only absorption : made visible
Note: I have provided this readable, text-only version of only absorption : made visible for equity and access. The creative work is designed to be read as part of the collage where reading is deliberately difficult. The intentionally challenging text highlights the problems of accessing marginalised voices within the archives, and the heavy-handed ways in which many settlers have engaged with the Australian landscape. This text-only version has been rearranged in format but remains identical in content.
only absorption : made visible
kiss me on the lips for i love you,
land:
i am the backbone de subtropic
la lunchtime poem of this bay
i am text on text on te x t catch! me
oceanic, portable homeland &
monody to a body that is not mine
no, vernacular,
let me sit on the verandah, ‘liminal
space between the home and
the outside world’ let me, eat
snack beat rhythms into the
water and summon the fish! not me,
i am family of tractors on the
beach clotheshangered stingrays freed
at the last minute and navigator mullet
gasping for air b.t
(before tractor)
where were we : i in
the
poorhouse and you throwing
headstands on
some
unknown beach, doing
business with
the earth / late stages of plant
time her vegetal rhythm of unsynchronised
life! must learn to grow
again here we must
learn though
beware, ‘the patriotic gardener may,
from old associations, attempt the
rearing of his national fruits,
he will never succeed
in producing aught but curious abortions’
despairing, face the attitude of low
-energy cultivator, what more
can Moreton Bay Horti
cultural Society do but
lament those who say ‘what is the
good, of planting trees
when we may never live
to enjoy . . .
this is a feeling, unhappily
so common in
this age, as almost to be termed its distinctive character
every thing we do is to be done
for ourselves,
nothing for posterity apres
moi le deluge —
is the motto
of the utilitarians of the nineteenth <
century’
fall apart, farmers! as you did done shocked
by the
possibilities of indulging in new
feast opportunities : who
tells you what to eat, landscape gifting
receipts of roasting possum, stock
pots of wallaby ways away, plant
time,
‘the social consequences of the Price
Revolution are revealed by these charts’ we
have felt hunger prior, bad harvests and
dinners of acorns, bark ‘the multitudes
weeping and
wailing’ pragmatism stirring in starving
bellies we turn to, ~
{caretaker }~ the riots of starvation &
naughty capitalism begun,
and thus named after maters
who, carrying the
bodies of their dead children in the
streets, dropped
fever on
grain prices and schlepped
seeds in their skirts count on your
fingers, an idea: the seasons
of sprinter
and sprummer modernist
reaction to ancient blooms we have no rhythm
here, but living is key the food of
the table also the food of the
sea adjust
lens, / cook to [p] discover how and
why we the body, land the body, can never quite be
me sand | you sand
sand sand chew spit! see the sp lit in the middle of the page
boundary built gallery,
rooms we make an idea: museum
in the garden, no need
to bring the work inside busy curators spit to tell
we develop
things of the spirit that require us
to keep our distance from the ground
goodbye sprinter! goodbye
sprummer! we do not need
your growing patterns here we have
instead, horror, and it
has a face, bodies mirroring
bodies mirroring movement in the captures
light snaps^ of figures ‘large
and vigorous, due to their varied diet’ island
food, Foley lives
in ‘hope that my heroine could be your heroine,
as she defies all odds with an unspoken
eloquence of spunk’ these words for me? no,
elsewhere
: a different sideline the others
sit, newer
members of this truth regime the archive, we
are collecting
life, wading through
~~ ~ ~ a lifting tale that
hangs breakers like gifts
on the walls taut with misery these
new sideliners reached
for
empathy in the wrong shadows do not align
do not align
my
strug
gle wi th
theirs! mine the trouble of boat
rides dead
mothers’ pale skin
blistering in the sun; famished
in love
land &
the dust consigning
as power, we
collect
stories of how these farmers
were
burdened with true disease,
ignorance brought over in ships, a cross
-pollination ‘whereby
forms of repression
developed in the
Old World were transported
to the New’
how many sidelines to
an infinite shape,
the nexus
swelling and fantastic in scale
full of natural
devastation see ea,
coloniser vs
colonised grand
stadium games, wherein the side
that builds small toothy enclosures
for swimming in the bay are
perhaps the ones most out of
their
depth : l l t
i i i
n & n of m
e e b
s s e
r
in the water, soft barricade against
becoming
breakfast we make witches of anything
