THE EARTHRISE DIARY
(October 2012)
Don
Diespecker
© text Don Diespecker 2012.
For sundry reasons, some of them physiological, this October Diary is
shorter than usual.
There were a couple of leftover days following the September Diary, one
of them auspicious: on Sept 29 Saturday I met my friend Sharon Snir at
Bellingen Library where she gave an excellent presentation describing her
recent book, Looking for Lionel. The
presentation was marked by a short video that explained aspects of Alzheimer’s
and showed how communication can be achieved and maintained. This was an
emotional experience and I was glad to have been present to see and hear.
Sharon also discussed her latest book (now out), The Little Book of Everyday Miracles.
Because it is now spring the local weather has been impressively
changeable all month: warm to hot and dry one day and surprisingly cool and
even showery a few hours later. It seems to suit my present mood as I wrestle
with difficulties of locomotion (due to a lower back injury) and difficulties
of short-term memory associated with a TIA (transient ischemic attack) on Sept
26.
The first week of October was filled with strange sounds at night (it’s
spring, after all). Many of these night-time noises are made by inquisitive and
perhaps playful possums exploring the house from the rooftops: I hear them
climbing (like noisy cat burglars) the poles that support the sheltering roof
over the front steps of the house; then they climb to the topmost ‘cathedral’
roof above my bedroom and race along the roof ridge. They make a surprising
amount of noise and have been successfully blocked from entering the
roof/ceiling space for nearly 30 years. They don’t like me shining a flashlight
at or near them and are otherwise fearless. (Until I recently took down an
overhead poly-pipeline that ran through the trees to my storage tank, possums
could be seen at night negotiating the swaying line like uncertain circus
performers… for reasons never made clear). Some of the other non-possum noises
are more mysterious: either edgy micro bats shifting about between flights
(though I’ve blocked most of this nightly traffic with strategically placed
materials). And, of course, there are the usual roof- and ceiling- loving
serpents that enjoy the hot spaces surrounded by fibreglass insulation. I
imagine that the snakes would rather be outside hanging laconically on tree
branches and snoozing near the cool river on spring nights, but they perhaps
know best what is good for their souls. These inhuman possibilities of the
varied fauna can be comfortably dealt with by ignoring them or by leaving the
radio on, at low volume (I like to think that the discursive intellect is
frustrated by my partly listening to Radio National until my brain decides it
would rather be in sleep mode than listening either to the Noises Off or to any
of the radio programs). If Radio National doesn’t subdue the noises beyond me I
encourage my brain to explore up-coming scenes in whatever story I may be
working on during the day (currently fiction and some non-fiction essays).
Surprisingly, some of the more adventurous characters/protagonists (fictional)
are so active (within writing compartments of my too busy mind) in the wee
hours that I easily can remember much of their schedules and intentions in the
morning when I am again more or less awake again.
In my now faulty and otherwise usual and most frequently experienced
reality I enjoy a gluten-free lunch in Bellingen at The Grain with Russell
Atkinson, who lends me a Hal Porter collection of stories.
The last 2 days of the first week in October are hot and unpleasant,
the temperature about 34˚ and there is news of fires on the Central Coast.
Later each day I sit outside in the cooling wind. Carl phones me from Mayfield
(his mobile, my landline) while Nick (in Ottawa) is talking to Pam who is
standing next to Carl.
The weather is smoky again. I take the iPhone and attempt a short video
from Richardson’s bridge. Hazy. The river is well down, the light poor for
filming. Before I properly get under way at the bridge next to my garden I see
a healthy-looking black snake (a metre or so long) at this (west) end of the
bridge. I say Hi. I’ve been watching a brush turkey on the other side of the river
and almost miss seeing the snake. When I return from my walk down to
Richardson’s Bridge a second smaller black snake crosses the road in front of
me then has some contact I think with the first of the black snakes. These near
misses (for me) seem more than a coincidence.
The second week.is again hot and I visit my osteopath who refers me to
the radiographer in Coffs for a lumbar X-Ray. It’s still hot and dry and I
wander the garden at lunchtime without reading—merely sitting or moving about
slowly. Leaves fall in ordered flurries that are strange in spring. The
Yesterday Today and Tomorrow bush is flowering; its scents are heavy and sickly
sweet. The local birds are loud for hours in the hot garden and they sound
happy enough.
