Day 15: Reflections on the Camino

This morning I left the albergue (pilgrim hostel) feeling a bit flat. My right foot was sore because I'd taken lots of skin off my little toe yesterday - ten mins after my blisters had healed! - by stubbing it while enthusiastically photographing the phenomenal stork's nest on top of the church.

I walk on. Along gravel paths, through zucchini-green wheat fields and canola crops. In the past few days, as soon as you leave one village, the next is visible in the distance, its not-so-silent witness, the church bell tolling across the meadows.
It came to me. I was feeling lonely and full of self-pity. I had no-one to walk with. I walk at snail's pace and everyone I've made a connection with so far has long since passed. In 'Sinning Across Spain' Alisa Piper would say I'm carrying too many sins in the heavy pack on my back.
As I turn the corner on the narrow cobbled road of the next village, I'm struck by the familiarity of the woman walking in front of me. Her hair, gait, body. It's my sister. Not literally of course but I'm immediately reminded that before I left home I told friends and family I was walking with them. It's a sign. Back on the path 30 mins later, walking toward me in the opposite direction, are a woman, man, three young children, and three heavily laden woolly donkeys. My first impulse is to reach for my camera, my second, intrusion. I stop by the side of the path to let them pass, and call to the woman leading the way 'peregrina (pilgrim)?'. Si, is her response. Another sign. I'm not alone.
My loneliness passes. I contemplate ending my day's journey 4 kms further down the track, a short day's walk. There are three mountains to traverse today, and I'm not feeling particularly energetic. I reach the next village which involves a short walk along the national highway. As I walk on the narrow culvert, trucks overtaking each other, I feel vulnerable, small and quite fearful. My protection mantra gets a good work-out.
At the village, I sit with an Irish woman who was at the same albergue three or four nights ago when I played some uke. I've become known as both a witch (the woman who carries the homoeopathic first aid kit and likes to share it), and loco (crazy, for carrying a ukulele). After a short conversation I rise to leave. She gestures for me to sit down, she has something to tell me. The evening I played, she tells me, was the first anniversary of her husband's death from a violent heart attack. 'Down by the River to Pray', and 'I'll fly away', songs I led that night, were songs played at his funeral and she wanted to say how moved she was. I'm brought undone.

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Fisherwoman

It was the whimsy, so endearing

I said to myself later at home

that turned my gaze northward

toward the unlikely sound

of a voice, rising with beauty

above the crash of the ocean

against the colossal granite

at the end of the wall

Amongst the rotting flesh and

discarded tackle of her peers,

dressed in grey trackies

faded flannel shirt and scuffed sneakers

her unruly curls defied the constraint of her beanie

as I became captive to her face,

aged, lovely, a classic Renoir,

and her unselfconscious melody

With hands masterful and deft

she baited her rod

paused to let the dolphins pass,

looked back, and cast long

a practised throw, plonk

one solitary fisherwoman,

with a song in her heart

How beguiling!

A meeting with a monk

 

I see him initially at the Hong Kong Ladies Market, a garish evening bazaar, bursting with acres of vulgar plastic junk destined for land-fill in a year's time, imitation-designer handbags and t-shirts, faux jade buddhas and beads.  He's tall for an Asian, wears a wide and rather sinister-looking smile, crew-cut, a floor length grey tunic and mala. Walking the narrow aisle, meeting the eyes of the tourists who dare meet his, he extends his alms bowl cupped in both hands.  Something inside warns suss, but I suppress it. Way too irreverent Catherine.  We look each other in the eye, he proffers his bowl, and I move on.   I’m not giving!  I feel petty and pathetic for harbouring such unholy thoughts about a holy man, but it’s my temperament.  I like my monks earnest!

Three days later, 9 pm, the heat intense, I’m on my second and last excursion back to the bazaar.  Getting there and back in a hurry is my main objective.  I’m just about to cross the street at the traffic lights when I notice the monk from the bazaar on the other side of the road. My reaction is not altogether pleasant, but I make a decision to practise the art of generosity this time and as the lights change, I move across the road, fishing for my wallet.  As I reach him I place my hands together in prayer and place $5 (80c) in his bowl. Simultaneously, from the folds of his tunic he extracts a small red plastic sheath, embossed with Chinese inscriptions, something firm and flat inside, and hands it to me.  I’m taken aback. Instinctively I look down at my wallet, and remove another $20.  Looking up at him he looks into my wallet, points to the $100 bill, shakes his head at my offering, and says ‘one hundred’.  You've got to be bloody joking, I think!  I look down at my wallet again, back at him, try and process my horror, place the $20 in his alms bowl, and turn and flee.

