The Earthrise Diary (809)

© text Don Diespecker 2009

The Earthrise Diary
Don Diespecker

The sea is high again today, with a thrilling flush of wind. In the midst of winter you can feel the inventions of spring. A sky of hot nude pearl until midday, crickets in sheltered places, and now the wind unpacking the great planes, ransacking the great planes...
Lawrence Durrell: Justine

I enjoy good opening paragraphs and notable first lines in novels and tend to remember favourites. In the quote above, the second sentence seems hugely significant here and now. Welcome to the August 2009 Diary. This may come as a surprise to some readers in distant places, but spring has been springing here since about mid-July. The light is different, the feel of the place shouts springtime; the smells of the earth are lively. And re-reading Durrell’s lines I’m encouraged to remember the winter of 1954/55 when Pam and I spent most of that time in Greece (a lifelong ambition realised for us both; we made frequent ‘return’ trips to the mainland but otherwise lived modestly and comfortably in our ‘headquarters islands,’ like Rhodes and Mykonos). In the old town of Rhodes we met the Grand Mufti and he was kind enough to show us around; it was that gentlemanly cleric who invited us to see the place “where Durrell wrote” (the Villa Cleobolus) and at a time when we’d not yet discovered LDs writings. When I re-read lines about plane trees, I well remember the old town (or perhaps I should write ‘city’): autumn leaves on the slopes overlooking Mandraki Harbour and all the boats in sunlight, and in the distance across the Aegean, the mountains in southern Turkey. Greece is a splendid country of many islands and the Dodecanese islands are very close to Turkey.
Here the Valley has been smoky for weeks due to hazard reduction burns being made by the National Parks and Wildlife Service (the fires are ignited by small incendiaries dropped from aircraft).
For much of July I encouraged the greening of Big Lawn, flood-gouged in places and otherwise well covered by slightly sandy, silty flood loam; high parts of the ‘lawn’, toward the bridge, were reclaimed and remnant lomandra clumps were planted there (these places were flood-damaged by rampant logs); removing flood debris from lower parts of the ‘home paddock’ near the house and keeping the harder wood for fuel; and much raking. I may have quite a bit more to write about raking: raking is an opportunity for learning, whatever else it may be. Despite the dry weather and the river continuing to fall considerably, the soils here are still damp: just below the surface of the flood debris seems as wet as it was when dumped by the floods although that has to be an exaggeration on my part.
More on Raking
August 14 2009. The last thing I do when letting down the blinds late each afternoon is to squint at the re-emerging Big Lawn and the effects of continuing to rake her free of smothering flood loam. Early in the morning, not long after sunrise, is a good time for raking.
Raking is an excellent example of Ordinary Work: work that is frequently repeated and doesn’t require higher degrees in the sciences. As I rake I realise the importance of rhythm. And, while raking, I start remembering—in images, my early raking history (my childhood memory bursts with clear images!). In the big back garden at 1129 Oxford Street in Victoria, BC, my father grew prize-winning dahlias; he’d been awarded many ribbons, blue and red, and a sheaf of certificates, as I recall. In the winter he rested bunches of dahlia tubers in coarse gravelly sand within a timbered area in the basement and at a distance from the heating furnace. In the late winter and early spring he dug over the rich peaty black and brown soil and then raked it. I was shown the dangers (code for idiocy) of leaving a rake lying flat on the ground: upward-facing tines and you would likely receive serious puncture wounds; and if rakes were stood upright against something stationary the tines absolutely had to be turned away from passing gardeners and garden admirers to avoid sudden skull fractures from rake handles. Although I was only four or five I heeded the advice (I’m always careful about leaving my rakes anywhere in the garden, even in old age). Dad used a light bamboo rake for leaves (there were no plastic rakes in the early Thirties) and heavier steel-tined rakes with long wooden handles to break up and flatten dug-over garden soils. I do the same.
As I was raking with my heavy rake this morning I remembered Dad’s demonstrations (of about 75 years ago) and began to appreciate, again, how meditative a practise raking may be. Potential raking persons may discover these tactics for themselves; or, you may benefit from my empirical experiments (!), necessary because I had to figure out the action components and because, as a small child, I was able to grasp only the strategic importance of not being rake-injured. Here are some principles of raking (and for all I know there may be encyclopaedias, compendiums and comprehensive lexicons, old and new, that will explain these arcane matters in huge detail); this little menu will save you from tedious researching and absolve me from writing the definitive Guide. Choosing a sufficiently long-handled rake is the first principle of general raking (a short handle requires much back bending and your spine will quickly telegraph it’s protests). Getting the raking rhythm right is the second requirement: it depends on one’s