Xmas eve.
Brisbane is F...ing hot.
Windows vainly seek the slightest of breezes
Bodies glistening with perspiration sit slumped in cane chairs.
Nana slips off for a quiet afternoon nap.
Presents hide under a plastic tree
wrapped in last years paper.
The old rust encrusted esky
makes its annual xmas acquaintance
with crushed ice, a leg of ham
and a dozen assorted sparkling ales.
The air is bush-still
Cicadas growl outside the window
sending Xmas greetings to each other.
The brush turkeys have taken a sabattical.
Their PHDs in garden deconstruction on hold.
The tiger prawns and side of atlantic salmon
sit patiently on the top shelf of the exhausted fridge.
The preparations are complete.
Now we just wait.
7 comments:
How sweet it is...
You should get air conditioning!
:-) Happy Christmas and Merry New Year friend.
apropros of nothing we are playing Swimming by Martha and the Muffins in your honour this evening. Have you seen Control - the movie about Joy Divison? Very good - if maudlin. But then I like maudlin. Yes - Mr Capo - read Breath - I'm dying to talk to someone about it.
Luvvie, Luvvie, Luvvie,
Talk to me about Breath. The wonderful Tim W is my one true love. Well Tim and Jackson Browne. I'm rereading The Riders at the moment.
Okay - Mr Capo asked what I liked about it. I liked that Mr Winton grasped something so basic and fundamental to human existence i.e breathing and then weaved it out into a magnificent story that was about a human growing up. Breathing - we do it unconsciously - I actually start to feel mortally ill if I focus on it too much - and yet it is so vital to our existence. How can we do something so important so unconsciously?? I also liked the description of the father/son routine. I ached for the father. And yet I know this growing up and growing away of children is inevitable. You do so much for them and yet your life is nothing to them - unknowable. This is as it should be. And the same goes I suppose for paramedics/ambulance officers. They are there to help you or clean up the rotten pieces of your life for you and your family. So important but so invisible. Hmmmm - much to discuss. Have you read it? What did you like about it?
I'll read it as soon as i get a copy and get through my five other books i have in a queue - or perhaps i should let it jump the queue so i can join in this conversation.
I was thinking of fathers and children and stories which affect us in our personal lives and as readers.
MostLusty wrote about her father and his enduring presence and i was hit by the truth of it as a story. I thought: How does a writer make a fiction feel as real as a real experience. Is it knowing that it's true and actually happened that gives it its power or is it something about tapping the truth of the experience. Sometimes i think one (me for example) can get carried away with the poetic wordsmithing of a story and risk missing the nub/guts of what one really want to share. My memory of tim winton's writing is that perhaps he gets pretty close to that truth - and yet he manages to wrap it in the poetry of the everyday.
I liked that the actual story was so sparse and yet W's writing so beautiful and poetic. For me it's all about his use of words and what they do to me, what memory these words evoke. He takes me inside the wave or onto the verandah of Sando and Eva's house. I'm there.
And yes using the act of breathing as the premise of a novel, brilliant. I love the whole interconnectedness of life. The didj playing by Bruce....I read this around the time I saw Kate Miller-Heike sing circular breathing. Just love that. Serendipity.
I also love the men in W's novels. For me they have such substance. Fathers. Relationships. For me it was 43 years ago but still so close to the surface. My children's father has been so absent in their life emotionally, though physically present. Ah it's all connected but I think I'm getting off the track somewhat.
Yes Capo, I think you will have to let Breath jump the queue. Would like you perspective.
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