Oct. 10. I drive to Coffs Harbour and Park Beach Plaza and the Homeland
area to visit the radiographer. To my surprise I wait scarcely 5 minutes before
a kindly technician leads me toward the machine room and a change booth. I
imagine I look very odd in a disposable shift. I’m in and out of the place in a
few minutes and go shopping to Park Beach Plaza. The sky becomes stormy on the
way home. I’m glad to be home again: the principal reason for going out on a
hot day is that there has been yet another “planned power interruption”. I wait
impatiently for the return of the electricity.
Oct 11. Light rain began falling last night. It’s now cool and wet.
Oct 18. I again go to Coffs to search for books at Book Warehouse.
There are no copies of Salter or Stegner. I go to the PO, buy some Reflex paper
and have new ID photos taken and also obtain a copy of the official passport
application form. I no sooner get home than I receive a call from the Book
Warehouse: my copy of Salter’s A Sport
& a Pastime has arrived!
Oct 19. Friday. The power is again off for most of the day. I fill in
the passport application and ask my neighbour, Doug Spiller if he will kindly
endorse a photo of myself and he agrees so I go over, complete the application
and then phone the Bellingen PO for a passport application appointment: I can
have the interview this afternoon. I successfully lodge my application and
proceed on to Coffs and collect my new book (James Salter) from Steve. It looks
excellent.
Oct 27. Saturday. I’ve felt hung over since Sept 26 when the TIA
walloped me and left me feeling like a visitor to two somewhat different
realities. Although I’ve been writing daily my prose has been writing of
particular kinds: essays that have been started and need progressing, emails,
the fiction (“The Belvedere”) and then a ‘better’ version of that fiction, the
tense changed (I’m redrafting the novel in the present tense and writing more
directly and without so much detailed historical stuff: searching for more
immediacy, if that makes sense.
Outside: I also work on the log pile that accumulated during floods
last summer: Carl, when he visited, Oct 22/23, was encouraging in that
endeavour and I’ve spent a few more hours axing and using the crowbar to split
logs or lever them and roll them over the riverbank edge and down into the
river—rather than walking up and down the road for exercise in the smoke and
dust.
Today I’ve had two work sessions on the log pile and have cleared part
of the area.
I also am making small piles of leaves starting with leaves on the path
to the lawn from the house. The leaves will help clear the lawns and will
reduce in their own time on the downstream riverbank. In this operation I am
shadowed by a black goanna that follows my strenuous moves with interest and
shows no signs of fear (or urgency of appetite). I chat to him or her and
respectfully walk around the reptile. He or she watches impassively and seems
interested to see me clearing areas and shifting leaves and chunks of wood.
Perhaps the goanna is stalking me? It’s small rather than large. After all the
activity with axe, crowbar and rake, I read and complete Salter’s fine book and
begin to read the Griffith Review: Novella project.
Reproduced below is a non-fiction piece (personal essay) that I wrote
describing a 1998 visit to France. The journey was made with my cousins Jill
Alexander and her brother, the late Gene Diespecker and our friend, Ilse Vogel.
This essay was previously published Online in the Diary: here I have re-edited
the writing and changed the tense.
Kin
Don Diespecker
Easter and I’m in Gourdon with my two Canadian cousins and our German
friend, Ilse. We all have a taste for the wines of the region, not to mention
the food. Gene and his sister Jill live in British Columbia. Ilse lives in
Germany. We’re in France at my suggestion; since 1950 I have always loved being
in France. Perhaps because I am a hopeless romantic, this country and its
culture, customs, civilization, people and geography are important to me. I
know that Ilse is a Francophile, too.
Gourdon is an interesting old town, although not nearly as interesting
as many other old towns in a region containing Lot, Périgord, Dordogne, Cantal,
and Auvergne. Wandering through these landscapes is a joy. In ways reminiscent
of longish sea voyages I am happily out of time, intentionally cut off, yet also
open to new adventures.
A few days earlier we were in north Bavaria in the town that gave my
family its name: Diespeck (between Nuremburg and Wurzburg). We have been
discussing much history and family history and visited the old Jewish cemetery
surrounded by oak trees up on the hillside. The cemetery had not been
vandalised by the Nazis but the locals blinked when we spoke our family name
because Diespecker is pre-holocaust
to them. (This has been odd—for me: there I am in a German town the name of
which is the origin of my family name and the locals are very surprised that I and my cousins should have this name. In the cemetery there is a section dedicated to
members of the Wehrmacht who served
in World War 1. I have been wondering whether the locals considered that unusual. I also wonder how many
German and non-German members of our family might have been shooting at each
other in the Great War.
