Continuity

What with running the business blog and getting more active on Facebook and Twitter, this poor blog has been very neglected.

Quite a number of fairly major changes over the last year or so, not that I'd care to enumerate them here. I ticked over to 40 some weeks ago - I'd thought that it wouldn't matter, that it'd just be another day, but for unknown reasons, the realisation hit me quite hard. I think it was realisation that things were now finite. I know they've always been finite, but when you're in your 20s and 30s, the finishing line just seems so far away. Apart from this sudden awareness, nothing much seems to have altered. I think I've become calmer, less fixated on things, more open to putting up with changes, whether good or ill.

I dreamed last night of completing some missions with a team which was something like the A-Team, without the over-the-top caricature characters. At the end of the mission, we had to grab some cars from a car yard and effect a quick getaway. I got into a nice, classic looking car and started heading off... only to realise it was manual transmission. Never mind that in real life, I don't drive manual, in this dream, I shifted gears and went on my merry way.

It was also a dream with a nebulous figure whom I felt was important to the story, but for the life of me, couldn't work out who this was. In one of those strange moments in a dream, this person became someone I'd gone to school with back in Malaysia, but it wasn't really him. It was someone else. Bloody dreams!

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Rest in Peace Russell Mullings.

Your passing on Friday was so sudden and I feel so much for your family, Jo and Jack. Your son Elliot, who I found out today is turning 21 this year. My dear, dear friend Christie, your sister. Your other sister, Holly. Your brother, Sam, and mother, Kerry.

I was looking at the photographs that Christie and Holly had scanned and uploaded to Facebook. Photographs from your childhood; you with your flaming rust-coloured hair and cheeky kid's smile - you look so much like your nephew Saf looked when he was younger. You at the birth of Elliot; you look so young, so gob-smacked as you held infant Elliot in your arms, surrounded by Sam and Holly who were just children then too.

Your smile held such promise of a life ahead. A life cut short.

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But I know you found fulfillment and contentment in the last few years. Your sister, Christie, is so proud of you.

Humidity and ennui

An overcast, humid day with potential for the mercury to hit the mid-30s. The air is staid and smells of moisture. I was planning to go for a brisk walk this morning, thinking I'd catch the cool breeze before the day warmed up, but there's nary a stir of refreshing breeze outside.

A few short days to the end of the first decade of the noughties. I'm listening to Joni Mitchell, singing "Both Sides Now" slow and wistfully.

The five days over the Christmas weekend have been blissful, yet busy. I've never had so many social commitments, to the extent that it was a relief to have a day to myself yesterday and begin the editing process for "Sons of Ganga". Still down to 100+ images, which I need to further cull until I come to a set of about 25 for the exhibition. Pare it down to a quarter of the current number of photographs.

Speaking of photography, the ennui continues. I cannot bring myself to take photographs, to plan photographic activities. Perhaps this is why I struggle with the aforementioned editing process. Everything photography-related now seems like too much effort and brings a great swell of disinterest.

Perhaps I've reached the end of the road where this is concerned. Time to get out of the car and go for a walk in another direction.

Turning inward

Well, I think the proverbial straw has landed on my back. "It's time to go, Seng," as is popularly uttered on Big Brother.

On a different note, I'm going to make a concerted effort to find some real space for myself. I've been expending too much energy and thought on matters outside of my own concern, and it has been wearying and frustrating, especially over the last week or so. I suspect that we tend to spend so much time and effort trying to get things around us working that we forget to give attention to getting our own selves working in a functional and healthy way. Time to change this.

Reading old diaries at the moment. Very odd as I have no recollection of certain events or incidents which I had documented. It's like reading fiction!

Natural disasters

It's a triple whammy of disasters in the region: the tsunami which swamped Samoa and American Samoa, the earthquake which rocked the city of Padang and its hinterland in Sumatra, and the typhoons that washed over the Phillipines.

There's even talk of another earthquake pending in Sumatra - predicted to measure at around 8 on the Richter Scale.

