A story part 4 - Calling up the past

"Garbutt n' Turnbull, Ruth speaking."

"Mum, it's me."

"Oh! Yes, what is it?"

"Sorry, mum, what's the problem?"

"Oh, nothing, Fleur. I'm just so busy. I've got this terrible estate. Mr Garbutt's going to court tomorrow and I'm not even half way through. What is it?"

Oh, nothing, mum, sorry!"

"No come on! Look I've just made a cup of tea, tell me while I drink it."

"Mum, it's nothing, it's just something strange. It might be nothing. I wanted to tell you. Hey, I was looking through the births, deaths and marriages. You know it's Hayley's funeral next Wednesday? Well, it's just that I saw this death notice for Daniel Lyon."

"For who?"

"Mum, you know, remember that guy you told us about? He tried to fly and fell out of a tree and broke his arm. The hippy guy, when you were in Nimbin? I remembered the name, 'Daniel in the Lyon's den'? Gotta be the same guy, don't you think?"

"Oh! Umm! Could be. I dunno. Anyway, it was Mullumbimby."

"Oh! OK! Well I knew it was somewhere up there. Mum, he was fifty. That's about right, isn't it? Wasn't he younger than you?"

"Well, yes, Look I don't know, It could be. It's strange."

"I just thought you'd want to know. I mean, if it was him. He always seemed to mean something to you. I mean the stories you told us."

"He was just someone I knew. It was a long time ago."

"Well, anyway, the funeral's this Friday, at Riverstone, St Alban's, two-thirty. If you're interested."

"What about Hayley's funeral?"

"Mum, I don't want to think about it. Not till Wednesday. It's just going to be tragic I know."

"Alright, well ring me. Look I've got to get this thing finished. Thanks for ringing."

"OK, mum, sorry. Seeya."

A story part 3 - "Let the Sunshine Inn"

At the corner, I hesitated.

By the time I'd got to Mullum, I was stripped raw; wary, jittery, looking over my shoulder, paranoid.

I felt done, shown up.

I kept expecting to see Ruth and Rush, together, laughing.

The nearside of the street was still in shadow. A couple of housewives in tangerine shifts over slacks and curlers in scarves were maggin' outside the Four Square supermarket. A couple of blokes in blunnies and greasy slouch hats were hangin' over a tailgate outside Rasmussen's garage.

Opposite me, Let The Sunshine Inn was doin' just that. It's open frontage caught the morning sun perfectly. The locals had already started to gather, heads down over vegie burgers and muesli, like crows on a wire fence; picking over their roadkill. A week ago I'd have strode straight over, hungry for the warmth of belonging, like hot tea in cold hands. Now I faltered. What if they know? Shame flared and subsided.

The guys from the co-op were out the front, clove rollies hanging from their mouths like white, smouldering grubs. Only the fat guy looked up; acknowledging me, just, with a barely perceptible nod. Inside, the clash of plates and the clatter of the coffee grinder rose above the hum of voices. The smell of frying and coffee mingled with the cloves wafting in from out front. A baby squealed.

A couple of people looked up, and then dropped their eyes. Trish n' Dave were in front of me. I greeted them in a weak, quavering voice that belonged to someone else,

"Hi! Dave, Hi! Trish!"

Trish said nothing, just kept breastfeeding and didn't look up. Maybe she was embarrassed. Yeah! Right! Dave just mumbled into his beard and avoided my eyes. A week ago they'd have been all smiles.

Sarah eyed me blankly, "Soykoff?"

"Umm, no." said the weak, quavering voice, "Is that Dandelion Coffee? Is that new? Could I have that, and raisin toast?"

Did I close my eyes? I saw Ruth, troubled,

You know, you really should just be yourself. Be straight out about things. No one kmows what you're thinking. Honestly, you look shifty. They don't how to take you. They think your'e up to no good.

"Two dollars seventy!"

"What? Oh, sorry!"

I sat down and took out a book, keeping my eyes down. It was crowded this morning.

Then I heard him. Fuck! Not today!

My eyes flickered around the room. Mine was the only table with an empty seat. I groaned inwardly.

"Hey! Birdman! How they hangin'? No one sittin' here? Good, I didn't think so!"

Doug's battered, red-nosed face, leered, sneering over a grubby purple tie-dyed t-shirt, stretched tight over a beer gut.

"Umm, hi! Doug!"

