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And their mother takes beautiful photos.
Friday, March 15, 2013
Saturday, March 9, 2013
The Presbyterian manse was up the hill from where we once lived. We would plod up there, a stick making satisfying rhythms as we trailed it along the picket fences. Gwen, a manse daughter, was my sister's best friend. Once I went to tea/dinner with them. Mrs Manse - I won't insert her distinctive surname, - apologised for her make do meal, which was leftover breakfast porridge made into fritters.
It still stands as one of the most memorable and delicious meals of my entire life. I haven't been able to replicate it.
When the Manses had their 5th child, yet another girl, she was given the soubriquet "Boy".
I was 7 years old when we left there.Forty years after I left we drove through the still tiny village, and I could unerringly find my way around. Childish memories, eh? But I saw what I didn't see then, that this village on the ranges western slopes, shaped out of local golden sandstone, was very beautiful. And that it was a dot in a swamping, almost menacing, sea of hills and dales of bush: swallowing, impassive eucalypts.
I had actually, back then, often watched the sun setting through a great gum tree in our backyard. and reveled in its beauty. I'm inclined to think that the adult world underestimates the young in all kinds of ways.
Allan Sillitoe came from an impoverished background, made even worse by a brutal father. He talks of starting school: "Each morning the teacher read about God creating the heavens and the earth, and every living thing. She read from her own black leather bound King James translation of the Bible whose English, whether or not all parts were immediately understood, entered my soul for life."
Little kids not only often respond to beauty, but can hunger for it.
At the end of each year the school had a "sociable." Kids, parents and whoever came together for the excitement of the "hokey pokey" and such. Plus sandwiches and cordial. What a wild night.
We rejoiced, for a while when the Manse girls excitedly told us that their father had agreed to them going to the sociable the year that they all turned eleven years old together. I wonder what happened to their beliefs?
Life has its compensations, adequate or not.
The Manses had an amazing seesaw that not only reacted vertically, but also traveled horizontally.
Heavens, I loved that seesaw.
It still stands as one of the most memorable and delicious meals of my entire life. I haven't been able to replicate it.
When the Manses had their 5th child, yet another girl, she was given the soubriquet "Boy".
I was 7 years old when we left there.Forty years after I left we drove through the still tiny village, and I could unerringly find my way around. Childish memories, eh? But I saw what I didn't see then, that this village on the ranges western slopes, shaped out of local golden sandstone, was very beautiful. And that it was a dot in a swamping, almost menacing, sea of hills and dales of bush: swallowing, impassive eucalypts.
I had actually, back then, often watched the sun setting through a great gum tree in our backyard. and reveled in its beauty. I'm inclined to think that the adult world underestimates the young in all kinds of ways.
Allan Sillitoe came from an impoverished background, made even worse by a brutal father. He talks of starting school: "Each morning the teacher read about God creating the heavens and the earth, and every living thing. She read from her own black leather bound King James translation of the Bible whose English, whether or not all parts were immediately understood, entered my soul for life."
Little kids not only often respond to beauty, but can hunger for it.
At the end of each year the school had a "sociable." Kids, parents and whoever came together for the excitement of the "hokey pokey" and such. Plus sandwiches and cordial. What a wild night.
We rejoiced, for a while when the Manse girls excitedly told us that their father had agreed to them going to the sociable the year that they all turned eleven years old together. I wonder what happened to their beliefs?
Life has its compensations, adequate or not.
The Manses had an amazing seesaw that not only reacted vertically, but also traveled horizontally.
Heavens, I loved that seesaw.
Sunday, March 3, 2013
We make mistakes
The second time I went to the winter snowfields was to Thredbo. I had previously worked, as a student in long socks and eidelweissed drndl at Perisher Valley in summertime.
What a pretty winter village this is - or was: I haven't been there for ages.
I was with people I didn't know very well, in our small flat, but delightfully I felt at ease and happy with them quickly.
