Friday, September 28, 2012

The Earthrise Diary (Sept 2012)


                        The Earthrise Diary (Sept 2012)

© text Don Diespecker 2012; other writer colleagues included in this edition retain their ©.

                                                                     Don Diespecker

               Come, fill the Cup, and in the Fire of Spring
               The Winter Garment of Repentance fling:
               The Bird of Time has but a little way
               To fly—and Lo! the Bird is on the Wing.

                The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (E Fitzgerald trans) (1st ed.)



                                  The river watcher at 1,000 months

September 2 2012. There has been high scattered and patterned cloud these first two days of September that make the morning brightness hazy. Although it’s still cold at night the sun soon warms me as I head down the dusty road toward it. There is also a blue smoky haze between here and the valley rim; the summer is going to be dangerous, I think. Also, the river dwindles. There is so much less of the flowing river and so much more that is non-river: the bedrock islands that now look like mere exposed bedrock, the decaying flotsam high and drying and all of the waterscape here dominated by the adjacent stone-covered banks.
 I walked along the ankle-jarring newly ‘surfaced’ road to Richardson’s Bridge where I enjoyed the swallow air-show and the river’s kinetic art and sundry other visual things, momentarily free of the clouds of dust raised by passing vehicles.
September 4 2012. I could easily write: More of the same but there’s always something new to see each day. I had crossed the seedy and seeding Big Lawn just before 08:00, stepped down to the very dusty road, crossed the bridge and was inclining upward from the concrete approach on the other side of the river when I realized there were cars approaching from both directions and only I could see both vehicles. Diplomatically I leaped off the approach as the two vehicles passed me with microns to spare (I exaggerate a little), both drivers having waved cheerily in those critical micro moments and we all survived. My back likes best the walking up of inclines these days but tomorrow, with luck, my favourite osteopath will have a solution that may enable me to also walk normally down declines and possibly on the flat as well so that I might look less grotesque in my current unwanted posture. I intend to be increasingly positive as I write; here I’m being honest: nobody is likely to see me striding out nonchalantly these days because I am now more than a little Old. Like it or not (and I am happy and chortling to like it well enough so that you, dear readers, may also smile): this is my 1,000th month to heaven: I mean that I have been breathing air on this planet for 1,000 months! If I am still a member of some nearly forgotten tribe I am surely a tribal Elder.
As I walk I hear several birds in the roadside trees but can’t see them and I start to wonder if there’s such a thing as a common language for birds. Might there be a ‘universal’ language that they all can understand? There is no such thing for humans although we like to think that our all learning English, for example, is as close as the human race will ever get to a ‘universal’ means of communication, whereas with birds, I like to imagine that they might have an innate language, one that comes naturally to all birds before they start to learn (presumably) their own dialects. I don’t know and would like to (the walker and principal gardener might be on to something here, but I don’t know, either; however, if you will kindly read on you‘ll see that the Diary writer is soon to have a Most Useful and Illuminating Birdsong Experience. Editor).
I crunch my way along the road and am certain by the time I reach the top of the rise (from the bridge up to the higher part of the road) that the Council has not adequately, if at all, supervised this most recent grading or levelling of this rural road’s surface. As rural road surfaces go this one is crap (sorry): the crushed stone dumped for spreading has been unwisely chosen, in my opinion, being apparently uniformly graded and has in no way been adequately compacted. Let me explain this stuff-up (as I see it). Or skip this bit if you don’t need to know.
A well-graded granular soil (e.g., gravel) has a range of particle sizes such that the material will bind well when partly mixed with a cohesive soil and compacted at optimum moisture content. A poorly graded granular soil is one that looks loose and ungainly because the particles are more or less uniformly graded, i.e., no matter how moist or otherwise this material may be it will not bind into a strong surface when compacted (especially if the underlying wearing course of the road, i.e., its ‘usual’ surface, has not been ripped or scarified). Some of these crushed chunks may be compacted into the sub-grade, but most of this material will sit on the surface of the road and be scattered to the verges by traffic (this scattering of stones is also what fells pedestrians). Darkwood Road is a rural road and the bitumen or macadam road surface that starts at Thora ends at Richardson’s Bridge and some of us (those furthest up the Valley) are uncomfortably more rural than many of our other Upper Thora residential comrades. Paradoxically, and despite those of us further up the Valley being unarguably closer to heaven than those living down the road in almost-suburban macadamized stretches, well-compacted surfaces are never lavished upon us. We are, as it were, living in the Wild West of Darkwood Road where maintenance is, in my opinion, minimal rather than generous. To put that differently, the lower stretches of Darkwood Road are those parts that recently have received extra care: there have been additions of bitumen to widen the road, for example; the area where I live has no bitumen—although the metalled road has been graded and compacted, traffic, including very large loaded vehicles as well as rain, soon damages the surface which rapidly becomes potholed). I have driven on roads, e.g., in Iran, made of crude oil and sand/silt mixes that were excellent (and if the Bellinger Shire Council would care to consult me on pavement design, including airfield runway pavements, I’d be delighted to advise them of economical alternatives to the expensive and crap Darkwood Road that they so foolishly continue to grade and inadequately compact—and will happily waive all consultation fees (Come on Council engineers and planners at Council GHQ, and get up here and see what a *&^%$#! Mess the road is and then get your #$%^& act together and make some intelligent changes so that the road crews don’t have to take the blame for your carelessness and inefficiency)!
