THE EARTHRISE DIARY
(September 2013)
Don Diespecker
© text: 2013
Don Diespecker; guest writers retain their ©
A writer’s problem does not change. He
himself changes and the world he lives in changes, but his problem remains the
same. It is always how to write truly and, having found out what is true, to
project it in such a way that it becomes a part of the experience of the person
who reads it.
Ernest Hemingway
They can’t yank a novelist like they can a
pitcher. A novelist has to go the full nine, even if it kills him.
Ernest Hemingway
When I am working on a book or a story I
write every morning as soon after the first light as possible. There is no one
to disturb you and it is cool or cold and you come to your work and warm as you
write.
Ernest Hemingway
September. It seems these luminous days will
never end. The city, which was almost empty during August, now is filling up
again. It is being replenished. The restaurants are all reopening, the shops.
People are coming back from the country, the sea, from trips on roads all
jammed with cars. The station is very crowded. There are children, dogs,
families with old pieces of luggage bound by straps. I make my way among them.
It’s like being in a tunnel. Finally I emerge onto the brilliance of the quai, beneath a roof of glass panels which seem
to magnify the light.
James Salter: A Sport
And A Pastime
Sept 3 2013. The date
September 3 always reminds me of September 3 1939 wherever I may be and regardless
of what I am doing. September 3 1939 is like imprinting and conditioning: I
can’t avoid being mindful of the anniversary. I was ten years old on that date
in 1939 and remember it being a Sunday morning in Pilgrim’s Rest (Transvaal).
‘Pilgrims’ as we all called the village is high in the Middle-veld and was then
the oldest continuously operated gold mining area in the country: it’s also a
wonderful alpine region of high hills and mountains that are parts of the
Drakensberg range. I can still ‘see myself’ imaged that sunny day. There was a
time difference of two hours between South Africa and London. The British Prime
Minister, Neville Chamberlain, ended his announcement with…’consequently this
country is at war with Germany.’ Dad had just bought a new radio: it was a
significant purchase; the Depression still hung over us like a cloud and on
that day, the radio news advised us, there were air attacks by the RAF on
German targets. All of us kids wondered what the war would mean for us; it
looked like all kinds of excitement would follow the news.
My family had returned to South Africa from Canada only two years
previously. Remembering those times jogged my memory even further back: to the
kitchen in the big old timber house on Oxford Street in Victoria, British
Columbia, where the family spent much time together in the early 1930s. My
first dog, Wolf (a rollicking Alsatian), would sit in the hall doorway in a
shaft of sunlight snapping at motes of dust in the bright air. Here at Upper
Thora and the Darkwood in NSW, Australia, there is presently much dust because
the river is low and the road here isn’t macadamised; dried flood debris that
still decorates the garden trees sends dust drifting across the lawn when I or
nesting birds pull it down. The air here is heavy with dust: every passing
vehicle raises dust; only rain cleans the vegetation and washes the house. I’m
reminded of the innumerable times in Iran when our Land Rovers drove over new
carpets intentionally placed in the street so that they might acquire a patina
of ‘age’ (the new looks so very new and expensive new carpets are required to
have a respectably oldish look about tem…
At lunchtime I go outside to sit in the sun and have a short read. I’m
presently reading Frank Moorhouse’s big novel, Grand Days, set in the 1920s and featuring the League of Nations in
Geneva and interesting characters and themes associated with the League. I enjoy reading about those far-off
times partly because I was born in 1929 and I like the notion of being almost in
touch with that Roaring Twenties period. In a long lull here between passing
vehicles the air is busy with tiny insects and a few adventurous new
butterflies.
Each time I pause in my reading I notice something new in the garden:
no flood, however huge, can dominate most growth: budding and leafing will
assert and push aside smothering debris. There are also very light scents in
the garden, mixed ones perhaps, and so slight that I can’t easily identify them
(probably not the dreaded mistflower, cousin of the dreaded Crofton Weed, I
think, but something more subtle). As I watch the very active spring phenomena
from within the garden and from within spring itself, my mind wanders from the
novel to remembering Gestalt training workshops that were held outside; the open air and gardens or
river and forest were always potent themes. The Earthrise dogs, Eartha and
Henry seemed to be parts of the proceedings too: they enjoyed the group as much
as the group struggled not to be unduly diverted from its work. I glimpse the
imaged memory of such a training workshop somewhere and remember how some
workshops were slow to begin (perhaps because everybody was so focused on
something they might ‘work on,’ something to be explored with the trainer but
also rehearsed to some extent. The alternative to rehearsing one’s intended
agenda of ‘working on a personal issue’ is simply to be open to whatever
awareness demands attention and that means becoming available to surprise
’material’ ready in one’s psyche (whilst also being free to respond to the
facilitator’s or trainer’s noticing of cues (I see that you suddenly sat bolt upright, Jane; what are you aware of
right now?).
