Category Archives: Lehan Winifred Ramsay

Catch the Bird, Catch the Bird

24 Thursday Mar 2011

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Catch the Bird, Catch the Bird

Story and Painting by Lehan Winifred Ramsay

Things break down. They break down badly. And whether it’s a small problem or a huge one, that breakdown devastates basic functions. Every small thing becomes impossible. Not just impossible, but each separate function clumps together with all the other functions forming a large unmoveable obstacle.

At first things are a dark hole. When it’s possible to think, the thought is: help me!
Help me help me help me.  And you wait for that, you wait for something outside of yourself to come and put things right. And it doesn’t happen. Anger, frustration, despair. That’s disaster.  And then something else clicks in. A straining to recover.

A tiny bird, a tiny hope. Almost impossible to view with the naked eye. The bird ruffles its feathers and catches your eye. It moves, it darts from one place to another. That’s hope. Catch the bird. Catch the bird.

The Man Who is Starting Something

14 Monday Mar 2011

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The Man Who is Starting Something

 

Painting and Story by Lehan Winifred Ramsay

Rumination. It is a word that describes the act of “dwelling on the negative”. So the theory goes, there are many people who spend the large part of their days doing this, and so have a perpetually anxious state. It could even be called dwelling in the negative, because negative thoughts locate one’s entire world in these negative thoughts. The Rumination-sayers tell us that rumination is best allotted a time of thirty minutes of so, in which doom can run freely and unchecked.

The Man Who is Starting Something has come from another country. For one reason or another, in one way or another. Should you ask him about it, his thoughts will go there and stay there. Should he manage to wrest those thoughts away from there there is little sustenance for them in the new world. If beloved things are absent, they are absent. But this rumination is a bad habit, and so it must be fought. He must try to dwell on the positive. He is from another land, so the culture around him sits quietly and lightly, not fighting for his attention as his own would. He has few friends, few family, few ties to distract him. If he conquers his rumination he will find little satisfaction in anything but to be driven.

The Man Who is Starting Something will pick up the complete set of Roblocks and pack them neatly into his consciousness. No cries from the children will bother him if they are not written in the commands of his mechanical functions. If the blocks say eat he will eat, but eating will not become a pursuit of cultural connection. His creative functions will be entirely tied to the pursuit of something he wants to have or do. All else like a second language. In his head when he needs it, far away when he doesn’t. The Man Who is Starting Something is a migrant even if he is not, because he is sustained like all migrant-likes on an understanding of a life that is no longer there.

Building Block Monster

11 Friday Mar 2011

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Building Block Monster

Painting and Story by Lehan Winifred Ramsay

Small autonomous monster blocks will move in the same direction until a small pebble on the ground, a twig, a rough patch, sets them off course. For a long time they will appear to be in formation. Eventually they will veer wildly. The ant sits for what feels like a long, long time, watching them, occasionally nudging one or the other until it moves back into it’s path. But the small monster blocks are reliable only at accomplishing their small tasks. Working together is beyond them, and after consultation with the Ant Elders, the ant has formed a new plan. The small monster blocks will have to nudge and nestle themselves up and over each other block until they form one block. The Building Block Monster. Not yet a social being, but an automated device capable of more complex behaviour.  Capable of social behaviour and limited problem solving. Each block able to mimic the commands of the ant, one block correcting other blocks. One central control containing hierarchical ordering. The Building Block Monster is a RoBlock.

The Small Monster Blocks

03 Thursday Mar 2011

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Small Monster Building Blocks

Painting and Story by Lehan Winifred Ramsay

The ant with his whole world carried on his back struggles at life. The world is heavy, the only way to make it easier is to make blocks. Each of these blocks contains a task that needs to be done. Publicity is a block, keeping the house clean is a block, preparing classes is a block, the maintenance of pets is a block. Once each of these blocks is constructed and set in motion, it will carry on automatically, not halted by anything but the largest obstacle. In this way the ant has learned the use of tools, extending his six legs with autonomous blocks. Small monster blocks.

A Cloud Across His Face

27 Sunday Feb 2011

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A Cloud Covers His Face (2)

Painting and Story by Lehan Winifred Ramsay

Every ant we see is carrying a small world on his back. You didn’t know? It’s easy enough to tell once you do. Every so often they slow down a little and stretch out their aching back. That’s all. One tiny gesture. Go outside and find one, and and watch for a while.

We don’t see the ants that don’t carry a world. They haven’t fallen yet. Still up in the clouds. Golden hued. Not yet afraid of heights.

The Hanged Man

23 Wednesday Feb 2011

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The Hanged Man

Painting and Story by Lehan Winifred Ramsay

Here’s what I learned, in my ant struggles. It is not enough to give up. You need to be mercilessly diligent in your efforts to not give up. Sure, it may seem like an eternal hassle to get that phone company to do something about your problem. And it will be: that’s not the point. The point is that as long as there is something that can be done, there will be something that you can do. No more frustration at the impossibility of everything. You need to turn each dumb-arse impasse of service into a breathtaking new canyon of possibilities with a far horizon. Yes, we’re talking doco-more. A Soft Bank of them to land on. The Aye! Phone.

Start at the bottom, with the first point of contact, and continue with it until it takes you up a step. Understand that that step has been introduced merely to give you a place to step down to. Step down if you must. Then start again. This time you might find another step. Take that. Understand that it’s merely a way to provide you with a chute by which to slide down to the bottom. Slide down if you must. Each time you meet the impasse, try to get a sense of what’s ahead. Before you go down again I mean. Next time, aim for the other side.

