the ground beneath

After a few too hot days at home scratching away at my journal, sewing, mooching among the bookshelves, tidying up a little fretfully, not feeling hungry but still thinking about food - I realised that I had cabin fever and I had to get out. The past few weeks I had been sewing - mending, patching, darning - and somehow that led to stitching cloth in a sort of dream - an unthinking meditation. I had been reading too about zokin - Japanese dusters, or cleaning cloths - repurposed material from clothes cut down and quilted together with tiny running stitches - a humble sashiko. These days it seems zokin are made only by the elderly, by women old enough to have memory of hard times, young enough to still want to do something with their hands. That is me, I thought, neither old or young - some time on my hands. I made three - quilted in different patterns - my sewing both inexpert and somehow satisfying hand work. When cabin fever finally struck I took myself into the city to buy proper sashiko thread, a Japanese leather thimble - worn just above the joint on long man - the middle finger. In an arcade upstairs in a tiny shop I found all kinds of sewing treasures. Stowing my sweet purchases in my basket I took out my stitching and showed the shop's owner Leanne. Leanne lived in Japan for many years and studied all kinds of traditional arts including sashiko. She was not really impressed with my work but gave me some helpful advice. I had pulled my stitches too tight,(story of my life) and had begun by quilting several layers together,(running before I could walk) - not good for a beginner. I blushed and took my leave. 
Sometimes I forget that the whole is made of many fragments. I forget that the journey can be at once humble and grand. I forget for a moment that I am a snail and that slow is my natural speed. Why I try to shuck this perfect rhythm I'm not sure. The years fly - sometimes it's good to have days that are slow. 


Memorandum: If you are in Melbourne the shop mentioned is Kimono House on the second floor of the Nicholas Building. It is an Aladdin's Cave of beautiful textiles and sewing tools. Kimono House offers courses in a variety of disciplines including sashiko. I have signed up for one.

last to leave

Sometimes being a land lubber is more humbling than usual.
Just on twilight - the last light on the last day of the year dragonflies swarmed overhead. The hot weather, the windless, cloudless conditions might have brought on this frenzy. Maybe there was an inaudible - to us - hum of insect activity that alerted the dragonflies to a possible feast. The aerial spectacular - not unlike film of a World War I air battle - took less than half an hour.  Darkness came on fast then. 


Last one out switches off the light.

cherry time

Cherries are an early Christmas present in the antipodes - their colour is a cheer - their sweetness something between a fruit and a perfume. Our Stella is only five years old - we have had it in the ground for three. Even the first year after a dry Spring we had cherries. Just a handful. Mark harvested that first fruit on his knees.

This year the rains have come after an absence of ten or more years. Some children have be born into this testy climate, never knowing until now a Spring downpour or Summer storm. And Winter rain? Winter what? No-one has carried umbrellas for years. No-one owns a raincoat anymore. We had a collie dog who looked a her first rain with utter amazement. Good rains have meant plump, rosy fruit and plenty. We netted the trees and still the birds got some. It is their due and hey, we are happy to share. My friend Jan looked at our little orchard - the trees each neatly under nets and called them ghost trees. To me they are upside-down skirts. To the dogs they are curious and require peeing on. 


In this corner of the country cherries are the season's first stone fruit. They flag the early days of advent and the end of exams. Nothing says Summer quite like sitting on the verandah, spitting cherry pits and idling away an afternoon.

birds eye view

British sports journo Simon Barnes also writes about birds. From his "How to be a Bad Birdwatcher", I learnt two cardinal (no pun intended)rules. Firstly, any small, brown, mystery sighting can be recorded as an LBJ - (little brown job. Most of my bird list could be described thus. Seeing birds on the wing means seeing them backlit. And seeing them this way means recognising a siloquette rather than colour or markings. So LBJ is a neat classification for all those thrilling but perplexing sightings. But seeing birds is more than identification don't you think? For me it's about the witness of wildness.It's proof that the world even in the cities is more than just humdrum people business.

Secondly, says Barnes, buy small bins - the rider being that they be good ones. He suggests a pair of Leicas. I noted the model, hunted them down, raised them to my eyes and felt that I was really seeing for the first time in my life. It was as though everything I had laid eyes on up to that moment had been witnessed through a fog - a pea soup, a fug, a smoke, an opacity. I trained them on the spire of a church, middle distance and picked out with exquisite clarity a clutch of sparrows - their markings, face masks, scaly legs sharp and true. Walking back to the counter I asked the price as casually as I could. The answer left a lump in my throat and a tear in my eye.

Today most of my sightings are still LBJs.

our bird is back

Well, it could be that our dead bird was not our bird.

A day after finding the body I notice that there is still bird activity in the olive tree. There are comings and goings and all the zen-like business of egg sitting.

A month later there is a chick. Just one - not two as I had expected. He is a mess of a bird to begin with. The feathers are spindly, rudimentary affairs of fluff and spines that do not lie flat. He looks surprised to be alive.

His mother is fattening him. He is calling and trying his stunted chicken wings.

Spring tips into Summer and he tries to fly. I will be watching him almost as closely as his mother - heart in my mouth.

He is all uncertainty and adventure.

goodbye bird

Ten years of drought stunted our trees. But since the rains came the garden has put on growth and green. The fruit trees in particular have almost doubled in size. The kalamata by the back fence - always hardly is now stout - prinked out with grey green leaves and abundant blossom. Thick as a hedge it has provided near perfect cover for a nesting thrush. She built a deep grass and mud daub affair almost at eye level. I climbed a ladder and looked into it before she was done. The mud was still wet - the inside as smooth as a hand thrown pot. She sits diligently and I speak to her when I pass. Our eyes meet and I try to appear as unthreatening as is possible for a giant two legged thing to be. Sometimes I see her fly direct into the tree like an arrow shot into a thicket - her powers of navigation so finely tuned. Yet yesterday we found a speckled brown birdy corpse on the verandah. There was not a mark on the body. It was likely she had hit the window and fallen dazed to the ground. Did she fly at her reflection? Did she not see the glass? How is it that she could fly at full tilt into the olive yet fail to navigate a familiar landmark like the house? 


Goodbye bird. 
You will be missed.

mind food

  

If you are like me...you read everywhere. 

You like to have a book to hand, in fact you like to have a book in your hand. 

You pack books even to run an errand. The idea of waiting in line or at the dentist without a book is some kind of Zen test you don't want to take. You pack books for a trip where others might pack clothes or food.

You don't want to be starved of words.  

Or food either - so sometimes I pack lunch too.