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Landscape Photography With Dogs by Coral Hull DOGS & GODS in the city botanical gardens i placed myself in the company of unleashed dogs/ & as the dog turned its cheek to view the blue sky so my cheek was turned/ a shadow from its jaw bone cast across my cheek bone/ then a flock of tawny birds fluttered up from the grass & garden sprinklers/ & i soared within their flight & was on fire with their wings/ wings which cast a shadow before the sun/ & so i knew of birds/ their lighter spirits within the heavy breast of flight/ & so i became a flightless bird in the eyes of god/ what do dogs dream?/ in the rise & fall of breath/ a twitch of soft tan bristles, back pads trotting & a deep inside woof?/ do my dogs dream about me?/ if i were to disappear would i live on in the eyes of them?/ would i be reflected in the purpose of their wandering?/ in their legendary search for origins?/ i have heard that it is best for dogs to view the body as its spirit passes on/ so like anger or fear it can be passed through the heads & hearts of dogs/ & our emotions pass through dogs like the open hands of god/ they are not held nor trapped nor stored/ they are grasped & then gladly let go by the dog who gladly loves you/ if i were to commit self murder who would look after my dogs?/ they are the reason i exist/ i was going to cut my wrists/ but i had to get their dinner/ take them for a walk & scratch them under their chins ROSE STREET FRONTYARD VISIT beneath the overgrown garden of rose bushes planted by the newcomers/ i found the old jagged pieces of concrete aligning the fence/ like grey shark fins burying themselves into the ground/ & one side trellis still intact & the 1960s backyard concrete cracked/ every crevice jammed with the metallic pulp of insects from rainy weather or garden hose drownings/ overall the house was still the same/ but it was like trying to find life in a dog that has died/ the peaceful brown eyes like windows looking back upon its past/ & for a while we linger by those soft brown windows as a way into the dog’s stillness/ & we hang onto collars until hours or years down the track/ the dog becomes deader & appears to take on its own death in a more final way/ we are left holding nametags or small portions of fur which we put into paper bags, cotton or plastic/ everything must move on as we all must bury our love & lose balance/ i crept onto the newly tiled verandah & touched a concrete box where i had played with my plastic animals & planted sunflower kernels/ which bloomed into bright yellow flowers reaching up into the blue light of childhood & as big as the sun/ i found the box empty with a memory of the yard in the age of the sunflowers/ then i came like a child to the front door & the old steel doorknocker was still attached to the wooden rectangular panels/ i knocked on the door of something that could not answer back/ like stroking the head of a dog above its blank windows & whispering all the things you would miss doing together into the space of its ears/ & so i could hear the sound of all the times our door was knocked on by the outside world in the age of the doorknocker/ & the red brick fence was so much smaller now that i had grown bigger like a shadow absorbing the yard/ the people inside did not hear my trespass/ as i looked into the damaged back latch of number sixty-six in the age of the letterbox/ mr poulton waits for me & lights up a smoke in the overcast twilight/ i turn away from the house unable to bury it/ if another dog died i could not throw dirt onto its clear brown eyes, drying black nose & fiery mane/ i would turn away & leave the body behind/ so it could fend for itself & stink away to bones beneath its cycles of weather LANDSCAPE PHOTOGRAPHY WITH DOGS the park is inside my dogs/ we hop out of the holden on the edge of a picnic area/ ignoring the signs that prohibit dogs to run without leashes/ kindi & binda release themselves from the hot back seat to bound through grasses wallaby related/ to vanish above & below its tracks of dry waves as though it were flowing/ past the flaky grey bases of gums & old ten gallon drum bins toppling over with drumstick wrappers/ the calm gradient of city parkland carries their bellies along to the creek’s hidden edges/ i want my dogs to experience many landscapes/ as dusk nuzzles up to my ankles & to my dogs’ noses turning damp & cold fogging up the camera lenses/ they will swallow or be swallowed by foreground objects like barbecues or boulders/ they will fade out over the round cupped edges of hills into clouds that sink behind themselves/ & appear like black specks on the watery grey endings of dirty rainbows/ or disappear completely before emerging again from forest darkrooms/ my dogs will be unleashed so that they may contain the landscapes inside themselves/ in australia shadows of blue heelers, red kelpies & photographers ignite along its huge crust & vanish in an instant/ leaving behind projected movement & dust-filled film equipment/ & they may have left a passing footprint in the sand/ & they may have left a story for the rock THE CHILDREN & THE DOG mark carried the cardboard sign beneath his arm/ it read: PUP FOR FREE/ ‘do you think this will work?’ angela asked, looking up into his face/ ‘yeah, it should,’ he said/ this is a very busy road/ cathy held the plump tan pup close to her chest/ ‘he’s bloated,’ she said/ ‘you shouldn’t have fed him all that weetbix angela/ i’m gonna get into trouble when mum finds out’/ angela said, ‘royce made me give it to him’/ ‘he was starving,’ said royce/ ‘he might have been lost for days’/ mark turned to royce/ ‘we’ll stay here with the sign/ you two girls go further up/ that way passing cars will see the sign first & then the dog’/ the big sky was forced westwards with clouds like white sheep grazing towards the blue mountains/ with sun & wind flying like kites/ the patch-em-up dog caught cathy’s eye & licked her throat/ her cargo of fears contained within cars speeding along the road/ the clouds could look like children or dogs on some days/ many hours passed/ royce got tired & lay down on the grass near the gutter/ ‘i have a bad feeling,’ said angela/ ‘i feel sick’/ ‘it’ll be all right,’ said cathy/ kicking tufts of clover in a little centred heap/ ‘someone will take him’/ ‘but your dad says he has to go to the pound or you’ll be in big trouble’/ ‘we’ve still got until the end of the day,’ cathy said/ late into the afternoon every car shot by like a bullet/ no one slowing down/ royce said, ‘they’re not even seeing us/ i have to go home soon’/ angela prayed into the dog’s floppy ear/ hoping an adult in the traffic might hear her/ the patch-em-up dog was curled up in the grass/ ‘they’re all pricks,’ cathy said/ ‘they don’t care less about dogs/ & do you know what a prick is?/ it’s a man’s cock’/ angela said, ‘i’ve seen a man’s cock/ i watched it on a movie at home/ a woman was biting it/ & the man said, "suck on it like a lollipop bitch!"/ then he held her head down & her arms were flying everywhere/ like she was a bird flapping her wings/ & her hair was all messy like a bird’s nest/ then white stuff like cream came out of the man’s cock & he let her go/ & her eyes were rolling backwards & she couldn’t breathe properly/ & the man kicked her away & said, "choke on that bitch!"/ do you think she died?’/ ‘no,’ said cathy/ ‘that wasn’t cream/ that was sprog/ you should know the right words’/ do you know what fuck means?’/ ‘yeah,’ said angela/ ‘it’s when a man goes to bed with a woman with no clothes on’/ ‘& then what?’/ angela said, ‘& that’s it!’/ ‘right’, said cathy/ ‘& do you know what rape is?’/ angela said, ‘yeah/ a man & a woman go to bed naked/ & then the man gets a rake & rakes her’/ cathy sighed/ looking down the road into an adult world/ ‘i don't believe they will take the dog,’ she said/ ‘because they’ve got shit for brains & they hate dogs/ my dad said, "what’s the use of dogs?/ you can’t fuck ‘em & you can’t eat ‘em"/ ‘i don't eat animals anymore,’ she said/ ‘i could be eating someone’s relative’/ she looked down at angela lying in the clover/ ‘you must never get into a car with anyone/ particularly a man or a sharpie’/ ‘what’s a sharpie?’ angela asked/ cathy said, ‘it’s a man who sticks safety pins through his nose & through his ears/ who eats flies & cuts his hair with razor blades/ anyway, best not to get into a car with anyone’/ ‘even my parents?’/ ‘no silly, they’re all right/ i mean strangers/ relos are okay/ but maybe not aunts & uncles/ neigbours are no good/ never get into a car with them/ they’ll take you out in the bush & strip you naked/ you will never be seen again’/ angela pointed to an old car that had slowed down near the boys/ ‘what about patch-em-up dog?’ she said/ ‘he will have to fend for himself,’ said cathy/ ‘none of us are allowed to have any more pets/ but i can communicate with him psychically/ so we’ll know where he is/ i hope the boys don't get into that car/ we best get back to them’/ an hour later the children & the dog were outside the gates of the local pound/ cathy lived up the road from it & the dogs yelped all weekend when no one was there/ & they yelped on week days during pound hours/ sometimes she couldn’t sleep on late summer nights/ because she thought about the dogs/ mark led the others onto the council grounds/ ‘i’m afraid,’ the dog said/ its head stretched back on the collar/ ‘don’t be frightened,’ said cathy/ ‘someone will buy you & take you home’/ & angela added, ‘or we’ll meet you in a better place where children & dogs can live’/ royce took out his puffer & inhaled/ a cloud passed beneath the sun/ his eyes searched his feet for his own shadow