Walking the paths nearly not-taken

Tags

creek, Jemisons Headland, kangaroos, lake, mushrooms, reflections

Tides were wrong for beach walking today, and the 6 am sky was luminous, so I headed along the path behind the dunes onto the headland. I needed to stretch my legs, particularly my left knee, after a weekend bum-shifting under sail.

The creek at the south end of Jemisons was brimming, although not open, and it harvested the pink sunrise clouds. The headland path, churned up by car wheels, was green and puddly. Looking down over lake and ocean to Gulaga, two tracks gave me the kind of option that always leaves me wondering “what if …?” I didn't really hesitate and agonise, but when I came across a clump of fresh white mushrooms, as big as breakfast plates, I thought idly “Aha! If … , then …”. And the next faint thought was, of course, “But what would I have stumbled across if I'd chosen the other option?”

Pelicans, shags and egrets congregated where the meeting of sea and lake offered a feast. The lake encroached on land, disappearing the place where I used to sit and read. Each path I chose offered up mushrooms. The creek below Borang gleamed in the sun. Two kangaroos observed my approach and then splashed into the bush through deep puddles by the track, leaving a trail of bubbles. My walk ended with a prone and otherwise pristine white mushroom.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Nature fights back

Tags

bark shedding, cedar, raking

I feel guilt as I scarify bush hillsides, raking up leaf litter as a somewhat puny defence against raging fires and turning deep mulch into barren dirt. I feel guilt as I ring the tree lopper to remove the red cedar at my front door because it's lifting the paving and create an emptiness in the sky.

However, my neat leaf piles on the hillside above the house have been scattered by two young male lyrebirds, who have rearranged the piles to their liking as they practise their strutting and singing. The bare earth under the girthy spotted gums down towards the old tent site and laundry is richly carpeted with substantial shreds of bark in red, orange, deep buff, grey, rust, green and pink. The remains of the cedar trunk is shooting with the speed of Jack's bean stalk, more than a metre in two weeks.

Nature won't let me get away with my interference in her world.

 

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In praise of fingers

Tags

body parts, fingers, gratitude

 

I've lived with my fingers for nearly seventy years, and it's only just occurred to me to value the work they do. I've written about legs, hands, breasts, teeth and brain, but I've never even thought about the very particular contribution of my ten digits. They can't be quite indispensable because I've known two men who have lived brilliant lives without the use of fingers. I'm a lesser mortal, and I can't imagine life without all the things they can do.

In the kitchen, I'd be lost without the ability of my fingers to chop spring onions, chilli and ginger for the curry or dates and apricots for the muesli; to grip the scrubber to remove stuck-on food from the frypan; to wrest lids from bottles of jam and sauce; to open cans of tomatoes or corn or beetroot; to peel oranges or mandarins or apples.

In my infrequent forays into the garden, I need those digits to prune callistemon, to persuade the lawn mower to start, to pick my precious lemons from their tree, to continue the murder of my red cedar by slitting its base with a tomahawk and painting on poison, to pull up the proliferating baby palms and to activate the sprayer that squirts pyrethrum for the eradication of ticks.

My fingers are my accomplices as I pursue my obsessions. They tap the keyboard of my iPad and control the stylus as I churn out blogs, edit photos, catch up with the lives of my children on Facebook, flick between apps and wilf on the net. They click the camera button to capture orchids, sea foam, pythons, bark, rock face and grandtwins. They pull the wool over the needle as I battle to master the complicated pattern of my son's jumper, currently growing at the rate of 6 inches a year. They cover the holes on my recorder as I practise Bach and Mozart and struggle to comprehend the vagaries of syncopation.

As I move around the supermarket, my fingers pick up items so I can scrutinise purpose and contents, and assess the quality of fruit and vegetables. They tilt tins or boxes on high shelves so I can get a grip on them to toss into my trolley. At the checkout, they unbutton my Warsaw bags and help me to shake them open, and they allow me to pick through the small change and relieve myself of the weight of 50c pieces and $2 coins. (A palm suffices in Poland, because I hold out my handful of drobna for someone else to sift through.) If I'm shopping for material, my fingers squeeze and assess texture and weight.

My fingers have served me well with my grandtwins. They have manipulated the stroppy fastenings of the safety belts in the pram as I reload two tired grizzly kidlets after a few hours playing on the rug in the park. They have led wondering eyes upwards as I perform the actions accompanying my less than wonderful rendition of “Twinkle twinkle little star”. They have enabled me to change nappies on wriggling bottoms and finesse the pulling of jumpsuits over reluctant heads. They have provided the variation to the drum-beat of my palms as I pursue the rhythmic education of two sets of ears. They have allowed me to extract blades of grass and floor fluff and other tiny discoveries from exploring mouths. It's my fingers that allow me to feel that beautiful softness of baby skin, and to gently ruffle their fine hair.

Subtract from my life all the things my fingers enable me to do, and I am lost.

 

 

 

 

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Returning

Tags

home, jet lag

I am back at Potato Point, at my address, in my house, pleased by ocean and bush. But I am also feeling quite unanchored. My shadow self is here, its shape imprinted on the rock face at Jemison's beach. But just under the surface of my skin is an uncertain being who has lost the firm shaping granted by Warsaw and twins. I feel slightly bewildered by my life here and unable to feel steady in it.

 

I decided to hit the ground running when I returned this time, and thought I had managed it. I should've been warned when I headed off confidently for a blood test, and realised when I was sitting in the waiting room holding my large square Number 1, that I had failed to fast. I continued to delude myself by action: organising the framing of a print; having my eyes checked and choosing new frames; catching up with friends. Then, five days after I landed, I found myself asleep in the chair at the living room table at 9 am, with no idea of time, place or identity. I continued delusory action: shopping, taking myself off for a Chinese meal, dealing with a few business matters. By 2 pm I was back in bed in deep intermittent dozing, until 7 am the next morning. By lunch time I was prone and asleep again.

 

So how do I re-grasp my life here? It needs a revamp, but it's a bit like a watermelon seed, a dragonfly, lightning. It slips out of reach whenever I get close to thinking “Aha! That's what my life looks like!” I place intentions firmly on my calendar – lots of them – and it looks like a life, but there's no centre. I'm not even holding onto the sense of loss because I won't see my 9 month old grand kidlets until they are 13 months old.

 

I don't seem to be able to find a calm place where I can draw in the experience in front of me. My mind skitters and everything that happens is a palimpsest. The parklands of Powisłe superimpose themselves on the tangled grass, casuarinas and spotted gums on the Potato Point road, and the here-skies merge into those of Warsaw. The pinkness of Australian banknotes startles, and when I pick up a book and find it is in English I am unreasonably surprised.

 

I am bewildered, disconnected, outside myself, waiting for my Warsaw self to recede and my Potato Point self to return.

 

 

 

 

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