Dot Dot Dot

stillness and being

2008-01-08T11:23:00.001+12:00

Driving to work today I noticed the world as though I was in it for the first time. Against the stillness of my seated driving position I was keenly aware of the movement and dynamism of the world around me, of the flowing thoughts and emotions that moved through me, of the flexing and relaxing of my muscles, and of the bony structure that held them up. And I noticed. The man leaning to his dog at the traffic lights, talking to him while his pooch grinned back, pink tongue lolling to the side and brown eyes gazing. I noticed the ratcheting sound of a steering wheel lock being opened and wedged in a parked car as I passed, I noticed, with pleasure, how long a traffic light stays green when you accept that it doesn’t matter if you miss it, and I noticed the agitation and aggression of a people in big cars—much like myself in unaware moments—a woman contorting her neck to check her face in her side mirror, driving with her arm hanging out of the window, or the crew-cutted ray-banned frog-man incensed that I passed him.

I imagined being merely a consciousness moving through this bustling world, an essence of stillness as the rest flashed by me. From there I could notice myself and my own neuroses and obsessions. I could notice how little things mattered and how little I was in a bigger and most amazing scheme. The drive escaped my attention completely—and all the worries I got into the car with evaporated as noticeable thoughts moving with the surrounding ebb and flow of other peoples’ and things. And for the first time in a long time, instead of a background hum of white noise, I noticed an underlying stillness that was alive and pulsing but at peace, poised but unmoving, a silence that anchored the buzzing energy. And it was, I thought, a great thing to notice on my way back to work.

Fish, Chips and the Meaning of Life

2007-12-19T19:19:00.000+12:00

There was a pool in our town. In the middle of a drought, when the ground was brown and dusty, peppered with upright stalks clinging determined, and the wind like from an oven howled from the north, hot, dry and thirsty. When the wells ran dry and the ground springs stopped offering up clear puddles of cold, rock-cleaned water, and all the tadpoles had long since dried out like prunes in the shrinking dams. Even then, the town had a pool.

We lived out of town, so the pool was an outing. It was 20 cents and had two pools, a baby pool warm like wee, and a big one. The shop sold Samboy chips in salt and vinegar and chicken, and Wizz Fizz and White Knights that would last all day once the chocolate wore off.

The only problem was, the pool was too cold to stay in it. Even in summer, even in the drought when the roads melted in the sun so that cars going too slowly left tire prints in the tar. The shallow end was bearable if you leapt and bounced and splashed, and squealed and got straight out again. But the deep end was so cold it was dark blue. And it was so deep you could dive off the third level, the highest and the bounciest level, of the diving board and not hit the bottom.

In the deep end everyone turned blue, and a person's ears would ache and push in on soft brains and temples, peoples' skulls would contract, and shrink from the water, squeezing their brains 'til they thought it might come out of their eyes or ears. Worse than an ice-cream headache it would follow ear canals slow and creeping right into the middle of a person's brain.

Normally so out of reach, the deep end came within my reach on a single flamboyant day. The older boys who were in high school tended to own the deep water. They used to dive in and get the iron grate that lived at the bottom like they were claiming a badge of street cred. Us younger ones always waited until the burning sun was gone and the deep end was deserted before we'd sidle up on the edge of the pool, clinging like mud crabs to the rail. All the way we'd go, inch by inch, until we could look down and see our purple feet dangling uselessly over the inky depths of the deepest part of the pool. Then we'd take big hypothermic gasps of air, let go of the rails and try to sink to the bottom, to the grate.

I don't think we ever sank that far. Until I learnt to swim in a fit of determination not to be laughed at in a pool in the desert hundreds of kilometres away where they generally found excuses not to let our sort in, well, until then, it never occurred to me not to kick your arms and legs. As soon as I'd let go of the rail and start to sink my arms and legs would get active, and I'd sink a little, but then generally just bob to the surface, looking down to the depths as if looking would take me there.

The time I touched the bottom I stopped kicking and sank. Fast. And I kept sinking, with my skull shrinking and my brain screaming. Looking up at the bright sky made me feel like I was still in the shallow end where I liked to lie on the bottom on my back. This time I watched the sky recede until I felt the softest 'thunk' on my reaching pointed right toe. 'Thunk' again on the other. At my feet, something cold, and hard, and rough. The grate. I swallowed a gasp and kicked my legs and flapped my arms until I surfaced, yelling, 'I tooooooouched it!!'

