Mount St Helens

Photos by John V. Christiansen taken from Mount Adams looking out on Mount St Helens at the moment that she erupted.  These photos originally featured in the January 1981 edition of National Geographic. It took me ages to find these pictures. It was surprisingly tough considering how spellbinding they are. A kindly chap via the Mount St Helens FB page eventually put me onto them. Words that come to mind here: Shock wave, awe and timing...oh and love...for some reason.

Write Club

After writing, everything else in your life has the volume turned down.

I am, you are, we are Agar

Lorum Ipsum Dolor

Rosa Celeste: Dante and Beatrice gaze upon the highest Heaven, The Empyrean by Gustave Dore.


This is simply dummy interesting,
because occasionally circumstances occur
in which toil and pain can procure a great
sum--
To take a trivial example, which of us exercise,
untrammeled and when nothing physical from the selection below.

We currently have in the train,
find fault with pleasure to be,
that produces no resultant online application,
It so account of the system,
they are at fault to leave,
We will definitely change.

The Secret History of Our Enemies

"If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility"

 - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Mit Flügeln, die gewohnt Singe.

In the haze in the gloom and in every other room 

there's a blue central maze 
from the War and its days. 

Makes me want to cry and watch you go get high. 

Makes us want to fly off buildings in the sky -- 

With wings that wont singe. 

The Capriciousness of Youth

Ok wow...gonna assume youve elected to ignore my email. That being the case let me cease to darken your virtual door with this Paris: I dont know what it is that I did to you, beyond the cavalier or capricious behaviour of youth, and Ive heard that you hold some kind of grudge...well I'm sorry dude...it's over 20 years ago....is it a life sentence I'm serving? Anyway I can't really speak to what it is that you think I'm guilty of because apart from maybe my being a floored and naive kid I cant imagine what it is that you think I've done to you. Life is far too short dude. If I'm reading the rumours and your silence correctly....geez man...get some frickin' perspective.
I wont bother you again so feel free to slot me back into whatever villainous historical role you've been supping on these many years.
Peace

Rabbits Made of Cake

Poem by Amanda Collins

one gritty grotty Maundy Thursday
the rakehell road warrior shoulders on  through
taking advantage of pretty side streets
never remembering their names, only the shape of their intersections
ready to find beauty in a pair of wings
wringing solutions from insoluble problems
bearing a burden of his own devising
then
for a moment in the blighted sunshine
he basks

 - Amanda Collins

Epson Printers Must Die!

The Epson Stylus NX130 printer was a lousy piece of shit from the get-go. So it came to pass one afternoon the Epson Stylus NX 130 pushed me too far. It met my axe in the backyard. The experience was everything I thought it could be.

Song: You're the Best by Joe Esposito.

Night in the Gardens of Port of Spain

Night, the black summer, simplifies her smells into a village; she assumes the impenetrable

musk of the negro, grows secret as sweat, her alleys odorous with shucked oyster shells,

coals of gold oranges, braziers of melon. Commerce and tambourines increase her heat.

Hellfire or the whorehouse: crossing Park Street, a surf of sailor's faces crest, is gone

with the sea's phosphoresence; the boites-de-nuit tinkle like fireflies in her thick hair.

Blinded by headlamps, deaf to taxi klaxons, she lifts her face from the cheap, pitch oil flare

toward white stars, like cities, flashing neon, burning to be the bitch she must become.

As daylight breaks the coolie turns his tumbril of hacked, beheaded coconuts towards home.

-Derek Walcott

Confusion Say

Feeling curiously out of sync with everything at the moment and it’s not just because I’ve decided to lay off the heroin. Hearing THE THE in my head like a message from the greater mind of subpop…errr I mean subconscious. Afray-afrock…mental illness everywhere and not merely my own— hovering over my travels in the USA. Inability to communicate, inability to connect…try avoiding the disconnect when you're confused and not sure you really understand people anymore. I languorous sub-torpor followed by cloud clearing moments of suspect clarity where I wonder if maybe my capacity to understand has in fact grown and what that has revealed is of course that I understand less than ever and then… I experience a little chill. I am disrobed. The warm frothy bath of self assurance and pride has evaporated. Standing here naked is colder than I thought it would be. I'm trying to warm my hands on the coals of my renewed wisdom but if they generate any heat it’s on a frequency that I don't sense.

Warmth, as it turns out, is not a colour.

