Letter to a friend:

Won't get into a competition with you about who is worse : )  We are equally bad ... and equally good, methinks.    Suspect we're both subject to that continuously criticizing voice within  (where did that come from?  My parents, although not perfect, didn't belittle me.  Is it our western christian, therefore guilt-based society which gives birth to the inner critic?.... and does it matter?)

Met the little guy when Richard and I had lunch with them last week.  Hadn't seen P in such a long time.   He looked well.  Lunch was great as always.  Loved the pond.  Donated a few goldfish which promptly went and hid under rocks.  Caught up with Jack the cockatoo.  Still miss him but so glad he's glad.  He's a happy bird now.  Great to see Cambridge on 'this side' of the aviary rather than always at the far end.  Richard and L talked Tai Chi (Richard has been to his second class.  He also fasted with me that Monday.  He won't admit something's going on but his openness to trying things which might help brain function is telling).  Anyway, the property looked stunning as always.  Wattles in bloom everywhere.  Was a lovely couple of hours.

But it isn't the same without you there.  P's stamp is more visible, as it should be- but sad all the same.  And sadly you sound somewhat melancholy, G.  Wish I had some wise words to help you through this but only you and P have the answers, if answers are even needed.  Perhaps living day to day IS the answer.  If you need to do something you'll know it.  And act upon it too.  You don't lack courage. 

Had occasion to reflect upon the nature of grief and guilt the other day.  We lost our little cockatiel Tachimedes.  Noticed he was a bit lacklustre and his poos had gone green and runny so put him on coccivet.  Worse the next day so direct dosed the coccivet.  The following day acutely ill with gurgly breathing.  Rang Karen and put him on Baytril but he died late morning.  The guilt stems from hindsight,  from not noticing little things which I should've paid attention to but that I didn't SEE (not being mindful, aware, HERE).  His death was unnecessary.  He was only 5 years old.  The grief, well you know far too well the grieving part.  So while crying from shame and loss a part of me stood back and watched and thought completely unrelated thoughts, like when will I have cried enough to assuage the guilt I feel.  When will I have cried enough to meet the inner criterion of grieving?  It was quite an odd experience.  Having grieved so many times over so many things...the feelings were real yet also just a familiar process that didn't touch the true reality of things - does that make any sense at all? 

Hours later:

We went to Spring Bluff for coffee.  Richard ate a caramel macadamia nut coated bit of slice with whipped cream and is now sick in bed.  Too rich.   Odd how one's digestion becomes used to good food and can't handle the other stuff anymore.  He'll come good in time. 

Ah, the ballet.  Ah, Warhorse.  Ah, David Helfgott.  Lucky you.  Especially the ballet.  I love ballet.  In my next life I'm going to be small boned, petite and live near a ballet school.  Took it up at age 44 but couldn't handle the leaps.  Dang.

Anyway, best go and do some chores, quietly, while Richard recovers.  I hope you come see us when you're at Long Grass for those 3 days (or before!).  Richard goes to the States on the 21st September, returns October 2.  Not much time but as he's going with Anthony, that's all the time he gets.

Saw an old Errol Flynn movie, Robin Hood, the other day.  In it he laughs at the Sherriff of Nottingham, a big rollicking hands on hips, head thrown back sort of laugh.  What a great laugh at life sort of laugh.  I'm working at cultivating it.  You too?