What a hard slog learning to ski is. The physical toil, the biting cold, the cement boots, the bodily unintelligence, the surrounding throng sailing past like Alis, floating like a butterfly. Or was that a bee? People, like dolphins, physically attuned to their environment.
How richly satisfying after a days hard slog - frustration mixed with moments of triumph and hope - to relax and eat and talk in the evening.
One evening when we were feeling wonderful, the chair lift suddenly came alight. Lit by torches that flamed out across the snow, we were entranced by the drama and spectacle as the chairs sailed up and around the mountain, flares hissing pulsing light aroubd them. What a wonderful show they put on for us.
We didn't know that they were searching for missing children. Three siblings, village children, found the next morning, frozen.
We make mistakes. that is our nature.
What seems to be may not be what is. That is our reality: our world.
What a pretty winter village this is - or was: I haven't been there for ages.
I was with people I didn't know very well, in our small flat, but delightfully I felt at ease and happy with them quickly.
What a hard slog learning to ski is. The physical toil, the biting cold, the cement boots, the bodily unintelligence, the surrounding throng sailing past like Alis, floating like a butterfly. Or was that a bee? People, like dolphins, physically attuned to their environment.
How richly satisfying after a days hard slog - frustration mixed with moments of triumph and hope - to relax and eat and talk in the evening.
One evening when we were feeling wonderful, the chair lift suddenly came alight. Lit by torches that flamed out across the snow, we were entranced by the drama and spectacle as the chairs sailed up and around the mountain, flares hissing pulsing light aroubd them. What a wonderful show they put on for us.
We didn't know that they were searching for missing children. Three siblings, village children, found the next morning, frozen.
We make mistakes. that is our nature.
What seems to be may not be what is. That is our reality: our world.
Thursday, February 28, 2013
I Don't Think of Myself as a Feminist. But...
it's just the default position, surely?
It surprises me to recall that when I was a young teacher and the issue of equal pay arose, I was not particularly interested until it occurred to me that although I was paid less, being a woman, I was never charged less, as a woman. Free entry on one day of the year at "Ladies'Day" at the races didn't really seem to balance that.
It's easy to accept the world as it is without questioning.
(The pig is just there for colour: my one and only attempt at pottery).
However, I now feel that difficulties for women are a by product of the misuse of power, and that this is the enemy. Sometimes people are unaware of their power. Parents can misuse power, as can spouses, bullies, politicians, bosses, managers. Anyone.
People misusing power often treat those "underneath" them with contempt.
It was a very hierarchical world back then. People knew their place, (irony alert). Important people - professionals, ceos, the religious, the monied - were the authorities on everything. They were the power figures, expecting deference. Women were of course lower - "we'll look after you as long as you act like we think women should", was the sometimes explicit message. Children, by and large, were very low down in the rankings, but poor people were probably lower again. Poor children - well, we know how they were treated.
Turning points. At 21 I was sent by the Department of Education to a remote country town. It was so small that there was little for rent, so for a while I lived at the hotel. One morning at breakfast a catholic priest sat at my table and questioned me. "How old are you?" he said. "Twenty one," I replied. "How old are you?" He looked at me aghast and muttered "52" or something. I was impressed and aghast at my own boldness. He was just aghast. He left me alone after that outrage, and I felt a gleeful pride. There was no turning back.
At present in NSW, apart from the endless child abuse scandals, we have ongoing revelations of past corruption involving politicians, some of whom were enriched by tens of millions of dollars. The adult son of one, when asked how confidential mining maps, showing coal seams under land that they bought for $3 million and profited by $73 million, appeared in his office, said, "Perhaps Jesus put them there."
They need their wings clipped.
Suzanne Moore, in The Guardian, rewrites Burke: "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men kid themselves that they knew nothing and set up yet another inquiry."
Hear, hear. We've had more than enough of that. We need to either limit power, train people how to use it, or have far more open systems than we do.
And dissociate power from physical strength, as well. And that brings me back to feminism again.
What a muddled post this is.
