The Day My Buddha Burned - Part Two

Here I am holding my big sisters' hands in the early 70's.

This is part of a novella. Here is the first exert of The Day My Buddha Burned 

Ideas like Building Blocks

We are like small children with coloured building blocks.  We sit there totally absorbed in placing one block on top of another and either because we haven’t placed our blocks well, or because we get fed up, the blocks fall and quite happily, and without questioning what we are doing at all, we rebuild. We often rebuild without seeming to learn anything from the last structure we built. We build without any view to an end point. We build until it collapses.

And then we start again.

The coloured building blocks are ideas and belief systems we individually construct within the walls of our minds.

We are all born with the building blocks before us. Some of the ideas we build are based on the blueprints handed down to us by our family, friends, society, culture and country, and others are drawn up in direct consequence of what we have perceived as positive/protective responses to life’s events.

Deconstruction and re-planning occur in the teenage years when our hormones coupled with an expansion of perception create some of the biggest conscious changes we have thus far been aware of. Many people don’t change their mental landscape again until their retirement.

However, for others, we have been forced by personality or circumstance, to abandon ideas housed within our minds and perhaps to put up temporary structures to aid us in different moments in life. Perhaps some of us can even be called nomads, resting in easily constructed rooms for comfort and being able to adapt according to the changing seasons.

I’ve written down some of the changes to my thinking in the past 40 years.

The Day My Buddha Burned - Introduction

I've been writing this short novel for several years. This is the first instalment. You're welcome to leave comments.

Here I am writing in my journal on a train in India, 2007

This sacred journey through life hits upon moments of intensity that we know are special, different, as if they’ve been dabbed with a fluorescent marker, to stand out as important. I’ve written down a few.

I do believe we’re here to take another step or two further along the pilgrimage of our soul’s journey. The sacred centers are those moments that stand out high and above the normal every day scenery and represent moments of clarity, of learning, of wisdom, choice, power. They are the sacred centers of our life and sometimes we are so obviously shaken out of the normal, we know we are in vibrant times, though sometimes we only recognise them in the hindsight.

This book is dedicated, with love.

The second part of The Day My Buddha Burned.

Adults and Children

Differing view points

We went to stay with my dad's friend in Sydney. I was twelve.

I was an aspiring poet and while the 'adults' were drinking in the lounge I asked if I could have some paper and I'd write in the kitchen. That was fine by everyone and Malcolm (the friend) produced a typewriter.

'You can use this if you like.'

I smiled and lifted off the cover. It was larger than my one at home and it had a different font. After I had typed a couple of letters I realized the letters were all joined together in a very pretty cursive style. I was delighted. It added a new elegance to my name- Tiffany- right at the top of the page. Quite distinguished.

Malcom lingered in the kitchen and eventually sat down beside me. He wore a black beret, was thin and slightly effeminate. He was in the music industry and knew a lot of people, so my dad says.

'So what are you writing?' He leant towards me and there it was, the slack wet mouth pouring out that unenviable beer soaked breath.

'Just a poem.' I continually smiled. It was my only defense against personal attention.

'What's it about?'

I struggled to explain what was on the paper. But as soon as the words were out in the air, I knew the poem had to be read for itself, so he stood behind my chair, a hand rested on my shoulder, and he bent forward.

My step-mother came in to fill her glass and he didn't move his hand away. He actually patted me and I tried to grimace at her. But she wasn't interested in my reaction. She wanted his.

She spoke to him, tried to draw his attention, but he was only vaguely responsive and another woman came in to claim her bleary gaze.

Wilma was a fattish dyed blond with remarkably large breasts. I never developed beyond a 12B, and that was at my plumper stage of life. Allow me to say that from a small athletic girl's point of view, those wobbly bits of fatty tissue are intensely offputting. Frankly she revolted me and left me with an instinctive fear and facination of large breasted women. Although I’m disgusted, I can’t seem to look at these women enough... but that’s beside the point.

So Malcom went back to the gathering for a while. I finished my poem and drank fanta and tried to occupy myself without disturbing the adults.

Of course he returned. He was very impressed with my poem and wanted to speak to me about it.
It was entitled 'Reaching the top', an A4 length aa bb rhyming effort about walking up a mountain. To me it was that simple.

Malcom devised a sexual symbolism to the eventual rise to the summit that I admit, unfortunately, to having missed.

He was trying to get me to admit to his perception and as it began to sink into my brain what he was getting at, my face became as flexible as granite and my ears started to hurt. I tried to deny his meaning.