For days afterwards I suffer a terrible disquiet.  Should I have given more? Was his gift valuable? Should I have returned it? Why did I run, not challenge him?  Who was he?  Why me? Should I track him down? Was he a fake?  Stashing some extra cash away for smokes? The reflections and neurotic questions were endless, and disconcerting. 

“Why do you have to make things so complicated!” my sister replied when I returned home and told her the story.

Then I did a google search, 'Monks, Hong Kong'

Time I learnt to trust my intuition methinks.

 

Hong Kong and the Muse

This is Hong Kong from Peak Tower, the island’s highest point.   It’s spectacular in a concrete and commercial kind of way,  and represents every reason I don’t live in a city.

We're 14 (8 clients, 6 support staff) from a disability support organization in Lismore, and it's our last night of the holiday so we've splashed out on the night habour cruise.   Sitting on the back deck of the Shining Star, in a plastic chair, drinking complimentary Nescafe, and wishing it was red wine, I’m taking in dramatic fields of laser beams, neon lights, flashing billboards. You'll just have to imagine it.  As if in empathic overwhelm, my camera died! Giant video screens perched atop monolithic high-rise advertise, well, you name it, Panasonic, Sony, Toshiba, Hong Kong Bank and the rest of the qian (money) whose hands are low in the pockets  of Hong Kong Tourism.  I feel six parts assaulted, four parts numb.

Every few minutes I look back at Eve (not her real name).  She’s sitting on a cushioned bench seat away from the rest of us because she’s afraid of heights, the boat, the water. In her cosy corner, as is her wont, she’s jabbering away to herself, and gazing out at the world with absent interest.  She’s 55 and has Down’s Syndrome, which means she’s already outlived most of her contemporaries.   I’m here to provide for her needs, pop her meds out of the webster pack, help her in and out of the bath, wipe her bottom, cajole and bribe her into cleaning her teeth,  document her trip with her camera at the same time documenting my own trip with my own camera, guide her choice of meals, gifts and activities, and change her money into local currency.   I’ve pushed her wheelchair, rubbed cream into her necrotizing lower legs and feet, eased on her pressure stockings, soothed her anxieties and countless times, at her behest, felt the pacemaker under her skin. She’s worth it. When she looks at me and smiles it feels authentic in a way I’m unused to, unaffected by layers of cynical judgment.  She calls me sister, and has a wicked sense of humor that rings all my perverse bells.  Given my father’s constant infidelities, she could be onto something!

From a distance I watch as a Chinese woman of about the same age arrives on the couch near her and attempts to make conversation.  I’m humoured, uneasy. Should I go over and explain, intervene?  Eve’s oblivious. For ten days now I’ve wondered what she’s saying.  This soft but audible chatter wakes me at night,  loud enough to disturb my sleep but not loud enough to make out what she’s saying, save for a word of two.  Tonight though, I think I have it.  I think she’s got a visual (photographic) memory, and is repeating the text she reads everyday in ‘A Thousand Scientific Facts’, a book she bought on the trip. Occasionally I read over her shoulder, so taken am I by her interests. Why don’t snakes have legs; How do bees produce honey; Why do some trees live for hundreds of years; Why is ear wax yellow.

I want to be in her head! Nature, such comforting innocence!

Meet Mahko

Name:                             Mahko

Gender:                          Gentleman

Location:                         Brunswick Heads NSW

Date of Birth:                  Some time during 1620

Relationship Status:       Single

Smoking:                        Not near me you won’t!

Personality:                    Attention-seeking

Nationality:                     Cross-cultural

Employment:                  Wallflower

Diet:                                Healthy admiration

Religion:                         What?

Dress Sense:                  Ostentatious

Interests:                         Hot babes

Children:                         Only if they look like me!

Facts and Footnotes:

Mahko is one of three period costume pieces I designed and constructed during studies for a  Diploma of Theatre Costume Manufacturing 1998/9.

Mahko is for sale (or hire/contract)

Ensemble:                   Doublet (jacket)

                                    Trunkhose (trousers)

                                    Detachable codpiece

                                    Lace Ruff

                                    Suede Beret

                                    Lamé stockings 

                                    Shoes
                                    (7 items) 

Medium:                      Ostrich skin, antique nylon
                                    quilting, skin print tapestry,
                                    silk Indian sari, lamé,
                                    suede, gold braid, cotton,
                                    lace, metal
                                           

Viewing/enquiries:       Phone: 0431 600 138

                                    POA, negotiable

Stand by in coming weeks for introductions to Mahko's eclectic family, Hadisha and Lush.

catherineperversi@gmail.com

A Case for Ageing

‘In another time and plaee, the lines on a woman’s face would be revered as her life map’.  So said Helen Garner.  That place and time sounds rather friendly, uncomplicated, noble. In that cultural heaven , I’m a wise old crone, with a wise old story.  In the cultural wasteland that’s Australia, I’m 58 going on 70, past my use-by date, and invisible. 

