Learning to act right (37)… A burqa near enough

Torrey Orton

November 23, 2013

I got to learn something the other day at a psych conference in Sydney. As usual, the important learnings often do not come by choice…or, rather, the choice is about whether to learn or not once fate has cast me into teachable moments. This one arose from my habitual preference for the last seats in the room of trainings and presentations. It keeps me out of the frontline of unsolicited audience participation tactics and allows a modest escape if the event is failing enough of my needs!

A woman arrived late and sat three chairs over from me with nothing but a slit for vision. She was even wearing thin dark leather gloves amplifying the fact and prominence of her hands (writing session notes with her gloves on, but shoes off stockinged feet). My whole self tensed with apprehension. I had previewed such a scene in the past as I worked through the challenge of full body veiling to my sense of normal social practice, testing my flexibility for tolerance of a practice which seemed then, and still now, to be inhumane. Travel has often exposed me to variations of the burqa, always at the distance which travel provides even if we are confronted by lack of space and packed aisles.

She was separated from me, and I from her, by another woman who had come along before the session started. The burqa’d voice started me on the path to release from the dogma of my cultural incompetence. It was a real Oz accented, somewhat rough, loud presence (…maybe a smoker’s) asking about fine points of psych research’s implications for families. Slowly my anxiety declined, joints unleashed, breathing lengthened, attention to the event focussed again. Maybe a half hour or so to return to normal, with only that slight fizz of guardedness which attends most of my public behaviour still in play.

Somewhere between that session and the next we resat in a similar configuration but shorter rows and my anxiety continued to abate. So, anxiety about what? Anxiety about not being able to see the whole face of anyone I might talk to. Since then I’ve remembered that men in sunglasses at night present the same opportunity for discomfort. And since then, I’ve remembered that actually I’m a specialist in voice in my work. I can catch a slight movement in tone, pace, rhythm, volume…the kinds which signal movements of evaluation, of appraisal, of all the emotions through which we engage the world. The kinds which give a sense of the being of the person at the moment rather than the mediated being of visual cues like manner of dress.

And so it was with the burqua’d woman. I recognised her voiced expressions of culture, health and interest, among others. I could have addressed them in the dark never having seen how she was dressed – that is, as if I were blind. I can see with my ears, as the blind do. Sometimes my seeing gets in the way of my hearing. This was one of them.

There were other things I learned, but this is the one to write home about rather than letting it slip into the ether of memory. Trust my other senses.

 

 

 

Appreciation (52)… Whatever became of…?

Torrey Orton

November 11, 2013

Whatever became of…?

So this is what became of us.

Me collapsing on the bed after making it for the thousandth time one would-be stormy night in our Melbourne house and home of forty years… Jane having finished off a story about a projected late-50^th graduation anniversary event in France wondering as she considered a classmate’s proposed list of participants, “so that’s what became of X…” and following up with “…and this is what became of us..” rolling around with tear pulling laughter that we have become an expert (not without dissent) bed-making team with clear role delineations (me the sheet layer; she the pillow ironer – a division of labour which expresses the advantages we each bring naturally to the respective tasks) and usually reliable product. Is this what mothers mean intoning the “I wonder what will become of you...” incantation at our teen and early adult selves?

That’s not all we’ve become but the moment captured the perilously fine judgment of having arrived at something, of having become, of finishing…appropriately enough in a life domain that is never finished (housekeeping goes on until there is no one to do it or nowhere to do it – the ultimate declarations of fate completed). And we could rest on the laurels of this moment with no second thoughts.

And what’s becoming of another…

By that chance which is founded and directed by a conjunction of genetic histories and vocational overlaps, a nephew arrived among us for a couple of days in pursuit of his vocation and having arrived in his broader journey at a height of achievements (the world increasingly coming to his professional doorstep in search of his views and his family of four having settled enough to confirm it’s really working …) from which he can look down and back with justifiable self-approval, unalloyed with self-aggrandisement or narcissism.

Nor are we finished becoming, it seems, though there’s talk again about major changes of employment commitment about a year from now. It’s hard to imagine, and there is no pressure to do so, that we’ll ever be seriously retired. That’s what one does when there’s nothing left to do and/or no more capacity, whichever arrives first. On the other hand, I’m getting some feeling for what retired my mean when I am visited by thoughts of camping the Kimberley again, doping similar in Tasmania and puttering around parts of Europe…none of which can comfortably done at length and a therapy practice be maintained. Or so it seems from here.

