THE EARTHRISE DIARY (August 2014 and Spring 2014)
DON DIESPECKER
© Text, Don Diespecker 2014; guest writers
retain ©. This Diary incorporates some writing drafted initially for an August
(2014) posting).
In
the midst of winter you can feel the inventions of spring.
Lawrence Durrell: Justine
One
of the dumbest things you were ever taught was to write what you know. Because
what you know is usually dull. Remember when you first wanted to be a writer?
Eight or 10 years old, reading about thin-lipped heroes flying over mysterious
viny jungles toward untold wonders? That’s what you wanted to write about,
about what you didn’t know.
Ken Kesey
CHARIVARI
After queer ‘false starts’ the weather
wintry one day and summery the next, spring is certainly here now. This time
it’s the real deal. Spring started weeks ago really but didn’t last: it came
and went. Spring is like that but this was different. I’ll stick my neck out
and say there were overtones and undertones of global warming and climate
change and who can prove me wrong? Spring has
now arrived.
September
24 2014. Walking thoughtfully through the grass and
bracken in front of the house I think of the season’s imminent snakes and
almost immediately see a small goanna lurching away from me. No harm done.
September
25 2014. Through the bathroom window at dusk I see
the first fireflies of spring flashing in the damp air.
September
26 2014. Staring out moodily from an upstairs
window I note the old ridge capping along joins of the lounge roof, the capping
soon to be replaced. Then I move along further to see that area of the same
roof next to the slow combustion heater’s chimney: a young python is curled
lazily across the corrugations, its head tucked strangely beneath the capping.
My gaze narrows: there seem two distinct lumps midway along the snake’s body. A
trick of the light perhaps or the snake’s first feed after a cosy winter sleep
in the roofing?
September
30 2014. As Bruce
Furner arrives at the carport I start out the door and two goannas one large
one small dash the grass and weeds either side the house steps and I shout,
‘Watch out there’s a goanna your side!’1 thinking of the Jack
Russell but all’s well and Meg’s on her lead. I’m reminded of correspondence
with Herman Labuschagne whose house in the Lowveld was next to Kruger National
Park: his Jack Russell regularly chased elephants from the veggie garden. Now
I’m reminded of how my dogs Henry and Eartha when pups long ago would for fun
chase snakes and goannas till Eartha was gut raked by a no nonsense goanna: she
came close to being disembowelled and thereafter showed reptiles greater
respect [1 above: “your side” means your
side of the usually dry flood channel
that becomes “Earthrise Creek” in very heavy local rain and flooding, a fast
torrent 2- 3-m deep and impassable].
October
3 to 5 2014. After months of relative quiet in the
house at night I hear a late- night fluttering in the wall next to my bed: this
suggests micro bats either returning early from hunting and slipping into a new
space not used until now, or a bunch of bats drunk on something and blundering
into the wrong location, or possibly something more sinister. I’m betting on bats, but I’ve been known to make
grievous errors in the past… Intermittent noises from within the wall a metre
away ensure a noisy night and insufficient sleep. On Saturday I decide that a
spell of high-pitched shrieking (acoustics from my Singing Rake) might be
useful in discouraging any new residents in the wall and I fetch up the rake…
Dear reader, the fantasy is easy to imagine: lightly lift your rake and lightly
drag the tines downward over the pine wall boards: the shrieks and squeaks will
set your teeth on edge and, it’s to be hoped, set too the furry jaws of micro
bats thus discouraging plans of squatting in the house walls… That’s the
theory, anyway. To my surprise Saturday night was soundless except for nearby
crickets singing and I slept, but Sunday evening (the rugby league Grand Final
evening and following the first full day of this season’s daylight saving), was
strangely noisy… It was as if a bat or two or perhaps a big moth was rapping at
the window a metre or so from me. The top of the outside wall I should explain
is sufficiently open and unsealed (my fault entirely) that it enables small
creatures to push their ways inside the spaces between the outside and inside
walls. The spaces are formed by internal framework of the walls, the vertical
studding the horizontal nogging. Each such space sealed on the inside and
outside walling is thus a compartment with only the one entrance and exit. I
find a suitable long weapon and the small LED light torch and slide open the
glass door to step outside on to the dark deck (no lighting here): all is clear
and bat-free. A horrible suspicion grows as I switch on the torch and move to
the corner and shine up to the top of the outside back wall. I suffer a
collective of Indiana Jones moments: a slithering armful of new-looking shiny
snakes, night tigers so-called locally, twists and waves menacingly in the
light. Two heads at least and one of the bodies thick as my arm. I could
insanely hold the torch in my teeth and maybe dislodge the serpents and likely
be chomped on by no-nonsense multi-tasking venomous serpents or discretely
leave them writhing. It has been a hot day here, almost 30˚, and the evening
too is anything but cool and snakes chilling out while possibly also snacking
on micro bats aren’t obliged to accommodate me in any ways nice. One hangs its
head lower from the sawn rafter end to peer down disapprovingly. I smile thinly
and very discreetly walk slowly back to my door… I watch much of the Grand
Final and check old entrance points by torchlight and I glance at the window
occasionally: perhaps the snakes are hanging lower to see the Grand Final too?
