Ride

Toa, Interrupted

I'd like that job sailing across the Great Australian Bight. I really would. The skipper will pay my airfare. The boat will traverse the same course, at the same time of year, as those sealers and Pallawa women I am writing about.
So I'm stewing in my own juices here. The twitching pit in the base of my stomach is a feeling that I recognise from past experience as wanderlust, wanting to go sailing, knowing the job is right there for me if I dare ... and knowing that I can't step off the jetty right now.
It is completely maddening. How to reconcile my reality with a potential reality.
Bah.
A friend said yesterday that a line from the Eagles song reminded him of me:  
Don't let the sound of your own wheels drive you crazy.

The red glow of a Flanders poppy against a green paddock is only a memory til next spring. Pumpkin tendrils are sending forays onto the driveway, laden with flowers and little bulbous babies. Australian christmas trees are dropping their orangey yellow blooms onto weedy watsonia and the ficifolia are flowering all their cool to warm reds. The easterlies are roaring in. That easterly is the rub that itches me. They should be the winds to usher me home on the catamaran or, if I were fishing, be the onshore whore I've cursed for years whilst out on the whiting grounds with Old Salt. I've never thought of that wind as a friend until this week.

Instead I'm watering the windblown garden, editing the latest copy from my publisher, freaking out about my thesis deadline, thinking that I really should sort out that bottle of milk I spilled in the car a week ago and patting the brindle dog whenever he puts his paw on my lap. I spend every day in front of a screen, typing (not writing), surfing the internet, dawdling over a sentence ... until it gets to the hour when I crank the Indi500 around the block like some crazy woman possessed with dreams of sailing the Southern Ocean.

Plants himself in all her nerves

"T'is a curious poem," my English lecturer once said. He was a curious creature himself; a tweedy Oxford scholar who'd ended up in the Antipodes teaching the colonials modernist and Irish literature. I could see why he loved it there in Otago - maybe he was the proverbial big fish but I also saw his delight in the odd student who stepped up to his standards. In my obligatory interview with him over an assessment, he was amazed and disappointed that I was doing four units and he discounted me after that.
"You should only be doing two!" (of his units, of course)
I explained that as an exchange student I was obliged to do four, that Pacific Origins in Archaeology and Maori History were making up the quota so I could migrate thousands of kilometres for him to lecture me on Synge, Faulkner and Beckett.
Mmmm.

The anthrop and history classes fed me and the exams were easy but the tweedy professor's exams were worth eighty percent of our final semesters' mark. Yes. Eighty percent, for essays on Borges, Wordsworth, Joyce and Faulkner. The exam question for Borges was the one story from Labyrinths that I hadn't read; The Garden of Forking Paths. That story still gives me post-traumatic shudders to this day when I think of the quietening hall, the collective groans and my utter dismay. I can imagine maths exams carrying some weight for a final mark but modernist literature? Irish literature between 1850 and 1950? I will always associate The Garden of Forking Paths as a horrifying experience and it has nothing to do with the story tale itself.
Passed. Just.

Anyhoo, here is the 'curious poem'.
If you've ever read one of my tyger tales, you will see that I've stolen a line or two. I didn't realise it at the time. Blake has been known to write about Tygers but I had no idea I'd internalised this poem so well. No excuses. I can only own my heartfelt larceny ... Read on. It's a (curious) ripper.

The Mental Traveller
by William Blake (1757 - 1857)

I travell’d thro’ a land of men,

A land of men and women too;

And heard and saw such dreadful things

As cold earth-wanderers never knew.

For there the Babe is born in joy

That was begotten in dire woe;

Just as we reap in joy the fruit

Which we in bitter tears did sow.

And if the Babe is born a boy

He’s given to a Woman Old,

Who nails him down upon a rock,

Catches his shrieks in cups of gold.

She binds iron thorns around his head,

She pierces both his hands and feet,

She cuts his heart out at his side,

To make it feel both cold and heat.

Her fingers number every nerve,

Just as a miser counts his gold;

She lives upon his shrieks and cries,

And she grows young as he grows old.

Till he becomes a bleeding Youth,

And she becomes a Virgin bright;

Then he rends up his manacles,

And binds her down for his delight.

He plants himself in all her nerves,

Just as a husbandman his mould;

And she becomes his dwelling-place

And garden fruitful seventyfold.

An agèd Shadow, soon he fades,

Wandering round an earthly cot,

Full fillèd all with gems and gold

Which he by industry had got.