"Mmm! What's that?"

"Umm, Dandelion coffee, it's new."

"Any good?"

"Umm, yeah, I think so."

"Hey, Sal! I made up me mind: Dandelion Coffee. Birdman reckons it's a good brew. Yeah, you too, luv!"

"So whatcha readin', Birdman?"

"Umm, the Bhagavad Ghita."

"No shit! heavy stuff, man. Too much like the Bible, for me. You read, 'Zen n' the art of Motorbike Maintenance'?"

"Umm, no, not yet. but I want to."

"Forget it. Starts off good then it goes to shit. Don't waste ya time. Hey, you still campin' out in that blackfella's humpy out on the back road?"

He went quiet. After a moment I dared to glance up from my toast. Doug was sitting opposite me with something like a smirk on his face. He looked me straight in the eyes.

"Hey, Birdman, they're takin' on pickers at Maloney's, and Patels."

"Oh, yeah?"

"Yeah! I reckon it'd be a good move."

"What?"

"You packin' up and gettin' on at Maloney's. Mick Maloney's a mate of mine. He'll take you on. 'Bout time you found a job. Put hair on yer chest."

I left the last piece of toast, hurriedly gathered up my things, face burning, legs like jelly; stumbled past him.

"Umm, yeah, OK! I'll think about it."

"You do that Birdman. Don't take too long about it. Never know when you'll get a chance like this again."

Outside there was a dirty white panel van pulled up opposite. A hard brown face ringed by a full black beard leaned out. "Daniel." I looked up. It was the guy from the leather shop. I didn't know his name. But he knew mine.

"I'm goin' to Maloney's. I'll give you a lift. Yer can get yer things"

"Umm, thanks. It's alright, I've gotta few things to do. I'll hitch. I'm still thinking about it."

"Get in."

I got in.

His hands were large, with blunt fingers, stained black with Ravens oil.

Through the dusty windscreen, as he pointed the bonnet out towards the back road, I saw Rush's ute. Ruth was in the front. Sitting close.

I swivelled round but already they were gone; hidden by the Last Bend into Town. Even the town was hidden, beyond the trees along the North Arm.

The feudal hierachy of the new age had closed ranks around Ruth and Rush; the shakuhachi players and the wholemeal bakers, the hand-spinners and the sandal makers, the dope growers and the bush mechanics. Sealed them off, protective, like a wound; against infection, against me.

Already, I could hear the Voices.

Daniel! Birdman! He was some weird dude! I mean, there's weird and there's too fuckin' weird!

I know, I know, luv. But it's for the best. Look, Ruth, you are one Beautiful Lady! And guys like that, they drag yer down, hold yer back. Yer better off. I tell ya, you and Rush are just such a Beautiful Couple. Yer like the Sun and Moon, the Sun and Moon.

Meant To Be.

A story part 2 - Road to Nowhere

I was rooted.

Feet frozen to the spot; numbed with cold, and reality. Blackness spreading across the day. Heart a stone, like ice. Hurt screaming soundless, somewhere inside; engulfed.

Swallowed up.

The long-feared-come-true-at-last.

At my feet, a jagged chunk of quartz shone starkly, seamed with fool's gold. Nearby, a discarded bottle top, blue...

Let's not pick it up. Let's leave it as a gift to the Queen of The Magpies.

...mocked. The faint outline of a sandal in the dust, dug deeper where it had changed direction.

After an eternity, I turned; slowly, weighted down with leaden loss and dread.

Ruth was a long way up the long climb to the cross-roads, becoming smaller and smaller with each step, determined-seeming, thrusting forward.

At the top of the ridge the day was bright and clear, like steel; she stopped, a tiny figure like a rose-pink doll, the wind picking up and tossing her raven black hair wildly. I willed her to turn. Sending my thoughts like broken birds.

Please turn, please, please....

And she was gone.

I began to walk slowly, each step an effort of struggle hard against the dead weight of despair. The sharp gravel bit through my thin soles. I grasped the hurt.

At the top, exposed, the wind was fierce, cutting through threadbare cheesecloth, whipping tangled hair across my face. Ruth was nowhere in sight. Down in the empty hollow the white signpost on the Twenty Mile was stark; like a gibbet.