…but for now this is what’s become of us.

Travel funnies 2013 (2)

Torrey Orton

June 13, 2013

Rocks do fall – Squeezed, again!!

It is a source of endless entertainment to notice the various ways our route-masters attempt to preserve themselves from litigation in the name of preserving us from our emerging fates en route to whereva we’re going. Take “rocks may fall” for example, a geological salutation common to slightly hilly areas of our neck of the Australian woods running a tight race with its biological brethren “limbs may fall” and “overhanging limbs” for leadership in the fatalities by fate struggle. But I meander…

Along the switchbacks of the Mercantour there are no signs proclaiming imminent disaster by stone, though at the head of three valleys we passed up are signs looking dead ringers for Oz beach warnings to foreigners about the dangers of high surf symbolised by a stick figure swimmer about to be swamped or mouthed by a looming dumper. And sure enough, that’s what’s being warned in these three valleys only the prospect of seeing such a fate has to be a lot smaller than the Australian version. The sign warns us that local electricity supply authorities may decide to evacuate the local dam without warning. At one such spot, there was even one little permanent statuette of a religious type cemented to the bordering rock just above normal stream flow levels (with permanent plastic flowers attached) memorialising one loser to the watery maw. Death by car mementos abound on Australian roads and a couple of mountain ones we’ve recently travelled here. No implications here for the relative death prospects of the two settings.  It seems the overall road toll in France is similar to Oz. Still, I meander…

Much more reliable in the Mercantour is the appearance of a recently fallen rock in the high roads of the region. They seem to fall cleanly into the middle of the quite constricted driving lanes, often enough just around one of the blind curves provided by walls of rock rising beyond sight (mountains) along the path. Some of the fallen rocks look a lot like they’ve been intentionally placed by hand, being often quite well shaped and cubic and just big enough to shock a steering system into irrecoverable disarray. Scared me, too. Hence my feeling squeezed by the prospect of encountering a fallen rock.

Of course that’s a paranoid foreign fantasy, but I’m not meandering here. That’s how they look. Someone must have put them there, they are so neat and neatly poised so often.

Lacets.

We got to know these well in their command of mountain driving.  A lacet is a switchback or hairpin turn. After days of responding to warnings of their imminence, often in multiples specified on warning signs – e.g. 3 lacets or 4 lacets – one of us wondered at the obvious: lacets = laces?? No??  Yes! And laces on shoes or corsets are switchbacks aren’t they. Once again a true linguistic friend not recognised, because it didn’t need to be. A lacet is so obviously a switchback it needn’t be thought!!

Heinz Dijon mustard?? Really…

Over the last two weeks I’ve increasingly thought there’s been an Americanisation of French (and other European??) public cuisine in two respects. One, the emergence of American marques in the retail food sector, of which Heinz Dijon mustard in single serve plastic sachets (think any American burger bar of pre-Mac days).Did the source the Dijon marque from Dijon? I guess not cuz the sachets don’t even say where the product they contain is sourced, despite the marque!!! Of course, these were very local eateries not salons of grand cuisine. Keep posted. We’re getting near to that next week and I suspect we won’t see Heinz there.

The second respect: shopping in Casino or Carrefour here is increasingly like Coles or Woollies in Oz, where the great maestros of food marketing are endlessly seeking ways to constrain us to less choice – that’s what house brands are about. Smart FMCG folks will tell me that the Oz retail maestros actually are learning from the French. Noticeably for us the varieties of muesli which not long ago adorned the shelves of these two providers have all but disappeared, relegate to “Bio” shelves. We’ve been in metropolitan and country France pretty much every year over the last 8 or so, preceded by multiple times going back to the early70’s.

Appreciations (22) … Snake in the path!

Appreciations (22) … Snake in the path!
Torrey Orton
April 8, 2010


Mistaking a snake for a stick? …you might wonder?


Appreciating a snake in the path is a bit odd unless you've done something like this: wandering down a dirt fire track 1 kilometre from our parked car on an early Sunday afternoon three weeks ago talking with Jane about something important we thought and suddenly detecting a fat black tree branch with a strange tip - the head of a snake I eventually realised - only a foot away from my next step…. Not your common garden variety but one of Australia's contributions to the troops of really dangerous fanged foragers…at about 1.3 meters, a well developed specimen...and, it was out in the open in clear light and we had missed it as we walked up onto it from 100 metres away with a clear view all the way until stumbling into the preceding events.


