Hard Rubbish

Young man, younger than my heart right now

didn't see me

but I saw him

ice wobbly, nicotine eyes

rifling through the pile

from the big white house

I strode down -

carrying moor loot

Words incomprehensible, then

'yagottanythinelse?'

'nah'

take the bags from the trolly

mum wouldn't mind

Mother and Daughter

There had to be a moment when Sir's recent writings would turn from squishy rambles down memory lane.

Perhaps the ideas that surround grief and mourning are like water crystals in a cold climate.... beautiful while our hearts are frozen and our tears sublime into ice on our eyelashes, lovely while the temperature stays cold enough to make tree branches living light prisms. But soon enough comes the first SNAP of melting ice, soon enough the water's suspension through the atmospheric stratum becomes a linear movement towards the ocean.

Anger has taken many forms in Sir's life. The recent explosion was unearthed by a comment made during a drunken rant by one of Sir's friends at the Wife's birthday party. After having an evening where said Friend was generally unsociable and her partner was terribly embarrassed by her behaviour... Sir walked into the lounge to hear Friend say that Sir had 'walked into a position' at the Salt Mine in such a manner that suggested a level of contempt and resentment that Sir certainly was not expecting.

Perhaps other events have triggered the final response to this comment, but in general, Sir certainly thought of herself as the working class daughter of a migrant. Mother and Father Reeves came to Australia as 10 pound Poms, with daughter Reeves, Sir's mum, confidant and greatest admirer for many years.

The anger that was inspired by this comment bubbled over into rage.... rage at the impossibility of being surrounded by death and being wretchedly sad coupled with the rage that surfaces at one's "friends and relatives''... those ones that have never known the utter horror of grief. The kind of rage that makes Sir want to shake and shake said Friend out of her pious self pity, screaming "Shut up!! Just Shut up and get your head out of your ass!!".... and consider the situation of people around you who have lost far more than you have ever considered that you had.

What happens to the discourse between the classes when the aspirational take on the form of almost middle class? Where does one start to look at one's history and really invest in either working class or middle class? Is there a

difference between how successful people see their class aspirations? Does it change the way that we talk to each other, like Sir and Friend... or is there a moment where the relationship SNAPs and the single string of class recognition and teaching that joins us breaks?

And Sir finds her anger is so random and passionate that it must be based in grief. This idea that we somehow leave behind the people that we have lost feels like such an unfounded lie. One told perhaps to comfort our ever young daughter heart... the part of us that simply will not believe that there will never be another day, another moment, another connection, another hug, another argument. The inability to face the immenseness of the cavity that she has left in our very being... both spiritually and physically.

In the life of Friend, her mother is still a figure of immense power and authority. The kind of strict mother who is alive in our minds when we are in our teens and twenties. Before we have tried to see her as a human being, before our feelings of betrayal when we realise that she is actually only a woman made of skin and bones and muscle like us, before we look into her eyes and see the mirror of ourselves in her smile, her ambitions in our steps... before all this Mother is a huge mythical woman of Goliathical proportions. She can see all and hear all. She has the answers before we ever know the questions. She is harsh and unyielding, strict and un-reproachable.

Friend still see herself as daughter to this mother. Still in the country running away into the back paddock when things get too tough. The logical conclusion here is that Friend is still hopeful that Mother will come and find her, whisper to her that things will be alright. That there will be the change in the old lady's attitude and childhood will be restored.

But in Sir's past experience there is no real 'logical' when it comes to feelings and identities. Sir is cross with herself on some levels because she vowed she would never become involved with a woman as a friend in such a close way after 2007 and the nightmare that it was. Sir said that it was the finish, that there would be no skin creepingly touchy-feely moments. No responses to other people's expectation's, no changing behaviour to make other people feel comfortable... especially not to make other working class women feel unchallenged by Sir's random talents and intellectual aspirations.

So Sir bites the anger and chews on it slowly. Wondering the stuff that really makes up friendship. Knowing the invisible bindings of this particular moment have changed. Feeling the inconceivable emotions that are released as the ice breaks and the river flows toward the ocean again.

These steps I have taken without you

Much to the relief (and outwardly projected body language) of Sir, the mode of teaching has changed for the better.

On returning to the Salt Mine, Sir has begun teaching at the upper end of the chaotic relm of Secondary School. Since coming to the wilde west and teaching at the junior level, Sir was, admittedly, somewhat infected with the general idea that the Senior teachers trashed us, so we would trash them. In reality, the Senior campus is seen as a step into that private area of the VCE teacher. Kind of a dark doorway into an unknown paradise of *easy* classes a somewhat more relaxed attitude.