I sat for a long, long time, letting the wind hurt; the pain gave form to whatever was left of me; edged a black hole that went down forever. The wind shushed through the dry pale paper grass; saying nothing of any sense. High up in the empty sky a crow cried, solitary, mournful. A long way off a dog barked then stopped abruptly.

The world had emptied out; of anything of sense, of anything of substance, of anything that I would want.

A faint far off sound of gravel crushing grew louder. An old faded Commer ute trailing dust: Old Fred, Goin' up the Top Forty. He stared blankly through the wound-down window as he passed, saying nothing, never acknowledging my presence. Once he would have waved, gruffly. But that was then, when I was with Ruth. Now, already, I was with no one, was no one. Rexie barked wildly from the back, scrabbling to stay upright on the shifting bales of hay.

The silence returned; and the sighing of the wind. It was too cold now up there, even for despair.

I began the long, dragging haul back down the way I'd come. Off the ridge, it was deathly still and silent; was a different world; all the magic drained out, like water down a plughole, dried up, left a corpse, withered, dull, flat.

I saw the Winding Forest Road for what it was: an empty, desolate, back road to nowhere. The bush silent and dry, straggling along a deserted strip of rutted dust and rusted fence wire.

I stood at the entrance to the camp on the edge of the trees. Once, months ago, it had been a Ranger's Lookout; I'd sweated its dream into being on a bright morning to the ring of an axe and the warbling of magpies.

Now it was tawdry, grubby, pathetic. A rumpled, greasy sleeping bag; sagging pine boughs yellowing. The campfire cold and unraked. On a bush rock, the pale blue star flowers Ruth had arranged in an old ink bottle, eons ago, were wilted, withered.

I felt sickened, ashamed, stupid.

Suddenly I grabbed my shoulder bag and ran. Ran hard, heart-bursting, throat-burning hard, down to the road and halfway up to the ridge until I could run no further.

Sobbing, I stumbled on. Pushing hard till it hurt, running whenever I could, tears streaming down an unwashed face, stiff with dust. Down past the Twenty Mile turn off, down away from an empty valley, down away from an empty life.

A Chorus of Currawongs

Reading Jane Fonda

Recent reading includes Jane Fonda's wonderfully candid, fascinating and eminently readable autobiography, "My Life So Far". I do recommend this book to anyone and especially to women. Although the circumstances of our lives are poles apart, I could so relate to so many aspects of Jane's long difficult journey to self. She so often expressed my own inner quandaries, struggles and workings through.

Of course, her story of her childhood growing up in the shadow of her father, Henry Fonda; the suicide of her mother; her life in films and activism and the many remarkable people she has known and worked with; the Vietnam War years and her marriages to Roger Vadim, Tom Hayden and Ted Turner make fascinating reading. She, herself, is of course a remarkable, talented and committed person.

My sister lent me this book which is autographed by Jane herself. My sister and mum went to see her during her recent tour of Australia. I so wish that I had gone to see and hear her too.

"My Life So Far" Jane Fonda Ebury Press (Random House)

Autumn Reflections

Comfort!

A story part 1 - New Morning

I remember now.

The morning, hard and bright, with strong yearning, new venture, resolve; guilt. The bird song was almost deafening coming through the New Forest. Magpies winging through the trees, darting, flashing, white and black; their melodious warbling cries like silver bells.

There was heady freshness to the day, full-scented with spring, sap rising. In The Gully, the Tea Tree river rushed and hurried, shooshing over smooth green riverstones, tinkling among treeroots.

My sandals slapped loud on the cool hard dust of the back road. The man ferns and black boys of The Gully, dew green and black, primeval, dwarfing, spears raised, fell away and the slope of the ridge opened up to a sparse standing of slim gum maidens, their smooth green-grey trunks straight up near the ground amongst the wire grass, twisting into writhing limbs high up beneath their red-tinged canopies arching across my head.

Nearing the crest, the sky broke through, brilliant and wide, a deep mid-blue, shocked with piled mountains of bright, white cloud.

My heart was in my throat, singing; a rushing filling my body, like a stream in flood. I felt washed and new, alive, beautiful; bad. If I closed my eyes I could still see Rush, his tousled hair gilded by the flickering embers of the fire, raked over. Smell his body, sandalwood, my head buried in the firm warm hollow of the base of his neck.

I opened my eyes. Warning. A huge crow stood still in the middle of the sandy road. Black, glistening, like a hole in the fabric of the day. His round white eye watched me. He stood his ground, a sentinel before destiny. I came on.