but all the ground had become darker/ ‘we have no shadows, he said/ i’ve got an aching leg & my bones are tired’/ mark being the eldest, took the dog into the pound/ then the sun came out & the council tree shadows spread & shook at the grass/ & the childrens’ shadows stood beside them/ & everywhere a shadow was cast as if the dog’s absence was about to become apparent/ later angela would fret/ not eating her tea for a fortnight/ & the dog turned & saw the children/ & the children swam in the brown eye of the dog/ & it resisted its leash wanting to spend the rest of its life with them/ ‘i want to grow old with you,’ it said/ as it was taken into the pound reception/ its four paws scraping along the cement/ its tan neck wrinkled up from looking back/ ‘pounds are where the good dogs go,’ mark called out, ‘because there are no bad dogs’/ a year ago mark had gone to the r.s.p.c.a. at yagoona with his father/ to do a school project on desexing/ & this is what he remembered seeing/ twenty-eight soft paws in a wheelbarrow & loose necks with UNWANTED written on the collars/ barrels & bins of patch-em-up dogs to be incinerated/ & a house sized pile of shadow dogs beneath thick plastic/ & hundreds of closed & opened eyes in bags as high as animal shelter walls/ dead dogs in truck loads to the rubbish tip/ or blocking the drains beneath suburban houses or stopping the waterflow of slow creeks/ almost five years later, mark told a high school counsellor/ ‘i could not comprehend dogs stacked as high a a building/ malformed faces & lost histories sweating beneath layers of plastic/ why were they ever born?/ this adult world building its cities of dead dogs/ if i couldn’t save the pup what chance have i got to tear down the structures of dogs?/ i have nightmares of being preserved beneath the plastics/ the hot weight of squashed fur & gaseous bellies taking my oxygen/ i am the dogs crying out to a human society where no one will listen’/ & the moment before the dog was taken cathy broke down/ ‘i don’t want to live here anymore,’ royce said/ ‘maybe it’s the wrong place for children’/ mark said, ‘i will never leave you royce’/ & the dog’s eyes said, ‘i will never leave you children’/ ‘i think we might meet patch- em-up in another place,’ said angela/ ‘or on another planet or in another time/ do dogs go to heaven?’/ it was as though there was a child inside the dog/ & the child had four legs & a coat of fur instead of clothes/ royce picked his nose & wiped it on his grey shorts by the pocket/ ‘i’m not gonna live to be an adult,’ he said/ his pale face & large black eyes like a bat confused beneath the sun/ ‘my mum & dad are separating/ mark, have you ever been a victim of crime?’/ ‘no,’ said mark, ‘have you?’/ ‘yes,’ said royce/ ‘i walked into a shop when i was five & i was raped/ anyway, what football team are you barracking for this year?’/ ‘easts,’ said mark, as he left/ royce hovered around the high walls outside the pound/ too light for the earth’s gravity & withdrawn/ his skinny white legs growing on the gutter’s edge like roots/ cathy said, ‘those pricks have shit for brains/ they can only kill the body/ but patch-em-up is inside all of us’/ ‘i‘m cold,’ angela said/ ‘i want to go home/ it’s getting late’/ cathy threw a rock up the street & it hurtled crookedly along its own scuttling shadow/ ‘i don’t like the dark,’ she said/ ‘even in daylight/ tree shadows don’t bark or wag their tails/ & the shadows of flowers don’t catch a ball/ & they don’t look back at you in the same way that a dog does/ shadows don’t require love/ nothing replaces dogs’/ mark came back from inside the pound/ ‘the dog’s gone,’ he said/ if you could imagine a young dog being led into the pound by a stranger/ & away from the children who loved it holding skies of tears inside/ then you would see the back legs & long tail touching up & down on the concrete & the lonely belly swaying with weetbix/ you will not want to see the dog’s eyes or the cages of yelpings before it/ an enormous blue horizon rolled over into late afternoon/ lifting its mauve blanket saturated with stars/ large streetlights flickered orange to white on their splintery poles/ & five shadows fell down along the road towards the dog pound & the sunset/ five shadows minus the patch- em-up dog stopped dead at the brick/ four children watch the skies of childhood diminish into adolescence/ they retreat to broken houses with pocket diaries & chemist calendars/ where months hang from the walls rather than in the sky/ where seasonal insects & birds only reach as far as the flyscreens on the wiredoors/ watched from inside the sky reddens & is extinguished as fast as a match is lit & blown out/ tell the children to bury themselves/ to dig into the soft earth of council gums & oleander trees/ as the wind comes to collect them like dandelions/ when the wind comes to