Autumn in my pocket

I've returned to writing in my writing notebook on the tram to work again, and this post begins from what I wrote there.

In my pocket is a light blue cotton handkerchief, the kind that is thick enough and large enough to wipe your face with without it scrunching into a ball, or blow your nose in without being sodden within three gusts – a handy feature for the impending cold-virus season. That's possibly because it is relatively new, and still has the fresh stiffness of new cotton. It has crisscrossing stripes of navy contrast along the edges that mark it as a man's handkerchief, and an upper-case 'P' embroidered in navy blue in one corner. It was my father's.

My father always had a handkerchief with him – every day, he'd put one in his left trouser pocket. (I've long long followed his habit.) Dad had quite a stock of them. My sister and I insisted that he have one just so for the funeral.

Each time I've been up to Brisbane lately, I return – on my mother's urging – with a small load of my father's clothes. This time, the load included a handful of these good handkerchiefs and a couple of pairs of new socks dad had not gotten around to wearing. They were still attached to their label.

Today, I'm wearing a light, grey cashmere jumper of dad's. Now I understand the love for cashmere – light, soft, almost luscious – and appreciate the premium put on them. I'd probably never afford cashmere myself. There was a time, some ten years ago, when my father could afford to buy them and appreciated their warmth and comfort in Melbourne's winter, however briefly he lived here. I found this jumper, along with another maroon cashmere and his chunky blue wool cardigan that I loved to see him in, stored in the bottom drawer of a dresser he hardly used. I wonder if he got to enjoy them much, considering how brief and relatively mild Brisbane's winters are. Though he'd been complaining of feeling the cold bitterly, especially in his hands and feet, in the last couple of years.

This morning in Melbourne, it is cool, grey and raining. It's probably closer to 14˚C than 21˚C in the range forecast for today. Autumn has announced itself dramaticaly, and I'm glad to be warm and snug in a fold of cashmere.

This morning, the online sponsorships and cash donations for my Shave for a Cure drive had past my $500 target! (As evident in the image of the fundraising meter.) Weighing up the pledges that have been made and the possibilities of another week of fundraising, I've decided to extend my goal by $200 – I'm now aiming to raise $700 for the Leukaemia Foundation by Friday 13 March.

I'd appreciate any help you can offer me to reach that goal, including spreading the word. And thank you to all of you who helped out, made donations, and spread the word.

In a week, I will have my hair shaved for Shave for a Cure. It will be a chilly affair, and I'm glad for my friend Lynn's offer to knit me a beanie to keep my head and ears warm! Thanks, Lynn! Meanwhile, keep warm. Or cool as your case may be.

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After the air ignited

I have to say that I struggled for a long time with this post, as I found the horror of the past week's Victorian bushfires and deaths very troubling and emotionally painful, and wondered long and hard whether, and how, to put into words what I had learned of these events. I've decided to go ahead and post anyway. I hope it is read in the spirit of caring, concern and bearing witness with which I wrote it. The image is from flickr.

UPDATE : A happy ending after all
I have recently learned that C's house survived the fire in Kinglake after all! Please note he changes below. [Updated 4.10pm Tuesday 17 February 2009]

When I spoke to my friend C late on Sunday morning, he still didn't know if the house he'd been building for his family was still standing after the firestorm that swept through Kinglake last weekend.

He thought there was a "99% chance" it was gone, considering all the houses across the road from his – bar one – had burned down. However, he held on to a glimmer of hope that it survived. His neighbour and neighbour's son stayed to protect their house and saved it.

With the roadblocks and other restrictions on movement to the area, it was a while later when he found out that the house was gone. Thanfully, C, his partner and their three-year-old daughter were safe at home in Melbourne's north-western suburbs when the fires hit. He hadn't gone up to Kinglake to check on the nearly completed house as he'd not expected the fire danger to be so severe or immediate. In this case, it must be a blessing.