Goddess, be with me.

I breasted the rise; into the day’s wide arms; and you were there. Halted at the edge of the road. Pale, like a ghost in grubby once were white cheescloth. You said nothing but I watched your eyes, those doleful cow eyes, flicker over the rose-pink dress, ironed-fresh and never before worn.

No I love it, but I’d never buy it. It’d be too self-indulgent. I have the Coming Spring to wear.

Flicker down to the pearl pink polish on my toes.

Yes, it’s nice but I don’t really need that do I?

I faltered in my stride. In that frozen moment, the crow called. Was it thrice? Or was that my guilty imagining?

I stood as if naked before you; my ambition and desire brash and strident. My arms bore fresh-picked snowdrops and betrayal.

Fuck you! Did I say that? Or did you just hear my thoughts? Like you always did? You never said a word. It didn’t need words. It was all said, there in the hard bright morning, on the back road into Mullum, just up from Josie’s.

Two spirits, kindred to the core; two blackbirds, sharing broken wings, winging it to the beat of a different drum. Sitting out the long hours of the night; marking the heartbeats of our separate pains to the sound of the same waves, flashing phosphorescent along the dark rimmed edge of Brunswick beach.

Ethereal, pure; or wannabe pure. Beyond samsara and commitment. Unbodied, unblemished; or so we hoped. Never touching but being touched. A platonic passion. Bloodless wraiths frolicking in muslin shrouds.

Fuck you! I feel like a nun! I want him, I want me. I want me back. I want something, not this. Yes, this but not just this. My cunt aches. Does that shock you? I said it. So I said it. So what?

What we had was a dream. Pretending to be magpies, pretending to dwell in Middle Earth. Everything starting with capital letters; Moreton bay figs being Mallorn trees; leaden loaves being Lembas. I want to be real; get real. I’m thirty-two. I’m running out of time.

You said nothing, just stared, with those wide-open doe eyes. Deep brown, sad eyes welling up with bottomless sorrow and hurt.

For a moment we stood together, face almost to face. Sad-eyed Lady of the Lowlands. You’re like a fuckin’ sad eyed Lady of the Lowlands and you’re the guy! Supposedly. Fuck you! Daniel! I’m a woman, I want a man.

He said nothing. I said nothing. I stepped slightly to the side and swept on, the new rose-pink dress swirling after me like a last word, my freshly washed feet raising cold clouds of dust from the hard road. Long after I started the climb up to the crossroads I could feel Daniel far behind me. Not letting go, not ever letting go.

I stood on the ridge at the crossroads. A cool early morning early spring wind whipped up and flung my hair around. I stood still for a moment, feeling the goose bumps breaking out along my arms and the chill in my feet, the chill in my heart. Then a cloud passed and the sun streamed down. Like a Sign! Down on the flat, the white signpost pointing up the Twenty Mile Road to Rush’s cabin was lit up, brilliant. Meant to be!

Joni sang, “I’m a radio” but I felt like a battery. I could feel the charge arcing and pulsing between the electrodes, Rush’s and mine. I’d broken free from moorings and my sails were out. I could feel the hard, strong tug of the winds of change lifting me up.

I stepped off, and down. Down to where the sign pointed brightly to the way ahead. Down away from your sad brown eyes, and dreams of flying and a Magic Land with capital letters.

I walked into the sun and my pearl pink polish shone and the scent of my own Patchouli wafted up, heady.

And you were gone.

Olive Harvesting

On a sunny mid-Autumn afternoon Alexx and I ventured into the backyard to do a little olive harvesting from our tall thirty year old tree. Alexx hasn't done any harvesting for quite some time due to his disability but we had a plan. I helped him up the slope to where there was a low hanging branch full of olives. He sat on his tall stool and picked the lower ones while I grazed the higher ones. Alexx powered through the harvest and when he'd stripped the lower branches bare I bent over the higher ones and held them down while he culled them.

The olives are rather small but are the most beautiful mix of colours, many grading down from green through rosy-pink to purple to black. We picked them into a colander.

It was so lovely to be out in our garden working together under Mother Olive. Alexx had a great time and spent the next days soaking and bottling the harvest in brine. Alexx bottles them up in old Ocean Spray Cranberry juice bottles whose narrowish necks are great for holding an olive oil seal.