An ordinary day (a gunshot at the end)

October 8, 2014  |  ibrainmapadmin

I wake when the sun comes up. Even if I want to sleep in there’s too much light coming in through the shower curtains. That’s not a desert metaphor. The curtains on the eastern window are shower curtains and keep out the moisture but not the light!

I pretend to meditate most mornings. Pretend because I’m only half hearted. I am really waiting for an idea to pierce through my sleepy brain to some part in there that can make sense of the jumble. I guess that’s the part we usually refer to as mind, though my system doesn’t seem to be that neat, just a blur of thinking, feeling, sensation and remembering, plus that other thing called by a lot of elusive names like intuition, creativity, presence….. (See what I mean, a jumbled mess).

Then I write. I’m on a computer diet at the moment. No I don’t eat computers. I’m trying to avoid them, at least in the mornings so I write with pen and paper. Yes quaint I know.

But if an idea is ready to burst out all over the page like a ripe pimple I leap onto the computer so I can get it down fast before it bursts and leaves a sticky mess in my psyche and nothing left to write down.

I write for however long the flow is there.

Some mornings there’s nothing there. My mind is full of empty. I know that’s very Zen but for a writer it’s a tragic waste of a morning. Sometimes I write about the emptiness if I can find the words to grab a hold of it, or about the strange voice in the fridge that talks to me in my night dreams. It seems to bang every now and then between the loud humming, almost a complete country and western band.

On Sunday my walk was hijacked by the markets. I met the real deal local country and western singers (photo attached). They were singing “save the last dance for me” when I strolled into the market zone at the information center. Well maybe that’s not a country and western song, again my lack of categories lets me down, but they made it sound country.

I met a woman from Jerilderie, which is only 50kms from where I grew up, while I was there. I bought some fruit cake from her. I think it’s the same recipe as my mother used to make, sensational. I do love a cup of tea and a slice of boiled fruitcake on a warm afternoon, takes me back to my country childhood.

I also spoke to a couple of local opal guys, one was a cutter and one a miner. And they showed me which are the best opals. The miner said he’d been here since 1971. So I guess that’s local. I wanted to take a photo of him but I’m a bit shy about random portraits yet.

But the Sunday market isn’t my typical day.

Usually after writing for however many hours my writing captain demands I have breakfast then go for a walk. That’s where I was going when I got hijacked by the Sunday market.

But first I have to find something not too glamorous to wear. Clothes that seemed pretty ordinary in downtown Daylesford make me feel like a sore thumb in Morilla St LR, aka the main street of Lightening Ridge. I wish I had an ordinary looking T-shirt that isn’t violent purple. Perhaps I’ll buy some of those parachute pants, there are plenty of those out here in caravanning circles, and a baby pink T-shirt with kitten on it so I blend in.

I change my walking track regularly because I’ve been accosted by dogs, well a dog on one “track” (a gravel road through a camp suburb), and some of you know how I feel about being attacked by dogs. This dog was serious, and very big. The guy in the camp came rushing out to save me, well, more sauntered than rushed if I’m honest, but I was willing him to rush as the dog had me bailed up against a tree and seemed to be wondering whether to eat my leg or the camera dangling around my neck. He said it was a stray that had claimed him and was very territorial, in case I hadn’t noticed. I haven’t been back that way since.

On another morning walk I was taking some great photos of an interesting looking camp. It was a kind of quaint corrugated iron affair with a flat roof.

As I was getting in close behind a tree in case the inhabitants had a big dog I noticed some tape flapping in the breeze. It looked rather pretty and I was snapping happily when I realized it was police tape. It gave me a creepy feeling and I finished up quickly and walked on. But then on my way back I had to pass the camp again. The tape was doing a particularly lovely dance in the sunlight and I snuck in for a few more shots.

I was pulled and pushed by my inner good cop – bad cop argument. One said just get out of here, something creepy happened here, some brutality that I didn’t want to contemplate. The other part was drawn in looking for clues “oooh how fascinating…” it murmured like a b grade detective who never gets his man. I kept looking over my shoulder, I was alone in the bush, but maybe there was surveillance on the joint. I ducked off quick smart when I heard a tank in the distance rolling towards me.

Then home, usually to check, and upload the latest photos and then crop a few. Cropping is my only photo editing skill so far.

My day gets a bit blurry here, usually more writing or reading. But if I’m in the swing of things I avoid reading, it clutters my mind with other voices and I can’t hear myself think. But like I said, lately my mind is pretty empty so I’ve been doing a bit of reading.

