sissinghurst castle gardens

We cruise through the hedgerowed English countryside, village to village, till we pass picturesque Sissinghurst and turn in along the track to the castle. Well, to the gardens, actually, since the castle, though it has enjoyed various incarnations since the 1100s, is now little but a gloriously solid Norman-style tower holding two writing rooms in which some of 20th-century Britain’s boldest words were written.

Vita Sackville-West and her family bought the ruined castle – a tower, a decrepit Victorian farmhouse and some outbuildings – in 1930, and turned the tower into studies and the farmhouse into a home – surrounded by what the National Trust calls ‘one of the world’s great gardens’. Within a couple of acres, enclosed by a wall on one side and a moat on the other, there is a series of ‘rooms’ – the white garden, the rose garden, the orchard, herb garden, yew walk, lime walk, nuttery, and so on. It’s a wanderer’s paradise, a place of grand gestures and exquisite detail, colour and shadow, encompassing both ancient stability and constant change. Vita was an intimate friend of Virginia Woolf and the inspiration for the central character in Woolf’s extraordinary novel Orlando, and the romantic, heroic atmosphere of that fantastical tale can be felt around the estate.

Besides the garden there is also, among other things, a working Elizabethan barn, a fine restaurant, picnic and parking areas, cafe, plant shop, etc. The restaurant looks out over the fields, including the organic vegetable plots from which diners’ plates are filled. I’ve promised myself that on my next trip to England, I’ll eat there.

Strangely, though I adored the gardens, my greatest pleasure was the tower – the spiralling climb, the individual writing rooms of that fascinating couple, the view from the parapets. And those exceptionally bold words? Vita’s diaries, published according to her wishes after her death by her son Nigel Nicholson in Portrait of a Marriage, give a frank and searching account of her personal life, centring around her bisexuality, her relationships with women and her passionate devotion to her husband. By allowing for publication, Vita did both the women’s movement and the sexual revolution a significant favour.

Driving away in the scented, tinted late afternoon we chose to linger in the High Weald, and stopped at a pub in Goudhurst. A great many pubs in England are almost psychedelically picturesque; this was one of them. The Star and Eagle is all 400-year-old oak beams and leadlight casements, crooked corridors and quaint but scrupulously modern facilities – gorgeous. We had the place to ourselves; ordered coffee and the local apple cake, and sat gazing out a window over soft green, gold and purple hills, the middle distance dotted with sheep.  Across the valley the contours of the weald gleamed under the slanting late summer sun, and in the pale distant sky four hot air balloons rose lazily, one after the other, and floated westward.

Jaqi by Terry Biggenden

FERNS 1 by Terry Biggenden

Originally uploaded by Illuminata

I’m just faffing around on the pooter, and one thing I was overdue to do (I think I’m overdue to do pretty much everything I do by the time I actually do it; it’s some kind of galactic time conspiracy; Douglas Adams would understand) was to update my blog address in my Flickr account details. I haven’t blogged a picture from my Flickr photo site since I moved to WordPress, and that’s far too long. So here’s a pic from my latest photo shoot.

An accomplished fine art photographer, Terry saw images of me by Peter Crowfoot on another photo-sharing site, and asked Peter to put us in touch. Terry was looking for someone to make a day trip with him to the abandoned maltworks at Mittagong, a couple of hours out of Sydney. I was up for it. We got some beautiful images that day – several different spots around the site, and enough unexplored to make another trip not out of the question. If you want to see more, the link to Flickr is in the left column, down low.

There’s a colour version of this shot too, which some viewers (howdy, James) prefer, though I like the restrained classicism of the sepia. The sunlight on the ferns does glow rather gloriously in the colour version, I have to admit. There are more images still to come from this very successful shoot, as Terry processes them. But I’ll try and ornament my blog with pictures that aren’t always of me without my clothes, if only to save my father’s feelings :)

living and dying

I feel like unloading; take or leave with no hard feelings…

Since my mother and grandfather died within 3 weeks of each other around Christmas ‘06-January ‘07, I’ve been visiting my grandmother weekly, first at her retirement village apartment, then in her aged-care hostel room, and lately, twice weekly, in a series of public and private hospitals. It has been warming (and wearing) to be able to help, but it’s painful watching my beloved Granny, alone in a way she has never been in her life until now, endure bravely and more or less stoically, as her once-active body and lively mind fall slowly apart around her wretched, unfailing, steadfastly beating heart.

“I wish the good Lord would take me now!” she has said to me, leaning forward on her walker with subdued but defiant fierceness – and other words to similar effect on several other occasions… and here is where I go into a good solid ptooey of a dummy-spit about the health system and the, ahem, ‘medical industry’.