And where do old snakes go to die, I wonder, if not to ‘their’ country estates,
their retirement hangouts, their cool TV spots, their Grand Finals seen through
the glass darkly?
Among the pictures and photos in the many-windowed
big lounge room downstairs where I do most of my writing I have, just over my
shoulder, a postcard photo of Ernest Hemingway and Fidel Castro shaking hands
in Cuba, and another pc showing Lauren Bacall, Humphrey Bogart and Marilyn
Monroe. I’m also reminded that more actors and entertainers recently have died:
Shirley Temple, Mickey Rooney, Robin Williams, Lauren Bacall, Richard
Attenborough, Joan Rivers have all shuffled off the mortal coil. GG Marquez has
gone now, too. The passing of writers, actors and entertainers reminds me of an
important notion: writings of others (in any genre) deserve acknowledgement and
information about them ought always to be carefully checked and even
double-checked. I recently wrote a few words for friends Pete and Dee Thompson
about to read Lawrence Durrell’s work and mentioned the Villa Cleobolus in
Rhodes (‘In Rhodes the days drop as softly as fruit from trees,’ LDs words).
Though Pam and I knew the island and town well in 1954/55, a recent check via
Google indicates that the little house where Durrell once wrote was only a
‘gatehouse’ to the old Villa and that in this era the site is occupied by a
casino… Everything changes.
Some Diary readers may recall the obsessive
struggle to wean myself from regularly posting Diaries (every month for years
usually without fail). Because I’m a creature of habit this turning away from
conformity to the reckless adventures of now posting blogs at irregular
intervals has been a difficult choice. Old conformists will recognize the
malady. The older we grow the more we may experience pangs of remorse, feelings
of guilt and a general malaise mysteriously arising from imagined duties of
service, from self-imposed notions of being reliable, being loyal. I’m laying
it on a bit thick because I’m currently in the throes of revisiting some
aspects of family history. There’s nothing quite like family history or the
merest traces of it, to inspire my conformist to run those old images of
childhood in my head and to again see in reflective moments those scenes that
increase nostalgia, trigger emotions and even inspire one to do a range of things somewhat differently. Thus the
writer that lurks within begins thinking of some aspect of the family history
that can be further written about: perhaps a non-fiction memoir (“I’m reminded
of a time when…”) or a new slant on an old mystery of history (“How else can we
explain that long voyage to a new land…”) and even a fiction, a roman à clef, a “key novel” based on
true events (“A draft of the Secret Agreement was sent to Queen Victoria…”). If
then I add to that the effects of climate or weather, or seasonal shifts and
especially ‘the inventions of spring,’ creative writing has again sparked
imagination, excitement, and a heightened sense of wellbeing. Similarly such
heightened sense will feed back to stir anew my imagination further, increase
creativity and please me greatly. I’m sure I’m not alone in thinking along
these lines; besides, exercising the big muscle between the ears is good for
overall health…
All this by way of suggesting to the unwary
reader that writing is more than a therapeutic experience: at seasonal cusp
writing may become so enjoyable and exciting that we can’t get enough of it: we
write fast, we write single-mindedly, we write while forgetting the time of day
or when we last ate a proper meal. When writing moments combine with creativity
and imagination writing is a labour of love.