Then lunch, and oh…. I don’t know if I should tell you this, but well it’s such a sweet guilty secret I think I must, I have a nap. An afternoon nap is such a delicious thing to do on a hot day. Mum had a nap every day of her life. Even out to lunch at other people’s houses she was known to disappear for twenty minutes, returning to the conversation looking refreshed and ready to take on the world. If anyone went looking for her they’d find her fast asleep in the cool dark of the far bedroom. So I guess it’s in my blood.

As evening rolls in and the sun sinks in the western sky I go for a drive to find a twilight spot to take some photos. I walk and snap and snap and walk whatever’s in range. A derelict truck, a shanty, a kangaroo or two, people walking their dog, the sun, the trees, wire, flowers, I meet whatever is there in front of me with my camera.

Then I head off to the bore baths.

Because I don’t have any hot water here, I didn’t know that cold water only, was part of the plan when I signed up for this house sit, but it’s forced me to go down to the bore baths every day.

It’s very continental down there. Like a cute little swimming pool with mostly European speaking people, and an occasional Aussie thrown into the mix.

It’s about 42 degrees so it can sting if you’ve been in the sun. Yes it’s a bit like having a hot bath. The water is clear and sometimes that milky blue of artesian water and smells slightly tangy, only a hint of sulphur.

You need to have a shower before you get in. There are several signs saying this and I always do what signs tell me so I shower, besides it just seems polite when I’m sharing a hot bath with strangers. Yes we leave our bathers on, these are not the beautiful bodies you get on TV shows but bodies that have been lived in, bulging over bathers, lumpy and soft from loving and living, like an old comfy sofa. No need to hold your tummy in around here.

A couple of nights ago one guy (an Aussie, local I guess) yelled at a couple across the pool because they got into the baths without having a shower. They yelled back that they’d just come from the caravan park and had a shower there. Mumbled conversations started up on either side of the pool. One team was the locals led by the big guy with the long grey beard and Hawaiian shirt and in the other corner (though the pool is round so I mean that metaphorically) were the tourists.

I was floating around in the middle red faced, not because of the argument but because of the hot water. Other than that my visits to the bore baths have been uneventful.

Is it helping my aches and pains? Well I haven’t really had any aches and pains since I left Victoria. I think my body belongs in the desert, or at the very least is a warm climate beast.

Then I come home, sometimes still in my wet cossie if the showers are full.

Arriving home at dusk in wet cossies reminds me of my childhood summers in the Riverina. Mum and Dad would take us down to the channel for a last minute dip, sort of how other kids had a bedtime story we had a bedtime swim, only in summer. We lived in a fibro cottage out in the desert (its complicated but I’ll stick to this story for now) and a fibro cottage doesn’t keep much heat out of your bed, Mum and Dad would drop the four of us in the channel and let us swim around a bit, sort of like mice in a science experiment. Then they’d haul us out and we’d go home still wet, jump into our jammies and into bed before we dried out and we slept like kittens.

When I get home from the bore baths I peel off my wet togs and get into my jammies and then pour a drink, ginger beer. That’s the other thing we did when we got home from a swim in the afternoon as kids in summer we had home made ginger beer. Yes perhaps I am reliving my childhood out here and why not.

There’s a great big TV in my room, bedsit, what the owners call “unit” so I’ve been channel surfing. Now I have another confession, I saw “Bachelor,” I don’t think I could technically say I watched it, I just happened upon it as I flicked through the channels, but perhaps I’m trying to lessen my embarrassment.

It was like trying not to watch a car crash. I only saw the last two nights and I was gunning for Lisa. But oh my god, what a kick in the guts she got from big bad Blako.

Watching it gave me the same feeling I got when I was taking photos of the police taped camp, ooh no I shouldn’t be here watching this, with a crawling feeling like something bad is going to happen. And what about the guy with the hair and the weird name that sounds like Gosh, which I said aloud when I saw his hairdo in Africa. Nice shots of Africa though.

And I was right. There was a car crash at the end, emotional wrecks all over the place, well Lisa anyway. What a set up. I have to shake my head as I write this it makes me feel better. I cant tell you if I’m shaking my head because I’m confessing that I watched Bachelor, or that I did watch Bachelor or that they make a program that leaves so many wrecks. And how come it’s about Bachelor? Yeah I guess Spinster doesn’t have the same ring to it. There probably is such a show with men fighting over the princess but I’m not going surfing to find out.

