I am from...

I am from gumboots and gratitude, from farm chores and early responsibility, from cubbyhouses and boating on the irrigation channel in half a 44 gallon drum which had been the hiding place for rust and snakes before it was filled with adventure and near-drowning.

 

I am from the weatherboard with pressed tin walls where a lamb was a cupcake thief,

a hound ate spiders with his human,

a calf was resurrected with honeyed milk and brandy and its mothers gargantuan tongue

and where a so-called failure of a racehorse tamed a wildling child.

 

I am from the jewelled peppercorns we shoved into the slug gun and shot at things; 

 

I am from wisteria boughs, from their explosions of purple and white blossoms, from their alien pods I prized better than the Barbies I’d given rainbow mohawks to; from their thick canopy of cool green that I’d hide beneath and read,

And I am from the Riverina gums, tall, proud, ghostly, rooted in the riverbeds and in my heart, whose long gone limbs I remember as if they were my own.

 

I am from making do and making up and making the best of any situation;

from “Keep to the high ground” and “If it hurts when you do that, then don’t do that”;

From a Scorpio dreamer and a pragmatic Cancerian.

 

I am from 5kg tins of Baked Beans from the SPC factory in Shepparton and the mystery cans with no lables which may have contained fruit in jelly or pea and ham soup or spaghetti and meatballs – and even though food should never be a lottery, what is that that Grandma has burnt for dinner?

 

I am from the time my brother speared me in the leg Shaka Zulu style after too much TV and a disagreement in the vegetable garden,

I am from knocking out my dog and myself when I drove into a fence at full speed in the Suzuki soft-top at age eight, and from discovering a treasure trove of comics in an old shed that smelled of possum pee.

 

I am from Catholicism and the Bombers and other things I also choose now not to follow.

I am from Scotland, Ireland, England, Wales, Denmark, Spain and the Gippsland Gunai Kurnai mob, who preceded them all.

 

I am from the winding Otway tree ferns, Warrnambool Norfolk pines stretching up like Christmas trees and the beautiful and fleeting Inokashira Koen cherry blossoms - perfectly pastel pink puffballs.

 

I am from things I can’t remember and things I can’t forget and some things I’m yet to discover

I am from.

Making (it with) my day

Some customers are golden and they make the day all sparkletastic. *

Just had a huge fest o' the gab with a lovely Melbourne couple, early 70s pre-boomers, whitherwandering from cellar door to cellar door, talking grape and taking names. The marketing people call them 'grey nomads'. I call them plaid-covered sanity bearers.

He loved the wines, but good-naturedly admonished Littlebro and myself over the fact that we still haven't done a winemaking course ourselves and let our winemaker do the Jesus trick.

"I'm studying remedial therapy," say I, an ever-ready excuse bunny.
"It's complementary therapy - a massage and a glass of wine," I protest further.
Met with scorn. "Massage?" He screwed up his nose. "You can take your massage - I'd rather have a glass of wine and a screw."

Nice point, well executed. But that's still a kind of massage, isn't it? Kinda?

Wishing you all fantastic weekend massages.

ex-ohhhh-ex

b.t.w. - This week's Music To Mulch Merlot To: Marvin all the way, baby.
The Marv-pod has 'Let's Get It On' right after 'Our Father'...



* Don't get me wrong - occasionally I still get those ones I'd like to kiss with a brick.
You know who you are, lady who asked if we had a rubbish bin for the tasting glasses and when I put out my hand to take them, filled it with dirty tissues and aspirin casings from the ruinous depths of your handbag. We will have our time...

Love and Other Ruses #1: Like I like my coffee...

I have a coffee machine. Industrial. It's not old, but it's been around. As with many things in my life, it runs a little too hot sometimes. It has too much steam to let off. It doesn't play well with froth.

The brand is Rancillio. Italian. I like the way the name rolls off the tongue: the breathy soft C; the lingering concentration of vowels and double L's. And the R. I love R's. In another time and hemisphere, I taught people that making R's is like the beginning of a kiss - a soft, puckering oh.

Actually, I said it was like being forced as a young child to give an old relative a kiss - fast, tight and no tongue in sight.

But that was when I was being paid. This is for love.

