I lay down on the fox pelt, its glass eye right next to mine as I rest my head on its head. I listen to the sound of the gas heater in front of me as I pull the orange and brown rug over my body. My mother knitted this rug. I close my eyes and gently press the tip of my tongue to the roof of my mouth and breath slowly, slowly, through my nose. It only takes moments before my ears close, just like the pressure change you get when you journey any significant rise or fall in altitude. Like a fog, but one that sensitises me, and nestled deep within the booming foam of that auditory sensation, my body begins to swell. I notice it most with my fingers, which feel like swollen sausages, but when I go deep, it covers my ears then my lips and my whole face, and as the bottom of the sky opens up inside me, my body descends into a thick heaviness, a fallen log, a hibernating bear, a buried treasure. I am awake, alert and very focused on the sounds inside my body, the bio-orchestration of blood and water and air and earth and metal. I am transfixed by the sound of my breathing. I feel as though I am listening to it from inside my body, from inside my lungs.

 

 

I stay like this for as long as I can.

 

 

I lay down on the fox pelt every night during winter that year, and every year after that.

 

 

I know that I was very young when it began, and that even now, I can press my tongue to the roof of my mouth and slowly slowly breathe through my nose, and I begin to submerge and to swell, and deep inside me is the rushing sound of my breath. Overwhelming, overriding, I am filled with this mighty wind and I remember a dream

 

in which I gave myself

 

these words...

 

 

 

The way out is through the breath.

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

Sometimes the personality disappears, and that objectivity, which is an attribute of pantheistic poets, develops to such an abnormal pitch that the contemplation of external objects makes you forget your own existence, and you soon loose yourself in them. You gaze at a tree bent in a harmonious curve by the wind; in a few seconds what is only a natural enough comparison in the poet's mind becomes a reality for you. At first you lend the tree your passions, your desire or your melancholy; its groaning and swaying soon become yours, and soon you are the tree. In the same way, the bird hovering high in the azure sky at first represents the immortal wish to soar above human affairs; but almost instantly you become the bird. I imagine you seated, smoking. Your attention rests rather too long on the bluish smoke rising from the pipe. The idea of a slow, gradual, eternal evaporation obsesses your mind, and it is soon transferred to your own thoughts, your own sentient matter. By a strange equivocation, a kind of transposition or mental quid pro quo, you feel yourself dissolving into smoke, crouched like a heap of tobacco in the pipe, which has acquired the strange property of smoking you.

 

 

From The Poem of Hashish, by Charles Baudelaire

 

 

*

 

 

Penny White is dead. She died two days ago, finally delivering herself from the near decade of debilitating body pain she had lived within since her accident. A candle that burned bright. An athlete, an aesthete, an avid reader and music lover. When I first met her, I didn't notice the crutches, though we were walking together to a pub with a group of mutual friends and acquaintances. She was much bigger than her injury, though eventually it conquered her.

 

 

I once said to her that she was so strong that the only thing that could destroy her, was herself. You see, her injury was sustained during roller derby training. She pushed herself all the way.

 

 

Never defeated, even now in death, she is a warrior and woman of integrity. My memories of her, though clouded with time and the calamity of our short relationship, are precious. She could see the world with eyes unclouded. Now she has delivered herself beyond suffering. I am proud of her courage to face death, as only a true warrior can.

 

 

*

 

 

The weather is turning and in the Autumn darkness, trucks heavy laden with grapes thunder beside me on the highway as I drive to rehearsal. The harvest is in full flush, and midnight is seen by teams of women and men on machines that drone obstreperously with the massive power of their diesel engines. I live in a land where the summer abundance of wine is a flood. At sunset the dancers arrive and the music begins, our wine-cups are full of songs, bare feet upon the floorboards. We break bread and laugh and for an evening that is our lives, we step into a world that is neither real, nor unreal. Neither here nor there nor halfway up the stairs. Spirits in blue and spirits in green turn on tiptoe and I find myself holding my breath, trying to hold on to what I see

 

 

A Spirit in White. I see the flash of an owl above me as I drive home. At home I sit beside you on the bed. Spirit in Orange, you wear your bright robe and seem to me like a Eucalyptus flower. There is a discernable language in the silence of your movement. Words do not communicate everything there is to be said and the flick of a finger can tell me all I need to know about how you are feeling. A flutter of the eyelid, or a turn of your head and the angle you drape your hair, or perhaps your knee is turned away, just a little. Even your stillness is a song to me, raking my soul over the fires of heaven. Everything I see, I am looking at you. My breath is parallel to yours, my posture, my stillness and the silent language of my movement. Spirit in Orange, Spirit in Red, the earth falls away beneath my feet every time you turn your gaze from mine, all my certainty feels founded on uncertain assumptions.

