Second Oasis = No DMZ

It has been a while since Sir wrote. Many good things have happened since that moment.

For example: Sir now sits in the oasis of West Foots. Ay!! You may say, why? Well, despite the obvious answers in terms of proximity to the wilde west, perhaps this picture can give you a clue.... the birds are fed ( of course) and so are the fish (outside and pampered inside), and so is the beautiful little girl (of course, of couuuurrsse, purr)

Despite the many flaws of the inner western suburbs (inner... bah! 25 minutes on a lazy day to Carlton... but not for the city views)... well actually Sir cannot think of many flaws. Sir did witness a drive by drug deal while Sir was brushing the cat...& there are (shock) often bins left on the nature-strip well after rubbish day... also, Sir does guess Totty is a chrome fest and the Totty homeless chromers fire at night is just up the road.

There is no chain reaction, well should Sir say Bogan_Lawn_Markov_Chain. Also, Sir's first intuition to the whippershnapper was a good one... many many whippersnappers here... why? No big ass lawns!! Hah!!

But hey, Sir & her clan are the dignified social climbers... Sir and her clan can deviate from these paths. More of paths in this new place later...

In fact the absence of a DMZ is beautiful.

Sir sees people walking too and fro, cycling to and fro, nay waiting outside their homes for a taxi!! Walking down the street! Even talking to each other, gosh ... well, even talking to utter strangers!!

One lovely lady in pink , with large shoes and proscription sunglasses with fruity breath gave Sir a "Merry Christmas Love.... gosh and you are so pretty too!" Ha! The wonder at being his/herself on the way to get take-aways Indian.

So now that the children are fed, the arabic coffee wafts over the fence, in and outwards to the neighbours, the taxi pulls in to next door for the nightshift... sigh. It can't get much better than this.

For my Purple Monster Lady

All of the small steps we take

Feeling hollow and empty

Like crying in the car

Like watching the storm rise and the smell of rain

Feeling alone, lost

Looking for and hearing that familiar voice

Being the one that things

stop

for

These small steps take us

lead us

eventually

to the place of loss

This is where healing can begin

Hold on to the hands of those that are close

Strong, definite fingers

Speak about the things that matter

Psychobabble be in the moment

unfortunately so true

hard days

longer nights

never get easier

just less dense with emotion

Boy on my mind

Back to school, and a boy.

This boy is difficult.

He decribes himself as "cocky and uneventful". A young man who travels a long way to get to this establishment... from the Flemington high rise flats in NewMarket to the flat dryness of Delahey. Being "on time" is an issue. He is being roasted for it.

Boy told me today that he was "almost always" on time... except for when some teachers make him get a late pass. Sir doesn't make him get a late pass... for this he is grateful.

Boy uses the staff toilets. Boy stays behind to talk to adults. Boy loves to crack a joke, and when Sir realises that it is an asperges asian joke, she laughs... and he smiles. A rare occurence. "But do you get it, Sir, do you get it?"

Boy is an abberation. New teachforaustraya staff have trouble with him... well, hell, we all have trouble with him. There is a difference here with the definition of "trouble" though. In the badlands of 9 & 10's Sir found that "trouble" was the naughty mouthy smart smoking defiant teen. At the Senior Campus "trouble" is quite different. Trouble is the sometime naughty often lazy no good lacklustre liberalist.

Over the year, Boy Trouble slips and skids, but stays on the path with the other kids. Halfway through, Boy Trouble is struggling to keep the last of his schoolmates in view. At the end of semester, Boy Trouble is lost.

Sir asks his classmates: "How is Boy going? Is he okay?"

Classmates answer: "Boy is having a hard time. Boy is forever lost"

At the start of the year, Boy drove Sir nutty nutty nuts. Forever with the questions and the interruptions and the non cylindrical conversations somehow spiralling out of control. After a while though, the formula became apparent. It was the x times cubed formula. One question = three answers... and not necessarily in an order. How many questions?? Depends on the day...Nuts!!

Sir is left wondering quite a few things from this intense relationship. What does the conversation formula mean? Is boy Aspberges? Or if not, why the need to focus so intently on safe adult relationships, to the extent that he will shift his whole timeframe of a day to be with safe adults? Why indeed, should Sir be so concerned with the "way things should be"?, which is certainly the slant that Boy puts on things.

However any extrapolation and hypothesis in Sir's world is a means to an end. Boy and Sir can now communicate. It has been an positive and eventful year.

The derivative of Pain

On suffering

Sir took a shower today. It was... as always is, an experience. But with many many doubts, and much confusion on the way... a shower became the hot water of temperament.

Hot hot water... good for cleansing the soul? No?