It surprises me to recall that when I was a young teacher and the issue of equal pay arose, I was not particularly interested until it occurred to me that although I was paid less, being a woman, I was never charged less, as a woman. Free entry on one day of the year at "Ladies'Day" at the races didn't really seem to balance that.
It's easy to accept the world as it is without questioning.
(The pig is just there for colour: my one and only attempt at pottery).
However, I now feel that difficulties for women are a by product of the misuse of power, and that this is the enemy. Sometimes people are unaware of their power. Parents can misuse power, as can spouses, bullies, politicians, bosses, managers. Anyone.
People misusing power often treat those "underneath" them with contempt.
It was a very hierarchical world back then. People knew their place, (irony alert). Important people - professionals, ceos, the religious, the monied - were the authorities on everything. They were the power figures, expecting deference. Women were of course lower - "we'll look after you as long as you act like we think women should", was the sometimes explicit message. Children, by and large, were very low down in the rankings, but poor people were probably lower again. Poor children - well, we know how they were treated.
Turning points. At 21 I was sent by the Department of Education to a remote country town. It was so small that there was little for rent, so for a while I lived at the hotel. One morning at breakfast a catholic priest sat at my table and questioned me. "How old are you?" he said. "Twenty one," I replied. "How old are you?" He looked at me aghast and muttered "52" or something. I was impressed and aghast at my own boldness. He was just aghast. He left me alone after that outrage, and I felt a gleeful pride. There was no turning back.
At present in NSW, apart from the endless child abuse scandals, we have ongoing revelations of past corruption involving politicians, some of whom were enriched by tens of millions of dollars. The adult son of one, when asked how confidential mining maps, showing coal seams under land that they bought for $3 million and profited by $73 million, appeared in his office, said, "Perhaps Jesus put them there."
They need their wings clipped.
Suzanne Moore, in The Guardian, rewrites Burke: "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men kid themselves that they knew nothing and set up yet another inquiry."
Hear, hear. We've had more than enough of that. We need to either limit power, train people how to use it, or have far more open systems than we do.
And dissociate power from physical strength, as well. And that brings me back to feminism again.
What a muddled post this is.
Thursday, January 17, 2013
This morning I lost my spectacles.
I had briefly used them earlier, registering then that perhaps I needed to follow up the year long urges from the eyeglass company to get re-tested.
I have 2 pairs - close work, long work...the latter meaning the ability to read the required eye chart for a driving test. I only use either sometimes.
I use the close work ones mainly: just to check. And that's what I needed them for: ensuring details were correct.
I had used them in the kitchen, noting how poor their help was, so first I went back there to check: result zero.
Maybe near the computer? Ditto.
On the work table? No.
So, they must be in the kitchen. No. And around and around and around.
I recalled Nancy Phelan' s tribute to her eye exercises restoring her vision. Is that my alternative? But that requires about 3 months, as far as I could recall, and I needed to check details now.
Nancy Phelan was a yoga enthusiast and promoter, and a vibrant tribute to her beliefs.
Her autobiography of growing up in Mosman in the early years of the last century,
"A Kingdom By the Sea," is an absolute delight:. When she speaks of a visitor arriving unexpectedly and the family rapidly closing all the doors down the hallway so as to hide the untidiness, it rang bells with me.
She recounts her mother's nightmare with hiring domestic staff: they would vet you, and disdain to work for you if you were disorganised or untidy, as her family constantly was. So, when hiring staff, you were required to lower your sights again and again and again, as the most desired sniffed snobbishly at you and moved on.
And of course a cook ... what a "cook" can actually cook may not be what you accept as acceptable food, then as now.
In a brief time I had working with unemployed people, I became surprised how many youngish, scruffy men called themselves "chefs". One would not particularly have wanted to eat anything that they had handled, on the whole, without a tetanus shot and some strong antibiotics: cleanliness didn't seem of any importance to them at all. I found out from them that the difference between a "cook: and a "chef" is that a "cook" has to do the washing up, and a "chef" doesn't.