The more the workshop participant ignores his or her spontaneity, the
more he or she will stand out like a beacon in the group. Musty old curtains,
sniffed with your eyes closed will inspire visual images from long ago. Notes
of music passing through your mind will evoke an explanation; the way a person
sits or speaks will remind one of somebody from long ago; a particular word,
like a bad habit, will trigger an unhappy response from someone, or encourage
another to make overtures to the trainer… I used also to sometimes invite a
group member to become a reader and to please read aloud a passage or two from
novels: often, the verbatim readings would generate feelings and emotions and
many personal memories. What comes suddenly into awareness is figural, highly
relevant and authentic; what comes up is what comes up: it deserves to be
addressed rather than ignored: worked on as a means forward to a new awareness.
Recently Sharon mentioned a particular psychotherapy conference and
that encouraged me to remember again past psychotherapy training workshops and
conferences as the places where our life’s experiences ‘re-emerge’ into
awareness for one reason or another and it is the remembered past that becomes
the basis for contemporary experience in the workshop group, rather than those
old agenda items chosen and partly rehearsed for safety reasons.
There are of course so many ‘varieties’ of psychotherapy and
differences between them may be profound. From focus to distraction to shaking
up the ‘agenda’ or ‘planned presentations’ that psychotherapy students quite
often bring to meetings; the best of those were the third year uni students
doing Humanistic Psychology: we always began our two hours meeting with a
warm-up Gestalt Approach workshop. Because we did this every week during the
course the students soon learned to enable more and more awareness resulting
from surprise interventions or interrupted chunks of agenda.
Those were some of the best meetings of my life. And it was then that I
realised I was in a shaded patch on my sunlit lawn, a place I value for being
stimulated simply by my sitting there for half an hour and using my eyes and
ears and my nose. The sense of smell deteriorates with age, but I have a very
appropriate riverbank lawn and the stimuli present will always generate work
for the client or patient. Despite having led many training workshops in my garden
and elsewhere in the Valley, I now begin pondering the outlines of a Gestalt
Approach based simply on sitting and seeing. All of the necessary props and
stimuli are right here right now. The client (or I, on my own) will notice from
among the enormous range of stimuli and signals what is figural and relevant in
the moment: that is what demands to be worked on or explored by the
client.
Charivari
If I were going to seriously outline a ‘new’ psychotherapy, this would
be the location where I’d start writing it down (but not right now: I leave
that to aspiring young psychotherapists to explore their own garden settings or
to seek appropriate ones in public parks or in the Bush). We have lots of Bush
in Australia: counsellors and psychotherapists will find the Bush a rewarding
location, always, for therapeutic training. I’ll keep that in mind and return
to it in the future (but not necessarily this month).
I recently watched an interesting story on TV; it was about an Army
deserter in France during WW1 (or the Great War, as we used to call it). I
suddenly remembered that I had met a British Army deserter in France early in
1951 and when I thought more on that occasion I realised that I probably had
noted it in one of my old diaries. Sure enough, the diary sits low and dusty on
the bookshelf less than a metre behind me. I re-read the pencilled entries for the first few days of
February 1951, when I was hitchhiking in the Pas-de-Calais.
Early in the morning on February 2 I was hitching in a cold fog and
without much luck but soon I enjoyed several short lifts that were encouraging
and kindly offered by farmers, locals in the area. An old car I’d thumbed
stopped outside a store in one of several tiny villages and I asked if the
driver was going toward Paris. Yes, they were, but only in that direction for a
few kilometres. An older man came out of the store and invited me to put my
pack in the vehicle and to come in for a drink. (It was breakfast time). We
drank a glass of wine together; they wanted to know how old I was and I told
them. Then I sat among their groceries until they dropped me off and as I was
climbing out the old man flagged down a baker’s van for me and the ‘new’ driver
kindly took me as far as Semer. There were banks of old snow along the verges
and it was cold. I walked for a few minutes and thumbed a van that went past
but it stopped at the top of the hill and waited for me. The driver was en
route for Arras and he dropped me off at Montreuil. Near Wally I stopped and
chatted with a road ganger who was English. From what he was saying it was
suddenly clear to me that he was a British Army deserter and at ease and
cheerfully living and working in France. He gave me some tips on traffic and
suggested that in the early evening there would be large camions driving
through to the Paris markets… From the diary notes I easily remembered that day
and the added difficulty of distinguishing ordinary traffic from Monte Carlo
Rally cars hurrying in the fog. I got safely to Paris the next day and it was
cold there too following recent snow. I hope the deserter, not much older than
I, continued in making appropriate choices for himself: he dared not return to
the UK. I remember feeling silly thumbing a speeding Rally car and their
excited map-reading driver and passengers but I couldn’t identify the vehicle
until it had sped past; I remember wondering what they thought of me trying to
hitch a ride with them. It was a long time ago, more than 62 years ago.