Sept 7 2012. Friday. This has been a week of cool sunny weather suddenly changing to blustery hot days with temperatures close to 30˚. Sitting outside in the windy garden where branches and twigs fly through the air is not a safe option. I’ve collected some useful and very dead and dry big branches that will usefully burn in the slow combustion heater although I doubt that I’ll need to light many more fires in the next few days: spring is now very dry and at times dangerous.
One of the best Earthrise views is from the bathroom window. Not only am I familiar with shaving my face, I seldom need a mirror to do so and that allows me a pleasant shaving time when I’m able to look across Big Lawn and upstream to the Hello Bend (as I call it). This morning early and as the sun is lighting the canopies of the high flooded gums I watch three large and stately brush turkeys taking bold steps across Big Lawn while I’m shaving. They seem to be demonstrating their right to do so—as if they too had seen male grizzly bears (that I saw on TV) loping sideways in order to appear bigger to the female bears. The turkeys certainly look confident these days: well-fed, shiny feathers, unconcerned about predators. The lawn is hairy and scruffy and shrieking out to be mowed. Most of it consists of tropical chickweed; it’s altogether untidy and the turkeys, you might think, are at some risk of being attacked and caught by a Very Fast Fox—the turkeys being big and heavy with dangerous claws that might as easily tangle in the very dangerously scruffy plants comprising my lawn. Good luck to them. The turkeys have dug many holes in the lawn.
After breakfast I saunter to the fence line and wait for a lull in the breakfast traffic: again there is almost a collision at my front gate as two vehicles going in opposite directions swerve through a billowing dust cloud (this also is not the best of days in which to do my laundry—dust from the road’s passing traffic blows into the house). 
A day or so ago and late in the afternoon near sunset I happened to glance through the glass wall/door upstairs in time to see big swirls in the corner bend—as if made by a couple of swimmers vigorously swimming or possibly by a couple of 150-kg porpoises! They were surely platypuses although I have yet to see a platypus large enough to so dramatically disturb the surface. It was an odd and surprising sight, very odd, indeed.
Sept 9 2012. Saturday. Although some jobs and tasks have been crossed off, the TO DO list has grown apace. Also oddly, one of the Outside tasks I yesterday tackled has not been listed, perhaps fortuitously and thereby hangs a tale (those readers who plunge into temporary madness when I write about Things Odd or Mysterious, please skip this part and re-join below).
It came about in this manner (sorry). It was a dark and stormy—(sorry, kidding)! The strangely unlisted and unusual job was tackled yesterday morning and it came about because my schedule was adjusted when I changed back into my play clothes/work clothes to clear vegetation (in that Wild West part of the garden between the house and Big Lawn). I had earlier changed into my best jeans and driven through the choking dust (in the Wild West part of Darkwood Road) and down to Thora Hall, there to cast my vote in the local Council elections. It was a pleasantly warm and sunny morning, I drove home and again changed clothes and was speculating about the List and because I had earlier in the week checked the water level in my big concrete storage tank and also remembered when last it had been filled (during Nick’s March visit) I decided to make a start on pumping. Because of the rain earlier in the year there is now dense growth all over the property and remembering the difficulties Nick and I had experienced with airlocks in the partly overhead poly-pipe line I spontaneously resolved to take the line down from it’s aerial supporting wire through the trees and re-lay the line along the ground so that there might be fewer airlocks and a reduced time spent wrestling with the equipment—but I had first to wrestle now in the immediate present with undergrowth that was approaching a state of jungle; only then could I get my ladder close to the suspended line and use trees as suitable ladder props. I grabbed my very effective and BIG long-handled ‘secateurs’ and went boldly outside, suddenly wary of the spring snakes (I needn’t have worried) and cleared around the big eucalypts and got deeper into the now dry Earthrise Creek-bed (as named by me) that roars with flood water from the slopes in heavy rain (and which also passes slowly through what once was intended as The Grand Stone Staircase—now so well covered by vines and roots and trees that even Harrison Ford would need several chaps with machetes to expose this incomplete Masterpiece). Saplings of the sandpaper leaf fig tree, the native privet and the European privet went down in waves as I hacked and slashed; I removed big river stones that more properly belonged in the Staircase; I tore down climbing vines embedded in the coarse bark of an old tree and I eventually got the step ladder extended and set up and was able to start demolishing the wire ties holding the pipeline to the overhead support wire. From high on this almost stable work platform, half hugging a cheese tree, one arm through a hacksaw and the other manipulating trusty old pliers, I successfully detached and took the pipeline down, then disassembled it in a couple of places to get it out and away from the trees and re-laid the line on the track that runs from Big Lawn up to the carport. I mention this hanging-by-the-eyebrows job so that the Comfortable Reader may appreciate the hardness of life here in paradise. :-)
