A dead Raven is in my hands, it is heavier than I had imagined. Neck bent in a gentle posture of sleep, wings tucked down, sleek and perfect and warm from the sun and with the faint fetor of decomposition quick upon the air. I saw it die, knocked aside mid-flight by the car ahead of me. The Raven hesitated as it rose from the road, and was lost. Tumbling though the air, wings askew and flapping with a final effort to escape its fate, there was no life left in the flesh when it fell into the dry grass.

I drive past at first, but I return later that day to collect the body, it is heavier than I had expected, but perfect, sunwarm and sour. I carry it home in my car.

I spend the afternoon reading about native American techniques for preserving whole birds, as well as techniques for clean dismemberment and feather plucking. I am both disturbed and intrigued, my stomach turns over, but my eyes read on.

Long after the sun has set I put on my gloves and set to work. I pick up the bird and say to it You are not your body. I know immediately that I am not my body, that the flesh I inhabit is only a part of what I am, and that when I die, my body will break down and return to the earth, just like the Raven in my hands.

I look at death for a moment.

I take the wings, the tail feathers, the feet and the head, the rest I return to the wild.

An experience both macabre and natural, gruesome and ordinary. I have not handled a dead animal in such a way since I was fourteen, when I caught a rabbit in a trap, then skinned and cooked it with butter and pepper over a campfire out bush. I cured the skin with salt, keeping it as a little memento for years.

So I guess the story about the dead Raven takes us here.

My father was a hunter. As a boy at home I would fall asleep beside the fire, laying on a fox pelt complete with glass eyes, the whole thing carefully mounted on thick felt. In my father's study, mounted on the walls were wild boar tusks, trophies for marksman competitions, memorabilia from his years in the army. Above my own bed, a pair of mighty goat horns were mounted on a wooden shield, I would stare up at them every night as I went to sleep. I went shooting with my father, my cousin and my uncle in the school holidays, year after year, filling tin cans with buckshot and cracking rocks with .22 bullets, staying up late sitting around the campfire, walking up and down the scrubby hills around Palmer, collecting old Yakka stalks to use as walking sticks.

Now I am a man, plucking feathers from a wild bird, taking it's useful parts and returning the rest to the earth.

*

I was given a shortbow when I was about eight or nine years old. I was taught the rules of its use, as I had been taught the rules of firearms, a code of behaviour that was not, under any circumstances to be contradicted, and which I never did. For years I fired at my backyard haybale target, learning how to breathe, steady my limbs, focus, draw and release the arrow in a fluid motion. I was never a master, but I knew how to handle the weapon and how to shoot straight over both short and long distances.

When I was about twenty and living in the suburbs, I gave the bow away to another young boy who lived in the country, and so the wonder of archery was passed along.

Today an old friend came around, bringing with him a new compact, collapsable shortbow and set of carbon fibre arrows. I set up a target for us, and when he handed me the bow it were as if I had forgotten nothing, shot after shot finding its target, seven out of eight arrows hitting each time.

Nock the arrow, (breathe out), draw the bow as you (breathe in) lift the bow and take aim (and slowly release the breath) as you fire.

It has been about twenty years since I have handled a bow, but my hands moved with absolute certainty and when I was most centred in my self, my arrows struck the centre of the target. If my breath was too quick, or my thoughts too clouded, I would hit off centre, always the result of my ego intervening in the process and wresting control from my body.

Archery is a meditation like no other.

*

The sensational permeability of love, the infinite gradation of its seasons of sunlight. To paint a picture of love is to paint a sky from dawn to dusk and through the halls of night to dawn again, and to paint it forever more for no dawn is alike to another, and no night lasts forever. So it is with you and I, my dearest, my Love. Forever painting and being painted, forever waking to the dawn and sliding soft and warm into the the bright day, to live hand in hand.

*

How humbling it is to be in the presence of such humble greatness. To share in your presence the joyful gaze of the crowd, and witness the testimony of your beauty. All day my hands have been in the earth, my back to the sun, digging holes, planting shrubs, trees, flowers, swathed in the silence of nature.

We are transformed by the night, garbed in the colours and fabrics of foreign lands, our daily labours invisible, our tribulations a forgotten fable as the purpose of all our striving finds purchase amidst the noise and haste of the clattering city. In the night you dance and I play and we eat and tell stories, and mesmerised by the fluid precision of your movements, I find it humbling to be beside such humble greatness, and to share in the gift of your art.

(for Kylea and Regan)

                                                                                              
*

The season changes, and I with it.

why not? am i immune to the laws of nature?

is my sentience somehow more powerful than the push and pull of the moon?