I discovered a problem. My denials or protests were of no consequence to either of us because I could not say no. I could speak the word but the power of denial had never been encouraged or respected in our house. What ever the adult wanted was his/hers without question. Dad was always right and what ever he wanted was unquestionable and may as well have been divine. There I was, seated with a self stimulated wanna-be paedaphile and he was demanding my submission and I smiled and quietly said, 'No, that's not what I meant. I didn't mean that.'

But Malcom saw and heard differently. He saw I was embarrassed about admitting to the meaning, he saw the smile and that's all he needed to visit me again later in the night.

They went out. I stayed in the flat watching TV and slept on the couch in their living room.

My heart woke me. The pound and thud of its pressure alerting me to his closeness at once. He was crouched beside me and shook my shoulder.

'Are you awake?' It was a loud whisper.

I murmured but my eyes were wide. He spoke about a woman at the party who had been pursuing him. He hadn't wanted her at all and couldn't think about anything but me ect... I have long since realized the common content of his pre-pounce speil. I did not realize though, at the time, where it was leading until both of his arms were about me and he was pressing his mouth to mine.
My right leg came up and I tried to push him away with the base of my foot. His mouth was wet and sloppy and merely distasteful. His drunkenness was enough to excuse his behaviour to me. I had enough experience with the stuff to know how it robbed the drinker of responsibility.

Finally a light was turned on in the hall and I looked up to see my Dad silouetted in the light. Malcom immediately begun to mumble that he was merely talking to me about the night and Dad told him to go to bed. Once his friend had gone he stood there a moment looking at me. I don't know what he saw, but he turned off the light and left me with Malcom's tongue imprint on my cheek and lips and never spoke to me about it.

Basically this was the first real shove I had from the realm of adults. It was designed to stimulate independant thought and for the first time that I could remember I thought my father was wrong and felt distaste in my stomach. It was unjust, wrong, hateful. My vision of him changed and if there was one chink in his armor then perhaps there were others. I was too well trained to ever allow my thoughts out of my head. I was not the type of teenager to talk back to my parents. And there began my life as an actress. Hatred and bitterness in my heart while I smiled like a serpent. I was evil personified.

Then there was the discrepancy in opinion about my poem. I have had a lot of problems with accepting differing perspectives. I rode on a double wave of acceptance and incredulous 'how the hell can you see that' until I was 21. I felt it was my duty to explain my point of view, to make everything very clear, leaving no means for misunderstanding. My early literary training didn't help advance this perspective. We were moulded to be the perfect reader. We were taught the correct meaning of the symbols used, and we are taught not to take the symbolism too far. There is a fine line between symbolism and reality. We as mere readers were trying to discover the author's intention. We did not create the text. It created us or so I was trained to believe.

Now to my reaction to Malcom's misinterpretation of my mountain poem.

Firstly I was sure he was wrong and that my meaning was the only one permissable.

Secondly I did not admit that there could possibly be another brain (Malcom's) that would give my poem another framework to be viewed from.

Thirdly, who was right? Who is closer to the truth? Malcom, in his beer soaked limply lustful disguise or me, shrouded in naivety?

And finally, how can there be an answer to number three? The answer is there is no answer.

I have to admit to giving my dad several chances to clear his record and make himself pristine. Though finally the blind was lifted. I sat in judgement and fried in my bubbling bitterness. The loss of illusion was too much to comprehend. I moved inwards and remained there.


A move towards 'adulthood'

I was fourteen when we moved to Melbourne. We stayed with my grandparents for a few days. It was a spacious, white house. Very clean and tidy. My grandparents were okay, gave me good food to eat. Then dad and Wilma said they were going to a friend's house, there was a race meet up in the country, and it would be better if I stayed with the grandparents. That was fine. It was two weeks before Wilma called again.

'Your father and I have never been together before, without one of you kids. We thought it could be nice if you stayed with your grandparents now.'

'Its up to you Tiffany, you don't have to stay there if you don't want to.'

'Its okay. I'm sure everything will be fine.'

My foldout bed was in the second lounge room. I pressed my face into the pillows to muffle my tears. It was the last time I cried in self-pity. It was the last time I thought of them with any feeling. I felt the chains of paternal love fall away, leaving me at once a small spot of bitter energy, fermenting in my own tears.

Children relationhips

Me and the step-sisters

One year we went to the Brisbane exhibition. It was a day full of stalls, people, chocolate and fairy floss. The step-sisters were with us then. Marty and Sal. Really Martha Genevieve and Sallamantha Augustus.