height, the lengths of one’s arms and the flexibility of both wrists. The third principle concerns the ability to walk steadily backwards, taking short steps, without tripping or falling over, while at the same time also raking methodically (if this sentence reads oddly, it’s because effective raking compels the gardener to relate what s-he sees ahead to what s-he remembers and imagines, in a magical way, of what remains innocently behind). Walking backwards requires one to work with markers in the distance. Markers—trees, other geographical features—will be seen with difficulty on hot days, particularly by gentlemen rakers, as the practitioner retreats uncertainly through the dust, squinting, sweat running into the eyes). Lady rakers adept at ballroom dancing will perhaps find the backward locomotion less taxing. The fourth principle (which is also an awareness requirement. is that you extend your magical powers a little further in order to sense or to intuitively discover the environment in which you’re learning the raking process: the time of day, relative warmth/coolness relative to geography and geomorphology; and wearing appropriately comfortable clothes in order to work steadily rather than in fits and starts. The fifth principle obliges you to identify what your psyche most urges you to explore in any particular raking session simply because the art of raking is such that we are enabled to both rake appropriately while simultaneously exploring some of the contents of the stream of consciousness. I’m blessedly surrounded by wonderful trees here; I otherwise would long since have constructed a Zen garden of sandy gravel where I’d tirelessly rake unending patterns with a heavy all-wood rake but, alas there are too many fallen leaves here for that. If you’re like me, you’ll be taking a look at the incoming imagery regarding your newest artistic endeavour—the current narrative unfolding while you’re writing it, the picture you may be planning to paint, or the notes that may represent the music you’re composing… Even shopping lists, the formulation of travel plans, priorities of books to be read, written correspondence to be drafted, and attending to sundry items requiring your choices/decisions (plus using your eyes within the landscape to prioritise weeding, mowing, planting out and clearing). I often work on current writing projects while raking. I do this by not reasoning (unless crazed and needing urgently to find a solution to a dilemma), but by mentally nudging toward a favourite character or a half-finished scene, or merely toying with the title of the narrative. (Sometimes new imagery is so entirely unexpected and surprising, or also contains raw dialogue, that it stops me in my tracks and, lost in reverie, I realise that I’m not entirely present in the raking department and feel obliged to go and sit in the shade there to write a few notes {yes, I always have a pen and paper in my pocket, always}).
Thus, the ordinary work needed for raking may enable us to better address aspects of our extraordinary works such as writing a novel.
My neighbour, Leif, recently lent me one of his McCleod Tools (sp?) to trial (used by fire-fighters). This tool is robustly made and heavy in the hands. There are large strong tines on one face and the remainder of the flat steel plate, when turned 180˚, is a sharpened blade. This relatively heavy rake-like tool is perfect for flattening hillocks and the deep wheel tracks of tractors but is also tiring to use. I recently acquired a supermarket hand trowel labelled a cultivator (‘antique brass plated carbon steel construction’). The checkout assistant recoiled when I placed it on the counter, for it looks like a weapon: picture an angled 3-pointed claw with sharpened end-points). It reminded me of a cumbersome long-handled implement with three big tines (seldom used in my family) that would have been similar in design but was so heavy as to require much operating strength. The small hand cultivator, however, is perfect if I think of it as a miniature one-handed rake: it enables the user to quickly reduce thick groundcovers and tangled weeds to manageable proportions.
Finally: raking is to be enjoyed. Perhaps I’ll organise some Raking Seminars or Camps…or design New Kinds of Rakes… There, that’s enough on raking today!
Memories Re-imaged (1)
In the northern autumn of 1937 and with the permission of my parents and Captain Shipton, it was my joy to accompany the bow lookout up and over the chained deck cargo of British Columbia lumber that filled the forward deck space between the Bencleugh’s bridge (and was stacked above filled holds of the same cargo) to the brass bell in the bows where we’d hold on to the bulwarks, grandly riding the 8,000-tons freighter through warm evenings off the coasts of Venezuela and north-eastern Brazil, the ship heading into the Atlantic bound for South Africa and Mozambique, the bow waves luminescent, the sky filled with stars.
Writings by guest writers are still much in my mind and as foreshadowed in the 709 Diary there are now TWO categories for nonfiction guest writings: (1) Place (I understand the Literature of Place to be a sub category of the genre, Nature Writing); and (2) Autobiography, Biography and Memoir). I’m also happy to receive short pieces (postcards, anecdotes) for inclusion in Diaries. My guests include Bruno Just (a Memoir), Dr Brenda Herzberg (a Place essay); and Petra Meer and Sharon Snir contribute postcards and an anecdotal piece.

