The Earthrise Diary (Sept 2012)

                        The Earthrise Diary (Sept 2012)

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

                                                                     Don Diespecker

               Come, fill the Cup, and in the Fire of Spring

               The Winter Garment of Repentance fling:

               The Bird of Time has but a little way

               To fly—and Lo! the Bird is on the Wing.

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

                                  The river watcher at 1,000 months

September 2 2012. There has been high scattered and patterned cloud these first two days of September that make the morning brightness hazy. Although it’s still cold at night the sun soon warms me as I head down the dusty road toward it. There is also a blue smoky haze between here and the valley rim; the summer is going to be dangerous, I think. Also, the river dwindles. There is so much less of the flowing river and so much more that is non-river: the bedrock islands that now look like mere exposed bedrock, the decaying flotsam high and drying and all of the waterscape here dominated by the adjacent stone-covered banks.

 I walked along the ankle-jarring newly ‘surfaced’ road to Richardson’s Bridge where I enjoyed the swallow air-show and the river’s kinetic art and sundry other visual things, momentarily free of the clouds of dust raised by passing vehicles.

September 4 2012. I could easily write: More of the same but there’s always something new to see each day. I had crossed the seedy and seeding Big Lawn just before 08:00, stepped down to the very dusty road, crossed the bridge and was inclining upward from the concrete approach on the other side of the river when I realized there were cars approaching from both directions and only I could see both vehicles. Diplomatically I leaped off the approach as the two vehicles passed me with microns to spare (I exaggerate a little), both drivers having waved cheerily in those critical micro moments and we all survived. My back likes best the walking up of inclines these days but tomorrow, with luck, my favourite osteopath will have a solution that may enable me to also walk normally down declines and possibly on the flat as well so that I might look less grotesque in my current unwanted posture. I intend to be increasingly positive as I write; here I’m being honest: nobody is likely to see me striding out nonchalantly these days because I am now more than a little Old. Like it or not (and I am happy and chortling to like it well enough so that you, dear readers, may also smile): this is my 1,000^th month to heaven: I mean that I have been breathing air on this planet for 1,000 months! If I am still a member of some nearly forgotten tribe I am surely a tribal Elder.

As I walk I hear several birds in the roadside trees but can’t see them and I start to wonder if there’s such a thing as a common language for birds. Might there be a ‘universal’ language that they all can understand? There is no such thing for humans although we like to think that our all learning English, for example, is as close as the human race will ever get to a ‘universal’ means of communication, whereas with birds, I like to imagine that they might have an innate language, one that comes naturally to all birds before they start to learn (presumably) their own dialects. I don’t know and would like to (the walker and principal gardener might be on to something here, but I don’t know, either; however, if you will kindly read on you‘ll see that the Diary writer is soon to have a Most Useful and Illuminating Birdsong Experience. Editor).

I crunch my way along the road and am certain by the time I reach the top of the rise (from the bridge up to the higher part of the road) that the Council has not adequately, if at all, supervised this most recent grading or levelling of this rural road’s surface. As rural road surfaces go this one is crap (sorry): the crushed stone dumped for spreading has been unwisely chosen, in my opinion, being apparently uniformly graded and has in no way been adequately compacted. Let me explain this stuff-up (as I see it). Or skip this bit if you don’t need to know.

A well-graded granular soil (e.g., gravel) has a range of particle sizes such that the material will bind well when partly mixed with a cohesive soil and compacted at optimum moisture content. A poorly graded granular soil is one that looks loose and ungainly because the particles are more or less uniformly graded, i.e., no matter how moist or otherwise this material may be it will not bind into a strong surface when compacted (especially if the underlying wearing course of the road, i.e., its ‘usual’ surface, has not been ripped or scarified). Some of these crushed chunks may be compacted into the sub-grade, but most of this material will sit on the surface of the road and be scattered to the verges by traffic (this scattering of stones is also what fells pedestrians). Darkwood Road is a rural road and the bitumen or macadam road surface that starts at Thora ends at Richardson’s Bridge and some of us (those furthest up the Valley) are uncomfortably more rural than many of our other Upper Thora residential comrades. Paradoxically, and despite those of us further up the Valley being unarguably closer to heaven than those living down the road in almost-suburban macadamized stretches, well-compacted surfaces are never lavished upon us. We are, as it were, living in the Wild West of Darkwood Road where maintenance is, in my opinion, minimal rather than generous. To put that differently, the lower stretches of Darkwood Road are those parts that recently have received extra care: there have been additions of bitumen to widen the road, for example; the area where I live has no bitumen—although the metalled road has been graded and compacted, traffic, including very large loaded vehicles as well as rain, soon damages the surface which rapidly becomes potholed). I have driven on roads, e.g., in Iran, made of crude oil and sand/silt mixes that were excellent (and if the Bellinger Shire Council would care to consult me on pavement design, including airfield runway pavements, I’d be delighted to advise them of economical alternatives to the expensive and crap Darkwood Road that they so foolishly continue to grade and inadequately compact—and will happily waive all consultation fees (Come on Council engineers and planners at Council GHQ, and get up here and see what a *&^%$#! Mess the road is and then get your #$%^& act together and make some intelligent changes so that the road crews don’t have to take the blame for your carelessness and inefficiency)!

Sept 7 2012. Friday. This has been a week of cool sunny weather suddenly changing to blustery hot days with temperatures close to 30˚. Sitting outside in the windy garden where branches and twigs fly through the air is not a safe option. I’ve collected some useful and very dead and dry big branches that will usefully burn in the slow combustion heater although I doubt that I’ll need to light many more fires in the next few days: spring is now very dry and at times dangerous.

One of the best Earthrise views is from the bathroom window. Not only am I familiar with shaving my face, I seldom need a mirror to do so and that allows me a pleasant shaving time when I’m able to look across Big Lawn and upstream to the Hello Bend (as I call it). This morning early and as the sun is lighting the canopies of the high flooded gums I watch three large and stately brush turkeys taking bold steps across Big Lawn while I’m shaving. They seem to be demonstrating their right to do so—as if they too had seen male grizzly bears (that I saw on TV) loping sideways in order to appear bigger to the female bears. The turkeys certainly look confident these days: well-fed, shiny feathers, unconcerned about predators. The lawn is hairy and scruffy and shrieking out to be mowed. Most of it consists of tropical chickweed; it’s altogether untidy and the turkeys, you might think, are at some risk of being attacked and caught by a Very Fast Fox—the turkeys being big and heavy with dangerous claws that might as easily tangle in the very dangerously scruffy plants comprising my lawn. Good luck to them. The turkeys have dug many holes in the lawn.

After breakfast I saunter to the fence line and wait for a lull in the breakfast traffic: again there is almost a collision at my front gate as two vehicles going in opposite directions swerve through a billowing dust cloud (this also is not the best of days in which to do my laundry—dust from the road’s passing traffic blows into the house). 

A day or so ago and late in the afternoon near sunset I happened to glance through the glass wall/door upstairs in time to see big swirls in the corner bend—as if made by a couple of swimmers vigorously swimming or possibly by a couple of 150-kg porpoises! They were surely platypuses although I have yet to see a platypus large enough to so dramatically disturb the surface. It was an odd and surprising sight, very odd, indeed.

Sept 9 2012. Saturday. Although some jobs and tasks have been crossed off, the TO DO list has grown apace. Also oddly, one of the Outside tasks I yesterday tackled has not been listed, perhaps fortuitously and thereby hangs a tale (those readers who plunge into temporary madness when I write about Things Odd or Mysterious, please skip this part and re-join below).

It came about in this manner (sorry). It was a dark and stormy—(sorry, kidding)! The strangely unlisted and unusual job was tackled yesterday morning and it came about because my schedule was adjusted when I changed back into my play clothes/work clothes to clear vegetation (in that Wild West part of the garden between the house and Big Lawn). I had earlier changed into my best jeans and driven through the choking dust (in the Wild West part of Darkwood Road) and down to Thora Hall, there to cast my vote in the local Council elections. It was a pleasantly warm and sunny morning, I drove home and again changed clothes and was speculating about the List and because I had earlier in the week checked the water level in my big concrete storage tank and also remembered when last it had been filled (during Nick’s March visit) I decided to make a start on pumping. Because of the rain earlier in the year there is now dense growth all over the property and remembering the difficulties Nick and I had experienced with airlocks in the partly overhead poly-pipe line I spontaneously resolved to take the line down from it’s aerial supporting wire through the trees and re-lay the line along the ground so that there might be fewer airlocks and a reduced time spent wrestling with the equipment—but I had first to wrestle now in the immediate present with undergrowth that was approaching a state of jungle; only then could I get my ladder close to the suspended line and use trees as suitable ladder props. I grabbed my very effective and BIG long-handled ‘secateurs’ and went boldly outside, suddenly wary of the spring snakes (I needn’t have worried) and cleared around the big eucalypts and got deeper into the now dry Earthrise Creek-bed (as named by me) that roars with flood water from the slopes in heavy rain (and which also passes slowly through what once was intended as The Grand Stone Staircase—now so well covered by vines and roots and trees that even Harrison Ford would need several chaps with machetes to expose this incomplete Masterpiece). Saplings of the sandpaper leaf fig tree, the native privet and the European privet went down in waves as I hacked and slashed; I removed big river stones that more properly belonged in the Staircase; I tore down climbing vines embedded in the coarse bark of an old tree and I eventually got the step ladder extended and set up and was able to start demolishing the wire ties holding the pipeline to the overhead support wire. From high on this almost stable work platform, half hugging a cheese tree, one arm through a hacksaw and the other manipulating trusty old pliers, I successfully detached and took the pipeline down, then disassembled it in a couple of places to get it out and away from the trees and re-laid the line on the track that runs from Big Lawn up to the carport. I mention this hanging-by-the-eyebrows job so that the Comfortable Reader may appreciate the hardness of life here in paradise. :-)

The voting chore plus the unplanned Outside Job had changed my schedule; it had also given my wrecked back a good workout so that my niggling aches and pains were compelled to change their locations (which was nicely liberating for me for a few hours). I attended to sundry other things: emails, The List, lunch, some further words extending my Iran essay and also a nice read in the warm windy garden as necessary preliminaries to taking an early mark—for this is Finals Week when large hairy fleet-footed ball players pound each other unmercifully as they grind their bloody trails toward Grand Finals in Rugby League and the Australian Football League (not forgetting a Rugby Union International between Australia and South Africa in Perth, WA, and the chance to see a late-ish TV presentation of The Good Wife (American legal drama from CBS) that I can’t resist, being an ardent fan of Juliana Margulies and Archie Panjabi (news this morning, also, from the American Tennis Open in New York where Djokovic and Ferrer were taken safely off the court because there were, of all things possible, tornados (!) in the area).