 

 

I would forget my name if I could.

 

 

 

*

 

 

Preferring invisibility to confrontation, the Crooked Man attenuated his power, and everywhere he walked, he did so in the shadow of another spirit. He left no footprints of his own, cast no outline upon the earth and made no sound save his breathing which nonetheless pulsed always in rhythm with the wind.

 

 

From my novel, The Hangman Tree, which after seven years is nearing completion.

 

 

 

*

 

 

A letter to my drum students.

 

 

We always start unsure of our ability to learn, but we do not ever let that prevent us from learning. Consider these things today. You have a variety of confidences, and confidants as a group. You share a quiver of techniques developed over years of practice. You have a vocabulary from which to speak music. You have many musical experiences from which to draw inspiration : classes, performances and your own private moments playing while no-one is listening. Drumming on the steering wheel. Drumming on your knee, drumming on your lover's knee. You have your whole life from which to draw inspiration.

 

 

Any challenge that has been set, you have conquered.

 

 

There are many challenges yet to come.

 

 

Consider how you have changed, or grown, or grown humble, because of the drum. Take a moment to remember the things you have seen and done, because you picked up a drum one day and said yes. Take stock of all you have learned and be inspired by your efforts.

 

 

Any challenge you have been set, you have conquered.

 

 

There are many challenges yet to come.

 

 

You have opened yourselves to this wholeheartedly, and for your dedication you reap the rewards equal to your efforts. I too, will consider all that I have seen and done since you began to study this music with me. I will consider all that you have taught me, and all the ways that I have been made humble by you.

 

 

Every challenge you have set me, I have conquered.

 

 

There are many challenges yet to come.

 

 

We always start unsure of our ability to learn, but we do not ever let that prevent us from learning.

 

 

 

 

 

 

*

 

 

I lay down upon the Earth. It is mid-morning, the dew has not yet dried in the shade and I can feel my shirt soaking it up as I rest my head on the grass. I close my eyes and see my body as a canyon, with all the waters of the ocean draining endlessly into it. I take slow breaths, drawing all this energy back into me, all the energy I have wasted throughout the morning, given over to a mounting tension and as I find my breathing growing shallow. I worry about everything I do not know, all the unknown potential calamities yet to befall me, set in motion by my own ignorant fumblings, both in word and deed. So I lay down upon the earth and I breathe real slow and I feel the ocean tumbling into me and I try to remain focused on this sensation, telling myself that nothing else is happening right now.

 

 

I feel myself sinking into the warm soil, the darkness is a mother's caress, it is a swaddling cloth, it is a moment alone but not lonely. I feel my heart beat and I think about getting up, but instead I slow my breathing further and I see myself as a canyon, draining all the oceans into me, returning all the morning's wasted effort and when I do get up, I remind myself that there there is nothing else happening now.

 

 

It's been an interesting week. I left the door open this time, the door to the room of mirrors, and every night I have dreamed. I remember three. In the first my hair was long, a curly cascade of black locks covering my shoulder blades. I was in the streets outside the recording studio. In this dream I was happy.

 

 

The second dream, I had long dredlocks, quite similar to the dreds I used to have about twelve years ago. I was at a commune in Kuitpo Forest, a place I have had friends living in for many years. I this dream, I was not happy.

 

 

In the third dream, I found a super cute baby Brontosaurus (a dinosaur), only it had a peculiar long and flexible vestigial protrusion from its back, which I assumed was the ancestral remains of wings. I picked it up to show the kids, and though it bit me through my garden gloves, it didn't hurt too much, and I managed to show everyone and let the kids pat it before I released it back into the garden. I was in the garden at work in this dream. In this dream I was very happy. In this dream my hair was as it is now, neither long nor short.

 

 

*

 

 

I will tell you about the last twenty four hours.

 

 

          Count backwards from three.