[Update: C has recently told me that he'd received incorrected information from a neighbour that the house was destroyed, and that he learned late last week that his house survived! He's been up to Kinglake to check it out and it's still standing.]

Unfortunately for the many, many dozens of Kinglake residents who lost their homes, and the 35 who lost their lives, the horrifyingly extreme nature of this bushfire was not anticipated – not the immensity of it, not the suddenness with which it changed direction toward Kinglake, not the speed nor ferocity with which it hit.

My heart was in my mouth when I woke on Sunday to read and hear the news of the fires hitting Kinglake (and the rest of Victoria), as I knew C was building there, and over the years I'd known people who had lived in that area. I was relieved to hear Chris and his family safe and well.

But I was also worried for another friend and her partner who live in St Andrews, another township near Kinglake and famous for its alternative weekend market. While I was quite unsettled and concerned that I couldn't get them on the phone either Sunday or Monday as the line was disconnected, by Tuesday when I'd heard about the high number of deaths in St Andrews – 22 at last count – I was panicking.

I called around a number of 3rd parties who knew these friends and finally heard from someone that they were safe. I finally spoke to my friend L on Tuesday afternoon (their telephone had been disconnected due to a stuff-up by the phone company, rather than the fires!) and learned that while they were safe and well, they had survived a close call. The stories of what she saw were unbelievably shocking – and she found it quite shocking, like nothing she'd seen before, and she'd previously experienced 3 other bushfires!

She told me how on Saturday they vigilantly watched the fires in the distance advancing on them, and were putting out burning embers on the roof and in the gutters that had rained from the sky all afternoon. She had watched the fire advance on a white weatherboard farmhouse on the top of a hill but leave it unscathed as it burned down the hill, and inexplicably leave it intact yet again when the wind change drove the fire back up the hill, and how that house now stands starkly white on a blackened hill.

She told me of how they watched as the very air ignited from the extreme heat and ferocity of the fire. How where as the top of one hill was ablaze, the air at the top of the neighbouring hill suddenly exploded in a ball of flames and set that hill ablaze. The fire was still some 3 kms away or so, sure to destroy their home, and they were prepared to leave when it go too close when the late change came through and started blowing the fire in another direction and their home was saved.

She learned the next day, as the rest of us did, what destruction and death that weather change wraught as it drome the firestorm front to the neighbouring townships and communities.

*********

Today we are being told that while the official death toll from the bushfires across Victoria stands at 181, already the worst natural disaster in Australia's history, we should expect the death tol to climb past 200 and nearer 300.

But Kinglake and St Andrews, while having amongst the highest death tolls in the state, are not the only communities affected. The township of Marysville has been scorched off the face of this earth, and the community is trying to come to terms with the devastation and loss of life there, while there have been terrible deaths and destruction in townships from Healesville in the Yarra Ranges to Churchill in Gippsland.

As you can see from MrTomTom's images of a family member's home destroyed by the fire in Yarra Glen, the devastation is frequently extreme and total.

I think this disaster and tragedy is going to stay with us for a long time, as we come to turns with the deaths, the environmental destruction, the loss of homes, jobs and businesses, the trauma experienced by the survivors and emergency workers, and the terrible injury to our collective psyche as we absorb this through the non-stop media coverage.

It is going to take a great effort and a lot of time to to make sense of this all. Though I have to say that David Tiley has made admirably insightful and eloquent efforts to do so. And Penni Russon's tale (her family and home in St Andrews are unscathed, thank goodness) gives great insight into the nerve-wracking business of waiting to see if the fires move toward them again. Penni and her partner have decided, quite understandably, they will leave their home again at the first signs of renewed danger.

I wish them, and all others on a danger footing, and dealing with the grief and trauma of this tragedy, my very best wishes. And to all my other readers too. Stay safe and well.

[Image sunrise.seven on flickr, under creative commons license. I think it's a screenshot from Channel 7's TV program Sunrise]

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John Updike dies at 76

US novelist John Updike died on Tuesday, aged 76. He lost his battle with lung cancer.

