OF BRIDGES and Jumping onto Sharks

 

 

Imagine if you will a blistering hot, sweltering, afternoon. The air is thick with humidity and the slight sticky sweet smell of burnt sugar cane.

 

My friends and I hop on our bikes and head to the river to swim. And one of the best places to swim was down by sportsman creek bridge where the grass slopes easily into the water.

 

Sportsmans creek bridge was a single lane, wooden bridge when cars drove over it would rattle and shake, I remember that sound so clearly.

 

The creek runs into the mighty Clarence river which in turn, runs into the pacific ocean, we were pretty close to the headwaters so on high tides the salt water washes back into the fresh. Creating our little brackish slice of heaven.

 

I was going to tell you a story about growing up as country kid in rural Australia, telling you fun stories of running bare foot through the snake infested paddocks, about riding cows, and jumping off bridges on to sharks.

 

I wanted to tell you of the hot summers and how the roads melted. The feeling of old wood as we walked across the bridge in our bare feet….

 

This is not that story, this story is about fear.

 

If you close your eyes can you recall what your fear feels like? Is it; Sweaty palms, a sinking feeling in your stomach, goose flesh creeps down your arms, your heart beats faster and breath catches in the back of your throat, your voice fades from lips.

 

Back to the Jumping off bridges, it really sounds more dangerous than what it actually was, honestly the bridge wasn’t that high and the creek was pretty deep and well, I’d jumped off way higher things.

 

Have you ever jumped off something really high? As I kid I was unafraid of heights or really much of anything. Maybe you jumped off the high dive? Or even just a cannon ball into the pool, or better yet was there a rope swing over a water hole? Or maybe you too jumped off a bridge into the water. Close your eyes, remember the smell of the water, nervous laughter escapes your lips, it’s your turn, you climb over the railing and standing on the wooden beam a few feet over the water, your back against the too hot metal railing, its almost too hot to hold. 2 small steps and you fling yourself off the side of the bridge…You fly….for a moment and then falling through the air for an amazing second and splash too soon into the water, bubbles fizz around you and river weed tickles your feet you as you kick once and your head pops above the surface, gasping for breath, swimming to shore triumphantly.

 

No sharks were harmed in your attempt to jump on them, you didn’t even get close.

 

But the thing is, I don’t actually remember the bridge jumping, I remember being told I jumped off that bridge, I remember getting in trouble for jumping off the bridge.. … but I don’t actually REMEMBER jumping off the bridge. I remember jumping off other things, but not the bridge.

 

 I painted you a pretty picture though…almost like I was there.

 

Did I tell you that I am afraid of heights? I don’t like walking or driving across bridges, or standing on balconies, looking out windows of tall buildings or not so tall buildings. The thought of standing on the sky deck at willis tower makes me want to hyperventilate, 2 years ago when I took my mum on a hot air balloon ride it required chemical assistance and a death grip on my husband’s arm.

 

And I wonder at what point did I become afraid? Is it the natural progression of growing up and discovering your mortality, or was it the fear instilled in me by the person who, upon finding out about my adventures in bridge jumping, and cow riding, who in fear for my safety lashed out in anger.  Everything that I wanted to do was bad and dangerous and I could get hurt or someone could come along and hurt me… I had to be careful….why can’t you be careful?

 

didn’t I know there were bad people out there, didn’t I know that I could get hurt? Why would you let someone one else tell you what to do…. You need to listen to me and do as you’re told….

 

it sounds like the punch line of a bad joke; well if what’s his face told you to jump off a bridge, would you…? …well it was actually my idea.

 

So the sharks, the sharks sound dangerous right?

But really they were pretty small, only about a meter and they were mostly nocturnal, bottom dwelling carpet sharks. Their mouths are not made for people biting. So even if we did manage to hit a shark it wasn’t like it was going to hurt us.

 

If you hurt yourself you’ll get a scar, and pretty girls don’t have scars, do you know what happens to girls who have scars?

 

I will disown you if you get a scar.

 

How many times do you need to be told something until you start to believe it? How long did it take for me to hate just walking over bridges?

 

I wonder who I could have been if the I didn’t have that fear placed upon me, fear of failure, fear of being hurt, fear of new things fear of my otherness of my own adventurous nature. What if rather than remember the belting I received from jumping off the bridge, what if I remembered the feeling of flying through the air, of hitting the cool water and swimming across those sleeping sharks to the riverbank.

 

Who could I have become if I had realized sooner that it wasn’t my fear, it was someone else’s?