Richard has been to get a CT scan of his brain as well as an ultrasound of his carotid arteries.  All was well.  So there is no obvious physical explanation for his deterioration. 
      I wasn't going to write about this but it is so much on my mind and no none reads this anyway - and even if they did - what great secrets am I imparting?  It is more important for me to have a place to speak frankly than to safeguard secrets that aren't secrets to anyone who knows us. 
      We went to another town yesterday to run some errands.  While there we looked in some opportunity shops for work sweatshirts and trousers for him.  He was so dull, so helpless, sometimes reminding me of a windup doll that has wound down until prompted to do something else.  He'd stand in the aisle unmoving, or absently fingering a sweatshirt without really doing anything, almost as though he needed permission - or a push.  I'd say what about this or this or this?  Try this on.  What do you think of this one?    I wanted to shout, as I so often do, Wake Up!  Come Back!  Everything he does is done slowly.  He gets out of the car like he's 86 rather than 66.  He walks slowly - unless we're walking the dogs and then he can hook along quite well - he fumbles with his wallet to pay or has to really think things through to use his card.
      The other day I asked him if he'd given seed to the birds.  In the afternoon, when we pull the pellets and water dishes, we always give the galahs a few seeds as a treat and some millet seed on the stem to Dimitri.  No, he said, I thought you'd given it to them earlier.  When?  Earlier in the day.  Why would you think that?  Because you were down here.  Yes, I was down there - about lunch time.  Yesterday I mentioned the chairs we bought a few months ago.  The much loved much longed for Art Deco Club Chairs.  What chairs, he asked.  You know, the chairs.  He stared at me.  I could almost see the wheels grinding slowly around but the gears didn't mesh.  So I explained to him what chairs I meant.  Oh, those chairs.  I thought you meant kitchen chairs, dining room chairs, not those chairs. 
     They are the only chairs we've bought in years.  It's a minor thing but it's a telling example of what occurs with frightening regularity.
     I think Helen, Richard's friend of 30 years, his ex partner when he was in the drug squad, is annoyed that I'm not pushing him to have more tests or go see a psychiatrist.  I understand.  Despite the clean bill of health from the CT scan and ultrasound, something is going on.  But Richard is now quite annoyed if the subject comes up.  If I tried to get him to go see yet another person I suspect he'd dig in his heels.  He asserts, and it's true, that he's done everything required of him.  He's seeing a nutritionist and doing the exercises required.  He has gone to the doctor with my complaints (not his, he is certain nothing is wrong and that he's as sharp as ever) and followed up with the scans.  He has even gone to Tai Chi as of Monday.  That might be the making of things. 
      I found Tai Chi very difficult when I first learned it.  You are asking your body to move in unaccustomed ways which while not physically demanding is hard mentally.  That's why it's called a moving meditation.  It takes total concentration.  He's going to move mental muscles he hasn't had to in quite some time.
      So I'm trying to remain positive.  We're on a roll to get the house ready and move closer to the sea.  As I wrote to Helen, I feel as though I'm on a deadline.  Get all the hard work done before .... before what?  Before he loses it completely?  Yes, that's my fear.  That he has Alzheimers.  I thought that would show up on a scan so as there was nothing seen it is a relief.  Still, still....   So get the house ready to sell, find another place suitable for all of our furred and feathered family as close to the sea as we can afford to be.  We won't wait for the quarry to start.  We'll do this now while we can.  We've been here for 22 years.  The next move will be the last one. 
      I remind myself daily how fortunate I am.  And I am.  Right now, everything is fine and there's no point in scaring myself stupid by thinking about what might happen.  Today, this moment, it's gravy. 

Aw shucks,

Because I did a favour for a friend and took some art of hers into the Gatton Show, I decided I'd enter the pastel drawing of our neighbour's feline, Alley Cat.  Cost $3 and I was going  there anyway. 
     Karen is a skilled artist, skilled in many mediums.  She had two pastel drawings, one of a friend's little girl and another of a possum.  She also entered a watercolour painting of  turtles from a photo taken while she was in SE Asia.  That watercolour was the best I thought.  It was realistic but because the turtles with the patterns on their shells were crowded and swimming above and below one another it was almost abstract. 
     While I was there filling in the paperwork I saw other work that had been entered.  Thought why in the world did I bring this painting of mine.  So many skilled artists, so much beautiful work.  The woman who was there before me had paintings of a green tree frog, a tortoiseshell cat and a mountain scene (painted on a new paper, yupo paper).  They were all good.  She talked freely of how she might win at one show but not at another, it all depends on the judge.  She knew Karen's work as well, 'she wins alot', she said.  I went home knowing I'd provided variety but with no hope of winning anything.
      You know what's coming.  I won first prize (and $20) for pastel paintings.  Can't believe it.  I shouldn't be proud but I am.  Years ago I'd entered a pencil drawing of a bearded dragon.  I thought then and still think it was a good work.  Didn't get a mention.  Sent it to Tam for her birthday, a little reminder of Australia as she was quite taken with our little lizard friends.  This painting, titled Glamour Puss because it reminds me of those l980's glamour shots women used to get which look so dated and sad now, is just another cat picture.  Enough skiting.