Apologies for my anecdotally having gone around the houses (although I enjoyed it) when I might have been more concise: long story short: spontaneously doing an unscheduled job was a surprise factor in my hearing a wonderful radio program I might not otherwise have listened to. I’ll have perhaps driven some readers away from reading any further (please return!). Here’s the thing: what with all the excitement and muscle stretching I slept nearly an hour longer than usual, tottered downstairs, opened the curtains, switched on the power and heard something startling on the radio (ABC Radio National) concerning the Australian pied butcherbird. One of my stories and now the first part of an unpublished novella, features this particular species.

Those of you who have the appropriate gadgets (apps?) can listen as and when it suits you. Now please read on.

Some time ago I wrote a suite of stories that when read serially also comprise a 'metafiction,' i.e., fiction about fiction, and taken together these three pieces are also a tongue-in-cheek sequel ("Finding Drina") to my The Agreement. --And although The Agreement has been published, this playful sequel has not.  (That's only part of the background). In the first of my three pieces ("The Park") I include an example of magic realism (a la GG Marquez)--in which a single Australian Pied butcherbird, as prodigy, is gifted with an amazing 'quality of voice'. 

My fantasized 'prodigy bird' is based on my reading of Peter Slater's A Field Guide to Australian Birds Vol 2 Passerines (p 278). Information about the Australian pied butcherbird Cracticus nigogularis includes this 

"VOICE: Beautiful flute-like calls, one of the most common recalling the opening bars of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony (Hutchinson 47)." 

 It's now several years since I wrote the fiction referred to above. Imagine my amazement this morning when I heard on the radio some of the real voices that this bird is capable of. Cracticus nigrogularis sing trios and quartets and quintets--and much more, i.e., these pied butcherbirds birds sing artistically and apparently for pleasure. One bird may sing the first part of a song; another bird sings the second and so on. Dr Hollis Taylor found that different birds in different locations (not very far apart from each other) would sing the different parts of particular songs. –If you think about that, it may seem awesome (as it does to me): humans are not the only beings who are practicing musicians! Individual birds also imitate non-bird sounds.  For online information and recordings here’s a useful link:

abc.net.au/radionational/programs/offtrack .

Truth is stranger than fiction.

Sept 11 2012. Tuesday. I carefully lift the firefighter pump and get it downstairs to the wheelbarrow, then start to make progress: I change the oil, I do the maintenance, clean the sparkplug, drain some petrol, check the discharge line—now on the ground—and prime the intake line and the pump roars into life again (at the first pull!). The pump runs like a sewing machine when I’ve fine-tuned the controls and I pump all morning and the concrete tank begins quickly to fill—about three and a half hours and with only one small refill of fuel. Job done. I take the bits and pieces apart and enthusiastically turn to the power mower.

Big Lawn gets some mowing attention at long last! I drag the mower down to the lawn and change the oil and add some fuel and coax her into life again after the winter sleep, setting the blades to cut at the 2^nd notch; it becomes hot and heavy work and clouds of (Earthrise) dust (!) rise to heaven. I don’t try to do too much in one session; I’ll have to cut this and the fiddly bits an hour or two at a time. The season’s mowing has begun!

Sept 12 2012. Wednesday. It’s warm and breezy today—again—and although I have an appointment at 1 pm in Coffs Harbour I take my time. I admire that portion of Big Lawn that has received its first cut of the season, load up some recyclable stuff and go to Bellingen in the old Honda. Today the white cedars are leafing (though not quite yet at Earthrise) along the road and the recently new pink leaves of the red cedars are greening. The colours when seen through my Polaroid glasses are wonderful. Here and along the way and particularly in Bellingen the azaleas are flowering too. In Coffs I take the car to the dealers, leave my keys and my mobile number and lurch off to look at books. I see Wallace Stegner’s Crossing to Safety displayed and recommended (by the Staff there) at The Book Warehouse and knew too that many who learned of this title by watching First Tuesday Book Club on ABC TV had ordered copies). I wanted to check through the Classics titles and editions of frequently published books and so came across a book, Light Years, by James Salter (yet another American novelist I had learned of through the First Tuesday book show).

Pleased with my purchase of Light Years (more below) I visit the central post office at the Palm Centre and when I search for the Muffin Break café I find that the place (they have gluten-free muffins!) has disappeared (this is where I sat with the coffee drinkers earlier in the year and which I later described in one of the earlier 2012 Diaries). While certain shops and stores downstairs are being re-furbished this coffee bar has moved upstairs so I follow the directions and glide upstairs on an escalator. The Muffin Break Café is temporarily located on one side of the big concourse opposite the Big W on what seems to be a long horizontal and raised bandstand-like platform—and there is also a little way off in the middle of the upstairs concourse a second group of separate chairs and tables; most of the chairs and tables are more attached to the temporary coffee bar so that there’s a distinct difference between the two snack areas. This peculiar difference is something for me to think about. I risk a medium sized espresso and gluten-free apple muffin and sit facing Big W. Everybody else is on my elevated section is facing the Big W, too. Being somewhat up in the air above the other eaters and drinkers, i.e., the Muffin Break customers and being in that section where we all are looking ahead in an abstracted manner (the chairs are loosely located around each table) it seems almost as though we are on a big almost empty ferry sailing toward the Big W dock—or possibly in an enormous near-empty passenger aircraft. It is uncanny, this feeling of our all sitting and facing in the one direction despite there being several movable chairs at each table. Nobody has dared to sit at the ‘front’ facing the rest of us: we are all seemingly transfixed while drinking coffee and solemnly watching the shoppers going in and out of the Big W. Meanwhile, there are a few people in small groups sitting more remotely in that second area and they are clearly a part of the café set-up yet both they and the café furniture look so distant from the rest of us as to be obviously disconnected. I think hard. I sip the delicious black coffee (no sugar) and thoughtfully spoon the un-muffin-like muffin (it’s more like a three-layered custard and is delicious). I conclude that where I am sitting solo as are several others plus one duo, the outpost groups are groups rather than individuals and they have little interest in the deep surveillance and observation operation that the rest of us are engaged in: they are having actual conversations. Would I enjoy my coffee and delicious muffin-like food if I were in a group? Not necessarily. H’mm. 

There are some heavy cylindrical posts a few feet from where I ‘m observing this peculiar scene that also includes myself. I know I have to be careful when I finish my snack and rise and step down to the floor—how unseemly would it be to fall here—but what are these chrome pillars there for? They look like posh hitching posts outside a saloon. I realize that when I stare over the tops of these strange posts I’m looking directly at the big red sofa where I sat watching the passing parade when last I was in this place, months previously (with a little imagination I can just about re-vision myself sitting over there on that plush red sofa of last summer puzzled at first by the disapproving glances certain passers by were casting on something or somebody near me that I wasn’t immediately aware of: the lacy black-stockings on the legs of a young woman who also was sitting close by on that out-of-place red sofa all of those months in the past). I continue to puzzle over those apparent looks that appeared to be so censuring. What was that? Fashion is fashion, surely? Do fashions in stockings have first to meet a moral approval code for some of the apparently sterner customers who may perhaps be Puritan? 

 And then I remember that when Muffin Break was situated downstairs outside a busy supermarket I had (like others) chosen to sit so as to see and observe that market directly in front of me. Now the little café with its many chairs and tables in two not quite adjacent locations was again located (although temporarily) outside and in front of the entrance to a busy department store. We who are the current coffee drinkers and muffin munchers are afforded excellent views of Big W Shoppers entering and leaving these emporiums: we are privileged spectators, well positioned, fortified with food, high and alert on the fumes of coffee, seeing aspects of the lives of others. Location, location! And how wise are the masters of commerce! At last I think I might just be getting this: solo drinkers of psychoactive beverages like to sit singly to observe (we singles are also the more likely secret agents or spies; normal beings prefer to sit together socially and apart from the secret singles who so busily See and Watch and Evaluate). I wonder if either of the Palm Centre or the Muffin Break café personnel people have organized the seating arrangements where I am sitting. Could the Muffin Break café be a meeting place for spies? Is somebody like to make the drop? Whatever else it might be, this muffin and coffee place seems to have craftily been set up as an espionage training school! Not only am I now in this school for spies: I am present without having been enrolled!