In those days the Paris Central Markets, Les Halles, were busy at all
hours and popular with tourists; they no longer exist in that form and that
location, but ‘Les Halles’ as a named placed is perpetuated as a named Metro
station. Everything changes.
(That reminds me that when I was about a year old in 1930 the world’s
population was about two billion; when I started lecturing to first year
students at The University of Wollongong in 1970 (and when the University was
still a College of the University of New South Wales), there were about three
and half billions of us; and as I type these words today, there are now in
excess of seven billion people on the planet. The only true constant in the
universe is that everything constantly changes. And then there’s contemporary
politics with its head in the sand trying to avoid the obviousness of global
warming and climate change.
All of which make me think hard about writing novels without feeling
compelled to write them, unavoidably, as dystopian stories.
Drongo Day here is or was Wednesday Sept 18, about a week later than
usual this year. I now hear them clearly each morning: this year they like
being near the river when they’re not in their nests: they take dried flood
debris from branches presumably to make or to repair their nests. I often
wonder how they navigate across such great distances when they return here from
the Torres Strait; I ‘m assuming some of them, at least, have made the journey
previously and know where to fly and where their old nests await them.
Also, the fireflies have been active again at dusk, always a beautiful
sight to see in the early evening as they cruise around the house. The goannas
have been emerging all month, several of different lengths and colouring. One
of the goannas, certainly young, ambles past where I sit at the back of the
belvedere with scarcely a sideways glance. He or she seems fearless. When startled they quickly head for the
nearest tree and climb swiftly on the far side of the trunk where I can’t
easily see them. The goanna, I sometimes think, saunters as confidently as a
boulevardier, knowing that most creatures will respectfully keep out of his or
her way. The goanna might walk in an ungainly manner but they certainly can
climb superbly well. Those long claws make walking up a vertical smooth flooded
gum a simple matter. Humans can’t do that; nor can we take off from the
swimming position, as do the cormorants and launch directly into flying in air.
Don’s Day Out (Sept 19)
I’m at Muffin Break deep inside Coffs Central in the Coffs Harbour CBD.
Coffs (as we all call her) is reputedly the largest city in NE NSW. There are
innumerable places in this very large building that serve food and drink (I
have yet to see a bar here serving alcohol, but I may have missed it because
there are parts of the building that remain mysteries to me). I go to Muffin
Break because the coffee is reliably good and so are the gluten-free
muffins. I order coffee and a
muffin, pay, receive an identifying number (on a pedestal that enables instantly
locating me) and settle at a table. The crowd that is en route to work begins
to cluster at the counter; I have slipped in before their arrival. Now I watch
these en route walking workers pay for their caffeine hit and hurry away
gripping their coffee containers like regimental standards. There is an outer
ring of immobilised persons who stop here to make phone calls. They communicate
only through their phones and peck at tiny keyboards perhaps doing so here
because they can stand beneath or close to overhead lighting. Yes, I know how
almost universal are the little mobile phones and cell phones and smart phones,
but I’m still puzzled as to why
their owners are so drawn to Coffs Central and to very public places like the
one we’re all now occupying to make public the otherwise semi-private act of telephoning.
Seriously: what the heck is this all about? I see no urgency, no intensity of
composing text or dabbing at numbers; rather, this peculiar behaviour seems to
be a ritual, one in which the phone
user appears compelled to manifest in
a public place, often standing and
thereby standing out in the crowd as
if performing an unavoidable duty, a
religious act, a piece of ridiculous theatre for the possible benefit of we who are ingesting food and
drink: we refresh; they broadcast or listen!
(Discreetly, being a secret mobile phone user and a quite private
person, I remove my phone from my shopping bag of Stuff and slip it into my
shirt pocket: it might ring and I
would feel obliged to answer the call)…
It’s now about 08:00 hours and I’m at a tiny table with my high-octane
coffee and a gluten-free blueberry muffin. There are two young women behind the
counter and enough custom to keep them both moving quickly and efficiently in
the small space. I hope no-one minds me looking and learning: the two workers
making coffee and an occasional tea are too busy, I imagine, to notice that I’m
seeing poetry in motion. The women are casually dressed and move fast: the one
closest to me is working the big coffee maker. She empties the spent coffee
grounds from the metal coffee holder with two smart raps on the metalled side
of a disposal unit: two bangs to empty, sometimes three, then three toggled
twists to fill the container with fresh ground coffee, level that with a metal
tamper and slot or clamp it into the machine. The machine hisses and gurgles,
the aroma rises and wafts through the early morning stalwarts like a heady
drug, something I’m not used to these days but also reminding me of days long
ago when the Italian coffee machines were in vogue everywhere and the rich
aroma of fresh coffee helped make visits to Paris or Rome a heady pleasure.
