September 11th, The Beach House
I wake to a perfect morning. Last night's grey drizzle has miraculously evaporated into a morning just like all those other perfect Spring mornings when I have woken up here over the last thirty years. Postcard blue and radiant. The birds are tweetling and cheepcheeping among the banksias and sheoaks as they always do. The familiar birdsong spirals me me into a sort of endless present moment charged with memory.
The sound of the sea permeates this place. Beneath an unblemished sky, the ocean heaves & thumps dully against the land, a sound that’s both restless and peaceful. There is a bright glare of white light off the water from the recently-risen sun. And the silhouettes of spikey pandanus. I sit on the verandah in the sun at the outdoor table in my usual spot
When I am here I never wish to be anywhere else. This is my place. Last night at dusk as we crossed the Maroochy River and saw Mount Coolum from the car, F said: ‘I feel like we are going home’. He was born in this house. When we finally arrive, unlock the door and walk in, he says ‘Ah, the familiar smell’
On the bench there are notes, thankyous, small gifts from various friends who have stayed here during the five months since i was last here. People now back in Melbourne, Paris, Maleny. A little painting from S of her family frolicking in the waves. I’ve put it up on the wall.
Someone has left a shaving brush in the bathroom and there is a bottle of shampoo labelled in German in the shower. Somebody’s forgotten board shorts hang in the laundry. There is a chip in the glass shelf over the sink ( which E called to apologise about) Peanut butter and coffee, not brands we buy are stored on a shelf where I never put them. And someone has tidied up my saucepan cupboard, and the shameful drawer full of plastic containers. Thankyou, whoever you were.
We are only here for the weekend. Now it’s 9 p.m. Dinner dishes are washed, bench wiped, day’s busy activities finished. F is in bed. He earned $ 35 at the market busking. All in small change , which he has organised into neat piles on the table.
I lie in the hammock under the stars out on the deck, bathing in the sound of that big old ocean. That wild, eternal, mysterious, watery womb, for which I can never find words that don’t sound cliched.
My mother wanted to die here in this house because she had heard that the last of the senses to fade away when we die is hearing. She wanted to die with the sound of the ocean carrying her off into the great mystery.
It didn’t turn out quite like that for her, sadly. Though she did quite a bit of her dying process here - up until the last couple of weeks.
Lying out in the hammock, looking back at the house, it’s lights glowing, it occurs to me that this has been my place now, for longer than it was Mum’s. Swaying in the hammock as the breeze barely touches the banksia leaves around me, I have the thought that this is where I would like to die. I’ve never considered the question before, of where I’d like to die. It feels slightly spooky. And of course the decision may not be mine to make. Oh dear, I’m talking about death again...
Chatting with someone at Eumundi Market this morning, we talked about how people our age are starting to feel that the upkeep of their large rural properties is too much. ‘Downsizing’ and ‘Moving closer to town’ is a bit of a trend. We are starting, in our fifties, to map out the path between here and ...the end of the path.
Walking around Z’s property with her after the market, looking at the trees she planted ten years ago, which now form a small shady forest, I say ‘ It’s a miracle, isn’t it , when you think about it, how the life energy just surges up from the earth’ I’m always ready with such words of wonder, but rarely found with hands in the dirt. I’d like to get my hands in the dirt more often - they seem to end up at his keyboard instead
A blue/ purple/white/black velvety butterfly lands on my wrist for an instant then flitters off into the foliage. A blessing! Later in our walk, down along the billabong we chat about husbands, children, trees. Past the paperbarks and back up to the open green paddock, we come across a dead ibis lying on the grass. Freshly killed and bloody. A fox perhaps, or a wild dog. Death again, after only two paragraphs. Our children rush down from the house to inspect.
At the juice stall at the market today I thought of Jen who started the business and worked there for many years. She died suddenly a few weeks ago. Mid fifties. I felt sad, standing there waiting for my juice, remembering her.