“This man, on one hand, believes that he knows something, while not knowing anything. On the other hand, I – equally ignorant – do not believe that I know anything”    Plato- Apology  

 I'm trying to be a better person. I want to question my assumptions about things. Question my assumptions about people. But oft I just fall back -- Instead second guessing, retracting and rewriting….keeping my fuckin’ mouth shut…

The benefit of the doubt it seems is, well, more doubt.

Previously on Den Done Did for 2012

Life as a work of Art.

It would be remiss of me not to flag 2011 as probably the worst year of my adult life...and yet like a sultry West Coast Ares horse I rise from the ashes, mash up my metaphors, stand-up-soldier-to stand up, drive my car into the ocean and seek to love life again...can Den Done Did do it? This and more I aim to explore...perhaps we explored these things together?

Merry Mantodea

Yesterday whilst at work in Abbotsford, opposite the old Victoria Park oval, I lured this little mantid, no more than 2mm in length, from amid the destruction of a rubbish pile. He stood a good chance of getting squished where he was so I was pleased he elected to climb upon my finger and then politely cut-some-shapes whilst Tone photographed him with my HTC phone. I nearly lost him a second time-- Hold up...Sorry for the gender specifics here, I admit it could be a girl would you prefer I said "it". The truck is a girl the mantid is a boy blahblahblah etc...anyway I nearly lost him a second time when I helped the mantid onto a paperbark tree. He ran right across a spider web. The vibrations enticing a huge black lurker which appeared at the edge of its silken cave primed to pounce. I drew him back onto my finger and took him to a low stone wall where he could have at least an even start back into his life.

Merry Mantodea my friends.

Christmas Beetle

I spotted this beetle whilst working on a job in Cheltenham the other day. I'm calling it a Christmas beetle and whether or not that's true, I'll leave entomology to the experts, I'm sending it out for the season to all my readers who have loved me presently and erstwhile. You have made me real by reading me and have made me shrink with your absence and in the end this is merely my small tribute to life. Merry Christmas-beetle one and all!

Culture is NOT a Type of Beer

Reminisce before me.

Its funny how singular my memory can play.
I've been looking back at old photos and videos,
of myself in my old life on the West Coast.
Four or five years hence.
It's all sunsets and blue skies
and brown skin and blue eyes
and green grass and fitness.
Now all I can see,
peeking out through the slender square of my window
is grey skies and cold rolled down Melbourne winter
and all I can feel is dirt and dust and damp.
Lungs that wont heal,
post flus that wont pass.

Help to stop you reminiscing.

Inner City Child

dreaming of a space beyond walls, beyond counting.
dancing down the lanes like children,
splashing puddles as we go,
the water takes neon,
electric paint,
staining the winter with our path.

I'm childish, I'm a child,
but a bigger man than fear will hold.
in the wake they'll try to scold,
but you can keep your subscription,
return your franchise,
up my dose,
lower my coat,
flash my ass at the world.



* (I want you to understand something. My ego demands that you understand. This is bop prosody -- Of fuel of inspiration. What kicks me. Perhaps I could write this pome better. Polish it. Pre-digest it for you. Pour over it for hours. Days. Weeks... Years. But I didn't. I tapped it out as it came into my head with no revision except for some punctuation so you might be able to comprehend it. There's nothing to sell here. I hope you can understand that).

Googolplexian

What is this that's between us, on the light all pale down and square in the margins.
What is this light that you and I share? Where does it come from?
Are we so different you and I?
I am as the moss clinging unlikely to the aluminium frame
This goodly frame
That life grows out of the margins despite itself

Despite the numbers...too large to contain

What is this love between us, in the dark of day under pouring rain.
What is this shadow that you and I share? Where did it come from?
I am no different to you.
I am the misshapen moss clinging to the aluminum frame
this most excellent canopy
that life reaches out of despite itself

Despite the numbers...too large to contain

The Blue Wall of North Fitzroy

The Blue Wall of North Fitzroy

These guys have been posting provocative thoughts, prose and protestations on this lovely blue wall in North Fitzroy for many years now. When I first moved to Melbourne and found a house to rent in Nth Fitzroy, not far from where this photo was taken, one of the first things that struck me was how articulate the graffiti on the streets was. Unfortunately in the last 10 years a lot of that street lyricism has been buried under an infestation of juvenile tagging.