When I bought the machine, a lovely old man who runs a tiny coffee turret on Pako Street told me I had to name it after the most handsome man I had ever seen. He said it was the only way to ensure the coffee would be perfect - and his Sofia Loren always gave good coffee.

I wanted Gregory Peck, but I was a little concerned about the Feng Shui implications of naming it after a dead guy.

I still can't drink Lapsang-Souchong because it smells like my dead grandfather - that Salvol soap scent which came from a life of using one's hands and a lifetime of washing away the evidence: fisholine for rust, turps for brushes and viscous black oil for everything else. Rosemary for remembrance would have been better against the Altzheimer's. Fuck it - it's just tea, right?

My coffee machine is called George Clooney.

I was trying to decide, there were people around, he ended up as the popular vote. Probably not a bad move, really. My first love was Grizzly Adams, my second was Andy Gibb and there was that little incident with Patrick Duffy as a merman...

So, despite my hesitation, George it was. And over time he charmed me. His coffee kept everybody happy and he knew his way around an African bean. Steamy but very practical. And then it happened.

It was a Saturday, early in the morning, before anyone else had arrived. Just me and my machine.

I put some music on, lit a little Champa.

George was flushed, primed.

Buttons were pushed.

And he gave me the most luscious crema I had ever seen - thick, unyielding and just begging for sugar.

I reached out, ran my hand along the warm, smooth metal. Good boy, George.

A large Oh, preceded by an N.

Good boy, George.
Good, Boy George.

It kinda stopped being sexy after that.

Learning Fear

It's 11.10pm on a random Wednesday night and I'm slowly calming down.

We had our first evening function in the shed tonight and I had been cooking like a mad thing for a couple of days, folding filo, chopping things of crunch and colour; roasting, basting, arranging all spanky-like.

I was a little nervous; a little scared. It was the sandwiches. I can't make even little triangles. Mine are misshapen, scalene, isosceles; with extra hangnails of crust. I go to functions and see other people's rows of angular perfection. How? I have sandwich envy. I know it, but I have to make them anyway. I try very hard. I manage it. Apparently the trick is in the type of platter and a little soft lighting. It's all about the lighting.

I stay late to clean, sort out the rubbish, do all the things you have to do when you run a cafe. There are mountains of dishes covering the benches and tables. Nothing for it but to turn on the stereo and dive in. I live by the theory that the louder the music is, the less dishes seem like actual work (Yes, I wash the dishes by hand. I'm so old school). I'm getting my suds on.

I'm zoning out when a bang breaks my reverie. Then a really loud rattling.

It sounds exactly like the noise the front door makes when my frankenfather, not having grasped the fact that the door is, in fact, locked, tries to open it with a complex mix of pushing, pulling and jiggling the door handle.
Said frankenfather is currently in Darwin at the very top of Australia, while I am a 30 minute drive from the most southern point of the Australian mainland. I'm thinking it's not him.

I press pause on the stereo, because frankly I'm not ready to commit to giving up one of my favourite songs. The rattling continues for a couple of second then stops. So do I.
There's only a tiny smidge of fear, lurking in the back like that niggling feeling of leaving the iron on (Not that I iron. It's not pertinent - I'm just saying).

I crank up the tune and go back to doing the dishes, because, well, it's just so much darn fun.

Another rattle.

I'm pretty sure it's just the aluminum in the shed expanding and contracting.
The fire is really hot. The air outside is really cold. It's what my very logical brother would tell me - if he were here, as opposed to being 30 minutes down the road, and a third of the way to his destination.
So I tell myself, because I am logical and sensible and not at all scared or paranoid.
I wrap that thought around me like a big snuggly blanket, stop the music and try to make a little headway on my dishpan hands.

A couple of minutes pass.

The lights go off in the kitchen and in the cellar door. Four switches in total. Simultaneously.
The dog is going crazy outside.
And I'm pretty sure the back door's unlocked.
I edge along the wall, get to the door, turn the handle and do a quick lock twist.
Nothing can get in - but by the same virtue - nothing can get out.
I don't actually feel safer.

I realize that I have no phone numbers at the shed. I still haven't gotten around to getting a mobile phone, and even if I had one, there is no mobile coverage here.