Such thoughts whirl now in my mind because
there are again good opportunities of reconsidering ways of deepening our
family history knowledge and understanding. A larger element of (our) ‘greater
family’ now lives in North America, particularly in British Columbia where I
was born. This Diary includes a short piece of non-fiction writing a vignette
by my cousin Jill Alexander in Vancouver, B.C. Some members of her family (my
cousins) are now either writing in one way or another or are proto writers
young enough and creative enough to pursue writing as being more than an
ambition or a hobby. Writing for some of the youngsters seems increasingly likely
to perhaps becoming a career choice. Technically Jill’s piece is a non-fiction
essay or memoir in which she remembers a time when she and her brother were
children of ten and eleven and her prose reflects some of that. “The Trunk” is
also about a lost collection of documents, icons and memorabilia. What could be
more inspiring and concerning to a
writer than important relics that might now be forever lost? The probability of
any such materials ever being found is very low, but not impossibly so. A three-step
task likely to be enjoyable begins with imagining
what might have ‘happened’ to lost items. The second step is to imagine ways of searching for the lost items
many years later and to start searching anew. The third step is the pleasure of
writing about the imagined
possibilities and the new search.
Some of my writing time has recently been
spent in drafting a document that might assist family historians and writers
(young intending ones, particularly) to search and perhaps find, to study and
to then write about historical documents and to report or discuss or speculate
on any findings. Their bonus might be to then use some of that research as
‘useful information’ required to write relevant non-fictions and fictions:
essays, historical articles and books as well as (fictional) short stories,
plays, or novels. Modelling from facts may not be everybody’s cup of tea, but
those who love writing and history need never be bored: pleasure or happiness
is only a written thought away.
Returning to an earlier point about writing: I’ll attempt an
argument here suggesting that a little pressure is a good thing when there are
deadlines, either self-imposed or set by others. A little urgency of urging
helps me to finish this, complete that and begin working on whatever’s coming
next. And if you’re still reading this the reason I’m banging on about
self-imposed pressure and deadlines is that I so often wrestle with priorities,
most of them also my choices. When recently I was obliged to respond to a
Governmental dictum to complete and submit a form the Government requires I
obliged, but with teeth clenched because the task took most of two days of
searching, finding and filling in. As a personal experience it was maddening
and time-wasting (I’d rather have been writing fiction). Filling in forms is
never an enjoyable writing path to pleasure
and satisfaction. Here’s a relevant punch line: being an ageing member of my greater
family is a constant reminder for me to write what I (selfishly) choose to
write and to do that competently in the time that’s available.
Writing fiction is my top priority and also
is the most self-indulgent of the choices available. Writing documents that
might be useful to the younger members of our greater family are also
priorities. Collecting and composing materials I can include in this Diary is yet
another important priority. And then there is my considerable email
correspondence. Priorities require juggling and choosing. Ordering the
priorities according to my commitments, household chores, electrical storms
that knock out the power, floods and umpteen other factors is more often that
not, a little difficult. Although these priorities and associated demanding
factors vie with one another daily, that jousting is also an element that makes
life so interesting. Everything else, from dish washing and laundry to the gleeful
pleasure of reading in my garden is invariably becoming auxiliary and of
secondary interest: pursuits and duties that now are slipping away from major
importance. It’s almost as if my priorities each day are decided for me!
It was certainly Late Winter when I began
this Diary, sketching with notes and single words: indeed it was August and
now, shock, horror, wince, having arrived at breakneck speed at the end of
September, early October has aggressively presented itself. Spring has established
without any interference from me. Just between us, you and me, this is the
first time ever I’ve allowed the deadline to come and go although I distinctly
remember mentioning this in an advisory email: I intended to break this old habit,
this notion of the deadline, this conditioned response to my writer’s rule,
this old decree that’s existed only in my head for many years.