I am an animal, a rock, a river, a tree, subject to the sun and rain and

a subject of the sun, and the rain

Those ghostly faces who stared out at me from the receeding shadows of winter are nowhere to be seen, instead I glimpse tall dream people, smelling flowers, shimmering as heat waves in the air, they float past me in the rainbow hue of glimmering water and everywhere the trumpeters proclaim the reign of the Summer Court.

Cloud banks heap against themselves building sky-quake mountain ranges that collapse and rise and collapse again, and rise again in their windblown procession.

I catch a flashing shadow, a scimitar curve black against the green earth, and above me a hawk floats triumphal, weightless and defiant of gravity, floating hollow boned upon the self-same winds that break the great blue sky with cloud banks heaping one upon the other, mountainous and trembling in the sky.

*

Low sunset laid upon the stones, I step in trick-step on the broad flat paths, side-step and slip past stains upon the pave, fresh from this eve's early imbibations. The city is drunk already upon the heat, pressing like skin upon skin, we feel our own bodies passing through air and sensual, silk bedsheets of breezes spread pleasure as they pass over sweat gathering on backs, bellies, necks, ears, noses and all parts exposed or concealed. The air is wet with sound, the sway of a violin street performer surrounded by children who whisper and gape at the sweet wonder of her song, the carillon choir of town hall striking the hour, the burdensome roar of traffic straining against itself.

And out of the day, come the drummers.

With drums slung across backs or carried under arms, they sway their way through crowds and conversations. Where they take up seats and play, the booming voices of their drums are louder than the traffic, louder than thunder, amplified and reverberated, and collected in the ears and hands and eyes of passers-by who stop, or turn and twist their necks to see and to hear. It lights fires in the minds of the children who come to look closely and to play, and their mothers who stand by with the faces of mothers everywhere who see their young ones discovering music.

Out of the day come the drummers

　
(A link to the poem by Steve Silberman, Out of the Day come the drummers)

http://ezone.org/ez/e3/articles/diga/drum.html

*

With my toes in the sand and my heart racing, I find myself upon your shore again. Like last time, I am as much changed as the time before that, and I can see all my past selves who came here and who made pacts with you, just as I am here now again, making a pact with you. My breath near frantic, I step into the water and let the ocean wash my feet and my hands and I wash away the dust of these past years. My fingers running wet through the curl and black tangle of my hair, I wash away the debris of trauma, the burden of clinging fear, the knots of my own anxiety. I wash these parts of myself and glance only for a moment at your immense beauty, knowing that I will return tomorrow to complete what I started here today. Tomorrow I will swim in your fullness, and you will know that I have come back to you.

Mother Earth

Mother Ocean

Mother Moon

Mother Sky

*

Now deep in the night, I sit with my woman and my son and we listen to the gentle surf. We listen, we sit in silence, listening, and when a wave bursts upon the shore with particular colour and music, we comment, talking for a moment, lifted from the silence of books and carried gently back into silence by the susurrus of the surf receding and advancing in the far off darkness of the night.

No clock ticks in this place.

Legend tells of a sorcerer who smashed a clock at midnight on New Years eve here. It is a legend I witnessed and can attest to. It was magic, myth, a mysterious and perfect midnight that I now find myself facing again, as I listen to the waves in the far off darkness of the night and remember the pact I made with the ocean, on the night that a sorcerer smashed a clock against the wall at midnight...

Tonight I make a new pact, a promise. A secret.

*

I see him.

Razor clean scalp, meticulous, white skin, clean. A strong face, sturdy jaw, pale eyes. The three top buttons of his white pinstripe shirt are undone revealing a portion of a circular symbol laden tattoo in the centre of his hairless chest. He is strong, very strong, and I think at first that he is a sailor, or a soldier. His huge pecs and arms bulge in an obvious display beneath his tight shirt. But there is something off about the whole picture, something that looks like a disguise, like these are not his regular clothes. I don't think he has regular clothes.

His face and eyes are fixed in a stern purposeful gaze, searching through the crowd for a specific place, or person. It is not a kind face.

He's not alone. Walking behind him are three young girls, all in glittering gold mini-dresses, all with blonde hair and high heeled shoes. The middle of the three wears a 21st Birthday sash, and in some way resembles the man with the tattoo, like he chose the dress, like he chose the clothes for all three. Like they are all in costume.

I get a creepy feeling when I first look at him, but I brush it off, telling myself that I'm just feeling edgy in an unfamiliar crowd, paranoid in a noisy nightclub, seeing menace where there is none. But then I turn as he walks past me, and I see his hand. His right hand, held behind his back just below the belt, about where his hand would be if he were standing at ease on a parade ground. This hand makes a gripping motion, and as if in slow motion, I see him make this same, steady, intent filled gesture a second time. I close my eyes for a moment and see, blurred slightly through a sub-visible translucent glamour, his shadow on the floor. Painted on the darkness of it, scrawled in white chalk, I see overlapping, interconnecting, arcane symbols, and in his clenching fingers I see a gold chain, and on that chain I see three girls in glittering gold dresses.