The two-time Pulitzer Prize winning author was highly prolific, and wrote novels, short stories, non-fiction and verse. Updike was famous for his keenly observed, sharply rendered and insightful narratives of middle America’s domesticity and family life.

As he put it once, “When I write, I aim in my mind not toward New York but toward a vague spot a little to the east of Kansas.”

Updike also pursued a realism that placed sex and sexuality squarely in the middle of his characters’ lives and thoughts, just as they are in the centre of all our lives. Some thought he took the sex too far, though for different reasons. The prudish British dubbed Updike the ‘laureate of lewd’, while other critics nominated him – repeatedly – for the Bad Sex in Fiction Award.

However, it’s worth remembering that in the 50s and 60s, Updike was pushing the boundaries of moral prudery and taboo over sexuality in a country and time where many saw Rock ‘n Roll as the work of the devil.

He made no apologies for putting sexuality in the middle of his stories:

“I think taste is a social concept and not an artistic one. I’m willing to show good taste, if I can, in somebody else’s living room, but our reading life is too short for a writer to be in any way polite. Since his words enter into another’s brain in silence and intimacy, he should be as honest and explicit as we are with ourselves.”

I think that some of Updike’s finest work is in his short stories where he explores small town life and burgeoning adolescent sexuality and angst with more restraint and nuance, yet great honesty.

His two Pulitzer Prizes for fiction were for his famous Rabbit series of novels (beginning with Rabbit, Run in 1961) featuring the middle-aged, middle class, middle America suburban antics of high school football hero turned car salesman Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom. Some of his other famous works were The Centaur (1963), The Witches of Eastwick (1984), and The Widows of Eastwick (2008).

“Writers take words seriously-perhaps the last professional class that does— and they struggle to steer their own through the crosswinds of meddling editors and careless typesetters and obtuse and malevolent reviewers into the lap of the ideal reader*.”

— John Updike, Writers on Themselves (1986); Wikiquote

* Whoever that is...

Obituaries elsewhere
‘A Relentless Updike Mapped America's Mysteries’, The New York Times, 27 January 2009

'Rabbit is gone: Updike's wit, frankness remembered', ABC News Opinion, 28 January 2009

[The image is a Magnum one... shhh...]

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The best laid plans

After this time and distance, it's been hard to come back to this blog – for many reasons. I've been away from Melbourne and the internet for nearly a month, I haven't really felt like writing much for an audience, and I would have to explain – to put into words – why I've been away for so long. But I will anyway, because to do otherwise is to pretend nothing has happened.

A couple of days ago, I emailed some friends to explain what happened, so I'd found the words to explain the events, but not quite the words to express how I feel or what it means to me. I think that will come later. So I've decided to post here an edited version of what I wrote my friends.

A lot happened in the last weeks of 2008 - particularly something very shocking and sad. My Dad passed away from a sudden heart attack on Saturday the 13th of December, and I rushed up to Brisbane that evening.

My partner Shelley, our boys and I were meant to go for a holiday at the Sunshine Coast on the 16th for three nights, and then we were going to spend Christmas and New Year with Mum and Dad, and celebrate their 70th birthdays together. Mum's birthday is on 27 December, and Dad's nearly a month later. I was suggesting a joint party while we were up there.

Of course, all the best made plans are tossed in the air by cruel chance.

Shelley and the boys joined me in Brisbane that week, but Shelley had worked wonders to change our travel and accommodation arrangements so we could delay our coastal break to the end of our stay up north.

My sister and her family were in Europe on the tail end of their extended holiday and they rushed back from Rome as quickly as they could when they got the news. They were wrecked.

***

Peter J. Lawrence
1939–2008

My Dad was so well, so we thought, and showed no sign at all of having anything at all wrong with his heart or health besides the usual things associated with ageing and high cholesterol. What we didn't know is that he had serious heart disease - his coronary arteries were severely blocked, and had been for many, many years, leading ultimately to the sudden heart attack.