But me, I’m not bothered, secure in the knowledge that my ageing body’s a temple, or so says  Crystal down the road.  Every week I can look forward to a brand new discovery, a brand new me.  Some new protrudance, a  couple of extra liver spots, a plump new mid-range tyre or two, a novel patch of previously unnoticed weathered epidermis, a sag here and a sag there.  Delightful, never-ending.  Age throws you a surprise a minute. The sub-text of this phenomenon - Practising for Death! Normal, perfectly normal.  Not your experience? You wait!

Some of my changing fortunes then?  Those things beginning to bulge on either side of my lower face for example.  What are they – well, jowls of course.  When and why did they decide to take refuge on my jaw when they could have applied for bed and breakfast in my cheeks, give my face a bit of  pup? As a matter of fact they resolved to land there because inner guidance informed them of my fascination for the triangular, three’s a very potent spiritual number, the holy trinity ‘n all, and therefore, as a fan of threesomes, my jowls are just being considerate.  Any day now I’m going to be blessed with three chins, that’s a pair of jowls and a chin.  Terrific, I’ll be able to wear my holiness on my face!

Then there’s my eyelids, well, the left one really.  I’ve noticed it’s become a bit lazy and droopy lately.   I’m quite appreciative of this though because your poor eyes have to look at things all day, be hyper-alert to what’s going on, stare at the computer, be mindful of risks.  It’s protecting my eye, and I didn’t even have to ask!  My right eye, on the other hand is on constant holiday, up and cheerful. Damned party animal.  This type of duality is part of the natural law of the universe, so obviously I’m stoked things are on track in my body.  Pretty soon no doubt I’ll only have to invest in one lens. That’ll save me heaps!

And those small benign rough lumps that are popping out all over the place, you may know them as warts, they’re especially useful too. Since they belong to that furiously resilient family, the same one as the cockroach, they’re never going to die and that means part of me will live forever . Woohoo! From a creative perspective these lumps are priceless because I’ve come up with a plan, well, it was Crystal's idea actually. She reckons they’ll work perfectly as a central feature in some body tattooing we were discussing, and that the ones on my leg will look ace worked into a mandala. I’ll just have to add color.  It’s a goer!

That fine-lined crepe paper effect on my chicken flaps, that’s the floppy bit forming  the inside of your upper arm, well it’s sort of fetching too, and sure, I understand that for the benefit of husband-scanning I may have to reassess the advantages of sleeveless frocks but hey, I can volunteer as a super-model for Hallmark, the fine manufacturers of quality cards and wrapping paper!

I ask you, why would you resort to the knife when, at the altar of your very own personal place of worship, such constant and fulfilling astonishment is at play? 

Not convinced?

Then chin up girls!

WHY BLOG?

People sometimes ask me why I blog. How can I bear to put so much personal stuff out there.  Isn’t it embarrassing? The short answer is no, what’s there to be embarrassed about, I’m only being irritatingly honest. I’m my father’s daughter, and possibly at some gloomy visceral level I’m scared that if I wait till I’m 70, about the age he was when he began writing, there’ll be no words left.  Two parents with Alzheimer’s disease can be a terrifying thought. Wasn’t it Socrates who said ‘An unexamined life is not worth living’.  I guess you could say I’m choosing to examine my life, publicly.  

The long answer is more complicated.  Truthfully, I’m not really sure why I blog. Maybe it’s because there’s a medium that enables me, and seizing opportunities is one of my fortes, like seizing the tail of the big bloody water dragon that spent the night under my bed a couple of days ago, or seizing the alarm in the morning and giving it a good clout. Maybe it’s because I have family and friends in far-off places and I like to keep them in my loop. I’d like to read their blogs, if they’d only sit on their nice Perversi arses long enough to write one. I’m highly confident I’m unoriginal with my words and the way I use them, it’s all been said, countless of millions of times before, but that’s not good enough reason to stop.  I’m a bit obsessed with writing, it’s something I do, and when you live on your own and don’t have telly - mostly it’s a load of croc - you need something to entertain you.  Words simply pass through me, like a good bowel movement, on the way to the sea.  Because Mercury (planet of communication for the philistines!) is retrograde in my natal chart, I often feel inarticulate, the words that are manufactured upstairs seem all sloppy and scrambled eggish, so when I speak what comes out is often counterintuitive to what I want to say, or  mean. Writing helps me feel more eloquent! This may not be your experience of me, but believe me, it’s what goes on in my head. Apparently one in about six people are punished by Mercury in this way, but I recently noticed a pattern. I generally write just prior to, during, and after Mercury does its reversal dance, three times a year for about three weeks. If that’s the only time I should write, it sucks, so from time to time I like to break the monotonous mould and write outside these parameters. I shouldn’t, I suppose, because it’s at these times that you probably find my writing THE MOST EMBARRASSING!  Like now for example. Writing is cathartic, helps me unpack my neuroticism, and is damned well cheaper than therapy.