their street to hurtle them through time so that they must lose footing/ so that they become birds thrown backwards or bees with broken wings/ so that they must be shot away from the street of childhood lawns & away from the dog pound like five stars/ the children will become exquisite light like sun behind sun showers & long lines of rain pelting down/ the remnants of the cardboard sign half buried in the ground DIESEL on the road from carins to normanton we picked up a dog/ a couple of travellers told us to go back down to charters towers/ & to take the one-lane highway across to mount isa/ there had been rain/ but we chose to risk the section of unsealed road along the bottom end of the cape york penninsula/ to view the queensland peppermint & river red gum landscape/ & its constant expansion into kilometres of giant plateaus & underground lava tunnels from extinct volcanoes/ we chose to widen our knowledge of roadside brolgas & dumped dogs like hitchhikers waiting for a lift/ after light rain the normanton road had expanded out into side lanes/ into large bottomless pits deep & soft with mud/ new bitumen strips stood high & dry in the middle/ with access to them blocked by roadwork signs/ a couple of tourists from holland took the detours & ended up bogged up to the windows/ their white arms waving from cars with mud pouring in/ on another lonely stretch a man was trying to gas himself inside his old bomb car with his german shepherd/ the dog’s horrible barking brought us to a halt/ i got out to see what was the matter/ & his car door flew open & he took off into the bush with his german shepherd following him/ the dog’s hysteria being released like exhaust fumes into the stunted growth/ on a very muddy section on which the e.h. holden was skating/ we came across a muscular black dog sitting on the side of the road/ it watched us pass noticing our dogs in the back/ we slowed down without stopping & i pushed my door open with my foot/ i called out: come on come on/ & the big black dog slid through mud/ it jumped onto my lap/ its wagging tail slapping my chest & face/ the bright orange clay flicking up onto the vinyl ceiling & interior light/ adrian said: perhaps we should go onto some properties & try to look for the owner/ i said: no/ as harshly as if i had slammed my foot onto the brakes/ there were hundreds of properties out there hidden in the scrub/ amongst drowned coolibah trees & sharp topaz jutting out/ i suggested we stick to the road & drive straight to croydon/ when we got into town we filled the tank with petrol/ then i went to the local shire building & the town clerk tied the dog up to the flagpole/ then a carload of locals drove past/ two wheels of the mud splashed ute jumping up over the gutter/ ripping into the sprinkler greened lawn/ the full round spotlight dangling crazily from the roof & the wire caged section on the back mingling with lunatic dogs/ in the front were thin-lipped australians with deep squinting eyes, checked shirts & dusty hats/ the chain rattled on the flagpole as the dog began to gyrate/ diesel, one cried out/ so that the dog stood to attention & became darker/ then he hopped out of the ute & came up & shook my hand/ the others observing me through the window glass/ i could tell he would be the type to keep his distance under normal circumstances/ but he offered me reward money/ i didn’t want any/ i saw diesel washed clean by a brief shower & enthusiastic stroking from her owner/ then her black shining loaded into the back with the other dogs/ he said that she had been missing for two days/ & that they were heading back out into the scrub/ these men are pig killers, i thought/ & compared my dogs’ lives to theirs/ i was pleased to have found their thick- jawed dog/ but i thought of the dead black pigs torn at the throat/ out there behind the bloodwood & paperbarks in the queensland scrub/ tusks turned upwards drinking in rain/ dried blood & the long lashed eyes half-buried in mud Coral Hull was born in Paddington, New South Wales, Australia in 1965. She is a full time writer and the Editor of Thylazine; an electronic journal of contemporary Australian art and literature on landscape and animals. She completed a Doctor of Creative Arts Degree at the University of Wollongong in 1998. Her work has been published extensively in literary magazines in the U.S.A., Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom. Her published books are; In The Dog Box Of Summer in Hot Collation, Penguin Books Australia, 1995, William’s Mongrels in The Wild Life, Penguin Books Australia, 1996, Broken Land, Five Islands Press, 1997, How Do Detectives Make Love?, Penguin Books Australia, 1998, and Zoo (with John Kinsella), Paperbark Press, 2000. Email: coralhull@thylazine.org Website: http://www.thylazine.org/ |
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