Ilse has explained that: “The family name means ‘die Specke,’ viz., a corduroy road, made with logs laid side
by side over the ground. Nowadays
they pronounce it ‘Dies-peck,’ but if [we] look at the Hebrew spelling on
tombstones, it is spelled and pronounced ‘Disch-bek.’ That is the way everyone born there pronounces it.”
I had toured the Dordogne years ago but this is the first time any of
us have ever been in Gourdon so we make it our base for daily trips. There are
features of the town that look almost familiar to us, even as strangers: the
busy open market, the old buildings, the entire town rising above a mound like
a lively hub of humanity. Perhaps I'll revisit one day and repeat some of this
tour—I will surely remember the hotel with pleasure. The hotel is nothing fancy
and as with any French hotel that boasts a restaurant we are well served with
good food and good wine. Clear images stay in mind: dinner scenes, for example.
We examine the menu and think hard on the choices while the young waitress
smiles understandingly because we are foreigners and a menu of delicious options
in France can be a trial for anyone. I generally make a quick choice because I
think first impressions are surely worth something. While the others roll their
eyes and groan imagining the tastes to come I look about and am touched to see
that the evening dinner ritual is not in the least disturbed by our intrusion.
In some ways we are probably only partly visible to the French diners. I think
that may signify both a civil and civilised respectful gesture. There is the
family that I first met on the stairs one evening. They are an elderly couple
together with their married children and their spouses, a baby and a little
black poodle. The poodle is obviously part of the greater family. At table the
small dog is perfectly tolerated and no one turns a hair when the dog sits up
on a chair to receive portions and titbits with excited pleasure. I doubt
anyone in that comfortably full restaurant sees that behaviour as remarkable
except possibly, us. We are the outsiders, after all. The French are accepting
and tolerant in ways I have never quite appreciated until now.
Another thing about the evening meal: how good sorbet is at the end of
the meal. One sorbet contains berries and that reminds me of my earliest years
in Victoria (British Columbia’s capital city): Dad used to grow raspberries and
loganberries in the back yard up against the house and there were always late
summer blackberries in the suburban lanes. That remains true in North
Vancouver, Jill reminds us: you may have a second breakfast walking those lanes
should you wish to.
I can’t honestly compare a casual hotel meal in a French town with a
similar meal in Canada or South Africa or Australia; the world isn't like that;
we each live in our different cultures more or less comfortably. Now I’m
remembering another time on our trip over in Burgundy, where we stay at a small
hotel in Beaune. As is our custom (‘Multinational, temporary’) at the end of
each day we meet for wine and cheese before dinner. We’re in my room talking
about history and sipping red wine and taking bites of Cantal on leftover
lunchtime baguette. What comes up for
me is a wartime memory of Pilgrim's Rest up in the Drakensberg in the Eastern
Transvaal where we once lived and I reminisce about those times. I was just a
kid in those days but the older guys, the ones we admired because they made
swing-out ropes over the swimming pool and knew everything about life--they
soon went off to the War in 1939, most of them not much older than I and my
school friends and most of those older guys were killed in the Western Desert.
They had all too briefly been role models to we younger kids. The village was
stunned, all those years ago. Telling that I choke on my words. My grief has
lain waiting for all of the long years and I am glad I am with family.
The long-ago War encourages me to think about the river at Pilgrim's
Rest, the Blyde. ‘Blyde’ from the Dutch means happy in Afrikaans. At home in New South Wales I live in the bush
and on a similar sort of river, the Bellinger and thinking on that reminds me
of yet another far-off river, the Cowichan that hurries through the woods on
Vancouver Island: the Cowichan River is my first river in time, the primary
river of my childhood. We used to go up to the Cowichan on vacation even in the
Depression years of the early ‘30s because one of Dad’s brothers, Jill’s
father, owned a cabin in the woods there. It overlooked the river and the five
brothers would take turns to share the cabin. We would drive up from Victoria
in an old Graham Paige: Mom and Dad and Deirdre and me, and Wolf my German
shepherd. Families had little money in those days, but almost everyone owned a
car.
The enormous trees at Cowichan make the woods gloomy except when the
sun gets through the canopy to the forest floor that’s always damp and has a
good earthy smell. Nearby is a rail track and logging trains roll by regularly.
On twilight evenings the driver and the fireman wave down to us from the high
steam locomotive while we gather berries (‘Oregon grapes’) in the bracken near
the line.