All true, in some senses. It *is* a dark relm of VCE teaching... but this only refers to the cave-like quality of the office that Sir now shares with the other Mathematics and Science teachers. This is where the fantasy stops and real work begins. Actual teaching, preparations and discussion of curriculum is refreshing. Working with intelligent and articulate woman who teach Physics, Chemistry, Maths and Biology is delightful. What a glorious thing.

There is also another advantage to working in a generally quiet and studious environment. The shock of coming back to work has been a softened blow. One that Sir is feeling a little now, after two weeks back in the game. This night, after 2 valerian and a quietly sleeping wife schnoozed off, the feeling of "oh no I took a day off work" tries to creep back in to the mind of Sir. She must remind herself that this year is one of difference. That working through grief is its own full time job. Despite the Senior classes Sir can still only work at the speed of one person putting the pieces back together. Sir never realised how much she would change.

The Work of Mourning

And now.... because Sir though she might be ready to face the future. And because Sir thinks that Freud sucks but ultimately made some good points on mourning. And because writing is never neat and sequential, even though authors who are actually published always tell their story as though it is so.

On the 14th of Novemeber, Sir got married. Hurrah!! Then, later that same November...

Last week there was a day when all things in the North seemed to awry. Trains to and from Rosanna went up shit creek, the Greens borough Mall collapsed, and Sir was stuck in traffic for 2 hours trying to get from Eltham to Diamond Creek to see Rose. When Sir got to Kilara Retirement home I had forgotten that one can get in to these facilities quite easily.... however getting out is quite another matter.

Never mind, Sir's mind was made up once the door was closed.

Suffice to say, Sir wasn't prepared for the musty flooded floors or the twelve sets of hopeful eyes that turned from the cricket on television to her when she walked into the living room. Sir's mind flashed back to the Christmas sing-a-longs that she went to in her teens, playing Violin, Piano and singing to the oldies at Mum's salt mines over the years. Shit.

So Sir found her notchalant fosterling sister. Sir realised that the path that brought us both togther have now forked away from each other. Notchalant fosterling sister told Sir that she was "happy for me to do what I though was best" to do, and to do so without her.

So Sir did. This is the story.

Today Sir went to that really expensive Nursery on the Maribyrnong in Alberfield. Sir went because Sir's dead Matriarch was jumping out of her skin (so to speak) all last night and Sir was just about going mental (literally... a normal reaction of most to the mother pressure).

Sir bought a Jacaranda, a Blueberry Ash, two bags of bourgeois potting mix, and two passion fruit vine seedlings. Sir came home, got a call from her wife and picked her up from Heidelberg Station with a box of succulents that she bought from the old-lady-with-the-card-table-stall at Deakin University. It's Dr Wife now (blush) and it seems that plants have been calling us both the last two days.

When we got home it was dusk. We dug two deep holes, one medium and two little ones. We distributed the Matriach's ashes between the Jacaranda tree, the Blueberry Ash, a succulent in the fairy garden, and the two passion seedlings on the back fence. We shared wine and watched the huge full moon rise up over the trees against a mauve sunset. Then we put up the fairy lights in the fairy garden.

So it is done. The garden is beautiful.

In the last 6 months or so you may know that Sir has refined the art of the Banana Lounge Lizard... interspersed with the last remnants of Sir's mum's estate, getting married, mowing the lawn, a daily walk and general hours of house and Proto-Doctor maintenance. Its been a real breeze of a time.

Well, yesterday Sir had the privilege of sending off the thesis emendations and henceforth have a wife whom is a real one, and Sir is no longer in the position of phD widow. Hurrah!!

The other big hurrah type is probably known to you. It comes slowly, from a place of great depth and usually some form of grief. It creeps up on us in our dreams at first.... , mine were fairly literal and strangely soul burning dreams of Jacqueline DuPre, playing in a cheesy sound stage set, playing with the MSO etc etc, you get it. In Sir's case it manifested its self as "Christ! I can't spend the next 3 weeks of my summer holidays playing Tomb Raider every day!!" Sir realised that even though her mastery of Lara Croft's triple back flip and remarkable skill in reaching relics in a time trial rivaled any 12 year old titty raider fiend... sigh, the sad truth is that Sir cannot share this with her grown up friends and stay a respected member of her chosen family.

Yesterday, Sir went to visit a dear friend who is struggling to finish her phD. We listed to music, ate and played with the pug puppy who was also visiting. Then she suggested that Sir borrow her Bodhran. As Sir was attempting to play this crazy Celtic beast she realised what She needed to do. Her soul needed feeding, desperately.