© text Bruno Just 2009
Now and Then
Bruno Just

I look at video movies for their place in time, the fashions of their times, as they recall the fashions I wore, the movies I saw—in those times. They take me back to earlier ages, before I aged. Oh, what is the use of aging? Julie Christie says. I want to be young and happy—always. She hugs Dirk Bogarde. New loves, new and fresh days, and places, I write about. At present, it’s raining outside as it always rained and will always rain as long as this Earth has weather, until the Earth—it’s coming down in buckets, at Turramurra now. The heavy fssssss and drumming and a softer nasal breath of rain on the asphalt roadway diagonally below my study windows beyond the thick black trees. Then, the slapping sound of rain from gutters full of water. Now, the rain recedes and the sounds are softer. Outside, a car swishes past on zzzsssshshshshssss and oophoophoophooph sounds ebbing and flowing. A dark figure in an overcoat, it’s collar pulled up, hurries through the rain without an umbrella. Who is he? In my mind, my old Gestalt therapy teacher exhorts me to: Imagine! Then, the figure is James Joyce at Trieste hurrying for the vaporetto to Muggia across the gulf. The small steamer white and black is held to the mole by a rope hawser around its bollard. The plank with the iron and rope railing moves as the tiny steamer rolls from side to side in the swell. The passage will be exciting, he thinks, daringly exciting to meet her again. She’s young. The excitement sinks to his belly, is mixed with fear of possible failure and rejection. His brow knits in pessimism. He shakes it off looking up into the thin rain with a thrust of the chin. He looks down to step steadily; wobbles across the gangway and awkwardly steps onto the deck; goes striding toward the full cabin hazy with the smoke of cigarettes. The rope is withdrawn; the gangplank retrieved. The steamer toots and reverses out of and away from the mole. The loud dump! dump! of pistons can be heard clearly in the steam engine below. Clouds billow from the funnel. The steamer pitches and rolls; the surging of white-foamed water around the propellers and stern; a stop, then a surge forward, and the ship is on its way south over the marmoreal grey Adriatic Sea. Here, I leave that place implanted in my mind and return to my place, at Turramurra.
It’s sunny here once more. Holidays and long sleeps bless my life. I feel alive again. The windows are open in their light-brown varnished timber frames. Tiny scraps of white clouds sail across an azure sky. I’m on the floor above, a timber extension of a house built in the 70s. Two very spacious bedrooms, a small lounge room, a little kitchen and an enormous blue-tiled bathroom are my home. The second bedroom looks like a boardroom but is my timber-panelled study and my sanctuary. It houses my companions, 1,500 books in five large bookcases and one small in order of subject, namely, the transpersonal, psychology, philosophy, history, literature, military, martial arts, reference and journals. Some might regard this as obsessive; I think of it as orderly. Similarly, my collection of 2,000 Napoleonic Wars period 25-mm miniature metal figures painted in their historical uniform colours is boxed and labelled by regiment and battalion and battery. (Even now, I have an image in memory of almost each book and each figure I own.) The quotidian sun comes in through the north window, as the east window is shaded somewhat by tall trees. I face north at my computer on a long table fixed to the wall under the window. There is another desk laden with papers, books and other things under the east window. An oval cream coffee table squats in the middle of the white-carpeted room. A wooden box containing a fine Stanton chess set sits on the glass top of the coffee table. My study recalls, in feel not appearance, my paternal grandfather’s spare bedroom on the first floor, in Via Giuseppe Verdi, Muggia.
Then and there, I was an elementary school child on summer holidays. It was a sunny room with a single bed, a bureau near the window, a chair and a chest of drawers. I was quiet there; would play with paper cut outs of soldiers, draw and colour-in armies of tiny figures engaging in battle or ships of the Italian Navy in combat with the Royal Navy. The sounds of infrequent passing voices below were cheery and they receded comfortingly; the cicadas would sing us into postprandial sleep. Summer siesta was normal, then. Another reminder of Muggia is the grey-cream sidewall of the huge house next door—Turramurra is a high middle-class suburb. It recalls the view from the spare bedroom in which I slept and he used as a studio in my late father’s council flat, when I visited him on holidays—or when I was in one of my mad-angry breaks from the boredom and repetition of a mechanical life inauthentically lived.
Now, birds calling, chirping; planks being dropped with a flat clanging at house extensions, nearby; workmen’s voices in their exertions; cars whooshing past smoothly, its drivers, I imagine, tensely. The birds here do not make the unbearably beautiful songs of those in Muggia. Often, their chirping is mundane, everyday, ordinaire—but acceptable. Occasionally, a rare one makes fine fluted calls; another rarity, ringing bell sounds; occasionally, the screech of white galahs annoys the ears, belying their avian beauty; or their cousins, colourful rosellas, stop to peck at bread crumbs thrown from my covered upper deck onto the roof of the patio. The midday, July, heat is on my jumper: in mid-winter, already, comes the intimation of warmer weather a month or two hence. Global warming helps to sound the clarion call of a hot summer more loudly. This suburb is unique for being the highest and the coldest place in this city. I am not looking forward to a summer as hot as the winter has been cold. Now, I am aware of falling into a negative flow of the imagination, like a fisherman losing his footing and slipping off the rocks into the sea.
At Muggia in a July day—and the hills roll down to the road by the water’s edge and end in huge boulders washed gunmetal grey by the lapping green-grey-blue waters. A wide-bordered white cement footpath is the place for bathers to lie on their towels and sunbake. With your back to the sea, you look across the road to the hill upon which the medieval castle-keep made of stone stands sharply against the risen sun, the hillside green with foliage. The road curves south toward Slovenia on your right. To the left, it curves past the grey oblong block of a building that used to, in the ’50s, house the Lega Nazionale, reaches a marina and travels under a Venetian arch into the township proper giving immediately onto a mandracchio the ancient inner harbour. Eyes front and the hole that you see before you is the road tunnel in the hill originating from near where my father used to live, at Salita Ubaldini. I turn to look and see the girls and women lying on their towels; they are feminine, velvet-skinned and attractive. I look out to sea so as not to make a nuisance of myself by looking at bodies too obviously. I’m in my Speedos and sandals. Not those sandals worn by alternative life-stylers from Byron Bay, but polished leather ones bought in a Bally store in Vienna. As much open shoes as sandals, really. I overhear one of two girls saying to her companion in Triestine (that is, Venetian) dialect:

‘Te sa, quel’ la el xe Tedesco’ (‘You know, that one there is German’). The other comments:
‘Éh, se vedi, el gá i sandali’ (‘Hey, you can see: he has sandals’).

