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.'