I was pretty much in a state of shock for a while when I got the initial pathologist's findings from the Queensland Coroner's office a few days after the death. It was a very, very heavy sense of dismay, incredulity and pain that this had been building up so long with no sign at all that we could interpret to indicate heart disease.

Cruel, cruel chance. I think you could imagine the anger, frustration and deep sadness I feel at not being able to see my dad again. I don't know about these different stages' of grief – I seem to be feeling them all at once, and at various times. In the previous two weeks, I was more numb than anything.

We held the funeral on Friday 19 December, the day my Dad was intending to drive up to Noosa to pick up my family and I to bring us back to Brisbane. This would have been the first time I'd seen him since he and Mum came down to Melbourne in November 2007. I gave one of the three eulogies (and a poem reciting) at the funeral, a blistering hot day in the sweltering Catholic parish church my parents had been very active in since they retired to Brisbane some 12 years ago. Three Catholic priests officiated at the Mass. That doesn't happen very often. My parents' co-parishioners were wonderful, sharing our grief and truly supportive of my mother. They really love my both my parents, and miss my father terribly. But not as much as we do.

***

Shelley, the kids and I spent 3 nights in Noosa after the New Year, and the break and rest has done me much good. We go back to Melbourne last Friday, and I've been back at work since Monday. Thankfully, it's pretty quiet and still a bit cruisey, so I can get lost in the background and mope for a little longer.

I'm still worried about my Mum, of course, as this is very, very hard for her. She has a large and close group of friends up in Brissie, through her parish, and many close relatives there, and my sister and her family are there, but it is not the same when you've lost the person you've loved for nearly 50 years, and been married to for 45!

But I'll see Mum again soon - next week, in time for Dad's birthday on the 21st. And I'll be going up again on 28 February when we hold the commitment of Dad's ashes into the Columnbarium at the parish church he and mum went to.

I haven't yet decided whether I will publish my eulogy for Dad online, although I'm inspired by other examples to do so. It's a bit long for this blog, so if I decide to upload it somewhere, I'll post the link here. What I can say for now is that my Dad was a great man, and a good man, and we loved him very, very much.

Meanwhile, I just want to say a big thank you to all my good friends and family who have been a big help and support to me and my family at this time. You're wonderful and I love you.

I certainly intend to make the most of each moment we share together.

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Tearing open the heart

I'm having trouble coming to terms with the enormity of the tragedy of the drowning death of the father and his two sons in Tathra, New South Wales. They were burried today in Bega, NSW.

Each time I hear or read the news of the event, I feel terribly troubled – almost in pain – to the extent that I don't allow myself to dwell too long on it, and the excruciating pain that must stem from such a tragedy. Today I'm facing it, otherwise it may haunt me.

I'm a very visual person, and I tend to visualise situations and events, particularly imagining how they may have unfolded. It's what I do, and it somehow meshes with the 'worse-case scenario' type of thinking I'm prone to.

From the reports, I understand that the father drowned after he jumped off the wharf to rescue his two young sons (four and 18 months) who had fallen in the water. The two boys also drowned. From an early report, police were investigating whether the older boy was playing with the pram his baby brother was in the minutes prior to their falling in. The three had gone for a walk on the wharf at Tathra, a popular holiday spot in New South Wales.

Part of my tendency to visualise and imagine the worst is that I also can't help but wonder how this could happen to my two boys and I. It could so easily have happened to any one of us. Kids fool around, big brothers (and sisters) often want a turn pushing their younger sibling in the pram. You take your eyes off them for a second to ask the fisherman on the wharf if the fish are biting. You hear shout or a splash, you panic, the terror rises up. You jump in. I would have, even though I cannot swim very well.

