15/12/23 - Beach Ball
I didn’t expect to be back here so soon but I just had an interesting little episode.
Just earlier I took a walk to Iron Cove to visit my mangrove seedling friend and sit a while to take things in, see what ideas may come up, what interesting things might come along. There’s a lot of daylight at the moment so I left at about 6:30 and there was still a fair bit of light around, even if it did go straight into my eyes when I looked west. Today was a fair bit cooler than yesterday but quite muggy and sticky, and breezy.
The tide was low - it’s been low the last few times I’ve been out there, and old (young) mate mangrove was well above the waterline. There were a fair few little crabs, even some of those kidney-bean shaped jelly blubbers. When I got there there was a couple, a man and a woman, nearby having a dispute. I didn’t really hear the woman at all but the guy was evidently angry about something, and it just seemed like the woman was a bit browbeaten. I got very fixated on this and it dampened my mood. I considered that for a little while after they’d gone - that something that had nothing to do with me had left this unpleasant feeling that was overriding the rest of what was going on around me.
But the longer I was there the more distant that part of the experience got, after they had gone away. I saw gusts of wind rippling on the water, I saw and heard various types of birds, I watched the cute crabs and listened to people walk by behind me. At one point a beautiful heron showed up and stalked around in the mud and oysters near the mangrove. I watched it for a while, craning its long neck, lining up its sharp beak to spear for food.
After a little while of this, something new came into vision on the water. A beachball - mostly yellow, with some colours on it. It was pretty far away but I could tell that was what it was. It gambolled across the surface of the water, rolled by the wind. It moved pretty fast. Looked like it was having fun. I took a video of it (you can barely see it because of the distance) and then decided I should go after it, to see where it would get to.
Going back the way I came, towards the odd Montage function centre, I was able to keep it in my sight if I walked briskly. It was slowing down a bit too. I watched it roll across the water underneath the rowing club (some girl’s school’s) wharf and then walked around the building to see where it had got to. As expected it was blowing against the shore. At this point, as with the entire shoreline on this side of Iron Cove, the shore was a wall of concrete blocks at a 45 degree angle down to the water, and had oysters clinging to its lower portion. I watched it, and also videoed it, washing up against the oysters, bouncing again and again. I was a little worried the oysters would burst it but it had a bit of give due to not being quite blown up fully, plus the plastic on those things is fairly thick.
After taking this video I got down to try and fetch it out, but the cheeky thing eluded me, and continued moving along the wall, washed onto the blocks and bouncing off merrily. I clambered back up to the path and ran after it. Three more times I picked my way down the wall to try to grab it but it kept bouncing off and blowing away out of my reach. It felt like I was being teased. Eventually, probably my fourth attempt, it became marooned on a particularly rocky bit, and so I was able to grab it. Triumph!
It has alternating panels - yellow, and transparent with sunflowers (though not strictly sunflower-coloured). The sticky saltwater was soon all over my hands as I bounced it around, seeing what kinds of sounds I could get out of it. As I walked and flolloped it around (yes that is a Douglas Adams reference, nerd) a sort of loose floppy rhythm developed, which I settled into for a while. I think it’s going to be a fun instrument to include in perhaps some improvisations or pieces.
I thought about why I went and got it. First of all I think the observant and inquisitive mindset that I try to keep when I’m out on my “on Country” adventures, seeking ideas or… anything interesting really, led me to go, “well obviously I need to listen to that urge to go follow it.” Then I thought about why I had the urge to own it. I think this is because I’ve been thinking a lot about possession lately, and how it’s a really colonial thing and has caused a lot of trouble. A lot of trouble. But, in a waterway it’s also rubbish, and I am my mother’s daughter (she is a rubbish-collecting fiend - she takes bags for rubbish with her on all her walks and has difficulty walking past litter). And now I have a new instrument! Plus it’s interesting to think about its story. I suspect a small child playing with it on another part of the harbour got very upset when a gust of wind collected it. It was quite funny to see it rolling across the water. Its story and mine have now collided.
And now, of course, there’s gotta be some music in this little adventure. It seems as though Iron Cove, this little arm of Burramatta (aka Parramatta River) has cheekily brought me some creative flotsam.