Tuesday, April 13, 2010

The surety of ducks

It's harvest time. The ducks are in the rice fields and drying stalks alternate with paddies of fresh turned clods. It smells like a pig farm for some reason, the earth is dark and dense and strewn with rotting matter and stagnating water. The ducks love it. Hundreds of them, herded by their master with bits of plastic bags tied to the end of a bamboo pole. He flicks and waves and they quack and waddle searching for I have yet to find out what, in the shallow waters. I love them. I love the whole scene. Straw hats, bare chests, stalks and clods and ducks. The afternoon storm adds a purple to the day and throws banana fronds and coconut palms in sharp relief to a sky, moody, moist and full of portent. I had not thought to find such peace at the end of the rutted path that leads away from the manic motorbikes and hustle at the other end of my lane. On a day like today, when everything feels precarious, there's a kind of surety in ducks

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

For Catherine

Today it is 3 months since my mother died and there are several things for which I am incredibly grateful. Bintang, altho It does nothing to help my rounding menopausal midriff, clove flavored cigarettes, except for the obvious deleterious health effects, and my friend Catherine. She, like me is on the ecstatic though sometimes arduous route to writing.
As often as we can, we meet online. She in Burringbar, Northern NSW and me in Ubud, Bali. Our journeys are surprisingly fraught with the same demons of insignificance, flashes of brilliance and needs for support, and across the reaches of cyberspace we have a bond; a pact, to read and write and bully and support each other on our ways. For the last 3 months we have bounced infidelities, moral dilemmas, disgust and celebration from terminal to heart space and back again, and in the undercurrents of my grief, she is my lifeline.

Sunday, April 4, 2010

Poor Neglected Blog

How is it that after packing up a life, burying a mother and leaving the country to write, that I can look here to see that mylast entry was over 2 weeks ago. Who or what are the interminable interruptions to that which should be my primary focus?????
I am soooooooo tempted to beat myself up right now for, well....... human frailty, I guess!If I was more focussed or more determined or more evolved or more disciplined or not such a pathetic excuse for a.........writer, or perhaps even more fundamentally, a person, then absolutely nothing would stop me from pumping out the measley 1,000 words a day that I have completely neglected for the last two weeks.WHAT am I doing all day??????????? And where is the line between grace and reprisal? A little help please Mr. Owl.