ONE MORE STEP, one more breath …
Long distance driving and free range thinking on my way to Melbourne and the Nick Cave Concert…..WHAT’S it like to be this Age (Terry Pratchett called it the Death Zone), let’s be real here…..my life is in the final stages, so I’d better use up every bit that’s left, while it’s still an option…..so, what is it like???
I cry easily and more often…..grief and happiness in almost equal measure. Happiness in being with the animals I love and care for, in seeing trust come to “Little Cat”, the refugee…..the garden, started from scratch after removing the big, straggly wattle…..a complete turnaround from sober, subtle blue /green /greys of succulents, to vivid purples, oranges, lavenders, yellows, blues and reds, with lots of greenery. The late night mooch around the plants, all lit up, is a joy.
Cravings, lust, desire….all crowd for attention (a little like teenage years all over again) overlaid with a hunger for speaking out, breaking taboos, and not caring much about what anyone else thinks about it.
Sorrow and Loss….loss of Children, Grandchildren, lost youth, beauty, lost love, lost vigour. Some days I can barely function….. when I,m surrounded by loved ones, I’m highly energized.
Lost hope, lost dreams…..
Understanding, and the bitter sweet knowing that it comes with living, no sooner……I can look back, and further back, and see, comprehend, know……the AHA moments when you could have done this rather than that, said or not said, acted instead of retreating….I guess this is wisdom, a strange cruel joke, played by the gods on us all. When we have most need of it (it is still in the birthing stages), and when it is most robust, we are beyond using it to repair and replenish what came before. Irony. And acceptance.
And grief…..we are the one species who understands that nobody gets out alive.
And I am very tired.

MA. 31st January, 2017

Continued…..Dead Penguin Diaries 2

MOVING DAY…..THE Moving Van is ordered and now it’s late afternoon on a Friday, Dylan is picking it up when he finishes work….we’ve got a couple of hours. I’m worn out, freaking out…..every time I move house I think I’ll die from anxiety.
A huge amount is packed, stacked and ready….a smaller amount is not.
Nick arrives early, after a long hard working day, with shit pay. He’s tired……all he wants to do is go home, have a shower, then a beer and chill out with his girlfriend. But, he said he’d do this, so he’s here, straight from Eastern Recycling, driving massive trucks, bobcats, supervising new workers sorting green waste, metal, bricks…..that kind of thing.
So, he’s standing in the shed looking at me….he’s got that “legs apart, hands crossed over his chest, steel capped boots, dirty jeans, blue workman’s singlet, peaked cap, don’t fuck with me look”, staring down at the preserving pan.
“What’s this?” he says
Me, “it’s a dead penguin”
He just stares at me, looks down at the weighty salt filled preserving pan, looks back …..”why are you keeping a dead penguin, Mum???”
I know he’s about to blow a fuse…..
“I want to keep it” ….pleading my case “it’s an experiment “
He’s had enough, he simply stands there looking at me like I’ve grown two heads.
“WE ARE NOT PACKING A DEAD PENGUIN MUM, YOU HAVE TO FUCKING LEAVE IT”
I’m feeling really upset, I wanted to see how well the salt and preserving spices would work.
Having spent earlier days living near Rudi Mineur, a gifted Book Illustrator and Taxidermist, I was fascinated by the whole process and had been privileged to watch him at work on several occasions….so really, there’s nothing so very odd about my penguin project.
The Penguin and preserving pan are left behind, to my dismay….Dylan arrives with the Van and we begin packing and stacking.

Laughing about this incident last night with Nick, I told him I realised without the proper process of removing the inner organs, and reshaping the body with stuffing, as I’d watched Rudi do, my little penguin would possibly have looked like a long, flat well preserved banana.
We snorted and smirked for a bit, then I said, “anyway, who would possibly have stories like this about their mother at her funeral….go ahead, when I die, you can have a good laugh”, and then I reminded him of the near catastrophe when we finally arrived from the long haul up the Calder Highway, with cats, chickens and canaries…..
He’d forgotten about that……
So, I told him.