That is all I see of him. He is folded into the crowd, and with his girls, is gone.

I do not see him again this night, and am glad of it.

*

I have never heard a woman cry in a theatre before, and the sweet guitar melody that was being played while she did was like water trickling through the stones of a dry creekbed, and the swaying of the wind and the voices of trees were brushed softly from the cymbals and all the room fell quiet around us. In the dim blue light between scenes, towering shadowed stage props cloud the dimly glowing sky of the vaulted ceiling and all the darkened wings backstage are filled with the silent costumed forms of children, holding their breath.

The actor upon the stage breaks character, stands and strides up the steps to the director, throwing her arms around her and speaking softly in her ear. It is the expression of love and compassion felt by everyone in the room, but it was the young girl in striped pyjamas who said for us what needed to be said.

　

An angry one may kindle strife

a cruel one may wreck a life

a timely one may lessen stress
and a loving one may heal and bless


What am I?
From the play, The Worsmith's Cat, by Joanne Sarre & Paul Cleaver

　

 October 2017

　

As light preceeds the dawn, the honey scent of crocus flowers preceeds her onto the stage, the silence of her footsteps disguise the gravity of her purpose. Starlight seems a heavy weight upon the floating petals of her dress, which drift and sigh with every note the musician lifts fingertip and palm from the gleaming gray steel elispse upon his cross-legged lap. An instrument named a Halo.

In the shadow of a blue light dulled by rough black curtains, I crouch offstage, crowded in beside the stage manager and the twinkling forms of the next dance troupe, as we all, in total silence, watch Regan dance, and Tony play.

Dance and Play.

I remember the sand pit. Of my childhood memories, playing in the sand pit is very strong for me, hours upon days upon weeks upon terms, semesters, years...and now a life well lived with my hands in the dirt. I remember dancing in the sand, twisting my feet around and making patterns like snakes. Or flowers. I imagined I could dig to China. Dance and Play. The instincts of children.

Up there, with the lights in her eyes and that look upon her face like all of life is as beautiful as this moment, and without a word being spoken, we all agree that it could be, life could be everything in this moment, and that right now, all of life is as beautiful as a woman dancing upon a stage, her red dress like a flower in spring.



*

Who are these ghosts? Why do they linger in weed choked alleys, on street corners, in shops and alone on the higway as I drive home, driving towards midnight, moonlit, the booming thrum of music ringing on in my mind, my ears congested with sound. Who are these masked desperados? These pale faced devils in plain clothes who stare blank as walls and who cannot be moved with word or force?

Where are the angels? the heroes?

Where is the whistling man? The mistress of keys? Here where the shadows have shadows and even deeper filth festers and fidgets in the unseen gutters of the spirit world. The city is not a safe place. And yet...and yet...neither is it unsafe, nor is it unknowable, for while these masked creatures who wear the shapes of men do linger, they do not malign, and my passing seems for all the world to be unnoticed, unremarkable. The ghosts too, though animate and conversant, have a society and interests of their own, and pay me no heed as I walk amidst their comapny.

With runes marked out upon the soles of my shoes, the dust does not move with my passing, shadows cling frozen upon the slate gray earth, unruffled. The masked forces of nature stand observant, pillars of stillness, mountain motionless surrounded by the rushing of time, entropy and order washing as waves upon their shore. While I, oh I, watch them. I stare into the emptiness of their eyes, their masks up close I see writing upon them, the fine calligraphy of whatever magic is granted to they who wear, or are worn by, the masks.

All my ignorance, and all my knowledge. That is what I see written in the masks. I see the infinitesimally tiny speck of light that is my existence, against the broad view of all existence. I look away. I must look away.

I break the spell.

Who are these ghosts? Why do I linger with them in weed choked alleys, on street corners, in shops and alone on the higway as I drive home with them, driving towards midnight, moonlit, the booming thrum of music ringing on in my mind, my ears congested with sound.

Where are the angels? the heroes?

*

The sun is high, the day bright and wondrous.

A distant, lone saxophone player blows his solitary music echoing beautifully, loud and perfect as I walk beneath vaulted pavillion arches. I look up from my boots, and standing right there before me, a mysterious woman stops in the shade to light a cigarette, blowing smoke up into the air with a cinematic wistful sigh. Tall boots. Mirrored shades. Red lipstick.

There are moments so stunningly arranged by fate as to leave one breathless, all the histories of man and beast had to preceed before this could occur. A scene-like theatricality, straight out of an old time detective movie, complete with musical score.