The new people who bought the business a year or so ago offer new combinations like watermelon strawberry and orange. They do not know my face or my name or that I never have ice. Waiting for my carrot and apple juice & F’s watermelon strawberry and orange juice I see Jen’s bright face, her purple and pink and orange clothes, and hear her croaky voice. She came to one of my writing courses and surprised me with her sensitive turn of phrase. I want to say to the new people, ’Isn’t it sad?’ and ‘I miss her’ etc.
But then I remember not everyone wants to chat about death, especially while they have a queue of people waiting to be served. I take our juices back to the table where our friends are chatting and laughing and getting outraged about various political things in the Sydney Morning Herald, just like they always do.
Back at the beach house, F spends hours after dinner putting all our photos of Europe into an album. I went out this arvo to the awful big convenient shopping centre and got them all printed. I’ve always been the one who puts family photos in albums. Now I’m happy to hand the job over to him - he embraces the project with enthusiasm, including hand written captions (The feri driver let me steer. A narrow ali in Venise, the cabel car, the wite peacocs) There we were in Rome, Paris, by the lake, in the chateau etc. In the middle of a heatwave, in the middle of northern hemisphere summer, which is now winding down.
F & I have agreed that we will go nowhere tomorrow , spend all day ‘just lazing about’
Sunday 12th
Some of the big rocks on the little goat track up to the top of the headland have fallen and broken in two. The familiar handholds and footholds are gone. The new configuration is rubbley, raw, exposed. There is fresh yellow and pink inside the split rocks. I guess the big rains made the earth soggy, the rocks loosened... Why am I so surprised, so put out? Had I forgotten that everything changes, mountains crumble, and cliffs are always in a slow motion process of tumbling into the ocean?
The headland, where I have sat a thousand times in the last thirty years is at the top of the track. I sit in the sparse shade of the sheoaks. Today I do not meditate or focus on breathing and sensation, or visualise anything. Today I just sprawl on a warm rock in the early Spring sunshine and hang out and try not to ‘do’ anything.
I don’t scramble down to the pool and the cave, because my lower back has been giving me a bit of grief lately. I imagine getting stuck down there, unable to clamber back up, tide coming in. Like an old person. Then I think ‘What if my back never gets better, and I never feel confident enough to go down there again?” A sobering thought. Meanwhile, I try to move my body in a wholistic non-effortful Feldenkreis-y way.
I’m experimenting with not pushing myself. I’ve spent a lifetime trying to be good, trying to make things happen. Being disciplined, making myself do stuff. I feel exhausted just thinking about all that bloody effort.
Even as this wise old me knows all about ‘trusting’ and ‘allowing’ etc, there’s another desperate, driven lunatic part that believes the world will end, I will die, everything will fall into chaos and disaster, if i don’t go on exerting myself ..sigh...
I felt a little resistance to going for my morning walk this morning. Staying in bed, reading Thomas Hardy was quite an attractive alternative. Yes I’m ploughing my way through Far From the Madding Crowd. Quite enjoying his prose, in a slow, curious sort of way.
Thismorning, the beach wins over the book in bed. I’m down there at 7.30. Thirty years ago it was an almost deserted beach. We swam naked here. I always tell people that, we used to swim naked.
This morning there are a lot of pairs of women with blonde pony tails and running shoes, doing that purposeful pounding walk along the beach that is all about Keeping Fit.
I miss coming to this place more often. Now that we are living four hours drive away.
But I’m glad not to be living in this area any longer. Those blonde pony tails and designer running shorts. And a glance at the Noosa News, which is full of nauseating ‘lifestyle’ & shiny new real estate, it all reminds me why we wanted to be somewhere earthier.
At the end of my walk, just before going back up to the house, I plunge into the waves. I dive under three times.
Once, a few years back, a house guest came down in the morning and saw me. He said,
“It’s your Ganges, isn’t it?” in his cockney no bullshit accent.
Sitting on the deck eating breakfast, F spots dolphins, a big pod of them. Runs for the old binoculars.
Now he’s reading Simpsons comics, swaying in the hammock. He’s been wandering around on the deck in his pyjamas playing his clarinet.
A good day. Wish we didn’t have to go home tonight.
