to the lighthouse

Friday before last I spent the day with two women I’ve known for more than twenty five years. We remember eachother’s youth, and eachother’s ex-s, and long-dead mothers. One of us, K has been on her own for many years, since her husband died. Now she’s suddenly head over heels in love with someone new, and he’s moving in with her soon.

So L and I thought we’d take K out for a day, a sort of hen’s party (surely there is a better turn of phrase?) to celebrate the big change about to happen in her life.

We had lunch at the Beach Cafe, then went to Kings Beach. Walked down the rainforest track and swam naked in clear green water. And reminisced about the last time the three of us were there together, almost twenty years ago. We used to spend a lot of time at the beach when we were young. Before life got busy. Our bodies are the bodies of older women now..We lay chatting and dreaming in the shade of pandanus trees, then  finally walked back up the track to the carpark. 

To end our day together we went up to the Byron lighthouse and watched the moon come up over the sea. We can all see the swinging beam of light from the light house from our different houses every night - though L lives half an hour up the coast from here and K & I are half an hour inland. The Lighthouse is a beacon of connectedness... A sort of local sacred site really. 

fine motor skills

Our driveway in all its purple glory

My right arm has been in a sling for several days, after minor surgery on tuesday. So there has been  no driving, no writing, no sweeping the floor for me. A lot of reading, a lot of DVDs. Even tv, which I almost never watch.

The post-op television was all coverage of the terrible Christchurch earthquake, which was happening just as I was drifting away under general anaesthetic. 

I was riveted by the earthquake. Is it voyeurism on my part? Or wanting to feel connected and empathetic? Wanting to be reminded of the mighty forces of Nature, of what is real, what our planet really is?  Or just that it’s so touching seeing people help and support eachother? Crises wake everyone up and bring out a deeper part of us. Why is it that when the drama passes we invariably slip back into our more superficial selves?

(I remember when my mother was dying & I was caring for her I felt extraordinarily calm and focussed and loving. Then after she went, I could feel myself, as the weeks passed, turning back into my usual grumpy, fusspot  self. )

Obviously lots of others felt the same compulsion to see the earthquake, because there was virtually nothing else on tv, with commentators wringing every last flimsy angle out of the story. 

TELEVISION: Even while I am being shown the most dramatic footage of bodies pulled from collapsed buildings,  and of weeping traumatised survivors, there is a ribbon running past at the bottom of the screen telling me about what's happening in Libya, about who won the cricket, and what top temperatures are expected in the capital cities. It seems almost... disrespectful, that we can’t just give the dead, and the survivors our full attention for even a minute.

More and more information crammed into every nook and cranny of our time and space. A worrying trend in my opinion. Personally I already have way more thoughts in my head than I want, more input than I can possibly process. 

Actually, there is less mental clutter than usual right now -  a rather pleasant after-effect of the anaesthetic ( my first ever) I’m still a bit spaced out. Lucky I don’t have to operate heavy machinery.

In the last few days I’ve  developed a lot of gratitude for my right hand and all its fabulous fine motor skills, of which I have been temporarily deprived.  It’s an interesting challenge, trying to wash dishes, clean teeth, butter toast with the non-dominant hand. Probably good for   creating new neuro-pathways. Today the sling is off and I’m happy to be back at the keyboard.  

undulations

I have a Michael  Leunig picture stuck to my fridge door, just to remind me that this is the way it is: One day I am basking in hill top blessedness, the next day I am plunged into the valley of despair. And to remind me that maybe this does not make me bi-polar or in need of medication...maybe I am just sensitive and alive and me, riding the waves of constant change?

One minute - and it can be a perfectly mundane minute, putting out the rubbish bins at twilight, or eating pizza on the verandah with two twelve year old boys -  I am filled with gratitude for this lovely life. Gratitude for the sweet breeze rustling in the palm fronds, for the two eagles circling high above the blue escarpment, for the strawberries from the market that we share after the pizza.

Then the next minute, or day, or week, I realise that actually my life is a pathetic mess of  futility and delusion. I trudge through a grey internal landscape where misery plays her sad violins in graveyards in the rain - And all while external circumstances are just as the same as they were the day before. Some little word or thought or interaction has triggered the gloom-response. Or perhaps some mysterious chemical, astological or climatic variable. 

Often all it takes for everything to lighten up again is a conversation with a friend,  a laugh about the whole tragi-comedy, the way we take ourselves and our lives too seriously.