But...here is the lesson easy to miss.

This moment was not special, not unique.

All moments are these moments, waiting for us to look up from our boots and see.

All of time, all of creation has waited since the birth of the first star, for us to look up and see.

See what? you ask.

Whatever is there.

*

In a field in the borderlands.

　

　

I lay down in the tall grass

I forget about time

for a few minutes

the clouds

the wind

everything

just as it is

*

At a Market.

The dancers in black, the dancers in white, in orange and gold, the drummers who are led by them, and the rolling waves of sound that follow upon their convergence. From the four corners of the city, trailing the perfume of their intent through crowds thick with the press of a marketplace, theirs is a confluence of culture and joy. In the sunny courtyard, a bespectacled gentleman in hat and shirtsleeves makes coffee while his two children take orders from the press of thirsty spring tickled supplicants. Dancers in black, dancers in white, in orange and red and blue and gold, and the drummers who follow the snowbell tinkle of their steps upon the floor.

*

There

in the tall grass...

a rock in the sun.

Upon it

a

black

winged

Ibis.

One step

two, three...

then it flies on through the woods

with more certainty than I have known

in

my

whole

life

*

Walking with the family across hills and rocks and through the tall grass we come first to the Goblin lookout. From this rocky vantage we look down to the realm of the Fox King in the dark green reeds along the banks of the northern lake. Far beyond it upstream, at the intersection of two valleys stands the Tree of the Ancients. Skirting the tall reeds and tramping upstream along the boggy edge of the creek, we cross and pass a thistle patch, following the curve of the earth to the mighty tree just beyond the hill. A tree beneath which we lie and stare up into branches that looked down upon a hundred hundred generations of Aboriginal faces, walking in search of intitiation, for this land was magical even before I imagined it to be so. Before I populated it with Goblins and Skags and the swift wild tribesmen of the Razor Clan.

Leaving the Tree we cross the plateau to the Waterstone, where we leave a tiny glass bottle as an offering and cross over into Razor Clan territory, along the Running Flag Race leading all the way to the Cupstone, and to the path leading down into Skag Gully. Passing by, we continue along the highlands until we can see The Twins, last of their kind in the valley. Tall and beautiful, swaying in the high wind, carrying messages between the Whispering Trees in the east, and those in the West.

But what's this? A third? Their child has survived the first year in the wild and now shows its green fingers above the grass. Where there were two, now there are three. Where there are three...?

Nearby we pause at the Viewing Stone. Once a portal to another world, it is now closed, locked for reasons lost to history. On the hill we see, crouched and almost hidden, a wild woman and her daughter, our kinfolk, resting in the sunwarmed concealment of golden grassblades.

The shadows lean long across the lowland fields as we turn for home. Crossing openly through the fallow pasture, fearing neither predators nor bandits, making straight for the southern lake and wetting our lips with the mineral water. Noisy as the sunset birds above us, we talk and laugh and stumble and play our way back along the road that leads to our homestead, tucked neatly beside the woodland creek crossing that leads back to the Goblin lookout. Nearly a full boundary trek from start to finish and a story told along the way of the land and the inhabitants of our imagination.

　

　

Or maybe none of that happened. Maybe I just walked around the paddock today with the wife and kids. Saw some weeds by the creek that need spraying and the fence is down on the edge of the track leading to the top paddock, next to the big rabbit warren. Dam levels are high and creek is flowing slowly.

Or maybe there really are Goblins in the tall grass, spying down upon the Fox King, and playing frisbee on the hilltop.

Maybe.

*

I follow in the footsteps of cows.

The rhythm of their

easy

steady gait

becoming my own as I step quietly in the

rut of their routine.

The easy path,

the middle way across the hill

offering the least resistance,

offering the simplest solution

to a problem far, far older

than humans.

*

The beautiful lie

of poetry

sometimes seems

more important

than truth.

*

Standing on the crumbling platform at the train station in a coutry town, the crowd gather waiting for the train and I could be standing on this platform in any year in the past one hundred as the children cheer and the adults cheer and everyone rushes to the edge, peering uptrack as the collossal noise of the whistle blasts all the world into silence beneath its mountainous wave. Hissing smoke and steam, the mighty and beautiful iron beast rolls smoothly to a halt before us, passengers within the antique wooden carriages looking out at us as we look in at them and they drink wine from tall glasses and converse in their travelling stillness, nearing their journey's end. One more town and their sunset disembarkation shall be a spilling out of people somehow out of step with time. All of modernity has yet to match the exquisite aesthetic of the steam train with its noise, heat and grime, its shuddering carriages every part the lumbering pendulous weights they are, pushing and pulling against the engine. The ornamented exterior in wrought iron and timber, always mixing function with beauty, matched seamlessly with the grease coated linkages and complex array of moving machine parts. It is real. None of its workings are concealed. The furnace heats the boiler which creates steam pressure, this pressure drives the machine. Yet, with the very soul of its function on display, it retains both modesty and pride beneath the sheer artistry of its design.