Insert appropriate expletive.

No.
Must. Enhance. Calm.

The other 'animal' part of the shed is fully lit. I can see the light on the stereo and on the drinks fridge. The lights that went off would have all been on one fuse. Logic prevails. No, it bloody doesn't. The emergency lights should have come on, but they didn't. I pull the plug on the dishes idea and the dishes themselves.

I have to turn the rest of the lights off before I can make a mad dash for the newly-locked door and the 4WD behind it.

I grab a knife. It's sharp and lives on a magnetized wall rack. When you take it off the wall it makes the sound you hear in Japanese films when a Samourai sword is unsheathed. It's a sexy, I'm-about-to-fight-you-and-maybe-I'll-do-it-without-subtitles noise. It's comforting. It's not on the wall. It's in the almost empty sink, slick with dying bubbles. I practice holding it.

When do we learn fear?

I'm about five and staying with my nana, sleeping with her in her big bed. I'm not asleep. There's a noise on the outside stairs and then on the front verandah. Nan sits up. She obviously wasn't sleeping either. "Charlie, get the gun," she says, loud enough to be heard outside (We're farm folk. We have guns).
Charlie is nana's husband. He died when my dad was 16. He won't be getting the gun.
We both lay in the bed, silent, listening; until we drift off.
She's dead now - and I'm still sleeping in her bed.

Fight or flight...

I have a recurring nightmare. I'm young, maybe six. I'm lying on my stomach in front of the television. My eyes are glued to the screen. I'm so close that I can see the little dots of colour in the screen, the blue-red-yellow trio that makes all the other colours come out to play. The Rocky theme starts to play. Fight? The colours swell in and out like pulsating polka dots, like boxing glove rainbows. I can't move. Flight? I can't look away. I know there is something behind me, but I am glued to the carpet, a threadbare cream concoction that cannot hope to offer any protection. I can not move.
And I still can't listen to that song.

Or fright.

I'm sure there's nobody out there. I'm sure I will be able to get to the car and get home. I'm sure it's all just a little universe tomfoolery designed to freak me out, make me think, stop me doing the dishes. I'm sure.

But I still take the knife.
And I hold it very, very tightly.

For Tiges

Belated Eulogy

So high you cannot
Climb or get close to it;
Raindrops scatter in the flying wind.
The gate is barred with green moss.
Suddenly forgetting thought,
Without attainment,
Only then will you be sure
The gate has been open all along.
- Zen Master T’aego (1301-1382)



The greatest lesson of my life - not just because it has been the most profound, but because I find I have to constantly re-learn it - is that all things shall pass.

It all goes, becoming good and bad and indifferent flotsam and jetsam. All that rises must converge. Nothing gold can stay. Every cloud has a silver lining. Outta mind, outta sight.

My final year at high school wasn't pretty. I'm not getting into why, but there came a point where my baths were less about bubbles and more about razors and I wanted everything to stop. And because everyone (at that point in my life) thought I was terminally happy as opposed to just terminal, I kept it all in.
I went to school. I was dutiful. I was studious. And I had this constant fear that everything was caving in (even now, remembering, writing this, I feel that old familiar sensation in the top of my stomach, the one that makes me want to throw up and cry at the same time).

At school I had this teacher who had a habit of singing in homeroom. Got my daily dose of Van Morrison at 9.05am Monday to Friday. I'd get to school and shrink down into my corner seat, hoping for numbness, but he was having none of it. And on the very rare days when the others, getting into The Violent Femmes or discovering The Doors for the first time, groaned or sniggered to themselves, he would smile, look at me, say "Ready Katy?" and dive headfirst into song.
Every morning was a moondance. I loved it and I loved him for it.
It didn't get me through the day, it just got me through a part of it. And that was enough. Every morning it was enough.
And it passed.

And I'm okay. Generally. I'm a little too in touch with my anger at the moment. I let myself go or lost myself a really long time ago and sometimes I don't know if I can be bothered looking. I know I think too much and I think I know too much.
I don't act enough - and sometimes all I do is act. In my more lucid moments, I praise something I'm not sure I believe in for all those human angels who have believed in me.

I had always wanted to catch up with my old teacher and thank him - not give him the specifics - just a session with some old familiars, some beer and karaoke.