Then as now quickness and agility seem important for those who prepare the
beverages. At the counter, or bar, milk comes from a large plastic container
kept out of sight beneath the busy work surface but I’m privileged to see this
because of my angled view. The coffee drinkers are turning up in increasing
numbers, mostly for takeaways. (Today’s newspaper discusses the downsizing of
products like coffee in smaller
takeaway containers, although the same old price applies as for the previously larger container: I’ve noticed this
phenomenon as relevant to one of my favourite packaged biscuits, too).
Anyone operating the coffee machine will want to wear comfortable
shoes: falling from high heels when shunting across the bows of hot machinery
would be disastrous in this workplace. The two or three workers in this crowded
area move quickly as if in a well rehearsed ballet: no collisions, no slip-ups
and no drama. Separated from this steamy redolent blurred activity several of
us apparently with free time, glance casually about, stir cups idly, push phone
buttons and seem light years distant from the growing melee in front of the
counter: that’s where there’s contained action: it pulses within the
customers who look set and determined and their shifting about suggests
urgency, impatience and an overall sense of anxiety. I no longer drink coffee
daily, but only on Saturdays. ‘Coffee Out,’ i.e., in Coffs Harbour, sitting
down in a café is a treat and I don’t risk overdoing it. (And if any of those
epithets are at all accurate, caffeine is going to exacerbate or compromise the
mornings of some workers, their equanimity, their work efficiency, possibly)
(This is probably all in my mind rather than in theirs). (Also, I can’t avoid
thinking that supervisors and
managers out there in the workplace, unless they are themselves horribly
addicted to powerful caffeine intakes, might want to consider which of their
workers is working with poise and confidence rather than with sporadic energy
outbursts or uncontrollable passion)…
Almost all of us who
sit at tables with food and drink are facing the counter/bar: we are almost all
spectators apparently not being
overtly nosey. Sitting and seeing whilst sipping, I have to admit, is also an
entertainment. Whatever else it may be, coffee and a muffin or a breakfast of
one kind or another, is decidedly a Show, one that starts the day for young and
old: not all of us are old or idle, but some certainly are. The peripheral
players in these shows are the more puzzling phone users: they too are part of
the show, the spectacle.
At the counter the drama builds. Customers and would-be customers press
forward. Behind the counter the workers move precisely. Out here at the tables,
we the survivors of coffee rage, watch placidly, imperturbably,
compassionately… I’m sure that those who want takeaway containers will set off
confidently for work, carefully carrying their magic potions; those of us who
are free of workplace burdens will sip and idly stare; the counter crew will
continue efficiently to earn their wages, and to do so impressively. (Where do
mobile phone users go and what do they do when they get there when they’re not
making or receiving calls?)
It’s still early enough to idle. I discretely teaspoon remnant muffin
crumbs, leave and stroll casually away, secure behind my Polaroids, careful not
to bump into the architecture or to trip and fall over. The large Post Office
inside Coffs Central is still not open. I pause to admire the respectably low
cost of the new printers for sale in the Post Office display windows. The
printers are not only inexpensive and compatible with most computers: they are
multifunctional or multipurpose machines. I suddenly remember the business
program I heard bits of, I think, at 05:05 hours when I was bumbling about
downstairs making my breakfast. The radio program had made reference to such
computers: they can be used (those that include lasers and appropriate other
substances) to print devices, including structures such as Un-personned Aerial (or
Arial) Vehicles, the UAV’s: drones, in other words. This appears to be an
amazing coincidence for me because I’m drafting a new narrative that includes
the use of drones! I suspect that though a word like unmanned raises no suggestion of trembling discord in my computer
and my very effective MP490 printer, the computer generalissimo isn’t quite
ready for new words like unpersonned,
no matter how the description is spelled: un-personned may continue for a while
to be a radical notion. We will all have to get used to the quirkiness of new
words. Youngsters of all ages are already used to the notion of there being
relatively small drones that can be purchased in a hobby or similar store; such
a machine device then requires only a couple of AA dry cells for it to be
functional. I rather like the idea of making one with my computer and printer
or of emailing the design to a friend (then we might fly our drones in adjacent
areas and with drone mounted cameras to photograph or video each other’s
machines, flying). I’ve learned something valuable that will help me write a
new story set in this area and only because I was listening to ABC radio at
05:00. Awareness is all.
Work-points
These relate to aspects of a story or novel now being written (I
borrowed the word from Lawrence Durrell’s books (specifically, Justine) because workpoints (as Durrell called them) represent passages I want to
develop in the book. Here are two that arose early this morning, (Sept 20
2013):
Breakfast time and from the kitchen I glimpse the still dark river’s
surface through a window: on the surface of the water, wisps of river mist
rising and moving against the flow come toward the house like a crowd of
phantoms; more hustle up from further downstream. Together these wispy moving
and purposeful forms remind me of a close-packed bunch of terracotta soldiers.
