Negative Capability

After all the rain we’ve had it was pleasant to enjoy the weekend’s sunshine, and what better view than Box Head, one of my favourite walks in Bouddi National Park. My friend Arjen and I have been climbing down the cliff face and across the rocks to Tallow beach for years. We take fruit and drinks and talk about our lives and all kinds of stuff. It’s cool, and along the way there may be dolphins in the ocean; once we saw a seal, or the little penguins from Lion Island sanctuary coming in to feed. Yesterday I lost my footing on the smooth deceptive algae and went skating on the sandstone rocks, but I think my hair and the hat I was wearing cushioned my fall, as there was no laceration or apparent fracture. I swear I’m an expert when it comes to falls. I think my body relaxes.

Today is the first day of another school year and though I was utterly daunted about how I’d manage, so far it’s gone well. Went to my day job this morning. Thank god for medicine: it’s such a controlled, calm space. Had a cruisy afternoon after school with Tegan and her best friend (+ best friend’s little sister), while I did a little housework and thought about an abstract I am writing for a conference on diasporic poetics. I’ve been really getting absorbed by the Spivakian question: she must be one of the most brilliant theorists I’ve read in the way she uses abstractions to contest European logocentric and Marxist philosophies and to extend those abstractions into new philosophies of education that develop and expand democratic lines of thinking. She exposes the occlusions and foreclosures so skillfully. And hey, maybe this is just a beginning for my abstract. But my point is that I find her inspiring. Though she denies it, Spivak is an activist and a poet of philosophy.

Tegan has just calculated that the Pacific Sea-Maid, aka “Siren pacificus” is 87.5cm in length, and she tells me that the Carribean Mermaid has poisonous yellow tentacles for hair and wears necklaces made from discarded land glass, bone and the sharp teeth of sharks. I’ve been saying it’s bedtime for at least half an hour and thinking about living gracefully. Why are mothers so ignored? Outside it’s dark. The cicadas have stopped their shrill calling. I guess my clothes are dry. And I reckon I’m ready to do this again for another year :)

Ok, I know, I know, I’ve been neglectful, dismissive, avoidant, and haven’t blogged for two months. Most of that time was spent during a Writers’ retreat in Scotland. I had no wish to write a travelogue/blog, or use this space for thoughtless nonsense; maybe a photomontage might be nice. But here’s a photograph taken at Hawthornden Castle where I was a Fellow with Kenneth Stevens, Liz Almond, River Wolton and Donna Stonecipher (Hamish Robinson, a poet and resident Castle scholar, was the Director). It was a really incredible time and I certainly got some writing done from my room, Boswell, which overlooked a pine forest and the ruins of the original curtain wall.

What strikes one in the UK, is the cultural domination of Europe; its subject positioning. How distant and insignificant Australia seems, the penal colony, the Pacific outpost, a poor copy stranded in the Indian Ocean. I think this altered my appreciation of our cultural cringe, the search for nationalism in our literatures, the chiselling away at language by poets like Wallace-Crabbe, who sculpts a lyric vernacular; or Peter Porter’s and AD Hope’s perspectives.

En-route back to Sydney, via the Arabian Sea, I attended an absolutely awesome conference to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Goa. The Portuguese described it as ‘invasion’, when in December 1961 Indian troops entered Panjim signalling the end of almost 450 years of colonial occupation and the beginning of the end of the empire in Angola, Mozambique, Brazil. The anti-colonial movement was also a struggle for democracy, against the policially repressive Salazar regime. Among the 160 delegates from around the world there was much scholarship and creative work to share. The dialogues and company were fantastic with polyphonies of Portuguese, Konkani, Hindi, English. The vibrant, postutopian luso-colonial ambience of Goa, drew me towards thoughts of forgotten histories, biographies, fictions. I visited my grandfather’s ancestral home in Asagoa, north of Panjim; brought home books, photographs, music and a Konkani primer.

I keep thinking about Spivak’s essay on the subaltern. In Portuguese the subaltern could be described as the desterrado, oppressed by political domination, economic exploitation and cultural erasure. Sound familiar? And I keep thinking too, of Bhabha’s “mimic” man and wonder how the subaltern can speak, how language can be refreshed, renewed, deterritorialised. More on this another day. Suffice to say that Bhabha considers mimicry to be destabilising and ambivalent to colonial discourse, a kind of ” double vision.”

So today, when I came across this video remix of Homi Bhabha and Kate Perry, I couldn’t resist posting, if just to say Hello there, saffron-antipodean-luso-colonial world, I’m back, in the ruins of articulation…