"Aaaah…" I gasped with arms thrown back and drawing myself up from the shoes in retracting my next step, as it was a slight lift into execution, before it fell on the snake's tail emerging into my vision and realising that Jane was a half step in front of me heading for the biter's mid-flank, and also not seeing it, I started saying "Back, back" which stopped her just before she would have been too close not to land a foot on its back…and so it glided off the road and into the edging forest without a backwards glance.


On reflection a few minutes later I noticed that my entire response had been without any palpable rise in heart rate, or tensing of muscles apart from those involved in the rising "Aaaah". Strange ways the body/mind.


Not mistaken, just missed
Or like this: 15 years ago, wandering down an old 1.5 meter deep by 2 meter wide grassy, overarched by light brush and trees, loggers' tramway cutting some K's from another car park in the second or third growth forested outer reaches of Melbourne (60+ K's from the GPO), Jane in front and me two meters behind hearing a stick crunch lightly under boot and sensing, barely seeing, something dark and ropey rise into the air a few feet to my right rear, and responding soundlessly but automatically with a jump myself which got me up to a height equal to the ropey thing, which turned out to be a large black snake, or close enough to scare the whatevers out of me, giving my heart rate a serious lift at the same time!
…a story I'd have told a dozen times, mostly to impressionable foreigners like myself who did not grow up with tiger snakes or their peers in the backyard, as many inhabitants of Australian cities do. I'd never seen a poisonous snake until coming here, though I knew (I thought) they inhabited the woods of Massachusetts (timber rattlers), not that I or anyone I knew or heard of had ever seen one in 1950 or '60!! But then in those days I didn't see racoons, wolves or bears in the woods either. They weren't there to see maybe, but they certainly are now a reliable source has been telling me for years since then.


Outdone, again…
However, someone else always has a better snake story, like this: a friend's wife found herself eyeing a large black snake in their backyard, shouting quietly that the thing was a danger and trying to shoo it away while holding it tightly in place with her left foot which was firmly planted on its tail. She hadn't noticed the tail and so her fear mounted as the snake stayed put and reared up with vengeful non-verbals. Her husband intervened with a strong right hand and pulled her of the offended tail, allowing all to move on into peaceful distances from each other.

Appreciations (21) … gods golfing?

Appreciations (21) … gods golfing?
Torrey Orton
March 10, 2010

Appreciation on demand…

Hope is often not enough. I need a boost or a boot to get going, and so it is with appreciating. I appreciate lots of things, but often with only a slight rise in temperature or heart rate. So they pass out of my awareness, rather than joining the crowd of input/output forces and facts jammed up around the portals of my perception.

 I mention this because I discovered one such matter – gods golfing – as a result of wondering what to write today and thinking an Appreciation would be a good thing if I could find one. My tangential insight is that creativity or inventiveness can be primed with a self-imposed demand for performance. Today's demand arose from an underlying one to keep my writing production rate up to a level which I have never specified precisely but hovers perilously (from month to month) around 4-6 pieces a month. I don't like objectives of the MBO type, but a trackable sense of concrete direction can be helpful.

 …feeds a demand for appreciation.
So, the gods golfing. Last Saturday we had our third or fourth big ploush* day in six months – an inch or more rain in a single event of 30-60 minutes. Three of these have happened on VicAvePsych days by chance and I haven't noticed whether the therapeutic events have been similarly striking in any way at those times,…but then, as I said, I miss a lot of little appreciables.


The latest event was punctuated and pocked and pierced by hailstones, appreciated danger-free from the doorstep under the front veranda of the psych shop. The real action was elsewhere, which Jane pointed out when I got home, marvelling at the height of the bounce hailstones achieved on our back lawn (nb – our back lawn is more like a cricket pitch on a country oval than whatever 'lawn' may bring to mind, so the bounce potential was good). The best pics of this effect can be found by expert websters. The link provided is indicative but not current.


Anyway, the bounce was stunning and my impression days later is that of gods golfing. I know for some the gods golfed with cricketball sized hail and damages were great, though no one seemed to stand out in the game to see what it felt like. A few cars got cratered, though not to the level of a similar event in Sydney 10 years ago, which decimated vehicle insurers, and funded lawyers for months. Some new and old buildings sprang leaks they shouldn't have – e.g. our brand new train station and a quite mature art museum.