No-one believed me, so I tried again. Didn't make it. I tried again. Again, I didn't make it. I kept trying, getting bluer and bluer until I turned a mottled greeny purple colour. I lost the power of speech as my lips froze the way they do when you eat ice cream. I kept trying until the pool closed.

After the pool closed my sister and I rode home on our BMXs, in the shade of the ancient old gums beside the road, dodging the long freckled shadows they cast. It was a long ride. Normally we were boiling by the time we got home again. But this time I was still cold, still blue, as we dropped our bikes and thundered in the front door. Our Mum, who was always tired, always stressed, worried and gaunt, looked rested after her kid-free day. She took one look at me and suggested a trip to town for fish and chips.

It's hard to say just how much of a rare treat this was. In our town, full of people on welfare and in varying degrees of poverty, possibly with us amongst the poorest, fish and chips was the food of the gods. All that batter and grease and salt. It put meat and blubber on the bones and probably thickened the blood for winter. We'd sit with the paper as our plate, picking out the crispiest, saltiest bits first, and drowning the rest in butter, vinegar, and lemon salt.

Mum piled us in the car with the heater on, for me. While she ordered we stared through the glass wall at all the one cent lollies, and when it was ready I got to carry the package home, warm and steaming on my legs. Unwrapped at home it sat gleaming with yellow crusts of fried golden skins and sizzled batter as we sat in a reverent semi-circle around it, eating in decadent silence.

Maybe it was my frozen state jamming up my brain, or maybe it was jsut the utter bliss of the moment, but at that time, munching on the extra potato cake that was routinely thrown in to the mix, a question occurred to me.

'Mum'.
I stated.
'Why are we here? What is it about? This? All of this?'
Mum's eyes widened then narrowed a little, the corner of her mouth turned up just ever so slightly suppressing a smile reserved inappropriate earnestness.
'Sweetie. It's the fish and chips. We're here for fish and chips'.
'Oh.'
I said in an arched tone.

And right then, with my fingers starting to thaw wrapped around a succulent salty potato cake, my big toes still tingling from where I'd touched the grate, I thought perhaps that was the most profound moment of my life.

Home Invasions

2007-08-24T17:05:00.000+12:00

An email that was doing the rounds this week and was sent to the 7.30 Report:

Subject: NT Home Invasions

FYI- This has gone to the 7.30 report and several newspapers. please
circulate. Let me know what we can do.

Dear Kerry O'Brien and 7.30 researchers,
I have just returned from the Northern Territory. I want John Howard
to explain why house to house raids without warrants are being
conducted by the AFP in all the Alice Springs town camps.
I also want to know why at least two of the senior women who toured
major cities speaking out against a uranium waste dump on their
traditional lands have been raided by the AFP on warrants issued by a
Federal Magistrate in Canberra, their furniture slashed with knives,
belongings damages, laptops and mobile phones seized, and phones
tapped. I was told by one of the women that the warrant gave 12 hours
access to her home, and that she was told that the measures were
justified because of the security crackdown for APEC ministers. One
of those women is an elderly grandmother.
I have also been told by town camp residents that the AFP has set up
surveillance on all households in the town camps, and have
photographed without consent, every Aboriginal child in those town
camps. In the 1990s the AFP were successfully taken to court for
exactly the same violations in Redfern.
Please report on this disgraceful conduct, and pursue a full
explanation from the Howard Government.
regards,
Jennifer Martiniello
Member, Advisory Board
Australian Centre for Indigenous History,
Australian National University

Warning:
This email may contain creative spelling!

Jennifer Martiniello
e: kemarre@optusnet.com.au

--
http://www.fastmail.fm -
Faster than the air-speed velocity of an
unladen european swallow

Photos taken by the Willowra community in June

2007-08-19T13:47:00.000+12:00

Sorry - photographer unknown.

The Northern Territory Intervention Laws and the Howard Government's Latest Land Grab.

2007-08-18T17:22:00.000+12:00

The legislation that makes up the Federal government's 'intervention' into Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory, and which has been passed into law with both bewildering speed and almost unilateral political support, has ramifications for the future that can be viewed in the past. Northern Territory MP, and Indigenous leader, John Ah Kit, has described the legislation as genocidal, while Galarrwuy Yunupingu, Chairman of the Northern Land Council, recently described it as 'bigger, bigger than anything else that happened in the past'. Indeed, the legislation represents the most radical yet of the Howard government's reversal of the limited progress this country has made in the area of race relations for the last fifty years.