What I remember is lining up for the dodgem cars. The burning electric smell of zapping power- the press of bodies in the que. I’d driven them before but always with someone else. Now I was big enough to reach the pedals and go by my self. A man in a blue T-shirt strapped me in and showed me how to reverse- just keep the wheel spun to the left or right and it would move backward.
At first I drove carefully, excited my the power and sense of infallibility. I was testing the moveablitity of the little red car.

And someone bumped me from behind. My body lurched forward. I drove on and again was pushed from behind. Cars were wizzing by on the other side- some cars appearing faster than others. I looked over my shoulder and saw a boy grinning insanely at me, pushing and repeatedly bumping my car.

I understood. I pressed the peddle down and zoomed by. I saw Marty in front and steady as an arrow set my course. But a little blonde boy drove in front of me so I rammed him instead.
He whipped his head around and grinned as if I’d done him a favour. The agression I could feel building up in me didn’t allow for smiling. I turned my wheel sharply and went after my target. I was in a radius of permissable agression. People were able to bump, crash, collide and try to demolish others. It was a release of perfect energy.

Marty’s head fell sharply to the side. I reversed quickly, swung my wheel and propelled my car forward. Her body jolted again. Her car was stuck in a pile up now. She felt the intent of my mission and sent me a quelling look.

But I scurried on, intent on ramming as many cars as possible with as much impact as I could muster.

Marty punched my shoulder twice for that. But that time I didn’t care.

Memories

The first memory

I have one memory of my parents together. I was about five years old. It happens to be my earliest memory. The vision comes to my head with the noise of raised voices, the tension alive and vibrating in the house, within my heart.

They were in the hall, it was dim, it must have been late afternoon. I could hear the panic in my mother's voice and I came around the corner to see them. He was on top of her, straddled across her waist, pinning her arms above her head. I saw a two person battle, locked in a familiar ritual.

They couldn't see beyond themselves. Trapped.

But Dad turned and saw me, his brown hair hanging over the crease of his face.

'Look,' he said, answering my expression, 'I'm just holding her down. She wants to kill me. Its for her own good. Look.' I looked and saw the helpless frustration of my mother. She was pitiful and in my child's eyes was the weaker of the two. Her struggles were barbaric, animalistic, twisting desperately on the floor. She did want to kill him. I carried that image with me for many years before I reviewed it.


Watching in Silence

My father put James and I onto the vacant lot beside our house. We had been fighting viciously, so as punishment he placed us side by side and watched from the front door. I was in primary school. James is two years younger and he was laughing, his skinny legs tucked up and his arms making a hoop over them. I was beyond rational thought. I was hysterical and undisciplined. I began to push at him and tell him to shut up.

Shut-up!!

I yelled it over and over until my pushes turned into punches while James laughed, his body rocking, his face creased. My screams were loud, hoarse, making me dizzy so that I fell back into a daze of wide eyed hysteria. I ended by thrusting myself into the grass and rubbing my arms vigorously and violently until I was pulled up from the ground. I was immersed in the swirls of my mind. There was nothing beyond the void surrounded by wavering, pulsations of violet and red. There was no pain. That emptiness was sacred and gave me a glimpse of the meaning of peace.

It is the first time I can recollect moving outside of my physical body. Freedom. There was no demanding self. Just a disengaged, unattached soul, watching in silence.

Or some might just call it shock.


Flames

She was in the front seat. We were waiting for him. He was in the TAB. I don't know where my brother or sister were. I was quiet, waiting.

Its the 70's and the woman has an afro hair style, a fluffy sparrow coloured haze around her face. Her cheeks are sunken with drunkenness, her wet lips slack.

The two were in the white panel van, with his easels and paints in the back. He has had the lot stolen a couple of times. He took it in his stride though Mum felt the invasion like rat's claws over her skin when she saw the mess they made.

The woman has a black top and a long flowered skirt. She wears a black band around her wrist. Her body is hunched over, her hair falling forward. And then she began to light a cigarette, flick, flicking, the light flaring up in front of her face. The flare turns her skin warmly yellow for a moment. The cigarette is dangling from her partly painted lips. I watched, leaning over into the front seat. I knew what to expect, my hands were ready.

Then her hair was sizzling, frizzling up, the smell instantly bitter and ashy in my nostrils. I screamed her name, pure fear piping the word out, my hands grasping the fired hair, trying desperately to stop the lightening-quick barely seen attack.