Two months ago, a couple came into the cellar door on a really quiet Saturday. They tasted the family produce and bought a bottle of wine. We talked about living overseas and where we came from and it turned out that the lady was a teacher at my old school. We reminisced about mutual acquaintances and I told them how this guy would start the day and asked them to say hi when they saw him.

They stopped talking, drinking, looking at me. They were really close friends of his. They didn't want to tell me. They cried.
He had died, a couple of years earlier, by his own hand. Marriage break-up. They said she left and he couldn't live without her.
I feel sick again.

The greatest lesson of my life - not just because it has been the most profound, but because I find I have to constantly re-learn it - is that all things shall pass.

I wish I could have told him that.
I don't know if it's due to guilt because I should have made the effort or vanity thinking it might have made a difference.
And I know that neither are real and both are pointless - but once upon a time I was hurting enough to want everything to end and he helped heal me. Whether he knew it or not.

So I do what any self-indulgent, pseudo-spiritualist with delusions of talent in my situation would do.

I cry.
I write.
I pray.
I listen to Van Morrison.
I have imaginary conversations.
I pretend I really knew him.


This, too, shall pass.

Experimenting With Relationships & Playing With Myself - Friendship and other leaky boats

Sunday morning, seven o’clock, and I’m waiting for a tram with a bag of poo in my hand.

Twenty-four hours earlier I was on a train, heading to the metropolis for one last weekend with my eco-warrior mate before his visa ran out and our friendship became hemispherically challenged. The plan was to do very little but hang out together, talk, read; all mundane but vitally needed.

I arrive, and call. He’s having brunch with some friends from the sports club where he sometimes trains. He sounds awkward, hesitant. He’s not quite ready, but no matter. There’s an easy solution. I will shop while he finishes his coffee and then he’ll meet me and we’ll go back to his meticulously laid-out, laid back enviro-palace and fall into our easy conversation, our plans to save the world and our sanity.

I get to the shopping strip, all department stores and buskers and tourists in cheap cotton t-shirts with day-glo cries of “G’day Mate” and “Koalas do it better”; panhandlers without pans, clouds of pigeons and intense, earnest consumers. I’m not one of them.
I feel extremely unsure of myself and overly aware of my otherness, but being in Melbourne and because this is just a head-rant, no one else is. Apparently you can take the city out of the girl.
I read in a toilet for forty minutes.

We meet. We’re going back to the others to have more coffee and then all go together to an eco fair and have lunch and later dinner and did I bring my bathers because they were all pretty keen to go for a swim in the afternoon and I’d really like them and he’d been seeing one of them for about two weeks and the other two were her mate and her friend’s boyfriend and…

I was suddenly so tired. Mid-30 degree temperatures sank into the concrete and my dark blue jeans and the four bottles of wine in my backpack and all bounced back, everything around me one throbbing mercury-riser.

See, this friend and I have a history. Not that kind of history. And though, when you continue to read and see twinges of words that make you disbelieve the nature of our friendship, hold fast. I won’t steer you wrong. I only do that to myself. They are only words. This is not about the nature of friendship, this is about its nurturing.

We have a history – one where I get bumped every time he starts a new relationship.

Man, I get it; one tends to develop that tunnel vision fuzz at the beginning of a new love: tingly heartjumbles, adrenaline so palpable that you feel their heartbeat in the briefest fingertip brush; sinking, drowning into every detail, and shagging like you intend never to come up for air. Writers through the ages have waxed proverbial - all spring in their steps and lead in their pencils.

I get it; I’ve have it; and, at some point I expect to again revisit that tantalizing freakshow, but all I could think of was how difficult it was to get time off work – my god, and an actual Saturday/Sunday weekend too – and I saw stretching ahead the pavement of my weekend and how the reality of it closely shadowed my newfound expectations of disappointment.

Plans gone, rearranged now: I am the third or fifth wheel.

We end up with thirty minutes of solo conversation and talk, like we used to. We open up: me about how I’m uncomfortable around people now; how despite a lifetime of jobs where I talk and listen, everything feels contrived, and he talks about visa woes and leaving Australia and relationships. We’re just getting started really and he says you have to watch this Al Gore film and it's good but I could have watched it any other time and because it’s the DVD there are the out takes and updates and I’m sitting watching this, by now, very long film while he reads about water consumption in agriculture and has a nanna nap.