Enjoy.

*ploush – my stab at an onomatopoetic for the sound of a deluge dropping without accompanying stormy noises, or where the other noises has been edited out by my internal sensors; the most recent was a day after the gods golfing event, in the middle of the night when a fluid afterthought dropped 10 mm on us with a ploush.

Appreciations (19) … Another woolly green recovery

Appreciations (19) … Another woolly green recovery


Torrey Orton
Jan 10, 2010


I forgot something now very strikingly present in Melbourne. Deciduous trees of some sorts - especially elms – can recover from near terminal drought conditions like those in Melbourne over the last two years. Their manner of recovery is quite the same as eucalypts do from fire (see below).

(Photo by Auscape_JLR08503)

In various parks hereabouts (West Hawthorn and Burnley parks and for instance) there are 100+ year old elms sprouting all around their major limbs and trunks much in the after fires eucalypt fashion. The elms sprout more densely, an impression partly arising from leaf colour (darker greens than most gums) and partly from leaf shape – oval for elms vs. elongated for gums. The underlying elm limb structures are almost totally eclipsed by the greenery.

It always amazes me what I miss in the world, and at the same time how alike the worlds are eventually. Furry green regrowth both from fire and drought, two afflictions one would expect to have terminal outcomes for the respective indigenous plants. The drought response never occurred to me, probably because it isn't often seen in Melbourne except in the city and then only twice I can recall now in my 38 years here. It never comes into our view in the countryside because things like elms are only seen in the towns and we are usually headed for the mountains. There are, of course, plenty of drought conditions in our immediate countryside, with increasing thoroughness of late.


However, as the farmer says, it will rain, and it has with some intensity (at least 25 mm per drop) on four occasions over the last four months of last year. It is this expectable, but recently anomalous, natural excess that revived the elms. Not all have made the comeback reliably, some standing with only slight outbursts of woolly green and excesses of sprigless sticks and limbs. These are usually at the outer and upper edges of the natural flow of rain.


The countryside, as much as the city parks and our own garden, are the greenest they have been for years. Usually they would be burned out by sun and heat. We've had both, to some extremes already the last two months, but the grass is still fresh.


Enjoy…before Adelaide's weather comes to us – endless days over 35C.

Appreciations (4) …my “sick sinus syndrome” saviours

Appreciations (4) …my “sick sinus syndrome” saviours
Torrey Orton
May 21, 2009

Here I revisit a “heart event” I had six years ago. Much of the following text was written four weeks after that event and I present it as written with a few editorial deletions and insertions. Some additional setting description and commentary (like this) is added in italics.

I was walking down Clarendon Street in Sth Melbourne on my way from one meeting to another about 9:15 am. I’d been walking 30 minutes at my normal quick but not breathless pace, feeling fine, when I suddenly felt faint, fuzzy, weak and thought, ‘where can I sit down?’ – which was the last conscious thought I had until I woke up on my back looking up at Jane and some medicos around 11:30am the same day in The Alfred Hospital trauma unit. Lesson number one: if you feel faint just sit down regardless of the dignity protocols that may be compromised in the act. I figure it was 1-2 seconds between the first conscious sensations of losing my senses and fully doing so. I’ll try to remember that – though I shouldn’t have to again if the pacemaker works. ….

And I haven’t had to remember for safety’s sake, but the story is a powerful one for showing the difference between the speed of thought and unconscious processes. As for my dignity, it’s still likely to be a cause of concern.
…
It appears that I had hit the curb from my full height (191cm, which the trauma people told Jane was twice the minimum level considered a dangerous descent) with a significant proportion of my full weight (107kg, at the time), fracturing slightly “a small bone” a bit above the right ear, leading to internal bleeding in the brain which prompted a seizure that went on for some minutes – thrashing around enough in the public pathway to chew a tear in my tongue, bounce my head on the hard parts a few more times, swallow a reasonable amount of blood into my stomach, inhale a portion into my lungs and attract the attention of someone who did two smart things (at least): call the ambulance service and take my handkerchief (I almost never use the things these days but have always carried one in the same place for 35 years of more) from my right rear pants pocket and stuff it into my gnashing mouth. …