The voting chore plus the unplanned Outside Job had changed my schedule; it had also given my wrecked back a good workout so that my niggling aches and pains were compelled to change their locations (which was nicely liberating for me for a few hours). I attended to sundry other things: emails, The List, lunch, some further words extending my Iran essay and also a nice read in the warm windy garden as necessary preliminaries to taking an early mark—for this is Finals Week when large hairy fleet-footed ball players pound each other unmercifully as they grind their bloody trails toward Grand Finals in Rugby League and the Australian Football League (not forgetting a Rugby Union International between Australia and South Africa in Perth, WA, and the chance to see a late-ish TV presentation of The Good Wife (American legal drama from CBS) that I can’t resist, being an ardent fan of Juliana Margulies and Archie Panjabi (news this morning, also, from the American Tennis Open in New York where Djokovic and Ferrer were taken safely off the court because there were, of all things possible, tornados (!) in the area).
Apologies for my anecdotally having gone around the houses (although I enjoyed it) when I might have been more concise: long story short: spontaneously doing an unscheduled job was a surprise factor in my hearing a wonderful radio program I might not otherwise have listened to. I’ll have perhaps driven some readers away from reading any further (please return!). Here’s the thing: what with all the excitement and muscle stretching I slept nearly an hour longer than usual, tottered downstairs, opened the curtains, switched on the power and heard something startling on the radio (ABC Radio National) concerning the Australian pied butcherbird. One of my stories and now the first part of an unpublished novella, features this particular species.
Those of you who have the appropriate gadgets (apps?) can listen as and when it suits you. Now please read on.
Some time ago I wrote a suite of stories that when read serially also comprise a 'metafiction,' i.e., fiction about fiction, and taken together these three pieces are also a tongue-in-cheek sequel ("Finding Drina") to my The Agreement. --And although The Agreement has been published, this playful sequel has not.  (That's only part of the background). In the first of my three pieces ("The Park") I include an example of magic realism (a la GG Marquez)--in which a single Australian Pied butcherbird, as prodigy, is gifted with an amazing 'quality of voice'. 
My fantasized 'prodigy bird' is based on my reading of Peter Slater's A Field Guide to Australian Birds Vol 2 Passerines (p 278). Information about the Australian pied butcherbird Cracticus nigogularis includes this 
"VOICE: Beautiful flute-like calls, one of the most common recalling the opening bars of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony (Hutchinson 47)." 
 It's now several years since I wrote the fiction referred to above. Imagine my amazement this morning when I heard on the radio some of the real voices that this bird is capable of. Cracticus nigrogularis sing trios and quartets and quintets--and much more, i.e., these pied butcherbirds birds sing artistically and apparently for pleasure. One bird may sing the first part of a song; another bird sings the second and so on. Dr Hollis Taylor found that different birds in different locations (not very far apart from each other) would sing the different parts of particular songs. –If you think about that, it may seem awesome (as it does to me): humans are not the only beings who are practicing musicians! Individual birds also imitate non-bird sounds.  For online information and recordings here’s a useful link:
abc.net.au/radionational/programs/offtrack .
Truth is stranger than fiction.
Sept 11 2012. Tuesday. I carefully lift the firefighter pump and get it downstairs to the wheelbarrow, then start to make progress: I change the oil, I do the maintenance, clean the sparkplug, drain some petrol, check the discharge line—now on the ground—and prime the intake line and the pump roars into life again (at the first pull!). The pump runs like a sewing machine when I’ve fine-tuned the controls and I pump all morning and the concrete tank begins quickly to fill—about three and a half hours and with only one small refill of fuel. Job done. I take the bits and pieces apart and enthusiastically turn to the power mower.
Big Lawn gets some mowing attention at long last! I drag the mower down to the lawn and change the oil and add some fuel and coax her into life again after the winter sleep, setting the blades to cut at the 2nd notch; it becomes hot and heavy work and clouds of (Earthrise) dust (!) rise to heaven. I don’t try to do too much in one session; I’ll have to cut this and the fiddly bits an hour or two at a time. The season’s mowing has begun!