*
Seen on a lounge room window: the projected forms of leaves of the
bleeding heart tree outside the window. The window is grimy/dusty with dust
from Darkwood Road settling on the damp glass and beyond the glass the rising
sun shining through the bleeding heart tree features shades of green, some
leaves seen darkly through others; and some leaves faded red in the strong light.
These lively images are eye-catching; they remind me of other times, other
places; seeing them now is therapeutic, like experiences relived.
*
Seen at sunrise: a lively moving picture, framed, on the new white
bathroom war: a consequence of the rising sun shining obliquely on and off the
glittering surface of the river and projected through the lounge room, through
the stained glass of the front door, and into the bathroom to make trembling
images of the river’s surfaces on the wall.
*
To explain that further: my new story, barely begun, is planned partly
as a novel of place. Having necessarily spent yesterday in Coffs Harbour I
better appreciate the views from here (in relative tranquillity); the pace is
slower here, more frenetic in Coffs; birds sing here and the city is noisy in
endlessly varied ways.
Don’s Day Out (Sept 26)
I’ve returned to You Know Where because the old Honda needs more work,
more replacement parts, and because I will need also to review my strategy for
maintaining an old vehicle and either purchasing a new one or at least a less
old second hand one.
The Big City Day starts in much the same way as it did seven days ago:
the casual walk from the Honda agency into the CBD, the slow paced stroll into
Coffs Central before the rush starts and we all will be obliged to walk faster
or be jostled; the coffee hit; the Show; and not forgetting repeat performances
from the mobile phone users prominently on the sidelines. The forecast today
indicates hot dry winds in this region of NSW: tottering around in the heat
makes little sense and I’ll try something different by going upstairs by
escalator, viewing the light/shade prospect from above along the sides of the
adjacent car parking station, then going down the pedestrian ramps of the car
park and walking at a safe pace along the shaded street and away from Coffs
Central into Municipal territory. There are now few people walking on the
sidewalk: this means that about 90 to 98% of all pedestrians in this area are
moving inside Coffs Central and are not braving the hot dry winds of the
street, no matter how shady the street might be. I turn right at the end of the
street and walk in the bright sun facing east. Further along this sun-blasted
street I arrive at the Library and the council’s Art Gallery. I have a half
hour to wait before the library opens and longer prior to the Art Gallery
opening so I retrace my steps and negotiate the street where cars dash in both
directions. There is opposite the Council HQ building a park of lawn and trees
on a slope that runs to the Coffs Creek and there are benches, mostly roofed
against the weather, that are attached to picnic-style tables. I sit at one of
these bench/table arrangements with my back to the table so I can keep an eye
open for any reckless drivers rushing out of control toward my park or picnic
shelter. I face the Municipal building. People come and go, some are wearing
flamboyant yellow tops and driving Council vehicles (the ubiquitous ute, most
frequently). On my left in bright sunlight is the Municipal Swimming Pool:
swimmers are coming and going, many are apparently students and the NSW school
holidays are still current. There is also on this side of the street what
appears to be a nicely wide sidewalk but when you examine it closely it quickly
reveals itself as a Cycle Track and any pedestrian (especially old frail and
doddering ones such as your intrepid Editor) who doesn’t quickly discover this
simple truth is at risk of either being run down and dismembered by bicycle or
of being hurtled from pavement and into the east-bound motor traffic and
dismembered on the hot bitumen rather than on the more unyielding quite hot
concrete. As your Editor I can’t avoid thinking that those with downcast eyes
would quickly see the stencilled warnings identifying the Cycle Track, but
those gazing higher whilst crossing
the track prior to safely crossing the road will be at risk of first being
cycled over, then flung into the road and his/her battered self then being
motored over, as well. Would it be asking too much of Council to consider
different signage, different warning systems, even an unsightly system that
places a physical barrier between the pedestrian and the Cycle Track? Possible
solutions may be simpler than we all might think.