James Salter’s novel, Light Years, first published in 1975, has an introduction by Richard Ford, whose novel, Canada, is also on my book list. Ford had written: “Frontally, Light Years is the story of Viri and Nedra Berland, a golden couple living a gilded, countrified life of late-lasting, candle-lit dinner parties, interesting friends, beautiful children—all with a river view.” Also, Ford had begun his intro with: “It is an article of faith among readers of fiction that James Salter writes American sentences better than anybody writing today. Buying this book was irresistible. These are the first sentences of Salter’s Light Years:

We dash the black river, its flats smooth as stone. Not a ship, not a dinghy, not one cry of white. The water lies broken, cracked from the wind. This great estuary is wide, endless. The river is brackish, blue with the cold. It passes beneath us blurring.” &c &c.

I want to begin reading the book because such writing is easily and pleasantly comprehended and during the reading the words enable my imagination to show me the related images (I mean my images of Salter’s words). Reading such writing quickly becomes something like a viewing that makes reading a magical process.

–But I also need to take care of myself. I go to bed early, make myself comfortable. It’s been a long day. I’ve survived the white knuckle driving. I’m home safe. I’ll watch the news…and…and. I fall asleep before I realize how tired I am.

Sept 13 2012. Thursday. This is my last day of being 999 months old. The day starts with red in the pre-sunrise clouds and then dawns bright and quite clear and there is a warm wind, i.e., there is a repetition of the warm to hot wind and there is an abundance of branches and twigs to be picked up whilst mowing. Mowing comes later this day. First, I try my best to purchase the phone I want online. Silly me. Despite the best advice from my friends I discover that the phone I’m trying so hard to purchase apparently doesn’t want me to complete the purchase and I start communicating with the sellers who decide that my browser has attracted cookies. Removing the spanner-in-the-works cookies is something I want to happen, but I don’t want to be diverted into risking the world’s networks and by allowing me to begin a clearance op (I think of certain veterans I used to work with in the UK who had been in Bomb Disposal during WW11: clearance may be lethally dangerous). The sellers kindly send me info that enables me to proceed to ways of fixing the cache problems that my poor iMac has succumbed to. I turn pale and tremble: I could get stuck in some helpful but horrible website and not emerge for years. Emails are exchanged; no the sellers don’t send phone equipment to PO Box numbers, but (long story short) they will take phone orders as well as online purchasing. I might need much more space than I have available here to explain this in detail and you, dear reader, might even find that entertaining, but I may overcome some of these difficulties by ‘using’ the address of a friend (a courier is supposed to deliver to my door, but we all know (up here in the Darkwood) that this will not happen: parcels are sent from Bellingen PO to the Thora General Store which also is a sort of sub post office; couriers up here in the wilds of Darkwood have seldom been encountered.

I mow for an hour in the middle of the day; the grass and groundcovers are splendidly dry—just how the mower likes them (except for the lawn’s dust). It’s 28˚. Later in the afternoon there are thunderstorms along the ranges and some showers. At sunset the river’s surface is dimpled with light rain. Nice. The showers wash the dust off thousands of leaves. Everything is glistening. Tomorrow it will be only 19˚.

Sept 14 2012. Yesterday kept right on going for me: sleep avoided me and I lay watching starlight and listening to old (repeat) radio programs through the night. Whatever I’d eaten during the day seemed blameless. Here I am, well and truly at the appointed time: month 1,000: welcome! And how will the next 1,000 be?

Sept 15 2012. A sunny day again and very nice, too—except that this end of Darkwood Road is the unglamorous end there being no bitumen or macadam up here. The dust raised by passing traffic is horrendous and I’ve stopped walking the road for exercise and pleasure; besides, there are too many urgent jobs to be tackled here. I have a third (this week) mowing session and am pleased with myself despite the extra clouds of dust I’m raising with the mower. There is still some smoke haze in the Valley, too. On the skyline’s eastern rim I can see the outlines of eucalypts high above me. All that can be seen of the highest branches are small dabs of dull colour, the foliage, against the sky, the highest parts of the canopies, and those thin top branches are invisible. In the gardens and seen from inside the house: caterpillar and spider strands in widths of microns are clearly seen metres away because those minute surfaces reflect sunlight so well.

Sept 16 2012. Sunday. It’s both sunny and cloudy this morning and the temperature is only 19˚ at midday, but I make the time to drop everything and go and sit outside to read more of Light Years; it’s an excellent read and a wonderful example of literary fiction and fine writing. I settle by sitting next to the old red salvia bush on the belvedere, but there’s a cool breeze and not enough sun. Before I move I watch a quite small honeyeater hovering in front of the flowers and behaving as much like any humming bird (there aren’t any in this country as far as I know) as seems possible: it hovers, it beats its wings in a fast blur and inserts its long sabre-shaped bill deep into each of the target blooms—hugely burning energy in order to refuel (and provide further energy) from the nectar within—yet another version of in-flight fuelling. The red salvia is nearly 2-m high and is regularly knocked down and buried by floods. The branches and stems are brittle and break easily and the flowers face openly outward: the honeyeater, however tiny, has to hover to feed.

Sept 17 2012. I dress up today; there is a anxious moment when I opt for the tailored Fletcher Jones trousers: will they fit (they had not fitted when last I tried in July; now by some slim miracle, they do). I cannot find one of my remaining three ties until I visualise the flight bag I took with me to Brisbane in July: the bag is empty except for my Newcastle University tie, neatly rolled, almost concealed in a dark corner. I dress confidently: I know the dashing blazer with brass buttons is going to fit. And away I go to town. I feel confident, yet uncertain of being myself because of the unfamiliar clothes I’m wearing. Having kept everyone waiting for more than 50 years I drive to Bellingen virtually unrecognisable in my best clothes and present early and a little anxiously at the Council chambers. Simone, the Mayor’s secretary, comes to collect me and we are followed at once by the Mayor. We proceed to a small quiet room. A staff member wheels in a trolley with tea and coffee (and I see a big plate of dangerous-looking cream-smothered scones; alarm bells ring in my mind: the scones are unlikely to be gluten-free and I’ll need to explain the likelihood of an impending disaster to my hosts). I do so; then we chat. We discuss the condition of Darkwood Road and several more matters. I’m here to become an Australian Citizen. The Mayor reads from a pledging statement and I repeat the words after suitable pauses and so hear myself ‘pledge my loyalty to Australia and its people.’ Suddenly in the quickness of the Australian spring I am now a proper Australian. For the first few years after arriving as a ‘ten pound pom’ in 1960 I had thought I had automatically become Australian; however, it seems that I’ve merely been a ‘permanent resident’ for all of those crowded years. There is some surprise when I add that I’ve been on the electoral roll for most of my life. Lightly we chat further over coffee. I confess to being a Canadian by birth, a South African citizen also ((‘by descent,’ as the SA Government has previously described me) and, also, a ‘registered citizen of the UK and Colonies.’ When I leave I take with me several items (including a grand-looking certificate and a potted plant (the kangaroo’s paw plant is now waiting in one of the riverside gardens surrounded by (somewhat foreign?) flowering irises. How will these plants get on together, given the difficulties of thriving in my most shaded garden area?

Sept 18 2012. I welcome my friend and mentor, Kerry, who arrives on a bright spring morning. We chat briefly over coffee before K begins to study the behaviours of my computer while I sit nervously on the sideline. We discuss important matters as the bright day becomes cloudier and eventually noisy with rolling thunder. The thundery rain begins falling after K has left. Some of the ample dust that drifts through here when there is traffic on the road has been washed from the foliage and everything looks cleaner now; however, the showers persist into the evening. 

Sept 19 2012. Wednesday has been a long spring day, most of which I spent indoors (e.g., first at the Healing Centre and then in front of the computer attempting to sort out problems attending the online purchase of a phone). The older I get the more cogitating and thinking energy gets burned and I get weary—until I think of certain small honeyeaters that resemble humming birds and consider how they might feel at the ending of each day. Following a light meal I head early for bed. As I relax with books, papers and TV and the shadows lengthen into darkness I hear an unwelcome sound coming from the spaces between the top of my interior wall and the outside weatherboards: possibly micro bats, even a deranged possum trying to force an entry, or maybe a rogue mouse, or…a snake. Sigh. I switch on lights, select a suitable timber weapon, grab my brilliant little torch and investigate by shining the light outside: there are three bright pink ‘night tigers’ (snakes) writhing over one another along the timbers supporting the fibreglass roof over the deck adjoining my bedroom—about 3-m from my flinty gaze. It is spring and the serpents are outside trying to get in; I wonder why they want to be inside where I will do my best to terminate them—as I always do? They look identical to the last snakes I encountered in the house and ‘night tiger’ is a description used loosely here in the Darkwood. –And venomous serpents aren’t tolerated inside this house, spring or no spring. I go to sleep with one eye open, so to say.  

