Writing from the waiting room

The Queen of the Night enters through the screen door and comes face to face with the face of a dog. The dog slips back into the room the Queen of the Night does not forget her mission and continues to enter into our consciousness one way or another usually by the nasal passages. She slips into the passage in the middle of the face and penetrates into the brain of her subjects. There she fills them with pleasurable sensations and long lost memories and deeper feelings that they may well prefer to forget of distant continents where the rules were different and everything was much less down to earth. Yes she has otherworldly schemes and dreams. She only makes her presence felt in the night in the dark in the slippery time of day when it is hard to see the things of the day-to-day. She operates on the senses when some of them are asleep and at rest and then she brings out her jewel box of memories hidden in a fragrance so dense and intoxicating you forget that once you were human and think maybe you have died and gone to heaven. Briefly. On the hint of a waft of air nothing solid to go on just a passing wisp of air that reminds you of things long buried and juicy. You think you might put on a robe and go down into the bazaar of the night and sit around an open fire and have a glass of chai and sit on the ground sipping in the glow of the fire with travellers all around you. You might stay there for a while but then you might stay there all night with the sparks of the fire dancing into the forest of the night wrapped up in a silken shawl given to you from a fellow traveller who sold everything to stay in this wonderland. But suddenly he also was gone like so many who were there one day and then you never see them again until maybe they turn up on a ranch in Oregon five years later and hand you a photograph and you were wearing that same shawl. They remember the colour of your eyes and the shape of your belly. They remember kisses and try to retrieve them but other strangers mouths are moving over yours now so you smile instead and take the photograph anyway.

The unimaginable happens

Since I last posted the unimaginable has happened. Existence has been unbelievably kind. I have moved into my very own home! Who could have predicted this momentous event after a lifetime of renting. Not that I am a fan of the culture of 'real estate' (I always maintained that the idea of 'owning' land was ludicrous) but when I recieved an inheritance at the end of last year the only sensible thing to do (with rents soaring and availability of rentals decreasing) was to invest it in myself with providing said self and young Fred with a place to be ourselves. Oh joy is me! So for the last two months consciousness has shifted from reading writing walking and gardening to searching and finding a home. What a little gem of a house I am now living in. My finances allowed me to look at the cheapest going and I found what I was looking for in a little house at the back of the Kwinana golf course. Kwinana is an older working-class suburb that sits behind a huge swathe of industrialisation. But the suburb, established in the sixties to accomodate the workers from the industry on the coast, has streets of well established homes and gardens on tree lined streets with masses of parks and bush in between. And, bliss upon bliss it is quiet and peaceful. Our morning walks are now through real bush instead of manufactured parks and the path around the golf course is a little walk in heaven. We have come home and it feels nourishing and liberating to be able to relax into our own space. The little house itself has everything I wanted and was left neat and clean by its previous owner. Thanks to a government scheme where the state buys one third of the equity in the house the whole thing is wonderfully affordable. And now let the creativity begin!

Back on Board

Well it's been a while since we last met. But let's not dwell on excuses and well more excuses. Just lets say there have been good reasons and leave it at that. At the beginning of the year I made a resolution to write in my journal every day and wondered at the time if that resolution could stretch to blogging. I must've freaked myself out because ever since I have been panicked at the thought of public airing of random thoughts. What is it that stops one doing the one thing one wants to do and then gives one a hard time for not doing it? Just pure bloody-mindedness? Laziness? I know I experienced a sudden frightening loss of confidence accompanied by painful self consciousness that has dogged my progress in blogworld until this moment.

But now I'm back on board ready to start again.

Last night I went to the opening on the Perth Writers Festival. I was lucky to have been given a ticket and my neighbour and I took off for the Octagon Theatre on the UWA campus. The foyer was bristling with literary fans and we headed for the bar for a fortifying glass of bubbly. Once seated Geraldine Mellet introduced the five authors who were about to treat us to a reading from their latest works. I was particulary interested in hearing and seeing Peter Godwin whose memoir of growing up in colonial Rhodesia was a very enjoyable read. He read from his latest book and the pages he trated us to dealt with the death of his father. How brave to write about that incredibly intimate event. One of the reasons (here they come!) that I have been reticent to blog is that back in Ocotober of last year my mum's spirit finally disentangled itself from the pain of living in her ruined body/mind. I haven't yet found the courage to write about that time. But how could I write here without some reference to it? No that didn't feel right. So I know what a delicate subject the passing of a loved one, and esspecially a parent is and I admired and absorbed his reading about this subject. I realised that now there is enough distance for me to write about mum's passing. I enjoyed all the readings but the other one that stood out was by an author I was not previously familiar with; Alex Miller. His authorative presence dominated the theatre as he stood in front of his audience and the piece he chose to read was particularly enlightening. His character was describing the feelings he had for his late wife. I was stunned by the level of intimacy and revelation of the characters feeling for his wife. It brought home to me the magic of sexual intimacy - that other-worldly space beyond words. Sex and Death explored on the night of Scorpio full moon!