Crows and other things

Reading Janet Frame's An Angel at My Table.  Have ordered Faces in the Water, a fictionalized account of her time in mental institutions (she was in more than one).  Her book shows how strong the human spirit is - even when she sabotages her own happiness, even when she's weak, even when she allows herself to be thistledown blown by the whims of others.  And her books make me ashamed.  I who have so much and do so little with it.

     Even now with Richard away, the perfect excuse to stay inside and create (a large blue band of rain is crawling across the weather map toward us) and this page before me for the first time since June, I am finding it difficult to settle and concentrate.  

     Often when I am walking I compose things in my head.  Observations to be recorded, thoughts to be considered but I do none of those things.  People write novels while working full time and raising a family.  What excuse do I have?  None, except when I look at the sites saved on this computer, even the blogs written by others, they are all about art, none about writing.  

     Isn't it odd how adept we are at beating ourselves up?  And how certain we are that we need to be beaten up?  So rather than carry on with the same old crap I'll write about crows.

     Crows.  I've been entranced by them for quite awhile.  They are so common they've become invisible.  We revile them because their song is more like dragging rusty car bodies across stones than anything resembling music.  Among other things they feed on carrion.  Although their black feathers are glossy we see them as dusty harbingers of decay.

      But they lead lives of mystery.  Each afternoon when I walk the dogs I watch them.  Sometimes they all seem to be heading north, the next day south, the next west, and finally east.  Flying in twos and threes (so as not to attract attention?) they make their way to what?  I have no idea but I am certain this casual gathering is deliberate.

      One day I watched two crows flying overhead.  They squawked and squarked while they flew a large irregular circle.  Soon they were joined by another pair of crows.  The four of them flew another circle.  Then two more and finally, two more after that.  The eight of them winged around this aerial circle and then, after a few turns, they drifted apart until two were left.  The original two?  I don't know.  Finally they too drifted away. 

     What was the purpose of that?  Was it a corvid version of afternoon smoko?  Was it a family gathering?  Friends catching up?  Neighbourhood Watch?  

     Yesterday I rode up the road.  On the way back I allowed Balthazar to graze while I crow-watched.  A 'murder' of crows had gathered in a tree halfway up Mt. Whitestone.  *Murders* are common around here.  They seem drawn to the flanks of Mt. Whitestone, or any good sized hill.  The gatherings are another mystery.  The crows all talk at once and at the top of their voice.  

     Trying to understand them as a human I cannot help but put a human interpretation on them.  If people got together to discuss something and all of them shouted continuously no one would understand anything and nothing would get done.  But understanding crows I would need to be a crow.  Maybe they gather to shout with the joyousness of being alive.  Maybe it's choir rehearsal.  Or a contest.  Whatever it is, it is meaningful. 

Death and Sleep

Thinking about the fact of death.  Not in a morbid, scary or I'm-going-to-do-it way, only because someone we know is probably beginning the process.  Suppose once we took our first breath as newborns we began the process so let's say this person is racing to the finish after 88 years. 

In the flush of robust health and the relatively young age of 57 it is easy to say I'm not afraid of death.  Pain, yes but that's another subject and one in which I hope never to have an intimate acquaintance.  Death, however, seems much like sleeping. (Such an original thought!)  When I've lived through a big busy day the sweetest place in the world is my pillow.  I sink onto it with such relief, even with the sense of a lover found after a long absence.  I close my eyes with no fear of the oblivion to follow but with relief, even eagerness.  There is nothing to fear in sleep.