Sept 12 2012. Wednesday. It’s warm and breezy today—again—and although I have an appointment at 1 pm in Coffs Harbour I take my time. I admire that portion of Big Lawn that has received its first cut of the season, load up some recyclable stuff and go to Bellingen in the old Honda. Today the white cedars are leafing (though not quite yet at Earthrise) along the road and the recently new pink leaves of the red cedars are greening. The colours when seen through my Polaroid glasses are wonderful. Here and along the way and particularly in Bellingen the azaleas are flowering too. In Coffs I take the car to the dealers, leave my keys and my mobile number and lurch off to look at books. I see Wallace Stegner’s Crossing to Safety displayed and recommended (by the Staff there) at The Book Warehouse and knew too that many who learned of this title by watching First Tuesday Book Club on ABC TV had ordered copies). I wanted to check through the Classics titles and editions of frequently published books and so came across a book, Light Years, by James Salter (yet another American novelist I had learned of through the First Tuesday book show).
Pleased with my purchase of Light Years (more below) I visit the central post office at the Palm Centre and when I search for the Muffin Break café I find that the place (they have gluten-free muffins!) has disappeared (this is where I sat with the coffee drinkers earlier in the year and which I later described in one of the earlier 2012 Diaries). While certain shops and stores downstairs are being re-furbished this coffee bar has moved upstairs so I follow the directions and glide upstairs on an escalator. The Muffin Break Café is temporarily located on one side of the big concourse opposite the Big W on what seems to be a long horizontal and raised bandstand-like platform—and there is also a little way off in the middle of the upstairs concourse a second group of separate chairs and tables; most of the chairs and tables are more attached to the temporary coffee bar so that there’s a distinct difference between the two snack areas. This peculiar difference is something for me to think about. I risk a medium sized espresso and gluten-free apple muffin and sit facing Big W. Everybody else is on my elevated section is facing the Big W, too. Being somewhat up in the air above the other eaters and drinkers, i.e., the Muffin Break customers and being in that section where we all are looking ahead in an abstracted manner (the chairs are loosely located around each table) it seems almost as though we are on a big almost empty ferry sailing toward the Big W dock—or possibly in an enormous near-empty passenger aircraft. It is uncanny, this feeling of our all sitting and facing in the one direction despite there being several movable chairs at each table. Nobody has dared to sit at the ‘front’ facing the rest of us: we are all seemingly transfixed while drinking coffee and solemnly watching the shoppers going in and out of the Big W. Meanwhile, there are a few people in small groups sitting more remotely in that second area and they are clearly a part of the café set-up yet both they and the café furniture look so distant from the rest of us as to be obviously disconnected. I think hard. I sip the delicious black coffee (no sugar) and thoughtfully spoon the un-muffin-like muffin (it’s more like a three-layered custard and is delicious). I conclude that where I am sitting solo as are several others plus one duo, the outpost groups are groups rather than individuals and they have little interest in the deep surveillance and observation operation that the rest of us are engaged in: they are having actual conversations. Would I enjoy my coffee and delicious muffin-like food if I were in a group? Not necessarily. H’mm. 
There are some heavy cylindrical posts a few feet from where I ‘m observing this peculiar scene that also includes myself. I know I have to be careful when I finish my snack and rise and step down to the floor—how unseemly would it be to fall here—but what are these chrome pillars there for? They look like posh hitching posts outside a saloon. I realize that when I stare over the tops of these strange posts I’m looking directly at the big red sofa where I sat watching the passing parade when last I was in this place, months previously (with a little imagination I can just about re-vision myself sitting over there on that plush red sofa of last summer puzzled at first by the disapproving glances certain passers by were casting on something or somebody near me that I wasn’t immediately aware of: the lacy black-stockings on the legs of a young woman who also was sitting close by on that out-of-place red sofa all of those months in the past). I continue to puzzle over those apparent looks that appeared to be so censuring. What was that? Fashion is fashion, surely? Do fashions in stockings have first to meet a moral approval code for some of the apparently sterner customers who may perhaps be Puritan? 
 And then I remember that when Muffin Break was situated downstairs outside a busy supermarket I had (like others) chosen to sit so as to see and observe that market directly in front of me. Now the little café with its many chairs and tables in two not quite adjacent locations was again located (although temporarily) outside and in front of the entrance to a busy department store. We who are the current coffee drinkers and muffin munchers are afforded excellent views of Big W Shoppers entering and leaving these emporiums: we are privileged spectators, well positioned, fortified with food, high and alert on the fumes of coffee, seeing aspects of the lives of others. Location, location! And how wise are the masters of commerce! At last I think I might just be getting this: solo drinkers of psychoactive beverages like to sit singly to observe (we singles are also the more likely secret agents or spies; normal beings prefer to sit together socially and apart from the secret singles who so busily See and Watch and Evaluate). I wonder if either of the Palm Centre or the Muffin Break café personnel people have organized the seating arrangements where I am sitting. Could the Muffin Break café be a meeting place for spies? Is somebody like to make the drop? Whatever else it might be, this muffin and coffee place seems to have craftily been set up as an espionage training school! Not only am I now in this school for spies: I am present without having been enrolled!