Sept 20 2012. Thursday and I am home with no appointments and only my writings, the computer, and online merchants to worry about. I exchange emails and worry further. In my next life I shall more speedily become a Master of Computing, but that still seems a dream without much substance as I struggle to recall certain computing procedures. The situation improves when I risk my mentor’s displeasure and follow important advice. Penitent, I change into my Outside Clothes before slinking and lurching outside to do some mowing. I drag the mower over to one of the fiddly bits of lawn that still needs mowing near the N-E corner of the gardens where there is an accumulation of fallen twigs and heavier deadwood branches; I also bring my strongest rake, clean the area and am confronted by a mass of groundcovers, twigs and branches that will have to be disappeared before I can return the untidy area into a semblance of lawn: this being the area where once the citrus trees grew (I feel less guilty about removing the citrus trees because I’ve recently learned that anybody suffering reflux has to learn to avoid citrus—I don’t understand why, but that has been my experience). I thoughtfully move most of the larger twigs and branches from the long raked pile of debris to my upper riverbank (wild) area and happily reduce the remainder with my lawnmower. Success! Later I take the same rake upstairs with me because there are certain ominous sounds from within my bedroom walls: snakes (possibly) or micro bats (most likely). Snakes make slow slithering noises; bats when they come and go make sudden scratching sounds—such as a rodent might make. I see no snakes; snakes will not be present if the bats are present (because the bats will have been eaten). One way or the other, I know this will be another noisy night.

Sept 21 2012. A fast month, September—there’s so much going on here, so much movement that change takes place as I watch and I’m groggy from lack of sleep.

At the start of the month the weeping coral tee looked like leafing and hours later it had; the old cheese trees near the lawn’s edge shed many of the russet leaves that blew down to cover the winter grasses and now is completely green; in recent days the Virgilia trees further down the valley are like clouds of white in the sun. Roadside grasses that have been slashed (by the Council) have quickly produced spiky new leaves and flower heads, some dock plants close to the traffic are 2-m tall and thriving. Here in the gardens brown butterflies appear suddenly and bounce through warm air that must seem summery to them and small crowds of flying insects explore me sitting reading. I watch in admiration as two small butterflies (or possibly moths?) bob together at speed while staying in one small space: they fly speedily and make innumerable changes of direction; it looks crazily random, but surely is not. How are they able to do that while lacking our big brains? Some of these spring days are so filled with movement that they surprise. One morning walking past the bamboo and in an opportune moment I see the new foal running fast across the paddock as the horses come into view—the colt’s awkward long legs driving beauty in motion. 

The National Parks: America’s Best Idea is a fine series on Television late at night. I am touched to see depicted old b/w photos in this TV program because I know exactly the period depicted: the early Thirties—and I know that to be true because I was there once, too.

Sept 22 2012. Saturday. Earlier I raked and mowed the overgrown area near the compost where I had carelessly collected a pile of useful hardwood bits when clearing after a flood (the grass and weeds had since covered everything). Greatly daring I also revisited the log pile left by floods covering parts of the river lawn and had some success diminishing the tangle. That endeavour included reaching up and breaking both long logs (by pulling rapidly and repeatedly) anchored beneath short heavy logs and then dragging the broken segments to the edge of the lawn and returning them to the river. I knew that these two problem limbs were casuarina once I’d uncovered them (the axe had bounced off the wood post flood) and that the wood would eventually dry out and finally rot. It was now quite dry and brittle. I bob the far loose ends, starting with one hand then changing to two and soon hear the satisfying CRACK! of the dry brittle wood breaking. I could then drag the broken timber away, ease it to the edge and slide it down to the water. Anybody can do this: it’s not rocket science. The longer the log the more a great fulcrum it becomes and I could have lifted and moved some of the heaviest materials jammed together had my logs not broken (with a lever long enough, one might move the world as someone wise once wrote). 

Now I’m once again in the sun-drenched garden with a good book (Salter’s Light Years) while feeling enclosed or even ‘contained’ by birds singing particular songs. There is one bird voice, though, that sounds troubled, the song a non-stop high-pitched jabbering that is surely a distress signal. There is probably a goanna or a snake hunting in the area. Looking about me between reading and not reading I see that the jacarandas here are bronzing. The leaves on the Japanese maple have a look of permanence about them although they’ve been out for only a few days; perhaps that’s due to the dust from the road only 4-m away. And all of the vaguely green blobs on the grey-white branches of the white cedars are now filigrees of pale yellow against the blue sky. There’s a sapling grevillea robusta (silky oak) close to me: its new leaves look so perfect against the sky they seem almost artificial. Four irises next to me are blooming; the little kangaroo paw plant sits there too and the white begonias have put up a protective wall of foliage. Tired from my exertions (not to mention the fatigue that comes from too much old age thinking connected with emails and the purchase of a phone to be delivered by courier to my friend’s house, distant from here) I crept upstairs to relax (again) with book, papers and the TV programs—there is a program about Tolstoy! I switch on and watch avidly after calling my neighbour who has recently read Anna Karenina. Brilliant! Then I doze. A couple of loud bangs overhead get me up, and peering outside and overhead: it’s that damn snake again! I glare up; the snake glares down and starts to slip back into the wall/roof space. I’m not fast enough to grab a long weapon; I miss the opportunity to hurl the snake into the distance (with my long pole). If I were able to fling the snake away I could then with a clear conscience use my stepladder to block this priest’s hole. Hole blocking with the snake trapped inside would be Not Cricket. I remember a couple of times when a snake or two retired into such a space for the winter’s sleep and died there because they put on weight and couldn’t get out again. The scented air of decaying snake is horrible and lasts for weeks. Later I watch another of the rugby league finals. From time to time I frown at overhead noises and flash my powerful little torch ceiling-wards. The gaps I filled long ago are not breached. It would take a much bigger snake to muscle his way through and down to a soft landing on my bed or on me. I eventually sleep in peace.

Sept 23 2012. Sunday. It’s a bright warm day. I get some laundry done and go for a walk after breakfast when the traffic is meagre. I meet my neighbour: there is a second new foal in the big paddock. Despite thundery showers, the river seems as low as ever. Later I stroll down to the sunny garden and continue reading while a couple opposite continue lying in the hot sun for most of the day. As I read a small goanna emerges from one of the overgrown gardens and wanders away. I’m suddenly between two shrike thrushes singing something at each other—or perhaps they’re merely conversing. It’s all very impromptu. I had come to the belvedere on this warm morning (temperature to the mid 20s) with a cup of tea, Salter’s Light Years and my folder of papers and had moved about in the light and shade to be comfortable having moved the garden chairs several times. The couple across the river were surely roasting (I wanted only sufficient light and warmth for myself not to be roasted). I found the best spot close to where the chairs are usually located, next to one of the bleeding heart trees. A shrike thrush bounced along and sat next to me on the lowest branch. I could almost have reached out and touched him. Instead I swung around—the thrush has such a bold voice—and said clearly, “Hello!” instead. The bird was completely disinterested in me and continued it’s earnest voicing. The distant other thrush was unseen in the old trees across the lawn—between the lawn and the old track that runs along the ancient riverbank; the second bird was somewhere near the water storage tank. Both birds communicated loudly; I was like the filling in their sandwich but it was also as if I did not exist as far as they were concerned. How strange it was! And what on earth were they saying to each other?

On Sept 24 2012. I have a middle of the day appointment to be seen by the optometrist. My eyes are OK but the macula in one eye is changing: for the present, I’m OK.  On Wednesday Sep 26 I visit Kerry with my computer: the new phone has been delivered to his address and there are technical procedures to be completed before I can return to Coffs and the Telstra store to have the new phone properly registered. It’s a warm day and my troublesome back ensures my walking in crowds will be awkward. There are delays: everybody has a mobile phone that needs attention. Eventually I get home and thankfully join the birds in the garden. By the early evening (being a slow learner) I realise that I’m now experiencing another transient ischemic attack (small stroke) and begin to grasp why the TV and the TV text seems faulty: the faults are taking place in my circuitry and not in that of the TV. (Interested readers who may want to understand more details will find that good explanations and descriptions can be googled (e.g., the phenomenon, “classical migraine” is ‘visual’ and not generally painful (yet is also unpleasant). Sept 27: I come to terms with the unpleasant situation I am experiencing courtesy of my crowded brain: short term memory deficits, confusion about dates and times and much more: in other words, I am experiencing a small stroke and having experienced such unpleasant phenomena in the past (pre-chelation therapy) I realise that I’m again experiencing the consequences of a small stroke, a transient ischemic attack. For those who wonder what this means, the TIA or small stroke compels the owner of the brain to struggle with remaining in one reality while simultaneously speculating wildly about the likelihood of now being able to access realities that are somewhat different from the consensus reality that most of us seem to experience. Put another way: one of the phenomena to be experienced is the suspicion that one’s central nervous system (CNS) has so quickly changed from the owner’s ‘normal’ operating procedures to those that seem strangely awry or even alien that automatically returning ones CNS to normal may no longer be possible. It is possible for the CNS to return to near normal operating procedures; however, the owner of the CNS has also to realise (the faster the better) that normal or near normal operational procedures of his/her brain will be restored as soon as possible… And so on. (Readers who have not experienced stroke or minor stroke will appreciate that the TIA is also a very great learning and that it is initially to be respected with common sense).    

I’ll end the September Diary here (Sept 28) on a warm sunny afternoon in spring. For further September news please see the October Diary.

Best wishes to all from Don. Sept 28 2012

See Russell Atkinson’s blog at  http://theoldestako.wordpress.com/

     

The Earthrise Diary (JUly 2012)

                                   The Earthrise Diary (July 2012)

© text Don Diespecker 2012; individual © is retained by authors whose writings are included in this text.

