My Wire My World

On By cjx07sterIn Uncategorized1 Comment

There is a creek rushing down the rocks of the sunken bush valley. Houses perched on sandstone slabs jutting from the valley sides.  The blue sky framed by the mountains on either side of the creek, and the gum trees all over the place all directions and stretching up all over in green and bark bits falling off after the rains. Above the creek and the horizon is a thick twisted power wire strung above a swimming pool where in the surrounding rocks are born lizards.

I come down here to the wire each day, it’s a good spot to sit and get a view of the pool.  The owners keep it clean, and only seem to use it on weekends, and then only for an hour or so.  In the meantime I can comfortably sit quietly and wait for a lizard to turn up.

But today is different,  I have noticed a kind of menace in the air and just now two Myna birds have come and sat on the wire about two wing lengths from me.  They start snapping like it is their wire.  The lizard does not move below.  Waiting for me, as I am for it.  The birds don’t care about the lizard, they only care about territory, which is not theirs by the way.  I clearly own the territory here.  I laugh about it each morning but these birds will keep trying for a bit.  I don’t move a muscle, but my right eye is focussed down on the lizard below.

Finally one of the Myna creeps along the wire, bending forward toward me, snapping it’s clicking beak in an earnest but futile attempt at claiming my wire.  The same wire that we will both be back on tomorrow for more laughs. I ignore the Myna and then just inches from me, the Myna quits and departs for another place.

I don’t move, but wait for the lizard to come out.  A cloud passes over the sky with a shadow below the wire.  The lizard decides to go back under the rock.  The creek makes the only sound in the valley now.

We shall see who comes again tomorrow then and perhaps get a better handle on the feeling of menace in the air with the sound of the water in the valley below.

CJS April 2012

Photo “Kookaburra” attrib. G Crouch – Flickr

Vodka Coke and a Klondike Bar

On By cjx07sterIn Dreaming, Existentialism, Love Story, Sunday Posts1 Comment

The lounge over there is red, a bright red color, which at least is still red when it’s dark night outside the window, all now wet with rain.  That same lounge was the lounge that I would sit with her, when Anne, my great aunt ‘grandma’ came over.  Not that often, usually when my parents were out. Out on nights like this one, but tonight the lounge was empty of her.  “You miss her ?”, I asked it, walking over to it. I flopped down in the leather, cool then warm, reached over an picked up my drink.  The glass was her usual, as was the drink in it.  Staring at the bubbles of vodka coke in the glass, and the beads of rain on the window outside of the room.

How could anyone drink vodka with coke in it – it should kill a normal person, drinking this all the time, every day for 80 years or so.  People think doing anything normal will kill you.  Eating peanut butter, drinking wine, drinking beer, as if there is a perfect normal somewhere that if found would extend your life by a day or more. I decided to pour this on in honor of Anne. Anne, she used to drink these every day.  So full of life right to the end.  At 95 she must have decided to call it quits and allow her vibrant spirit full of vodka cokes to lift up to heaven, where of course she belonged.  No doubt about it. At the funeral today, they had read out a eulogy of her life which sounded like the history of the world all the wars, fights, loving, floods, droughts, bushfires and friendships packed into her particular century.

A history that Anne brought me into. A vivid red and white and blue flag of necessary adventure which she recognized might just be missing from my life.

“Do you wan’t a drink ?” I hear her say… “No, I am not old enough” I would reply.  “Tell me a story” I would say..  . Tonight I got up like lead off the red lounge. It was cold, but i walked over to the fridge, and looked at it for a long time.  It was stupid of me to get into this mood.  How I missed Anne, her laughter and funny stories. Now God only knows the stories she will tell.  I wonder if God listens to them ?  Perhaps he has a bunch of story angels that wander around with Vodka Coke’s in hand listening patiently to the stories of all the Saints who made it to there. I felt the cold handle of the freezer door, and opened it up.  Inside was a solitary Klondike bar, the last one out of the  pack of 6 original.  OK then, I picked up the bar thinking to myself.

I walked back over to the red lounge all curvy red and sat down again in the white room.  I waited thinking over the stories she told.  When I was still younger, Anne used to always start  the stories, and go through funny things that happened and made me laugh and see life through her own vividness. After we laughed, she would go to the freezer and bring out an icecream, just like that one, there on the table. “Since you are too young to drink, at least you could share an icecream with me.” Anne had said. “OK YES, mum never lets me have an icecream late at night like this” I would reply.

“Troubles will come and you must be adventurous, drink some of this, and have faith in Jesus Christ”, she had said.  Still I had said no. “How about an icecream then ?” she always was happy to add.. It was always a Klondike bar, just like the one on the table, thawing out with it’s white crystals of ice forming on the white polar bear on blue on it’s shiny wrapper.

On the table, there was now three items.  The Vodka Coke, nearly empty, the Klondike bar, and a leatherman knife.  The knife’s convenience and blue steel color still threatening me with it’s potentially ‘ end of the line in pain ‘ demeanour.

I picked up the knife. Why ? What would it matter if it slipped a bit and cut blood would run out. I thought.  Then I carefully put it down.  Whatever !

I took up the Klondike bar, unwrapped the top half, then ate it, like a polar bear and head ache as well. I scrunched up the wrapper, enjoying that one memory of childhood with her.

Then I picked up the glass.  “Here’s to you Anne!” I cried. Then with tear’s falling into the tiny bubbles of the coke.  I took a sip.  It wasn’t like the raw bubbly coke of childhood.  It had that kind of muted taste, picking up some aniseed and salt along the way with the vodka and tears I guess. I drank it all as well.