nurse sharks new people whole cont
inents, for now, turn
to the place of
these timber teeth
in the sea
weary dentin exposed and nervous 2
St Helena
Island
and its surrounds (island)
( isl)
(and)
( isl)
(and). (and-isl)
(and-isl)
360antipodeanism
causing
‘no domestication
or salvation,
only threat of
absorption’
‘we need to go where the archive
cannot’ for John Kean that
means tracking rain making
among the
painters of Haasts Bluff,
Johnny Warangula Tjupurrula
making
lightning, ibis | warrpanji (kan
garoo rat) | lightning,
ibis
how do we find
similar ilk
when the directive is
to shoot
straight for the ‘arch (arkh- arkhi, first,
chief |primeval)’ -ives been thinking
about deep water, just
like she and, like she,
bored of men, toppled
and buckled by difference and exhaustion they
/ she | | old
me are then
taken with romantic notion——
Julie Gough, touching archive ‘holding
them
clarified if they felt right
in the hand
what type of stone— could i
have made this, did an
ancestor’
i can’t help! bringing in other areas
we, not Haasts Bluff we, not
Ho bart
we still, riddled with bugs huge
pictures singing with
sand ‘sable sons of the soil’ driven
from the field as Mr Walker has
begun ‘hauling
his seine’ in the waters
of
…… bugs, back the
Bay ey up the citation list of what, ‘do those hackademics, anthros, researchers
activists want for nothing
__________ ?’ a significant life, read
site specific
bites on this land of wooden shark net /
Bonita Ely’s Murray
River circles
tiny redux
instances
of we | the entrapment of
land
time to eat, clean, ‘they brought
us fish, for which
we gave them potatoes’ | standing at doorways
with sugarbags until the oil lamps were lit
and a chasing was
begun over Breakfast Creek
love land,
powerful numbers at the bottom of
the page r
i
c
e (but written more tilted) —
lbs
42 , 9(or seven) ½ / 16
“
ditto ditto x 4
42
“
ditto x 14
84 9 ½ /16
stocktake a beautiful thing tell me how much
rice is eaten in a month in
the Bay (1833) but gridlines ! why are you making
me cry
in Naarm nite tell me
of ‘take this
for it
is
my
bo dy’ (sj N, n.d) scones
full of Wiradjuri
blood & test for
cyclical batch of
six ::: around the table an idea:
do you eat
the Bathurst
genome shoulder the belly of
death
or decline taste, in good &
waste
> the flour >>>>>>> “ironbark” “
over-
landing” Jim
apostrophizeth his qondam
mate — a ballad
of qld
‘teeth like
a
Moreton
Bay shark’ ‘in the
gunyah down there
by the lake; [t]he grubs
that she
gathered, the
lizards she
stewed
the damper
you taught
her
to bake’. trike him with the
girdle, the
paltando! strike him
the manga
the kundado!
with rescue motif
‘spell employed when hunting
dingoes’ eth no -‘no squatter’s
house in Queensland is
without a
verandah long
deep and
low delicious
cool cane
lounges waterbag slung
indispensable’
speak: tether
post in
the middle of
the
day to
‘the gem
oyster saloon opposite
the tra
nscontinen tal
hotel george st, charlie
invites his
friends to
call on him
crabs oy
sters fried
fish prawns
> ‘tea tree bark
a wrinkle’
what fish
“ gasp sigh as they ask
‘practice control in the kitchen’ supper
island time
supply chain beeps to the big
truth regime splash of
Mulgumpin’s fl-
-oating breakers
of mainland
bight | below
it moared Quan
damooka hea
vier set site
of pulsing
dol phins & Sea
World baggies
real q: when all
the old
mullet
are
tractored n spit
who
will
lead the pack charging
from
George St to
the golden fields
of practice bodies
mirroring beating
bodies beached
live on in hope
*
margins from
mergyns from marginibus
border edge
frontier implications own
version of
order
the carpet
pages of Book
of Kells || Lindisfarne
Gospel aiding clarity halting
stat ic
rigor mortis a
physical
mark of silence &
cultural pro duction
———
relatively
new social
category go
explore
this shift
-ingness in
absolute
obverse
Boa Vista the
balcony the margin! site of
reflection undoes
division between home
& outside world
*
what
now queens
land
figaro ?? we see
stic re
ks o clai
f oys me
ters s d th
up e
pla tim
n b co-
ted er te- -as
-e-
an -th -t
d trending of
coping / to see how do i end this microdosingthe archive
on adder rock
to understand? no, vernacular
pale skin blistering smartly
in a tractor reaction to
dust de canon of Eire
in the sun la setting
up shop the divine memory
laugh | at me for
believing i swear the hills are like
attics and boats like
jaws crafting catch me let me eat
snack beat monody
rhythms into landscape gifting
idiotic ideas of connexion ‘struggle
between
the living and the dead’ opening
out an easy read but
margins! beautiful | unhappily
feeling what gasps
are providing the
fish with sprummy air good
-bye sprinter goodbye navigator we have
learned nothing
yet