Dog Days of the Backyard Buddhas

We are not Buddhists but we live with three Buddhas - each of them different and each of them on a different duty.

The least fancy is our backyard Buddha. He is a tubby, bare-bellied laughing Buddha, who has the eyes of the Dalai Lama – knowing, forgiving – always faintly amused. He is only a foot high, cast concrete and there are most likely a thousand others in his exact image, who look after other backyards.

It is this very ordinariness I find endearing - a humble and humbling incarnation. He has lost some of the detail of his chin and his left hand over time. But that seems only to set him apart from others, as though cast from one mould, each incarnation seeks only to become itself, as it also works at becoming nothing.

Through the dog days of Summer he sits serenely. After weeks of rain he wears a thick green moss across his head and shoulders and it seems to me like a lesson in being still. Looking at him through the kitchen window I am reminded of the story of the saint, who held still throughout Lent, with a blackbird’s nest in his outstretched hand. St Kevin was fed berries by the blackbird and perhaps my Buddha has a similar gig. As he sits cross-legged in contemplation on his lotus, his lap might seem inviting to a bird. That’s when I think to lift him up and set him in a tree. He is safe there from being lost in the long time unmown grass. He is lifted off the ground, as though in some kind of trace-like levitation.

Our other two Buddhas are both Thai and live in the bathroom - one reclining and one walking. Recently a friend asked, why is it that our ears grow longer as we age. And without really thinking, I said, because we are better listeners now than when we were young. Now we have less to say and more to learn and less time in which to do it. But before bed as I stood cleaning my teeth I looked over at the sleeping Buddha. He has the longest ears in the world. Perhaps our earlobes hang lower as we age because we all becoming Buddha.

I had always assumed that the Buddha’s ears were long because he listened to the whole world’s worries. But today I read that his princely beginnings weighed on him and as royalty he would have worn gold ornaments in his ears. In the eighties we all wore large earrings – perhaps our earlobes are longer now as a warning to others of fashion’s follies. I stopped wearing big baubles on my ears when I had a baby. He reached for and grabbed at them, lying in my lap as fat and happy as any Buddha.

The bathroom Buddhas are both painted gold – the larger reclining one covered in mirrors. If you bend towards him you can see yourself reflected in him a hundred times over. Perhaps the idea is that, if we see ourselves in him, we will see him in ourselves also. The sleepy Buddha is cracked through from breast to thigh. He was originally a shop fitting - perhaps from a restaurant. Whether he was dropped or split in the sun I’m not sure – but he was no longer wanted. He was greasy and his gold paint was peeling when we took him home. Now he is dusted clean and spoken to but we have not mended him. A friend of my son’s got a fright seeing the Buddhas in the bathroom. She felt watched, though both have their eyes either closed or cast down. She asked him later why they sit on the side of the bath and he was not sure. Neither am I really. It seems fitting though to see the Buddha at our most naked and innocent. There is no hiding from the Buddha and no hiding from our true selves in the bathroom.

We had a fourth Buddha but I broke him. I bought him some months after Tiananmen Square, with illegal currency in a shop in Shanghai. We were allowed only to have the mostly useless FECs in the 1980’s, to be spent at designated government stores. But I was trading Australian dollars with the hotel doorman.

There were so few Buddhas to see in Shanghai at that time. We saw only the Jade Buddha in his pavilion. But he was billed as an artefact - something to see which was extraordinary because of his size. A week later walking through the French quarter I saw a ceramic Buddha. Sitting atop a pile of printed papers, he was green and white  - a smiling rather than laughing incarnation – rosy cheeked and red lipped, with ears that touched his shoulders. He was dirty - as though he had been pulled out of the earth – a fitting image for someone who sits astride a lotus. Perhaps he had been squirreled away while the Revolution raged around him. Later I was told that that was unlikely.

His grubbiness was most probably a clumsy antiquing process, applied just prior to sale. I carried him carefully home in my hand luggage wrapped in brown paper. The newspapers were still pasted up on pillars in those days in Shanghai – not commonplace enough for wrapping. He sat on the kitchen dresser for a year or two but I dropped him trying to clean some cement-like grime from his fingers. Some of the Thai and Indian Buddhas have evenly lengthed toes and fingers. Some even have slightly webbed hands. Perhaps washing the Buddha’s hands was a little presumptuous. I might have loosened the webbing and left him less capable of catching reincarnating souls.

Today when I pass the Buddha in the tree he looks a little uncomfortable. I have no lotus for him to sit upon but I cut him a cushion of moss.

Perhaps I am too much taken by graven images but this is not a lesson. I like to think that the backyard and bathroom Buddhas live with us as friends.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning's dog

This romance like so many others in this day and age began on the internet.Love, it seems can use technology.