I have this  postcard on my desk 

And I have a home page that every time I go on line says wise Zen things like 

Once you 

realise that the 

road is the goal

and that you

are always on

the road, not to

reach a goal, but to enjoy its

beauty and its

wisdom, life

ceases to be a

task and

becomes

natural and

simple, in itself

an ecstasy

- Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

...and still sometimes there are days when it’s All too Hard! Just remember that everything passes.

between the worlds

fleeting hint of autumn early this morn...

Last night we three had a swim at the little beach by the river mouth in Bruns, then got fish’n chips. We picnicked on the grass, and lay looking up at half a moon, and  two pelicans who were perched on top of lamp posts. Rainbow lorrikeets made a racket in the palm trees. The river turned silvery pale, the sky intensified into azure. The trees  on the other side of the river blazed golden then sank into inky silhouettes.  F shoe-ed the seagulls away, and I said to D, 

“ Remember when he was little and he always used to...”

“Yeah, yeah Mum”  F cut in, “ I know exactly what you’re gonna say now, you say it every time. About how cute it was the way I used to automatically chase everything”

As it happened, this was exactly what I was about to say. So I vowed solemnly not to mention it again before he is at least twenty one years old.

“Stop it Mum”.

Later, we get takeaway desserts - raspberry sago pudding, and sit in the picnic shelter. F says something to the effect that he can feel himself changing, getting older, and he can feel it sort of coming on that he is going to be really really irritated by us, his parents, but that we shouldn’t take it personally. (And that he really does love us - or did I make that  bit up?)

I remember feeling the same at his age  - though I wasn’t able to articulate it as well as he is. “I was embarrassed to even have parents at all when I was 13”, I tell him. 

. 

“Yup”, he agrees

“Even cool parents like us, ha ha”, puts in D. 

I can remember my mother singing some  song to me about being Just an In-Between, Too old for toys, too young for boys...which of course made me feel like killing her.

F moves between the worlds. There is  rap music blaring four letter words from his Simpsons poster-plastered bedroom. But today he’s re-reading his old TinTin books, lost in an innocent world of boys own adventures and rocket ships to the moon.

lunchtime review

A little squabble before breakfast this morning , with D. Why is he hacking back the bougainvillaea so ferociously? I want to know. Because it needs doing, he says. 

etc.

Now he’s gone off to the tip with a trailer load of old palm fronds and assorted prunings that I should be grateful to him for removing. I hope The Tip has it’s usual therapeutic effect, and he forgives me for my ingratitude.

Why do men always seem to want to prune things?  For the same reason that women are keener on nurturing and preserving, I suppose.  And because  both aspects are necessary in the garden, as in life. But I fear I’m wading into dangerous gender-stereotyping waters here.

It’s been a busy morning. Funny how I often think I’ve done nothing much, and then when I actually review what I’ve done, it’s a lot. Albeit ( and worryingly), mostly involving staring at this screen.

An hour on the phone to my financial advisor, looking at graphs, and discussing superannuation and the ethical credentials of various companies. I learn that Lend Lease build 5-star-rated green buildings and are highly committed to good environmental and social practice. 

I hear about  the Barefoot Power Company, who are taking affordable, portable solar power to the world’s poorest people, mainly in Africa. Replacing kerosine ( bad health- and environment -wise as well as expensive) with low cost clean technology. 

Next, some emails back and forth to an organisation in Victoria who liase with an Aboriginal Womens Landcare Group who are running a project to gather and preserve traditional knowledge. I’m keen to support them,  because it gets a tick in  three of my favourite areas - environment/wilderness, indigenous, and women. More good people, doing good things - a nice change from the daily media. But a lot of information to digest.

Then several lots of emails to organise details of the various groups I run or am part of - the new Writers’ Group I’m starting up, the Gestalt therapists supervision group meeting next week. 

It seems to be one of my roles in life - one of those un-named jobs we all have that are part of our personality. Mine is to organise comings-together of people in various configurations, socially or around music/writing/therapy etc. D thinks this compulsion to connect people up is because I don’t have much in the way of extended real family.

( What is your un-named job?)

Still barely a dint in the interminable To Do list... Lunchtime.

bursting out belatedly

Early this morning I thought I sniffed a little whiff of Autumn. Something about the way the leaves were quivering in the wind on the tree outside the bedroom window. It’s been divinely drizzle-y and grey for the last two days. Sweet, soft coolness, a blissful respite after the  flattening heat.

Now, in the middle of the day,  the sky is blazing summer blue again and the house is creaking in the sun. The cicadas have re-started. The purple tibochina trees on the dirt driveway to our house are on the brink of exploding into their extravaganza celebration of the colour purple. Their buds are almost bursting. 

Plants are blooming late this year because of all the many dark rainy  days we’ve had during this strange, tumultous summer. The garden here is usually dripping frangipani flowers by mid December. This year hardly a bloom until February. Flowering gums up the road are late too - but worth the wait.