 

 

Eighty school children squeeze into the music room, cross-legged they look up at us and I become a seer with the future lined up before me. Through the window of our art, the seeds of peace blow dandelion soft into the minds and hearts of the little ones. We tell a story, we revel in dance, we drum and we strum and we speak and the question comes every time...what is a Gypsy?

 

 

Though the question itself is fraught with the snares of history and misunderstanding, our answer speaks of the long story of human movement across the land and sea. We name the Romani, the Shuvali, the Indian, Persian, Irish, French, Slovak, Romanian, American and Australian. Our answer is in nine beat, it is in minor scale, it is call and response and howling at the sky and there is something incredible about seeing a room full of children dancing as if they are stirring a huge pot of soup, or wringing out their wet clothes, but greater than these was their fists in the air, wrists crossed above their head striking the seven-eight beat as the dancer in blue revealed the spirit of a culture far removed from their own. With a world atlas unfurled as a flag behind us, the old Czech storyteller points the way of nations driven from their homes by war and prejudice, their possessions few, their spirits resilient.

 

 

We Crossed the mountains

We Crossed the seas

we crossed the rivers and forests

Our Family were with us all the way

 

 

We came to the cities

we came to the towns

the people chased us away

our family were with us all the way

 

 

We came to the school

the children were friendly

we taught them our ways

our family were with us all the way.

 

 

We four, disparate of origin but tangled in the same string, clasp hands and make a steeple of knots and through the windows we can be seen eating and laughing and drinking and sharing our stories and inspiration and gratitude and every moment is practice for our part upon the stage. United by Music, Poetry, Dance, Storytelling and our mutual love for the limping stepping skipping dance of a life well lived, we gadjo give what we can to the fields of the future where the vardos will camp and we pray with our hands and feet that their songs and their dances will continue, as they continue through us.

 

 

Word by word

Dance by Dance

Note by Note

 

 

            Count backwards from two

 

 

I had never considered that multiculturalism in Australia would mean a renaissance of European culture as well, but up there on the stage, handing out citizenship certificates and hearing the vows of the applicants, is the Mayor of the district, resplendent in his long red robe and projecting a welcoming and magnanimous air. His official attire is not out of place. The audience are international, and with the earthen spectrum of human skin all around me, the once exotic Indian sari's, the riotous patterns of Ghanian fabric, and even the glittering costume I have worn to perform in, seem equally in harmony. I imagine I am in Timbuktu, or Carthage or some other fantastic metropolis from the past or even the future. It smells like food cooking and trampled grass and sunset dew as the band takes the stage. This is what peace feels like.

 

 

Strident, Romantic, a feeling that comes up through the feet and makes me want to laugh like a boy, the music is miraculous and smiling faces gather thick beyond the whirligig of spinning dancers. The violin sings lyrical in place of a singer, each song crafted carefully to evoke a certain motion: push me pull me, or turn on the spot beneath the full moon, or laugh and leap then sway down low and let the hips do the talking. It is music to cut a rug to, music to raise a glass to, music for harmony day in the great brown land down under. March twenty first, two thousand and eighteen.

 

 

It is three musicians from three nations, and two dancers from two more. This is what peace feels like, this is what it sounds like, this is happening right now, the flowers of our efforts spread seeds and are carried on the wind to whatever future will take them in and let them grow.

 

 

There is a choir with voices like a mighty lions, there is a choir like an eager apprentice, there are Ukranian Cossack dancers, a jazz piano and drum duet, there are speeches and certificates and the singing of the national anthem and photographers and sound techs and event managers with schedules soon marked with more changes than original plans. It is a congregation of culture and a ceremony of civil law. This is what peace looks like.

 

 

                 Count backwards from one

 

 

I visit my brother, the shaman, the psychonaut, the sorcerer.