Six years ago we got Blue as a paddock buddy for our ailing Border Collie, Patch. The Save-a-Dog scheme, (they have a website, with pictures and a biography), billed him as a placid heeler cross. When my sister and I went to the pound to see him we looked up and down all the enclosures without finding him, not realising he was actually corgi. Thinking on it now, we were probably looking at the wrong level. Blue is really a corgi with a heelerish coat and a busy cattle dog brain. He carries himself about on stubby corgi legs well suited to the things he likes in life, like surfing. Interestingly on reading about corgis I found that they are true dwarves. A miscommunication of the genes has produced an averaged sized dog with limbs that are foreshortened. Obviously the Scottish liked this accident enough to breed true from it.


Patsy came along later. Hearing about another heeler corgi (Blorgie), dog made me curious. I went to the pound to look and came back with her. All Pat's hobbies are different from Blue's. He loves the sea - she won't get her feet wet. Blue is not interested in other animals and Pat's lives to hunt. Her Spring through Summer job is catching butterflies and skinks. I take them from her mouth when I can. Sometimes I'm too late and we have a little funeral. Pat's is not invited.Although she has the sweetest temper she is a hunter. She and I have our differences there.


Both Blue and Pats grew on me. It was not love at first sight. It has been a smouldering affair with bright moments, some tiffs, long walks, great company and a shared interest in food.With Fred it was different. I was looking for him for a long while without knowing. There was going to be no fast car or boyfriend in my mid life crisis. But I needed someone new to talk to and do things with and someone to cuddle on the couch, (apart from M). I grew up on dog stories, Lassie, Grey Friar's Bobby, Rin Tin Tin, Call of the Wild...oh I could go on. But Flush always caught my fancy. He was a lady's companion - a poet's companion. He had a book written for him by Virgina Woolf and another by Flora Merrill. There was a stage play later and then a movie. Flush was remembered for himself as much as for his owner - much like Mozart's starling. Good credentials no? A signifier if you will. Flush was a spaniel with long soft ears and a mournful gaze. He was loyal, almost prescient, an ideal escort for a walker and a reader. He was small enough to sit in Elizabeth's lap but strong enough to walk the dales. Flush was credited with curing Browning of an unnamed illness which had her confined to bed in her childhood home. I think I have been saved once or twice by dogs.


Enter Fred. He was surrendered at the Lost Dogs' Home. Not in Melbourne but in country New South Wales. I looked at his picture on their website and read his little biography: Dachshund Border Collie cross fourteen months old, needs supervision, loves people, not good with chickens or cats, desexed, answers to Fred. After two weeks of looking and longing we set off in a storm to get him. When we got Blue he was called Clive. We changed that almost immediately and he seemed not to mind. Patsy was called Patsy and it seemed to suit her. Fred I mused could be changed to Flush. The jury is still out on that.


So far this is what we know about Fred. He seems to like to sit on furniture, often I look about for him and he is sitting at the kitchen table like a person, he loves the Blorgies seemingly equally. He does not like the vacuum cleaner but will happily sit in the bathroom hand basin to have his hair blow dried. He likes to fetch a stick or a ball but will not yet relinquish them, better than this is to chase Blue and take the ball from him. He loves the car and likes to be on the front passenger's knee and watch out the window. He swallows or tries to any kind of foreign object - favourites so far are erasers, shoelaces and fleece pulled from the sheepskin in his basket. He doesn't mind being brushed but likes to help get out any tangles himself. He happily sits on my knee while I type and is there now but prefers to be walking. Whether he can balance on a boogie board or not will have to wait for Summer.

He persists in being called Fred. Perhaps after all he is not Elizabeth Barrett Browning's dog.

Other dogs in thymy dew

Tracked the hares and followed through

Sunny moor or meadow;

This dog only, crept and crept

Next a languid cheek that slept,

Sharing in the shadow.

Other dogs of loyal cheer

Bounded at the whistle clear,

Up the woodside hieing;

This dog only, watched in reach

Of a faintly uttered speech

Or a louder sighing.

from For Flush Elizabeth Barett Browning

Cloud study 101

Clouds give crispness and definition to the sky according to Gavin Pinney. And as founder of the Cloud Appreciation Society he should know. He has looked at plenty of clouds. They predict weather – they can mass or burn back. They inspire both wonder and worry – they can spoil a wedding or a picnic. Sometimes they scroll across an otherwise empty atmosphere like teletype. Cloud fanciers have favourites.

Did you know that Nimbus is the Latin for rain cloud? Nimbus by their very definition bring rain, they are dark, close and classed as praecipitato – clouds which can no longer contain their precipitation. Throughout the ten or so years of recent drought we watched the sky somewhat wistfully for nimbus. Then, it seemed to me that the sky was often empty. The ground hardened under it and even tall trees suffered.