Anyway. I see that the much bigger and obviously more recent big
building of reinforced concrete next to the earlier–built and somewhat old
other municipal building, is not only bigger and higher: it has tinted glass
windows: the municipal workers can see out, but your editor cannot possibly see
in. This illuminating fact gives me an idea for a story, but I playfully decide
to make a tableau story for the benefit of any idle and eagle-eyed worker who
casually looks down from his or her tinted tower and sees the old Editor openly
leaning back against his picnic table and staring opportunistically at the
windows, especially at the top floor windows. Without looking I craftily take
my smart phone from my shirt pocket gently press the appropriate recess and
note the time, then I casually replace the phone before reaching down to my bag
of Stuff and removing my nice blue clipboard and opening it. With my favourite
propelling pen I begin to alternate between Looking Up to the Windows and
Making Notes. (It’s just possible that by now there is an office-full of
workers anxiously watching me. What’s
this guy doing? Why is he there, watching and noting? Who is this old guy? Is
he a terrorist with a cell phone? What if…
I wait a few minutes in the shade and until I’m certain that it’s now after
09:00, then I abruptly get up and leave quite quickly and hurry across the
grass to the Track and a safe crossing during a gap in the traffic and then I’m
directly below the windows of that building and knowing that I can’t be seen
from upstairs I turn quickly toward the sea and hurry along the street to the
Library…
The Library/Art Gallery share the same sun-blasted entrance, more or
less. I enter into the air-conditioned world of books and go to the front
counter. Yes, it will be OK for me to read and write therein; besides, I’m a
member of the library at Bellingen. Pleased that I’m considered harmless and
have then been made welcome I donate a print copy of The Agreement (it includes the sequel novel, Lourenço Marques) to the
librarian assistant who barely glances at it before placing it on a desk where
it will perhaps be Entered and Accepted and Numbered. Possibly.
It seems a nice Library and relatively quiet. I find a safe-looking
place but note that there are salient’s of ankle biters and quite noisy
children where doting Mums read stories, not always in hushed tones, to the
little ones. There are also small pockets and detachments of older students who
are supposedly studying and I tactically manoeuvre to find relatively safe
ground that isn’t entirely covered by teenagers unendingly texting or stormily
whispering into mobile phones. I am one of the few present who does not have a
laptop with me: most of the students do have such machines. I succeed quite
well in this and find a small table with one chair near to a chap similarly
seated and hunched forward intently reading a book. I take out my clipboard,
pen, and the fat Grand Days pb and
begin reading. Bliss! The school holidays are still on and a surprising number
of those in the library are children and, apparently, pre-schoolers. I read off
and on, happily, until late morning and the noise level is not as bad as I
feared it would be.
Deciding that a change of scene might now be appropriate, I stop
reading and drift through the crowd (which includes very intense and unsmiling
computer drivers of all ages glaring at computer screens) and exit the Library
and then enter the Art Gallery. Somewhere beyond the door a piano is being
punished noisily. I enter apprehensively to be greeted by two gallery reps
offering me printed information: briefly I pause and then press onward. The
Gallery looks fine: well lit, good natural lighting, also, and many pictures on
the walls, all of them by the same artist. My eyes narrow, a small but
effectively noisy group of (kindergarten?) children are hilariously forcing the
piano to produce sounds.
The kids are having fun; the piano is suffering; I feel doomed and melt
away (the piano is perhaps, beneath its veneer of kids, a baby grand piano).
Tuneful bits of music can sometimes be identified from the horrible sounds. I
am mystified at the purpose of this noisy behaviour and also mystified by the
total absence of any ‘permanent collection’ of artworks. I head sadly for the
exit but am cheerfully asked about the ‘exhibition’ by the door authorities.
‘Distracted,’ I say haltingly. They each are surprised. ‘Distracted?’ ‘Yes,
distracted,’ I repeat. ‘Are the children providing a musical accompaniment to
the art being shown?’ ‘Er, no: they’re not part of the exhibition.’ ‘I see,’ I
say, ’and where is the permanent collection which is what I have hoped to catch
a silent glimpse of?’ ‘Oh that’s not here at this time…’ And so on. I am talked
at and encouraged to read printed information that would enable me becoming
something of a friend of the gallery for I think, twenty dollars. I free myself
eventually and hasten away. Seriously, I wonder, as I totter out into the blast
of heat and light that is the entrance, what on earth is the Coffs Harbour
Council’s Art Gallery attempting here? And to be fair, I hasten to add that any
art lovers within easy travelling distance of this gallery would be wise to
drop in and to see for themselves, what I have so poorly described.
I walk away into the hot air and return to the different noises and
sights of Coffs Central and drink some green tea. There is a different counter
crew on duty now at Muffin Break and a very different lunchtime crowd: Mums and
Dads with kids, a scattering of older or elderly people, pensioners like
myself, I imagine, who are snacking, resting and also now reading their books
at the café tables. There are crowds that shuffle past: the fleet-footed
workers of the early morning are nowhere to be seen, but the phoners and
receivers can be spotted on the sidelines, still phoning, still listening. I
leave this area because there are several (two or three) different music’s
being played somewhere in the background and uneasily I detect a small
possibility of their being probably connected in some dark way with the noises
being made at the Art Gallery. It is best I shuffle out into the hot light and
amble back to the still shady sloping park.
This time I sit on the creek side of the same table and re-open my
snappy blue clipboard, produce my pen and glancing at the tinted glass windows
and then checking the time on my phone I make further Notes. The notes are
merely possible dialogue for the first part of the story that I hope is snugly
inside my computer (and inside the external hard drive snug inside my Stuff
bag). He tries to speak but suddenly his
face is white, his head goes back in agony and he grabs his side as if shot and
collapses in front of them, rolls over once and seems semi conscious, groaning.