I did not understand trains before my son was born, but through his eyes I have learned to see them as a child see's them, as huge, noisy, bright and beautiful machines, like a rare striped bear roaring in the rocky barren wilderness of the rail yard.

*

Rain in the night and I dream of you, pale skinned in the moonlight, naked and unashamed, a wild animal. I awake to the sound of cockatoos and you are still asleep beside me in the dawn pink, the air outside awash with a veil of fog. The world beyond our window is both exposed and private, for there is no fence like a mountain, and no freedom either. In the day when we don our boots and walk upslope to the standing stones, we stand hand in hand with the sky, our hair the sudden plaything of wind sprites and we laugh and smile and even beneath the bright sun, your smile is brighter.

Rain in the night and I dream of dreaming, waking from one form into another and finding myself in the body of a forty year old Englishman with pale skin and red hair, and I knew the story of his life as if I had lived it and I felt his loneliness and resentment, his despondence and fear, but I knew his love as well, and when at the end of along and tiresome day, he slept, I woke again in another body, another life...

How far into the dreaming had I come? How many dreamers had I skipped like a stone on water across? Each time I slept, I woke again in another life, and like a body floating to the surface, from the deep dream of that Englishman, I rose up through the dreams of others to myself, and woke at last in my own bed, my own body.

Rain in the night and I dream my dream and in the morning I awake to the sound of cockatoos and you are there beside me, naked and unashamed, a wild animal in the dawn pink.

*

I want to tell you now about the barefoot priest, and the soldier.

Three years ago...

First, the priest, barefoot on the hot bitumen, I saw him cross the street alone. Bald, dressed in a black suit, with the white collar of the clergy tight around his throat. A small crucifix hung on a chain, swaying against his chest as he took deliberate, slow strides, out of rhythm with the pace of the world. A man out of step with time. He made the world around him seem blurry.

He was tanned, he had spent a lot of time in the sun, and did not show discomfort from the considerable heat of a January morning in the city, but despite this healthy glamour, there was something off about him, a hollowness to his gaze, perhaps I saw a shadow mark beneath his eye or upon his cheek. This man was privy to dimensions not known to the common man, cognizant of conversations unheard by the common ear.

On the same day that I saw the barefoot priest, I saw the soldier. He was young, in his twenties, but the burdens dragging him graveward carved lines into his face on their way down from his beautiful, blue eyes. Like eroded rock, he sat slumped against himself, elbows on his knees and head tilted up, his uniform matcing the dull green of his duffel bag which lay on the ground at his feet. He sat alone in the useless perspex shade of a bus shelter, sweat staining his shirt and glistening on the rough stubble of his shaven head, his westward shadow cutting a frightening shape into the surface of the earth.

I saw the soldier again later that day.

On the other side of the city, hunched over like eroded rock, slumped against himself in the useless shade of another bus shelter. The sun now burning his other cheek as he turned but did not see me with those beautiful, blue eyes, his shadow cutting east, a canyon in which to fall.

That night, on the radio I heard the news of suicides all over the Queensland wheat farming lands, children as young as eleven succumbing to the despair of a drought that seemed to have no end.

The next night, Adelaide flooded. The garden festival grounds were half submerged in the morning when drainage teams showed up with pumps and shovels and sandbags by the truck load.

All these things are connected. I said to myself. All these things are connected.

　

I cast a magic spell today, a kind of magic mirror, or mirrors I suppose, that lets me see all the parts of myself as if we were a circle of friends, facing inwards. Anxiety, doubt, courage, creativity, all the others, all the old gang together under one roof. When they speak, now they speak to me, not through me, and in their overt gestures I can see machinations, hear clever word games and no longer am I their unwilling conspirator in the complication of my inner life.

So now that I can see them, I can speak to them by name, and when they assert their ignorance and call it experience, I can say to them...I know you. I see you. I know your NAME. Though at first the circle only had a few recognisable forms, the number of faces and names is increasing, while their unseen, Unseely voices grow tired with even their own games, as I, as I, step into the light of their acceptance.