What you discover after a time, if you don’t get frustrated, if you choose not to see a wall, is that there are probably going to be ways, and some people some times are going to get along a bit. Your goal cannot be the fulfilment and resolution of the original problem. Most likely you are not going to manage that. Is that important? You need a new goal: understanding and entering the system. It’s a different kind of win. But much more entertaining. By all means Hang. But do a bit of hacking while you’re about it.

Ant Coronaries

19 Saturday Feb 2011

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Ant World (5)

 

Painting and Story by Lehan Winifred Ramsay

Computer networks are ant networks. Computers are comprised of a trillion ants, all doing their business together. China is an ant country. Ants work well when they work together. Wikileaks uses the power of an ant; one ant to challenge a system. That one ant merely happens to know where the off switch is, and becoming irritated by the misuse of his own function determines to use it. It stands to reason that one well-placed and dissatisfied ant is now capable of such powerful activity, because we have followed the ants into their world but we meddle more than they. It only takes one ant to notice a weakness. DON’T DO THAT! the leader might say. They might know that the switch shouldn’t be toyed with. But they cannot be aware of how big that switch is going to make things. Because we don’t know. We are not in our world any more. We are in Ant World. No one person, no group of people make a wikileaks happen. It’s beyond the control of we. Our mobile phones, our cars, our refrigerators come now with computers, and computers, when they meet up in the Ant World, are seven degrees away from our nuclear power plants and our military facilities. Ant World. Wikileaks provides us with a new window into Ant World. If we are smart, we will be thinking. How is the wikileaks effect going to spontaneously manifest itself in our Ant World? We could be in for a bumpy ride.

Apologies to Lehan, this should have been published prior to Between Two Worlds

It’s now or never.

16 Wednesday Feb 2011

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It’s Now or Never
I make six hundred photocopies of my school flyer to insert in the newspapers of the next suburb. But my car in the carpark is sitting on a bed of ice, and the wheels simply spin without moving. I am a little pleased because I feel anxious driving on the ice of February. I set out on foot. Down the road I meet Mr Kitamura walking his dog. I ask him where the newspaper distribution office is, and he points me in the right direction. It is a walk of 25 minutes, but I am outside and the weather is fine, and I feel like I have taken a step.
The flyers go out, but the phone does not ring. I am in a low-pressure pattern holding pattern. What if my six hundred flyers don’t bring me any students, what then? Things are no better for having gone to the newspaper distribution office. I take some more to a gallery. Maybe things will be okay. But if there is no clear result it feels like there is no step taken. I take some more to a cafe. The owner is not there, the cafe is locked. Then things will not be okay. I will have to do another thing tomorrow.
This is the way it is for the anxious. Maybe the weather will improve. And then maybe I will go outside.
This is the way it is for making something happen. Even if I have taken a step today, I will take another tomorrow.
One student came today. She is elderly, and she reads the lessons I give her over and over, determined to make them stick in her head, but she doesn’t think that they do. She seems worried too, by the lack of noticeable change in her. I take out an Elvis Presley song. Her eyes light up. She loves Elvis Presley and she has this song in her house. Two things have connected for her. This is the difference, for her, between taking a step and standing still.
No students come to my painting lesson. So I paint a picture. I have no money, but I do have time. Make a good plan and then begin it. Do what you say you want. It’s Now or Never.

 

Between Two Worlds

12 Saturday Feb 2011

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Painting and Story by Lehan Winifred Ramsay

When the ant falls from his Ant world, that world rolls down after him. It has to. How can an ant still experience his world from so far away? He’s looking around him when beside him it drops and lies quietly on the ground, catching its breath. Now it’s a small world. A humiliated, humbled world, vastly reduced so that now he can see it. It doesn’t have to explode in some fantastic media-driven inferno, though that happens to some ants. It can just – fall from a low height, thud onto the ground, bounce a little, and then lie there, crumbling a bit at the edges. Now the ant knows the graying long-in-the-tooth truth. His world is not so hot. Didn’t hold up, and when it went the sun didn’t stop shining, didn’t take any notice at all. Now he’s gonna have to carry it. Knowing that it isn’t THE world, but only his. Ant World. But how interesting it is. He looks up at the sky, and it’s as if his eyes have turned to prisms, there are worlds everywhere. One world for every ant. All a bit similar, all a bit different. Then his eyes uncross and they’re gone. He looks around to see if he still has the correct number of legs.

Ant Musings

05 Saturday Feb 2011

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Ant Musings (3)

Story and Painting by Lehan Winifred Ramsay

There’s a card in the Tarot called The Hanged Man. The hanged man is stuck up a tree, tied upside-down, unable to escape. If the hanged man stops struggling, makes use of his time observing the world upside-down, then it will be time spent well. I don’t really know what kind of benefit I could receive by spending years as an ant. I do know what I want, perhaps that’s a start? I want to find problems that need to be fixed. I’m quite good at it, and I figure that a ten-percent clean-up will often solve the problem, without too much effort, and a twenty-percent clean-up will bring out new possibilities. I’m convinced of it. I also believe that many errors are simply work in need of a little revision. Up to the present, I’ve taken a hands-on approach, so most of the problems I’ve found are my own. I’m always happy to share my considerations of other problems. Nobody much wants to hear about problems from an ant though.