Graphology Lambent 62: in memory of Jordie Albiston
You
would have got
any triangular
number sequence, and any polygon
for that matter. You are neither inside nor outside this one,
but I send it to you letter by letter line by line, counting each symbol, each sign
as a step within the equilateral, a step towards knowing why it is you wrote as
you wrote, why this counts.
John Kinsella
Battle is Not Spectacle It’s a Catastrophe
‘Nor did anyone note with care that it was the same island; nor in the night did the Doliones clearly perceive that the heroes were returning; but they deemed that Pelasgian war-men of the Macrians had landed. Therefore they donned their armour and raised their hands against them. And with clashing of ashen spears and shields they fell on each other, like the swift rush of fire which falls on dry brushwood and rears its crest; and the din of battle, terrible and furious, fell upon the people of the Doliones.’
(from The Argonautica Book 1, trans R. C. Seaton, 1912)
Blown back by the winds of our making,
they clash with enemies conjured
from darkness. Dawn will show bloody
truisms — neighbour slaying neighbour,
or people who might have been friends
slaughtering under orders. On the beaches
of their imaginations, the dead drift
through the tyrant’s dream — part smog,
part oil, part bloody earth, and the strange
intangible nature of torn flesh. War
laps at the cold waters of the summer
resorts. Weapons are made to be used.
The dying are heard in and around
the cities and people can only lament
while still living, streaming away or sheltering
in underground rail stations, masked
against the pandemic. The clash — rigor
mortis of empire-craving, and the media’s
feeding frenzy, networks embedding
to bring more than images to screens,
to frenzy around violence then regret
the cascading losses. And the news
that no epic poet could contrive to embellish
the story — the invading army has taken
Chernobyl, concrete cradle of unbirth,
monument to spectres that fall across borders,
called with impunity and reassurance,
summoned from its eternal sleeplessness,
full of self-praise as the reactor core
maintains its rage. And now its makers
have it back in their care. Sarcophagus.
Strategies of the exclusion zone. A tree
shivers, a bird is dead before it can land,
barely symbolic among seemingly
familiar terrain. Terrible. Fell. Furious.
John Kinsella
I condemn the invasion of Ukraine by the military forces of the Kremlin and the tyrant Putin. This horrendous abuse of human rights and human dignity is deplorable on every level. As a committed pacifist, I firmly believe that non-violent resistance and protest are the most effective way of countering this abuse of life. Meeting violence with violence will mean more violence, more suffering. Total and utter refusal to do what the militarists demand is, to my mind, the only effective answer.
I send my support and solidarity to all those in Ukraine who are under attack or under threat. I also send my support to those peace protesters in Russia who face arrest with their every objection and refusal to be part of a tyrant-driven Kremlin agenda of extending power and occupying country in order to enhance imperial obsessions. To the people peacefully resisting this, you are not and never will be forgotten. We are with you.
Taking up arms only means more death and increases the wealth of military profiteers. I am disgusted by Germany breaking its own 'restraints' to supply weapons to the conflict (though this is unsurprising, given Germany is an exporter of arms), and also by Australia for doing the same (also unsurprising, given it's a nation working hard to increase its role and influence in the world armaments trade). This is, of course, part of the increasingly right-wing urges of a right-wing Federal government that aims to project itself into global politics as a 'middle ranking power'. The disgraceful AUKUS pact, the drive for nuclear-powered submarines, the push to make the Australian military 'less woke', and the increasing push for military-related activities in Australian universities, are all part of this.
The decision to send 'lethal aid' (an oxymoron if ever there was one) to Ukraine is part of the death cultism of right-wingism. The Russian power-elite shares a similar worldview, but with a 'stronger' military behind it. Violence leads to more violence. Send humanitarian aid in every way possible; aid should be life-affirming and not death-making in nature and intent. Peaceful aid will mean the preservation of life.
Lethal Aid
There’s no point even placing
scare quotes around this.
In the frenzy for death to show
resolve where death is,
the Australian government
will send its devices of death
into the killzones, will feed
death so when death
comes to its end, a supplied
by Australia logo will light
up the graves, a small
if not discreet claim,
a reminder of assistance
rendered, of death’s compassion
for death. The invaders
will recognise it as kin
to their own way of thinking.
An aid to memory, of aid rendered.
John Kinsella
Forest Raves Fuck Up The Forest
Forest raves fuck up the forest —
the doof doof annihilation
of the birds barely registered,
the minuscule syrinxes, the costumed
feathers, the hyperstimulated skin,
the padded nests you can collapse
into exhausted but still willing
to party on, tossing the fledglings
out on the forest floor to be stomped,
hands reaching to the canopy
& twilight’s nimbus — a false
friend of freedom, a flattering
admirer of the rubbished moon. And
the spreading of cinnamon fungus as you rave
to avoid limitations on venue numbers
due to Covid, the imitation of animals
that has no respect or understanding
for the animals imitated, a cultural
mocking, the melding with an ecology
which you destroy as effectively as farmers
& mountain bikers. You can doof to this doof.
You can crank up the energy consumption.
You can max out on the tools of capitalism.
You can carbonate in full immersion.