At the end of the day, to be perfectly blunt, I write a blog because I’m just plain bold!  I’d recommend it.

 Who, me? Bold?

On Forks and Futures

 

Yesterday’s emotional release hangs like a bleak dark cloud around me today.  There's a change in the air and I don't know how to read it.  A couple of days ago it was the anniversary of my mother's death. She was born in the Year of the Pig, a loyal, steadfast woman. She was also a woman of great faith, and I can't help feel some association. I remind myself to be patient. 

It’s not that I’m unhappy with my life, I have all I need and I recently realized when I was going through some old papers that I’ve marked virtually all my desires off my last wish-list.  I have a home by the beach, I’m exercising my writing muscle, I work for an organization that satisfies my desire for service, I’ve had my canines done and they now look more like teeth than broken tree stumps, and I’m relatively financially secure. There’s no bloke on the horizon, yet, but frankly, and this is where my belief system probably acts as a roadblock, they’re mostly hard work, and rather unevolved.  Oh dear, I’m sounding, ah, rather unevolved.  So, what’s missing. In effect, nothing. I’m just restless, insecure, and itching like crazy. Let’s call it my bimonthly spiritual crisis … my replacement menopausal hot flush!

This morning I walked miles up the beach, stripped and had a dip.  It was fricken cold and ultra fricken, mmm, reductive. It’s amazing how an icy bath can make it seem like the cellulite that was once your thighs has simply gone south for autumn! In my altogether I stood facing east, and called to the creator. I implored spirit to guide me, asked for my dreams to be prophetic. I asked that I be graced with the capacity to recognize the signs and symbols that are constantly present on the canvas of life. I promised to keep rehearsing tolerance, to  be kind and compassionate and not be too needy, hmm!

On the long walk back to the surf club I got drenched.  And then, my answer. Someone, in the space it had taken me to walk up the beach and back, had created this astonishingly beautiful, and simple, sand Buddha.

Message received.

Keep your gaze fixed to the east. Have faith.

The good doctor

A good doctor is like an oasis when you’re lost and bewildered in an unfamiliar or forgotten landscape.  He quenches your thirst, raises your awareness, and, like a mirror, reflects your natural design back at you, revealing that which you are sometimes unable or unwilling to see for yourself, despite the looking.

I’ve been recalled following a routine procedure. I want to know whether my cholesterol still registers  high, thanks genes, and whether the Barambah organic full-cream milk I haven’t been able to resist recently is having an adverse effect on my insides. Clearly, the results aren’t favourable! 

At the surgery, a week ago, the doctor I saw was gruff and distracted.  Perhaps he was having a bad day, doctors are human too, but his bedside manner landed like a cold dead fish on my warm flesh. This morning, by a fateful stroke of genius, two doctors arrive simultaneously at reception, the bad guy and the unknown, and call my name. Automatically, I walk toward the unknown.

Kind doctors are hard to find. They have a way of drawing you out of yourself, of touching and exposing vulnerable inner places, those places that through practise and self-preservation I usually prefer to keep hidden.   Good doctors choose their words with sensitivity, understand the wisdom of turning their chair toward the patient, understand that it’s their presence you crave.  They have a way of intuiting the affectations of the patient’s heart, they ask the right questions, show empathy. In the space of ten minutes, I’ve disclosed more of my underlying self than in any conversation I’ve had in months.  His kind blue eyes have searched and found me.  His unwavering, unfidgetting presence gift me a truth and beauty I long for in those who are purported to care.  At the end of the consultation, I dare ask to be bulk-billed as my work in disability support has been reduced to two days per week.  With a genuineness I am immediately disarmed by, he nods and replies ‘Thanks for looking after the people’.  It’s these simple words, the acknowledgement of the work I do, which I neither ask for nor expect, and which is so often unheard in the language of the 21^st century, that bring me undone.