And now I like the freedom that goes with
that (the freedom that I’ve always had, anyway). The reason for this dramatic return
to the future re-think is that I know that I’m running out of the time I selfishly
want to spend writing my own stories. Some of the ‘work in progress writing’ in
my Earthrise house is in note form, some exists as typescripts (TSS) only,
novels, stories, plays that have been written or drafted but that now require
to be properly completed, finished and published if possible. There is nothing
quite like the urgency of time passing to keep me tapping the keys of the Mac,
a weather eye out for lightning, for fires, for flooding rain, or for big old
trees falling on the house while I’m working inside…
Although I’ve previously mentioned this,
I’ll repeat it again: the New York City publishers, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
produce (free) a regular ‘anthology’ of reproduced writings titled Work In Progress, The Latest from the Front Lines of Literature.’ Many of these
articles, essays, stories and poems and new book excerpts represent the best of
fine writing. If this interests you, track down and explore the FS&G
website and sign up. I highly recommend Work
in Progress to all writers and apprentice writers and to all who love
reading. And it’s free!
MONOLOGUE
WALK
DD
Ten past six. Will leave a bit earlier this
morning. The day’s coming up clear no it’s not it looks hazy already but just a
guess. Can see a couple of pink clouds distantly. Wind predicted. Cool before
sunrise and almost quiet sundry birds excepted. Slowly at first along the
lawn-edge-riverbank-top passing the Pool below. Fish jumping. Stop to see. Fish
rising a rare sight these days. Remember when we saw rises through lantana and
sundry weeds and the caravan window. Thirty years. The Pool’s part covered by
foam and something else presumably winged insects or why else would local fish
rise so pleasingly like trout in early light? Won’t ever see trout here rising
or otherwise: too warm the water. Press on. It wasn’t a platoon of platypus
either though could see biggish swirls. No bubbles however. They always leave
bubble trails if anything. Not any pooled platypus now. Come to think of it
haven’t seen one for ages. That last big flood February 2013 must have done
them harm. Remember Bru visiting yesterday and both remembering times he did
morning Tai Chi watching platypus and maybe platypus watching him. Bend to pull
token ragweed en route the road the lawn grass dewed. Crunching walking briskly
now the metalled road. Not aiming to crack the record though not today anyway.
Leave it to Kenyan marathon guys. Carl to run the Chicago marathon is it called
and meeting Nick in New York sounds good sons far and wide. Brothers meet in
faraway places. Keep to routine here walking fast pounding the rural road and
no demanding marathons. Some swirls in the river next the bridge but no fish
seen. The dead river oak angled over the flow by the bridge hanging by the
still standing river wall. Small orchids still thrive the dead branches. Tiny
yellow orchids in flower now. Warm to hot weather probably aided. Rest of the
big tree looks dead as doornail as Mom used to say. Grace had quaint sayings
probably heard in her Scots family. Was long ago in the old Transvaal well
before my arrival. What was it
like the present for her then following 1898? No early handwritten letters by
her though. That photo of her in the deck chair in Grandpa Singer’s garden at
Pilgrim’s Rest about 1938 one of my best. Should have been a photographer
perhaps. The river’s low again. Could
have been photographer perhaps if not a moviemaker thinking in images always.
Why didn’t Dad stay with photography his first job as 12-year old 1908? Cool
again today early the sky uncertain. Clear air. The Deer Park gate open the
Dexter cattle gone. Across the
bridge a turn around to look over seeing the house the new whiteness of
new-look paint the blue trim. Mykonos Blue the colour name on the paint can.
Often think of Mykonos Pam and I that sunny winter 1954. And Rhodes especially
too a kind of base for nautical rambles the Dodecanese the Cyclades the Aegean.
A Greek-looking house here in Darkwood! Set off nicely by rising sun lighting
high trees over the house lighting my trees was thinking though they’re not
really mine since they were here first. Merely the caretaker the steward here a
minder till I leave. Must snap another photo of the now old green house thirty
years green now going white. The White House will call it not because there’ll
be plenty of blue. Nice. Remember Byron’s crudely deep chiselled name on white
dressed stone was marble surely lapped by waves at Sounion in Attica long ago.
Temple of Poseidon once was. Bloody vandal. What was he thinking? Everything
changes. Briskly up the rise away from Plain’s bridge and the dream house a
better autograph than the poet’s. On past the neighbour’s past their golden
bamboo that’s also been there for years and then hugely big the other giant
clump of green bamboo and a just right window cleared now allowing passers by a
view the beaut new garden big park-like the big bamboo clumps splendidly framing.