When my mother way dying I believe she reached for it as I reach for my pillow.  She'd been ill for years.  Tired for years.  Everything was an effort and although she loved and was loved, those ties were not enough to claim her.  My paternal grandfather died during one of her hospital stays.  Mom cried.  He's gone before me!  Death was the longed for embrace.

Today we seem to fear death. I fear not my own but the death of others.  It's the grieving that kills.  Death in a way is life.  I hope when my time comes and I pass through that door I will feel as I do now and find that I was right.

 The alternative doesn't bear thinking about.

Geometric dreams.  Vivid dreams that are staying with me.  I go through dry patches where nothing dreamt survives into daylight.  Now (had to stop then.  The theme from Lawrence of Arabia on the radio.  Great sweeping panoramic exotic sounds.  Music so aligned with the breath.  Had I been holding my breath? for I took a huge deep clearing one at the start, like a breath of release or relief.  Music is such a powerful medium, because it moves through time and is not static like art?  The written word moves through time too and has changed the course of history repeatedly.  But music!  I think if we could saturate war zones with Debussy's Syrinx or Williams soundtrack to Schindler's list, soldiers would put down their weapons and weep with the sheer beauty.  But then I am constantly arrogantly amazed that people don't think like I do.  Like litter.  Walking the dogs I am forever picking up litter.  This 5km dead end road is bordered by giant gum trees, green hills, brigalow scrub, wattles and is quite simply, very beautiful.  So why am I picking up soft drink cans, KFC containers, cigarette packs and other common detritus of modern society?  A few days ago while riding I saw from my higher vantage point someone had flung a bag of garbage into the undergrowth.  Haven't picked it up yet as I need Richard with me to hold the dogs - and to help carry it back.  The point of this is not to have a whinge per se, although whinging does satisfy, but to illustrate that naturally people don't think like I do or they would never litter).

Which is a long seque from dreams.  I don't know why I'm remembering dreams again.  The first dream had our road transplanted to a caldera.  On the opposite side, on the rise leading to the lip was another collection of buildings.  The next night I dreamed of a flood, traced it to a neighbours dam, blue and half filled with water.  The dam was shaped like a roasting pan.  Last night, no dams or calderas but a bathroom with long louvered doors, a former vet nurse, a man tied at the wrists and the rope looped over a coat hook, horses, children underfoot, changing clothes, perfume and guests having a party on the verandah on the other side of the louvered doors.  Complicated and untranslateable. Why do we dream?  The unanswerable question.  The mind entertaining itself while the interfering conscious self sleeps? 

I would like to know the meaning of my dreams but find, as in reading Tarot for myself, that I am unable.  There is no eureka moment, only frustration and confusion.  Despite this I still like to write them down.

Auction of a Life

Yesterday drove to Esk to attend an auction of household effects.  Jacqui's effects.  Jacqui is in a home now and the contents of her two story queenslander with dormer window were spread across the lawn for all of us strangers-in-hunt-of-a-bargain/find to paw through. 

There was a rack of clothing; old ladies clothing, that was also going to be auctioned off.  It was a sad sight, dark pastels and navy blue sweaters with white piping, a pinkish purple mottled jacket.  I could almost see the old lady wearing them.  Now, instead gazing out at her garden with the twin pony tail palms (lot 239) she is gazing at what, 4 walls?  other lost and lonely faces across the dining room table, quick smiling nurses with permanent creases between their brows? 

An entire lifetime gone in an afternoon.  We bought the imitation Tiffany lamp.  Thank you, Jacqui.  I loved it when I saw it and one day, I hope, someone else will adopt and love it too.  Instead of a rack of old lady clothes, dresses and skirts and sweaters, mine will be a drawer of jeans and tee shirts.  Jacqui's auction was a timely reminder.  Time is fleeting.  A baby, a child, a young woman, a mother, a crone.  All gone with the auctioneer's hammer.