Thank you for sharing 'A Clock In The Forest.' What an invigorating and calming observation on the way we measure and 'keep' time. An excellent point made that questioning the clock is tantamount to questioning modernity. I'll be thinking of the ways I can live less by the clock, without rejecting modernity... More time spent amongst the trees, no doubt.
Congratulations on the publication of your new book!
Thanks Ryan. I responded to Grieg’s article by feeling worried and undeniably impressed by his writing style, the rhythm, his descriptions of nature are wild and the bush are defineless.
I appreciated the post mate. I look forward to your article in rhe GWE next week and the next coffee
Well that probably says that your art is much more complex than my "art". Mine isn't really art, I'm not creating just retelling something that exists. Would love to get to QLD, will have to see how far the tour budget stretches!
Ryan: Hurrah - there you are - suddenly - new book to the printers and writing again in "Out of Office". And what treasures of references you have included. A most interesting essay on AI - warts and all - including of the obsessed souls at the centre of its California "cell" who seem not to have heard of the rest of the world unless in that old "Western" exclusionary sense of seeing seeing "others" as the bad guys/the barbarians - and the hubris of feeling as if they are god - with the power of life and death over the entire Earth.
Lovely piece from Ursula Le Guin. Some years ago I flew back from Japan with just enough time to get in to Sydney, collected by my wife at Mascot - back to home on the edge of the Pacific in Caves Beach - shower, change and drive on to Nelson Bay for a 20-year class reunion. I taught many at the reunion in a class rated third of four groups in that Year 9 cohort in the old (still?) iniquitous system of ranking. At the start of the year I told my group that I didn't believe in ranking - that we would do as much or more than the so-called "A"- ranked class. And we did. We played with classroom group seating - rearranged as required for public speaking and for debating - for work after our reading - then in small groups on scripting chapters of Sue Hinton's The Outsiders (published 1967 but written when she was about exactly the age of my class) which we then filmed - the students being the actors, the location scouts, the camera operators - the costume and make-up personnel - finally a public viewing with parents. It was a remarkable class. At the reunion one young fellow came up to me. His wife in another year, also one of "my" students - and he, too, were both teachers. He'd gone to university. I was unsurprised but enormously pleased. Some years later in communication he wrote that he and his upper primary school class had written to Ursula Le Guin (1929-2018) and that she had generously written back. Bravo!
And then the essay by Elias Greig - of a time as a little chap when he had lived on Gumbaynggirr country - experiences from then made clear in a NAIDOC event. I agree with you that Elias Greig is a beautiful writer - the exact reason I read YOUR essays, book/s. And I wish I had the talent of you both and were able to write my own experiences with First Nations or First Australians (Ted Egan's preferred term) or Original Peoples (Ziggy Ramo - in Human?). Growing awareness from when I was a lad growing up in Tamworth, neighbours, students, colleagues and then kinship links. That I were able to weave that narrative into the richest of tapestries - giving the warp and weft of connections and the textural beauty it surely merits. Thanks, Ryan.
(By the way - just last week my wife took me to Uluṟu - to celebrate my 75th - to see Uluṟu AND Kata Tjuta - a whole range of experiences at the heart of this country - Aṉangu country - UNESCO World Heritage listed - Natural Significance and Cultural Significance declared. In the past year I've been able to visit Viet Nam and Cambodia, across Canada and the US, to Egypt - all enormously impressive - friends and relatives and vistas and cultural history - and here within Australia up into Gumbaynggirr and Bundjalung and Gamilaraay country - and it is those traditional landscapes here in eastern AND central Australia which affect me the most.)
This article will really help me in my comic book series titled "Babbap" which tells the story of my childhood stuff toys and their struggles. Its kinda like toy story but in my own spin to it.
Thank you for sharing 'A Clock In The Forest.' What an invigorating and calming observation on the way we measure and 'keep' time. An excellent point made that questioning the clock is tantamount to questioning modernity. I'll be thinking of the ways I can live less by the clock, without rejecting modernity... More time spent amongst the trees, no doubt.