 

 

The midnight clock stands still and I am the ocean floor, metamorphic rock, a primal soup, half squid half exploding star. I can feel my amnesia uncoiling, amoebic....there are a lot of things I have not allowed myself to remember about my life. Holes get cut and the absence that remains is a black hold, dead-weight, knuckle-break...what have I hidden away from myself, from you? I forgot how beautiful everything was, how I long ago lived a life that I loved and adored and thought was so precious that I took no time to appreciate it, or care for it, and so like everything, it was swallowed up by time and locked away by pain and every day that I could not speak of it, it got harder and harder to believe that any of it was ever true. My memories sank to the bottom of the ocean where I did my best to let them die and I got on with my life without them. I told myself over and over – you were wrong about everything – the fantasy of happiness and love that you left to rot on the vine was a fiction, an illegitimate claim to a throne you could never be worthy of – but, counting backwards from three two one, I find myself on the ocean floor deep in outer space and I am half squid half exploding star and somewhere nestled in the gooey liquefaction of pressurised sub-mantle rock, I find my own internal organs growing around the broken fragments of my discarded spine and I am being re-made by wiser hands than mine and my forced amnesia comes undone and I remember how beautiful we were, and how every day since then I have told myself that everything I thought was real about us was a lie. I have stabbed myself in the heart every day. I have carved the commandments of my damnation upon the rock of my flesh and I have done my best to get on with my life without my memories of you, made mute by the self referential evidence of my own denial. I offer no defence against my accusations, I make no plea.

 

But today, sipping coffee in the shade of suburban silence, I remember. I have come back up from the leviathan trench and I take my first breath with lungs that feel new and I am at my brother's house, recalling all the years from then to now, and how he has been there through every part of my buried pain, and that I can hold his hand and weep for reasons that do not need explaining, and say over and over to him, Thank you for being here with me now, Brother.

 

 

I made my past into a hell populated only by demons of my failure. I covered over the sky that once shone bright upon my youthful, loving, striving, kind and hopeful life and I bound with briars all my joys and desires, and I tied my arm behind my back and told myself that crippled was the new black and I turned miserable-ever-after in ever decreasing circles, asking why I could not steer myself out of Hades, though the sun shone bright upon my not-so-youthful, loving, striving, kind and hopeful life. The shadows of my hated past stretch long into the present, and all the chains and weights I put on my abandoned memories and let sink to the ocean floor, took me with them, and staring up at the receding light above I asked when will it ever be day again?

 

 

Will it ever be day again?

 

 

But today I am buoyed by the weightless joys of allowing myself to remember that perhaps not everything was a lie, and that we did know happiness and that I was, if only for a few short years, a good and loving man, and that we made a child together and that the sunlight that beams from his every smile is a reflection of the love we once shared. His light breaks through the sky I destroyed and a beam cuts shadows in the long grass, and I contemplate the possibility of forgiving myself for my mistakes.

 

 

It is day. Sometimes madness is a choice. Sometimes it is the lesser of two evils, and sometimes that is no kind of choice at all and today, in the suburban shaded silence of morning, with lungs that feel new I breathe in and I breathe out and I breathe in and I breathe out and I breathe in and I breathe out.

 

 

            Count backwards from zero.

Indivisible From Magic - March 2018


　
I have to leave the room of mirrors for a time. Too long spent in there is like to drive a man mad. The colours of the day start to fade a little, as the darkness grows a little brighter, until, well...you know.

The Hills around here are home to several of the Kithain, I guess they must have come across on the ships with the Scots who settled here. They seem to get on fine with the natives, perhaps there is something about the Dreaming that can allow for new dreams, unlike a lot of other...spiritual perspectives.

The Tall ones, dressed all in yellow, every shade of yellow imaginable, January tall grass yellow, Daisy on its second day yellow, clay from the creek yellow, more gold than yellow yellow, sand washed gray with rocks but it still looks yellow in the morning yellow, cat's eye yellow.

Do they carry spears? Or are they tall swords? The haze of sunset makes them indistinct, but the cobweb clouded kitchen window makes clear what should be unclear and...there they are, standing on the hill, walking acrosss the ridge casting shadows into the sun, as if they were brighter...as if they were brighter.

Then there are the creatures made of stone. In the old country I think people sometimes called them Knockers, but they seem different here. Perhaps they are just Goblins and I do not recognise my own kind as well as I should? But then who made the seeing stones? Certainly not the Goblins.
There are a lot of Goblins.

So many goblins. Stone Goblins, Sand Goblins, Goblins of the West Wind that blow in from the lake every evening. The Fox King, The Razor Clan, the Emperor of Thistles (who is actually lord over all prickly plants, so here that includes the Apple of Sodom.

Life in the Borderlands is weird, wyrd, wiered.


***


I sat in front of the little statue of the Buddha, squatting on the floor on my cushion, I just stared at him. I drank my beer and stared. His enigmatic smile bugged me sometimes, and this was one of those times; he was laughing at me.