I am bemused but too taciturn to say anything denoting that I have understood them and thus having to reveal myself to them. The old teacher in my mind asks: Why? Revealing might mean inadvertently exposing my light lust for them and be rejected as too old to be a successful suitor. I do not approach. Lightly perplexed by this, I conclude to myself that, often, I travel wrapped as if in a cocoon from which it is not easy to emerge into acceptable social intercourse. I do not travel light. (I make a mental note to experiment with lightness.)
The light is different at the two places. Muggia’s light is bright, to see colours by. The light at Turramurra is a golden-yellow-brown in my study and strong enough to fade colours outside. The trees in the front yard are grey-black and green. Their branches nod in the light breeze, old and happy.
About the author: Bruno Just is an Italo-Australian born at Muggia (Trieste) a month before VE-Day. He immigrated with his family a few months before Trieste and Muggia were returned to Italy after Allied occupation, in 1954. He is a former high-school teacher of English and History, a school-psychologist and Gestalt therapist, currently living in Sydney. (Note: Muggia is pronounced as in Mooja).
[I well remember the crowds in the railway station at Trieste on that celebratory day in 1954: Pam and I were on our way by train to Ljubljana in Slovenia (then a northerly part of Yugoslavia) and Greece was our ultimate destination. DD].

© text Brenda Herzberg 2009

Valley of the Ghosts

Brenda Herzberg

Does the name "Valley of the Ghosts" perhaps suggest an eerie rock- strewn gully permanently in shadow between looming threatening mountains where the wind is raw even in summer? Would such a place be haunted by noises of tortured shrieking spirits and the crashing of tumbling rocks?
In Hebrew, emek is a valley and refaim are ghosts. "Valley of the Ghosts" is the literal English translation of the phrase "Emek Refaim" which appears in several books of the Old Testament and refers to a valley on the borders of ancient Israel, the location of one of the battles with the Philistines. The Refaim or Rephaim were a race of giants said to reside in Israel and related to the equally enigmatic Nephillim. These ancient myths refer the peoples living in the area prior to the conquest by the Israelites, which took place around 1200 BCE.
Far from being the haunt of chain rattling colossi, Emek Refaim is a tree- lined city street. It begins at the Jerusalem railway station, inaugurated in 1892. The facade is a semi-baroque gabled style not unlike that of a Florentine Church. The Ottomans who were teetering on the brink of losing their extensive and long lasting domination of this part of the world sold the concession for building the railway to the French. Once bustling with religious travelers to the Holy City from various parts of Europe, it is now derelict. Plans exist at City Hall to transform the weed-strewn tracks to part of a green belt for the city with walking and cycling paths. The street ends about a mile to the south, at a bustling noisy road junction. Earthly Jerusalem, in contrast to its heavenly counterpart, appears on maps, in guidebooks and even on Google Earth. Emek Refaim is in South West Jerusalem not far from the Old City.
This is Jerusalem's German Colony and was founded as a district by German Templers who came to Palestine from Southern Germany in the 1870s. They are not to be confused the Knights Templar, an ancient order of protectors of the Crusades, founded in the 12th Century and linked with glory and butchery. The Wikipedia tells us that:
"The Templers were Christians who broke away from the Protestant church and encouraged their members to settle in the Holy Land to prepare for Messianic salvation. They built their homes…using local materials such as Jerusalem stone instead of wood and bricks. …The colonists engaged in agriculture and traditional trades such as carpentry and blacksmithing. Their homes ran along two parallel streets that would become Emek Refaim and Bethlehem Road. The British Mandatory government deported the German Templers during World War II. As Germans, they were considered enemy citizens, all the more so because they made no effort to disguise their Nazi sympathies. Some of them resettled in Australia."
These industrious émigrés from chilly Europe built Middle Eastern variants of "home and hearth". These are one or two storey buildings of rough hewn stone, with arched or rectangular windows and wooden shutters. One of these sturdy symmetrical homes has a biblical quotation carved into the lintel above the heavy green painted front door. The houses are separated from the street by stonewalls and these days the front yards hint at the occupants. Some yards are well tended with native flowering shrubs and water saving gravel; others have abandoned old prams and chairs among the weeds or a few straggly geraniums growing in rusting cans.
Shaded by the tall cypress trees you may stroll along the street starting at the Templer Community Hall. It is a solidly built utilitarian 19th century structure currently threatened with demolition by profit hungry developers who dismiss the values of neighbourhood character and history.
Soon you will pass an intriguing small shady courtyard where worn stone steps lead down to a semi-basement with a well-stocked toyshop, and up to a dressmaker's studio. Further along is an old water pump, no longer functioning, that once served the homes in the laneway behind.