The day is grey when I step outside onto the sodden grass. The rain is relentless, the soak terminal.  In the car, stripped of my defences and utterly unhinged, I am engulfed by tears. I had planned a quiet coffee, a scan of the newspapers, some socializing.  There’s bills to pay, library books and DVDs to return,  a work roster to check, phone calls to make.  All this must wait.  I need a horizontal space, some self-nurturing, and time.

Thank you good doctor.  Hello skim milk!

Lives of others

When I mentioned the neighbourhood oddity to a girlfriend a week ago, with a laugh, she accused me of being a spy, or a stalker, probably both!

I noticed the car, and him, a couple of months ago, parked  in a residential street, under a giant fig, adjacent to the park and close to a community hall. At first I thought he must have been facilitating or participating in classes run at the hall, given I usually noticed his presence in the early evening on my regular walk to the beach. Then, during my days off, twice or three times a week, I began to notice the car parked in the usual place, during the day.  Sometimes he’d be sitting in it, sometimes on the grass, clothes draped over the hedge, his face in a book. Sometimes he was nowhere to be seen.   Occasionally I noticed him ambling back through the caravan park, a towel draped over his shoulder.  He’s worked out the code to the toilet block, I figured.  My suspicion and curiosity were aroused.  It’s the detective in me, a natural gift. It behoves employment, Your Honor!  Was he homeless, or waiting, waiting  terminally for something or someone?  One day, when I made certain he wasn’t in or near his car, not an old Kombie but a new and spunky wagon, I ventured to peek inside.  Every now and then I horrify myself with my gall!  It was crowded with life - books, soft furnishings, clothes. The front passenger seat was sprayed with a bouquet to nature, shells, feathers, botanical specimens, sand.  What caught my attention mostly though was the Buddhist artifacts, a mala, vajra, Buddha statue.

In my indefatigable way, I vowed  to say hello.  Yesterday, passing his car, I smiled.  He smiled back.  I approached.  We talked. Yes, homeless, after a 28 yr relationship, everything gone.  As I leaned on his passenger side window, a light rain falling, we spoke of identity, home, schooling, praise, children, food and comfort.  In the space of 15 minutes I detected not an ounce of bitterness, but a warm soft voice, an unfidgetting presence,  vulnerable brown eyes and unflinching openness.  Here was a man doing it tough in a seemingly blameless and courageous way.  I’ve been homeless, and when I look back into that time, I feel a profound mix of despair and liberation.

Like the detritus and scum washed down the river and into the sea following days of wild wild weather, how we manage the muddy waters of this life during the difficult times, I believe, maketh man.

Peter, a Tribute

 

A long time ago
before TV or computers
when girls picked dandelion flowers
in exchange for boiled sweets
and boys wore mud
when the paddocks were alive
with laughing kookaburra
and the train echoed up the valley
rattling its way to the end of the line
broody charismatic men in shirts
with sleeves rolled up
their voices low and guarded
barely noticed the busy four year old
with the wide smile and chubby cheeks
John Lennon specs perched on his nose
a spirited and carefree abandon
propelling his little bare legs forward
on the verandah boards
at Villa Bereguardo
where they all gathered

then one day, without warning
weeks, perhaps months later
sure of his devotion
silently he left
committing himself permanently
to the painful belonging
of his family’s enduring  memory

Peter Perversi 24/11/50 – 8/9/55
61 today

‘The morning glory
which blooms for but an hour
is in essence no different
to the giant pine
which lives for a thousand years’

A Zen proverb

Books and Forgetting

As a kid I wasn’t read to.  When I became a parent I understood why! I wouldn’t have had time to read to seven kids either, let alone inclination. Anyhow, when I was about 10 I had a book shoved under my nose by my mother. Read this, she insisted, dismissively.  I tried, really I did, but I couldn’t concentrate, wasn’t interested, or maybe I couldn’t read.  They Found a Cave was the book, and recently, to my surprise, I recognized its sepia tones on my sister’s bookshelf, picked it up, flicked thru it, felt a cold and unwelcome contraction of my heart muscle, and returned it to the shelf.  I recently tapped its title into google. The book’s about the lives of four orphans, their relocation and battling the baddies.  I wasn’t an orphan but it sure felt like it.

Not surprisingly, my book destiny never really passed go! What reading I’ve done over the decades has got me by tho.  Although I didn’t finish high school, I must have read at least one book because I won a competition in third form sponsored by Actil Cotton Mills.  I shamelessly plagiarized the entire text, adding a sample of cotton I secretly cut off a sheet (and got belted for it later!) enhancing it with meticulously traced pictures of machinery from books like they were my own. I won a set of bed sheets!