"What are you laughing at, fatso?"

I’m laughing at you.

"What’s so funny?"

You think that there is a problem, when there is not a problem.

He sat silently, unmoving. His white stone face obscured occasionally by the incense smoke that drifted past. I twisted my long hair around my fingers, and picked up my book, ignoring him for a moment, but I knew that he was still sitting there, perfectly still; perfectly smug, content and certainly happy to be laughing at me all afternoon.

What is the problem? He asked me.

"There is no problem, you said so yourself." I was trying to be a smartass.

Then why are you worried about it? He was reading my thoughts again. I put my beer on the floor and narrowed my eyes, peering into his, hoping to draw the answers from him without having to go through this whole dialogue thing again, as we seemed to do every afternoon.

"What should I do then?"

Go outside, leave your beer behind. I stood up and walked outside to my front porch. My view stretched out across the park with its tall trees and dry grass. The sky was bright blue and the tree in my front yard moved only slightly from the south breeze that took the edge off the summer heat.

"You think that it is doubt that blocks you, and that your path to peace is based upon your ability to trust me, and to trust yourself." His voiced carried through walls and doors.

"Well, isn’t it all about that; the question of trust, of faith in the world?"

Tell me, do you think that the sun trusts the sky, or that the earth trusts the trees?

 I walked inside and finished my beer.

***


It's time I told you about Queen Manu, of the Lily Delta.


The Delta was a lush territory of peace and prosperity. A land where everyone had shelter and food and comfort. The weather was kind and the river supplied their every need. Their ruler, Queen Manu, was loved and respected and no war had troubled the waters of their land for generations.

But in the mountains things were very different. The Mountain King suffered as his people suffered under a drought that had lasted many years. His wells ran dry and the crops did not grow. As so often happens, his suffering drove him to madness and envy, as he looked down to the delta where life was abundant and where everyone had enough to eat, while his own people starved.

The Mountain King accused Queen Manu of stealing the rain, or declaring war upon his people without drawing a sword, and so he assembled his armies and marched upon his peaceful neigbour, burning and killing everything he found. Queen Manu sent messengers and diplomats, declaring her desire for peace and co-operation between their people. The Delta had more than enough to feed the Mountain people. If they came in peace she would house them all and see them safely through their time of struggle.

But the Mountain King did not hear her kindness. He believed that her offer was an attempt to steal the very people of his nation, after she had already stolen the rain. The Mountain King was sure that Queen Manu would only send her own armies into his emptied lands, and steal the precious gold and silver from his mines. 

On he marched with his armies, burning and killing.

Queen Manu sent a second messnger, declaring her complete surrender, if only he would spare the people of her peaceful nation from the swords and fires of his fury. But the Mountain King did not want peace, and even with the whole Delta offered to him, he demanded her utter destruction. He sent his messengers with the reply that his war would only conclude when Queen Manu's head was delivered to him on a silver plate.

So Queen Manu left her palace and walked down to the river, where she ordered her must trusted servant to cut off her head and deliver it to the Mountain King.


That is the story of Queen Manu of the Lily Delta


***


Now that you know about Queen Manu, you should know of Michael and the Dragon, and remember, all these things are connected.

Ancalagon, the greatest and most terrifying of all the dragons of the ancient world, lay siege to the ancient city of Tara. The parapets burned and the palace lay in ashes, thousands were dead, thousands more dying, the land was flooded with refugees fleeing the carnage, seeking safe places to hide in the night.

Hundreds of brave warriors, knights and archers had marched out to fight the dragon, but none had returned, and the people who remained in Tara, shivered in their homes, huddled together awaiting the fires of the dragon.

Michael, the youngest of four brothers, a boy of only ten years, had watched as his entire world was burned to nothing by Ancalagon, and his heart wept to see the people dying in the street. His father and uncles had all died trying to slay the beast, and now his brothers had not the courage to face it. In the morning, before his family woke up, Michael put on his tin armour, and took up his wooden sword and crawled out across the rubble to fight the dragon and drive it away.

The dragon caught the glimmer of metal in the faded blood red light filtering through the smoke of his devastation, and turned his wing to dive upon this new fool who had come to be his food. When Ancalagon saw that it was only a boy, curiosity entered his heart and he did not burn the child with his fiery breath as he had done all the others before consuming them.

