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.