On Friday last we drove through an atlas of cloud types. The sky was already threatening at two in the afternoon. At first it was diverting, watching the clouds climb and assemble into impossible architectures. Later it gave an unwanted urgency to our adventure. I know only the ABC’s of cloud kinds. But Cumulonimbus is unmistakable. It is almost always trouble or troublesome - Nimbus but with attitude. It means a storm, a sudden swing on the barometer, thunder and lightning displays and possible hail. To us it meant a plummet in temperature and a sudden drop in visibility. 


Leaving town we skirted the Hume which was closed close to Melbourne by an overturned truck. And despite our cross country route progress through Yarra Glen slowed to a crawl - while a tow truck retrieved a youngster’s car that had taken a corner awry and skated on the wet road into a ditch. The kids, thankfully unharmed, watched from under one umbrella while the mud covered car was winched aboard its ride. There would be a deal of explaining to do at home and mothers on their knees somewhere thanking the heavens that it was only an injured car. Meanwhile the storm hit its stride. The next three hours or so we seemed to be driving through all of the elements at once. Trees came down, a semi trailer jack-knived across our path, lightning lit up the road in minute spaced exposures. I was gripping the wheel hard and craning to see. Mostly all I want in a storm is to be home – the gates fixed so as not to bang, the gutters clear. I like the heat to be on, a bowl of soup ready, the family on the sofa or at least busy in their rooms – the dogs at my feet and a book in my hand.I am not known to be brave or adventurous. I am not even that often out at night. But we were on a mission to fetch a rescue dog and that alone made it worth risking wet roads.


That night we crawled into town like sailors looking for safe harbour. Well, Albury is a good way from the ocean – but the river is close and as we crossed it looked a torrent. Perhaps we could have been sweet water sailors…

After dinner - surprisingly good, television - reception terrible and bed - bliss, we woke to a different kind of cloud. Stratus is the kind of cloud that likes to be on the ground. It is a dog at heel. Damp almost to the point of rain but falling somewhere short - it is our chance to experience the sky at sea level. Nosing north to Canberra we sped into a chalky quiet.Either everyone else was sleeping or sensible enough to stay home.

Could melancholia be good for you?

The melancholy of Autumn can be its glory too. Rain, wood smoke, bobble hats, jacket potatoes and gum boots. Then there is the excuse to stay in. It's Saturday, so why not stay in your pyjamas? There are books to read, things to eat in the pantry and the leaves are too wet to rake anyway. Washing won't dry, the dogs are rain shy - there are sofas, blankets, pillows, slippers and novels. Now I can't remember why Autumn is sad.

Grasshopper and the ant

Today when I am dusting I find a dead grasshopper on the windowsill. He is still perfectly green and even in death his face looks full of intellect and interest. He does not have that frowning fierceness that the praying mantis has – all hard angles and the eyes of a maniac. No this sweet fellow has the face of a country vicar - all humility and gentleness and through carelessness I have killed him. I wonder if the Buddha of household things sees this misadventure and I leave dusting him till later - still suddenly my karma seems too heavy to carry on with. I think on all the accidental deaths, on all the lives cut short through some failure of attention or care. Better the grasshopper had died in the beak of a bird, I think, more violent but a death with purpose. The thing is I had seen this small fellow come in a few days ago. The screen door was open, the afternoon sun was coming in at a slant and this perfectly jointed green creature came in too. He settled on the architrave beside the door and I got up from my desk to admire him. His sweet face looked somehow familiar and put me in mind of the grasshopper in Aesop’s fables. I’m not sure what edition I had as a child – it was a book that had belonged to my mother – a hardback, the pages roughly cut and the coloured plates interleaved with tissue. I remember that the grasshopper had spent the summer singing while the ants worked. I think in the illustration he carried a small violin while the ants shouldered a giant stalk of wheat…the text was spare, hardly a story really. Labour and frugality was rewarded and idleness condemned. How much more eloquent the picture was and how surprised I was that singing could be punished. I liked to sing.

A day later when I noticed the grasshopper again he was clinging to the cornice. I wondered at his ability to walk upside down and went back to work. I had spent the morning bottling quinces, now I was at the sewing machine stitching straight rows and unable stop – I admired his acrobat instincts in an abstract sort of way, not thinking he might be in peril – I was being an ant – I hadn't stopped to wonder that he was still in the house, did not even think to open a window for him. Perhaps he was drowning not waving. Perhaps he was not singing but calling for help. I looked without seeing the obvious, heard without listening something I am too often guilty of - and that is how I came to find him a week later, laid on his side as though in sleep, unmoving on the windowsill. 

the comfort of colour

The passing of the equinox means we cannot claim Summer anymore. Summer is on its last legs - has leaned into Autumn and from now the days get shorter. The tomato vines are straggling, the strawberries put out a last few berries and the apple tree is loaded. The quinces are heavy and going gold, the pear trees are feeding possums and cockatoos. In a way Autumn is more social than Summer. Everyone is back at school or work. Holidays already seem sketchy and only half remembered. Suddenly sleeves are rolled up. There is fruit to pick, jams and jellies to process, pie to roll pastry for... and after the haze of Summer heat the mornings are crisper, the sky clearer, the colours cleaner. The turning leaves, the cold starts and Wedgewood afternoon skies - this is the comfort of colour that Autumn offers.