Ancalagon landed before the boy, his gargantuan mass causing the ruins around him to crumble. The cracked remains of towers fell, and stone blocks crumbled to dust beneath the clawed feet of the beast. With a great flourish he spread wide his massive wings, flashing the boy with the magnificently coloured scales that lined his entire body. Their colours were like nothing else in the whole world, new colours that the boy had never seen glittered before him like the treasure hoards of kings and princes of legend.

The dragon lowered his head to look closely at the boy whose hand shook as he raised up his little wooden sword to strike, but the dragon did not harm Michael, instead he spoke.

"Answer me this, little boy, and if I like your answer I will let you live."

Once again the dragon spread his colourful wings and Michael saw the red light of dawn reflected upon the dazzling display of glittering scales. The ruined world of his home city shone like the inside of a cathedral when the sunlight strikes the stained glass windows.

"What is the most magnificent thing you have ever seen?" Ancalagon's arrogance knew no limit.

The boy looked around him at the burning city where nothing grew, where no living thing stirred, and he answered in as brave a voice as he could muster.

"The most magnificent thing I have ever seen are the flowers that will bloom here after you are gone."


And the dragon was so ashamed, that he flew away never to be seen again.


***


They built a prison in the desert, they put people in there who were foreigners, gave prison sentences with no foretold date of release. Whole families lived in these places, children were born and children died in these prisons. From all around people rallied, waving flags and giving speeches, throwing themselves on the barbed wire and running from the guards batons, years passed and still the prison stood.

The desert life took on a routine, a groove began to wear itself into the landscape, leaving a mark in the shape of their delirium. Years passed as people saw before their own eyes, identities dissolving into the hideous coil of white walls and standard issue food served on standard issue plates. Names were forgotten and numbers were given to replace them.

Letters arrive in the night. It is always night after five years in here. I see pictures and song lyrics, sometimes a celebration card, or perhaps a hopeful looking newspaper article with a photo of sixty people with placards standing in front of a tall building. My eyesight is failing me, as surely as my memory has fled me completely. I do not remember who I am, or rather, who I was; in that place that I came from that I cannot remember. I am a hollow being filled with the numbers on a clock face.
They built a prison in the desert, they put foreigners in there and banned the journalists, preferring the published images from their own department of public relations, their ‘leaked’ documents, their scandalous exposés. In the summers people clamoured against the walls with their flags and their speeches, their passion stirred on by some small victory, some tiny reprieve. Smashing their faith against a government whose only response to any inquiry or report was, denial.
After seven years it is always night. 
War flared in another land. The prison was forgotten, its people transported somewhere the people could not reach them so easily.
After nine years it is always night.


 ***


There are times (frantic) when the words overtake me. (frantic) When I cannot crest the wave, but am submerged beneath, and though for hours each day I am writing, composing, arranging words, (swimming) listening to the rhythm of my father's slow walking-cane three-step-dance (a soft sand shuffle) and writing melodies beside it, (a sweet serenade into the twilight of age) I cannot fulfil my need. There are always words waiting for me, calling me onto the dancefloor. (a slow shoreline waltz) And when I am in that tide, I can float and trust that my body and mind are worthy of the task of writing.
Step by (frantic) step by (breathing) step by dancing step.
***

　

I only turned my back for a minute. I thought I locked the door behind me.

But when I woke up this morning, there it was with its hooks in my mouth, climbing out of my stomach with its poison sacks empty. I didn't even bother to kill it. The damn thing practically winked at me as it crawled away. My vision is blurry, I feel my joints giving way, my flexibility and confidence of movement are shaky. Paranoid. The corners of my thoughts conceal threatening ideas, fears, frail fractures and fallacies.

I mistrust my own motivations, I look everywhere for evidence of my betrayal. My perfidious selfish heart with its single minded selfish goals.

It seems that room of mirrors is not done with me.

***

I have to tell you about Coriolanus. Well, really the story is about his Mother, Volumnia, his wife Vergilia and another woman, Valeria.

You see, this story is from one of Rome's many civil wars, when one of her Generals, a certain Gaius Marcius Coriolanus, once banished, had returned to Rome leading a great army of her enemy, the Volscians, and he beseiged the city. The people suffered and all about was the great fear that Rome was to be burned for the sake of personal grudges between men of great power. During this time, many groups of women gathered at the temples to pray, but one of these women, Valeria, prayed at the shrine of Jupiter, and there had an inspiration which she immediately acted upon. Calling together all the women around her, together they marched to the home of Volumnia, mother of Gaius, who was there with Gaius' wife, Vergilia, and their children.