MA©️. Winter 2018
To be continued

Continued…..Dead Penguin Diaries Part 1

LAST NIGHT, ME ‘N NICK…..After dinner in town at the classy new Bull and Mouth Restaurant, came home…
got into reminiscing…..it’s almost always ridiculous things that happened to our family, or, our family, doing things ridiculous enough to be worth remembering.
Various pertinent changes were happening back in Circa 1993. We were all living in Melbourne, Dylan and Nick in a share house in Richmond….Grace and I in a rented California Bungalow in Heidelberg, when my father died and I came into some money. Enough to buy property, but not in Melbourne.
I found a beautiful small farm with old house in Harcourt and our story begins on moving day.
Some background is necessary here, to explain the various tracks each of our lives were taking. I was a struggling single Mother, working 2 sometimes 3 jobs to put Grace through a Steiner Education….so menial stuff, ironing, housework for Agencies, packing dried flowers for a Floristry Business in a factory, market stalls at weekends. My escape from exhaustion, the oppression of the daily grind, was studying Native American Mythology, whilst also doing a Correspondence Course in Herbal Medicine. I was fascinated with personal Totems, Symbolism, Herbalism, Ritual.

On a weekend visit to my sister-in-law, while walking along the wilds of Fairhaven Surf Beach, we came upon a Fairy Penguin…..lying dead, at the water’s edge. Perfect. Unmarked. Beautiful.
I got it into my head to preserve it….like the Egyptians did, with human bodies, with their idolised cats.
Why???
Why not!!!
I brought it home, purchased about 10k’s of salt, plus a multitude of small packets of Cinnamon and Cloves, found a huge aluminium preserving pan (the kind our mother’s and grandmothers made jam in), and slowly filled it to halfway with the salt/cinnamon/clove mix, laid the dead fairy penguin in the middle, then filled the pan to the brim with the rest…..covering the small creature entirely.
Left it to “preserve”, in the garden shed.

MA ©️. Winter 2018

To be continued…..
Moving Day
Nick arrives, hot, tired from a hard day’s slog

AFTER THE STORM, Venus Bay Circa, 2001/3

She had never felt so small, so completely vulnerable. The storm raged above, around the tiny Cedar Cottage…..screaming, wailing winds battering the walls, and nearby, behind the sand dunes at the bottom of her garden, the roar of the ocean, so beloved….now terrifying. Curled into herself beneath a pile of quilts, she understood the way the wild winds had shaped the trees…..the coastal Banksias, their twisted forms leaning almost horizontal, like huge, ancient, Bonsais.
When morning came, the storm gone…..she went out, exploring.
The two dogs running ahead, they turned towards the Surf Club, closed now for Winter.
Up the winding road, to the steps leading down to the sea.
Gone!!!
Torn away in the night!!!
Yesterday, grassy topped sand dunes sloped gently to the beach below, with chained wooden steps leading downwards from the road.
All gone!!!
The dogs ran back and forth across new ground….a jagged cliff created overnight…..the stormy seas gouging huge chunks of dunes away…..tearing the chained steps down to a crumpled mass way below near the water’s edge.
And far off, along the beach, a fur seal, sitting in enormous splendour , head tilted upwards…facing the cliff.
And so, sliding down the unstable ground…..they went to see.
Dead, and yet so life like, still.
Fearful, hackles ridged along their backs, the dogs circled cautiously, a constant low growling.
It was an incredible thing to behold , so close, towering above them all, unbelievably dead in its great looming presence.
Later, she spoke with her friend, a local Wildlife Carer, who had been called to the seal, earlier in the day.
What had killed it, yet left it so perfect???
Worn teeth….unable to feed (it looked sleek and fat)
Injured by something in the storm???
No answers, only more questions, and the image of it seared into her brain…..an awesome presence, so alive in death to be fearful, yet gone….just like the storm.
Gone, peaceful, perfect.