Her head jerked forward several times but the woman really had no perception of her state. Flames or none, there was only one reality available for her.

I pressed myself back into the seat and felt the cold upholstery. My body was overheated with confusion. I turned so I could still see her bowed head.


She told me this one

He tore her books up in her face. It was her only secret pleasure, something that could take her away from the here and now of his needle sarcasm and deliver her.

I don't remember it. She says i was five or six. He'd been away a couple of weeks on a job. My older sister whispered that he was visiting his other family.

"There are three of them, we're the second family."

She had beautiful brown eyes, long brown hair parted down the middle like any 70's child. The cut of her hair emphasized her large eyes, the doe expression.

I didn't feel anything about what she said. I don't recall thinking. It was acceptance and adjustment and listening and waiting. I wasn't the little kid that suffered in silence and looked cute doing it. I smiled a lot. I was a girl. Cute enough to learn the fundamentals of female charm.

Mum was reading on the lounge, her feet elevated. He left the car around the corner; one of his tricks, so she didn't know he was in the house. Her surprise can only be guessed at. He was like living with a taut wire across your throat. The tension he created by being in the house was enough to rip your breathing to shreds.

She would have felt the air change before she heard him. He was light on his feet. He would have been watching her for a few moments, possibly minutes, before she became aware of him. Her throat tightened, her eyed widened. Her pose is fixed, the glare of his presence pinning her.
Only after tense and definite fear had caught hold of her would he begin to speak; low, sharp, his body deceptively casual, the coy lowering of his eyes drawing the moment to its peak with studied drama.

She wouldn't be able to avert the scene. It was impossible. She knew him and feared him and felt her stomach clench in horror at the thought of him. And he stood before her. Accusing her when he had been away for days...

He drank to get away from the spirit of wasted and befouled genius and she drank to get away from him. He drank to forget his life and she drank to live. They balanced each other by being Mummy and Daddy and pretending to the world out there (of school and dance classes and cannabis parties) to be a family.

So they argued and threw things around the room and there is nothing, to me, so harsh as an Australian man and woman screaming at each other. Its the accent, the stress they put on the words of abuse. The same cruel taunts came up every time. The same words, the same tone, the same screeching the wild whothefuckcares stance of both partners that ticks inside our heads. We heard the words a million times, but the desperate way she sometimes screamed his name shot straight into my stomach.

She didn't buy herself another book for about twelve years. Then I inadvertently brought her a book on hiking and heard the reason she only had a few magazines in her book shelf. I remind her of him, but I can't help it. There is nothing I can do to plug the memories she has. She's like a different person now, but it leaks through every now and then. A taste of bitterness, a tightening of her eyes.


Dad

My father used to take us fishing. Camping trips all around and sleeping all together in a tent or the back of the combie. He sat me on his knee and let me hold the fishing rod. I mostly remember warm sunshine and seeing mutilated and scaled fish in the bottom of the bucket. Or squiggly worms, still alive, being squeezed onto hooks. Right up their arses, he said.

He used to lay traps around the house so he would know what we had been up to. His room used to have invisible bits of string showing him if someone had been into his closet or had opened a draw. I never touched his things so this part of his life didn't concern me directly. Unless it was the threat of being falsely accused. Though this never happened.

I felt Dad managed his drunkenness better than many I have seen. He did have an explosive, violent temper. He brooded a lot. He was melancholy, distrustful and generally a foul personality.
But he had a warmth about it. As if he was lit up inside by a glowing flame. He was generous, he laughed a lot and his hand was comforting on my shoulder.

He used to wake me up in the middle of the night to perform tricks for his friends. I had to show my legs, they were athletic and he was proud of them. Wiggle your ears, roll your stomach, flare your nose, press your elbows together. Freakish circus tricks. Dad performed the finale by lifting James and myself up off the ground by holding a handful of our hair in each hand. The secret was gripping the hair close to the scalp. And he would raise us up, using the strength in his shoulders. Then we could go back to bed, to lay and listen to their laughter and the sound of glass bottles filling the corridor.

His mother is a compulsive cleaner. I mean, totally fanatical. Everything is cleaned and re cleaned every day, possibly three times. And vacuuming went on at all hours of the day. I have a theory that people tidy their houses so ferociously because its the only domain in the world they feel they are in control of. They feel the limitless expanse of the world, and in defense, so as not to fall off, they make sense of their house by buying things for it and tidying the little rooms and dusting and wiping and vacuuming and it goes on and on in circles, because circles are contained and any lateral movement might let them fall into some void of crazed insane possibilities. And so, she cleaned.
She's a neat, straight as a pin lady with not an ounce of fat on her. Not particularly a cuddly grandmother and not particularly kind. Though she did her duty by her husband and son.