Well done it looks a picture also heartening green statement. Increasing pace a
touch now walking faster cockatoos flying over their raucous chit chat then see
the horses look up questioningly. Oh it’s
only the old predictable two legged one. Safer on four legs surely? And now nearly flying at warp speed can
hear the birdsongs various never mind naming them all would be too much not
needed anyway. Birds sing interesting songs everyone knows. Heard a radio
program about that. Don’t horses ever sing? Why not? We do birds do even dogs
can sing why shouldn’t horses too? Hold on watch out pull over more on the
verge the vehicle’s coming up from Richardson’s toward me almost at me. OK the
driver seeing me slows. We exchange waves no idea who is. It’s maybe a tradie
an early morning contractor. Civilized chap slows down making hardly any dust
at all. The wild peach blossom’s all gone now. See the new short green grass
sprouting the verges close to road as can be. And the tiny quails if that’s
what they are Painted Quails maybe running by my feet. Two maybe three groups
these small ground birds running the verges most mornings. See the small
finches bouncing topmost fence wires diamond dewdrops flying ahead as if for
fun and see the paddock grass awaiting the sun the grass frosty-looking though
really only silvered the nightly dew. Glancing up admire straight trunked
flooded gums seem so atop knobbly knoll high above road the trunks so white so
straight as if drawn against drawing board set squares sun lighting them up to
their crowns those small painted tops seemingly lacking their thin support
twigs their powder puff end branches dabbed against blue sky. Deadwood left by
slashing and sawing roadside overgrowth loads of firewood or if we prefer lots
of fuel for wildfires. Our fire season comes closer. We see warm days growing
this hot spring weather up here. Recent rains nice though insufficient rain got
most everything green and growing like mad. See roadside weeds and dock
flowering or seeding now some two metres high stately over that fine green
grass new for running quail. Can see a ginger-looking cat hunting the paddock
not far from unsung horses feral perhaps or maybe someone’s domestic moggie
practising dark side arts inside its worldly paddock? There’s Richardson’s now
and Council’s warning signs marking blatant that walkway gap. Turn at bridge’s
end to briskly walk back again beneath sun lighting now those big white
riverbank cedars greenly by jacarandas still bronzing. Twin silver wires the
landline too low over the river and the higher power lines not bright enough to
easily see. Low flying aircraft would miss but only in my novels. And
thirty-four minutes door to door my tempting breakfast to come!
WRITING REALITIES
DD
Remembering that I used to be both psychologist
and psychotherapist I’m sometimes tempted to imagine I can competently muse on several
things more or less at the same time. Although I doubt that’s truly possible I
fancy that doing several things more or less at the same time is perhaps slightly
more possible than entertaining several thoughts (if not quite simultaneously) together
in one package. I’ve also been reflecting on the ways in which I write. I often
‘get’ ideas or notions about a current story being worked on. I really don’t know
how ideas are received or ‘got’ and how it is that at least one of a competing
bunch of newly arriving ideas hits the target (me, Don Central) and struggles
its way into one bunch or another of restless neurones hanging about listlessly
about ready to be used or discarded without service or possibly shunted off to
storage in a kind of cerebral and cognitive warehouse. I have a
well-established imaged scene in a Paris hotel; it’s there when I want it to
muse on and when there’s time I see it more reflectively, see more of the
detail that’s already there for the story. I just don’t know, but somehow I imagine, I visualize that
kind of magical process taking place within my central nervous system (CNS).
The odd thing about that is that all of the relevant and appropriate CNS
processing and functioning is apparently under my steely gaze, my tight-lipped
caring control all the master switches and wheels and levers somewhere inside
me ready to move at my nod, yet a great deal of all that latent work seems
somewhere else entirely and quite beyond me, far from and decidedly apart from
my everyday awareness. It is as if
that kind of CNS activity inside me is on automatic is functioning separately
and is also beyond my conscious control. Is that weirdly odd or what? I certainly
think it odd and oddness is precisely why I’m so hesitant about getting or having several ideas at the same time. There is now an image
screening in my mind’s current collection of larrikin images clamouring to
burst in through some aperture. The images are bouncing up and down for
attention in my Ideas Department, these eager neurones, and I don’t know where
that Department is and neither do I know how any of the ideas are triggered.
