Thank You Shakespeare!

'Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.' All's Well that Ends Well

In all corners of the world, the course of true love never does run smooth.

If you remember that comparisons are odious and discretion is the better part of valour, you can screw your courage to the sticking place forever and a day. You can say good riddance to the green-eyed monster, and it will vanish into thin air.


More fool you if you do not look for the milk of human kindness. But it is not the be all and end all if you do not get your pound of flesh. 

When the game is up, and it is time to shuffle off your mortal coil, sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything, cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war.

Hark! Hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings all of a sudden for good men and true.

Where's Wal?

‘Had to put them both in the back of the milk truck,’ Nicole said to Donny as she opened the doors to her refrigerated van. It was parked in the drive-through at the Funeral Directors where Jack and Donny lived behind their family business.

When the sun beamed into the van’s interior, Jack blinked. The last thing he remembered was the sharp bend before the river crossing on the back road from Tumut. ‘Seems I’ve had a bit of a misadventure,’ he said, fingering the gash on his forehead.

‘More than that,’ Nicole said. She helped him upright and steadied him as he alighted from the back of the van. ‘You were out cold when I found you.’

Jack nodded. He was surprised to be alive. ‘Thought I was inside a coffin,’ he replied, and laughed a single, barking note into the morning air.

‘There’s more,’ Nicole said, as she reached into the van and hauled out a body. ‘Found Wal fifty metres down the road from the car.’

Wal had been Jack’s closest friend. They had gone everywhere together – to the newsagent to buy the daily paper, to the Council meetings where Jack took the minutes, to the pub for a drink on Friday after work, and to the Tumut River to fish for brown trout. That’s where they’d been this morning. Only now, Wal, who didn’t wear a seatbelt, had flown through the windscreen. And here he was, dead.

Jack stood leaning on the side of the van, still befuddled. Then he sobbed.

Donny, however, had a grin bigger than a sheepdog with a paddock full of wethers.

***

The videos on YouTube made it look simple. Donny had started off experimenting with roadkill – a fox, a feral cat, eventually a kangaroo. He had the knack. After six months, when his ornaments no longer fitted in the house, and threatened to overflow into the funeral parlour’s viewing room, he set up a taxidermy website and began selling his handiwork to discerning buyers.

He was approached about a business venture by the local veterinarian. It seemed that quite a few people couldn’t part with their pets and were willing to remunerate Donny to provide the solace they were looking for in their time of grief. They were willing to pay extra for a display plinth. And for a decorative bow.

***

Donny pulled off Wal’s skin. It was like removing a rubber glove.  He scraped the sinews away. He washed the skin in soapy water and shaped it around the mould he had made of Wal’s body. Once he replaced the eyes, he was satisfied with the lifelike result. It was as if Wal watched him as he moved about the room.

***

‘Woof! Woof!’  Wal’s mechanical bark sounded as the sensor for the Funeral Parlour door was triggered.

Jack laughed and patted Wal on the head.  Like his namesake out on the highway near Gundagai, Wal sat on a box, was loyal and never left his post. 

Dog in the Night

I think prime numbers are like life. They are very logical but you could never work out the rules, even if you spent all your time thinking about them. Mark Haddon -The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night

Why is it that the great ideas often come when you wake in the middle of the night? They are like a dog's wet nose - surprising, annoying, but a reminder that you are alive.

Like prime numbers, the midnight ideas have an arcane set of rules that do not require a detailed understanding for everyday use. All you have to do is write them down. It's as easy as ABC - or is that 1,2,3?

Any Beginning Will Do

'Never lose an opportunity of urging a practical beginning' 
Florence Nightingale - the Lady with the Lamp

From the point of view of a writer, any beginning will do, as long as it's a start. The blank page can intimidate you into all manner of procrastination:

• Sharpen pencils (first find pencils and sharpener)
• Turn on computer (check FB, comment, like, reply, friend, unfriend ad infinitum)
• Make coffee (grind beans, refill sugar pot - at a pinch wash up or run the dishwasher - bake scones, whip cream, invite friends to eat, shake crumbs from cleavage)
• Research topic (search library catalogue, read online snippets, look up Wikepedia, sigh, check bookshelf for related items, tidy bookshelf, alphabetise books by title, decide alphabetising books by author is better, read three other novels)
• Light lamp (turning on lights is a reasonable alternative since by now it will be dark)
• Put pencils in order according to size (ready for the morning)
• Turn off computer  (after checking FB, commenting, liking, replying, friending, unfriending ad infinitum).

Job done. Fresh start tomorrow!

Starting Somewhere

‘Almost all good writing begins with terrible efforts. You need to start somewhere.’

Anne Lamott – Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

For the last few months I have been writing full-time. Every morning when I sit at my writing table I tell myself  'start somewhere'. 