The street noise may disturb you. Israelis drive with one foot on the accelerator and one hand on the horn. Buses rumble past. Young motorcyclists accelerate noisily if there is a gap in the traffic.
You may be impressed by cafés and tempted by ice-cream parlours. The dress shops are trendy. Should you want to buy jewelry, there's plenty of choice. Loose beads and friendly help are available in Harouzim where flyers about women's rights and alternative theatre productions lie on the counter. Further along there are several small shops where the work of talented local designers and silversmiths is displayed. There's a well-stocked shop specializing in health foods and natural products with a wide variety of beans, grains, oils, tofu, skin-care products and the smell of worthy cleanliness.
As a visitor you might want to glimpse local life. Call into the post office, crowded whatever time of day you arrive. The line snakes round and as you enter, you must establish your place by asking clearly in any language you want—Hebrew, Arabic, Russian, English, French, Yiddish or Amharic—who is the last in line, and then you point clearly to yourself and state that you are next. Once this ritual is out of the way, if you choose and there's space, you can sit and wait on the bench and return to read a few pages of the novel you had thoughtfully packed in your bag until it is nearly your turn to be served. Or you can turn to the person next to you in line and begin a conversation about anything you want, their land of birth, life in Australia, the book you are currently reading, their children's school or the dreadful political situation.
Gidi's hardware shop is across the street from the post office and plastic children's chairs, ironing boards, boxes of kitchen utensils, brooms, mops and buckets all spill out on to the pavement. You will be lucky to be the only customer. An elderly man might be debating the comparative merits of different kinds of mouse traps or a young woman, her head covered, showing her adherence to Jewish orthodox practice, with a stroller and several small children might be getting a set of keys cut.
The smell of roast lamb or hamburger has been occasionally wafting your way and you're ready for refreshment. If you want a quick local snack, try a felafel or a shwarma from the small spotless but simple place opposite the Templer cemetery with its Formica top tables. (The cemetery is open on Friday mornings and behind the high stonewalls, the headstones tell their version of the story of the German Colony). The lamb from the vendor’s skewer is succulent and his salads are fresh and lightly spiced. Or perhaps for the moment, you would prefer coffee in the courtyard at Caffit or at one of the tables outside Café Hillel, relaxing with the newspaper or engaging in some people spotting? The names of these cafés may be faintly familiar since they reached international headlines when they were targets of suicide bombers. Ah, of course, that's why there are security guards.
Now you are revived, look more closely at the architecture. Interspersed with the Templer houses are gracious Levantine buildings rising straight from the pavement, three or four stories high with elegant Arab windows tapering to points at the top, balconies where women could sit mostly hidden from the street life below, and there is carved Arabic calligraphy on doorposts. The floors are tiled with interweaving designs in various reds, browns and greens, and the walls are thick. Stone staircases, now uneven lead to apartments that were never there in the original plans, kitchens and bathrooms crushed into corners and plumbing snaking along walls. Other buildings are art deco style, from the 1920s and 30s, cubic and evoking the new modernism of that time. Jews were arriving from Europe building their homes and setting up the institutions that were to become the State of Israel once the British gave up their mandatory powers.
The architectural styles spanning a hundred and fifty years reflect the diversity of residents over the decades. Today as you stroll along at a gentle pace you will notice the modestly dressed, head covered Orthodox Jews, a few nuns, scantily clad teenage girls, noisy gesticulating swarthy young men who always seem to be arguing, a keffiya-wearing Arab with his prayer beads, beautiful sloe eyed Arab girls with headscarves covering any stray hairs, slender handsome Ethiopians, and American tourists with cameras, guidebooks and loud voices.
You may even meet me: a tall woman in sunglasses wearing a T-shirt and pants and carrying my shopping bag for this is my local village. I may be on my way to meet some friends for a late breakfast after a few errands, such as an appointment at the clinic, a tedious wait at the post office or collecting my shoes from the Russian shoe repairer in his small booth.
Ghosts of past residents still float above the heads of tourists and the local residents. If you listen carefully, when the traffic falls silent for a few seconds, you may hear them whisper of their yearnings, of their hardships, their satisfactions and their joys.
I enjoy the way history permeates this sophisticated yet mundane street. I hope you do too.
About the author: Brenda Herzberg lives mostly in Jerusalem and has done so for over twenty years, with a four-years break in Australia. She also spends time on a kibbutz in the desert near Eilat, and with her family who live around the world. She is a retired psychiatrist, who grew up in England, brought her children up in Australia, and spent a year in the USA. She enjoys reading, writing, music, travel, her children and grandchildren and struggling to do a bit for the never-ending conflict in the Middle East.