The passage of this legislation has been significantly aided yb the understandable and appropriate concern of Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples over the findings of the 'Little Children are Sacred' inquiry. But it has also been eased by an atmosphere of claims such as the Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Mal Brough's, that Indigenous communities are living in 'a fog of substance abuse'; or those by John Howard that Australia faces a national emergency in Indigenous communities equal in scale and devastation to that of Hurricane Katrina.

John Howard, who is notorious for his stone-like refusal to acknowledge any national responsibility for the aftermath of abuse of Indigenous children in State hands, has suddenly acknowledged national responsibility for the futures and conditions of the communities that Indigenous children are to grow up in. While this turnaround could be applauded, it is also the first clue that all is not well. A signal that was reflected in the initially tentative and wary, but nevertheless supportive response of Indigenous leaders.

Their wariness seems to have been well placed. The government has since shown clear indications that the fate of Indigenous children is not their prime motivation in acting. The Senate Committee drafting the legislation never called on the authors of the Sacred Children report, Pat Anderson and Rex Wild QC, to offer evidence despite the report being the catalyst for radical intervention. Moreover no use was made of their 97 recommendations, and the parliament had to vote so quickly on the 500 pages of legislation that few, including Mal Brough himself, were even able to read them in their entirity.

It is hard to see at face value how the main elements of this legislation, such as gutting the achievements of the 1975 Land Rights Act; forcing traditional owners to accept either five year leases or compensation for altered land title; and exemptions from the Racial Discrimination Act to do so, are in the long or short term interests of Indigenous children. So too, it's difficult to see how legislation based on minimal consultation with experts in the field, and no consultation with the leaders and members of the communities to be intervened upon; or the ludicrously heavy-handed use of military personnel to take over remote communities, could have any real impact on the systemic causes of abuse outlined either in the Sacred Children report, or in the countless reports that preceded it.

It is worth adding too, that an atmosphere where national leaders freely, and dishonestly, conflate hundreds of Indigenous communities into the one-brand-fits-all representation of chronic dysfunctionality; universal acceptance, acquiescence or promotion of child abuse; and constant and ubiquitous substance abuse, doesn't seem to create a very safe nation for the futures of Indigenous children.

It doesn't take a sharp political wit to come to the conclusion that the federal government's national emergency and sudden attention to Indigenous affairs serves other agendas. In election years, wedge-issues involving the hip pocket or race have had proven mileage, and when economic booms are busting, interest rates are rising, and terror is more readily recognised as being caused by 'us', the Coalition of the Willing, rather than 'them'; the race card, mixed with protecting the 'innocence of children', as Howard put it, must seem like a backable winner.

The agendas being met by this intervention legislation seem many, but the ideological undercurrent is probably more sinister. Land held under the Land Rights Act is freehold title. Like any owner of freehold title the owners of this land are able to control who gains entry to, or trespasses on, their property, a right manifested in the permit system. This right of veto, which both Indigenous community leaders and the Northern Territory police have said actually assists in the control of sexual offenders, and drug, alcohol and porn runners, is inexplicably abolished under this legislation. Interestingly, with it goes Indigenous communities' ability to veto mining exploration on their land.

In addition, traditional owners of towns and towncamps will now be forced into leasing their land to the government for five years, ostensibly to build houses, in an enactment that Howard promises is not a land grab. Any 'disturbance of title', as he so inoccuously puts it, will be justly compensated. It's difficult not to notice the coincidental twin headlines of the last week. Amidst reports of the Howard government rushing this legislation through the parliament, there was also news of the poorly safeguarded deals to sell uranium to India. In another coincidence pointed out by environmental engineer, Gavin Mudd in June this year, much of the ground covered in this legislation is either loaded up with minerals - such as uranium - or else is considered 'empty' enough to dump nuclear waste that no-one else in the world will take.

Indigenous leaders around the country have been quick to point out that snatching control over Aboriginal freehold land without the checks and balances potentially offered by the Racial Discrimination Act will be historically repetitive in limiting the extent to which communities are able to be functionally self-determining. The flow-on effect of this for cultural and social self-determination can be predicted if the past is any indication. Moreover, the increased 'micro-management' of communities and the mainstreaming of programs such as the CDEP without any apparent concern to safeguard those that have been successful (such as those supporting many artists and art centres), also seems potentially destructive and badly thought out at best.