And these are the gems of the human soul,

The rubies and pearls of a love-sick eye,

The countless gold of the aching heart,

The martyr’s groan and the lover’s sigh.

They are his meat, they are his drink;

He feeds the beggar and the poor

And the wayfaring traveller:

For ever open is his door.

His grief is their eternal joy;

They make the roofs and walls to ring;

Till from the fire on the hearth

A little Female Babe does spring.

And she is all of solid fire

And gems and gold, that none his hand

Dares stretch to touch her baby form,

Or wrap her in his swaddling-band.

But she comes to the man she loves,

If young or old, or rich or poor;

They soon drive out the Agèd Host,

A beggar at another’s door.

He wanders weeping far away,

Until some other take him in;

Oft blind age-bent, sore distrest,

Until he can a Maiden win.

And to allay his freezing age,

The poor man takes her in his arms;

The cottage fades before his sight,

The garden and its lovely charms.

The guests are scatter’d thro’ the land,

For the eye altering alters all;

The senses roll themselves in fear,

And the flat earth becomes a ball;

The stars, sun, moon, all shrink away

A desert vast without a bound,

And nothing left to eat or drink,

And a dark desert all around.

The honey of her infant lips,

The bread and wine of her sweet smile,

The wild game of her roving eye,

Does him to infancy beguile;

For as he eats and drinks he grows

Younger and younger every day;

And on the desert wild they both

Wander in terror and dismay.

Like the wild stag she flees away,

Her fear plants many a thicket wild;

While he pursues her night and day,

By various arts of love beguil’d;

By various arts of love and hate,

Till the wide desert planted o’er

With labyrinths of wayward love,

Where roams the lion, wolf, and boar.

Till he becomes a wayward Babe,

And she a weeping Woman Old.

Then many a lover wanders here;

The sun and stars are nearer roll’d;

The trees bring forth sweet ecstasy

To all who in the desert roam;

Till many a city there is built,

And many a pleasant shepherd’s home.

But when they find the Frowning Babe,

Terror strikes thro’ the region wide:

They cry ‘The Babe! the Babe is born!

And flee away on every side.

For who dare touch the Frowning Form,

His arm is wither’d to its root;

Lions, boars, wolves, all howling flee,

And every tree does shed its fruit.

And none can touch that Frowning Form,

Except it be a Woman Old;

She nails him down upon the rock,

And all is done as I have told.

Squid. Boy.

Nobody Can See in Our Hollow Tree

A Transit of Venus Year and My Handbag

It was a pretty interesting year for Australian women; what with the Prime Minister's slap down of the opposition leader after two years of personal abuse, Anne Summers' essay Her Rights at Work and an online guerilla response to Alan Jones' usual tirade that educated, powerful women will destroy the joint.
The turning point in all three happenings was the that online community rode rowdy roughshod over the old media guard, yahooing and swinging their bras and Yfronts above their heads. What happened next was what Benard Keane summed up as the rage of the prostatetariat. (prostatetariat being possibly the most magnificent word coined in 2012)

The media has been told for a long time that the internet will bugger their advertising revenue. But no one told them it would happen courtesy of social media campaigns as well.
This had a particularly amusing outcome of upsetting powerful old white men, the sort of people not merely used to running things, but doing so in an unchallenged, and definitely unmocked, fashion. No matter where you looked this year, there was some privileged old white guy angrily denouncing things. Gerry Harvey or Solomon Lew or Ray Hadley or Alan Jones (Old White Guy primus inter pares), or the entire Republican Party (brilliantly condensed into Clint Eastwood railing at an invisible person, an act so laden with symbolism it deconstructed itself in real time), or the old men of The Australian, from Chris Mitchell down, powerful elderly males infuriated that the world no longer gives them automatic deference, let alone allows them to run things unchallenged. 
The result: the rage of the prostatetariat.
(Here - and this is a great article)


The coup happened because even as Gillard's speech and Summers' essay went viral, and Jones was forced to apologise for some truly 'vile' comments (his advertisers were deserting him like nightclub punters after the 3 am spotlights are turned on), the old white men of The Australian completely misjudged the seismic shift that was occurring and tried to maintain their status quo of keeping a witch at the stake whilst wielding pitch forks and a box of matches.
Meanwhile the bloggers, twitterers and FB activists just got on with it and burnt down the prostatetariat tower within the week. No newspapers or matches required, thank you very much.

What happens when guys
like Paul Kelly, Chris Mitchell,
 Christopher Pearson and
Alan Jones misread their own readership.
Oops.

