Monday, September 30, 2013

THE EARTHRISE DIARY (September 2013)


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

Reunion
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.



1 comment:

  1. DEAR DON, I REALLY ENJOY YOUR "ERTHRISE DIARIES" AND ALSO SHARE MANY MEMORIES OF GESTALT TRAINING OUTDOORS IN THE ALPS (MERANO), DENMARK AND MEXICO. THANKS YARO STARAK

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