In light of the potential that accompanies this legislative return to the heavy-handed paternalism and management of the Assimilation programs of 1930s-50s, which fit snugly into the legal definition of genocide, John Ah Kitt's description of this legislation as genocidal seems more solidly grounded in historical precedent. The waves of crocodile tears promoting protection mirrors past good-intent in ways that might have made the hardest ideologues and architects of Australia's Assimilation and child removal programs proud.

I don't think there'd be many who would dispute that the protection of children -indigenous or non-indigenous - from predatory sexual and physical assault should be a national priority. But this legislation is likely to do little to alleviate the pressures faced by remote communities, and even less to generate the kind of determined, informed, and considered response needed to raise the awareness or capacity necessary for change. Moreover, its removal of safeguards against the kind of disastrous 'management' of Indigenous peoples that plagues the past, will instead serve to intensify and perpetuate wider pressures on remote communities, only to weaken them further.

Amidst all of this, the fact that this legislation has the capacity to free up valuable land from the burden of Indigenous ownership, while enforcing the economic and social mainstreaming of remote communities shouldn't go amiss. That Howard and Brough seem to have used the most unspeakable suffering of children as a veil for pushing other agendas is cynical and morally vacuous, but historically unoriginal.

Tracey Banivanua-Mar

insomniac with jetlag #3 and a dog in a footy jumper

2007-07-31T11:00:00.000+12:00

The elusive eight hours sleep. I got 'em. Bed at 8, up at midnight, bed again at 2, up again at 6 - for some reason I'm still on London time, but at least I'm sleeping!

Okay, that's the boring stuff out of the way. So when I woke up I went for a run with Angie-the-exceptionally-wimpy-but-cute-mut to the park full of ex-cons, mad old bastards and displaced little hello-kitty girls with their little white yappers. It's a curious place when the sun's coming up. The creek makes bubbling gurgles as it skips on its way past gangs of water birds of every kind. These fat, waddling, big-footed birds at that time of morning are surprisingly busy. Starting the day, they chatter, quack and squeak, and trip over their big water-bird feet as they head to the creek to bathe and duck below its surface leaving their tails and feet waggling in the air. I wouldn't bathe in that creek. It's grey and smells like a washing machine. So the scene at daybreak here is kind of rocky wildness and avian bliss meets storm water drain and urban decay.

On our run, Angie and I ran past a lady in a black balaclava with two big black dogs on leashes; a man with a tatooed face, a beanie with a pom-pom and a snarling, leaping, half-crazed german shepherd that he hung on to for dear life; and an old man out for a jog running so slowly he was basically going heel-to-toe, heel-to-toe. The best of the bunch tho' was a little man, shuffling through the trees in his old clapped-out bomber jacket, fusty full-of-farts tracksuit pants and old black beanie. He was running, head down and brow furrowed, his hands clutched up near his chin like the old boxer, or maybe just old fighter, that judging by his 's' shaped nose, he clearly was. You wouldn't mess with him is what I'm saying, even tho' he was in his 60s or 70s. His dog? It was a little white, curly-haired, pug-faced, toe-tapping yapper, that was skipping in circles around him in the wet grass grinning from little flapping ear to little flapping year, showing his tiny little pearly whites with the smile that dog's aren't supposed to have. The dog I should say also had a jumper on - a sleeveless, knitted western-bulldogs jumper. So, this is what the world looks like after eight hours sleep? Lovin' it!

insomniac with jetlag #2 - sleep?

2007-07-30T07:51:00.000+12:00

I'm going to regret keeping these posts I think. So boring. It's been two weeks and three days. Still waking at 3 in the morning... maybe I always will. The night before, no sleep at all. The night before that? Five hours and twenty-three minutes. And before that, four. I could list the hours and minutes of sleep I've had every night since I got home, and I could chart the rest of my life on my receipt of hourly units of sleep - but that would be sad.

