NetDynam 2.0

i just returned from a long drive to geelong to attend the association of societies for growing australian plants (ASGAP) biennial conference there. the drive itself takes about 10 hours or so straight, so i did it in 2 days, leaving about 11am each day and arriving for the evening about 4. the conference was held over 5 days, monday to friday, with 3 days of talks and presentations and 2 days of excursions to local reserves and gardens. on the way back i stopped in at seymour to visit my old school friend, and then we took a 2 day loll about to beechworth and rutherglen. victoria – the place to be!

anyway, of course i took some pics. the themes of plants and railways were prominent… in this post, a selection of plant-oriented fotos…

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pine in grounds of shrine, revered with shimenawa and white paper, yufuin, kyushu, japan

eucalyptus in rightful place, left alone in a vineyard landscape, barossa valley, south australia

I continue at last my account of our short trip to Italy earlier this year. All these observations were written quite soon after the days to which I refer, but now, when i re-read them, each seems impossibly remote, and one day is blurred into another in my memory. The entry takes up where i last left off – our overnight stay in the medieval town of Mantova. ….

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those three weeks travelling about in my second home recently, got me noticing things i’d already known but hadn’t seen as a thread before that.

people often asked me how it felt to be back in japan after a ten-year gap, and it was hard to explain. it was not like what i was told was the rip van winkle experience of suddenly waking up in the same place and not remembering the time having passed… i was aware that many of my memories of place had been erased – and mainly because when i saw them again i remembered them anew… thus the time having passed was highlighted for me. but at the same time, i felt at home – at ease, not worried – i knew how to get about, how to get things done, everything seemed second nature to me. although i had often felt that i had forgotten how to speak japanese, as soon as i got out of the plane, japanese came out of my mouth unbidden. for me, amusing and very useful.

One thing that i began to notice differently was the presence of plantlife. the attitude or orientation towards plants is not the same as in the west. i do not know how to describe ‘from the inside’ what i feel is this peculiarly japanese orientation, but i did start to observe elements of the urban streetscape in japan, notice relative differences, and then started trying to account for them in my own mind – as maybe related to constraints on space in japan – or at least urban constraints of various kinds.

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i have an architecture jinx. it started in 1998 i think, when me and a friend from art school days went on a european jaunt for a couple of weeks. it seemed as if every church and monument we attended to view was in the process of being reconstructed at some level, and all of them had some sort of scaffolding over part of the structure. here in japan, the jinx has not been thwarted. i offer a recent photo from kyoto when i made the effort to get out to ryoanji again….

[note row of red buckets perpetually filled with water]

My last week in Helsinki, and I’m not ready to go. Spring is in full swing,  and everything looks different.  The temperatures are up in the mid-teens and there’s a warm earthy scent in the air. People are out  on the streets in droves, the sidewalk cafes are like vases full of multi-coloured flowers, the heads and arms of many persons chatting away and gesticulating in the sun. The day is long and the afternoons seem to go on forever. When we go indoors to have an evening meal, it is still sunny when we emerge, the crisp creamy afternoon light on the façade of the building still picking out every bump and colour when we come out  again an hour or so later. The horizon is still light even at 11.30pm—daylight saving has no real meaning here, except maybe to keep pace with the rest of Europe. The horizon with the night sky behind it reminds me of a Magritte painting.

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We nose the car out of the street and onto the A1, turning left and driving the one kilometre to junction 2 on the M1, where a sign says “THE NORTH”. It is like something in a fantasy novel, and we chuckle as we enter the flow of traffic on the M1 heading towards Birmingham for the second time in a month, feeling as if we might be travelling back to middle earth.

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