*

I saw an invisible woman. I knew she was invisible because I could see her, but no-one else looked, even though she intruded upon their space and moved strangely, furtively around them. Her hair was pulled back in a functional pony tail. Function. A good way to describe her fashion, it was to a function, not a style. A purpose. She wore tough running shoes and denim jeans, and a long, dark blue, RAAF trench coat with original gold coloured buttons. She wore a backpack, and kept her hands in the deep pockets of her coat at all times, but around her wrists, tangled almost to her elbows were bangles and bracelets of every kind and colour and around her neck were a mass of necklaces. Chains, leather and string, like a Hindu woman with all her wealth upon her she wore jewellery to a purpose, and among the strands of beaded genstones and silver charm trinkets, dozens of keys hung from her neck.

She looked hungry, but not famished, clean, but not clean living. I saw her but no one else would turn to look at the invisible woman. The busy flow of the crowd through the market, unconscious of its own aversion, gave her a wide berth, but never did their heads turn, nor their eyes glance to see her.

*

I heard his whistling melody long before I saw him. Its melancholy descent and playful resolution were delivered with a smooth, unhurried purity. Like birdsong in its confidence and revolution, like a concert flute, elusive, emotive. I saw him, sauntering through the dissapating crowd, an old man, white beard, round belly, red scarf tied in the gypsy style at his throat, bags full of fresh food in both hands, and hanging low on his chest, a large brass crucifix. As he walked, his beautiful music escaped from pursed lips and the whole scene became painted with his sound. The tea house where I sat, the fresh food stall across the walkway, the shoe store, the fish shop, even the tea in my cup, all became themselves, but now each was itself, with music. No longer alone, the loneliest lime sitting discarded and fungal in the bin now had the commpany of this man's song, the whistling man, and I sat with book in hand and caught his eye, but he did not smile, or change his expression at all, as if he were alone with his music, and I merely a standing stone or fallen tree in the forest.

*

Teetering on the edge of a well, I can feel the pull of the hollow earth. A sucking wind inside me, calling me down into the absence, the great absence of love, the underdark. I slice vegetables and fruits for dinner, my noisy children playing in the next room. My mask is fitted well, to hide the void inside. I ache with the loneliness of self disgust, overwhelmed by thoughts of uselessness, of unfulfilled potential.

I slice fruits and vegetables and meats for dinner, my noisy children playing in the lounge room. My Mask is fitted well, so no-one can see inside to my hidden face.

Yet, like the shrinking aperture of a flower closing at sunset, the hollow earth beneath me, the sucking winds inside me, are once more sealed off, and with the coming darkness of night, my star rises over the horizon of my family.

Teetering on the edge of a well, the hollow earth beneath me.

I stand in a circle of mirrors.

*

Tall grass around me, I lay with bare feet sloped down to the waters edge. The sound of laughter, children play in the dam, swimming and splashing. A butterfly dozilly undulates through the tiny sky above the ants and I wonder what it was that had me feeling defeated and weary only yesterday.

*

I saw him on Monday. The Man in Black. (and I don't mean Jonny Cash). Black tights in the medieval style, a black tunic loose over his skinny frame, and a black, broad brimmed hat that shaded his pale skin, rough chin and white eyebrows. He was there, and then he was gone, walking briskly past the window where I sat in the cafe, reading Herotodus. Heads turned on the street as he passed, confused, bemused expressions staring openly.

He was there, and then gone.

*

One of them slipped out yesterday, playing me like a puppet all afternoon, telling me all of the most terrible things about the world, making me doubt the love, even the honest expressions of those closest to me. But his critique of the world rarely stands up to visible scrutiny, and with the breath of a kiss, his voice is plucked from the air of my mind and placed carefully back in the circle. He is naught but a reflection of my fear.

*

The howling of a sunset drunk collapsed in a doorway, her youthful shrieking an inverted siren song echoing along the canyon walls of an alley, cries which struggle momentarilly to rise above the throb of amplified dance music, but are, like all sounds, subsumed in the electronic impulses of the night.

There is a sweet smell in the air as I walk, the pollen clouds of streetside clustered smokers billow, illuminated pink and white in the neon twilight. Laughter, smiling faces and glimmering eyes watch for the fall of dice on a backgammon board as the shisha pipe is passed around again and Friday night takes its cue entering stage left to the fading glow of the sun in the west, long shadows collecting unobserved in the gutters and tangled beneath the chainlink arbour signposts of a hotel fire exit.

Where the drummers gather to play on the street.

Where the booming voices of their Darbuka's crackle and split the air with a clattering of hands upon the curved steel rims. Five drummers make much more than five times the sound of one drum, and in the sunwise ravine of Hindley street the music of the ancient world peels back the veneer of modernity, to reveal a perpetual scene of humanity everywhere, everywhen, walking upon the stone paths of a city by the sea. It could be any city, anywhere, for what difference is there in people of any nation who take leave of their burdens at the end of a working week and come to eat, drink and be entertained in the restaraunts, nightclubs and cafes of a busy city precinct?