I'm beginning to lose that stiff upper lip, positive, silver-lining spotting approach to my state of sleeplessnes. It's been a long, long, long, long, long, long time since I was properly rested. And I'm not sure what's worse... not getting to sleep, or having it stolen from me. When I wake in the the night, at that second I wake up, sleep is gone, utterly and completely gone. Within a moment the deepest, longest, darkest slumber is ripped away, hauled in on some invisible pulley, by some invisible hand. And it leaves me exhausted, cheated and mournful, lying there in the dark with eyes wide open, wondering how it can be that I'm so catagorically awake. Not drowsy or groggy, no remnants of sleep to shake off or surrender to, just bright, goggle-eyed awakeness. Not bloomin fair!

insomniac with jetlag

2007-07-25T07:43:00.000+12:00

I've been up since 3 this morning for the fifth time in a week. I get up. I eat. Drink tea. Sit at my computer and write and read the mountain of emails in my inbox - which after only one day is overflowing with demands for instantaneous attention. My eyes feel hot and gritty and when I close them they water. It's cold and so silent my ears are ringing. My mind is clear - crystal clear. Until about lunchtime when I'll slump, and I wont be able to keep my eyes open. I'll get that jetlaggy thing where you blink and in that split second when you close your eyes your brain shuts off and you're asleep. Your head bobs forward, nod, and you're awake again with your eyes pulling down willing you to blink again. The insomnia of jetlag - sleeplessness without the speedy buzz of normal insomnia that gets you through the day. It's Day 12 of my return. I must get back to normal soon. The fog's cleared, but for the occasional lapse into stationary inertia in the middle of a purposeful deed. My appetite's adjusted. It's just the body clock... soon. It must be over soon...

Island girls

2007-04-25T14:49:00.000+12:00

I stand on the hill and before me a dance troupe, performing the ubiquitous haka, is on show, on display, but in control. I revel in a feeling of blending in. Everywhere, in this place where I am used to standing out, everywhere are faces like mine. Almost but not quite. Everywhere are people like me, caught somewhere in between what white people like to say is 'two cultures'. But for us in the middle we're stuck only between two expectations that make sense of us, for us.

"Look at their beautiful Island hair - I love how they grow it long. Look at the beautiful Island girls with their hair pulled back." She says, as though speaking a thought.

"Sooo... Islander!" She says it again.

It leaves me feeling, with a sense of wonder, that I am being made privy to what white people say when they think they're alone. And she says it to me.

It's then that all I begin to see are people who are 'real'. The more I see, the more I feel like a thumb beginning to smart. All around me are people who know who they are, who grew up with a culture that matches their skin. They're not stuck between two worlds, they're straddling them. Being stuck between two worlds is all about being a mis-match. When your world doesn't match your colour. I'm brown but grew up white. But being brown I'll never be white. And being white of course, I'll never be brown.

When I get home from watching the dancing I stand in front of the mirror and pull my hair back and pin it tight on the top of my head. It makes my eyes look smaller than they should be. And it makes my Island-nose and my cheeks look broader. Mis-matched and strange. My hair is too short so the bun is small and mean. I look at it on the side. Do I look real?

This morning I sit out in the sun. Ten minutes and my skin has darkened two shades. At home they are buying skin 'brighteners'. Ten years ago they were called skin 'lighteners'. My cousins look at me and see white, money, and distance. I look at them and see belonging, identity and beautiful dark skin. So I get as much sun as I can. It makes me feel real to be brown. And then at least I can fool some white people and perhaps through them make myself feel brown. But only just. It's a tenous grip that can be ripped, ripped away by a focussed gaze.

Swimming Darkly

2006-03-29T09:44:00.000+12:00

There are days that seem unbearably thin. These days seem to be there only because they happen for everyone else, and sometimes they seem to be there just to spite you. But there are the days that are yours. That happen for you. These are the days you notice the sparkle of dew, the angles of sunlight, the scent of flowers and all the cliches of living a life. Today was one of those days. Walking the same track I walk nearly every day with my dog, along a creek that's really a glorified storm water drain, I noticed all those things. On the bad days I notice the rubbish clogging up the creek, the flotsam hanging from the trees where the water rises fast and furious during the rains. In the dips and peaks of the creek bed I notice the stench of pollution and the miasma that gathers at dawn full of flying bugs and microscopic beads of the black creek water. On such days the weed below the surface of the water appears to me as some alien mutant species grown from the pollution. The weed is thick like a bullfrog's neck, still and lurking, waiting beneath the glassy surface of the still still creek.