..and on the way did not take anything out of the other pockets – keyset, wallet, watch: all present in the hospital bedside cabinet, including the blooded handkerchief..
…
The role of chance / luck in all this – One example: if this moment had occurred at the same time a day earlier I would have fallen out the door of a Bridge Road tram under one of two cars that were illegally passing the tram after it had stopped (I was leaning out to check if any yobbos were passing the stopped tram, which they do so often here that not looking before getting off a stopped tram is an invitation to an earlier death). Another example: if this moment had occurred while driving us around the Falls Creek neighbourhood a week earlier we could still be unfound down a ravine, which was subsequently incinerated a week later by the bushfires we could see ringing the high country we were driving through. And so on. A newly acquired respect for fate, luck, chance, etc, …
…
Finally, there’s the status of me as meat* – which is the only intellectual position from which I can summon the images of my unconscious states, especially in the first hour of the events. It’s a peculiar result of seeing myself as an object / subject of fate – as an entity whose intentionality is wholly in the hands of a series of others (some of whom I never saw – the critical care ambulance guys and who ever called them!). These others collectively by their actions affirmed what I could not: that I was more than meat and thereby made it true.

My experience of being saved by the system is what I want to recognise and celebrate. I am very aware from living in other places – notably China – that this kind of health system is not widely available across the world. Second, where it exists, it may not be well run, especially at the level of service provision. The para-medics service (Ambulance Victoria) has been an object of political contention and governance doubt for some time, but whatever the sources their service was excellent. Third, it is stunning that a matter so life and deathly should be handled with such precision and care both by the stipulated role holders and the passing public. My thanks, again.


*See here http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/TheyMade.shtml for a wonderful take on ‘meat’ which illuminates various pretensions of the meat class of conscious beings.

Appreciations (2) …Learning aikido by submitting to mastery

Appreciations (2) …Learning aikido by submitting to mastery
Torrey Orton
May 14, 2009

This is less an appreciation than an appreciating – a developmental, making process rather than a summary or aesthetically contemplative one. For I have certainly not mastered aikido or even a small part of it, though I have passed my first grading 6+ months ago. And I continue after two years to find little, and sometimes big, refinements or completions of the practices which have required an unconscious transition to a different mental space to even notice that they were possible.

Submission and learning:

One of the key learning steps is being willing to learn. This means, in part, submitting myself to someone else’s expertise, superiority, good intentions. Recently I was telling people I met at a lunch about my aikido commitment and volunteered that one aspect of interest to me after 9 months practice was consciously submitting myself to another’s leadership. One of the listeners blurted: “I couldn’t do that”. Therein probably lies a story of self-entrapment in the folds of self-protection, but...

Repeatedly, I remind myself to just do what Sensei is doing each day and everything will come together. Of special concern is remembering the order of practices which partly controls access to the inner contents of each one. It has become apparent that consciously struggling for the order – making notes, or similar – does not work for me. Or, rather, that just going along brings everything around again and again, so struggle for control is unnecessary. The video of Sensei’s Sensei demonstrating the 21 jo suburi practices helps. I don’t often use it now, though it’s on my laptop desktop and easily playable anytime I’m home (or away).

At the end of the morning meditation routine (which is the entry to the jo work each day), Sensei bows to the aikido school’s founder whose picture is hung on a wall with ceremonial incense burning on a table to one side. This ritual, too, I am not yet committed to after 8 months of participating in the meditation (which was not a part of my initial training, though I had experience with it intensively 30 years ago). I’m aware of resisting this last (?) submission (is it really the last one?) , while realising as I write that submission is a means of honouring the authority, expertise, etc. of the Sensei and his submission to the authority, expertise of his Sensei, and so on. ... a way of respecting the price in submission to the discipline of the school that they paid to become good enough for us to learn from them.

I am also aware that displaying this submission before other students, including my wife, is embarrassing in some way I don’t yet grasp. I undertook one morning when only I and Sensei were training to try getting on my knees at the close of the mediation ritual acknowledgment of the dojo’s founders in Japan, but couldn’t kneel the hardwood floor...so back to my chair.

Submission as offer and undertaking

It seems that submission goes in two different but mutually dependent directions: it’s two common meanings are (a) offer or propose, as in submit a report or an application or a rendition of the jo suburi under the eye of the Sensei (or, precisely, for the eye of the Sensei); this I did to pass my first grading. And, the second is (b) undertaking for another, as in submit to their command, direction, etc.(which I do in every training whether in group or alone).