Either that or there’s an autonomous department or two that manages very nicely
without any interference from me and even without my awareness of the ideas
forming softly or perhaps in safe little staccato bursts… How may I be in
charge of me and yet not have a working model either of idea getting or of how I do it all?
Similarly when I watch a film or a movie or
a doco there are aspects of me monitoring what I see from umpteen angles and
doing that so well that it takes only seconds for an appropriate neural
committee to manifest in the anteroom of my mind and the Chair to salute with a
thump or two to his or her chest and “We have seen enough. This movie is
lamentable, a Class One Stinker you might say.” I thank my committee and change
channels. These are My Top Advisors and they’re working for nothing! For
example, I enjoy watching thrillers especially old movies or the best of modern
ones and prefer that these days to be via television, it’s so much easier, and
one doesn’t have to dress up or go out. Movies as talking pictures have been
available for only a year or two longer than I’ve been. “The Jazz Singer” I’m
pretty sure was the first talkie commercially available to all and dates to
1927 I seem to remember and I arrived in 1929. And there were fewer of all of
us in those days: less than two billions: now there are more than seven
billions of us and there are cities too in South and Central America and in
Asia each with populations greater than the total population of Australia! I’m
pleased to say that I predate almost all the stuff that now comprises
television (if I remember my TV facts the first commercial telecast was of the
Oxford and Cambridge boat race in 1936).
Sorry, I diverge. I wanted to explore
briefly the strange phenomenon of failing to comprehend much of what are surely
thrillers of particular kinds: I’ll call them political and crime thrillers.
Whereas British examples like Silent
Witness or the recent serial The
Tunnel are well made and produced and the acting is fine, the photography
is invariably gloomy and alas, I have great difficulty in trying to figure out
all the fiendishly clever twists and turns that make each of the episodes so
very clever. Exceptions are the
Jason Bourne movies: everything about these superbly made films is wonderfully
clear and unambiguous. Strangely, I understand best or almost as well as I
comprehend the Bourne movies, similar dramatic or thriller films and serials
(like “Borgen” and “The Eagle” produced in Denmark or the Norwegian
“Headhunters”). Although Pam and I visited Denmark and Sweden years ago I don’t
speak any Scandinavian language. How is it that their Scandinavian thinking,
their acting, their body language works better for me because I don’t speak
Scandinavian languages?
CREATIVE WRITING
THE TRUNK
JILL ALEXANDER
The trunk
lived in our basement. It belonged to Uncle Denny even though Uncle Denny
didn’t live with us. He lived in a small suite in a house on Rockland Avenue in
Victoria, BC. Government House was also on the same street that made Uncle
Denny’s apartment seem larger and more important. We had a very big basement
and this is where we stored Uncle Denny’s trunk for him.
Our house
was characteristic for its day. My dad built it in 1935. My brother was born
the next year and I came along 21 months later.
Our large
basement had space for two cars as well as various other small rooms my father
had created. One of these rooms was called the Store Room and was a place for
all the canning and jams my mother had made. A workroom for my father contained
every tool imaginable. He was often referred to as Mr. Fix It. Two smaller
rooms were made into playrooms, one each for my brother and me. My brother put
a lock on his door with a sign that read, No Girls Allowed. Our furnace
lived here too and beside it a huge pile of wood to fuel it. After some years
the wood was replaced with a pile of coal. There were packing crates,
suitcases, a chopping block, garden tools, fold-up lawn chairs, our bicycles
and Uncle Denny’s trunk tucked under the stairs leading to the main floor of
the house. It remained there relatively unnoticed until one day it was opened
by my father and his two brothers, Uncle Denny and Uncle Dick. We were told
that Uncle Dick was writing a book and that the trunk had some old and valuable
papers that he needed to write his book. At first my brother and I went
downstairs to join them but we were not welcomed in the way we usually were.