I must have read books at Business College for two years, but if I did I don’t remember, and besides I don’t have to because I’m an ace typist, administrator, and sometimes an all round smart-arse when it comes to meetings and noteworthy events at which I can demonstrate  my knowledge of Mr Pittman’s weird shapes and symbols, those that impersonate words, are lightning fast to record and code-named shorthand. 

During a theatre costume diploma, the technical and history books I read, and you guessed, barely remember, relit a fire in my belly, and my inner aesthete and costumier was reborn, along with my passion for sharp scissors (and knives!) .  All those corsets, doublets, trunkhose, frockcoats and codpieces are now buried and communing with moth balls in tea chests in the shed, but not forgotten. 

In the corridors of academia for a year, I read some Foucault and Flaubert, but don’t ask me what they said. 

I’ve now become a bookworm, greedy for horizontal time with my favourite authors.  I have a book bucket-list from here to Africa, and only half a life-time left to make a mark.  I’m not complaining.  I’ve gladly and willingly retreated into the ranks of the obsessed-by-words movement, and whilst it probably does little to cultivate the soft heart of my social animal,  half a century of forgetting behoves half a century of remembering.   Should I not answer the phone or door, well, it’s not personal, I’m just busy, right!   So if you’ll excuse me, I have a date with the page and to borrow the only useful term I remember from uni I intend to ‘faire et se taire’ ( ‘shut up and get on with it’ Flaubert).

The Juggler aka The Coffin Lid

I’m handed a torch at the front desk and enter the ‘Dying Art’ Exhibition. The darkness is punctuated by tea-light candles, illuminating shrines, highlighting and accentuating urns and shrouds, and creating silhouettes of the dozen or so eco-coffin lids standing upright at intervals throughout the room. My eyes adjust to the light as I flick on the torch and move through the space, reading inscriptions, viewing lids decorated with interpretations of end-of-life, images of nature, the human form, abstract and the obscure, all personal to the artists commissioned.  I move slowly in the extraordinary atmosphere, conscious of my breathing, aware, overcome by something I now struggle to put a name to; reverence, grace? Silently, I say a prayer.   It is at once an uplifting and sobering experience, an intricate and intimate web that I am willingly drawn into, and absorbed by, like a moth to a flame.  Tears come as I gaze down upon the infant's coffin, my Carla, and almost immediately I become one with an overwhelming sense of beauty, fragility and mystery.  I feel I've died and gone to the holy land.  At no time do I recall ever feeling so moved by an exhibition.    

At auction later in the evening I successfully bid for the coffin lid depicting the unicycling juggler, seen above. It landed like a long lost relative in the palm of my hand the moment I set eyes on it.   It is the work of artist, Kellie O’Dempsey. There’s something vaudevillian that speaks to my sense that once upon a time I moved across Northern Africa with the gypsy caravans, performing for my supper, and also reminds me of my stilt-walking days.   The juggler's skill is to work with rhythm, timing and focus to keep all her balls in the air; this I see as symbolic of keeping in check our emotional, social, practical, intellectual and spiritual life, maintaining a balance, an equilibrium, and a homoeostatis for the everyday.   The subject of the artwork is looking down, inward, trusting her intuition, confidently navigating her path on the wheel of life, getting on with what she does best. I love this piece not for its lofty, far-reaching and grand style but for its wonderful distinction between the earnest and the whimsical.

Death as a subject is often way too inconvenient a truth for the masses, but how I see it is you can’t have life without death.  It's everywhere.  Why not mention its name, talk about it?  I feel proud and grateful I'm involved in a social change movement that honours life by fearlessly naming death and which acts courageously to demystify its place in our lives.  I’ve installed the lid at home, just inside the front door, as a reminder of impermanence, that now is the new tomorrow. 

No, I haven’t recently been diagnosed with a terminal illness!

How do you view death?

Disadvantage

She’s severely intellectually disabled. Every day she wanders about the centre clutching bangles and the lid of a jar into which she’s placed wooden beads, red, green, brown, blue. She drops them frequently, and comes to you to retrieve them from under the cupboard or somewhere she can’t access. Voluntarily, or not, I don’t know, she constantly shakes her right hand, holding a bangle, as you would a tambourine. In her profile folder, it cites food and drink as her interests. Should you leave your lunch lying around, as I did one day, it’ll be gone in an instant. She's non-verbal and I find it excruciatingly difficult and excruciatingly sad knowing how to engage her. There’s lots of clients like her. When she’s happy, generally after a good lunch, she’ll produce a kind of maniacal laughter. The first time it happened I was a bit scared, wondered what was going on. Now that I know there’s a lightness of being inside, I rejoice with her. Up until today, there’s been no reason to consider her sadness. Mostly there’s enough of your own going on to spend too much time thinking about anybody else’s. She was sitting out in the sun with her back to me when I went up to her to try and encourage her to come inside and participate in the music session. As I squatted down, I noticed tears gently falling down her pink cheeks, her nose running. I took her hand, and said the first thing that came into my mind. “Are you sad T?”. Stupid, I know, it was obvious, what did I expect, an answer? I offered some comforting words, went and got the tissues and returned to her side. A couple of times as I dabbed her eyes and nose, she seized my hand in hers and held it tightly to her face. I was overcome with feelings of tenderness for her. Now, some hours later, I’m reflecting on the cruelty and the tragedy and the pathos. Most of us can choose the path of our sadness - speak it, write it, dance it, take it to bed. Not here!