So, when I take up aikido I both undertake the command of the Sensei and offer myself to him, or put myself in his hands. This is probably the source of the authority which allows me to follow his lead even when it is ‘wrong’ – that is, when he departs from routines, styles, orders of activity which previously had been the behavioural foundation of the discipline. And which made it learnable to a large extent in the initial phases where the performance models were not enough in mind to be accessed quickly and fluently.

Inhibitions to submission

Finally, for the moment, what inhibits submission? What makes “I couldn’t do that” a likely response from some people which also expresses part of me in resistance, like them!? In myself I find that resistance to a fully compliant submission I mentioned earlier – to honouring the elders who are the origin of the aikido I study. At the aesthetic level, it involves moves I’d feel somewhat silly to be seen doing. At another, ethnic perhaps, the manner of honouring is very non-Anglo.

In any event, I can say that part of me is under-developed (or over-developed looked at from another perspective). Perhaps it’s that I would feel shrunken in some respect by participating?? That’s what just came to mind and I’ve learned to follow the tracks of things which come to mind since that’s the only access to the subconscious I carry with me all day every day. But, on noticing that, I also notice that what I may be resisting is the submission to an imperfect god, for the practices continue to change in their home place as much as in the variations of my Sensei here – as they must.

So, what am I submitting to exactly – a discipline which is definite but changeable, which is demanding but relaxed, which is paradoxical to some extent? An effort for perfect form which realises that it can never be achieved...there is only the trying. A parallel universe to everyday life.

At various times each of these three has been my Sensei, but these Sensei’s Sensei is the man in the middle. They are, from l to r: Sean Seibold, Simon Harris, John Rigopoulos in Japan in late 2008.

Appreciations (1) …why appreciate?

Appreciations (1) …why appreciate?
Torrey Orton
May 6, 2009

While this is a new theme for me, it is not new for humanity. Various people have recommended gratitude to us. While approving, I’m not moved by gratitude because of its links to quasi-religious formulas like ‘blessings’. I discovered that there are wonderful things to acknowledge, celebrate, reward by remarking…things which I notice but leave in the innards of my awareness. Often, reporting them makes others feel new interest, insight, desire, awareness, and sustains mine along the way. Building the latter resources is my primary aim here. If I try to write what I appreciate I am forced to get it together in some affecting way which meets my own experience and has a hope of offering that to others. For me, the process is always illuminating in unexpectable ways.

I also undertake this venture because my sceptical side is tuned to the problematic, the doubtful,…which leaves me tending to underestimate the certain, the sure, the light and light-hearted. Conscious countering of this tendency is possible, but I never get much better at automatically reaching for a star rather than the scar. Hopefully, like wearing seatbelts because it’s the law, I’ll get naturalised into appreciation with never a thought of deviating from it as normal.

In another frame, I am a late life convert to story as a way of making and finding meaning. I find myself telling stories to therapy and coaching clients, and using them to structure activities for leadership events. These are usually real stories, not ones I’ve picked up somewhere in the training ether. I don’t do storytelling well unless it arises spontaneously in the work with clients.

I have friends who are really good at this – the kind of good you can get by trying a lot and watching others who’ve been doing something longer and better than oneself. So, this is an emulating initiative for me, too. I’m slow to allow the possibility that someone else has thought of something useful to do and developed it before me (though I know perfectly well that they do so).

Further, this is not an anger driven event (not to preclude the possibility that I’ll also find myself appreciating some matters arising from angers). It came to me in a moment of appreciation, from the perspective of which I noticed I had been appreciating more over recent years. At the moment I can’t remember the original appreciation. Maybe it was a search of Appreciative Inquiry which I was trying to appreciate against the grain of an original exposure some years ago where AI became a cover for being ‘nice’ and not looking at hard things except appreciatively (or so it seemed at the time). Hard things can be appreciated, but they have to be acknowledged first. There goes that problem seeker again.

A recent example of something I appreciated was revisiting sites we have walked and skied for decades after the Victorian Black Saturday fires of early February ‘09. This was a reality shifting event. There’s nothing like seeing the remnants of natural and human landscapes soon after a fire. We’ve done it before at various stages of recovery, but never so close to home and so much of those landscapes ones which we treasured by repeated visits. See next Appreciations for my impressions.