           Ah, fill the Cup: --what boots it to repeat

           How time is slipping underneath our Feet:

           Unborn TOMORROW, and dead YESTERDAY,

           Why fret about them if TODAY be sweet!

           From Edward Fitzgerald’s translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam XXXVII

 July 28 2012. In some ways it’s been one of those months, otherwise, July has also been interesting and even exciting. The weather as expected has been cold and wet—and also has been mild and sunny at times. The excitements and stimulations of the Master Class in Brisbane linger pleasantly and continue to inspire a swag of writings that demand much time and energetic imagining—and remembering.

Red cedars in the neighbourhood have leafed and are looking surprisingly pink. Like the flowering wattles certain trees start leafing or flowering in the winter well ahead of spring. I’ve noticed that for a couple of weeks now when driving to Coffs Harbour the wattles are flowering along the highway. I love the smell of flowering wattles and like to put my face close and close my eyes when I sniff that intriguing scent—not that I’ve been doing that on busy highway drives, but I’m reminded of my first acquaintance with flowering wattles in South Africa when I was young—and that distant time has nagged again at memory because I’ve been writing essays about rivers and those scribbles include the Blyde running through Pilgrim’s Rest (blij originally in Dutch and now bly in Afrikaans, meaning “happy”). And I was a happy kid in the old Transvaal most of the time. Mindfully running through some of that imagery in turn reminded me of inviting members of workshop groups to discover what their sense of smell might evoke: almost anything will evoke imagery featuring scenes or experiences from the past when sniffed with one’s eyes closed: the smells of the busy forest, a musty curtain, a sinle bloom of the dark red Joyce carnation.

And at the end of July there’s plenty of leftover anxiety as a consequence of some deep dark problem in the mail department of the computer’s software: my otherwise wonderful Turing machine began resisting my attempts to reach my Inbox (let me give Turing credit for his ideas that eventuated in our being able to use computers that might have seemed miraculous in his day). Not being able to access email is maddening. It’s just as well that we aren’t all zipping about in interstellar space vehicles and dependent on faultless performances from our onboard computers: we might otherwise never reach our destinations nor ever again see the beautiful blue planet we call home. When my computer’s email becomes inaccessible due to a perverted gizmo beyond the computer (at the so-called server) that behaves as if protecting my computer from access by the world and I have no control over that misguided ‘over-protection’ I’m stymied: I need expert assistance. Ironically I’ve been permitted to send emails, but have not been allowed to receive any. I managed to contact my computer teacher, KS, who with his partner has sensibly removed from the madding crowd to another part of the country—on holiday—and where they were so far away as to be virtually in another country. K was in the Kimberley in distant WA, more or less, where the scenery was admirable but the conditions for communications were less so. K’s advice: it would take too long to sort it out by phone; therefore, get the machine to the computer fixer-uppers in Coffs Harbour. –And that’s what I did.

The uncomplaining machine was disconnected from its wires and cables, tenderly carried to the carport and strapped into the back seat of the Honda (the Honda perhaps enjoyed its company and I suspect that the pair of them on such occasions perhaps develop rudimentary (or, who knows, perhaps very advanced) ways of sharing information… (‘What’s up, little Mac?’ ‘Alas, Big Fella, my email Inbox is compromised.’ ‘Yeah, I hear there’s a bit of that going around. Hang in there, little buddy and we’ll get you to the electronic techs.’ ‘Will they respect my frailty?’ ‘Sure they will—or I’ll ensure that the three of us will drive into the fixer-uppers without benefit of their front door.’ ‘Oh!’).

Long story short: I booked the Mac in to the repair shop on Saturday morning, July 14 and coughed up the required $50 toward defraying costs and to keep the Mac in the queue. As there was no chance of the queue diminishing for days I chose to take the machine home again and to use it to complete work on an essay. (The old Honda was perhaps impressed by our speedy return to the car; I left it to the Mac to explain). The reader may begin to suspect that machines in my care are influenced in ways that are anthropocentric, but I’m not yet sure about this because we humans tend to invent parts of the future by writing stories.

July 29 2012. On July 18 the Honda and I navigated the return to the fixer-uppers where I left the Mac to wait her turn and where she was surrounded by enough other computers to launch vehicles to the moon and beyond; she wouldn’t have been in any sense alone, but it was a wrenching moment for me, her driver. No matter how lightly I might write about computer separation I suspect I’m not the only computer driver in the world who has come to depend on these powerful machines. It’s bad enough having to kick my heels for most of a day or even a half day in Coffs Harbour while the Honda receives an expert servicing from the dealers: it’s hellish to not have any access whatsoever to the Mac for a week or more. We are way beyond mere convenience and the requisite partial dependency on computers: it is as if we have chosen to become enslaved to the extent that we can no longer live independently apart from the machines. A USB flash drive or whatever they’re called is a backup, reassurance, even a talisman and a protector, but nothing beats one’s own computer solidly sitting on the worktable and efficiently keeping us In Touch not only with The World, but with the thousands of words of Stuff that may be called to duty at the press of a button: entire drafted novels, a swag of essays, family histories, innumerable documents of varied otherness. Sigh.

By July 25 I was twitching in every fibre and desperate: how would I pay bills that may now imminently be presented to me via the Mac? I planned to be in Coffs Harbour (to shop) and telephoned the fixer-uppers: would my machine be fit for duty if I were to visit during the early afternoon? There was a good chance, I was told, although my poor Mac had only just received pre-med and been prepared for theatre in the last half hour. I took the chance. I would at least be close by and on hand if she was likely to be in recovery by early afternoon. Naturally she was not quite out of danger when breathlessly I visited. No, there was no point in my hanging around and fretting. Yes, Majok or Matthew would phone me, perhaps tomorrow, or if and when. I lurched back to the Honda, a victim of my emotions and began the homeward journey.

At this point I beg to explain that although the Honda can get from the home stable to the fixer-upper’s door in about one and a quarter hours without blowing a gasket or collapsing in a heap, applied stoicism if not heroism is generally required by the Honda’s carer-operator to help by guiding us both over Darkwood Road and the bridges (sections of this rural road are horrible and hellish, to say nothing of the reprehensible driving by some of our rural lost souls and the bitumen ends at Richardson’s Bridge; also, parts of the metalled road near my place appear as if shelled or mortared, the craters now filled with murky water); and there are seven river and two creek bridges between home and the Trunk Road at Thora. For those who came in late the Bellinger is a most beautiful example of a serpentine river (criss-crossed by Darkwood Road). Nobody can ever be bored in the Darkwood. Those of us who live upstream of Richardson’s must grin and bear the dangers of needing to use these unsealed parts of the road (I think of myself, suddenly, as a member of the Unsealed Ones).

I reached Earthrise just a little frazzled and after tenderly stroking the warm exterior of the Honda and offering words of comfort—as one would warm down a favourite riding horse—I tottered over to my house, slumped across the threshold and crawled up to the kitchen for a strong cup of Assam tea, a dash of milk, no sugar. Three gulps later I reached feebly for the phone: there was a message. I listened to Majok’s polite voice and learned that the Mac had just been fixed and was expectantly awaiting her driver. Urgently I called Majok back. What time would they close? About 5.30-ish. I advised I would be there on the fixer-upper’s doorstep, quivering. And I was, all in good time. I rescued my Mac and brought her home. I had returned a second time to home and beauty, stepping very discreetly over the muddy patches and the slippery stones with the Mac in my arms. I divined that the Mac and the Honda had enjoyed each other’s company and I was very happy indeed: I had crossed and recrossed the Bellinger and tributaries 36 times that day (40 if I include the high bridge on the Trunk Road at Thora), the Mac was soon reconnected to her favoured wiring and power source. Darkness was falling and my unfinished cup of tea was cold, but the Mac and I (and not forgetting the old Honda) were home safe, again.

                                                                   *

The temperature now is 18˚, the same as yesterday, but yesterday was cloudier and there had been a breeze that caused the red cedar leaves to bob and sway; today was a little warmer. Both days found me at the back of the belvedere at lunchtime, furtively reading; I have so much on my plate that I’ve felt guilt-ridden if I haven’t spent every waking moment playing catch-up and frantically herding words: the Diary, re-thinging essays and re-submitting some to flinty-eyed unknowable editors at new destinations, endless notes to myself, the new draft of an essay on my adventures in Iran years ago, old diaries and letters to find, and map research in my big Atlas; draft emails to friends, transferring photos from camera to Mac, axing firewood, laundry, dish-washing, remembering to eat. –And walking. The river level is lower: some of the phenomena seen down at Richardson’s Bridge can now be partially seen here at the Plains Bridge (sunlight projecting images through the water to riverbed stones).

To get to sleep I imagined some of the restaurants and dining rooms of long ago: there was the tourist-class dining saloon on the old Gerusalemme, a Lloyd-Triestino vessel that had been a hospital ship in WW II (in 1950 I saved the price of the fare—more than 50 pounds but less than 100 pounds—to travel from Durban to Italy. The tourist class was filled with young and old from everywhere; most of us were young and carefree and if I remember correctly, it was also the time when the Korean War started. The food was wonderfully Italian (a variety of pasta and other dishes) and included at no extra cost were carafes of red wine at lunch and dinner. I began my long flirtation with red wine.

