Cam and at least three more chapters of Don.

I spoke with the teacher at Fitzroy High who tells me her and her students trammed it to a shop called ‘Lost and Found’ and there the kids went poetically mad, collecting last minute poem effects for the Wednesday performance. How wonderful that just when a project is dead, done and over you are reminded that another brain in another planet is working on re working.

Last Sunday night the navy beam drove Honest ‘Dot’ Cassidy and I away from city signs into our search of quite conversations, snow, pigeon cam and gold, all the way to Bathurst. The four legs and four wheels arrived in darkness seeking a room, any room at any inn that wasn’t a Comfort Inn or unnecessarily grand motel. Wheeling In the dark we made out some almost grand architecture but it was the morning sun that shone up Mr George Evans, The famous town Masons and a lot of larger than their pyjama outfits. Before we found our beds we tapped on the door of The Knickerbocker Hotel yet it was locked up as was the Heritage hotel.The bed hunt continued well into the night and our legs exercised up and down the roads, through the Arctic conditions and past many signs warning of hotel punch ups and associated fines for knuckles on noses.

With nowhere to sleep except inside our own duffel coats and hoods we continued t roam the streets calling for a pillow and then At Last! A poem by Les Murray ‘The Commercial Hotel’ urged us to try one last door and for $55.00 per moonshine twin room we were in. In the family pub we tucked ourselves leaving the bar to the fly - a merry boy from the coast snacking on thick, custard like glaze he termed Thai Stir Fry.

Just as we descended to slumber I heard a scrubbing sound from within the walls and behind the bricks. We realised this was the ghost of Margaret Preston - it was her picture print hanging on our wall and watching over ours and all those whose heads rested beneath her flora and birds. Adding to our ghost files was the White Preston Horse who neighed us as we zoomed the highway home.

I can happily report my road trip dreams really did come true - cream parcels of ricotta and spinach, not too turning cheap house wine and (although no Pigeon Cam) my second quest, to find Snow, was accomplished. The following photographs document the snow hunt.

Beginning with the spangled icicle clump on the roadside, the curvy snow lines nestling against our window, snow on the lemony green lawn and a pure white sheet of snow that was soon mashed by footprints.

Not caught in the images is our Formula 1 looping of Bathurst Motorway. Rubber to road Bonny and I forgot about being poets and became racing car drivers. This imagining was great fun until I got disturbed by thinking of the souls in the road .. how many drivers and crashed and burnt to death on the strip.

Penelope’s web, perpetually doing but never done. In the constant state of waiting. Weaving time, undoing time, being killed by time. In the dark stone downstairs of The Sydney Film School, I and a family of invited guests (including one just born baby in blue blankets and splutters) watched a soon to be complete feature film ‘Penelope‘.  Penelope is the melancholy character of Penelope from Homer’s epic, The Odyssey. In palatial loneliness she waits for 20 years for her husband Odysseus to return from the Trojan War. Set in Croatia, in a mythic time and space, the film challenges the mythological tradition with contemporary attitudes, through a reevaluation of the role of Penelope’.

In Ben’s film the ache of women waiting for husbands is sickening in its sadness. 20 days I could wait. 20 years, I couldn’t. The scenes roam rooms, rooms are portals into different spaces of the self that the waxy body of Penelope drifts in and out of. Penelope cries quietly in hypnotic state of abstract missing and there is a vacancy to her final act that is both vicious and virtuous.

I left the building for the white gold sun flashes and noted a curious amount of local mouths eating tomato sauced meat pies. I purchased a five dollar Fm/Am radio from a junk shop that had a confusing odour of chicken salt and mice. Pigeons were replaced by crows today, one glutton almost fattening before my gaze as his beak gnashed on a slab of lamington.

In contrast to the melancholy of being abandoned is Mr Potter’s Pigeons - a beautiful children’s story unexpectedly loaned to me a few days ago. I have been unable to close the book or resist sharing it with others. The tale, published in 1979 features Mr Potter, a sweet and gentle pigeon fancier and grandfather. Feathering the book also include garden objects such as sheds and spades, a friendly pigeon protagonist and fellow pigeons. The story features my all time favourite symbols - the lighthouse, the binoculars, the black cat all illustrated in sensitive perfection by Reg Cartwright, his style reminscet of Henri Rousseau’s exotic landscapes and pigeon dreaming.

It’s halving the five - the stumpy heater blows on my cheek and outside the light is leaning towards a white streaked peach. It is at this moment I wish to be a cat, able to leave whatever I am doing now, for a stroll to the ultimate softness of a curl.

Dangerously I am gathering quotes as if a gleaner collecting unwanted corn cobs and crops, fetching but not it all. Not quoting in full and not always exploring where the quotes come from. What laziness.

An intangible concern exists with quoting out of context or pulling away from the whole a part.

This quote sung to me today: ‘So come, my friends, be not afraid. We are so lightly here. It is love that we are made; In love we disappear’.

You know it is Leonard. So I found the street where it comes from,  Boogie Street.

‘Boogie’ lost without Woogie but when together,  ritualiastic-orgiastic Jelly Roll Morton sounds out into my lounge room on his boogie lumber and turpentine piano style whilst chick peas pop and spit on the stove.

.. (note to nothing) I must find that Langston Hughes poem,’The Weary Blues. Not that I feel the wearies today but the poem will come in handy when these August days now longer, lengthen that bit too long. so long that if you’re not up to the sun with to do ness limbs take to another street.

I remember someone saying Langston’s poetry wasn’t great because you can understand it. Is this the Great Depression then, when you can’t understand the self at all, when the self is lonst in a startling, dramatic downturn?