Granny, who as a war widow (Grandad was TPI) has all her medical costs paid by the DVA, has entered the age and condition in which one is constantly monitored and assisted through the day’s basic functions – there being little else you can manage, and you manage basic functions by no means well either – while your pain levels, though constant, are minimised and your general health is kept at its medicated best. The little declines common at this age – which if left to accelerate might lead to merciful release – become an administrative issue: when the patient slips from Level X care needs to Level Y care needs – from, say, being able to go to the toilet without assistance, to needing help – she must be moved from the hostel to the nursing home. You can’t flip back and forth over that line, even if medical policy actually contributes to your seesawing health. Besides, already you’re a mere husk, wretchedly disabled, eating without relish, shitting without control, decaying without privacy. No-one wants to end up bedridden as well, condemned to total dependence on overworked staff who (though many of them are absolute saints) cannot really respect you for what you used to be – but cannot help you towards death either. So you must be maintained at Level X as long as possible, until eventually you slip from their loving pharmaceutical clutch. It’s hardly surprising you’ll likely start to go batty in the process.

There is no way out of the extended wait, for her or me. She is soon to have a hip replacement – at 90 – because although at first she said no, I’m too old, it’s a waste of resources, a surgeon convinced her it will lower her pain levels – though he couldn’t guarantee it would enable her to walk and so stay semi-independent. She tells me she’s hoping the anaesthetic will kill her, though the doctor has assured her that doesn’t happen any more. A modest but staunch old-style Protestant, she lacks the courage of her more nihilistic convictions – in the face of her lifelong upright obedience – and probably didn’t make her wish clear to the doctor. Sadly, even if she did, that was the wrong doctor. She needs to tell her GP, not the surgeon, but such refinements are beyond her understanding these days. And I, of course, can do nothing but ease her daily (or rather bi-weekly) way until time wins or desperation gives her courage to tell every medico she sees.

But how long, forgodsake, how long? This vapid, industrial catering to the basest instinct – shared by the lowest of animate organisms – demeans us all. And not just when we reach decrepitude: frankly, I can think of about a million better things to do with my forties than spending them caring like the family spinster for someone who, to tell the godshonest truth, would rather not be here any more anyway. Poor Granny – Mum was so much better made for this task than I; she would’ve buoyed Granny in her faith, and she wouldn’t have been oppressed by the stupid, purposeless, bureaucratically perverse pointlessness of it all – and the gloomy awareness that one sterling reason Granny is still alive is that people, industries and corporations are making good money out of her misery.

The rabid right claim euthanasia – by definition a ‘good death’ – is a crime. How ironic. I think the lack of a clean, simple, properly counselled, supervised and legislated option to end your life is a crime.

trooly fablous partay, dalling mwah

Other accounts of Friday’s party may already be online – I know there are some entertaining visuals on Facefuck (which I’ve seen but can’t access because I haven’t joined), and god knows what where else. Most probably went up today: Saturday was the kind of heavy, dark, broiling day that makes for exquisite paralysis when you’re hungover… I (preens virtuously) don’t get hangovers, but I did feel pretty seedy, and I reckon there were a fair few corkers after Friday night…you should’ve seen Mirj. I dragged her off to the beach late Saturday afternoon.

The thing was, it having been so hot all Friday and there being somehow SO much alcohol, everyone was amiably trashed by 10pm. We never even got to broaching the absinthe. Nor did we sing, play or otherwise do any numbers as such, as had been planned – though there were fine performances all night in every space. Details, of course, must be omitted to protect the innocent, but we talked and argued and flirted and danced and people explored the house and asked questions, and the music jumped all over the place from Mirjam’s iPod through my great big speakers. Hilarity, outrage, seduction, sugar, sparklers, you know the deal. At least two people passed out on M’s bed – at different times – and as the night went on there was the fascinating asshole enthroned out the back and, out the front, the requisite tragic scene of a lady dissolving in drama, which I actually missed but am still pleased about. If the inner release a party is designed to create is to be effective, you should see a little negative energy here and there.

I say let it out – let it go, bro…

Stars of the show included Mirj and her lush rum’n'icecream punch diffused with fruit juice and peach spumante no less, which was all gone all too soon; the revolving shell collection (“this too shall pass”), Maximushka and the ladies, the fairy lights in the shade umbrella, and my dear eccentric androgynous Uncle Harry.

And a veil of discretion shall be drawn over the rest. You had to be there.

All in all and in short, the house was well enjoyed, and has been splendiferously rechristened. Thank you with happy heart to all involved :) – there will be more before long.

adventures in role-playing

Phew. Christmas is finally over. My family gathers on the 27th and, since the death of my mother two years ago, I seem to have fallen into the role of matriarch (it hardly becomes me) – that is, it falls to me to cook the turkey, organise the rest of the family’s contributions and effectively host the event, though not at my place, since Granny could never get up the stairs. This year I took half my goddamn kitchen to the ‘games room’ of Granny’s nursing home. I’m tempted to reflect further on the event, but it would take time to tease it all out – the delicate dynamics of assembling a bunch of people with precious little in common except blood, frustration, and the best of intentions – and I’m busy packing.