A bunch of keys falls from his left hand. She hopes that the goggles in his
other hand are undamaged; she will certainly need them if she’s to get him to
Coffs…
And so on. I’m trying to get the sound
of the story’s narrative voice as well as the voices of characters right: that
imagined sound of the character and the sound of the read text the reader will
try to hear when he reads silently the text. Sometimes the
text has drastically to be changed; it’s best that the writer (this one,
anyway) works to get that sorted sooner, i.e., at the beginning, rather than
much later.
Now I move away from the too warm and windy table and totter across and
down the grassy slope to near the Creek. And relocate to a shadier bench and
table for a few minutes more. This is not a happy-looking creek: its water is
murky and a dull green and you can’t see through or into it at all so there’s
no sign of the bottom or how deep it might be. Sinister is the word. It looks
best at this time in early afternoon light, perhaps, but that’s not saying
much. A Zen garden it isn’t. I think water dragons and goannas would make it
more homely and suspect they already have. I imagine a new Council enterprise;
Creek Makeovers, responding to a wailing multitude of residents to Save The
Creek. Then I hold on to my hat and walk away into the wind again and go as far
as the second hand bookshop up on the highway. I have an hour to browse and
always enjoy second hand bookstores. This time there’s plenty of room for me to
stretch and bend to the low shelves that few readers bend to. I find two books
there that I purchase and add to the Stuff bag: Ian McEwan’s On Chesil Beach and at long last, a
clean copy of Flann O’Brien’s At
Swim-Two-Birds. By the time I get back to the Honda agency there is the
best part of an hour for me to wait, but in a cool waiting room and with a cool
drink of water: I read almost half of On
Chesil Beach before the car is ready. And then I drive home in the heat,
carefully, the radiator temperature needle going aggressively UP.
I have been in Coffs Harbour for more than eight hours: it is more than
enough on this hot day. I pat the dashboard gently. ‘Steady on, Old Friend,
let’s head for home now and the forested hillside and the river.’ We slip into
the fuming traffic. The glaring sun sinks lower in the west.
I am hot and tired from little sleep and a long day, but arriving home
is like arriving in paradise: it is dusk; a few late birds (perhaps as tired as
I) are still singing doggedly (!) and it is almost time for the firefly Show
but I sit in the dusk by the river and am sad to think in this beautiful place
that the old Honda is nearing the end of her road running (and if you, dear
reader, are wont to talk kindly to your motor car, and I know some who do,
other than I, then you’ll know how important it is to murmur a Thank You to the
motor For Getting Me Home In One Piece and postponing the telling of bad news,
particularly on a hot stormy evening.
Creative Writing
Jill Alexander
What I was hearing
on the other end of the phone line left me breathless. After fourteen years of
searching, I was being told that my son had been found.
“Where does he live? What is his name?” I asked in a voice I hardly
recognized as my own. The business-like reply came from the researcher.
“I can’t give you any identifying information until your son has signed
a consent form.” Then her voice softened as she said, “He has two daughters,
aged two and six.” Then back to her more formal voice she added, “He wants to
talk to his parents over the weekend before agreeing to the consent.”
“Oh, and he asked me to tell you that he is feeling a lot of confusion
right now, but it also comes with a lot of joy.”
She would next be contacting me when she hears the decision.
For the next three days I went through the motions of day-to-day
living. My heart felt as though it had expanded to fill my chest. My brain was
numb to everything except a picture of my son and myself meeting each other for
the first time. I seemed to be immobilized, unable to function normally. Eating
was an effort and sleeping almost impossible.
Then Tuesday arrived and the call came in.
“I have your son’s signed consent form sitting in front of me.” At last
she gave me his name and where he lived. He had been living all his life just
thirty miles away.
The next step was to be a phone call between the two of us, my son and
myself, set up by the researcher at a designated time. I was to place the call.
The time was set for 9 pm the following night. The researcher promised to
inform him of the time.
The next day I was filled with apprehension as I watched the hands of
the clock, sometimes hardly moving and at other times racing by. It felt as
though I had a 9 o’clock deadline when I would be stepping out onto the stage
of Carnegie Hall to perform in front of a full house and knowing I wasn’t in
the least bit prepared.
With great anxiety, I sat and watched the hands of the clock creep from
8:30 to 9:00pm. On the dot of 9, I picked up the phone and dialled. And then we
were talking at last. We talked about many things, trying to fill each other in
on our pasts. He told me that, at his wife’s urging after their second daughter
was born, he sent for the non-identifying profile the government provided of
his birth mother. This gave him some information on my background, education,
and any relevant medical history at the time of the birth. He commented on the
notation that I was allergic to dust and feathers, “And I’m allergic to dust and feathers.” Together we both laughed. It
felt good, a genetic bond we shared.