String Theory – Force of Reason vs Mass of Criticism

On By cjx07sterIn Art, Dreaming, ExistentialismLeave a comment

—S-T-R-I-N-G—

)))))|||T|H|E|O|R|Y|||((((((

Which comes first – chicken legs or egg timer?  I think for me, it was probably the egg timer. Chicken legs came later in life.  Mum used to make baked chicken but memory is strong on egg timers which weighed more in my mind that chicken legs.  Certainly egg timers have more mass than force, at least from outside the realm of the timer.  I mean it’s all force with a chicken leg, scratching around in the dirt looking for grit, with their head cock-eyed down to the earth and sky for an instant.  No the face of an egg timer is pretty straight and it doesn’t exert any force whatsoever, except on the mind of the child watching it.  Which is why egg timers, mechanical ones are a pain – they tick along like a chicken scratching.  What you really need is the timer that just has sand falling down inside a glass.  Yes but they are hopeless mate, what happens is that the sand falls down due to the force of gravity, it has some small mass, and then when it’s all down you basically spin the thing over and it starts again, but unless you are watching it, you don’t know when the time limit is reached. I think there is something comforting about having a ringing or dinging of things, ring ding at the end of an allotted span of time, you wind it up, set it on the table, and then at the end of the time interval, it rings, just like the phone.  So you go get your egg and turn it off on the stove.  Yes for sure now you don’t need an egg timer – now I can set any time I like on the microwave, put the egg – all mixed up – inside a bowl – and just turn on the microwave, which automatically turns off – and the ringing thing is to tell me to “REMOVE FOOD”..

As if I didn’t know anyway – hungry for the egg, and eggs come before chickens as you all know.

Yes it’s all chicken and egg with mathematics as well.  What comes first ? The chicken of an idea or the egg of theory.  Which has more courage, which succumbs to the mass of criticism or the force of pure reason. Lets be reasonable now.  The old equation learnt in high school – F = MA is the same.  It implies kind of that Force = Mass x Acceleration.  Newton again, but definitely gravity existed before the apple on the tree, and the Acceleration faced by the Apple was due to the Gravitational Force acting on it’s mass.  So a more natural equation would be —- A = F/M … yes I think I like this better, but you see typesetters don’t like division A = F/M.  So what happens when the mass goes to zero – dummy. ? I hear the critique coming – then basically the acceleration is infinitely better isn’t it.

So what you are saying is that without the Mass of Criticism, there would be infinite acceleration of an idea, with just the slightest amount of reason behind it. Yes, it can get a bit that way with people.  Wake up with an idea, hide it from the critics and with a minor reason – go destroy something.  It is very hard to make something decent without a mass of criticism to balance your force of reason out.

I had an idea about string theory.  With a kiwi fruit just sitting there on the table, it looked so … I don’t know passive – just sitting there, as though not to be loved, forced down by gravity on a table waiting for someone’s enjoyment or neglect.  Inside a whole universe of life, but outside, just an object of still life. Waiting for a painter or something.  As an Idea with no reason whatsoever, I felt the urge to tie a string to the kiwi fruit, as though it was a present perhaps, or like the world on a string perhaps.

There are many string theories, most of which are not comprehensible by the average person, even mine.  I am sure my string theory, an idea, without the force of any reason whatsoever, with the gravitational impact of a whim and with the mass of intellect of what it takes, waiting for the microwave pseudo egg timer to go off, or my wife to say “please REMOVE FOOD from the table, and what is that silly string doing tied to it ?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

SUPERSTRINGTHEORY

When a kid turns 100cc and bends something

On By cjx07sterIn AustraliaLeave a comment
on the road somewhere in Australia..

Ho Ho, on the bike at last.  The sun was going down at the farm, and the old dusty farm homestead road was the only track there was.  Such a bike at such an age of 15 or so, meant a chance to prove what a rider I could be.  No more stupid mini-bikes for me. With no thought I took off at flat chat. The road was narrow and once past the first curve in the drive started down a steep grade with corrugations all over, and the sun strong going down over the mountain.  I tried the brakes, of course they were bent or something from some prior stack.  I ended up in a heap of dust and rocks after squealing all over the dirt.

I must have been knocked out a bit, the bike’s headlight was climbing up through the dust into the sky, the hot heavy engine was stopped, and I was under it all.

I made it back to the homestead in the dark somehow, not with the bike, which wouldn’t start, but somehow I had made it back. I explained how the bike must has slipped from under me.  The brake lever was bent or something.  Perhaps I bent it.

I got in the shower to get clean, my arm hurt a lot, and my hip as well.  Painful it was to wash it all off. The blood and the dirt.  The mother of the house took a look and said, you will need a stitch.  Lets find the doctor.

We got in the sulky, the only vehicle left and went into town.

The doctor was no where to be seen, it was night, and all were at the opera house for a centenary celebration,  not too common in the outback.

He came in to the surgery, and stitched up the arm with black thread. Took a look at the hip and put a few in there as well.

It was late, and outback getting real dark and cold.  We piled back into the sulky and took off back to the farm.  The arm had got a bit stiff on the drive back but the mother of the house where I was staying seemed a lot happier to have had the doctor take a look and do some repairs.

Of course I was totally humiliated, having to admit that i had fallen off a bike, a 100cc motorbike at that. Bit the dust ! ! and had a scar on the elbow to remind of the event forever.  Ahh.. the mental pain was far greater than the actual.

100cc of blood lost – of petrol used – or power given – or forgiven – in the outback – a night to remember for the town’s 100th birthday – and my elbow is still bent,  just like the brake !