Anyway, whilst on this feminist slant, I think I'll talk about my hair and I may at some stage move on to my handbag. There's also the slightly fraught question of whether, with my new status of grandma, I'll ever get laid again and if I do, will it be weird, uncomfortable and with all lights turned off. As MF keeps reminding me, I'm quite young for a 21st century grannie, which makes the whole nanna dating scene sort of strange. What to do. I've been angsting about a lack of boyfriend sauce for a while. A factor in this dearth may be living in a country town where the gender demographic is female heavy. Perhaps it is also being a nearly six-foot tall wild woman who gallops off at the hint of a gold ring and has a reputation of being a bit lippy, wins at arm wrestles. Grandma. All those states require someone quite um ... quixotic and special.

This paragraph has no bearing whatsoever on the above paragraph's subject. Of course someone will love me despite the twigs in my hair, I mutter defensively. Having run out of shampoo, I want roll with it and see how long I can go without washing it. Yes, there is a light aroma of woodsmoke and sweat. There's a few twigs and bottle brush flowers going on too. Like one of the Toa sisters, my hair thrives on the briny and I've always loved leaving salt in my hair for days after a swim. It gets glossier and shorter as the curls tighten and begin to dread.
Said sister was told once that her hair smelt and she should probably wash it. "But it's not itchy yet!" she answered. Mine's not itchy yet either. It's actually starting to feel really good. So there.

Personally it's been an odd rollercoaster 2012 of highs and lows. Some of them I've blogged about and others have been a bit raw to document online. Fishing out at Pallinup was definitely a highlight, along with getting my book signed by Fremantle Press (coming out this year, yay!) and Matilda Grace, ohh, that baby ... My handbag is honest testimony to my year: phone charger, diary, tampons, pocket knife, screwdriver, so-called smart phone, headlamp, ear phones, rollie papers, sandalwood oil, blue wren feathers, pliers, tissues, cable ties, a water bottle, puncture repair kit, asprin and crushed seashells. An apple and a book.
These items service my midnight visits to the whale graveyard, my own personal road side assistance needs, fish filletting habits, a night on the town, working out of town three days a week, living in a tent, roams around the red cliffs or to the sand bar at Pallinup, a funeral for a tiny blue bird, some minor emergencies, some major joys. One major joy involved the little plastic jar that my daughter made me cart around in my handbag for the last month, in order to salvage a portion of her placenta on the big day.
And all this ephemera lives in a canvas miner's tool bag that I cannot seem to give up for anything more feminine or elegant because it is just so bloody useful.

Oh - hey - Happy New Year everyone!
May it be happy and honest and fruitful.
XXX
Sarah

If I were tickled by the rub of love

If I were tickled by the rub of love,
A rooking girl who stole me for her side,
Broke through her straws, breaking my bandaged string,
If the red tickle as the cattle calve
Still set to scratch a laughter from my lung,
I would not fear the apple nor the flood
Nor the bad blood of spring.

Shall it be male or female? say the cells,
And drop the plum like fire from the flesh.
If I were tickled by the hatching hair,
The winging bone that sprouted in the heels,
The itch of man upon the baby's thigh,
I would not fear the gallows nor the axe
Nor the crossed sticks of war.

Shall it be male or female? say the fingers
That chalk the walls with greet girls and their men.
I would not fear the muscling-in of love
If I were tickled by the urchin hungers
Rehearsing heat upon a raw-edged nerve.
I would not fear the devil in the loin
Nor the outspoken grave.

If I were tickled by the lovers' rub
That wipes away not crow's-foot nor the lock
Of sick old manhood on the fallen jaws,
Time and the crabs and the sweethearting crib
Would leave me cold as butter for the flies
The sea of scums could drown me as it broke
Dead on the sweethearts' toes.

This world is half the devil's and my own,
Daft with the drug that's smoking in a girl
And curling round the bud that forks her eye.
An old man's shank one-marrowed with my bone,
And all the herrings smelling in the sea,
I sit and watch the worm beneath my nail
Wearing the quick away.

And that's the rub, the only rub that tickles.
The knobbly ape that swings along his sex
From damp love-darkness and the nurse's twist
Can never raise the midnight of a chuckle,
Nor when he finds a beauty in the breast
Of lover, mother, lovers, or his six
Feet in the rubbing dust.

And what's the rub? Death's feather on the nerve?
Your mouth, my love, the thistle in the kiss?
My Jack of Christ born thorny on the tree?
The words of death are dryer than his stiff,
My wordy wounds are printed with your hair.
I would be tickled by the rub that is:
Man be my metaphor.

 

Dylan Thomas