We spent almost an hour sharing our lives with each other, both past
and present. Then he said, “I’d
like to meet you tomorrow if possible.” I was overjoyed to hear this. “Can I
check with my schedule tomorrow morning and give you a call? We can then decide
on a time that suits us both.” Then we said goodbye.
I didn’t move for a long time, experiencing utter joy, switching to a
little apprehension, and then back again.
I had a profound sense that my life was changing forever.
The next day we met in a little restaurant near my workplace. I arrived
early and took a booth where I could clearly see the door. I watched and
waited, feeling every heartbeat. Then the door opened and he walked in. I stood
up and we put our arms gently around each other. There weren’t the fireworks as
in my dreams but there was a deep presence and a knowing that from this moment
we would always be a loving and integral part of each other’s lives. And so it
was.
Jill Diespecker Alexander is a retired nurse and business owner and is
presently writing her life story.
About my eBooks
For those readers who browse
for eBooks, here again are the first of the online books that I’ve begun
self-publishing. These digital books can be found on Amazon/Kindle sites; or,
try this link:
(a) Finding Drina is a light-hearted sequel to my two print novels (not
available as eBooks) published in one volume as The Agreement and it’s sequel, Lourenço
Marques. Finding Drina is
written in three parts and in three different styles that also are intended
homage pieces (to GG Marquez, Ernest Hemingway and Lawrence Durrell); thus this
little book is also meta-fiction (novella, about 30-k words).
(b) The Earthrise Visits is an Australian long story set at Earthrise
(about 20-k words): an old psychologist meets a young literary ghost from the
1920s (his girlfriend meets her too) before a second old literary ghost,
unaware of his spectral state, arrives unexpectedly.
(c) Farewelling Luis Silva is an Australian dystopian long story partly
set in Australia, Portugal and France (about 23-k words). A sniper meets an
Australian Prime Minister, an old lover and a celebrity journalist; three of
them meet a terrorist in Lisbon where there is a bloody assassination.
(d) The Selati Line is an early 20th century Transvaal train
story, road story, flying story, a caper and love story sequel to The Agreement and Lourenço Marques, lightly written and containing some magical
realism. A scene-stealing child
prodigy keeps the characters in order (novel, about 150-k words).
(e) The Summer River is a dystopian novel (about 70-k words) set at
Earthrise. A General, the déjà vu sniper, the Australian Prime Minister and the
celebrity journalist witness the murder of a guerrilla who had also been an
Australian university student; they discuss how best to write an appropriate
book about ‘foreign invasions’ (novel, about 70-k words).
(f) The Annotated “Elizabeth.” I examine and offer
likely explanations as to why my uncle published a mixed prose and verse novel
in which his mother is the principal protagonist and I suggest why the book Elizabeth (published by Dick Diespecker
in 1950) is a novel and not a biography, memoir or history (non-fiction, about
24-k words).
(g) The Overview is an Australian novella set at Earthrise (about 32-k
words) and is also a sequel to The Summer
River.
(h) Scribbles from Earthrise is an anthology of selected essays and
caprice written at Earthrise (about 32-k words). Topics are: family and
friends, history of the Earthrise house, the river, the forest, stream of
consciousness writing and the Earthrise dogs.
(i) Here and There is a selection of Home and Away essays (about 39-k
words). (Away includes Cowichan (Vancouver Island), 1937 (my cabin-boy year),
The Embassy Ball (Iran), At Brindavan (Sai Baba in India). Home essays are set
at Earthrise and include as topics: the Bellinger River and floods, plus some
light-hearted caprices.
(j) The Agreement is a novel set in Mozambique and Natal during
December 1899 and the Second Anglo-Boer War: an espionage yarn written around
the historical Secret Anglo Portuguese Agreement. Louis Dorman and his brother,
Jules, feature together with Drina de Camoens who helps draft the Agreement for
the Portuguese Government. British, Boer spies and the Portuguese Secret Police
socialize at the Estrela Café (about 62,500 words).
(k) Lourenço Marques is the sequel to The Agreement. Mozambique in
September 1910. The Estrela café-bar is much frequented and now provides music:
Elvira Tomes returns to LM from Portugal and is troubled by an old ghost; Drina
and her companion return with a new member of the family; Louis faints. Joshua
becomes a marimba player. Ruth Lerner, an American journalist plans to film a
fiesta and hundreds visit from the Transvaal. Drina plays piano for music
lovers and plans the removal of an old business associate (novel: about 75,000
words).
Pleas see also, Russell Atkinson’s blog at
Last word to my most
admired English teacher who also loaned me so many excellent novels:
Writing about nothing is never easy, but it’s
always worth attempting.
Joyce Kidger, 1945.
Be well, all. Best wishes from Don.
