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ARTS AND CULTURE

Reflective Insulation

  • 08 July 2006

You just walk out of the world, and into Australia.           (Lawrence)

Dozing mere afternoon away hot and salty, outside time you do not see the powderblue of distant hills, beyond that cape: everything has become marine with gulls for scattered punctuation.

Huddled all together lie the igneous and stratified: craglet, pit and water pebble, mini-tarn, long crinkled shelf yellowish, ginger, tan, wet-black with a hint of half-decayed kelp, sea-lettuce—something off. Could be a dead penguin, eh?

Meanwhile, back there on the sand listening to the Test match rhythms, elastic theology on the green or psychic stress enacted by a flanneled ghost in the machine. Days are seasons of the psyche, fresh waves crash against the sill, over after over.           Sandstone is the metaphysical pavilion; our old friend the summer’s ocean finding odd gaps in the field.

Epics within epigrams and the stink of restlessness, but on the sand it feels like Bush Week, folk with towel and radio crescent between quotes of rock, off which those yellow-eyed silver mullet patiently abound.