When we are blessed with reason and thought,

That we fuck each other over.

I wish compassion was our default position.

‘No beings were harmed in the making of this life!’

But that is not the truth.

We are moving on from the house of sunsets and traffic whoosh. A lot has come and gone in the years that we have lived here. It took a long time, but I am as close as back to my old-self again that I ever will be, and that is good enough, because if I was exactly the same, I wouldn’t have learnt a thing, and that would be sad.

My son, sentimental as they come, is the saddest of us all to be leaving here. I try to make it better for him, by reminding him that we are leaving by choice, not tsunami, or volcano, or famine or heaven forbid we never had a roof over our heads in the first place.

So, soon we won’t be here. And this chapter will be closed. I am looking forward to turning the page on all that has been, and devouring with gusto the life that will unfold on the pages of our home. It is a place in trees, away from hustle-bustle town, and it is ours. My heart is happy at this possession, I have waited and wandered and longed to know where I am from, to be able to say, “This is home.”

can we go to the moon mum?

We went away to where I grew up. They liked it more than I imagined they would, the air, the quiet, the space. I, like the dweller of a city that I’ve become, felt the trees were closing in, and the spaces seemed too big.  Like a tsunami the waves of big-city success have washed over this place too;  paddocks are filled with pastel houses, roads are wider than ever before, there are super-barn-omatics galore. Everywhere we went, change, progress, change…until here, where land meets sea, man’s influence on the landscape is halted, the passage of time is slow, it is only the erosive force of nature that brings about change, and that change is not discernible. It was only here by the ocean, in this familiar place, that I felt at home again.

Last night I dreamt that I was eaten in one big bloody gulp by a White Pointer, biggest one I’d ever not seen. A witness, in the dream, said I didn’t even scream, I was just gone…eaten.

Today, at the beach, I fished for a while and then lay in the sun. I couldn’t bring myself to go in the water, but I let myself lay in the sun, and I let myself burn…stupidity.

The cicadas are abundant and insistent again this year. On the track to the beach they drummed in my ears, making me beg “Pardon?” every few sentences as he chattered on ahead of me…chatterbox.

High cool water greeted my feet after we scrambled over rocks to reach a good fishing spot. The wind and rocks put an end to the rock-fishing and we moved to the sheltered sandy beach. I spread out my towel, which is festive, red and stripy. I stripped down to my cossie and sat on the towel, surveying the family of bodysurfers that porpoised in front of me. Two boys and their dad, bashing the surf, their wiry bodies glistening, enthusing in stereo.

“Dad!”

“Dad, Dad, watch this!”

“Dad!”

I lay back and closed my eyes, and enjoyed the sounds of the harbour, the flapping sails from the yachts racing around the Lion, the distant motors charging through the swell heading out to open ocean. I turned my head to the side and my eyes settled on the line of flotsam nearby. White bird-bones amongst smooth grey-brown sticks, worn-out shells, and black shrivelled beads of Neptune, all tossed up onto the beach to be windswept and further eroded. I like flotsam, I can close my eyes now and see it…it reminds me that we start as one thing and end up as something else, and that change is natural.

Time to leave the little slice of heaven, the track passes in part, through a valley of cabbage palms, where the humidity rises and temperature falls, and I shiver as the sweat cools on my back…it’s all a bit pre-historic.

My calves ache a little from the walk up the steep hill back to the car. My ears are tingling and tinny from the cicada-whine of the bush, I’ve sprayed my burnt patches with aloe juice taken straight from the fridge…ouch.

Mother nature never intended for us to save wails. For reasons unknown to me beyond saving face, we try to keep them down, deep down. But they inevitably burst even the calmest, turquoise, sparkling surface.
“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”
It is much better, at the very moment a wail is given life, to set the wail free. Wails are massive, require lots of space and eat a lot. We are not equipped to harbour wails. Scream-sob-cry your pain away, and set the wails free.

You’ve gone. And you, and you, and you too.

Re-entered into the stream of a life unknown to me,

or exited, who knows?

Taken up the pogo-stick, no time for words, no words come.

Must have been bounced out,

or perhaps evicted by the clatter-clank of background thoughts.

And once again, this is all about me.

Just another salmon.

Out there, somewhere. xxL