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).
Blogsite: www.theoldestako.wordpress.com
*
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.