One would surmise that the shower is the best form of cleansing, at this time, this place, that is our place... 20...something century. What if there were times that the shower, i.e. the act of cleansing, is a farce? Where would we be now?

Perhaps enough cleansing of words, enough prettyi-fying of our experience.

When a friend is dying, one would say the the act of cleansing is a ritual. Next question: what is the act of cleansing? What is the act of pretty-fying? How and where do we start to see that the end is near, that the sanctifying of the human existence can step in to our word of grief?

Living with grief is the world only known to those that have lived with grief. It is seldom talked about, sometime written about. Grief exists in many many forms. Sir has an amazing friend who is able to vocalise/sanctify/publish the grief of others through his writing, yet seems unable to write about his own. Why such a block, methinks, I do not know.

Sir's wife, a wonderful creative and unknowingly poetic woman, is living with grief as it flows.. with one that is dying. The death is a concept that we understand, in terms of now alive, now dead. But the death of a loved one is not so sanctified in such short terms... where does the death begin? Where does it end? We only have the experience of life... life around us, life encompassing us, life in our loved one as we see it disappear.. and what does that really mean? Life is gone.

Our experience of it however is such a different turn. It is private, and can become public. If we are lucky it is a shared event. Sir's mother spent two nights with her, on the train of passing, from the place of life to the place of peace. Many many times of conversation, for the dying are alone, but do not want to be alone.

Sir's wife is an amazing woman. Creative, loving and kind. With the kindness comes a belief that there are others that are, too, kind. So with the death that is unfolding, Sir has to say that there is no other place that would be better to be, in this time, this space and this knowing.

Our experience of death makes us change... yes perhaps Sir has harped on about this too long. But she thinks not. There is not enough writing about people that are gone. Our memories are one thing, but the truth about the person that was well loved is another entirerly. Perhaps the person was loved in part... perhaps not fully loved but loved none the less. What then?

Sir's experience of suffering is just so. The feeling of the death of another is heavy. It weighs... and this weight has an exactness. It does change, so could be described as a derivative of pain, from one day to another. Sometimes the pain is more, sometimes it is less. The pain constant is what we carry in our hearts, about our loved one, about the positive and negative weights that we have associated with them. Because of course, when our loved one is dead all we have is our constants.

Sir's wife is at the beginning. Sir knows that the beginning of a scale and graph of pain is none that no other can know. It is a lifeline of feeling. It begins, but does not end.

How well we have been loved

The shortest day has passed. With it the weather has stayed cold and wet, finally a true Melbourne Winter! With the grey skies comes the task of cleansing... Sir is packing up the memories and throwing out the junk. And boy, how much is there? Lots and lots and lots. Sometimes too overwhelming to think about, but always with the old saying "How does one eat an Elephant?" in mind.

The heaviness of possessions, the decisions that are made on the basis of worth. Whose worth? What would Sir take from here to remind her of her mother? So much anger in Sir's early twenties about the quality and quantity of love... and now, when the physicality of maternal love is no longer, unearths a treasure.... words and words and words and letters and letters. All saying the same thing. And how well does Sir know now that she was loved? Very very well.

Odd always to look back on the person one once was. Feisty, bouncy, difficult, prickly, razor sharp. Is Sir still that person? Is there ever a lost past? Why do we keep the letters of the dead and shred the letters of our first love? There is regret... yes, at not knowing, not realising, and now too late the picture of who Sir was... in lots of ways just a spoiled brat. Thank goodness Sir knows this now.

But it is never too late. To unfold the memories of the past and absorb that feeling of being encased, accepted and cherished. To have been so loved is a gift, and in its self with the act of cleansing feels light and good.

April 8

I walked across the bridge over Burgundy St

Looked right to the sky

Full Moon hung over the hazy Dandenongs

Down the valley into Heidelburg

I drove home

Into a blazing golden sun

I would have been dazzled

If my eyes weren't wearing grief already

6A

Its a dry echoey ward

We have the best seat

And morphine crystalizes the view

Parts of me in strange places

My heart is with bed 13

Is it a lucky number?

in America, 12 to 14

Somewhere ahead the road for us stops

and we don't walk together any more

Hold my hand tightly now

I want to feel your heart beating

into my palm

08/04/09

364

I can feel it now

again

the paper cutout of your pain

lays down over my body

like a sheet settling over a well made bed

stabs of incomprehension, aches of recognition

your hands made my cup of herbal tea

tonight

your crown prickles at the dark corners

your eyes look at me from the mirror

green, blue, yellow, cloudy

sad

red

I can see your white temples

while I was playing Bach at your viewing

thank god I was only me

my heart reached over my breast bone

and my lips

kissed your cold forehead

warm fingers massaged your praise

I know you miss me

but you know where I am