Storybook life in words and pictures

Memory.  The farrier was here today and we gasbagged as usual.  One thing about talking with the farrier is the ease with which we move from solving the world's problems to horse gossip to humour and back again.  The conversations never get too personal but after years of chatting we know each other well enough to be comfortable.   We were talking today about memory.  Or I was.  I'd read this article on Huffington Post (and have just spent 15 minutes trying to find it again to reference here, without success) about a 92 year old woman, a refugee from Nazi Germany, a dancer, yogini, who lives up three flights of stairs, still cooks for her family, has a personal trainer and tangos every week but who, to her mortification, briefly forgot the name of her daughter.  So now she practices, like she does her dance routines, a memory game.  She chooses 10 random words and memorizes them.  The trick is to remember them the next day. 

Sounds easy, huh?  Uh huh.  It's not.  I started with five words.  Havana, verily, car yard, have forgotten the other two.  That was the first day.  The second day, ten words, which I remembered for that day but couldn't recall the next.  The following day better and the day after better.  Yesterday I remembered the ten words for that day AND the ten words from the day before.

But I can feel my brain creaking with the strain.  Thought learning a language would be enough but obviously it's not.  I've always been poor with memory.  Years ago when I was going through a near destitute period I didn't have enough money for the laundromat so I'd wash the sheets in the bathtub of my rental house.  I'd walk up and down the tub while I tried to memorize some of John Donne's poems.  Unsuccessfully.  I couldn't retain the words.  Like smoke on the wind, gone with the first distraction. 

So now there's another to do on my to do list.  Growing older is inevitable but if I'm going to grow old in a way that suits me I'll have to work at it.  No coasting allowed.  In some ways being alive is harder now than it ever was.  Perhaps because I'm aware of  how much is at stake.  I see how easily health and mental acuity can slip away.  How quickly people go from hale and hearty to the rest home.   I'm not going there.  Ever.  Made up my mind.  Will die at home or quickly in hospital after falling off my horse or some such thing.  No going slowly and meekly into that good night.

So part of my daily walk is devoted to memorizing ten random words.  There is a pleasant side effect to this.  The words themselves.  The last five words from yesterday were:  yellow muffin pulls analogy ... darn, I've forgotten the last word.  Typical.  No matter.  What is important are the words.  Because I'm concentrating so deeply on the words, I hear and see them at the same time, they assume an importance in themselves and in relationship to the words next to them.  Like really bad poetry. 

And I miss words.  I miss the companionship of words.  Words reflecting me back to myself, very narcissistic perhaps but when I was traveling solo and had no friends, vitally important.  Again, in a way, as we all are ultimately, I am traveling solo, traversing the arc of life on a slippery slope of destiny.  There is only one outcome.  I accept that.  But I still want to describe the trip to myself in vain hopes that I might understand what it all meant, my four score years and ten.  A story book in words and pictures.  I've got the pictures and now I'm writing (again) the words.

Why I am beginning to remember dreams, I don't know. Didn't remember anything when I woke up but a neighbour stopped by to deliver eggs from his overly productive chickens (we have three dozen plus now and I know we aren't the only egg recipients. Told John if we die of cholesterol related heart failure the blame would be laid directly in front of his coop). He described how he had to hotwire his yard to prevent his dogs from going bush. The bitch, he said, never tried to jump the fence but one of the others did. Then I remembered the dream. In the SW corner of the front paddock was a tall red and white horse truck. It was almost as tall as a double decker. On top of the truck was tied a bay mare. She'd been sold or given to me by another neighbour. I was talking to him when I heard a commotion from the truck and turned around in time to see her leap over the side to the ground. It shattered her feet. The injury couldn't be seen but was there nevertheless. Overheard the neighbour tell someone else it didn't matter as she was already stuffed from racing and he was just getting her off his hands. I was angry and ashamed. Angry that he had such a callous attitude to a living creature and ashamed of myself for not tying her in more securely. I don't remember anything more.