In other words some nights I watch some trash on TV after tea, yes “tea” because that’s what we call it out here, never dinner.

Well my day goes something like that. Often there is a little blip, like picking up a hitchhiker with a strong sour smell that leaves my car even more like a rural ute than it was. It’s covered in dust except where the dogs have pissed on the tires and left streaks down the side. Or something out of the ordinary happens, like the sound of a gunshot nearby in the evening (I wrote a little piece about that, so I’ll tag it onto the end of this post).

I talk to the flies and mozzies and I have a mouse living with me, and Pee-Wee down the end of the porch that pecks the black shiny garden pot all day, so I don’t get lonely.

One lazy blowfly came in this morning as I wrote and started dive-bombing the window. Then it made wild circles around the room. I showed it the door and told it to leave. It ignored me so I told it that it would have to die if it didn’t leave. It was silent for a time and I thought it had taken heed of my threat. But it started up again. Yeah not very Buddhist I know. But blowflies can bring out the worst in me, especially when they don’t cooperate. No, I’m not telling what happened.

So my life is very ordinary and simple.

But because it’s different and so simple it lets in more light, as if my brain can rest into each day. The daily chores that I rushed through only a month ago have become small rituals, like the washing up and saving my water for the garden and taking out the scraps to the compost and talking to the animals.

Yes my days are simple, like white linen, (well off-white perhaps, because it couldn’t stay white for long out here), a soft rough fabric that weaves all my simple experiences of my day together that I can wrap around my head to protect my face from the hard wind and shade my eyes from the burning.

 

Gunshot

I’m sitting outside on the porch eating a salad in the soft twilight. The light is like fresh air with silver streaks through it, a mixture of late evening sunlight leaving and almost full moon. Stars are just waking up for the night and twinkle, gentle as sleepy children.

How peaceful, I think.

Then the silence is split open by the crack of gunshot. It sounds like it’s only a couple of camps away. Then I think I hear screaming, or was it the screech of a bird.

I hold my breath and listen.

Nothing happens.

I listen but then have to take in air. And I breathe again, a gasping sound.

Slowly I start to eat. I don’t know what else to do.

Should I call the police? Maybe someone shot a kangaroo for tucker.

I munch and try to listen over the loud crunching sound of chewing inside my head.

The world is still except for my munching.

I tell myself I am not unsafe, usually murders and assaults are committed by people known to the victim. And I don’t know anyone out here.

There’s a tight spot in my chest like a sack of cement sitting in there making it hard to breathe.

I keep listening. The world is listening. Waiting for something to happen, a siren, another shot, something to tell us, give us a sign that it was nothing or something.

I finish my meal unmindfully. Trying to slow myself down. The food is hard to swallow.

I sit frozen, listening. My imagination goes wilder.

Then a tiny light, red flashing in the sky, crossing overhead, a plane flying to some far off destination breaks the strange spell of waiting. A little scrap of normal pierces through, a tiny sign, that all will be well.

I go inside and close the door quietly and lock it. Then walk around and close the windows and pull the curtains and close the blind.

I wanted to read tonight but decide I’ll watch trash on TV instead, something to distract me and take my mind off that gunshot and give my imagination a bone to chew so it doesn’t eat me alive.

Now I hear a dog barking in the distance and I’m glad of the sound. It feels like normal is returning, well ordinary. This doesn’t feel normal to me. But then what is normal?

The dog stops barking and again the hard silence skulks close waiting for that sign.

I switch on the TV and breathe out and surf to find some mindless trash. I quickly flick over guns or anything creepy or brutal. But somewhere between Bear Grills Island, covered with blotchy red and white men slapping each other on the back, and a not funny comedy, a new thought swipes me sideways.

My mind gags and tries to push out the dark ugly thought and concentrate on something bellowing on the big bright screen on the other side of the room.

What if someone shot themselves?

My mind keeps going back to it like a dog with a stinking bone buried under the Oleander bush, sniffing and pawing at it and licking the dirty ugly thing. My imagination fills in the gaps around my question and I feel its sick weight in my stomach.

In the morning I watch for signs as I go for a walk. But I don’t know what I’m looking for. I don’t know what normal is out here. When I drive into town there’s an ambulance at a camp up the road and I wonder if they found something, but perhaps my imagination has overtaken my sanity. Perhaps I am mad and imagined it all.

But my body remembers that sound cracking the still night. And it can’t pretend. But I can’t do anything as a stranger in this town, can I?