No, I don't feel any better having written this. I've imagined it yet again, and it hurts. But I've also been reminded that constant vigilance is a price for the joys of raising children and being parents. And this is in no way a suggestion that the dad at Tathra had not been vigilant. Not at all. I know exactly how quickly, and terribly easily, it could all come crashing down. That imagination feeds my paranoia when the kids are mucking about in places or situations I don't feel safe in or about.

I know that my feeling troubled at these events pales in comparison to the trauma and deep grief the family, especially the mother of the boys, and the wider community in Bega and Tathra are feeling. And will feel for a long time. The grief of losing a child, let alone two, and your lover, can tear open your heart. Especially when your memory of your partner is coloured by what happened to your children.

I know many, many people live with grief each and every day, and I've had my share of grief from death in the family, so I know that time will heal.

Honestly, though, if I had not been able to find them in the water, I don't know if I could have come back up to surface to face the enormity of the pain of it.

Vale, Shane, Riley and Travis. May you rest in peace.

[Image of the wharf at Tathra, NSW, by sophiec]

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For peace remember Hiroshima Day

Today is Hiroshima Day. 63 years ago today, the crew of the United States bomber the Enola Gray dropped a bomb, Little Boy, onto the city of Hiroshima on the west of Japan's Honshu Island. The bomb blast directly killed an estimated 80,000 people. Injury and radiation poisoning killed another 90,000-140,000 by the end of the year.

I don't have figures for starvation and homelessness killing people, but wouldn't you say that these contributed a lot to the deaths by injury? After all, 69 per cent of the buildings destroyed, and another 6.6 per cent seriously damaged, and you can imagine what happened to the food stocks – either incinerated or irradiated. You can find out more on the bombing of Hiroshima, and of Nagasaki three days later, from Wikipedia.

Despite the debate over whether US President Harry Truman really had a 'choice' over whether to bomb Hiroshima or risk thousands of American (and Japanese) lives in an invasion of Japan to end the Pacific theatre of World War Two, Hiroshima remains an abiding reminder of the utter horror, and futility, of nuclear weapons and the way they have no way of discerning between civilian and military targets.

The true horror of Hiroshima – and Nagasaki – galvanised the world's peace movement and became the rallying point in the anti-nuclear weapons and anti-uranium industry movement and the peace movement. In many ways, it is as the survivors of Hiroshima want it. The Hiroshima Memorial remains a potent symbol of the devastation – and of remembrance – but perhaps not as much as the mushroom cloud.

If you are so inclined, and are in Melbourne, of course, there will be an anti-uranium, anti-nuclear and pro-peace rally in the city on Saturday the 9th at 1 pm at the State Library. There will also be a Peace Concert held by Melbourne-based Japanese peace activists at the Town Hall at 3 pm on Saturday, also marking Nagasaki Day.

But, instead of waiting for some 'official' Peace-come-anti-nuclear Rally or Peace festival on the weekend, I suggest that you can conduct your own Hiroshima Day activities. This can be a moment of silence to remember the first victims of the atomic bomb, or playing a peace song, or reading a poem, or lighting a candle or lantern, or folding origami paper cranes.

Folding origami paper cranes used to be a favourite and common peace activity to commemorate Hiroshima Day. It was something that thousands of school children in various parts of the world would do to mark the day and to call for peace. I'm uncertain how much it still gets done these days.

Here are some paper crane-folding instructions to follow, and here is an instructional video online (warning, I've been told the crane is a pretty tricky one to start origami with, so try this with someone who has done it before. I know I'll be doing just that tonight over the dinner table once the dishes are cleared.)

One of the other things I try to do each Hiroshima Day is to write a blog post on it as part of my rememberance, and as a renewal of my disavowal of all things nuclear.

These are easy activities, especially to do with kids in your family, or on your own on a busy mid-week. They are also easy enough to encourage other family members or housemates to do with you. The idea is to perform simple, accessible activities that bring to mind the victims of Hiroshima, of nuclear horror, and to resolve that nuclear weapons should never be used again and that all of us have a role in bringing peace.