I also remembered low-cost (medical) student restaurants near the Odeon Metro in Paris, the table waitress who used to chuck a damp cloth to whoever sat furthest away and the table was progressively wiped clean. The same waitress would come boldly down from an upstairs kitchen holding balanced in her arms and atop one another all our plates of dinner: Strassbourg sausage or rice or beef stew.

And I remembered innumerable ‘teahouses’ (chaikanas) in Iran that were often in the middle of nowhere, what we might now think of as truck stops and where a plate was always piled high with fluffy white rice, a skewer of kebab and a big square of white ghee and sometimes a raw egg as well and if it could be found outside, a sprig of something green: young blades of wheat and possibly grass on occasions—and in one such place where there was little else but the ‘teahouse’ and desert sand and scrub and a mountain, we were assisted to climb the rock-face base of the adjoining mountain to uncomfortably see ancient rock carvings depicting warriors and weapons and the mighty Darius ((522-486). –That was Behistun in western Iran and on the rock-face, there was a cuneiform inscription in Old Persian, Elamite and Babylonian that provided a key for the decipherment of cuneiform in other languages (the rock carvings are enormous and dangerously high (about 100-ft) above the ground and the artists/stonecutters removed a convenient viewing ledge before leaving the site more than 2,000 years ago: the panel is 15-m high x 25-m wide. Brilliant art perilously made and displayed—what other eatery on Earth could boast that a stone’s throw from the ‘restaurant’?

In snowy Sarajevo: rich spicy meat dishes—lots of meat—and a roaring clientele and the restaurant filled with smoke and laughter during that ‘austere’ time in the old Yugoslavia in the mid ‘50s: somehow we were included in the most friendly way. And somewhere in Denmark in the 1950s in a small country town Pam and I joined the Sunday Lunch locals when the main course was new potatoes in their jackets, butter melting overall and the casseroles hot and steaming—and where we were made welcome: those new potatoes made a delicious main course.

 

Creative Writing

Welcome to visiting writers: my cousin Jill in Vancouver, British Columbia; my friend Russell Atkinson who lives in Bellingen, NSW, and my friend and psychologist colleague, John Morris who lives at Kiama, on the South Coast of NSW. –Each of us, I’ve just realized, are retired from the busy marketplace. The theme this month has enabled my guests to focus on vehicles.

                                                The Gas Gauge

                                                                                                                      Jill Alexander

 One day last month my friend Signe and I headed off to my cabin for a few days. The cabin is situated in the foothills of Mt. Baker, not far from the Canadian border and on the U.S. side in Washington State. Our plan was to spend a day at an outlet Mall several miles down the freeway from the city of Bellingham, the closest city to the cabin. We headed out in Signe’s car, a 2002 Honda CRV. She loves her car and has mentioned on many occasions that it has never let her down. I took her on an isolated route I knew through back roads and lovely farm country. We felt as though we were in the wilderness, as we saw only an occasional farmhouse and passed only one car. Signe made a couple of comments in passing about her gas gauge and how she thought it hadn’t moved much since we’d left the cabin. All was well until the car shuddered and came to a stop. We soon came to the conclusion that the gauge had been stuck and we were out of gas. The skies had opened and it was pouring rain. The car was well into the road so we put on the 4-way flasher and worked at remaining calm. This became more difficult when we realized there was no cell phone reception. After about 20 minutes we saw a car approaching. It passed us and then stopped and backed up to see what was wrong. A very friendly and kind young couple said they would try on their Smart phone and see if they could get through to BCAA. After several tries and lots of static they finally got through and were connected to the local AA. Miraculously their phone was able to bring up the exact location of our car to pass on. We were told that there might be a 90 minutes wait as the AA driver was on another call. So we said goodbye to our Good Samaritans and sat in the car out of the rain. Signe and I have known each other for over 50 years so we soon were reminiscing about the past and events we tried to remember from our nursing and university days. The time went quickly and exactly ninety minutes later the truck arrived with two gallons of gas and directions for us to the closest gas station. Two hours later we arrived at the Mall and carried on with our plan as if nothing had happened. On our way home we stopped for dinner at a pub close to the cabin called the North Fork Brewery, Pizzeria and Wedding Chapel. The owner is a minister from some obscure spiritual church who brews this great beer, cooks the best pizzas and occasionally puts out a sign that reads: “Closed. Wedding in session.” 

Our little holiday ended with a few days of walks, reading, listening to music and playing two-handed bridge, all around a roaring open fire in the living room.

     Jill Diespecker Alexander is a retired nurse and business owner and is presently writing her life story.

 jillalexander@shaw.ca

                                                             *

                                                      Clive’s Bike

                                                                                                                       Russell Atkinson

After some argument I removed all the valuables from my pocket and put them on the curb. “Look here Clive, I’ll swap you this tree frog, bunch of keys and these beaut marbles for a ride on your bike to the bottom of the hill”. This removed all of Clive’s objections. Promises to his parents about not letting anybody, especially me, borrow his new bike were overlooked.

As I swung into the saddle to begin my heady descent a chill churned my guts and a presentiment moved behind the happy anticipation of a speedy downhill, no-hands, wind-whistling ride. I don’t remember much after that or before it. 

Reports varied, but the consensus opinion was that the front wheel of the bike was flipped at right angles to my descent by contact with a stone and I was catapulted into the air like a rocket. Maybe twenty feet up according to one startled witness 

The first part of the hurtling body to hit the road was the skull. It was a heady ride indeed. Concave fracture of the scull with a star fracture on the left side; assurances to my parents by the doctors of my immediate demise; months comatose in Manly Hospital; assurances to my long-suffering parents of a miracle at my survival but dark hints of permanent damage. Distraught, Mother enlisted the aid of a Christian Science healer, who had a word to God about the situation. For some obscure reason inscrutable Providence decided to heal my cracked skull and start me once again up the long winding road.  

Slowly the visual and auditory senses wavered back into some semblance of a world. Like a newborn baby I learned to put it all together again. Of course, having done it once was a great help, though it has often occurred to me that whatever was learned prior to the ride has had little effect after it. So without my being a Christian I contrived to having been twice born. I was thirteen. The year was 1943.

Being born at all is the first error we all make, but being born at the start of the Great Depression is an added error of bad timing.

So it is that hearsay, a few blurred memories and a photograph or two testify to the fact of my presence on the planet prior to the event that became known in the family as Russell’s Accident. It was pronounced in capital letters to distinguish it from all the other accidents.

     Russell Atkinson is a much-published author (books and articles on   Hindu philosophy, memoirs, and aspects of naturopathy).

     E: theako@westnet.com.au

     Blogsite: www.theoldestako.wordpress.com

     Web: http://members.westnet.com.au/theako/ 

                                                                   *

                                                The Beer-Sodden Rover

                                                                                                                              John Morris

   Melbourne—cold and wet—late lecture at the Uni of Melbourne. I have an hour before Money and Banking ll (maybe in today's terms MB 2010). I look at my watch—mmm—5.30 pm and lecture at 6.30 so I have to wait an hour before I can get into the warm Public Lecture Theatre (now there’s an oxymoron if ever there was one). The PLT is freezing at this time of year but less freezing than outside.  Generally it’s warm enough for me to nap intermittently while Sammy Weller (aged Professor of Economics) discourses on the pluses and minuses of the gold standard, and Greshams's Law. 

But wait—some relief is at hand—in the late afternoon I generally craved a beer and maybe because that craving lay in my money and banking sub conscious I recalled that a can of Fosters possibly lay in the boot of my car awaiting some crisis such as this to leap into the here and now. 

The car in question was my new Rover, a car I had saved for and denied my wife and myself the fruits of my long and subservient employment with the State Government of Victoria. I fondly imagined that I was the envy of all other motorists and that they would be so impressed on confronting my prestigious vehicle they would immediately grant me right of way.  I was in the habit of sneering at those with Holdens and Fords and even the little monsters from the Morris Garage (MG's) which were all the rage at the time This fantasy gave me relief from the ever-present acknowledgement that I was indeed a lowly servant of the public at a wage that was to be truly sneered at and that I aspired to being well above my current station in life.

Be that as it may, this quite upmarket machine, one from the great days of British motoring almost certainly held the highly prized can of beer in its bosom. So I gathered my poncho around me (stolen from the quartermaster of the Melbourne University Regiment during my days as an anti tank gunner) and dashed through the rain to the car near the Union Building.  Had I any inkling of the pain to come I would certainly have chosen a non-alcoholic libation at the Union Caf. 

   Leaping into the car to avoid any further drenching I found the can tucked away in the boot.  Sadly, it had lost its chill and was in an almost lukewarm state, doubtless due to its proximity to the exhaust pipe. I was not deterred.  Now, in those days there were no such things as a can which came with a built-in opening device or tab to pull and so the thought came starkly "How the f ... am I going to be able open this thing?” The chill of the late afternoon and the beating of the rain against the windshield and the need for momentary alcoholic respite from the reality of my position at the bottom of the employment ladder ensured that my basic plan was not jettisoned. Beer cans at that time were made of steel, not aluminium, and constructed so as to require more than ordinary force to access the contents A lever with an arrow-shaped cutter which was clamped onto the rim of the can was what was needed.  Unfortunately, on this occasion it was as unobtainable as was a high grade for me in M and B II.  Finally, my mind traversed through the contents of the car toolbox searching for viable tools and/or procedures for opening obdurate cans of Foster's Lager. Then I all but shouted, "Voila!" "Ecco!" "Yessss!" The image of an available hammer and screwdriver emerged from the thought bubble.