With a bucket of homegrown Golden Delicious to hand and dinner guests tonight I pull down Jane Grigson's Good Things and thumb through. She has the authority of Elizabeth David with a less testy temperament. I feel friendlier towards her. She is smart, motherly and wistful in turns. My eye lights on Evreux apple tarts and I feel her at my elbow when she warns, "Do not be tempted to cook the tarts before the meal, or the juices will soak away into the pastry." How well she seems to know me. I would have cooked them early if only to admire them cooling on racks by the window.
Here is her recipe altered slightly to be baked as a galette.




Evreux apple tarts
At the Vieille Gabelle restaurant in Evreux, 55 miles to the west of Paris, they serve these tarts made with Golden Delicious apples. Do not be tempted to cook the tarts before the meal, or the juices will soak away into the pastry. Put them into a hot oven as you serve the first course, and baste once or twice with the apricot mixture.


shortcrust
8oz flour
5oz butter and lard mixed ( I used unsalted Danish butter only)
2 level tablespoons icing sugar
1 egg


creme patissiere
1 oz flour
2 egg yolks
1 egg
2 oz sugar
1/2 oz milk


apricot mixture
6 tablespoons apricot jam
2 tablespoons water


plus 
11/2 lbs Golden Delicious apples


Make the pastry and use it to line four straight sided patty pans, of about 4 1/2 inches diameter (from Woolworths). (I rolled 2 discs of pastry and lifted them into pie dishes leaving a generous overhang to be folded into on top of the fruit). Make the creme patissiere next: mix in a bowl the flour, egg yolks egg and sugar and stir in the milk which should have first be brought to just under boiling point. Cook over low heat until the custard is thick. Cool, then pour a 1/4 inch layer of it into the pastry cases.
Peel, core and cut the apples into1/8 inch slices. Halve the slices and arrange curved side up inthe creme patissiere, so that they resemble records gradely neatly in a rack.


Melt the apricot jam and water together, and sieve. Pour a little over the tarts. Cook in a hot oven, Mark 6-7, 400-427F, basting from time to time with the rest of the apricot mixture. The top edges of the apple should catch the heat and turn brown. Golden Delicious apples will not lose their shape, or disintegrate into white fluff as cookers do. When you cut into the tarts, a delicious aromatic juice bursts out. Serve plenty of cream with them.
from Jane Grigson Good Things illustrated by M J Mott, London, 1971, 2007

festival of broken needles

Hand sewing slows the heart it seems. Or it does mine. Perhaps like writing longhand it cannot be done at speed. Begs not to be. One stitch, one breath. The rhythmic dip and dive of the long nose, round eyed needle lets the thoughts lift loose. And the heart feels unburdened. Sometimes hand sewing is more a joy than a job.

A needle is a fine tool. Simple, portable, industrious. But what to do if it breaks? If it is bent and no longer able to sew true? Thank it. Lament it. Offer comfort. Japanese women do. For hundreds of years Japanese women have honoured their needles and pins on Hari-Kuyo. On February 8 women take their tired needles and worn out pins to Shinto or Buddhist shrines and lay them to rest in the Festival of Broken Needles. Bent pins and broken needles are made to lie down on a soft bed specially sewn or plunged into cakes of bean curd. Softness comforts the needles and pins who before have known only sharpness. Sutras are said to thank the needles for their hard work, for a year of straight stitches, for repairs, for their sorrows inherited direct from the seamstresses hand.

Last night I saw a fox step out of the darkness. Kitsune - the Shinto messenger - a good omen, I thought, for burying needles. I made my bent pins and one broken needle a bed stitched with sashiko, plumped with fleece - a button and spare thread for company. I thanked them and then I laid aside sewing for the day.

If the fox came for them he would be able to carry the soft parcel in his mouth with ease - no booby trapped tofu to choke on.

"Oh my needle, how sad! You were a special gift, beyond the ordinary, prominent among all ironware. Deft and swift like some knight errant, straight and true like a loyal subject, your sharp point seemed to talk, your round eye seemed to see."

from Lament for a Needle.  Anon Choson dynasty, Korea.