But on the good days it's a different place. The clogging rubbish blends in to the background of lush vegetation that overflows into the creek from the banks, the flotsam in the trees a strange decoration symbolising those exciting times when the water's up and we can all marvel at how high it got - my god, it was so high it left rubbish in the trees! The dips and peaks offer views and entry into the lingering mist of dawn that nearly always catches the sun as it surfaces in the east. The weed below the surface seems more a sign of life below the lingering stench of dirty water, and it makes me happy that the water is clear enough that I can actually see it. Everywhere the creek is fighting back. Nature, or earth, grass, vegetation is pushing back against the dumped tires, shopping trollies, boots, books, chip packets and milk cartons.

There's a bridge I cross over which hovers above a section of the creek which collects in a corner creating something of a mini-lake. It's deep here. The bottom is not visible and from the bridge the creek is just an expanse of dark brown depth, animated on its edges by lake weed, spear grass and some willow trees. Ducks float, and from this angle you can see that the serenity of their surface gliding is underpinned by frenetic paddling - front to back side to side. This morning I stop to watch them for a bit. And that's when I see it. For the first time in the thousands (surely! hundreds probably) of times I've stood and looked from this view, I see them. Shadows at first, but on closer inspection! Fish! Huge humungous enormous fish. Fish, as long as my arm. Fat and slow, dark and gray, slicing slowly, in curves and arcs through the water. First one. Then another. And as though I've finally cracked the art of seeing in three dimensions I see the water is full of these enormous fat fish swimming darkly, swimming slowly through water that seems so deep with lifeless murk. Fish! in a creek!

Angie

2006-03-25T12:23:00.000+12:00

Angie. Where could a person start when introducing Angie. Angie is a dog. A black dog. When she goes for a walk her tail conducts unseen orchestras as she trots high with bliss in her step. In the morning by the creek when the sun glances off her *very* shiny coat, red, yellow and even purple are scattered through the shine.

She doesn't like dogs though. Most dogs. Big dogs. And small dogs. She will tuck her tail in, down hard and tight against her herself and she'll spin madly, hissing like a cat, to stop the dog getting behind her. She bares not her fangs but the front of her mouth. When she thinks she's being attacked she lets out a scream. Not a yelp, not a bark, but a scream, long and unbroken. That's when dogs usually walk away, and if they could do it, I'm sure they'd be rubbing their forehead in puzzlement at such a strange creature.

But then there are the dogs that pretend to ignore her. She likes them. She likes manners. She'll walk past, and if they ignore her, or simply stop and watch her, she launches low on to her front paws. Butt and tail high in the air, head aligned with teh floor. If the dog joins her, she'll run, round and round, and round and round, head high, joy in her teeth. And anyone watching would swear, that if dogs could do it, she'd be most definitely grinning from ear to ear.

So that's Angie. High spirited, strange, and brimful with character. And smart. She interacts as though she can talk. When you talk to her, she cocks her head. If she's asked to do something she'll figure it out by trial, eyes wide, mouth open and grinning. That's Angie, my crazy, sensitive, funny little companion who lies next to me when I write. Who tries to talk to me when she's bored. Who kicks her water bowl around when it's empty until it's filled. Who lies on her back and throws socks in the air and catches them with her paws which she uses like mits. Who's greedy like a garbage dog. Who hates dogs and is scared of cats. That's Angie.

Before the War

2005-10-05T15:47:00.000+12:00

She didn't die alone. She had the nursing staff with her. I hope someone held her hand when she went. Even in her state of absence she seemed to like that security. She always clutched back and held on hard. Perhaps some bodily memory of times that were happpier, more unsure, younger and more vibrant caused the muscles of her hand to hold back when she needed to be safe. Bodily memories of before the war. I've seen photos of that time. Her with her hair in those cool forties rolls, shorts above the knee, and strapped in belted-up corsetted casual wear. Him free and easy beside her, holding her hand ever so lightly with the tips of his fingers. She was beautiful and she was smiling. She looked down in this photo, a big smile on her face, and head cocked slightly to one side. Flirting I think. In later photos there's someone else there, not him. The German Friend they called this other one. In some pictures it's her and him, in others the German Friend and him, or just the German Friend by himself. In this one the German is behind the camera and there's just the two of them. He's looking at the camera, a crooked smile and creased eyes. They'd been hiking I've been told. The German was their hiking friend. I think they flirted her and the German. Even when she told me, her face weathered by the war that was yet to come, and the years of sadness afterwards, even then the coy smile would return. She was a different person to the one I knew. They both were. They were the kind of people that got married on a whim the day war was declared. He, a member of the communists, (which got him kicked out of home) and smoking since he was ten, would bluff his way into the prestigous ranks of the fighter pilots by pretending to be a toff and inventing some toff school. She was a toff, but head over heels in love with this slightly cheeky man that made her laugh so. I wonder whether it was the laughter that attracted them - their wicked sense of humour. They would see so much in their time, lose so much and change so much. But then, before the war, they were as carefree as they would ever be. And I wonder now if that's where she flew to in those final years and if she died reliving a time of such great joy, before the war when they still held hands.