Part of the dream might stem from one of those country tragedies experienced a few times a year. Two days ago noticed another sick galah. They are so easy to pick out now; they fly slowly, heavily, are slightly fluffed and eat the grain with careful consideration. Had a good look at him with binoculars although he would let us fairly close before flying off. His beak was longer and straighter than normal. Beak and feather. The warty pink skin around his black eyes was sunken. The heartbreaking thing is that birds look you right in the eye, even tiny Tony the tiny budgie. This small sick galah looked me right in the eye as I looked at him, knowing he would have to be put down as he was dying and while he was dying he was spreading disease. Richard saw him yesterday morning in the yards, too weak to fly away. He flew to ground instead. Richard came back and got the gun to shoot him. It depresses everyone even though it is the right thing to do. Richard said he was 'skinny as a rake handle'. Birds can fake their health for a long time. When the galah finally showed signs of illness it was too late to help him.

All the birds, wild and domestic, knew something horrible had happened. Even Dimitri squawked repeatedly from the verandah. The gun, rifle? isn't a loud one. Richard uses rat shot. The gun makes a small pop not a loud boom. Nevertheless every animal on the place knew that pop meant death. The wild birds stayed away from an hour or more. Death casts a pall over everything, even on the clearest brightest winter day when the colours are so vivid they almost make me squint.

Finished reading Thomas Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd last night. How different a book it was than what I expected. It was just a love story. Somehow I had the idea it was some sociopolitical treatise. How wrong I was! When I say just a love story, it was a love story written with a deep understanding and love of the principal characters. But what I loved about his writing was the descriptions of the weather, the countryside, the feel, smell, look and Life of Nature. It was the chief and most memorable character in the book. His description of the coming storm when he is trying to cover the ricks - I am there. I can see it. I can smell it. I feel the hairs rise on my arms at the raw power which comes, which makes the problems of Bathsheba and Gabriel and Boldwood trivial in comparison.

I don't think Hardy and his ilk are popular now. In the local library I find very few classics. I find them in op shops and garage sales. A pity. Just as a university education today is an education in science, technology, or business. What use is it to learn Latin or Greek or read the classics or understand history (because history unknown is history repeated?). I think we lose much by concentrating on the 'hard' subjects, educating ourselves to look for, understand and create more 'hard' facts. What about educating the creative spirit. Who reads poetry anymore? I keep a book of poems in the car. To read in small doses. I didn't know Walt Whitman except as a name. The only poet I was truly familiar with was John Donne. But Whitman! What a muscular take on life! He throbs and throttles and sighs and caresses. I don't understand most of what I read. I only get the sense of it. Yet what an introduction. Poetry is a muscular medium even in the hands of someone like E. Browning. She might be writing of the drone of a housebound fly while someone dies with the lightest most economical touch but she's punching me solidly in the solar plexus at the same time.

Finished and 'framed' the pastel painting yesterday. Keep forgetting to take a photo before sticking a finished work in a frame. But what's the point. I set up a MySpace account to promote my work and have done nothing with it. Promotion, self-promotion, it sounds faintly bilious, feels faintly bilious. I'd rather paint. I didn't start the new painting because I spent yesterday finishing off (finally) the pastel. We are going to Toowoomba on Wednesday to pick up interior paint (zinc blue). While there we are going to look at sofas, have a coffee (or lunch), find out where I go for the yoga workshop so I'm not wasting time looking for it on Saturday and, most fun of all, we're going to Murray's Art Supplies. I've drawn up a list of supplies. This is the kind of shopping I adore, unlike clothes shopping which I abhor! On the list is paper for drawing, sanded for pastel work and pads, pencils lots of *B-types', pastel pencils (new toy, they are great! found some cheap Montmartes to play with but want MORE!) and masking liquid (necessary for this next drawing). Interestingly, the yoga workshop venue and Murrays are probably right across the street from one another. Murrays is open until 1pm on Saturdays so even if I don't go on Wednesday, I can go on Saturday which might be better for browsing as Richard won't be with me. Hmmmm.

Rode the bike to Peterson Road yesterday. There is a hill (Peterson's Hill) that is so steep I cannot ride up it but must get off and walk. It is worth the extra effort and time for it is the fastest and scariest return trip! I am truly frightened flying down that hill. I don't know how fast I am going but it feels like 100mph. Then I must brake hard so that I don't come screaming out onto the highway and into the path of oncoming traffic. It is amazing that I find the bike riding so easy. Before I had to build up endurance to ride the 14km (round trip) from here to the Ma Ma Creek Shop. The only problem now is that my hands get sore and my back aches from the unnatural position one takes to ride these modern bikes. Must look for some kind of compromise set of handlebars so that I can sit up straight and take the weight off my hands.