James Salter’s novel, Light Years, first published in 1975, has an introduction by Richard Ford, whose novel, Canada, is also on my book list. Ford had written: “Frontally, Light Years is the story of Viri and Nedra Berland, a golden couple living a gilded, countrified life of late-lasting, candle-lit dinner parties, interesting friends, beautiful children—all with a river view.” Also, Ford had begun his intro with: “It is an article of faith among readers of fiction that James Salter writes American sentences better than anybody writing today. Buying this book was irresistible. These are the first sentences of Salter’s Light Years:
We dash the black river, its flats smooth as stone. Not a ship, not a dinghy, not one cry of white. The water lies broken, cracked from the wind. This great estuary is wide, endless. The river is brackish, blue with the cold. It passes beneath us blurring.” &c &c.
I want to begin reading the book because such writing is easily and pleasantly comprehended and during the reading the words enable my imagination to show me the related images (I mean my images of Salter’s words). Reading such writing quickly becomes something like a viewing that makes reading a magical process.
–But I also need to take care of myself. I go to bed early, make myself comfortable. It’s been a long day. I’ve survived the white knuckle driving. I’m home safe. I’ll watch the news…and…and. I fall asleep before I realize how tired I am.
Sept 13 2012. Thursday. This is my last day of being 999 months old. The day starts with red in the pre-sunrise clouds and then dawns bright and quite clear and there is a warm wind, i.e., there is a repetition of the warm to hot wind and there is an abundance of branches and twigs to be picked up whilst mowing. Mowing comes later this day. First, I try my best to purchase the phone I want online. Silly me. Despite the best advice from my friends I discover that the phone I’m trying so hard to purchase apparently doesn’t want me to complete the purchase and I start communicating with the sellers who decide that my browser has attracted cookies. Removing the spanner-in-the-works cookies is something I want to happen, but I don’t want to be diverted into risking the world’s networks and by allowing me to begin a clearance op (I think of certain veterans I used to work with in the UK who had been in Bomb Disposal during WW11: clearance may be lethally dangerous). The sellers kindly send me info that enables me to proceed to ways of fixing the cache problems that my poor iMac has succumbed to. I turn pale and tremble: I could get stuck in some helpful but horrible website and not emerge for years. Emails are exchanged; no the sellers don’t send phone equipment to PO Box numbers, but (long story short) they will take phone orders as well as online purchasing. I might need much more space than I have available here to explain this in detail and you, dear reader, might even find that entertaining, but I may overcome some of these difficulties by ‘using’ the address of a friend (a courier is supposed to deliver to my door, but we all know (up here in the Darkwood) that this will not happen: parcels are sent from Bellingen PO to the Thora General Store which also is a sort of sub post office; couriers up here in the wilds of Darkwood have seldom been encountered.
I mow for an hour in the middle of the day; the grass and groundcovers are splendidly dry—just how the mower likes them (except for the lawn’s dust). It’s 28˚. Later in the afternoon there are thunderstorms along the ranges and some showers. At sunset the river’s surface is dimpled with light rain. Nice. The showers wash the dust off thousands of leaves. Everything is glistening. Tomorrow it will be only 19˚.
Sept 14 2012. Yesterday kept right on going for me: sleep avoided me and I lay watching starlight and listening to old (repeat) radio programs through the night. Whatever I’d eaten during the day seemed blameless. Here I am, well and truly at the appointed time: month 1,000: welcome! And how will the next 1,000 be?
Sept 15 2012. A sunny day again and very nice, too—except that this end of Darkwood Road is the unglamorous end there being no bitumen or macadam up here. The dust raised by passing traffic is horrendous and I’ve stopped walking the road for exercise and pleasure; besides, there are too many urgent jobs to be tackled here. I have a third (this week) mowing session and am pleased with myself despite the extra clouds of dust I’m raising with the mower. There is still some smoke haze in the Valley, too. On the skyline’s eastern rim I can see the outlines of eucalypts high above me. All that can be seen of the highest branches are small dabs of dull colour, the foliage, against the sky, the highest parts of the canopies, and those thin top branches are invisible. In the gardens and seen from inside the house: caterpillar and spider strands in widths of microns are clearly seen metres away because those minute surfaces reflect sunlight so well.