Even the bookstore is still open, the resin glow of its lamplit interior revealing the sacrosanct romance of the book to be far from faded in this hyper-futuristic present, where the dreams of rocketships and spacemen are already sepia toned and receeding, retreating into the forgotten past of our new virtual reality.

Yet, the drummers are out there, making new what was forgotten. Making new inside themselve the experience as old as our common ancestry in the trees. The language without words, the solution without problem, the resolution of unwoven threads between us. Music.

Though the drummers may leave, the rhythm never does.

*

...There is something about the smoky orange red lights of a stage that sharpen the senses and make the incredible, possible. In the restaraunt, huge Moroccan lamps from the ceiling hang ponderous, swing pendulous in miniscule pirouettes driven by the breeze of a hundred breathing, moving human beings. Beneath such lamplight the drummers play, beside themselves with kinship, before the glimmering eyes of diners who twist from every seat to watch such music as might make the Gods take notice. When voices are lifted in union, when hands are joined in the common task, these are the moments that make us, the experiences that we build our lives upon, they become the stories we tell ourselves at night, the lullaby that speaks the truth; that we are more than the sum of our parts.

Hands dance upon the drum as do feet upon the floor, and when the two are met, the magic that ignites is promethean. The first languages are still spoken today, long after a thousand others have been forgotten, their names lost to the wind, yet Music and Dance prevail, spoken by all people in all nations upon the earth, and all the nations of the sky, and those beneath the earth, for do not all animals in some way share these languages too? The drummers follow the dancers' feet, the dancers lift and step in time to the drummers' hands and the circle follows itself out into the cool night air, out into the eternity of our lives and our actions echoing without cease out beyond the city by the sea, out beyond the island nation, beyond the blue planet, beyond the milk of distant star light that fed the dreams of our ancestors. All generations rising and falling as wheat in the field, a crashing tide line of chaotic life falling upon the shores of time, hissing with the pleasure of its dispersal and settling swiftly into the sand. As we too, must one day settle gently into the sand.

Though the drummers may leave, the stories never do. The stories we live, live on in their telling, and they grow and they change and with every narration they become themselves something wholly unique, just as we, who told ourselves a story of music and dance and drumming in the night, grew to become ourselves, something wholly unique, and not ever to be repeated, though the universe might live on forever.

*

The Christian initiation ceremony of Eucharist, or First Holy Communion is an interesting piece of modern magic. The transubstantiation of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, when eaten, represents the union of the body and soul to God. Young girls dress in white, like brides before the altar, young boys dress in suits, the formal wear of a groomsman attending his own wedding. I remember the ceremony from my own childhood, and though my country town experience was somewhat less grandiose than the one I attended on Saturday, the elements of ritual and ancient pagan belief still hold.

The magic of this ceremony is celebrated every year in churches across the country, initiating children into the community, absolving the sins of their youth through confession, and admitting them into the greater mysteries of their religion through the breaking of bread and drinking of wine. For Catholics, the old ways still hold and while modern churches now substitute grape juice for the Eucharist, Catholics still drink wine, a strong, dark liquor that stains the lips and wets the throat, drunk from a golden chalice offered by a priest in white robes.

The Bridgewater Trio were invited to play at the feast held after the Mass in a Catholic school gym, converted and consecrated into a temporary church which held over five hundred people, families of the children to be initiated. An entirely Indian community, Alice and I were two of only five non-Indians in the room. Solomon was too sick to play, so Biju was his temporary replacement.

I wittnessed several things. I saw an enthusiastic gathering of people, celebrating a common belief, and a shared sense of both aesthetic and integral religious ideas. I saw young children singing on stage with far more confidence and ability than is commonly seen in those under ten. I saw teenagers passionately giving a dance performance, a kind of Bollywood love song routine, with a dozen boys and a dozen girls sharing the stage in a theatric display received to great cheering support. I saw a young initiate in the evening's ceremony, given pride of place upon the centre stage to play a rock and roll drum kit solo clearly rehearsed with rigorous discipline and performed with a free and easy smile I will have to try to emulate.

I saw Alice. In the bright lights upon the stage she seems superhuman, barefoot and beautiful in her Persian gown with the scrolled timber curls of her violin and the golden waterfall ringlets of her hair. I saw myself and Biju, seated beside her like court attendants, drums in our hands and rhythms in our hearts.

I tasted the spiciest fish curry I have eaten in my life, more powerful and rich in flavour than from any tradtional Indian restaraunt I have dined at. I saw the concerned faces of the catering staff as I heaped my plate up with this, the hottest dish on offer, and I saw their pleasure at seeing my pleasure, my comfort and delight at the authenticity of the meal. Over and again as Alice and I sat to eat, we were asked if everything were to our satisfaction, did we needed more food, would we like some water? A bowing kind of obeisance expressing a need to see us feel welcomed, included, well fed and honoured both as guests to their community, and as musicians for whom the Indian community seem to have a much greater respect than in general Australian culture.