Of course it was too wet and windy to open the can outside of the car and so I sat the can on the car floor, positioned the head of the screwdriver on the centre of the can and gave it a decent whack.  But this was an extraordinarily resilient can.  The screwdriver just bounced off the tough steel top of the can.  So I whacked the driver again and again until the resisting metal succumbed and rewarded me with the hiss of escaping gas. I was ready for another whack but my vision was obscured by the   cloud of beer vapour issuing from a tiny hole I had managed to pierce in the can. The cloud increased in intensity.  I had lost control of the situation.  It was impossible to either get the screwdriver to widen the hole and it certainly could not be plugged. I had become the victim of this colourful application of the laws of Physics that had to do with the pressure inside and the pressure outside of a container, the temperature gradients applying, and the contribution of the tiny orifice at the centre of this micro disaster. The contribution of my own stupidity did not escape me. 

Now dear reader, my colleagues, a jealous bunch, had often suggested that my car was no more than a middle aged, middle class vehicle. While these observations hurt I clung to my complex of superiority. However, while its fittings and performance were of a superior kind it did have an Achilles Heel. It had been designed with a grey felt lining that matched the colour of the upholstery.  No thought had been given to the propensity of this material to absorb toxic evil-smelling beer vapour.  The fabric dealt with the misty beer spray as a cobra deals with a mongoose. Not one square foot of the lining was denied its full share of the Foster's Brewery product.  I winced.  I swore blue oaths. I cried and invoked all manner of gods and demons to ward off the full realization of the consequence of this tragic moment. The car, in my eyes, was now all but worthless.

There was no way the car could be restored to its former glory. I tried everything I could think of including ammonia, desiccated lemon peel, onion and garlic puree, new car spray, and several full cans of toilet deodorant.  There was no way to reduce the smell. It had become a built- in feature of the car. I got to the stage where I did not even want to drive it to work fearing I would be contaminated and my puzzled clients would seek other counsel.  The sneer value of my chariot had evaporated but the beer had not.  The jealous colleagues who later travelled with me would sniff the odd perfume and feigning innocence would enquire as to its origin.  I was cut to the quick when one passenger exclaimed, "What the hell has been going on in this car?" Ladies were too polite to draw attention to it and thereby elicit what might be a very embarrassing response.  I usually played dumb and usually deflected the proffered insults and asked, "Is it that noticeable?" One bright spark advanced the notion that the smell closely resembled that of a Hong Kong Brothel at the peak of the hot season.  His acquaintance with the low life in Hong Kong might be questionable but the accuracy of his statement was not.

John Morris spent a heap of Catch 22 years in the Regular Air Force and Army and retreaded to do the same thing in Departments of Psychology in several universities.

John presently resides in Kiama, NSW, contemplating the vicissitudes of life and the vagaries of the Tasman Sea.

vk2bes10@bigpond.com

                                                                             *

Next Month: Diary readers are cordially invited to write about an experience in a well-remembered eatery or eateries: "An unforgettable eatery experience (café, teahouse or chaikana, diner, coffee shop, self-serve, restaurant or banqueting hall) where you ate an unforgettable meal--anywhere in the world. Unforgettable may mean something wonderful or something awful..." I’ll be pleased to include such writings in the next (August 2012) Diary if you will kindly send them to me as email attachments.  don883@bigpond.com

July 30 2012. It goes quickly, doesn’t it? I sat in the sun again at lunchtime today. The sun was pleasantly warm. I read more of Wallace Stegner’s Crossing to Safety. I like his style. The story is set in 1937 and is about two couples that meet and become good friends; each of the husbands teaches in the English Department of an American university; one of those protagonists narrates the story. Good writing and good thoughts between the lines. It’s an American Classic.

Earlier this month I also read Ian McEwan’s Enduring Love, an unusual story and a page-turner. The author’s language is clear and sharp—he has a way with words and puts the right one always in the right place. The plot focuses on a peculiar and troubling psychological condition. A good read.

On reflection: I now realize that I need help in several departments. I’ll have to have access to a 24/7 IT trouble-shooting genius computer fixer-upper, at least one versatile gardener who can double as chauffeur at times of stress (mine, not his or hers) who also is a motor mechanic, Also, I’ll need a cook/house-maid, a scullion, a genius or comprehending person who understands Income Tax forms and has the ability to complete my Return without needing to ask a single question of me, and a gamekeeper or two with expertise in chiding restless brush turkeys and probably bandicoots that overdo hole-digging in what otherwise I could call ‘my lawns’ and prevent possums from playing Extreme Catching Games at night across my steel roof. Additionally I’ll require  a physiotherapist/osteopath/ENT specialist/cardiovascular specialist, and a bodyguard to watch my back and protect me from fishing eagles, wild dogs, giant goannas and water dragons and bad-tempered poisonous snakes in the dangerous garden.

Time to go. Thanks to Jill, John and Russell for permission to include some of their writings. Be well, all. Best from Don.

The Earthrise Diary (May 2012)

                             THE EARTHRISE DIARY (May, 2012)

                                                                                                 Don Diespecker

      

© text Don Diespecker 2012; individual © is retained by authors whose writings are included in this text.

Movement, simple movement, is perhaps the greatest mystery of the universe.

                                                                                           RH Blyth: Haiku

      

A Note On The Brown Butterfly, Dear Readers: I took umpteen photos of the wee beasties; I crept, stalked, pounced and bounced about the sunlit garden and although I captured some weird images of my shadow and quite a few of the butterfly (different individual butterflies on different days unless there was just the one that was hogging the limelight) their images are almost impossible to see. The last of these failed attempts is the one that may appear at the start of this May Diary. I’m looking at it now. The butterfly is right in the middle of the frame and it’s parked on one of those dreaded tropical grasses with the indestructible root systems (I call it ‘blade grass’). The butterfly is facing to the left, downward. The shadow of the butterfly on the hairy grass leaf indicates the animal’s resting posture: each wing more or less up. I think the port wing is in the way but at least you should be able to see most of the starboard wing markings: a dot and a half and a longer blob. The real colour of these wing ‘roundels’ is close to pale yellow (sometimes straw-coloured) yellow. The real colour of the butterfly’s body is brown. I’m a terrible failure as a butterfly image-maker. Sorry!

(Earlier in May) I was walking down Darkwood Road early one Sunday morning and having passed and counted the eight horses in the Happenstance long paddock I saw in the distance a number of parked vehicles near the Tyson’s Track (I think it’s called) that connects Dorrigo with the Valley (the Track is navigable by foot or by trail bike). Aha! I thought: are these guys horse rustlers? If so where’s their big truck?

I’ll brazen it out, I decided, and walk boldly on. I was close to one of those monstrous 4-WD urban attack vehicles when I suddenly became aware of a young woman striding vigorously toward me. I veered out of her way. She quickly climbed into the 4-WD, grinned down at me and said, ‘They’re all on a ten-stage walk to a point on the coast.’ I grinned back and said what a fine day they had for it and pressed on; it was then that I saw there were several more big vehicles (none that would accommodate horses, though) and a large group of walkers or hikers complete with back packs—and that they were all more or less of my vintage. When I reached Richardson’s Bridge I paused to stare reflectively and see the flow and was soon joined by the lead walkers or pathfinders. The walkers were in no hurry; naturally they stopped and we chatted. They assured me that they were not about to complete all of the remaining stages in the one day. One member of the group referred to the neighbourhood as paradise. ‘Please don’t tell anyone,’ I begged. It was good to chat with these fit-looking walkers. We exchanged a hug or two and parted on good terms. There would be no horse duffing today. (Later, when I’d decoded some information on websites I decided that my walker friends were on Stage 3 of their journey: Diehappy (State Forest), up Orama Road to Horseshoe Road and Scotchman’s Peak). –Names such as Diehappy and Scotchman’s are the ‘authentic’ names of forests in this area and are so marked on many maps.

(Later in May) having completed my reading of Simon Winchester’s Yangtze River book (much of that reading in clear light in the garden) I want to hurry down there again because the light is even more perfect than it was yesterday. These relatively dry and very clear autumn-almost-winter days are rare enough for them to be treated with joyful respect. The light is crystal clear, which is to say that the air is filled with all the necessary air stuff and it also contains small winged insects and is more or less dry (wet air is not crystal clear). The garden again today, is full of movement, particularly the movements of leaves falling idly and taking their time to reach the ground because there is no hastening breeze to hurry them. It is May and movement and light in the garden make this the most desirable place and time on Earth and not forgetting that this is the month of my birth.

And it’s also butterfly time in this part of the garden. It seems unfair that butterflies live for so brief a time. For those who know the garden, I’m behind and to the left of Belvedere Central with the early afternoon sun tracking low behind me and warming my back. I can’t quite see the nearby river tucked in beneath the edge of the lawn and the riverbank and have fragmentary windows through the foliage of the downstream parts. Here there are good patches of warming light (the higher trees near the road interrupt the sunlight a couple of times and I move my two chairs to stay in radiant touch—one chair for me, the other for books, and a clipboard/file filled with unused lined paper from old exam answer books {I brought many of these otherwise wasted pages when I moved here in 1984} and the emergency phone {please come and rescue my battered self from beneath the fallen forest giant}, my glasses, my camera, my 27-years old mug {usually tea-filled, but the tea sometimes replaced by a glassful of Shiraz}). 