A Tokyo Postcard
‘… Here I am in Tokyo! Nearly all the signs are in Japanese but I ventured out from my hotel today after a long support session from the kind lady at reception. A friend suggested I go to Ginza but he doesn’t know me (Sydney’s George Street is often more than I can handle) and as I am alone and cannot read signs I decided to venture somewhere quieter. After standing at the ticket machine for 15 minutes wondering how to buy a ticket in Japanese the train guard came over to investigate the hold-up. ‘Please, I want to go to Harajuku.’ And 160 yen later I was walking to platform 3 and heading goodness knows where. If Harajuku was quiet then Ginza must be worse than Mumbai. Anyway, I walked along the road counting the streets and wishing I’d brought breadcrumbs to lay a trail when I saw a sign I recognized: Massage and the picture showed a foot so I knew I was fairly safe. It was wonderful. I had reflexology for an hour and a shoulder massage for 20 minutes. By then I decided I'd had enough for the day and was on my way back when I realized I was hungry. I must have chosen the only café/restaurant in Japan that doesn’t have chopsticks! So, a bowl of rice, egg and salad later I found the train station, bought the ticket like a pro and here I am sipping on a Remy Martin that I bought duty free in Sydney and feeling quite pleased. Tomorrow I teach 15 women; none of them speak English. Don’t ask me how I’m going to do this. I can hear Spirit splitting its side with laughter…
Love Sharon.’

© text Sharon Snir

The Japanese Workshop

Sharon Snir

My dear friend and esteemed colleague, Wataru, picked me up at 7.15 am to drive to the OVTA building (the Overseas Vocational Training Association). Together we carried all the equipment I had brought from Sydney up to the 12th floor. The room was set up in classroom style but Wataru assured me we could move all the chairs and tables around. He left me to set up and went to complete some administration.
I was feeling a little out of my comfort zone when suddenly a white-haired Japanese woman walked into the room and screamed. She ran over to me, grabbed both my hands and welcomed me over and over again. Her smile touched both sides of the room. Her hands held mine in joyful warmth that took me completely by surprise. Where was the reserved, slightly shy Japanese student I was expecting? Here was a bundle of excitement and child-like anticipation. I found myself bowing in greeting. How lovely to meet you, bow. Yes I am excited to meet you, too, bow. Thank you, my trip was excellent, bow. Thank you, thank you, bow, bow, bow.
Then another woman arrived and another, and the same process of welcoming and smiling and bowing repeated itself. When Wataru returned the students showed him tremendous respect and bowed deeply.
In all my workshops I provide chocolate treats for the students. I was told, many years ago, that spiritual work can be tiring and that chocolate contains minerals that boosts the system and replenishes the soul. I believe it completely. I had brought a couple of packets of Allen’s Snakes from Australia for myself and put them out on the table too. In the first choco break one woman tried a snake and yummed in delight. Before I knew it, twelve participants also wanted to try a snake. I showed them how the children in Australia stretch them as long as they can without breaking them and suddenly there was an informal competition to see who could stretch it the longest; so much laughter, so much fun.
The people in Japan have many qualities but their enthusiasm and willingness to try something new touched me deeply. The two days workshop was a wonderful experience for me and from the generous comments I heard, it was also a great experience for the students.
Will I return? I hope so. And if I do return I know I will be first on the plane, probably grabbing the hands of the Japanese flight attendant and telling her how excited I am to be returning to her beautiful country. And I will bow for that is the way it is in Japan.
About the author: Sharon Snir began her professional life as an early childhood educator. After her five children were born she returned to study and six years later began working in the field of clinical psychotherapy. In 2007 she published her first book, The 12 Levels of Being, a system of energy that explores the evolution of consciousness through a unique hierarchical approach. Sharon’s latest book Looking for Lionel, will be published by Allen & Unwin in March 2010.
A Yarra River Postcard
‘… I wanted to tell you about the antics of a couple of ducks I was fortunate to spy the other day... I was by the river, a favorite spot, where it is wide and where someone (a long time ago) had piled round stones to slow the flow a little, and so there I was, watching the calm water race over the handmade weir and it was then that I saw a duck being carried along with the flow downriver, over the small weir and then through the eddies thereafter. It was bobbing in a very wooden way, and quacking! Then there came another duck behind the first, quacking, bobbing, running the rapids, like a pro kayaker! I laughed at the sight of them; they can do this everyday, how good it that. Then I ambled further up the river...two ducks flew overhead, and yes! They were going to do it all again, quacking together and riding the rapids for fun, I'm smiling again now just thinking about the two of them...
From your sailor friend, Petra.’
About the author: Petra Meer is a Visual Artist who recently spent three years living on a yacht called ‘Zydico’ with her family, sailing up the east coast of Australia. She is presently studying in Victoria and living by the Yarra River in the mountains outside Melbourne (far from the sea and longing for Her often).