And so the fire twirlers in dry & heat-stricken
woodlands, & so the off-your-face open air
self-discovery & bonding rituals,
& so the mockery of all ancient knowledges,
& so the colonial paradoxes seem to be reset
with every alternative setting, each contra-
indication... & so the party at the end of the world
which is dance beats as utility as centres
in which you are the anonymous sole attraction,
the contradiction of liberation,
the raving exploitation of nature,
as your forest rave fucks up the forest
as you do the work for mining companies,
land developers, dispossessors and pastoralists,
as your forest rave fucks up the forest.
John Kinsella
If I’ve learnt things askew, it feel it’s not because of bad intentions —
rather, I laud the form and am sad if spirit shifts when I make use of it.
On a day of trauma for many, a day of mourning a day of anger
at ill-gotten gains, when there are no platitudes, only pain, I call on it.
I call on a form of desire with all ‘erotics’ stripped away because
of the greed of one body over others, because of the chasmic longing in it.
Third person singular, I locate those items of ongoing occupation,
and they are all around me and I make use of them as I make recourse to it.
I don’t for a moment believe that life can be renewed for the oppressed
from the ‘rotting corpse of the settler’ as violent Frantz Fanon would have it.
In fact, I see the artists and poets and singers redressing the wrongs
and bringing repair, knowing the gun was the end of justice and not start of it.
But Fanon was right about loss of dignity and hope and ongoing mental illness
wrought by the settlers who played their part and excluded or validated it.
I laud this form because of its moments linking to moments, its building
out of longing and despair — in the interconnectedness, each couplet unique in it.
I feel the trauma of Karla Dickens’s artwork that antiflags and is forever
more than object — January 26, Day of Mourning — and acknowledge it.
I am a flagless person but that doesn’t exonerate me. I feel my bare feet burn
on the ground and know it’s more than a reminder. In my weakness I call on it.
John Kinsella
Note: for more on Karla Dickens see this article.
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| Un-map De-explore |
The fact that we need 'nature reserves' is an indictment of colonial-capital in itself, but without them there'd be very little 'original' native vegetation remaining and consequently an even greater loss of species diversity, and animal-life in its own rights. I am troubled by the idea of 'reserves' as a statement of ceding what has not been ceded, and of corralling land into parcels that are only allowed to persist because so much of the land around them has been occupied. Further, such reserves are also a form of 'occupation' (if a 'better' version), and exclusion of full rights of traditional ownership. To my mind, these 'nature reserves' should be under local Aboriginal management.
We have just spent a few days in Geraldton (where I went to high school and where my brother and his partner live), and spent time skirting nature reserves to asses their 'condition' and how they are or aren't being respected. Most nature reserves in Western Australia that I have encountered suffer from degradation along their boundaries (especially when they abut rural holdings, mines, commercial, industrial and 'real estate' developments), but also from the dumping of rubbish and incursions by hunters and recreationalists.
The edges of reserves are as important as the interior, and yet because of their proximity to other modes of 'land usage', they are inevitably negatively impacted. On the periphery of one nature reserve we visited was an array of dumping/rubbish, ranging from building scrap to heaps of grass clippings, from a massive variety of plastic waste to assorted house objects. As one ventures further in, the rubbish becomes 'historic' in the sense that prior (to being a gazetted nature reserve) usage by 'settler' presencing leaves many damaging traces that are only partially absorbed into the restoring/recuperating ecology — rusting tin drums (oil, poison etc), bricks and mortar, garden residues, bottles and so on.
The rubbish situation wasn't severe by comparison to some instances I've come across, but it was still a marker of frustration (and ecological disdain, even abuse) over space 'set aside' that's not part of the acquisitive accrual of property — of 'ownership' that erases traditional cultural custodianship of country. Rubbishing is an act of resentment against the uncolonial.
Here are a few images of Howatharra, one of the Chapman Valley/Moresby Ranges reserves. Most of the ranges with their incredible flat-topped hills (reaching a height of 183m and around 50 million years old), has been cleared and occupied by farms, but a few nature reserves are scattered across their length and breadth.
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| Nature Reserve, Chapman Valley |
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| Following a Kangaroo Trail |
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| Not Vanishing but Appearing! |
Edging the Howatharra Nature Reserve, Moresby Ranges, Western Australia [Argonautica}
The levelled range
Says those canyons of the sea
Aren't like this now, but will be.
No ‘Köppen climate type’
Can address the fragrance
And textures of leaves and bark
Afloat in heat. Further into the valley,
River redgums might suggest
An elsewhere but are more here
Than anywhere, though
Settler surveys diffuse
To serve their own purposes.
In the clefts where water runs
At downpour, there are other names
For erosion. A mistletoe bird's
Red is a different red
And the mistletoe differs
As well. From denomination
To denomination the stone
Is drawn from roughly
A similar source. The wind
Rips the high temps
But not all the way to the core
Of piles of grass clippings (dumped
Whether it be a wet year or drought year)
Which heat in and of themselves, interiorly
And dangerously, like more bad news
From the fourth estate, while, in addition,
Museum-loads of colonial rubbish
Trouble the roadside ecotones. Not-
withstanding, a view to the green-reefed ocean
Is a reflection (if at impossible angles)
Of all that might come again on land.
John Kinsella