After a while we started creeping partway down the stairs very quietly and sat
watching them and listening to their conversations. Sometimes they laughed
together as they found something funny to read. My brother and I were able to
go down the stairs and get a little closer to them without them noticing. At
other times they seemed very serious and spoke very quietly, moving closer
together while reading something as if they didn’t want anyone to hear. We
wondered what it was they were reading and tried to hear what they were saying
to each other. After a while we were told not to come downstairs anymore and to
go outside and play. We were a little hurt I remember because we loved our
uncles almost as much as we loved our father and wanted to be around them
especially as their interest in the trunk contents had a sense of mystery that
made us very curious.
After a
week or so Uncle Dick left and went back to Vancouver. It was 1948. Later that
year our Uncle Denny died suddenly in Victoria. There was great sadness. He was
only 56 years old. He had been gassed in the first war and people said that his
lungs finally gave way from all his coughing. I remember towards the end watching
him struggle up the front steps of our house when he came to visit and stop
before he reached the top, gasping for breath. This was my first experience of
a death in the family and I felt it deeply. My brother and I were very fond of
our uncle and perhaps because he never married, he was very good to us and took
us with him on many Sunday outings.
Then two
years later there was great excitement. Our parents told us that Uncle Dick’s
book had been published. It was called Elizabeth
and it was a story about her life. Elizabeth was their mother and our
grandmother. My uncle Dick was a radio broadcaster who wrote radio plays and
even read the news on Radio CJOR. Also, he was a journalist and poet as well as
an author and now his name became even better known. My brother and I reaped
the benefits of this notoriety and were frequently asked if we were related to
Dick Diespecker because that was our family name too.
We never
paid much attention to the trunk after that but one day when the two of us were
looking for something to amuse ourselves my brother and I decided to go down
into the basement. We looked around for a while before our attention was drawn
to the trunk. It was still in the same place tucked under the stairs. We
carefully opened it and began digging around inside. Suddenly we discovered
something that looked like a wooden leg. We felt a strange feeling come over
us. We felt scared and at a loss for words. We looked at each other and quickly
retreated upstairs. We hid in the den behind the sofa for a while unable to
grasp what we had just seen. It was some time before we were able to talk. Then
we slowly started whispering to each other about Uncle Denny and the wooden leg
he had all those years we knew him. We became obsessed with this new revelation
and felt it must have been a deep dark secret in the family.
A few days passed before our mother
noticed that we had been very quiet and were acting rather
peculiar and not at all like our usual selves. She asked us if something was
wrong. We then broke down and told her that Uncle Denny had a wooden leg and
that it was in the trunk in the basement. She looked sceptical and followed us
downstairs. We lifted the trunk’s lid. “There!” we said as we pointed inside
the trunk. Our mother made a careful examination while we watched her, hardly
daring to take a breath. Then she looked at us and smiled and told us that it
was just a special boot stretcher for Uncle Denny’s army boot and that there
was probably one for his other boot somewhere in the trunk. We all left and
quickly went back upstairs with no interest in doing any further searching.
The trunk
continued to languish in the basement of our family house. My brother and I
eventually left home to attend university in Vancouver. Then two years later my
father died of a heart attack. He was just 60 years old. My mother stayed on in
the house for another ten years and we went home frequently to visit her. The
trunk stayed tucked under the stairs.
My
brother and I moved even further away and were unable to come home as often as
before. Then our mother wrote to say she was selling the house and moving into
an apartment. We both offered to come home to help her with the sorting and
packing but she strongly rejected the offer saying that she did not want anyone
around to get in her way. We
discovered that her method of coping with this huge task was to call in
auctioneers and junk dealers to cart away anything that would not fit into her
new apartment. And so sadly the trunk was taken away and never again seen.
The next
generation of the Diespeckers has been busy with the daunting task of piecing
together our family history as well as trying to make sense of it all. The
contents that once were in the trunk have not just taken on a new importance
but are being seen as a possible source for solving some of the family
mysteries and providing missing links for us.