When he was ten his father won some money in a lottery and left her. He took the boy, Daniel, my dad, and they travelled to the bigger cities. The money fled into the hands of pub-owners, hotel rooms, party-girls, and sure pals. Empty of pocket but with memories that were going to have to last the rest of his life, he returned to his cage. The door opened and my grandmother let him back in, where, with her silence, she never let him forget his wayward prance into the great unknown.
Grandad worked, came home, ate his dinner and sat in front of the television. He gave what money he earned to her.

She cleaned.

She took care of the boy.

My father told several stories about his childhood, but I think they were mostly made up moral tales, with a severe punishment in the ending. The things he said, in retrospect, couldn't possible have happened. That must have been my grandmother's input into his personality.

My mother actually believes that evil dwells in that house. Its a pretty horrific thought.

I've seen pictures of him when he was a boy. Dressed neat, like a little man. His hair parted severely to one side. He was in short pants. His face is so serious. I felt a genuine movement in my heart when I first saw that picture. It seemed to embody the beginnings of a life. A life seemingly capable of moving in many directions, yet only moving in one.

But he craved a warm family, a child to hold.

Though he couldn't do it. He tried, several times.

The family would begin, and his heart would be hardened and he would enforce his personality upon household until it couldn't breath.

There was a disease in his mind, holding him back from life. It was the disease of memory, of life experience, of upbringing. He didn't see the greater good. It passed him by while he dreamed life in bitterness.

School

The first full length memory I have of myself sprouting my individuality was in a tantrum I threw about going to school. I said I wouldn’t go, I screamed it, I cried and frowned and my face was red with unhappiness.

‘You don’t have to go. Don’t go. But you’ll have to go and get yourself a job if you stay home. I won’t have a pack of loafers in my house.’

I went to school, slamming the door as I left. Tears of rage, my feet in brown strap sandals.

Shifts in Awareness

The first time

The first time I felt it was during the autumn. The leaves falling - golden coins in the breeze. I walked towards those flashing flickering gold leaves, my arm in a sling. A car had hit me as I was coming home from school. My rendition of the accident could never be like coloured pencils flying high-reminiscent of a circus- slow motion.

I was walking towards the falling leaves. Time was not apparent. There was only the moment- strangely warm on my face, the tall poplars, the white fence, the shutters on the cottage house.
Norma Crescent.

And I was transported. Removed from my physical self. There was only that moment, and I was of it. I can still recall the sensation with vivid impact.


Sometimes

I gave up athletics when I was fourteen but I never stopped running; around the block, at the grass oval, up at the National Park, on the country roads- flat as a tack, on the beach. I’ve tried running on a treadmill but its not the same. Its the warm breeze on my flushed cheeks that I like. Its the movement, of landscape passing by, trees, cars, people, shop windows. It feels good to have the power in my legs, to push myself further. Its good to breath in that dry air in the country, that humid air on the coast and to feel the sun on my back, or see it glinting through the trees.

Running makes me feel as if I’m going somewhere, as if I’m being pointed in a direction and I’m moving forward to attain that goal.

I like the air expanding my lungs until my chest hurts, I like the salt on my upper lip, I like to look at myself in the mirror and see my red face, the sweat dampening my clothes.

But I don’t enjoy bending down in a line with other girls and racing them. Dad said I didn’t have the killer instinct. He’s right. He took the light out of my step. With him there was always a catch. So I gave up jogging around the stadium to take up running around the suburbs where my grandmother lived.

I was twenty-one when I felt God's breath on me again. I was positioned, ready, seeking transportation. My life at this time was geared towards the inner-self.


The Red Gums

I began meditating for ten or so minutes every day. Just relaxing and trying to release the hold the world had upon me. I read a lot about many different religions. I was searching, looking for an answer. Looking for something that would make sense and hold the world together. I was looking for something that would make life worth living.

I'd been in the country for about six months, helping the family I was living with in the garden for board and lodgings. I disliked the people very much. They were materialistic, pompous and geared towards living a life that the world would think highly of.