Welcome to Drearysville!

If only someone had warned me! I’d have taken my name tag off the front table in the front row on day one, and replaced it down the back and brought my knitting, or done sudoku, anything but this. There’s 30 of us, crammed hip to jowl into a small room, a whiteboard that serves as a computer screen, and a change of guard up front every hour. I’ve become a terminal clock watcher, counting down the minutes to morning tea, lunch and afternoon tea and finally home. This has been the longest week of my life. The room smells of boredom and escape, a dank stale kind of smell, like old socks, one that cripples the learning neurons. Every now and then I hear what’s being said, but mostly I’m at the beach or the central desert or the bush or thinking about what’s for tea.

OH&S, IT, HR, EEO, EAP, XY& bloody Z. What on earth happened to good old-fashioned common sense, you know, look right, look left and look right again. It worked, I haven’t been run over, just run down by the stupidity of an age that considers the economy more important than its people. I’m being forced to undergo this trial by bureaucracy because I must bear in mind the risks, and lordy, there’s thousands of them, like a spillage or a cord across the floor, and don’t forget to wear the right shoes and bend your knees when you’re lifting, and did you know how much carelessness costs the country and how crushing litigation can be and make sure you’re respectful and supportive and fill out all the right forms. We’re all 30 years plus, not 14. I resent being treated like a child. Didn’t I read somewhere that if you value efficient, empathic, professional, calm and compassionate people you model it. A travesty!

For Frank

Why don't they open the blinds in the morning I think, pulling on the string to let the sun in. Such a small mercy, surely it's not too much to ask.

He’s dozing, sitting in the wheelchair on the cold linoleum floor, mouth open, complexion grey. His mop of grey hair looks like it hasn’t been combed in days. My sadness comes in a rush, and that familiar lump in the throat, again. Just as quickly I suppress it. I touch his shoulder, ‘It’s Catherine’. Opening his eyes, he beams me a big toothless grin. To him, I’m another relatively good-looking woman visitor he’s eager to impress.

‘How are you’ I enquire. ‘I’ve got pain here (pointing to his shoulder) and here (upper arm) and here (his back)’. It’s been this way for years, decades even, this chronic and acute arthritic hell. Gently I smooth his hair out with my fingertips.

‘You wrote two books’ I prompt, changing the subject. ‘One about the war, the other …’ I falter, not knowing how to describe it. ‘Did I?’ he responds, incredulous. ‘Perhaps I could bring it in next time and read to you. Would you like that’ I ask. ‘I can read’ he responds angrily. This is true. Sometimes when I remember, I’ll take one of his cards off the shelf. He’ll hold it close to his face and read the sentiments, over and over, for endless minutes. What he is thinking or feeling is impossible to tell.

This year he’s 92. He’s adamant he’s not. He was an absent dad, a man of great passion and intellect, a philanderer, a real charmer and a ruthless bully. I’ve been scared of him most of my adult life. He intimidated the heck out of me. Now, however, I love him with a bursting heart. Is this thing called Alzheimers a gift from the creator that brings forgiveness and acceptance to the table. I am grateful, for I finally see him.

Thanks Dad.

The business of death

Practising for death, with kite, in the heart of the Olgas …..
or, Waiting for the Vultures!


The woman at reception is on the phone and gestures for me to take a seat. As I pass the plump couches, on the way to empty my anxious bladder, a seated, shiny bald-headed man of 40-something flashes me a wide smile. Friendly, I think, smiling back. When I return, the woman I’ve seen in the carpark has joined him. I feel self-conscious, and chilly in my should-be-wool-but-cotton attire, and very hick under my Edward Scissorhands do! Why does everybody in the city use a hair dryer? I sit down. “I was horrified, her make-up was all wrong, I barely recognised her” the woman is saying. I’m triggered. Mum used to dab at her lipstick, the embalmer had plastered it on. It wasn’t her, and it was shocking. I empathise. We’re at the home of one of Melbourne’s original independent funeral homes because at some stage in the past few months we’ve made application for employment and we’ve been invited to an ‘information session’. Later we learn we’re 3 out of 8 invitees who’ve turned up. He’s a salesman, she a legal secretary. I have little doubt that, like me, they’ve been touched by death. We talk freely about our interest in entering the industry, our hopes and dreams. I belong.

