hold infinity in the palm of your hand

the best part about rolling a joint in a field of mirth...

and gazing down amongst the oversized seed pods into the valley beyond

is smoking it.

then rolling around & running amok afterwards

before descending down to the mountains edge to drive even further away from civilisation.

"to see a world in a grain of sand

and a heaven in a wild flower,

hold infinity in the palm of your hand

and eternity in an hour."

- william blake

gen Z heliocentrism

pierre et gilles meets david la chappelle kitsch this could be sans bush & with somewhat altered production design. this pose makes me want to add glitter, halos, saturation & more but i uncharacteristically restrain myself. this is my idea of a perfect family setting. 

the child iconised before the parents who sit back & bask in adulation at her entirely self-aware mischievous glow. she doesn't know about heliocentric cosomology yet. diametrically opposed to copernicus: she is the centre of the universe.

meet my latest muse: this is ruby. she was born to be in front of the camera in a scary way that gen Z can manipulate a camera indiscernible to the naked eye like a sniffer dog from twenty paces away. strike a pose, there's nothing to it - vogue. 

naturalism, the rare reward of a studious sniper in a constant tug of war meets hide n seek. not for the impatient.

ruby & i recently shot a film together in the australian museum which took a brief post production hiatus while i melted down & reinvented my personal wheel. with renewed vigor & clarity i'll go back to it in the next couple of weeks & redress the water monsters children mash-up. 

she kind of stole the show so in the edit my task is to redress story balance yet to paint a picture which i want to share with deference to the energy contained within the frame. ruby practically burst through it. she's an imitable force.

we're in the mountains for long weekend with a handful of our favourite people in a delightfully mellow meander, untempered by tech issues which could conceivably shut down any other enterprise. just add more mulled wine, easter bunnies & stir. who needs piped-in water & chainsawed wood anyway? chillax is key.

our happy tribe kick back on top of the mountain taking in the last amber rays from the sky & our beer bottles, a little late for the oft stalked magic hour but in time to watch the grand spectacle of the end of the day in a place where no other sign of human habitation can be seen. we have our own civilisation here.

as the sun sets low in the sky, ruby's energy also wanes & we steadfastly make our way down the hill orbiting around her toward the evening bonfire, the celestial sphere's hold still true until the moon frees itself from the horizon. eventually even stars have to sleep.

the goat hunters

far from civilisation in the respite offered by my little cabin in the bush i sit on the porch reading, soaking up early morning rays. it's the last saturday of january, 2011. already the year is a month down. soon i must go face it.

i am the only one up; it's by far the best time of the day. already the mercury is rising but it's not uncomfortable yet. the cockatoos who were recently eating sunflower seeds on the balcony beside me as i stepped out uncouthly squawked their disagreement at my arrival. i came, they left. 

360 degree welcoming sounds to the day are amplified to my secret spot as i sit quietly like fern watching the animals at the zuckerman's farm in charlotte's web. there's so much to see & hear. it's like having best seats in the opera house. an invisible conductor allows the cacophony to ebb & flow as various creatures chime in. it is something to revel in.

suddenly there is movement at the end of the plateau where with close friends i've been developing a permaculture food forest with the first of three mandalas designed around ponds, now operational.

by the gate towards the creek there are horses & dogs. with people. they appear to be armed. on my property. despite not believing in land ownership per se, i am the guardian of this sacred land & do not advocate unnecessary murder. death as sport is an irreconcilable concept. this is a retreat, a refuge.

i yell but they choose not to respond & turn around & head down the side of the hill. my hill. to my surprise i become incredibly territorial. adrenaline pumps in fluoro red.

 

my actions stir the house. a reconnaissance mission is undertaken. i stay put, on guard. that's me on the balcony. i can hear them beneath me. i call out to the echoing men's voices. but they do not speak to me. the trespassers continue down the hill ignoring my entreaties which become increasingly... insistent. they're hunting. further down the mountainside making the trail their dogs follow, is this guy:

pretty cool huh? he looks like he's been freshly groomed knowing that he'd be starring in a photo shoot that very day. what a rock star.

the goat hunters eventually run into our ambush & are cut off at the pass. really. we cover them from all sides. what we are armed with is actually much more intimidating than them. it pays to be prepared in the bush. i'm a survivalist after all.

the goat lives to see another day! and pauses for his close-up, before high-tailing it in the opposite direction rock-hopping up the mountain further. 

he appreciates that we shoot with cameras only. an altogether different kind of deadly. and yes, we have the goat hunters on close up too.

photos © andrew berman

my gnarled limbs

i've had a crush on this tree forever. i've always planned to make a film featuring it & am terrified by the time i get around to it, it will be dead. well, more dead. 

it's a casuarina, a genus native to australia. once when i was studying at an indigenous bushfoods workshop years ago now, the aboriginal elder told us that the old people tell their children if they ever get lost to find these knotted twisted trees. for wherever they are so is the water table. 

this one grows alongside the river on my little monkish mountain hideaway.

forest foragers

whilst clare & i collected rocks and filmed on the river over long weekend we came across a plethora of life. or evidence of where it had once [recently] been...

emu-gedden

driving into the bush we came across these archaic creatures of yesteryear roaming the wild fields on the national park fringe adjacent to fossil imprinted caves which were already ancient before the first over-sized reptile roamed the earth. the aboriginal people have known of them for tens of thousands of years.

stopping the car, i walked to embrace the birds' prehistoric beauty. my phone does little justice to these magnificent creatures but our curiosity was mutual as we both approached each other in sync.

i wondered if they share the survival attributes of cockroaches. their presence is eternally timeless. an unspoken wisdom  passed between their eyes as if the stories had been passed on from the old ones, dormant until the legends live once more in the face of unilateral destruction.

 emu in the sky, copyright: barnaby norris via CSIRO

while up in the sky the matriach continues to look down upon us. the dinosaurs are not extinct yet.