Congratulations on the publication of your new book!
Thanks Grace. I think the Japanese are good example of balancing modernity and nature.
Congrats on the second book mate, quite an achievement. Looking forward to reading and discussing your third with you! Auguri!
Thanks mate
Thanks Ryan. I responded to Grieg’s article by feeling worried and undeniably impressed by his writing style, the rhythm, his descriptions of nature are wild and the bush are defineless.
I appreciated the post mate. I look forward to your article in rhe GWE next week and the next coffee
There is something haunting about his writing. He has some other good stuff too, one about renting and one about public transport.
I would like to be like you.....in that talking about your art form is easier than making your art form!
Looking forward to your second book Ryan....and I hope at some point you come to Toowoomba to talk about your book!
Well that probably says that your art is much more complex than my "art". Mine isn't really art, I'm not creating just retelling something that exists. Would love to get to QLD, will have to see how far the tour budget stretches!
Ryan: Hurrah - there you are - suddenly - new book to the printers and writing again in "Out of Office". And what treasures of references you have included. A most interesting essay on AI - warts and all - including of the obsessed souls at the centre of its California "cell" who seem not to have heard of the rest of the world unless in that old "Western" exclusionary sense of seeing seeing "others" as the bad guys/the barbarians - and the hubris of feeling as if they are god - with the power of life and death over the entire Earth.
Lovely piece from Ursula Le Guin. Some years ago I flew back from Japan with just enough time to get in to Sydney, collected by my wife at Mascot - back to home on the edge of the Pacific in Caves Beach - shower, change and drive on to Nelson Bay for a 20-year class reunion. I taught many at the reunion in a class rated third of four groups in that Year 9 cohort in the old (still?) iniquitous system of ranking. At the start of the year I told my group that I didn't believe in ranking - that we would do as much or more than the so-called "A"- ranked class. And we did. We played with classroom group seating - rearranged as required for public speaking and for debating - for work after our reading - then in small groups on scripting chapters of Sue Hinton's The Outsiders (published 1967 but written when she was about exactly the age of my class) which we then filmed - the students being the actors, the location scouts, the camera operators - the costume and make-up personnel - finally a public viewing with parents. It was a remarkable class. At the reunion one young fellow came up to me. His wife in another year, also one of "my" students - and he, too, were both teachers. He'd gone to university. I was unsurprised but enormously pleased. Some years later in communication he wrote that he and his upper primary school class had written to Ursula Le Guin (1929-2018) and that she had generously written back. Bravo!
And then the essay by Elias Greig - of a time as a little chap when he had lived on Gumbaynggirr country - experiences from then made clear in a NAIDOC event. I agree with you that Elias Greig is a beautiful writer - the exact reason I read YOUR essays, book/s. And I wish I had the talent of you both and were able to write my own experiences with First Nations or First Australians (Ted Egan's preferred term) or Original Peoples (Ziggy Ramo - in Human?). Growing awareness from when I was a lad growing up in Tamworth, neighbours, students, colleagues and then kinship links. That I were able to weave that narrative into the richest of tapestries - giving the warp and weft of connections and the textural beauty it surely merits. Thanks, Ryan.
(By the way - just last week my wife took me to Uluṟu - to celebrate my 75th - to see Uluṟu AND Kata Tjuta - a whole range of experiences at the heart of this country - Aṉangu country - UNESCO World Heritage listed - Natural Significance and Cultural Significance declared. In the past year I've been able to visit Viet Nam and Cambodia, across Canada and the US, to Egypt - all enormously impressive - friends and relatives and vistas and cultural history - and here within Australia up into Gumbaynggirr and Bundjalung and Gamilaraay country - and it is those traditional landscapes here in eastern AND central Australia which affect me the most.)
Thanks Jim. If you send me your address I'll make sure you get an advance copy.
This article will really help me in my comic book series titled "Babbap" which tells the story of my childhood stuff toys and their struggles. Its kinda like toy story but in my own spin to it.