We’re led down a maze of passageways, past the auditors, and into the boardroom. The walls are a museum to its Irish Catholic founding fathers and staff, past and present. The table, larger than my bedroom. A potted history is presented and any notion we may have had about securing a role that befits the importance of our ego is quickly quashed. In no uncertain terms we’re advised that all newcomers enter the industry through the same door, FDA (Funeral Director’s Assistant). Washing and preparing the hearse, driving the hearse, sweeping floors, assisting at funerals, transferring the deceased, assisting at viewings and rosaries, handing out pamphlets. “Some who come are too precious” states our informant, “Are you all prepared to do this?”

Despite there being no current employment opportunities, I am grateful for and humbled by the experience, and say a little prayer that in the future my wish be heard. This is the landscape of service, these are the places and spaces where I know I am at my most authentic.

How to make a dog's breakfast!

This is how it was supposed to look!










I’d made it once before. Trying to emulate my favourite dessert, sago and raspberry pudding, I’d given my first attempt 7 out of 10. This time I was aiming much higher; I wanted it to look as good as the one you buy, and taste even better. I’m a confident cook, proud of my personal success rating in the kitchen, some would even say cocky! Despite my inflated view, I had to concede there was merit in reading the directions on the pack of sago. Reflecting on that evening a week later, all I remember is reading the first three lines , water, tapioca seed and sugar, and feeling a little puzzled about the ratio of water to seed, pressed on regardless. At this point in proceedings, easily distracted, I abandoned the directions.

First sin, disregard!

So I boiled the water, and threw in the tapioca seed. Gazing down into the steaming pot, wooden spoon in hand, it occurred to me, in a blink, I’d committed the second sin. The sago had instantly cooked on the outside, leaving it raw inside. It resembled a pot of clag with hundreds of half-sucked homoeopathic pilules floating in it. Idiot! The third sin was the brown sugar. Isn’t that what the recipe said? My intended virginal dessert had now taken on a muddy appearance. Fugly! Remembering I hadn’t added the expensive coconut cream paste, I ladelled it into the mix. The mixture, now hideously murky and coagulated and spewing its fury into the atmosphere like the grey heaving geysers of Rotorua, had suffered its final assault. In an attempt to resuscitate what was, in hindsight, clearly already dead, I took it off the stove, sprinkled liberal lashings of vanilla essence on its surface, put the lid on, said a prayer, and left.

A couple of hours later, bowl of lightly cooked raspberries at the ready, and half-anticipating a miracle, I peered into the pot. It was, undeniably, irredeemable! I spooned the now dumpling-like, speckled, tea-coloured sago mistake into the raspberry sauce with a curse. The dish resembled the insides of a cow!

2 out of 10!

Just Being

Through Byron Hospice, for 4 hours every second week, I sit with him in the loungeroom of the home he built for his second wife, 20 years ago. He wonders, repeatedly, how much he'll miss his wife, how she's going to manage when he’s gone.

In this funereal atmosphere, steeped in coffee-coloured light, today I carefully turned the pages of his photo albums, awakening memories long held, names long forgotten.

He is a canvas to grief, and has grown weary, like chrysanthemums left too long at the graveside of the beloved. He is open and honest, a gracious model for conscious death and dying.

Occasionally, during the interminable minutes of emptiness, a spotlight is cast sharply on my mind’s aversions. I watch with horror, disappointment and acceptance at what happens under my skin! Sitting still, doing nothing, a deep and abiding restlessness. TV blaring, irritation, boredom, a neurotic mind that screams ‘turn it off’. Silence, a desire to fill it with clever chatter. Sometimes, during his reflections on his life, I’m triggered to speak, have the final word, offer similar experience from my own life’s narrative. I turn my mind’s eye to his hand in mine.

Just being!

Scones* Smirnoff** Snakes*** & Song****

From 3 pm Saturday 11 December

Come farewell my Burringbar sojourn, reflect on the year, practise soothsaying, swim and chill

21 Geles Road, Upper Burringbar (first house on left)

BYO togs, plate to share, musical instruments/voice and happy heart.

RSVP: 66771551/0431600138


* while they last
** be early
*** for the keen of eye
**** no shrinking violets catered for