Wondering

2005-10-04T21:00:00.000+12:00

It's an amazing thing how when someone dies you find yourself reaching for all those cliches you've heard before. It's an amazing thing how much they capture what you feel, the questions you have, the emotions that well up, the guilt, sorrow, anger. So it feels like a sad and tired cliche to say that when an old person dies it's such a bitter-sweet sorrow. Instead of mourning the life that wasn't led I find myself mourning the life that was led. I find myself wondering if that's all it was about. I find myself wondering how it is that someone can make it through their life and die alone in a hospital room, to be buried at a tiny funeral with not more than four people in attendance. It seems unnecessarily cruel that a life led should end with the twisted foetal curling of the body that comes with dementia, with the stench of death, of failing organs and tired rancid breathing. While once I thought it a blessing that going demented once the love of your life has passed away and left you all alone, now I wonder. I wonder if she ended her life screaming inside her head for help, screaming inside her head for her life back, for her limbs, her mind and her dignity. She talked to three people while she was dying, all of them inside her head. All of them a distant memory to all but her reaching brain. And she said for months in this conversation, 'I want to go home now' 'Yes, yes, you can go home now' 'But you can't scratch you know' 'Oh but I itch so' 'No no' 'Help me, oh, help me' 'Do you love me?' Over and over this went inside her head for hours and hours and months and months. The same conversation with people so far away she talked to them from the step of her carriage. Had she regressed? Or was she inside a book she read? We could write it off as the ramblings of a distant floating mind. But what was she trying to say? and was she content there? Her face was scrunched, pinched and pained when I saw her, and she scratched her head and her back, scratching with such force from her frail bony arms, that she made herself bleed, and the blood caught under her fingernails. I'd like to think she's up there with him now, sipping her vermouth with her feet up and her dogs in her lap. I'd like to think she's not alone anymore and that she's been set free. And I hope with all my heart that that's not it for her. That it didn't end with that bitter nasty end. So comes the biggest cliche of all, that hope and desperate conviction that a life lived so hard and in so much sorrow and pain surely must be rewarded with some peace.

blogging

2005-09-16T15:34:00.000+12:00

Every 7.4 seconds, a blog is created. That's 12,000 new blogs a day, with 275,000 posts a day, or 10,800 an hour. Wow. And here's me thinking I was talking to someone. I kinda like the idea that I'm just chatting to myself, but it's like chatting to myself in a box. I don't really know if there's anyone out there listening. So i better make it good. Hmm. But that's more like chatting to myself in a box in a room full with 275,000 boxes, in a building with 12,000 rooms... wow! The chances of being heard are pretty slim. That's great. Keep talking, be free, and keep talking. Is this like the million monkeys scenario?

weather

2005-09-16T14:07:00.000+12:00

Sunshine peaking through the clouds. It's got a kick in it already and it's only September. I can feel it in the morning as I zoom to work on my bike, flying by the railway lines, black jacket flapping behind me more like a sail than protection from the wind. And the sun hooks on, sinks it's baby teeth into the black and releases it's warmth. Nice at first. I can feel it, like Chi, warming my back, spreading through my spine up, then down then wrapping tight around my body. Every time a particularly clawed gust of cold wind swipes across my path ever so slightly adjusting my bike, it whips away that warmth. The sun is there tho, then it's gone, then it's back and it's life spreads again across my back and down my arms. About halfway to work it gets too hot. I sweat. The jumper under my jacket feels more clammy than warm, and I start to think, perhaps that's enough of the sun for now. Ask and the Universe says yes. Behind a cloud the sun slides and the ride is perfect once again. A great day today I think. Great day for weather.