I saw one of the nicest things about religion, something that doesn't occur everywhere. I saw the beauty of shared belief, an inclusive belief that did not stink of the insecurity of cultish fundamentalism, but rather carried the sweet fragrance of love, community, faith and enthusiastic hard working people who come together to share in the beauty of their children, and of their initiation into the mysteries of transubstantiation and the magic of their faith.


Take this and eat, for this is my body.

*

The sun has set, children gather for bed, a rumple of sleeping bags and blankets on mattresses on the lounge room floor. Dim lamplight reveals their glimmering excited eyes as the storyteller enters, resplendant in blue and gold, his coat and hood and flute cast their shadow shapes upon the wall as he kneels before the little ones. He tells them a story, he plays his flute, and when he is done, one of the children takes the coat from him and puts it on, and kneeling before the little ones the child tells a story. When he too is done, the coat is passed on to a girl who tells a story. The next boy refuses the coat when offered, wrapping himself in his own special blanket, wearing it as a cloak and then he tells a story, and the next boy also wears his own blanket and becomes the storyteller, kneeling before the little ones.

Somewhere in a cave in the mountains, a hundred thousand years ago, this same scene plays out night after night.

*

A boy-man wears a mask, and standing in the broken doorway of a burned out relic, he becomes a portal himself, my imagination drawn into the impassive terror he inspires. I stand as a witness.

*

Many years ago I made three pacts. I called upon the North Wind to show me my desire. I called upon the Ocean to grant me my desire. I called upon the Moon to light the way. The consequences of these pacts defined the course of my life for many years.

But, there came a day when I went back to the North wind and I said my pact was finished. I went back to the Ocean and said my pact was over. But, I asked the Ocean if I could still visit her, for advice, and she said yes. I went back to the moon and held myself in her light for a long time, asking her to illuminate my path, for the road is dark and crooked and she said yes.

So here I am, my shadow moonlit, I have worn the masks of eternity and seen myself for what I am.

Lost in the wilderness.

*

I am pressed into the warm back of a stranger by the storm of humans cycloning themselves in the centre of the crowd. The rock singer towers upon the stage above me, ragged of beard, head dred heavy as a hindu holy man, he clutches at the air with fingers clawlike and the crowd are held by him as the Monkey God was held by the Buddha, for in that moment we are worshipful. Creation he howls, and we howl his words back to him, we are a mirror of his power. Creation, of insane rule, all we hear is Desperate Cry! Every word he sings, we sing with him, we are his voice amplified, we are his will, multiplied. The poetry of this ragged man's youth still finds a voice in us. His mighty and life scarred appearance is seen iterated through the crowd, we who stand, who leap, who spin and fall and float upon our brethren with hands outstretched above us, we lift them closer to the sound, closer to the stage and in their elevation, we too are elevated for in the lifting of one of us, we are drawn to unite in the act of supporting another, granting the gift of raising another human being up as an offering to music.

*

There is a point at which technology becomes indistinguishable from magic, for the processes are invisible, though their outcomes define reality and govern our every living moment and the gap in our understanding is a chasm as wide as the milky way.

　

What is it?

　

I said, what is it?

This...

dancing,

this music,

this

ART

　

It

is

the collision of forces,

of earth and sky

and in the middle,

I,

and time

and always the question, the useless question why...

but the reason, oh the reason does not ask, does not try,

and we,

though free to choose,

are bound to this freedom as a slave to his master,

as earth to sky,

a collision of forces

The duende, the unknowable depths of our own shadows, and the shadows of our knowledge, the vast well of our ignorance, of self, of other, of the world and its processes, of ourselves and our creations and our cultures and rituals and habits and the impossible endless pit inside the human soul that leads nowhere but to the spiralling, looping rotation of birth, death and re-birth. The world is made of this magic, of this un-knowing, this unknown quantity in all our lives. This magic is the reason we do everything, it is the push behid our desire, behind our curiosity, our thirst for understanding, or mastery, or even simple aquaintance. It is the voice behind the curtain, the song in the waterfall, the dance of birds and water and seeds upon the wind. All knowledge is pushed upwards into the light by the magic which is now indistinguishable from technology.

So I say to you; technology is magic. self knowledge is magic, good stage lighting and sound mixing is magic, the computer I type these very words upon is a magic so impossible and beautiful that I find myself unable properly consider the million discoveries that preceeded it and made it posible. Your minds who perceive these words, interpret them, absorb or reject them...all magic.

Let the invisible become seen.