Fabled Anecdote (1)
© text Don Diespecker 2009

Aspects of Flying

Don Diespecker

The [midge] larvae are aquatic and the adults may commonly be seen dancing in swarms about sunset.
The Modern World Encyclopaedia (1935)

The old gardener (on a 5-minutes break) sits sleepily watching the river in afternoon sunlight. Nearby, two veteran water dragons pause to watch the old gardener in the shared garden.
‘I say, old man?’ says Darius.
‘Yes, old boy?’ answers Dinny.
‘I say, Dinny d’you think humans can fly yet; I mean really fly?’
‘Oh, I don’t know about that, Darius, old boy, not with any certainty—although we know they have something to do with those gigantic fixed wing things up in the sky. I doubt the old human gardener over there can fly: he’s barely conscious, I think.’
‘Ah, yes, those things up there: their shadows race over the landscape faster than ospreys can fly. Quite unnerving. The higher they fly the better. They probably hold captive humans.’
‘M’nn, good point, Dar; but why would they do that? Might they be eating the humans in flight?’
‘Good grief! I’ve never thought about such a possibility until now! That could be the explanation.’ Anyway, I doubt they do really fly because we see no wings on them—even when they shed their artificial skins to swim. Real flyers like us, Din, show our wings to the World at all times.’
‘Of course we do, old chap. I have seen the humans do what they call flying. I sometimes perch near the old gardener human’s head when he reads so I use my Reading-Over-The-Shoulder (ROTS) ability when he reads and also when he studies the TV machine and I’ve seen humans attach themselves to wing-like artificial skins, strapping themselves to these materials—‘
‘Oh, oh, yes of course: that, old Din, is the hang glider, invented by Otto Lilienthal in 1890 and thanks for jogging my memory.’
‘Not at all, it’s a pleasure. Yesterday arvo while I was sitting on the old gardener’s boot, the better to spot lunch, I started thinking about the lawn and moss forests, you know?’
‘As one does, Din, old horse. Yes indeed. But what was going on, really?’
‘I suddenly remembered old Leonardo da Vinci, the Italian human I learned about from my own ROTS observations with our human gardener.’
‘Oh yes, old Leonardo; it’s all coming back to me now. He invented a flying machine so that humans can control their pretend flying by moving strap-on skin wing things.’
‘Exactly, yes, moving himself while attached to the machine makes the machine move so that they both are flying—well, sort of. See?’
‘Oh! Yes, absolutely. I see what you mean, now. Anyway, what was it about the lawn and moss forests?’
‘Well, it was rather surprising, but I realised that the forests of grass and moss look both green and gold at the same time—when I was looking down, I mean, from above.’
‘Aha! Yes, I see what you’re saying, old bean. Yet when we’re there, down in the grass forests and we look about us, look around I mean, we see only green. Dashed odd, what?’
‘Indeed. And when I consider the view from the boot I sometimes spot our finest fly food blackly, black against green and gold, you know?’
‘Aha! The juicy plump stinger flies, of course yes.’
‘So when I see a dark stinger so clearly and flex the muscles for a flying leap, what happens to the green and gold, because I see only black it seems?
‘Oh, perhaps colours disappear temporarily, you know, and returns when you’ve caught your dinner?’
‘I’m very doubtful about that, very doubtful indeed. I know, let’s ask some neutral creature. ‘I say! Little midge hovering over the birdbath! Listen up!’
‘You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me?’ the tiny midge squeaks at Dinny.
‘Oh, come on, midge, I’m Dinny and this is Darius. We’re not here to eat you; we simply want your scientific advice, don’t we Darius?’
‘Absolutely, yes—I say, who’s that, just arrived and now sitting next to you, little midge?’
‘This is my sister, the Hon Morgana.’
Morgana prettily flutters her tiny wings.
‘Delighted, Ma’am, a great pleasure,’ the Water Dragons say almost in unison.
The first miniscule midge gives a barely perceptible sigh. ‘Do you mean concerning myself as your potential dinner or as Sir Gawain of Midgeworld?’
‘No, and Yes, it’s more or less a Midgeworld question.’
‘Yes, rather,’ murmurs Darius, ‘and of course, it’s also a question that affects all of us here at Earthrise.’
‘Whatever your question may be,’ says the tiny Sir Gawain primly, ‘we do not recognise the human person’s claim to call this place Earthrise, whatever that may mean, because here it’s jolly well Midgeworld, so there. Is that not so, Sis?’
‘It is so, my Lord,’ Morgana squeaks faintly from the edge of the birdbath as if trying to stifle a tiny laugh. The water dragons consider it strange that Morgana would address her brother as ‘my Lord,’ but they are far too well mannered to say so.
‘Oh, fiddle-faddle Sir Gawain. What’s in a name?’ Dinny rasps.
‘A very great deal, sir, a very great deal.’
‘Very well then; have it your way,’ Dinny mutters. ‘Now then, little Sir Gawain Midge: if I might ask you my question, when you fly over the green grass forests and the green and gold moss forests, here, what colours do you see, pray?’
‘Why, I see green grass below and green and gold moss below, of course; even humans know that. However, when I fly within and through the inside of the grass forests which from above are green, I see mostly green tempered by flashes of gold, naturally.’
‘How so?’ Darius and Dinny urge simultaneously.
Sir Gawain sighs more audibly. ‘The gold-flecked mosses of Midgeworld cling most powerfully to the Earth and are very dense; to fly through dense moss is to risk wing damage or even a fatal crash. We’re Greenies; grass is our ally and here the grass forests rule; mosses are occasional or partial; thus, we catch golden glimpses of moss, you see, against a sea of varied-hued greens. May I ask why you ask?’
‘It’s a matter of seeing what’s what,’ Darius explains. ‘One needs a little altitude to spot the big stingers against Earthrise’s Grasses, sorry, Midgeworld’s Grasses, even in morning sunlight.’
‘Yet you seem to manage satisfactorily,’ Sir Gawain pointedly adds.
‘Well, yes, but only because we’re so jolly quick, you know,’ Dinny tells Sir Gawain. ‘And of course we wonder how you little fellows are able to see the world as well as you do.’
Sir Gawain and the Hon Morgana begin to recite to the dragons: ‘Small is good and tiny is best; the teeniest midge has the sharpest edge. Swatting at us wafts us away; thus we fly and feed another day,’ and both midges bob up and down laughing in a tinkling manner.
‘That’s as may be,’ says Dinny crossly, ‘but it doesn’t quite explain how or why you see so well, does it?’
‘Why, certainly, sir, it does,’ says Morgana. ‘I’ll fly close to your eye and you may swish your elegant claws at me: yes, like that! I tumble every which way freely in air and my eyes see absolutely everywhere; and now I’m whispering in your ear while scanning likely images over there.’
‘She’s correct, old boy,’ Says Darius in surprise. ‘They actually use the swatting and swishing energies of others and have only to keep their eyes open. Well done, midges, well done!’
And Sir Gawain and Morgana launch into a late afternoon thermal rising from the warm lawn, tumbling and then gliding in the most exuberant manner toward the old gardener.
The dragons, red-hued on the flanks turned to the setting sun, smile at the midges.
‘Do you know, Dinny, old chap, we learn something new almost every day? The midges derive and utilise whirling and tumbling energies from swishing and swatting humans. Those midge-inspired energies not only move the air through the World, that air is also Gaia’s breathing and that’s what drives the weather!’
‘An excellent deduction, Darius, and I’m sure that makes sense to all of Life, even to humans.’
‘What’s more, old boy, tumbling and whirling envisions, inspires and satisfies our midge colleagues—if not all the Diptera! And didn’t we once fly when we were dinosaurs?’
‘We surely did, Darius, old boy. –I say! The midges have begun their swarm dancing and while the old gardener dozes, why don’t we dash and dart a bit, the way we do in the river? Perhaps flying will return to us; it’s probably like riding a bicycle, you know: impossible to forget, completely.’
As the two little dragons/dinosaurs race about, tumbling, leaping, rolling and diving, they pass by the old gardener whose shoulders are shaking.
‘Do you see how the old gardener is breathing, Dinny?’
‘Rhythmically do you mean?’
‘That, too; he breathes in short, shaking gusts.’
‘Rather like laughter?’
‘That also, Din; that also.’