Now Sir has a beautiful new creature who will need a few months of playing in until Sir can get the new, better set of strings. Maybe later this year Sir can trade her up to a more professiona model. Far from 30 year ago when Sir first picked up the Violin, and many years of wanting to wring it's scrawny neck, she is delighting in the body memories of playing the Suzuki Method, but for 'Cello. Happiness. My soul as woken up and wants to be fed.

Moments like this make Sir remember that there is more to life on the inside as well as the outside. Not too long now until the teaching begins again. Sir got in just in time....

4 out of 6 ain't bad

The statistics are in:

Four month out of six unpaid from the salt mine. 

Emergency teaching experiences amount to six high schools, two special schools and one primary school.

Phone calls from teaching agency: 103.

Days Sir refused to answer the phone: 7.

House moves: 1.

Holidays: 1.

Wedding: 1.

Boxes destroyed for recycling: 54.

Nights spent awake with the cat and the fish: 23.

Days off spent staring at the garden/wall/open page of a book: unrecorded.

The official press release will state that Sir had a good rest over the second half of the year, moved into the suburbs and prepared for the inevitable return to work in January 2010. 

Reality: Emergency teaching really sucks balls. Apart from the expected inconvenience of the early morning phone call, the mystery flight type caffeinated morning drive and the ratty testy kids... it was the other teachers that made it absolutely horrid. Sir was blown away by behaviour that ranged from being passively ignored to being cornered and questioned about her ethnic background, classroom management experience, wages and appearance. Emergency teachers are assumed to be either stoopid, incompetent or graduates with no experience. Whatever.

Luckily for Sir, there is an ongoing position waiting in the heart of the West next year. Despite the salt mine shambles that Sir heard about in the St Albans KFL from an unexpected run in with a colleague, relief floods her synapses where the helplessness of the young graduate or the UK working visa has been palpable. Desperation shows on their faces and grows as the days to terms end grow fewer and longer. Time to go home? Soon.

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As of July, there were few places that Sir felt might be worse than the salt mine. Complacency and lack of motivation was mistaken for, as it often can be, a workplace without meaning, a teacher without a heart, students with no connection. Despite the MacMansions that surround the salt mine, the proximity to the Melton Highway where the slow urban sprawl has almost closed the gap between Hillside and Melton Proper. All of these reservations and small factors have played on Sir's mind over the last half year, factors that have irritated and niggled in that itchy place just under the skin of the collar bone where professional pride sits. 

Sir has begun to teaching casually through an agency. Something very strange has happened. 

Sir is now transparent to other teachers, and a one hit wonder with students on any particular day. The transparency is both refreshing and spooky. Refreshing because of the lack of investment in any particular institution and Sir's ability to just walk away from anywhere scary. Spooky because other teachers not only have no interest in Sir but they are more actively obnoxious to Sir. This unpleasantness ranges from special school leading teachers informing Sir of the recent outbreak of Pig Flu and the effects that it had on schools in the Western Suburbs (OMG did youse know that kids were quaranitined schools were closed??) to being ignored when asking for directions. Or even more surprising, while Sir was working at a P - 9  school down the road from the salt mine, a staff member looked for her second head when she asked to remove a little turd and place them into another class. Sir was informed that this student wanted to leave class and the best thing to do would be to write an incident report. An incident report, coming from a Casual Relief Teacher... interesting strategy.

(Note: both Special schools and the staff that work in them are extra-ordinary places that are underfunded and poorly staffed in general. Don't get Sir started on the lack of suitable housing for young people with disabilities..) 

Despite the general unpleasantness of being treated like a moron, Sir was in the unique position of remembering just what freaks special school teachers are. Worse than being in a *new* school in a *new* suburb without trees, birds or natural noise of any kind, baking on the basketball courts without sunscreen or sunnies on a random warm August day. Special school teachers are even more unbearable than primary teachers (... picture a Mathematics conference seminar where some teachers are completing the problem solving task designed to engage a four year old student and other teachers are either asleep or looking straight ahead with glazed over eyes. Now spot the primary teachers). 

Special school teachers are inclined to describe their intentions word for word while simultaneously signing their actions. They *pop-in* to a classroom with a CRT and and aide and stay for the whole day. They are incapable of having a conversation with an adult. And they are shameless about touching students, both for restraining purposes and praising students. Woah... put your chairs back into the upright position. Dunno about anyone else but this creeps Sir out! Knowing full well that kids with disabilities need touch and physical re-assurance, but.... these kids have families, right? So, hats off to the teachers that work with these children, and the kids themselves. But hats on to boundaries and maintaining healthy safe ones, ay?