MA©️. Winter 2018

WHEN I WAS a small child, when I was not at school, I spent my days living at the beach, or holidaying in the Hills…Idyllic, tv wasn’t even imagined….and in those dreamlike days, the idea of sitting for endless hours watching a screen would have seemed like wasting the day. In the big old two storey house, built by my Cornish Great Grandfather, us kids spent almost all our school holidays…..the neglected two and a half acre European garden, a children’s wonderland. Lavender flowered Rhododendrons up to 20 feet high…. huge Laurel and Pine hedges, the brilliant crimson of Japanese Maples….a long tunnel covered with Banana Passionfruit, water tanks, brimming with clean, ice cold rain water…
And the five enormous Oaks, below the second storey front verandah. Trees so thickly leafed, I could still stay outside in heavy rain, sitting beneath them, staying dry. A Weeping Elm, with an old tram bell attached to its trunk (who thought of this is unknown to me), but if that strange old bell rang out through the garden, we knew the faeries had been….that they’d left gifts for us kids. It was a very good time in my young life….losing myself completely in the wonder and mystery of the big, wild, garden. I still remember…..all those years ago, on a freezing wet early Spring day, passing close by a tree, and seeing the bright eye of a Thrush, sitting on her nest, right there beside me…..a moment of enchantment, seeing her there, so still in the dimness of her leafy shelter. Enchantment and Wildness…..looking into perfection.

ONE MORE STEP, one more breath……rested today after a long, deep, uninterrupted sleep, the first for such a long time. Contemplating Courage….the strange complexities and variations of it. Being forced to clean and empty my house (a compelling force that drives me like a harsh north wind), takes almost all the courage I have (and then some).

And yet, when faced with the dilemma of a trapped, deadly, Eastern Brown Snake some years ago…..I didn’t hesitate. Some garden netting I’d left lying in the bushland nearby, was caught in great ruffles behind the Snake’s head, slowly choking it. It was helpless and I felt responsible. So, with a prayer offered up to the Snake Clan, I knelt down, held it behind the head with my left hand, and began the long, slow process of cutting through the netting with a cheap, rather blunt, little penknife I always carried in my pocket.

The day was fiercely hot, filled with heat shimmer and the screams of cicadas and cockatoos…..the rescue process, dream like, as I bent to the task and continued cutting…..continually speaking to the snake, til the last few strands of net were falling away.
People talk about the Kundalini, rising up through the spine…..As the snake felt the net loosen, a powerful surge of energy shot up my left arm all the way to the shoulder….two more snips and it was free….but dazed and dehydrated it pushed forward into the pile of netting. Standing, I leaned forward, grabbed it by the tail, and pulled it free….a few powerful S-bends like a brown wave, and it was gone.

Drenched in sweat, fear hammering in my kidneys…..I stood up, drank some water, and went home.

• 

THE FALLING Continued
(And the rush of memories is akin to drowning, a nervous twitching need to get it down while the punishing, controlling mind, whispers maliciously, “but what about the daily grind you’re ignoring”….and the tiny crushed creative heart of things, whispers back….”do it, write, tell this story”)

She fell into the natural rhythm of the Community with ease, because of her voice. Invited to sing, with different groups, as a solo artist, fuelled by whisky and the local weed, she felt the stress and tension of her body leave. She really felt the freedom, the nature of her wild self come into being. A reckless release of ALL the years of tension….going right back to early childhood beginnings. And through the exposure, up on stage, singing smoky, sultry songs of sex and longing (1970’s JJ Cale), she would lose herself, look boldly down at him, holding nothing back, falling into his amber eyes, looking back, looking up, looking at her.
Nothing mattered but feeling….feeling every strong, hot, subtle, overt, reckless feeling.
She met him, his girlfriend….the connection was so….very …
easy.