Tomorrow I’m off to the idyllic Glenworth Valley for the Peats Ridge Festival, where I shall be Mistress of the Boudoir for Kamikaze Couture – the dress-up tent. It is my job to have an absolute ball… actually it’s my job to ensure that everyone who comes in has a ball and leaves feeling like a million dollars. My employer called it ‘essentially an interactive performance’ – I can’t see it being anything but fun. To add to the joy I managed to wangle Eug a job as a stagehand, so when NYE midnight comes around I’ll have beloved company – and of course a few thousand likeminded revellers. Jezebel the Kombi is shipshape for camping, we are well-stocked with yummy Christmas leftovers – just gotta grab a sarong for the daytime and some glitter lashes for the night, and we’re off to wonderland :)

australia’s stone heart

I went wandering on Google satellite maps… and was transfixed by this new perspective on an old image (you have to zoom right in). I sat and stared at it, fascinated, till the energy-saver dimmed the screen. The shape, the shadows, the energy of all that diagonal texturing, the fertile associations, the symbolic power, the simple, revelatory miracle of a vertical view – the awful, ironic, necessary marring with Google copyright marks…

Australia’s physical and spiritual heart. But there’s more: pull back to see the whole continent and look at that round swirl in the middle, circling Uluru and Alice Springs – a big fat egg yolk in the messy fried egg of Terra Australis. Trace the rents in the fabric of the earth around that great central ring – a series of lakes and rivers, beginning and ending just east of Coober Pedy, is this not art? (You can get it without the tabs by typing Coober Pedy in the search box and pawing your way east. Do zoom in.) A looping, magical, pendulous, genital jewel in blameless cerulean blue. Whence it all must drain subterraneously toward the great fissure we now call Port Augusta.

Pull back out. If you stare long enough you can almost see the continent rotating glacially, clockwise, chunks breaking off against the currents, against the resistance of the planet beneath, as if someone out there were twisting a cosmic knife in its adamantine heart.

the lost art of beachobatics

On a tangent while doing online research for the Bonachela interview, I came across this gem of art news. Have a look at a bewitching bit of Bondi history.

And before anyone comments on the excruciating neologism in my heading, I lifted it straight from the SMH story, which implied it was in use back in the day. The art of amateur beach acrobatics may be lost but we’ve retained the more dubious art of contracting two unrelated words into one etymological slashfest.

you don’t see the half of it

My god but it has been wild around here lately. Until this year I never posted private blogs; there have been five since mid-May. The unspeakable poetry of my private life.

And you didn’t think I had any ;)

“a new dawn of American leadership is at hand”

If nothing else, Barack Obama is one of modern history’s great orators.

“…tonight we have proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity and unyielding hope.”

Ah, I wish. Guess it’s all in how you define ‘true’. See a livestream of the whole speech here on his website.

a little pre-US election chit-chat

I’m reluctant to go all global on you again, but I can’t help being obsessed with the big picture. If we don’t manage to curb world population growth and the resulting increasingly acute resource crisis within a few decades – and that’s about as fast as it could possibly be done, eh – then the Last War, which many point around the globe and say has already begun, will accelerate to levels of destruction more wretched than any the planet has yet seen.

You don’t have to be a seer to figure that. Does publishing make you a prophet? Who cares. The point is, even if Barack Obama has the vision to address the impending tragedy, does he have the power? His most loyal sidekicks in the battle for planet Earth don’t inspire confidence – Gordon Brown’s already offered Parliament (ie, vested interests) his prerogative to declare war, and as for Kevin07, the Australian Tintin – whose global influence is stronger than it would otherwise be because he speaks Mandarin – he’s good; he’s very good… but what weapon can an honest Christian wield against the ruthlessness of Hu Jintao? The leader of the world’s largest nation says his political principles are, domestically, a harmonious society, and internationally, peaceful development. Call me naive, but doesn’t this sound arse-about to you? Shouldn’t he be advocating the peaceful development of his own nation, and a harmonious global society? What kind of international development does he have in mind – other than peaceful, of course?

And although Obama will win the election (there’ll be riots all over if the Republicans rig another one) he’ll need bionic (or at least logistical) superpowers to dodge the bullets of his trigger-happy constituents long enough to effect real change.

Ho hum. The view from the Pembroke eyrie is grim as ever. It’s a rainy day and I’m fighting the flu, but that’s no excuse for world leaders to faff around on the important shit.