The cabin is close to a coldwater creek and is high above the river
where on sunlit days we float on tubes and swim and fish for trout. The cabin
walls are covered with coloured tracings of the best fish The Boys have caught,
fly-casting. Remembering the cabin now I sense that long ago smell of trout
frying on the riverbank in a pan of spitting butter.
In South Africa upstream of the mine’s reduction works at Pilgrims Rest
the Blyde has long pools with reeds in places and there are shadowy parts that
run through black wattles. The Australian trees didn't arrive until well after
gold was discovered in the 1870s but they always look natural there in the high
country. Near the river there are or there used to be great plantations of blue
gums grown for timber props in the mines. They’re trees just like the flooded
gums at home in Australia, at Earthrise, magnificently tall and straight.
Downstream there are rapids and then shallows with coloured gravels patterning
the bottom. Some afternoons after school we’d ride our bikes upriver to First
Drift where there’s a rock shelf near the suspension bridge. Lying flat and
peering down you can watch rainbow trout hanging in the current waving their
fins slowly in the clear stream.
In the Gourdon restaurant Ilse and my cousins are discussing fish and
I’ve been eating mine almost without noticing. I realise something else: when I
was 11 years old and swimming in the Blyde and sometimes learning to fly cast
with Dad, our long-lost new-found cousin Joel in Israel--the same age as
me--was a refugee and being arrested in Spain with his parents, then separated
and gaoled. They had fled Germany to live for a time in Marseilles before the
War caught up with them. By a miracle they are eventually reunited and later
they safely reach Palestine.
Later on this trip, Jill and Gene and I go to Israel and meet Joel and
Sarah; they live on kibbutz now near Jerusalem. They were living there when
first I went to Israel in 1976 sensing possible connections, but we did not
meet then because we didn’t know of each
other. Our 18th century ancestor, the Rabbi David Diespeck had
married three times; now it is time for the descendants to see and to meet each
other and to try and figure out how we'd become so separated in time.
Later in the evening in Gourdon we four sit talking about some of the
places we’ve been visiting: we have returned from a drive over to Cahors where
we wandered about the wet and windy streets. Later when the sun comes out we
walk across the big 14th century Valentré bridge: a stone bridge
with high roofed towers and set above a barrage that pools the river. It's
funny how one thing reminds me of another: that surprising stone bridge at
Cahors is so old but it looks strong enough to last for hundreds more years.
The Joubert Bridge over the Blyde at Pilgrims Rest close to where I once lived
in the 1930s is also stone-built with big arches but now is still not much more
than a century old.
I remember when we were about ten years old in Pilgrims Rest how
Leonard Franck would sometimes climb up on the undressed stones of the Joubert
Bridge parapet and calmly walk across, deadly high over the river, the only kid
game enough to do that. The bridge next to where I live now in Australia is
timber--all the timber bridges in the valley are low-level and become submerged
in floods and are sometimes destroyed; predecessor to the bridge here was torn
away and washed down in 1985. It was replaced of course, and has even been
modified to become the best and strongest of the valley bridges. Nothing is
permanent, however.
I'm remembering another hotel-restaurant, at Souillac, and again the
meal is excellent. I remember it for a peculiar reason. The proprietor also
serves at table and because she is so busy in her crowded restaurant she appears
to be eating on the wing: a succulent mouthful in the kitchen becoming a
delicate clandestine cud as she swiftly serves her guests. I've not seen that
before or since.
All of these images compose in an early spring. Thinking now of our
tour, there are hundreds of images to choose from, each poignant and shining.
There is the winding road that leads up into the hills between Brive and
Souillac where it is cold and drizzly, and as we drive higher there are sleet
and snow showers. Early flowers bloom in the falling snow and when we stop for
breaks the silence is eerie. While in Montignac we visit the nearby Lascaux
caves and I once again sit in the big church in Montignac: it seems unchanged
in the more than 50 years since my first visit there with Pam and my parents,
Durbyn and Grace so long ago. And there is the old three arches stone bridge
with its water level quay for fishermen to pass sunlit days; when the river
rises the long flat quay is submerged. The low quay is carefully designed, I
imagine, and located in a sweeping bend of the river where it also prevents
scouring.
There's a restaurant on a corner in Montignac on the way to the caves
where we all eat paté followed by
entrecote in wine sauce--and then sorbet. It's funny how some things stay in
the mind and then reappear rising to this surface reality once again.