I recently bought, at a flea market, a book written by Nancy Phelan when she was quite old. The stories in it were admirable and perceptive - one of an old and eccentric man destroyed by his daughters' desire to keep him "safe", one of a retired woman sinking from optimism and engagement into fear and dependence - but they showed her age. Of course. Of course?
I also read a P.D. James, published in 2008, when she was 88. Was the conclusion a little weak? Well, perhaps: the rest was sometimes gripping, always readable, and there was no sense at all that it was written by an older.
I gave up on the great search for my spectacles and decided to make do, do what I could.
That's when I saw them next to my bed, where I had left them last night.
No wonder, really, that when I looked at detail in the kitchen this am, in hind sight through the wrong specs, I found them somewhat lacking.
I'll put off that eye test for a while.
I had briefly used them earlier, registering then that perhaps I needed to follow up the year long urges from the eyeglass company to get re-tested.
I have 2 pairs - close work, long work...the latter meaning the ability to read the required eye chart for a driving test. I only use either sometimes.
I use the close work ones mainly: just to check. And that's what I needed them for: ensuring details were correct.
I had used them in the kitchen, noting how poor their help was, so first I went back there to check: result zero.
Maybe near the computer? Ditto.
On the work table? No.
So, they must be in the kitchen. No. And around and around and around.
I recalled Nancy Phelan' s tribute to her eye exercises restoring her vision. Is that my alternative? But that requires about 3 months, as far as I could recall, and I needed to check details now.
Nancy Phelan was a yoga enthusiast and promoter, and a vibrant tribute to her beliefs.
Her autobiography of growing up in Mosman in the early years of the last century,
"A Kingdom By the Sea," is an absolute delight:. When she speaks of a visitor arriving unexpectedly and the family rapidly closing all the doors down the hallway so as to hide the untidiness, it rang bells with me.
She recounts her mother's nightmare with hiring domestic staff: they would vet you, and disdain to work for you if you were disorganised or untidy, as her family constantly was. So, when hiring staff, you were required to lower your sights again and again and again, as the most desired sniffed snobbishly at you and moved on.
And of course a cook ... what a "cook" can actually cook may not be what you accept as acceptable food, then as now.
In a brief time I had working with unemployed people, I became surprised how many youngish, scruffy men called themselves "chefs". One would not particularly have wanted to eat anything that they had handled, on the whole, without a tetanus shot and some strong antibiotics: cleanliness didn't seem of any importance to them at all. I found out from them that the difference between a "cook: and a "chef" is that a "cook" has to do the washing up, and a "chef" doesn't.
I recently bought, at a flea market, a book written by Nancy Phelan when she was quite old. The stories in it were admirable and perceptive - one of an old and eccentric man destroyed by his daughters' desire to keep him "safe", one of a retired woman sinking from optimism and engagement into fear and dependence - but they showed her age. Of course. Of course?
I also read a P.D. James, published in 2008, when she was 88. Was the conclusion a little weak? Well, perhaps: the rest was sometimes gripping, always readable, and there was no sense at all that it was written by an older.
I gave up on the great search for my spectacles and decided to make do, do what I could.
That's when I saw them next to my bed, where I had left them last night.
No wonder, really, that when I looked at detail in the kitchen this am, in hind sight through the wrong specs, I found them somewhat lacking.
I'll put off that eye test for a while.
Teenagers and all that
Persistent, repetitive, demanding: the teen magpies, almost the size of their parents, appeared about a month ago, with their high pitched nagging squawks. I take my (figurative) hat off to the parents who seemed unruffled by their incessant needs, their nerve-fraying persistence.
As time has passed I have seen that although the teens can pick up food, and they do, they have a little difficulty in getting it from the front of their beaks back to their throat. Seeing this has made me feel kinder towards them.
The parents feed themselves, as well. But when they turn to the child, and beak a mouthful deep within, there is an impression of bliss: perhaps, for a young bird, feeling a hard, food providing beak deep within yours is what parental comfort is all about.
