to the curve of you
Caitlin Franzmann
I’ve been feeling my inside ... and realising it’s not mine.
Mother, lover, soil, are moving through you, inside your crevices and on the tips of your hairs—in water that simultaneously remembers and transforms.
Can you smell that sweet sour scent of future and decay?
Everything is touching, breaking down walls and becoming walls.
As I was tending to the mother, she told me, ‘Recognise where life thrives and thrive with it.’
Imagine that this gallery is a cell and the walls, floors, doors and windows are the membrane controlling the movement of information in and out. Leakage is inevitable.
Move outside. Past the bay window and through the glass doors.
Go to the rammed earth wall that opens to the grass.
Press your skin to the cool ochre surface.
You are touching a foundation of living bodies.
Soil, sand, clay, enzymes, excrement, blood, all bound together and disintegrating at the pace of a mountain.
Are you inside or outside?
Over near the restaurant, there is a cluster of trees, shading a deck. They are Mulli. It means ‘that tree’ to the Quechua people of Peru.(1) Move closer to the trees and onto the deck.
Imagine you are becoming smaller with every step. So small that you can enter the pores of the trunk, through its capillaries, moving with fluid and DNA carried in its core.
From Mulli’s roots, a question rises. ‘Who decides my value on this land?’
‘Am I healer, am I protector, am I enemy?’
The question rises again. This time from the microbes resting at its roots. ‘Who decides our future on this land?’
Follow the curves of the terraced steps, down to the deck by the dam.
What do you think of the roses, the grape vines and the rolling green lawns that adorn this valley?
They once carried a mystique of civility and plenty. Do they still?
It’s 1866 in Rhone, France. A commission of three men—a stockbroker, a botanist and a wine grower—are working together to find the nature of a catastrophic disease that has attacked the old vines in France and will soon spread to the rest of Europe and eventually Australia.
Suddenly under the magnifying lens of the instrument appeared an insect, a plant louse of yellowish color, tight on the wood, sucking the sap. One looked more attentively; it is not one, it is not ten, but hundreds, thousands of pucerons that one perceived, all in various stages of development. They are everywhere: on the deepest roots as well as on the shallow, on the thick underground parts as well as on the most delicate rootlets.(2)
The tiny proclaimed enemy that wielded immense power was named Phylloxera vastatrix—devastator of the vines. The aphids were introduced to France with American grape vines. Governments, universities and wine growers came together to address the catastrophe and in turn, transformed viticulture.
And yet, Phylloxera vastatrix is still here. One could be on your shoe.
They have no regard for borders or laws.
And so, we continue to adapt our ways, with a growing respect for the small.
The unique taste of a grape is thought to come from the country, climate and culture of a place.
Soil microbes cluster at vine roots and rise to colonise the fruits.
Here, on Wurundjeri Country, we have clones of European vines grafted onto American roots.
From where and when is character imprinted?
At what point does the fruit belong to the ground where it grows?
There is a solitary Eucalyptus tree on the other side of the dam. Make your way there, down the stairs. Follow the grass path bordered by stone and water and continue up the hill, past the bench.
Can you feel the tightly woven grass cushioning the soles of your feet? What would it feel like if you removed your shoes?
Adelaide Chronicle 1930 … Of all the recent grasses introduced into Australia for ordinary pasture purposes, Kikuyu grass is destined to take the foremost place. No grazier or farmer, no matter what may be the character and quality and situation of his land or the local climatic conditions, would be doing himself justice by remaining unacquainted with the qualities and virtues of Kikuyu grass.(3)
Lawn grass is a weed that resists weeds.
It is tended to by some, eradicated by others, depending on desire.
Can you find gaps in the network of the grass roots and stems? This is Fungi resisting monoculture and creating circular patches of decay. Opportunistic dandelions and clovers fill the void.
Shhh ... I think there are seeds still sleeping underground, waiting for the right conditions to shapeshift with the elements. They are waiting to show us how to transform.
Hear that. That’s the Helmeted-honeyeater, over there in the swamp gum. Can you find it?
In birdsong we can feel stories of the landscape—songs of grassy woodlands, slow moving waters and of cleared land becoming borders. We can sense danger and disease, as well as resilience in unbroken connections.
Listen.
The weeping willows down by the dam are whispering a sorrowful farewell. Move to their shade.
Take a seat under the willow. Let the earth hold you.
Catch the shimmer at the edge of the lake.
Take a deep breath.
Breathe in like you are smelling a rose and out through your mouth, like a child blowing dandelion seeds, wishing worlds.
There ... do you feel it? That moment after you exhale and before you inhale again … when everything changes.
References
- Guevarra, L. (29 December 2020) personal communication over zoom, translated by Putnam, C.
- Cazalis, F. 1869, Le Messager Agricole 9, p. 237, Montpellier: Imprimerie Typographique de Gras, as cited in Gale, G. (2011) Dying on the Vine: How Phylloxera Transformed Wine, University of California Press, Berkeley, London, Los Angeles.
- ‘Kikuyu Grass: Wonderful New Fodder Plant’, Adelaide Chronicle, 3 July 1930, p. 6, sourced from https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/90493346 on 20 November 2020.