It seems the trick is to turn off the self doubt and just start typing. Here are some techniques I have used to let my inner creative take hold: 

• Describe the story behind an interesting photograph
• Start with three key words
• Use a news story and pretend to be a character in it
• Write like crazy (and don't even think about editing!)

Grumps

As Grumps walked along, he could feel Oli’s hand, small and trusting, in his own.  There was a time, he supposed, rubbing his free hand across the stubble on his chin, when his own hand had been as soft. Now it was burred and scarred.

 ‘What’s that?’ Oli asked, pumping his two-year-old legs to keep up.

‘They’re cows,’ Grumps replied, eyeing the Friesians in the field ahead.

Almost on instinct, Grumps took in the information about his dairy farm. He’d been born here one winter morning nearly seventy years ago, and there was nowhere in the universe that he knew better.

With a single glance he counted the cows (forty with calves at foot), he assessed when he would need to move the cows to preserve the paddock’s carrying capacity (Tuesday next week, around lunchtime), and he estimated how much he would make at market when he sold the yearlings (not as much as last year before the drought broke).

He stopped next to the gate, opening its catch. ‘Come through mate,’ he said to Oli who stepped around a cow-pat and stood on tippy-toes to push the latch back into place.

He liked helping Grumps. It made him feel grown up and competent with technical things – and Grumps had a lot of those.

His favourite place was in the shed. This was where Grumps had let him hold a funnel while he poured oil into a jerry can. Oli even helped wipe around the lid with a rag made from an old singlet. Another time he had helped Grumps straighten nails with a hammer. That took all afternoon.

‘For next time,’ Grumps had said, placing all the nails into an old jar on the shelf where he kept his tools.

This morning, as Oli made his way around the paddock with Grumps, he noticed that there were hundreds of spiderwebs strung between the wire strands of the fence. When he looked closely he saw that they shimmered in the morning sun because dew drops had collected on them overnight. He touched one, sending the dew drops scattering, but when he pulled his finger away, the web stuck to him and broke.

Oli thought he might cry, but Grumps distracted him. ‘Look over here,’ he said, leading Oli to where a newborn calf was nursing from its mother.

‘It’s hungry,’ Oli observed, watching the calf flick its tail while it drank. He flicked his fingers in time with it, and edged closer.

The cow wasn’t happy and shook her head at Oli. When she mooed, Oli jumped back, frightened, and hid behind Grumps.

‘Breakfast time for all hungry littlies,’ Grumps said, suppressing a smile as he picked up Oli and walked towards the house.

Oli had recovered from his fright by the time they arrived at the gate, and he fastened the latch. All by himself.

‘Can we go to the shed later?’ Oli asked, keen to be with Grumps.

‘Yes mate,’ Grumps said, laughing. ‘Where would I be without my helper?’

Drive Towards Mullumbimby

When I crest the hill I see the curve of the land cupping the bay and holding it up to the horizon. As I drive towards Mullumbimby, hugged in the palm of the land, the thumb of the lighthouse is at one end of the bay and the skyscraper fingers of the Gold Coast are at the other.

Each time I see this I feel the same kind of wonder that I experienced the day Dad had opened his hands to show me the surprise nestled inside; a blue diamond butterfly that had flicked its wings before flying into the sky.

Drive Towards Mullumbimby: Karin Maier 2015

Our farm was wrapped in the embrace of ancient hills that spoke of the time when volcanoes ruled. The valleys held remnant rainforests that drew on this alluvial legacy, making ferns and orchids that were too fragile to pick. 

As a child I played in the cold, cold water of springs that tumbled down the rocky steps of waterfalls. I squeezed the silt, soft as silk, between my toes. It seemed like a paradise full of treasure.

‘What do you think I’ve got?’ Dad asked, playing the game that required me to guess.

‘A flower?’

‘A sparkly stone?’

Often it was a dandelion ready to be blown. Sometimes a piece of quartz washed from the mountain. But it might also be a beetle, shiny and iridescent like a Christmas decoration. Or a cicada, green and quivering with the noise of its life that seemed somehow trapped inside it. This time it was the butterfly.

‘Look how it goes,’ he said.

I watched its wings beat up and down. The propulsion took it into the green leaves of a tree and it flew there a while in the dappled light. Exhausted, it settled on a branch.

‘Will it die?’ I asked, knowing even then that all creatures have a time and place allotted.

‘Eventually,’ Dad said.

We stood for a moment, acknowledging that truth.

As an adult, I value that instance of honesty more and more. It held within it the need for urgency; to do what you can with the time you have. Your wings may be small, but they can lift you.

So today I am trying to fly - into an expanse of creativity, mapped against the contours of the place that nurtured me. Every heartbeat pumps a memory. I breathe the ageless air that lifted the butterfly and I know I am coming home.