Perceiving behaviours and empathising is part of being human.
If I note behaviours and reactions or happenings in you, and deny to you the associated emotions that I might feel in that circumstance, that would label me as a psychopath.
If I react in the same way to other creatures, it is ridiculed as anthropomorphism.
Currawongs, with their staring yellow eyes, are present here all the time: not seasonal, as at home. They are a fierce looking bird: big. black, beaky. This is a nasty trick that nature has played on them, because they are a little timid, and well down in the assertiveness rankings. They have a range of calls, tunes and whistles: all with a pleasing richness of timbre. Unfortunately they seem to congregate in mobs and talk a lot, and have loud voices, so that one can simultaneously think, "That is really beautiful", and "I wish they would stop."
One day when they - about 15 of them - and 6 or so magpies were guzzling the mince I scatter around, a loud currawong "clang! clang!" from on high, sent them all instantly into flight and hiding. I had had no idea that they had sentinels, and I was impressed that it was across species..(maybe wrong word there). But, the magpies split as fast as the currawongs: they knew the message.
Kookaburras cause me frustration. I feed them gravy beef, as the mince that all others gobble is, I understand, bad for them. Throwing them a slice, they may cock their heads, stare at it reflectively, and watch benignly while someone else steals it. And then suddenly stir themselves to action and swoop on some mince that I want them to avoid. Are they stupid or philosophic? I only feed them now when they perch on the back railings and I am tossing from about 20 cm. They like to shake and beat a strip to make sure that it is dead, before heading back to the clothesline to either swallow it or feed it to their fluffy babies. Oh, those babies ae adorable.
I used to try to protect the small birds, but I have no need. They are swift and agile, and generally all the birds interact with behaviour that I can only interpret as a kind of respect and tolerance.
Not that there are no disputes, or no hierarchy. Assertiveness is always displayed with harsh noise, and a rearing and stretching of wings in order to appear larger. Evidently it is inbuilt in all species, including us, to be intimidated or impressed soley by size.
Although I can see it working in bird disputes, I'm not sure that this innate instinct is helpful towards creating the kind of society I would prefer.
As time has passed I have seen that although the teens can pick up food, and they do, they have a little difficulty in getting it from the front of their beaks back to their throat. Seeing this has made me feel kinder towards them.
The parents feed themselves, as well. But when they turn to the child, and beak a mouthful deep within, there is an impression of bliss: perhaps, for a young bird, feeling a hard, food providing beak deep within yours is what parental comfort is all about.
Perceiving behaviours and empathising is part of being human.
If I note behaviours and reactions or happenings in you, and deny to you the associated emotions that I might feel in that circumstance, that would label me as a psychopath.
If I react in the same way to other creatures, it is ridiculed as anthropomorphism.
Currawongs, with their staring yellow eyes, are present here all the time: not seasonal, as at home. They are a fierce looking bird: big. black, beaky. This is a nasty trick that nature has played on them, because they are a little timid, and well down in the assertiveness rankings. They have a range of calls, tunes and whistles: all with a pleasing richness of timbre. Unfortunately they seem to congregate in mobs and talk a lot, and have loud voices, so that one can simultaneously think, "That is really beautiful", and "I wish they would stop."
One day when they - about 15 of them - and 6 or so magpies were guzzling the mince I scatter around, a loud currawong "clang! clang!" from on high, sent them all instantly into flight and hiding. I had had no idea that they had sentinels, and I was impressed that it was across species..(maybe wrong word there). But, the magpies split as fast as the currawongs: they knew the message.
Kookaburras cause me frustration. I feed them gravy beef, as the mince that all others gobble is, I understand, bad for them. Throwing them a slice, they may cock their heads, stare at it reflectively, and watch benignly while someone else steals it. And then suddenly stir themselves to action and swoop on some mince that I want them to avoid. Are they stupid or philosophic? I only feed them now when they perch on the back railings and I am tossing from about 20 cm. They like to shake and beat a strip to make sure that it is dead, before heading back to the clothesline to either swallow it or feed it to their fluffy babies. Oh, those babies ae adorable.