[Image of Hiroshima memorial dome by bebouchard (cc)]

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US aid plane lands in Burma

BBC Online reports that the first US plane carrying emergency aid has landed in Burma – nine days after Cyclone Nargis!

The plane was carrying over 12,000 kgs of supplies, including mosquito nets, blankets and water. According to the BBC, "The US spent days negotiating with Burma's military government to gain permission for the aircraft to land."

This is a significant development in this emergency, as in the early days the Burmese had refused to allow US planes to land, and all commentators were saying that any aid worker with a US passport wouldn't be allowed into the country.

The BBC also reports that three Medicins Sans Frontieres (MSF) planes are due to be allowed into Burma soon.

The biggest worry is that although the military is showing signs that it is softening its hardline stance against foreign aid intervention and help in the disaster, the pace of their cooperation with international relief agencies, the UN and leading western aid donor countries is too slow and this natural disaster is going to turn into a humanitarian disaster

Over 1 million people are still very much at risk from the aftermath of this cyclone, and the reports indicate that there are still many, many dead bodies unretrieved from the disaster areas.

It is still important to exert pressure on the Burmese military junta to allow the smooth flow of the international relief effort into cyclone ravaged Burma – especially via putting pressure on the junta's international supporters: China mainly, but also their Asean supporters and neighbours including Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia.

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Cyclone devastation and the aid crisis in Burma

It is growing increasingly apparent that the extent of the death toll and damage in Burma from Cyclone Nargis is getting much worse – horrendous, in fact. It is certainly far worse that the Burmese military dictatorship can either handle or is prepare to admit.

So far, Burma's official death toll has jumped from 15,000-odd to about 22,000, but aid agencies are predicting it may reach 100,000, and at least 40,000 people are thought to be missing. Hundreds of thousands are thought to be homeless as a result of the devastation. Exacerbating the problem is the military's refusal to allow international aid agencies to freely enter the politically and socially isolated country to both assess the crisis and get aid to those who have been hurt, made homeless or otherwise affected by the storm.

The unpleasant but terribly urgent job of retrieving dead bodies – especially from the extensive river system of the Irrawaddy delta – must be done quickly if they are to prevent a massive outbreak of cholera and typhoid and other water-borne diseases – one of the big risks now, besides starvation and thirst. Electricity failure has compromised fresh food storage and there isn't enough clean drinking water going around. I heard on the news last night than aid deliveries of rice had begun arriving yesterday, but I couldn't help but wonder how the hungry were going to cook the rice when there wasn't clean water and precious little in the way of dry fuel.

This is where the infrastructure expertise and equipment of international aid and disaster relief agencies – especially the Red Cross – come into play: besides medical equipment and food, they have the water purifiers, electricity generators, portable cooking stoves, canvas and plastic for tents and shelters and, as importantly, sanitation equipment (so the already contaminated water doesn't get worse). What is troubling is that the Burmese military is dragging its heels in letting them in.

I cannot understand such a callous regime with so little regard for the lives of its own people and is so hell-bent on defending its own pride and power – and insisting with continuing with its charade of a constitutional referendum.

What is heartening is news that the Burmese people are throwing their energies into the job of helping each other, especially in the clean-up. One report on the radio this morning spoke of Burmese Red Cross volunteers, themselves victims of the devastation, are putting on the Red Cross vests and going out to help. They need to be congratulated and supported. They need help.

I have found that BBC Online's coverage of the turmoil in Burma far more effective, extensive and thorough than ABC Online's – despite Burma's proximity to us, and the large number of Burmese refugees now settled here in Australia, the ABC hasn't managed to make such a major humanitarian disaster a priority for its online coverage (it is heavily reliant on audio and video pulled from the rest of the broadcaster's coverage, compared to the specially developed text content on the BBC's site). Pity.

If you want to keep track of the relief effort, the BBC Online is publishing the diary of Andrew Kirkwood, Save the Children's 'man in Burma'. They are also publishing eyewitness reports of the devastation (Warning, the reports are quite disturbing), and background analysis of the cyclone and whether the military are responding adequately to it.