 

And that it was not a fear of heights, but fear of the punishment from being myself. And that to escape punishment I had to squeeze myself into a different shape, a shape dictated by someone else. How often do we change our selves to escape fear or punishment? How does that fear change who we are? Does it change us permanently?

 

I don’t know the answers to any of those questions.

 

It’s been a long time now.

 

I am no longer afraid to be myself, but I AM still afraid of heights.

 

Of Home

 

I’ve been thinking about home a lot recently. I have two of them. I have been thinking a lot about who I am when I am in each place, that I’m different depending on where I am and who I’m with, this isn’t just about who I think I am, it is who I am here and who I am now and who I am wearing these clothes or those clothes or who I am when I’m with you or in another country, the other home. The one far away from here.

 

And home to me smells like:

Sunshine and Eucalyptus,  Sugar cane fields burning and the ocean

It smells like spices cooking in my mother’s kitchen

And fresh laundry hung outside in the sunshine

The air just before it rains, It’s Sunscreen and bug spray

 

And how your skin smells after you’ve sat outside in the sun for a little too long and it smells like hot air and dust. And feels like hard packed earth and the brown grass that has been baking in the sun and it’s crunchy and there’s nothing green left and everything is muted shades of dull green and brown and grey and you think everything is dying or already dead

 

It’s so hot that the power lines sag to touch the street and then the power goes out, and the asphalt has melted from days and days of unrelenting oppressive heat, and you don’t ever remember the last time it rained.

 

When there is absolutely no relief and you’ve run out of water in the tanks and the back dam is a desert of cracked earth and sadness.

Just before the fires start… the gum trees come alive, suddenly woken from their slumber releasing eucalyptus scent in the air and bursting forth with fluffy yellow and white flowers. The wild orchids like the heat as well, the kookaburras don’t care.

 

And at dawn and at dusk they laugh at us, they laugh at us as if to say, you strange flightless birds, why don’t you just fly away.

 

But we can’t because this is our home.

 

And so, we wait for rain. The thunderstorms roll in darkening the sky with wind, sound, and light and nothing else. The deafening sounds of cicadas doppler around the house, singing their songs in the dry grass and dust.

 

The cacophony of silence, you would never know it was so loud out in the bush.

 

You city people thinks the country would be peaceful and quiet, how wrong you are. The bush is usually so loud, but when it’s dry as a bone thirsting for any hint of moisture the hush seems like a threat.

 

Each time the sun rises the birds remain quiet, too thirsty to call, you know, no rain is on the horizon. It’s home still and you make plans for the inevitable fire and you decide you will fight fiercely for it when the fire comes, you bring the animals inside and you get the long hose out and you use what little water you have left to wet down the house to keep the sparks from catching.

 

As the winds change and fire front swings round to face you.

 

 Animals and insects stream out of the bush towards YOU, the only safe port in this fire storm. Everything is a tinder box and there is nowhere left to go. The banksias burst their seed pods and gum trees sizzle, fire sometimes makes new life possible…A wet hanky across your face and tears streaming from your eyes…eucalypt fires are the worst.

 

The hard wood smolders for days without any visible flame and then the wind picks up and everything is awash in a sea of dancing red and orange.

 

And then one hint of moisture and everything springs back to life in a riot of verdant greens and fornicating frogs. The ground was so dry that the sudden water just washes over the earth without really sinking in.

 

The water tanks are full, but underneath the earth is still bone dry, don’t let the lascivious calls of horny cane toads tell you different, no amount of rain will break this drought 20 years in the making.

 

Waters fill dams, streams, rivers, the sudden massive flow with nowhere to go washing out roads and now the ferry is tied to the banks and the bridge is out and there is no way around, you’re stuck at home without parental supervision because they get the message too late that all roads are closed.

 

After a few days the earth soaks up the water and now the heat is different, the sudden humidity makes it hard to breathe, and the washing never quite gets dry on the line, and it feels like swimming when you’re walking, and you start to sweat straight out of the shower, and at least you can have a shower because you now have water.

 

But everything has come back to life and new growth bursts forth from the ashes.

 

This home is a study in contrasts, a maelstrom of mixed emotions and conflicting states. I think this conflict has shaped my being…

And it’s not like that here. Home here is different. It’s not quite so stark in its contrasting seasons, or maybe it is. Summer   / winter. Back there wet / dry.

 

This is the place I have lived the longest in my life, the place where I have built my life and my community, the family I have chosen. Home here is a choice and It’s the feeling of electricity of just before it snows, everything covered in white and the hush that falls upon the world.

 

The metallic taste of the air after a heavy snow fall, and the crunch when soft snow freezes a bit after a few days. I remember the first time I saw it snow, well it was only a flurry really.