There’s no time for talking after that. A quick shower in the balcony bath, a gin and tonic and then to dinner with the same few.
And they’re lovely people, truly. And at another time, I may have enjoyed it, been able to relax into it. But I’m there with two couples and they do their couple stuff and their double date stuff and we ask each other the usual perfunctory questions, all punctuated by frothy social lubricant.

The dinner becomes dinner and a bar with the promise of a café for midnight tiramisu - and my eighteen-hour day says no. So I beg off: I’m tired I say, and I am. What I don’t say is I’m feeling ignored, undervalued, irrelevant. What I don’t say is I know, despite your assertions that you will meet me back there in an hour, you won’t. That you’re giddy on imported beer and love juice. That I know tomorrow will be another today.
So I get the key, organize where to leave it for him, and leave.

Had I created this? Possibly. Probably. I could have simply smiled, not cared or chosen to have different feelings and just rejoiced in the fact that my good friend, who tended to need to be needed and always shone in those first dazzling love-lights, was again fulfilling the general criteria. Be happy that he was happy.

Nah. F*ck it. I was pissed.

I can feel uncomfortable and awkward anywhere – I really didn’t need to make a special trip to the city for it.

***

The 6 a.m. not quite dawn arrives, heralded by plastic on my wrist and the hopeful heart monitor attached. The key is still there, lying snug against the brick. Who am I kidding? I’d made my choice as I lay it there. This just made it easier, made me feel justified, made me feel like a bitch for contemplating screwing his day, made me realize I was giving him what he wanted after all. At that moment I didn’t care about saving the world, I just wanted to save my weekend.

Leaving again.

Going through the motions: remake the bed; folding clothes; cleaning dishes, myself. All your morning basics. Teeth, toilet, and then…

The toilet doesn’t flush.
At all.
Even a little bit.

I look down at the nuggets of potential shame.
More crap to deal with.
And in a household such as this, do you think I can find a plastic bag?

Eventually I do.

I leave other things to show I was here instead: a note, the key, the mess of half-eaten stone fruit left by marauding possums, some fresh peppercorns I had liberated from a tree next to the Yarra River.

I want to go, but the weight of unsaid volumes hunches me, rounds my shoulders, and my feet drag my still reluctant head down the stairs, past the decades of family murals, an old bike, a new bike, a clutch of coats, until I reach the front gate. It’s too late to stay.

I open the gate, let it clang behind me, take a deep breath and …

It’s Sunday morning. Most of the city is sleeping; the early cool a welcome lullaby after the heat of the night. A few stragglers are bounding homeward: the walk of shame or fame, depending on the night’s transpirations. Is that even a word?

The neighbor to my left is sneakily watering his garden and, at a service station two minutes down the road to my right, there’s a man who has completed all but one hour of his night shift. He’s really tired, but he still manages to smile and sell me some really excellent juice.

There’s a thirty-minute wait for the first tram, a sixty-minute one for the train and I’m happy, really happy. I feel courageous, even though I’m really sneaking away.

I look around, hoping he won’t come into view, hoping I can escape without him finding me. I will deal with it, I just don’t want to yet.
I want my familiar turf, my high ground, my hermit crab cave. Hell, I want my own toilet, with its reassuring flush; I want physical and emotional distance – miles and days of it.

But.

In a couple of hours he will find my tardy train and twice try to get me to stay; in a couple of days he will tell me that he had not communicated to me properly what the weekend would entail. Communicate. A dozen times he will use it in a five-minute conversation. You would think that with such effort actual communication will have taken place. And maybe it will in another part of the future. But not now. For now I’m done.

Exeunt, gentle reader. The heroine aways. With dignity? Pride? Sanity?

I’m standing there, grinning like the idiot I am, and waiting for a tram with a bag of poo in my hand.

But it’s ok, or it will be. Or maybe not.

Sunday morning, seven o’clock.

It is now and now is beautiful and it’s mine.

Sometimes, not putting up with someone else’s shit means taking your own shit home.