I used to try to protect the small birds, but I have no need. They are swift and agile, and generally all the birds interact with behaviour that I can only interpret as a kind of respect and tolerance.
Not that there are no disputes, or no hierarchy. Assertiveness is always displayed with harsh noise, and a rearing and stretching of wings in order to appear larger. Evidently it is inbuilt in all species, including us, to be intimidated or impressed soley by size.
Although I can see it working in bird disputes, I'm not sure that this innate instinct is helpful towards creating the kind of society I would prefer.
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
Christmas and all that ...
Once, I had family who came, and it was good. Roast ham with pineapple and cloves and brown sugar. The turkey. Cranberry sauce and brandy butter. Bon bons. Roast vegetables. Glass baubles and lights on the tree. Carols. Chocolates. Eyes lighting up, It all went well.
Until it didn't.
Later, reduced, older children travelling home, listening to ABC radio who gave regular updates on the Christmas road toll as if it were some kind of record they were eager to breech. Fear - imagination? - did not eclipse relief, but certainly reduced pleasure.
None of that fits where I am now.
Now I ignore the crassness, shrug off the rancid commercialisim, and am aware that what the celebration is about, fundamentally, down to the nitty gritty., is the birth of a baby. Some people think that this particular baby was divine. Other don't. I don't think that it matters.
Like sunsets or stars, tides, rainbows, babies - humans through to mice, cockroaches or other- are an extraodinary phenomena: always miraculous.
I like to think that at Christmas we are celebrating the importance of the most vulnerable in our world. The least influential. And, arguably, our sttrongest hint that life continues to have confidence in us. I am happy. at Christmas, to celebrate babies.
Thursday, December 6, 2012
Indolent in the Garden
There are some lovely trees in the garden, like this oak. Its branches spread perfectly for a tree house: it just needs children.
Large parts of the ground have had ivy over them, and it has climbed many trees. Mainly, I am severing the ivy stems and hoping for good luck, tho' I understand that if robust enough it can live from the tree itself, not from the earth. I am careful in trying to rid this gum tree of it, because its bark is so tender.
The above was not meant to be underlined: that was just a gremlin. I don't argue with them. I wonder if anyone knows what that plant is.
Once, boysenberries were planted. Now I am enjoying that foresight.
I didn't expect that I would enjoy the ripe boysenberries, as I am doing. But, in the interim I have been tossing minced beef -only $6 a kilo - at the magpies, kookas, currawongs + small miners - (mynahs?) - and others, and can see that I may distorted their world in doing so. Or not.
A smallish brown - grey bird - oh, maybe 20 - 40 cm - has a pure clear song of notes when he is at the rear, waiting for mince. The clarity and beauty of his voice penetrate to me within, to the advantage of the other birds hoping for handouts.
He snatches food in mid air like a miracle, his reflexes astonishing to watch. His beak is large for a smallish bird, and has a hook at the end, which, I assume, is to pierce the eggs of other birds. Alas.
It occurred to me that that is what I do: take the eggs of other species.
Logging on to my site, it says there are a number of comments waiting for moderation. Looking at these, they go back to 2011.
As far as I recall, I have never asked for moderation.
Sunday, October 28, 2012
The wood is somewhat mismatched, although one end looks almost like oak. It is very coarsely grained, and the whole piece looks rather crude and rough and almost home made. Perhaps that is why I have never seen another like it. Or, perhaps it was always such a cheap piece that others simply threw theirs out when they could afford better - when they grew rich..
But the hinges - there are four of them, are quite beautiful. Over the years this has become one of my favourite pieces.
Simple and unpretentious. Both ordinary and beautiful.
In this it reminds me of the youtube flash operas in malls and supermarkets. No stage to separate, no fabulous costumes, just very ordinary people with an astonishing streak of beauty in their voices.