I warm to the theme of late bloomers, being one myself. It’s taken me such a long time to...I’m not sure how to finish this sentence. Such a long time to bloom, to blossom, to become more myself? Or just to grow up? And to become  a parent, the mother of a late life child. ( F has recently started to realise that he has OLD parents. I remind him that we none of us ever know how life will unfold, or who will die when. But it’s a little poignant somehow)

Talking of being ‘old’  - and of blooming - D has been teasing me about my ‘retiree lifestyle’. It’s true that the parts of my day not taken up by work and parenting are often devoted to pleasurable leisure-activities, like going to choir or book club or playing marimbas or lunching with a friend. Next month I’ve booked in for a ukulele class. Last year there was Life Drawing...

I still can’t quite shake off a vague sense of guilt about my pleasant ‘lifestyle’, guilt which I blame on my dour God-fearing Scots ancestors, my father’s lot. Grandfather was a stern Church of Christ preacher, a fundamentalist type, dead against singing dancing or having fun. He died when I was about eight or nine. But lives on somewhere, it seems, in my psyche, though thankfully with an ever feebler voice. 

rainy Byron last night

freedom of speech

Interesting doco on ABC Radio National thismorning in “Background Briefing”. About  Wikileaks and Julian Assange. Hearing his pleasant, intelligent and unaffected Australian voice, I had a rare moment of feeling  proud (rather than just lucky)  to be Australian.

I often cringe at the matey flag-waving, C’mon Aussie, green-and-gold brand of Australian patriotism. And for too many years - the  John Howard years - it was of course just downright embarrassing to be Australian. 

But I cherish the no-bullshit, tell-it-like-it-is aspect of our ‘national identity’. And the cheeky deadpan humour. 

When cyber-activists managed to temporarily close down Paypal, Mastercard, and Visa, after the credit groups blocked payments to Wikileaks, the activists’ spokesman had this to say to the big credit operators: ‘Betcha didn’t see that coming!’

I love it that the whole issue of secrecy is being flung into  the public arena, and that vested interests are so far unable to put out the fire, shut everyone up, sweep it all under the carpet.  And it’s heartening that Assange has so much support. 

But by the end of ‘Background Briefing’ I was depressed again, hearing about an American soldier - I’ll get his name later from the web site (* it's Bradley Manning) - who has been imprisoned for several months, in solitary confinement, in declining physical and mental health, still no charges laid. For, I think, giving 'secret' information to Wikileaks. 

We learn about this appalling violation of human rights from an interview with a decent-sounding bloke, an American lawyer or academic who is campaigning on behalf of  the imprisoned soldier.

Then we’re told that two days after this interview the lawyer/academic went to visit the prisoner with another visitor, a journalist, and that both visitors were then themselves also detained at the prison. God.

                                        

                                  ************************

Meanwhile in the garden, these guys (or gals?) are devouring our grape vine. Yesterday’s vine leaves are today's big fat caterpillars and tomorrow’s moths. D points out something we’ve never noticed - the ‘eye’ design on the caterpillar which will later become markings on the moths’ wings. It’s all so miraculous that we just can’t bring ourselves to kill them. Finally, we decide on relocation to the passion fruit vine down the back.  

I am putting up a fight against the torpor today, and soldiering on, ignoring/surrendering to heat and sweat

hot summer night

I suppose in chilly mid-July we’ll remember these sticky insect-buzzy February nights with a pang of sweet nostalgia. We’ll remember lazing around half-naked and drowsy in the middle of the day and  flinging  the big verandah doors open at dusk to catch the breeze. The bats flying over, silhouetted against an azure sky.  The kids hanging out at the local pool on Friday nights. The smell of chlorine and hot chips from the pool kiosk. The damp springy grass under bare feet. 

Tonight we - D & I, F and F’s friend - went  to town for pizzas. Sat at a table on the footpath. Telling silly 12-year-old boy jokes & playing a game the kids like - guess the famous person ( Soccer players featured heavily. Though F, indoctrinated  in early childhood by Mary Poppins and The Sound Of Music, also came up with Julie Andrews. His friend looked blank) 

After dinner we walked around the dark back streets of our little country town. Through open windows we glimpsed other lives in yellow-lit rooms. The fragrant musky smells of night-blooming plants wafted. Frangipani, millions of stars, infinite blackness. D& I pointed out the Southern Cross to the boys, and showed them how to find south by drawing imaginary intersecting lines in the sky.

Back around the block and down the empty main street. The pavement still warm from the day. Clouds of insects around the street lights. Palm fronds rustling in a tiny breeze. 

friends, enemies...