Valeria begged Volumnia to go with them out to face the enemy army, for all the women to go as one to Gaius and to beg him for mercy, that together they might end the war. Valeria said to Volumnia: "We come to you as women to women, not because we have been ordered by the Senate, but because our God has listened to our prayers and given us the inspiration that we should turn to you for help."

Volumnia replied, "I do not know if he will have any regard for us, since he has none for his country, which he once loved better than his mother, his wife and his children. But in any case, take us, make what use of us you can and lead us to him. If we can do nothing else, we can die offering up our prayers for our country."

And so they left the city, a piteous sight in their rags and their hunger, such that even the enemy army greeted them with respectful silence. It so happened that Gaius was seated on a tribunal, with all his officers around him. When he first caught sight of the procession of women he was filled with amazement, but when he saw that it was his mother, wife and children at the head of the gathering, he struggled to maintain his remorseless and inflexible resolve, and was overcomme by his feelings. He greeted his mother first, clasping her for a long time in his arms, but when he grasped his wife and children he could hold back neither his tears nor affection, but allowed himself to be swept away by a flood of emotion.

Volumnia spoke to her son thus:

"Gaius, we come to you as the unhappiest women alive, for we must come to see you having turned your arms against your native city, and we within it. When we pray for your salvation, we are doomed, for to do so is to wish for our city's destruction, but when we pray for our city's salvation, we pray for your doom. You ask us to sacrifice either our city, or you. I shall not wait for the war to decide the issue. If I cannot prevail upon to you to prefer friendship and harmoniy, to enmity and strife, then let there be no doubt - you shall never attack Rome unless you trample first upon the dead body of the mother who bore you."

While his mother was speaking, Gaius Marcius Coriolanus remained silent, and after she had finished he stood in silence for a long time. HIs mother asked him, "Why have you nothing to say, my son? Is it right to sacrifice everything to anger and resentment, but wrong to give way to your mother when she pleads with you in such a cause as this? But if I cannot persuade you, I must use my last resource."

As she spoke, she and his wife and children threw themselves at his feet. At this, Gaius cried out, "Mother, mother, what have you done?" Then he raised her up and tenderly pressed her hand. "You have won your victory. You have saved Rome, but destroyed your son. This is my defeat, though none but you could have defeated me."

He then spoke in private to his family for a few moments more, then sent them back to Rome as they wished. The next morning he marched the Volscian army out of Roman territory.


- I must tell you the origin of this story. I have been reading the works of writiers from the ancient world. The current book I am on is by, Plutarch, a Roman autobiographer from around 200BCE, the Ian Scott-Kilvert translation from a book called "The Makers of Rome" A great portion of the text above I have copied word for word from the original - this is not my writing, but I think that you can see how much these ancient writers have been influencing me. I include it here as a comparison to the story of Queen Manu, which is an original story that came to me about twenty years ago, and which I have been telling around campfires and the like since then.

The more I read, the more I find stories of the ways in which women deal with war, and how their cleverness and compassion seem a bright light in the darkness of calamity. This is not to say that all women are bright, beautiful and lovely...I have found just as many stories of women whose savage exploits in war and in peace have caused a shiver of fright to run up my spine. I'm just saying...we're all in this together, in sickness and in health.

***



Review of Boy Overboard
From the Novel by Morris Geitzman
Adapted for stage by Patricia Cornelius
Directed by Delia Olam
Produced by Ink Pot Arts
Performed on March 10th, 2018 in the Living Arts Centre, at the Mount Barker Waldorf School.

　

As I leave home to go to the theatre with my son, I glance in my rearview mirror at the dust swirling behind me, and the flickering light/shadow/light/shadow of the gumtrees along my driveway. Considering the play I am going to, I consider my place in the world, and the peaceful life I lead, and have always led. I am a product of first world thinking, economocs, politics and geography. My struggles are against anxiety, work/life balance, car servicing, shopping centre carparks, and hot weather. I drive a nice car, wear nice clothes and have a lovely job, a beautiful partner and healthy children.