Sept 16 2012. Sunday. It’s both sunny and cloudy this morning and the temperature is only 19˚ at midday, but I make the time to drop everything and go and sit outside to read more of Light Years; it’s an excellent read and a wonderful example of literary fiction and fine writing. I settle by sitting next to the old red salvia bush on the belvedere, but there’s a cool breeze and not enough sun. Before I move I watch a quite small honeyeater hovering in front of the flowers and behaving as much like any humming bird (there aren’t any in this country as far as I know) as seems possible: it hovers, it beats its wings in a fast blur and inserts its long sabre-shaped bill deep into each of the target blooms—hugely burning energy in order to refuel (and provide further energy) from the nectar within—yet another version of in-flight fuelling. The red salvia is nearly 2-m high and is regularly knocked down and buried by floods. The branches and stems are brittle and break easily and the flowers face openly outward: the honeyeater, however tiny, has to hover to feed.
Sept 17 2012. I dress up today; there is a anxious moment when I opt for the tailored Fletcher Jones trousers: will they fit (they had not fitted when last I tried in July; now by some slim miracle, they do). I cannot find one of my remaining three ties until I visualise the flight bag I took with me to Brisbane in July: the bag is empty except for my Newcastle University tie, neatly rolled, almost concealed in a dark corner. I dress confidently: I know the dashing blazer with brass buttons is going to fit. And away I go to town. I feel confident, yet uncertain of being myself because of the unfamiliar clothes I’m wearing. Having kept everyone waiting for more than 50 years I drive to Bellingen virtually unrecognisable in my best clothes and present early and a little anxiously at the Council chambers. Simone, the Mayor’s secretary, comes to collect me and we are followed at once by the Mayor. We proceed to a small quiet room. A staff member wheels in a trolley with tea and coffee (and I see a big plate of dangerous-looking cream-smothered scones; alarm bells ring in my mind: the scones are unlikely to be gluten-free and I’ll need to explain the likelihood of an impending disaster to my hosts). I do so; then we chat. We discuss the condition of Darkwood Road and several more matters. I’m here to become an Australian Citizen. The Mayor reads from a pledging statement and I repeat the words after suitable pauses and so hear myself ‘pledge my loyalty to Australia and its people.’ Suddenly in the quickness of the Australian spring I am now a proper Australian. For the first few years after arriving as a ‘ten pound pom’ in 1960 I had thought I had automatically become Australian; however, it seems that I’ve merely been a ‘permanent resident’ for all of those crowded years. There is some surprise when I add that I’ve been on the electoral roll for most of my life. Lightly we chat further over coffee. I confess to being a Canadian by birth, a South African citizen also ((‘by descent,’ as the SA Government has previously described me) and, also, a ‘registered citizen of the UK and Colonies.’ When I leave I take with me several items (including a grand-looking certificate and a potted plant (the kangaroo’s paw plant is now waiting in one of the riverside gardens surrounded by (somewhat foreign?) flowering irises. How will these plants get on together, given the difficulties of thriving in my most shaded garden area?
Sept 18 2012. I welcome my friend and mentor, Kerry, who arrives on a bright spring morning. We chat briefly over coffee before K begins to study the behaviours of my computer while I sit nervously on the sideline. We discuss important matters as the bright day becomes cloudier and eventually noisy with rolling thunder. The thundery rain begins falling after K has left. Some of the ample dust that drifts through here when there is traffic on the road has been washed from the foliage and everything looks cleaner now; however, the showers persist into the evening. 
Sept 19 2012. Wednesday has been a long spring day, most of which I spent indoors (e.g., first at the Healing Centre and then in front of the computer attempting to sort out problems attending the online purchase of a phone). The older I get the more cogitating and thinking energy gets burned and I get weary—until I think of certain small honeyeaters that resemble humming birds and consider how they might feel at the ending of each day. Following a light meal I head early for bed. As I relax with books, papers and TV and the shadows lengthen into darkness I hear an unwelcome sound coming from the spaces between the top of my interior wall and the outside weatherboards: possibly micro bats, even a deranged possum trying to force an entry, or maybe a rogue mouse, or…a snake. Sigh. I switch on lights, select a suitable timber weapon, grab my brilliant little torch and investigate by shining the light outside: there are three bright pink ‘night tigers’ (snakes) writhing over one another along the timbers supporting the fibreglass roof over the deck adjoining my bedroom—about 3-m from my flinty gaze. It is spring and the serpents are outside trying to get in; I wonder why they want to be inside where I will do my best to terminate them—as I always do? They look identical to the last snakes I encountered in the house and ‘night tiger’ is a description used loosely here in the Darkwood. –And venomous serpents aren’t tolerated inside this house, spring or no spring. I go to sleep with one eye open, so to say.  
