[first published 30.11.2024 Substack]
After some heavy days of oven heat, we are now in a ‘rain event’. Back to the grey. I don’t mind. The rain comes and goes in sky-high veils, blowing across the yard and the cliff-face beyond. The little birds (the littlest bird left home and like a bad mother, I missed the moment!) are out in force because the heat has kept them ‘indoors’. Maybe ‘force’ is not the right word – what kind of force do little birds, some no bigger than a teaspoon, exert? Determination? They’re certainly intense.
Anyway, these little fluffed up spoonfuls of willpower are making the most of gaps between towers of falling water: blue and black boy wrens land on window corners, looking for bugs to snatch from cobwebs; red-browed finches spot for specks and crumbs hidden in the mat at the back door; scrub wrens (finally set free from feeding ‘the kid’?) grab a quick splash in a puddle. A leech, stretching out towards all this activity, hovers its heat-seeking nozzle horizontal to the ground, its flat suction foot planted on the window in front of me. You have no chance leech.
A couple of lovely things sailed across my screen this week, joining the small blips of joy that the birds give (did I mention that my mother died four months ago? For context re: the blips). One was inside Greil Marcus’s substack ‘Ask Greil’, 26 November <https://greilmarcus.substack.com/p/ask-greil-november-26-2024>. He gives a link to a YouTube clip made by Graeme Buckley – a collage of snips from Western films, set to Bob Dylan’s ‘Ain’t Talkin’. Buckley’s clip is beautifully crafted and shows Westerns in all their romantic, hokey, hilarious, masculine profundity. And by the way, all of the ‘Ask Greil’ posts are worth reading if you like thoughtful, direct takes on music, lyrics and some politics.
The other lovely thing was reading Ted Gioia’s 2021 substack post on how he adopted his title of ‘The Honest Broker’ – it’s a great read on what it’s like to confront your youthful ambitions and figure out what your “long-term game” might be <https://www.honest-broker.com/p/how-i-became-the-honest-broker?r=f2x7y&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web>. Not being particularly nationalistic – maybe it’s just US-election-fatigue? – I was surprised to realise how much I liked reading about the “drunk Australian” who gave Gioia his piece of wisdom. Here is one of Gioia’s nicely made sentences: “He had traced the secret paths to power and knew all the dangerous mistakes amateurs always make.” Read it all here <https://www.honest-broker.com/p/how-i-became-the-honest-broker?r=f2x7y&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web>The wind has come up. Long wet streamers of bark are hanging from the gum trees – cream on one side and dark orange on their inside – moving elegantly in the gusts. The birds are taking advantage of a break in the rain to get away from the back verandah and move out into the paddock. The leech remains – still seeking blood.