I'm not a religious person, not a church-going person (though I won
second prize for attendance at the Methodist Church Sunday school when I was
about 11 years old). I try hard but can't remember where or when I've last been
to any kind of church service although I've wandered through hundreds of
churches in many countries. When my companions suggest we all go to church at
Gourdon on Easter Sunday I am embarrassed and almost refuse to go, yet I do go
and it is a most peculiar experience for me. Again I see in my mind's eye the
kindly face of the long-ago Anglican archdeacon in Durban as he tries
unsuccessfully to persuade my mother to urge me toward communion; and I
remember how cross he becomes when she and I both turn him down. My mother's
people were all Scots. Then I think myself a hypocrite to have married, the
first time, in a Church of England. My sister married a Christian Scientist, I
recall, and her second marriage was to a Christadelphian. My great grandfather
outdid us all: born a Bavarian Jew (which I didn't know until recently), he
married my great grandmother, Christian Warmington, at St Martin in the Fields,
London. Apostasy and assimilation are powerful things. I often puzzle about our
ancestry having been a secret in my father's family. Great grandfather Samson,
born a Jew, became an apostate Jew, married a Christian woman named Christian in a Christian church—and was
‘reclaimed’ by his brother and finally laid to rest in the Balls Pond Road
Jewish Cemetery in London. Bu
which time he was also known as ‘Louis.’ Full circle.
In the church at Gourdon this Easter it is damp and cold and there is a
strong smell of candles. I follow most of the service although I don't try
singing in French. I think the experience is perhaps more important for my
companions. In some ways it’s important for me too, but I am hardly present, if
you know what I mean. Perhaps I am a little embarrassed in that place and
because I'm an outsider I start thinking of something that isn't embarrassing.
While candles smoke and voices rise and fall about me I visualise a springtime
view from my house; it's a soothing experience that calms the mind. The surface
of the river at all times is worth seeing. When you look down to the river
there's a long stretch between the bends and there's often a wavering stab of
blue on the surface reflected from the sky. Beyond that and downstream the top
of the river is like burnished gold with a smear of light green along it. On
the right bank going down past the cool rainforest creek it's a darker green.
The shimmer in the middle of the stretch comes from the top of the ridge
against the sky where the setting sun behind me lights up big old trees along
the ridge. The whites and also the living greys from those old trees in the
forest are a meld of stunning mixed lights below on the surface of the river.
The picture of this is framed by straight bloodwoods close by and by some thin
young flooded gums. There are hanging-over casuarinas along the banks down
toward where some bedrock islands stick up proud of the stream and if you
search hard you can generally see a duck or two far off or a cormorant drying
its wings. I know it as a wondrous river, a river to dream on and to remember
by.
Now I'm home again and France is far off, and it's springtime here.
It's been so warm and dry, perhaps too dry. The snakes are out and about. I've
seen a young fox for three days in a row. As I drink breakfast coffee the fox
ambles along the edge of the lawn on the riverbank. He has patches of black fur
and looks oddly distinctive. There are fires all over the region now and the
valley is often filled with smoke and that's a worry. Yesterday the morning was
damp and grey but by noon a wind got up--one of those late westerlies we
normally get at the end of winter. It was a cleansing strong wind and branches
flew about like arrows, and then it died down and everything was still. The air
is like crystal now and I can see exactly what I'd been thinking on when I was
in the church at Gourdon.
I know we're never alone and barely separated, and if we're all
standing on the earth somewhere we're surely connected even though Australia is
the world's greatest island. Looking at the river now I'm wondering if I might
again be more intimately in contact with my dispersed family were we all to dip
our fingers in the water at the same time—in the river here, under a tap there.
Then we'd all be in touch at the same time.
October 31 2012. Wednesday. I have a new Outside
job: the groundcovers, weeds and the developing Christmas orchids have been
scratched and raked into oblivion by a solitary brush turkey. This huge amount
of litter covers the path to the house and will take time and energy to shift.
I suspect that the turkey is just a wee bit obsessive/compulsive. I’m not in
the mood to explore brush turkey psychotherapy. I wonder why the bird’s
behaviour seems so persistently pathological to me—he’s probably looking for a
good feed. Drongos and honeyeaters are singing at the same time. It’s a warm
spring day at Earthrise and jacarandas are flowering all the way to the coast.
Please see Russell Atkinson’s blog at www.theoldestako.wordpress.com
Best wishes to you all from
Don.