In the aftermath of the Boxing Day Tsunami, as with a number of other recent disasters in the region, there were a large number of blogs and websites set up to track, report, and pool news of developments in the relief efforts, and to help channel people's desire to help. I'm going to look out for these in relation to Burma's tragedy and I would appreciate any tips or links for these in the comments. I will keep following this as closely as I can.

Meanwhile, flickrites MaiNaSukhumvit, luisrene and Azmil77 have photos of Cyclone Nargis's trail of destruction.

[The image above is of the peak of the storm in Yangon, witnessed by Azmil77.]

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Sweet corruption

Walking home from the train station last night, I caught the sweet stench of a rotting animal carcass. It was probably only a little animal, but it the smell was accentuated by the summer shower earlier that evening.

The way the post-shower dampness collided with the warmth of the summer evening brought many memories of my tropical childhood crashing home. There was the smell of rain and damp earth, I caught whiffs of rotting garbage and stagnant water, and, of course, that sickly sweet smell of corruption – the body of some small animal was rotting in the bushes or weeds growing beside the train station.

You know how it is: you catch a hint, then a whiff of something – it's alluring and you're sure you recognise it, you can't stop yourself from inhaling deeply to know for sure and then stop mid-breath to prevent that cloying sweet rotting from filling your lungs, and from deep inside your evolutionary memory of the danger of carrion, something says, 'I know what that is!'.

Such moments bring home the reality of animals dying and rotting – something I'm finding a fascination for.

In a society where hygiene and tidiness are valued and markers of civilisation, personified in the modern, clean city, we are so divorced from the corporeal reality of animals and their deaths. More generally, we are divorced from the way animals are bred, raised, killed and slaughtered for our tables, our sport, our entertainment and our companionship, to the extent that we are still shocked and dismayed when we come across a cat or possum killed by a car lying by the road, or a bird downed by stiff breezes or, worse, the neighbourhood cat. I know that I am.

In fact, we're often only reminded that we share the city with so many animals when we come across their dead bodies, sometimes mangled by the car that killed it, and complain that 'someone should clean that up'.

Riding to work on my bicycle has given me a few more opportunities to witness the rough justice of nature, something the tram capsule shields me from. Earlier this week, I cycled past a torn bird's wing, with the body it came from nowhere in sight. A couple of blocks further, I smelt some other decaying animal whose stench ripened with the growing morning heat.

Instead of letting go my impulse to shudder and turn my mind away from imagining the rotting body, I've allowed my imagination to dwell on these dead animals. This morbid fascination has started me thinking about the places dead animals and bodily corruption have been given in our culture – separated, feared, loathed, pitied, ignored, grieved – and what it means for our understanding of our ecology, our particular bio-regions or biological spaces, our habitats, and our relationships with animals.

Our habitats are being drastically damaged by human caused climate change (and other human threats to bio-diversity), and we're asked to consider the impacts of climate change in terms of future (and current) species extinctions. However, if we city dwellers cannot comprehend dead animals, and cannot pay attention to what the stench of decay actually means beyond a nuisance in our urban landscape, the I think that humans will continue to struggle to comprehend what we are doing to other animals. If we have difficulty facing the death of one animal, how do we comprehend – and stop – species extinction?

This is by no means an exclusive fascination, as I've discovered. Lots of other people have a greater interest – an obsession even – with dead and decaying animals, as any search for 'dead animals' or 'dead birds' on flickr will reveal. But I'm intrigued where this will go. I'm toying with the idea of setting up another blog about dead animals, where I will share news, stories, reflections, photos and more about animals' deaths – if only to reveal a little more about how they live, and how we live with them. I'd be interested to see if others would like to contribute to it – as part of a group blog. Let me know. Are you interested? Would you like to see a bit more dead animal?

[Image by john.nathaniel ]

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