Whenever something like this happens, one is just agog at the loss of human life, the degree of suffering and the extent to which the human spirit can recover from such unmitigated suffering. In Samoa, the 7.30 Report reveals, the people are moving away from the ocean inland and rebuilding their lives there. An interview with a young father aired in that segment - a man who had lost his young son, who told the reporter that his son "is now in the Sky... his body is lost."

He has moved beyond grieving to a sad acceptance.

If we are, ourselves, the very agents responsible for the caretaking of humanity, what can we do. What can we do?

Remembering Dobbo

I only knew Kenny "Dobbo" Dobson as that fit-looking, middle-aged bloke from the Trigg Blue Hole Club.

I photographed the Blue Hole Club's winter swims in 2006, 2007 and 2008 and it didn't take long before I noticed the short, nuggety bloke sporting the compact muscularity of an athlete, who dashed into and out of the cold and roiling surf in no more than a pair of club budgie smugglers between him and the wild, wintry elements.

This was a fella who would laugh at storms and jeer at hurricanes, a bloke for whom the churning ocean and turbid surf meant more a challenge than an impediment.

Two evenings ago, while I drove up into my parents' driveway for our usual Wednesday night dinner, my mobile phone rang. It was Les Lindsay from the club, asking if I remembered Ken Dobson. Of course I did: Dobbo.

I learned from Lindsay that Dobbo had passed away on Sunday after a battle with cancer.

Since then, I have been contacted by members of the club about photographs of Dobbo from the Sunday swims, which they would like to use during Dobbo’s funeral service. From this contact, I gleaned more about Dobbo’s fate.

I last photographed Dobbo at the Blue Hole Club’s windup swim for the 2008 season. It was in September 2008. In that same month, Dobbo was diagnosed with cancer. He underwent treatment and all seemed to go well – he was in remission.

The cancer, however, did not relinquish its hold on Dobbo, later insinuating itself into his head. He went into hospital for surgery to his head, where surgeons drilled into his skull to treat the cancer.

Dobbo did not recover. Things went wrong after surgery and a week later, in the hospital, he passed from this world.

His funeral is tomorrow, at Karrakatta, followed by a service at Trigg Surf Life Saving Club for family, friends and fellow-clubbies.

In looking through the archives of Blue Hole Club photographs, searching for images which had Dobbo in them for the funeral, I became aware that the photographs gave the impression that, in their timeless, frozen eternity, Dobbo was still around, still with us, and that, on Sunday, he would still be down at Trigg Beach raring to race into the ocean.

Dobbo’s mate, Boots Campbell, dropped into the office to collect the CD of images yesterday. He told me that Dobbo was one of his best mates – they went on trips together, competed in triathlons and surf events; Boots seemed crestfallen, shaken, confused by the suddenness of his mate’s departure, the irony of a man at the peak of physical fitness being denied life and future by that terrible C.

In the time I photographed the Blue Hole Club, I rarely spoke to Dobbo – perhaps a nod here, a quick “how’re you going” there. But in photographing Dobbo and in looking at the photographs, I came to know him in the odd, inexplicable way that you can come to know someone because, in photographing them, they become a part of your consciousness, a part of your history.

Be at peace, Dobbo. You’re swimming with good company now.

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Making time to have time off is becoming increasingly difficult. I've been feeling under the pump lately from the various project skeins - Fables & Nocturnes, workshops, FotoFreo Fringe, and on and on and on. It's getting to the point where I'm waking up in the morning with a mild panic attack wondering if I'm on the ball with things or if I've forgotten something critical.

This is not what I imagined it would be, down-shifting in order to be able to dedicate more time to photography about which I was (once) passionate.

I'm planning on wrapping up Fables & Nocturnes, and then going for my short holiday in Singapore - and just blanking out photography for five days.

You know, I need to bring my photography back to a personal level. Just things I want to photograph, not things that feel need to be photographed. If that differentiation makes sense.

I've sometimes wondered (or imagined) what I would do if my employment was impacted by the economic downturn ie. if I were made redundant and without employment. People talk about using this "recession" to create new opportunities, and I wonder if I would have the drive and energy to do this. I would like to think that I have the creative drive to make something out of such an "opportunity" though I suspect I'm one of those unfortunates with drive but no direction.