Margaret Arlen

WILLYUM ? day 4, after his stroke.

Basking in the Wintry sun….deep tissue massage into foot pads and thigh muscles, a helping hand to balance when he’s needed it, and he’s almost fully recovered. A stranger seeing him wouldn’t notice the slight difference in his walking (and it IS slight). All the love and encouragement that poured in won’t make the slightest difference to Him, but it certainly helped me. I love all my animals, but when I found a cage of tiny kittens, all Tabbies, at the Talbot Farmers Market…..grey and ginger (there were about 15 of them) cold, terrified farm kittens who’d obviously never been handled. I set out to have two …..a litter brother and sister.
How on earth do you choose? In the bottom corner of the cage, was Willyum. Obviously the “runt” of the litter, absolutely skeletal. I didn’t choose him out of pity. Willyum simply looked up at me or I should say, into me, with his big, celodon green eyes. It was like being shot through the heart. “That one”, I said. And then I looked for Maerie. “She’s a spitfire, That one” the owner said, which translated to me that she had tried very hard to escape capture. They have both been with me now for 12 years, my joyful, witty little yoga practitioners, but because of his early, desperate beginnings, never getting enough food, Willyum has been the one with health issues….always set back days after early vaccinations….whereas Maerie sailed through with no problems. I am convinced that the combined flea/worm treatment caused his temporary paralysis.
Before, when they were sold separately, a weeks wait between treatments was strongly advised.
I will never used this combined product again!!!
So, for anyone reading this, perhaps it may be useful.

Thank you all ? for the love, care and suggestions.

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