The story of Boy Overboard has me crying from the opening scene, as four young girls are smuggled in the boot of a taxi in the night, to attend an illegal school run by a small group of parents. As the story of life in Afghanistan develops, covering landmines, public executions, and government hit-squads coming to arrest those involved in the school, I am not the only one crying. In the dark, warm and crowded silence between scenes, I hear the unmistakable horror of a woman weeping, and some part of me knows that it is a mother. A refugee mother. For as we entered the theatre I saw the familiar sight of unfamiliar faces, many nations already seated before I took my place in the shadows amongst them.

The sound of her crying, whoever she is, goes quiet for a time, as the story seamlessly shows us the humour found amidst the hardship, granting us all the chance to see the bravery and kindness and cleverness of the teenage characters' in their quest, tragic and heartbreaking though it is. We all laugh at the jokes told by the one legged boy, hopping about on crutches as he stands as goalie in the childrens' games of street soccer. We chuckle at the awkward violent outbursts of the young girl, throwing rocks at passing trucks, while her brother warns her that she must hide from the soldiers. Theirs is a story of the common struggle for so many who live in Afghanistan, and those who try to flee. Struggle against the barbarism of governmental oppression, against hunger, death, piracy, and the final tragedy, the one that brings home our very own part in the story, their imprisonment by our own government, in an offshore camp as they are denied the very thing hey have fought so hard to believe in. Australia. The woman is crying again, and I hold my son, eight years old, as he sits on my lap in a quiet trance, exhausted but intentely focussed. Last night he was with his mother at WOMAD. She showed me this morning a photo of him making angel shapes in billowing drifts of bird feathers amidst the revelry, colour and music of our most treasured cultural festival. Last week he attanded swimming lessons through his beautiful school, where I help out once a fortnight in the gardening class. Tonight upon the stage, we watch children dressed in pirate rags with scarves covering their faces, using crutches and walking sticks as props for maching guns and my whole body shivers with terror at the sight.

In the theatre antechamber, once the drama upon the stage is over, the audience linger over coffee, cake and sweet rolls, and again I find myself swimming in a familiar sea of unfamiliar faces. I am one of many nationalities, all of whom have come together in peace to experience what is so much more than a story about politics, or war or even refugees. It is a human story. It is a story of our time, an international story of great importance presented with incredible acting and passion by a youth group who rehearse in my home town and perform in a local school theatre. The significance of this incredible combination of elements is not lost on me.

I know that I haven't yet said anything about the actors, or the sets, or the speech given before the play began. I haven't even mentioned the main characters' hopes and dreams of one day playing soccer in the world cup, a ridiculous fantasy that at times seems the only thing that keeps them all from sinking into despair. What I will tell you about this play is that it has shaken me out of myself and let me take better stock of what is important in my life. The sets made of rags and suitcases and wooden crates have shown me that great beauty, great art can be made with the simplest of materials. It has shown me that there are people in my community dedicated to staging amazing theatre, and to telling the truth. It gives me hope to see such an intelligent and compassionate treatment of a very difficult and complex subject, and to be mesmerised by the profound acting talent that commanded the stage tonight.

As I drove home from the theatre through the winding tree lines roads out of town, my son and I both saw an owl, its white feathers illuminated in the headlights as it swooped low, between the canopy of the trees, and the top of my car. Now that we are home, my son sits in bed reading before sleep, while I sit in the lounge room beside my partner and write to you.

My youngest daughter has been learning the national anthem as a part of her choir practice for the Festival of Music, and I am reminded now of one line in that song.


For those who've come across the sea, we've boundless plains to share

What happened to us? To our country that now illegally imprisons these most vulerable of people, the victims of war, who flee from our common enemies? Where did our pride and generosity go? Have we become victims of our own government's cynicism and allowed fear of immigrants to now dominate our foreign policy and to override our humanity?

Yet, hidden in enclaves in every part of this nation, people defy the arrogant and cruel attitudes of the status quo, and set their hearts and minds and bodies to to the task of fighting the injustice of refugee imprisonment. Tonight, in that theatre filled nearly to capacity, I saw the face of our resistance. Our beautiful, articulate, and hopeful resistance. I saw the space we have made in our hearts for those who've come across the sea, and as the sun set on another day in paradise, I was moved by the power of art, and took home with me the inspiring reminder (in the words of the main character Jamal) to 'never give up, even when things are looking hopeless.'