Yes, I know I wrote about the butterflies last month, but they’re still flying sunny afternoon sorties and I continue seeing them as happy symbols of hope. The intrepid fliers are often awake earlier in the day, but not many are warmed up and ready for flying until about noon: it’s obvious that they love warm flying conditions and sometimes will fly together in twos or threes (ought I think of small groups as flights or as squadrons, I wonder)?

–And although there are sundry small moths and other insects in the air the small winged insects that I most enjoy seeing these days are invariably those brown butterflies with the gaudy wing roundels. I don’t know what species command the skies of ‘my’ garden. I do know that in this era and in this season the majority of these beautiful little creatures are largely brown, a rich dark chocolate or richly roasted (but not espresso roasted) coffee colour—more or less the colour of dark chocolate or ground coffee and that they each have yellow or pale straw coloured wing markings. They look striking in sunlight and every bit as beautiful as the wartime Spitfire looked when filmed flying in clear air—and the butterflies, particularly during a group or squadron exercise, can move with awesome speed: very tight turns, enormously fast changes of direction that would surely tear a real aircraft frame apart! How on Earth do they do that?

I take my blue clip board filled with writing paper, the scarcely begun book about the Yarra, a copy of the Literary Review that has been opened—just—once or twice and Anna Funder’s novel set in Berlin (I’ve started to read this but for several reasons I haven’t been travelling quite as easily inside this novel possibly because I well remember some older novels that explored some of the issues that arose between the wars or that examined themes about the lives of refugees in Europe (particularly Paris) in the 1930s. I’m thinking of dusty old books like Erich Maria Remarque’s Flotsam; All Quiet on the Western Front, Arch of Triumph; Ilya Ehrenburg’s The Fall of Paris. Some of these old hardcover books were published during WW 11 and printed to “Book Production War Economy Standard” when paper was scarce and the printing was tight and sometimes difficult to read. I realise I’m not quite ready to read a new novel of those times and perhaps I may have a need to re-read some of the older ones first. Ms Funder is a writer I admire and so I’ll postpone her novel for now and return to it later).

Outside in the garden the autumn sun is pouring down its effulgence (how’s that for a clichéd phrase?) on this little part of the world. I think how fortunate I am to be in this radiance. I wonder if, when we die, it might be possible for us to be dead yet still be able to somehow see the ocean of light arriving in waves from our star? Being dead in the dark will be so bloody boring as to be perverse: as an aspect or part of this universe, please note, I and Thee also are the universe for how can anything be part of the whole without also being the whole?

And I also take the kitchen scraps down to a compost site that the wild creatures inspect for nourishing rejects before the environment is allowed to process the remainder (night time operations that I hear as four-footed brawls, but which I seldom witness). I farewell the kitchen scraps. One-handed I grab up the green plastic garden chairs then, rushing to the light, I set myself up and have barely got myself into a chair unscathed when I see my favourite butterflies at all the popular winged insect altitudes, including millimetres above the grass and ground covers. I leap up, unwrapping the camera from its waterproof cover and begin stalking the fliers. Today they enjoy the advantage of flying at about 5-m in bright sunlight—I write flying, but in reality they make bobbing flights (bob-flights?) that look more like rapid jumps through the air and these movements are so dashingly quick that the overall course of any flier looks impossible to predict. I would enjoy knowing just how fast they move but will have to detour from writing to research that.

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,

Old time is still a-flying

And this same flower that smiles today

Tomorrow will be dying.

        Robert Herrick, Hesperides, ‘To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time.’

May 27 2012. When not finding excuses to loaf about in the sunny garden I’m currently working on drafts of a novel, set here (of course) and which feature the major protagonists from “The Summer River” and these drafts are also intended to become the sequel to that unpublished story (!).

The title of the prior novel is also the title of a haiku by the 17th century poet, Shiki. That poem and many others can be found in RH Blyth’s fine book, Haiku Vol 3 Summer-Autumn (Fields and Mountains). Tokyo: Hokuseido Press, 1950. Years ago a friend sent me some photocopies of some pages from that book that nicely relate to associated landscapes and waterscapes to be seen at Earthrise and nearby.  I enjoy reading these excerpts from that marvellous book because the poems are presented first in Japanese characters then, second, in Japanese text and, third, in English translations. Seeing the Japanese characters adds to my pleasure of seeing the transcriptions in English. Although I can’t read the Japanese characters I like the ways that they look and, it seems to me, the subtle way in which those characters decorate my photocopied pages and strangely seem to influence my imagined visualizing of the poem in English. That may seem an odd thing to write, but it isn’t at all odd for me to think it. There may not be too many similarities between the Japanese countryside and the Darkwood where I live, but rivers with water-rounded stones seen only from bank to bank will be similar in many ways. I’m trying to indicate that I like to think that when I visualize Japanese rivers they don’t look like Australian rivers—beyond the banks (no gums; pines in Japan; the somewhat similar casuarina or she-oak here help the illusion). 

The poems I have in mind are contained in a Field and Mountains section and the ones I most enjoy are English translations of haiku about rivers and water. The notion above made explicit by Blyth is one that I’m fond of because I see its reality so frequently here. For example my morning walk takes me along the road and downriver to Richardson’s bridge. The bridge is not well sited in my opinion and together with a concrete approach that juts into the stream on the west side of the river the bridge is an undeniable obstruction to the river’s flow and consequently the river flows every which way.

At the bridge, more or less surrounded by the lively river, I take my time to step over the baluster rail and stand on the walkway directly above the torrent probing and winding to find its way and from where I can watch water in motion over stones. To explain that more fully: at this time of the year the rising sun shines at a low angle across the river’s surface and through bubbles and froth and an array of casuarina needles jumbled together between stones so that the images of all these ‘objects’ are projected by sunlight, and somewhat magnified down and through the shallow water beneath me and on to the surfaces of large stones on the riverbed. Additionally there are surface patterns on the river that are ephemeral: swirls made apparent by the stream’s variable flowing and seen only when the viewer focuses on them (these swirls and ripples are slight and look unmistakably black and are best seen on dull grey days from directly above on the walkway). All of these projected patterns move continuously and so are continually altered or dynamically changed by the changing flow and also when there is a breeze and when clouds vary the strength of sunlight. I the seer or viewer see this moving exposition simply by standing still and looking down and through the water to where the patterns are altering. The patterns often look like colourful laminations in the stones set free by the energy of sunlight. The passing river produces accompanying water sounds and I’m privileged to be attending a sound and light show.

By slightly moving my head a few centimetres on fine sunny mornings I may access a second show being presented, this second one being more difficult to see because it is almost background and because its nature is micro rather than macro and anyone not actively paying attention by refocusing and scanning may miss it altogether. I had altogether missed this Second View on many occasions because although I was present and more or less fully conscious I was not at all well focussed: I was seeing the light on tonnes of water rounded stones flood-dumped over most of an otherwise flattened half hectare of riverbank. Many of the stones were of many different sizes and shapes, some of which were dry and others that were damp or wet and I became suddenly aware that there were also many threads of what seems to be spider silk, some of the strands being anchored to the timber bridge near my feet, but there were no visible webs, not one! As my eyes adjusted to this new phenomenon I was able to see an increasing number of the threads that stretched between stones and realised that I was able to see them at all simply because they reflected sunlight. Spider silk, if that’s is what I’ve been admiring, is only microns in diameter (a micron being one millionth of a metre). (Such silken strands floating in clear air can only be seen at a distance (e.g., 50-m away over the river from where I am sitting inside the house writing) because reflected sunlight enables their visibility.

The more carefully I looked the more strands of silk I could see. Perhaps were I to clamber down from the bridge walkway and peer closely with a magnifier I might be fortunate enough to find webs and the master makers of the silk threads, but I was more content to stand in the sun and to see with wonder what Nature was displaying. A stone ‘field’ interconnected by silken cables may not be everybody’s cup of tea but I was pleased to watch this for a long time because the slightest movement of air would set this big network trembling and glistering in the light. Do the threads constitute hunting devices intended as very large open meshed nets to stop or stun flying insects? If so there might then be a degree of cooperation between the many cable manufacturers such that territoriality might be waived to allow several predators to share meals? What other possible explanation could be offered if the silk cables are not traps? I suppose I’d be stretching my imagination rather too far were I to suggest that many small beasties (probably spiders) were intent on constructing a 1–km array that would facilitate their detecting other galaxies or clusters of galaxies so I’d best not proceed down that track…

When at last I turn away from these river shows and prepare to walk homeward I note that the tallest and most mature-looking casuarinas near the bridge all support stag horn and elk-horn and bird’s-nest ferns high on their trunks; some of these green living forms offer shapes that might have excited Gaudi when he was visualizing the building of the Sagrada Famillia cathedral in Barcelona. And if I change my focus yet again I can take a few more seconds or minutes to admire the air show being staged by daredevil swallows that fly dartingly up and down the river, over and under the bridge, undoubtedly enjoying their acrobatics as much as they probably love hunting and eating on the wing.

Ah! Time to go: it’s the last day of May and official winter only hours away and the presses are waiting to roll. Be well, all.

Best wishes, Don.

--And here’s a message from my friend, Russell Atkinson:

The latest blog on www.theoldestako.wordpress.com about the light of your life has been posted with strange photos. Are shadows things? What do you think? Plus more maxims for mystics and some up-to-date words from a Japanese sage C 300BC