 

But I ran outside in my too thin clothes and danced about childlike in my happiness catching snowflakes on my tongue and trying to hold them in my hands to see, I mean really see if every snow flake is actually different.

 

Home is bagels and cream cheese and packet apple cider (my first ever American meal).

 

Home is wood floors and vanilla scented candles and summer by the lake. This large body of fresh water doesn’t smell like the ocean, but it sometimes looks like the ocean, if you were looking at it sideways through sun glassed squinted eyes. I can almost forget sometimes.

 

And while home here is different it still smells like spices cooking in my kitchen.

 

And sometimes when its humid I forget that one country isn’t like another and there is a certain color of sky that tricks me into believing I’m somewhere where I’m not and the birds don’t sound the same, and that’s ok cause at least they’re not laughing at us.

But I wonder who I am in this place

And if When you look at me and you’re with me

What do you see? Am I different here?

Am I different there? And who is the only person that has seen me in all of these places? (And maybe that’s why I love you.)

 

That you see me where ever I am, and to you I am always me. But to me I’m always different.

And sometimes I feel like an outsider and imposter

(yes there’s a name for that I know)

 

Changing my identity, changing my skin to suit the situation, a chameleon if you will. Maybe, if you were looking at me in the right way, sideways, through sun glassed squinted eyes.

 

And here, well, I’ve got an accent

 

And you don’t really know what I am, but you know I’m not from here. And you love to hear me talk and I wonder if you are really listening to what I say. You probably think I’m English, or from New Zealand.

 

I am whatever I think you need me to be, or whatever I think I need to be right then. I’m Australian when I’m here, I’m American when I’m there, or maybe I’m still Australian, but I’m not “really Australian” because I don’t really “look” Australian (or so I’ve been told).

 

And I don’t really sound Australian anymore…yeah, I know, YOU think i sound Australian, but trust me Aussies don’t…and also I’ve never really been told what an Australian is supposed to look like, and you can’t really say either, but you probably know that it’s not me.

 

And all of this to say, I am split and my home is in two places and I am from both and neither at the same time. I am a bridge.

 

Performed at Pour One Out At Volumes Book Cafe Chicago Illinois February 2020

Love, Friendship and Glow Worms

 

I thought I would start at the end and see how we get there.

 

So the glow worms are both actual and metaphorical.

 

My dad used to say that the light at the end of the tunnel was the train coming in to hit you. Which tells you a lot about him.

 

But I think that the tunnel as a metaphor for life. its ok if we don’t see the light at the end, it means the tunnel keeps going, and in the darkness if you take the time and look up, there is always the possibility of glow worms.

 

I recently watched this really stupid, surprisingly touching, terrible short series on Netflix called Dash and Lily. About 2 teenagers, they are both 17 living in NY city. They are both self-confessed weirdos and they “read too much” (if that was such a thing). Lily is a biracial girl of ½ Asian and European decent. It is just before Christmas and Lily is lonely because her parents are out of the country, so in a desperate attempt to not feel alone, she writes a dare in a notebook, with the help of friends she leaves the notebook for someone to find at a book shop.

 

Along comes Dash – your typical gangly white boy, dirty blond, floppy haired, voice pre-maturely deep and gravely. He seems “world-ly” and mature for his age…So they write each other and dare each other to do things, Dash of course hates Christmas and Lily desperately loves it…you get the drift. Shenanigans ensue.

 

And I was surprisingly touched by this romantic comedy. And god damn if Dash didn’t remind me of my first real boyfriend with his dirty blond floppy hair, too deep slightly gravely voice and faux intellectualism. And oh, I was a lot like lily when I was her age. A bi- racial girl who didn’t fit where she lived, a bookish, awkward teenager. And I too fell in love with the idea of someone who didn’t really exist. Someone who I thought was interesting and intelligent, kind, an intellectual, someone who was certainly more interesting than anyone from the small town I was from. At the end of the story Dash and Lily meet for some sort of romantic evening in the bookshop and that’s sort of where that story ends.

 

 and I wonder what happens next for them…  I hope there isn’t a sequel, but I’ll probably watch it if there is. I don’t recommend it, or I do, I don’t know.

 

This is where the story of Dash and Lily and my story diverge….but it got me to thinking about the choices we make when young that change the direction of our lives and who helps us along the way.

 

I met this boy, the dirty blond floppy haired one, I went to the big city to study, I moved in with said boy. I made a lot of choices knowing that forging this path would disappoint members of my family, aka my father. Lily is so afraid of doing things to disappoint her family that she rarely makes waves and when she finally starts make her own decisions, I think she behaves in a very self-centered way. I was never terribly afraid of making waves, or I was but did what I wanted anyway. Are we anything but self-centered at 17? Are we anything but self-centered now?