This flash performance is actually an advertisement, so it is better produced than most. If you have the few minutes to watch it, I feel sure that you will enjoy it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_popout&v=GBaHPND2QJg
Saturday, October 20, 2012
Pink Owl
I was 5 years old when my mother's friend took us from our minute rural village: sandstone cottages in a bush clearing near the Cudgegong River on the far side of the Great Dividing Range, for a holiday in the megalopolis of Sydney, She took us to Taronga Park Zoo for the day: such excitement, such astonishment, such thrilling views of the exotic, outlandish, bizarre and beautiful only before known through stories. We gawped.
The evening train back to her home in Killara was a puzzle. We had to stand, crowded and shoved. On our morning trip the train had been relaxed and empty. What had changed?
"It's pink owl," she bent down to answer my question.
Pink Owl! What did this mysterious, arcane term mean? "Why is it called that?" I asked.
"Because that's what it is," she said a little crossly, no doubt tired, impatient and regretting her timing.
I was astonished. I knew the adult world to be prosaic and mundane: yet, here was a poetic, magical name for a rather unpleasing phenomena. Pink Owl: the evening hour, when people rushed for home.
Our minds, or mine certainly, try to impose meaning, or patterns onto the incomprehensible, the mysterious, the unknown. And, on the whole, I'm happy with that.
Later in the holiday, I awoke one night in the double bed I shared with my two sisters. I pondered as to whether the bed had side rails or not. I could not remember, so I decided to roll over towards the edge to find out - (one might have thought that the youngest should have been in the middle, or, that I might have had
more common sense...but, ...). As became obvious, there were no side rails, I landed on the floor, and for some time had a scar down the length of my nose. I can't remember that it hurt: my memory is of everyone else being concerned while I was not.
Forty five years later, when my husband died quite suddenly, this scar immediately resurrected and jagged down my nose again. Although I had long forgotten it, I recognised it's path precisely. It was a reminder that the body has its own history, its own dynamic, its own life, memory and agenda.
And it has been little nudges like that that have reminded me of how little I know, or will ever know, and how much I may misunderstand, and how my mind ( which feels like myself, ) does its best to understand to comprehend and find paths through this complex, complicated, glorious, extraordinary, difficult existence that we find ourselves in. Pink owl.
And, on the whole I'm happy with that.
The evening train back to her home in Killara was a puzzle. We had to stand, crowded and shoved. On our morning trip the train had been relaxed and empty. What had changed?
"It's pink owl," she bent down to answer my question.
Pink Owl! What did this mysterious, arcane term mean? "Why is it called that?" I asked.
"Because that's what it is," she said a little crossly, no doubt tired, impatient and regretting her timing.
I was astonished. I knew the adult world to be prosaic and mundane: yet, here was a poetic, magical name for a rather unpleasing phenomena. Pink Owl: the evening hour, when people rushed for home.
Our minds, or mine certainly, try to impose meaning, or patterns onto the incomprehensible, the mysterious, the unknown. And, on the whole, I'm happy with that.
Later in the holiday, I awoke one night in the double bed I shared with my two sisters. I pondered as to whether the bed had side rails or not. I could not remember, so I decided to roll over towards the edge to find out - (one might have thought that the youngest should have been in the middle, or, that I might have had
more common sense...but, ...). As became obvious, there were no side rails, I landed on the floor, and for some time had a scar down the length of my nose. I can't remember that it hurt: my memory is of everyone else being concerned while I was not.
Forty five years later, when my husband died quite suddenly, this scar immediately resurrected and jagged down my nose again. Although I had long forgotten it, I recognised it's path precisely. It was a reminder that the body has its own history, its own dynamic, its own life, memory and agenda.
And it has been little nudges like that that have reminded me of how little I know, or will ever know, and how much I may misunderstand, and how my mind ( which feels like myself, ) does its best to understand to comprehend and find paths through this complex, complicated, glorious, extraordinary, difficult existence that we find ourselves in. Pink owl.
And, on the whole I'm happy with that.
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