Friday, hot hot friday.

Got to the market at 7.30. Beautiful fresh organic cos lettuce. A dragon fruit - F’s favourite , for after school. 

Then, my old nemesis J, completely unavoidable as we were both well into buying our punnets of blueberries right next to eachother before we recognised one another. She has dyed her hair. We made a bit of pleasant conversation about how hot it is and how our personal body  thermostats at this age seem to have gone  haywire. Then we both scuttled off. Mercifully no phoney overtures of  ‘Must catch up some time’ I like her better for that. There’s really no charge left. All in the past now. 

Why hold on to the idea that a certain person is my ‘enemy’? 

Reading Stephen Bachelor Buddhism without Beliefs on this whole routine we all have of making some people into goodies, others into baddies etc. How we keep reinforcing our perceptions. 

To help loosen up our rigid judgements he suggests this visualisation exercise:

Imagine the person as a newborn baby, covered in blood. Slowly follow her as she grows from a toddler to a child to an adolescent to a young adult to the moment you first met her. Try to picture what her hopes and longings were before  she even suspected your existence. Think of her now as someone who values her own ideas and feelings in just the same inscrutable way you hold onto yours. Then look into the future  and watch her age, fall ill and die. 

Do this first while thinking of a friend, then a stranger, then an enemy, until three human beings sit before you: equal in birth and equal in death. 

Hmmm. Challenging. But I know every time I open my heart/feel compassion/let go etc - I feel better for it...An ongoing project. 

 (Dragonfruit flower, snapped in Munduk, Bali last year)

the printed word, spider on sunflower

This morning at dawn I turned on the radio and heard that Cyclone Yasi had passed south of Cairns, about midnight. Terrible destruction of houses and farms, tall palm trees snapped in half, many frightening experiences, but amazingly, no deaths or serious injuries. A baby born in one of the evacuation centres. What an orderly, together country I live in! Can’t help thinking how very different it would have been if the cyclone had hit a poor country rather than this fortunate one.  

Managed to overcome my early morning torpor and go for a walk. Getting back into routines is hard. School lunch, drive to the bus stop, work, put on my professional face. It’s too hot for any of it. 

Took this pic in the garden this morning. The sunflower seedlings I planted not long before we went away for Christmas are in full bright yellow summer bloom.

In town for a spare half an hour between appointments I took refuge in the library. Heavenly airconditioning! I picked a book almost randomly off the nearest shelf. 

E.B. WHITE Writings from The New Yorker 1927-1976. He’s the guy who wrote ‘Charlotte’s Web’. In 1948 he made the following observations about  television, then still in it’s early days:

Like radio, television hangs on the questionable theory that whatever happens anywhere should be sensed everywhere. If everyone is going to be able to see everything, in the long run all sights may lose whatever rarity value they once possessed and it may well turn out that people, being able to see and hear practically everything, will be specially interested in almost nothing. Already you can detect the first faint signs of apathy...

...Television, when it gets going, will almost certainly pick up and throw into one’s home scenes it didn’t reckon with when it first set up its camera...

A few years later he wrote:

The printed word...has a natural durability....Whenever we watch television we are impressed by two things: its effectiveness and its evanescence. The printed word sticks around - you can walk into a library thirty years later and there it is. ( Yes, here I am reading these prescient words from a man who died in 1985)

...The most puzzling thing about television is the steady advance of the sponsor  across the line that has always separated news from promotion, entertainment from merchandising. The advertiser has assumed the role of originator, and the performer has gradually been eased into the role of peddler...

acts of god

It’s sooo hot and sweaty. I’ve filled the bath with cold water. I  lie in it for a few minutes when I get the chance during the day. Then stand in front of the fan. 

People up north are also filling up their baths, but for a different reason: so that they will have drinking water tomorrow  if the cyclone knocks out mains supplies.

The birds have all gone, from the cities and from the rainforest up there. Fled before the storm. I heard someone who lives north of Cairns on the radio this afternoon, saying it was ‘eerily silent ‘  The creatures can sense the cyclone  long before the winds come up. 

Waiting for the cyclone to hit . Thinking of friends and acquaintances in Cairns. That extraordinary satellite/radar  image, the huge psychedelic swirl of colours. Beautiful, enormous, terrifying. I can’t stop thinking about it. What would I take with me  if I had to leave my house, knowing it was about to be blown away? All those people camping in the big shopping centre, reading books, playing cards, snoozing on sun lounges. Waiting.  Surreal, apocalyptic times.

Meanwhile, I water the garden at dusk. It’s a warm summer evening, insects chirruping.