A Street scene more than 30 years ago, plays in her mind’s eye….a sensual movie.
Coming through the Nimbin Bakery doorway, famed for their heavy Wholemeal Bread, their Lentil Pies, she sees him on the opposite side of the street….he’s heading up the hill towards the Pub. Riveted, she “takes him in, sketches him”.
Tall, beautifully boned, dirty from a long day labouring on a building site. Head thrown back, thick dust filled dark brown hair, shoulder length, brushed back, James Dean style.
Scarf around his throat, denim jacket and blue jeans, heavy work boots. His jeans, loose enough to show the shape of him, long legged ease of movement as he strides in tandem with her, relaxed and graceful as a big cat.
She is impervious to the rumours, the aura of danger, his sexual charisma holds her attention, utterly.
She feels the pull, deep in her belly. Wherever she moves in that very crowded, close knit community….there he is.
And what of his past???
Whatever sense or intelligence she may have had, before, is lost, given over to biology.
It is, always has been, simple.
She wants him.

MA©️. Winter 2018
The Falling
To be continued….

Seduction

Stay with me

STRANGER THINGS……

I’ve just finished watching the first Series of SHETLAND…..captivated I was, by the stark bleak open country, wild, craggy coastline and open sea…..calls me, almost painfully…. such uncompromising beauty beneath a vast open sky.
Many years ago, I took a course in Transcendental Meditation…..it was ok, I followed instructions (a bit like learning your tables at school, by rote)…..nothing changed, I pushed through to the end and was glad to be finishing. I didn’t believe in it.
On the last day a final ritual had to be performed……
Facing my teacher, I followed the Chant he gave me, which involved a particular form of circular breathing…..the Chanting was strange, eerily beautiful. Eyes closed, head bowed, I became at one with the music……
Next thing I felt my great strong wings stretch, lift, reach out and up…..I was airborne, my wings carrying me in strong, effortless beats… no longer in Melbourne, but flying over flat, silver grey ocean, and stark black rocky coastline …..
that place was SHETLAND.

No…..I’ve never been there.

2020, THE PANDEMIC, AND ISOLATION…..

I’ve got this clear image in my mind….it’s really a painting, or a film….but I’m a writer so I’ll have to show it with words.

I’m way, way out in a stormy sea. Huge waves, the kind that used to sink sailing ships, threaten to engulf me….a tiny human clinging to the only piece of flotsam I have ….my IPAD. In this story, the IPad floats, it is impervious to salt water…..even though it’s disconnected from the WorldWideWeb, it keeps working.

I kick feebly with my legs, hold on tight with my left hand, while the fingers on my right, still tap out messages to the world.

THIS IS ALL I HAVE, Then I remember my animals….what happened to them?
But they are safe…my dog, my cat, my little hen are riding out the storm perched on my back.

A toddler floats by, clutching an IPhone,
Iistening to music and playing games.

Who knows when this storm will end….I’m afraid of drowning, but this sturdy little IPad seems indestructible…..perhaps it will still be receiving messages when I finally tire, and go under.

Who knows…..definitely not me.

MA©️ Spring 2020

🧡🧡🧡 ELIAS, ZEN CAT 🧡🧡🧡

Missing now since the terrible heat and fires of last Wednesday …… the natural life of a
Tom Cat is fraught with dangers, from cars, the Ranger, traps, and people who really hate cats….I fear for him, but he was never ever mine.
A beautiful animal who came to me for Sanctuary, which I gave him willingly as well as two hearty meals a day whenever he stayed, flea treatment and worming, and medication for his sometimes terrible wounds from fighting.
I could pick him up and carry him, towel him dry when he arrived soaking wet….love him.
Kiss him on his golden head.
Even discussed with the Vet, the possibility of neutering him….but, so alert and wary was he, they advised me against trying to cage him as he would more than likely bite me, from sheer terror….I had been grazed by his teeth twice, when he was particularly stressed.
A small tiger….cared for, adored….gone!!!

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