Summing Up. Most of August has been unusually dry and strangely warm. The day’s work usually starts with some raking or some wrist wrenching splitting of bloodwood rounds and that’s followed by the first of many inquisitive inspections of new growth, new leaves, and new flowers. The Dogs Garden wall rises slowly: I’ve watched from a distance to see brush turkeys saunter into that burgeoning garden where they tread warily on the profusion of chicken wire protecting the plants—then disdainfully saunter away after completing a careful scratch or two (yet failing to complete more than a semicircle of resentful strutting between the inside of the wall and the plants). A Council road crew works carefully on a new Left Bank approach to the bridge; the excavation now contains reinforcement steel and formwork. Clouds of fine dust rise along the road and drift through the garden and throughout the house. Despite a cold change, swimming has started. At night I hear possums quarrelling and some longer-legged creature is delicately cropping the young bleeding heart seedlings (I suspect an errant deer or two). The jacarandas are bronzing. In Cedar Grove the scarlet azaleas are blooming and the decorative pear tree is in blossom. On the lawn the older citrus trees show some blossom (The best of these is the calamondin or cumquat which still looks good after nearly 25 years of flowering and fruiting. Big Lawn continues it’s greening; I rake; I chip weeds; I admire the changes. When I tottered over to see the new bridge approach works I recognised some of the old cemented (or concreted) stones, broken now and removed, that once were parts of the approach base, the mortar quite white; and that reminded me of the 2001 Big Flood when neighbour Enrico and I rebuilt the washed-out approach with logs and stones (on top of the mortared spoil just noted) so that the bridge could re-open. The first of the small orchids on the riverside trees are flowering today and earlier (7 am on the 29th) I watched a fishing eagle watching a cormorant working the pool in front of the house (Clarrie, possibly); the osprey circled above, restlessly. Everything changes. And we’re rushing toward September with two thirds of the year more or less completed.

A Little Haiku

(Natsu kawa ya hashi aredo uma mizu wo yuku)

The summer river:
There is a bridge,
But the horse goes through the water. (by Shiki)

(RH Blyth. Haiku (Vol 3): Summer-Autumn. Tokyo: Hokuseido Press, 1950).

This Diary is #21 in the New Series (previously 1107, 108, 208, 308, 408, 508, 608, 708, 808, 908, 1008, 1108, 1208, 109, 209, 309, 409, 509, 609, 709; this is 809) DDD August 28 2009.