Drive out to Bells Rapids at the top of the Swan and walk up to where it becomes the Avon. The water levels are way up on last time, with actual rapids and improvised trails where the river has flooded the banks and walkways. The main water is brown, as are most side puddles, but there are also little streams that tickle down valleys from the side, at right angels to the river, with water more clear. And yet, there are still many dead trees right by the river’s bank—like kwell(ilul) the skeoak, with its shallow roots. I guess many didn’t make it through the long, dry summer, and stand now dead, in or near the water.
Author Archives: jbstubley
Yellow and Purple
Late August lakeside and noticing the appearance of both yellow and purple flowers— yellow wattle, prickly moses, parrot bush; purple wisteria, guichenotia, other things—so often together; more because of the other; complementary.
On Opening the Window Blind
I open the window to red earth Australia—Pilbara or Midwest Gascoyne—around sunset. We look east. A hazy sky, old waterways, ridge lines in the evening light glowing. A road, a homestead, a couple of salt-lake-looking formations. The eastern horizon is orange, yellow, green, blue. A seasonal riverbed. Another homestead. A minesite. River valley. Magenta then peach above on the horizon (darker red to apricot). Areas of saltlakes. Orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo sky. Lights at minesite; a single one elsewhere. Now the sky is orange, yellow, blue. More lights. More saltlakes. Hazy darkness. More lights. Sudden country and connection.
Limestone and Volcanos
Departing Bali in the plane: Mt. Agung. Lembongan and Penida—all limestone. Volcano to east—Lombok?
Upsurging liquid rock. And broken down coastal bits, reformed, broken down, reformed.
Lake Beratan Cloud
Driving south past Lake Beratan, northern Bali, and a cumulus cloud rolls in over the lake, coming the other way. It rolls and rolls and bends down close enough to kiss the surface of the water.
Water Falling Northern Bali
Water falls
in northern Bali
between plants.
Clouds in the Subak
Cumulonimbus roll over the top of the ridge and down the north side of Bali; tumbling, rolling water, like the subak system, flowing down.
North Bali Sunset
Sunset with some cumulus on the western horizon, alto above. Red, orange, yellow above the horizon, with green and blue dipping down in between; magenta above (or is it more indigo and violet?). Venus is there, the Southern Cross, Scorpio; wind continues from the south east.
Other Side of the Ridge
Up beyond the lakes of Bali—especially Beratan—there is a ridge line where you can look back down upon the lakes, or keep going down from there on the other side to the ocean on the north side beyond. It’s like the lip at the top of a crater. And here, on the north side of the ridge, there is water that still flows; from where exactly, I don’t know—on first glance it seems higher than the lake below. But it flows down none the less, through the narrow valleys in little rivulets and waterfalls. People use it to irrigate hydrangeas—they’re also growing bananas, coffee, pineapples, bamboo. And further down—on the slightly wider, flatter lands—they’re growing rice: the Subak system here, or so I’m told, too.
One island organism.
Offerings to the Gods/Dogs
The offerings with rice and flowers given to the Balinese gods is so often eaten up by birds and cats and dogs.
John Stubley 