Sept 20 2012. Thursday and I am home with no appointments and only my writings, the computer, and online merchants to worry about. I exchange emails and worry further. In my next life I shall more speedily become a Master of Computing, but that still seems a dream without much substance as I struggle to recall certain computing procedures. The situation improves when I risk my mentor’s displeasure and follow important advice. Penitent, I change into my Outside Clothes before slinking and lurching outside to do some mowing. I drag the mower over to one of the fiddly bits of lawn that still needs mowing near the N-E corner of the gardens where there is an accumulation of fallen twigs and heavier deadwood branches; I also bring my strongest rake, clean the area and am confronted by a mass of groundcovers, twigs and branches that will have to be disappeared before I can return the untidy area into a semblance of lawn: this being the area where once the citrus trees grew (I feel less guilty about removing the citrus trees because I’ve recently learned that anybody suffering reflux has to learn to avoid citrus—I don’t understand why, but that has been my experience). I thoughtfully move most of the larger twigs and branches from the long raked pile of debris to my upper riverbank (wild) area and happily reduce the remainder with my lawnmower. Success! Later I take the same rake upstairs with me because there are certain ominous sounds from within my bedroom walls: snakes (possibly) or micro bats (most likely). Snakes make slow slithering noises; bats when they come and go make sudden scratching sounds—such as a rodent might make. I see no snakes; snakes will not be present if the bats are present (because the bats will have been eaten). One way or the other, I know this will be another noisy night.
Sept 21 2012. A fast month, September—there’s so much going on here, so much movement that change takes place as I watch and I’m groggy from lack of sleep.
At the start of the month the weeping coral tee looked like leafing and hours later it had; the old cheese trees near the lawn’s edge shed many of the russet leaves that blew down to cover the winter grasses and now is completely green; in recent days the Virgilia trees further down the valley are like clouds of white in the sun. Roadside grasses that have been slashed (by the Council) have quickly produced spiky new leaves and flower heads, some dock plants close to the traffic are 2-m tall and thriving. Here in the gardens brown butterflies appear suddenly and bounce through warm air that must seem summery to them and small crowds of flying insects explore me sitting reading. I watch in admiration as two small butterflies (or possibly moths?) bob together at speed while staying in one small space: they fly speedily and make innumerable changes of direction; it looks crazily random, but surely is not. How are they able to do that while lacking our big brains? Some of these spring days are so filled with movement that they surprise. One morning walking past the bamboo and in an opportune moment I see the new foal running fast across the paddock as the horses come into view—the colt’s awkward long legs driving beauty in motion. 
The National Parks: America’s Best Idea is a fine series on Television late at night. I am touched to see depicted old b/w photos in this TV program because I know exactly the period depicted: the early Thirties—and I know that to be true because I was there once, too.
Sept 22 2012. Saturday. Earlier I raked and mowed the overgrown area near the compost where I had carelessly collected a pile of useful hardwood bits when clearing after a flood (the grass and weeds had since covered everything). Greatly daring I also revisited the log pile left by floods covering parts of the river lawn and had some success diminishing the tangle. That endeavour included reaching up and breaking both long logs (by pulling rapidly and repeatedly) anchored beneath short heavy logs and then dragging the broken segments to the edge of the lawn and returning them to the river. I knew that these two problem limbs were casuarina once I’d uncovered them (the axe had bounced off the wood post flood) and that the wood would eventually dry out and finally rot. It was now quite dry and brittle. I bob the far loose ends, starting with one hand then changing to two and soon hear the satisfying CRACK! of the dry brittle wood breaking. I could then drag the broken timber away, ease it to the edge and slide it down to the water. Anybody can do this: it’s not rocket science. The longer the log the more a great fulcrum it becomes and I could have lifted and moved some of the heaviest materials jammed together had my logs not broken (with a lever long enough, one might move the world as someone wise once wrote). 
Now I’m once again in the sun-drenched garden with a good book (Salter’s Light Years) while feeling enclosed or even ‘contained’ by birds singing particular songs. There is one bird voice, though, that sounds troubled, the song a non-stop high-pitched jabbering that is surely a distress signal. There is probably a goanna or a snake hunting in the area. Looking about me between reading and not reading I see that the jacarandas here are bronzing. The leaves on the Japanese maple have a look of permanence about them although they’ve been out for only a few days; perhaps that’s due to the dust from the road only 4-m away. And all of the vaguely green blobs on the grey-white branches of the white cedars are now filigrees of pale yellow against the blue sky. There’s a sapling grevillea robusta (silky oak) close to me: its new leaves look so perfect against the sky they seem almost artificial. Four irises next to me are blooming; the little kangaroo paw plant sits there too and the white begonias have put up a protective wall of foliage. Tired from my exertions (not to mention the fatigue that comes from too much old age thinking connected with emails and the purchase of a phone to be delivered by courier to my friend’s house, distant from here) I crept upstairs to relax (again) with book, papers and the TV programs—there is a program about Tolstoy! I switch on and watch avidly after calling my neighbour who has recently read Anna Karenina. Brilliant! Then I doze. A couple of loud bangs overhead get me up, and peering outside and overhead: it’s that damn snake again! I glare up; the snake glares down and starts to slip back into the wall/roof space. I’m not fast enough to grab a long weapon; I miss the opportunity to hurl the snake into the distance (with my long pole). If I were able to fling the snake away I could then with a clear conscience use my stepladder to block this priest’s hole. Hole blocking with the snake trapped inside would be Not Cricket. I remember a couple of times when a snake or two retired into such a space for the winter’s sleep and died there because they put on weight and couldn’t get out again. The scented air of decaying snake is horrible and lasts for weeks. Later I watch another of the rugby league finals. From time to time I frown at overhead noises and flash my powerful little torch ceiling-wards. The gaps I filled long ago are not breached. It would take a much bigger snake to muscle his way through and down to a soft landing on my bed or on me. I eventually sleep in peace.