What were
the conversations of the brothers when they met together those many years ago
and spoke in serious and hushed voices while reading those papers from the
trunk? Did they make a discovery about the family that they felt was necessary
to keep to themselves? We may never know the answer to this mystery. For alas,
our trunk has gone, lost to us forever.
jillionalexander@gmail.com
Jill Diespecker Alexander is retired in North
Vancouver, BC, after a career as a nurse and spa owner and is now writing
vignettes of her fascinating life.
MY EBOOKS
For those
readers who browse for eBooks, here again are descriptions of the first of the
online books: they can be found on Amazon/Kindle sites. E.g., see
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Don+Diespecker
(1) 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).
(2) 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.
(3) 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.
(4) The Selati Line is an early 20th
century Transvaal train story, road story, flying story, a caper story and also
a 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).
(5) 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).
(6) 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 portrayed as 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).
(7) The Overview is a short Australian
novel set at Earthrise (about 32.5-k words) and is also a sequel to The Summer River.
(8) 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.
(9) 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
(meeting Sai Baba in India). ‘Home’ essays are set at Earthrise and include as
topics: the Bellinger River and floods, plus some light-hearted caprices.
(10) 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
(1899). Louis Dorman and his brother, Jules, feature together with Drina de
Camoens who helps draft the Agreement for the Portuguese Government. British
Intelligence Officers, Boer spies and the Portuguese Secret Police socialize at
the Estrela Café (about 62-k words).
(11) 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 an unexpected new member of the family; Louis faints.
Joshua becomes a marimba player. Ruth Lerner, an American journalist plans to
film a fiesta and hundreds of tourists visit from the Transvaal. Drina plays
piano for music lovers and plans the removal of an old business associate
(novel: about 75-k words).
(12) The Midge Toccata, a caprice about
talking insects (inspired by Lewis Carroll’s Alice stories). This book has a
splendid new cover designed by my cousin, Katie Diespecker (fiction, caprice,
about 26-k words).
(13) Happiness is a short novel set at
Earthrise. The ‘narrator’ is again the very elderly ex-ATA flier who
unexpectedly meets and rescues a bridge engineer requiring urgent
hospitalisation: she gets him safely to hospital in his own plane. She also
‘imagines’ an extension to her own story, one about a small family living
partly in the forest and on the riverbank: the theme is happiness. Principal
protagonist is a 13-years old schoolgirl, apparently a prodigy: she befriends a
wounded Army officer and encourages his plans. Her parents are a university
teacher and a retired concert pianist. The family pets can’t resist being
scene-stealers in this happy family (novel, about 65-k words).
(14) The Special Intelligence Officer is
part family history as well as a military history and describes the roles of my
late grandfather in the Guerrilla War (1901-1902) in Cape Colony. The Guerrilla
War was the last phase of the Second Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902). The title of
the book is taken from Cape newspapers of the time: Capt Rudolph Diespecker was
a District Commandant; his responsibilities included intelligence gathering
that led to the capture, trial and execution of a Boer Commandant who was
wrongly framed as a ‘Cape rebel,’ when he was legally a POW (Gideon Scheepers
was never a Cape rebel, having been born in the Transvaal (the South African
Republic,) one of the two Boer Republics (non-fiction, about 33-k words).
(15) The Letters From Earthrise, an
anthology of my columns and other essays and articles written for the Australian Gestalt Journal between 1997
and 2005 (fiction and some non-fiction, about 70-k words).
(16) The
Darkwood is a dystopian novel set at Earthrise in the not too distant
future (about 80-k words). Earthrise is again central to other themes.
(17) Bellinger;
Along The River is an anthology of personal essays relative to my home and
the property, Earthrise, and the river at my doorstep (aspects and descriptions
of the river, including flooding) (nonfiction, about 28-k words)
(18) Reflecting:
an anthology of personal essays about the gardens, butterflies, a caprice, and
other motivating factors at my home, Earthrise: mostly non-fiction (20,300
words)
(19) Idling:
is a collection of personal essays about seeing; a military history essay; a
speculation about lawns; a working visit to Griffith University; periods of
enforced idleness as “Don’s Days Out” in Coffs Harbour (mostly non-fiction;
about 35,600 words).
Thank you to my guest writer, Jill
Alexander.
Best wishes to all the Diary Readers from
Don. don883@bigpond.com