 

Is there any point in dissecting our lives when we were this young? Am I still the same person, in most instances – I sincerely hope not? But this is just the start of the tunnel and we may have just turned the first corner.

 

So, let’s skip a head a few years in my story, so I’m in the city studying and living with the dirty blond floppy haired fellow. And surprise! it isn’t going so well, and I knew that the relationship wasn’t good anymore, if it ever was to begin with, but I didn’t know how to break up with someone who so desperately loved me. Any time we talked about how things needed to change, he said he would do better, and he would for a week. With him he had to be the smartest person in the room, any story you had he had one better, if you had an opinion, you would always be wrong. And it was much later I learned to recognize the traits of a narcissist and how they contain the people they are in a relationship with.

 

I was in my 20s and I didn’t know any of that, I was finishing university and I wanted to continue to perform, with few opportunities in Australia I was looking at going to the UK to live and dance. And i thought here is a good opportunity to leave the relationship by leaving the country. I know this is a terrible way to break up with someone. But I felt like I had no other choice.  I could leave without hurting this person, I didn’t have to be the bad guy.

 

But somewhere along the way I met this OTHER person – who lived in a completely different country than the one i was intending to go. And if you know me you can guess who this foreign gentle man is. If you don’t know me he is currently sitting behind me slightly off camera. Anyway, this is where is tunnel splits in two.

 

It was after Christmas and sometime around New Year and 2 friends and I decided we needed a break and so we rented a small house a few hours outside of the city for a long weekend getaway. The house was I think in the Southern highlands and we drove out to the middle of nowhere with everything we needed for a long weekend.

 

I remember being sad because I had finally managed to somehow break up with the bad for me floppy haired one, I was dealing with the emotional fall out of ending a long relationship, and also because I was wondering what to do about this foreign fellow was falling in love with. He had just left back to his country of residence and I wasn’t sure when I would see him again.

 

Now my friends and I didn’t have any long heart to heart conversations, there were no deep and meaningfuls in the middle of the night. We just hung out together. 3 good friends, reading, eating, napping, swimming.  And Here’s a picture….

 

this weekend was another turn in the tunnel, another step closer to where I am now. I don’t think I had any major epiphany’s, but in some ways major life changing things were taking place inside me. I was thinking about the sort of person I want to be by thinking about the sort of person I want to be with. Or maybe I’m making all this up because …hind sight….

 

Close to the cabin was a series of caves and abandoned tunnels, and one was a fairly well known for housing a colony of glow worms. I had never seen a glow worm, and I was so excited for the possibility of glow worms! We thought we would stop on our drive home and explore the glow worm cave. Part of the reason we went to this particular cabin was that it was close to the caves. But for a reason I no longer remember, we didn’t actually make it to see the glow worms. But I don’t think that really matters.

 

Over the years there are been more friends and other great get away cabins. And they all have the same things in common, a desire to just be together and do…well not much. It is in the moments of stillness and quiet that I feel most connected. If I can be in a room with you, on the same couch even and be relaxed and comfortable to not have to say anything at all. Are some of the best times in my life and I have found over the years that I crave these moments. These are my points of light in the darkness the glow worms in the tunnel of life.

 

SO I do really  think that the tunnel is a metaphor for life and its ok if we don’t see the light at the end, it means the tunnel keeps going, and in the darkness if you take the time and look up, there is always the possibility of glow worms.

 

The darkness in the tunnel doesn’t really matter, as long as you have friends to light your way.

ForgottenWords.

(sometimes i write things in the middle of the night, and i dont remember writing them)

The pinacle of right

The spectacle of right

Shines a light on that we wish to forget

        open mouthed

        shame faced

We walk with shoulders hunched

        head dropped

        as if it were raining

Softly softly words spoken 

In rhyme and rhythm to confuse

        building beats

        describing mean feats

        onomatopeia

        spitting words

        building worlds

         only to tear them down

Like a sculptor with his chisel

    revealing or concealing

The truth told in form flattery or fiction

Using a certain diction

        the Chicago beat

Words like rain on the streets

        (words like blood run on the streets)

Mean feats of mad poetry

         cannot control or dispel

The feeling or call to action

 I know nothing

        of that which i speak

        i  pass

And life can be difficult enough

Maybe this is not my lesson

        but one from another life time

        if only i could remember

If I am not myself 

    then i will be another

    THE other

Living a new lesson

This life time foretold

I am not yet old.......

*un-edited