Sept 23 2012. Sunday. It’s a bright warm day. I get some laundry done and go for a walk after breakfast when the traffic is meagre. I meet my neighbour: there is a second new foal in the big paddock. Despite thundery showers, the river seems as low as ever. Later I stroll down to the sunny garden and continue reading while a couple opposite continue lying in the hot sun for most of the day. As I read a small goanna emerges from one of the overgrown gardens and wanders away. I’m suddenly between two shrike thrushes singing something at each other—or perhaps they’re merely conversing. It’s all very impromptu. I had come to the belvedere on this warm morning (temperature to the mid 20s) with a cup of tea, Salter’s Light Years and my folder of papers and had moved about in the light and shade to be comfortable having moved the garden chairs several times. The couple across the river were surely roasting (I wanted only sufficient light and warmth for myself not to be roasted). I found the best spot close to where the chairs are usually located, next to one of the bleeding heart trees. A shrike thrush bounced along and sat next to me on the lowest branch. I could almost have reached out and touched him. Instead I swung around—the thrush has such a bold voice—and said clearly, “Hello!” instead. The bird was completely disinterested in me and continued it’s earnest voicing. The distant other thrush was unseen in the old trees across the lawn—between the lawn and the old track that runs along the ancient riverbank; the second bird was somewhere near the water storage tank. Both birds communicated loudly; I was like the filling in their sandwich but it was also as if I did not exist as far as they were concerned. How strange it was! And what on earth were they saying to each other?
On Sept 24 2012. I have a middle of the day appointment to be seen by the optometrist. My eyes are OK but the macula in one eye is changing: for the present, I’m OK.  On Wednesday Sep 26 I visit Kerry with my computer: the new phone has been delivered to his address and there are technical procedures to be completed before I can return to Coffs and the Telstra store to have the new phone properly registered. It’s a warm day and my troublesome back ensures my walking in crowds will be awkward. There are delays: everybody has a mobile phone that needs attention. Eventually I get home and thankfully join the birds in the garden. By the early evening (being a slow learner) I realise that I’m now experiencing another transient ischemic attack (small stroke) and begin to grasp why the TV and the TV text seems faulty: the faults are taking place in my circuitry and not in that of the TV. (Interested readers who may want to understand more details will find that good explanations and descriptions can be googled (e.g., the phenomenon, “classical migraine” is ‘visual’ and not generally painful (yet is also unpleasant). Sept 27: I come to terms with the unpleasant situation I am experiencing courtesy of my crowded brain: short term memory deficits, confusion about dates and times and much more: in other words, I am experiencing a small stroke and having experienced such unpleasant phenomena in the past (pre-chelation therapy) I realise that I’m again experiencing the consequences of a small stroke, a transient ischemic attack. For those who wonder what this means, the TIA or small stroke compels the owner of the brain to struggle with remaining in one reality while simultaneously speculating wildly about the likelihood of now being able to access realities that are somewhat different from the consensus reality that most of us seem to experience. Put another way: one of the phenomena to be experienced is the suspicion that one’s central nervous system (CNS) has so quickly changed from the owner’s ‘normal’ operating procedures to those that seem strangely awry or even alien that automatically returning ones CNS to normal may no longer be possible. It is possible for the CNS to return to near normal operating procedures; however, the owner of the CNS has also to realise (the faster the better) that normal or near normal operational procedures of his/her brain will be restored as soon as possible… And so on. (Readers who have not experienced stroke or minor stroke will appreciate that the TIA is also a very great learning and that it is initially to be respected with common sense).    
I’ll end the September Diary here (Sept 28) on a warm sunny afternoon in spring. For further September news please see the October Diary.
Best wishes to all from Don. Sept 28 2012
See Russell Atkinson’s blog at  http://theoldestako.wordpress.com/
     

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