The woman always introduced me as 'Tiffany, English Literature Graduate, writing a novel...' I had several heated discussions with the man of the house. Though often they were in Melbourne and I took care of things while they were away. Peaceful times. Perfect for my conscious search.

My mind was wavering between 'determined to produce better happy times for myself' and 'sometimes I really can't help my depression. It just happens and I can't lift myself our of it. Sad in a way. Must be accepted with everything.' I wasn't sure at all how to go about making life better.
I'd been studying the tarot for several years. In the country I used the cards often as a guide to my inner life and stopped foretelling the future. It occurred to me that all this worrying about the future meant that we weren't thinking about the life we were leading now. That's one of the reasons I feel so repulsed by lotteries. The advertising encourages people to look forward to a trouble free future with lots of money. So millions of people give millions of dollars towards some totally mind-projected vision of the future. There is no now. And the slogan 'Get me out of here' sung in such a deceptively mild tone indicates the frustration and unsatisfactory lives people are leading. That more and more money is the answer for so many people should make us wonder about ourselves and our goals in life. Anyway, I was trying to focus on my life as it was happening without projecting into the future. The tarot was helpful in many ways, and the symbolism on the cards helped expand my consciousness when I needed it.

One day I walked out of the house and looked up at the sun. Golden. It was in the morning. I was feeling good- refreshed. And I looked up and breathed the air and felt the world open up before my eyes. The blinds of my eyes were taken away and the earth became heaven and I was transported.

I moved to the country in January. It was a hot summer.

I lived in one of the small self contained huts closer by the river. The previous owners had three huts built for enthusiastic canoeing weekends. We were on the Goulbourn River. My hut was the furthest away form the main house.

I had a huge pink protia bush by one side of the hut and rosemary and lavender bushes along the other sides. There were many bees. I was about ten steps away from the river bank. Two long tailed honey suckling birds with a beautiful song woke me each morning. They fed on the syrup from the half grown banksia by the door.

I’d open my eyes to a dusky light. Then I’d hear Tammy pad across the roof trying to catch the singers. Half and hour later she would meow at the door and I’d let her in and unchain the dogs.

My life was suddenly, most deeply changed. I wasn't sure what to do with my new sight. I felt my new knowledge was secret, sacred and silent. Not for all ears. So I braced myself for continual learning, experiencing and recalling.

'Dearest Freshness Deep Down Things'


Information was streaming into my mind, unbidden. I have several theories where it was coming from, but none can really explain the reality. It was merely from a higher realm. Something above and beyond the physical plane. I used Christian words such as God and Lord only because they came natural to me, from the community and the society I was brought up in.

During the early months, while it was hot, I would begin the day with a quick swim in the river. There was a gravel path down to a sandy bend in the river. The dogs would bound around chasing each other, racing in and out of the water like children. Only old Rags would lower himself slowly and stately in. He’d stand there sniffing and then walk out to shake and lie in the sun. Dame and Jake usually left him alone. It took me a month or so to become confident enough to immerse myself in the river. I never liked the ooze of mud or leaves or sticks under my feet. I was used to the clean pressure of sand at a beach. The river seemed full of unpleasant surprises. But I soon became used to the feel of sludge between my toes, and the icy feel of the brown river passing me by.
There was a huge old tree trunk further out. Sometimes Dame used to swim out to it and lie there, barking to us left on the bank. Sometimes I’d grab my towel and run up the path, the other two following, and Dame spluttering in the water trying to get to us before we were out of sight. Delight in peeving her. Delight in being the master. I don’t know why.

I put my overalls on and tramped up to the house. They had, ridiculous to me, several gardens with European exports wilting in apparent splendour. I weeded, mulched, watered, fed and planted. I spent a couple of hours a day in different parts around the house. Though mostly I paid attention to the vegetable patch, carrots, potatoes, zucchini, tomatoes, capsicum, cauliflower, beans, spinach; interspersed with Jen’s favourite roses, onions and nasturtiums. Queer girl.

I let the sun burn my shoulders and arms- I wore gloves and a hat. I put snail bait in careful places so the animals wouldn’t eat them. Apparently cats love them. I let the dirt rub my knees, get into my boots and embed itself into my fingernails. I wiped the sweat with my shoulder or forearm. I picked wild strawberries and ate them with a prong in my hand. I fed almonds to Dame who also learnt to unshell them. She was a beautiful Border Collie with light tiger eyes. The three of them would sit around and watch me. Sometimes padding off to sit in the shade if it was too hot or lap carelessly at their bucket of water.

Tammy and Jimmy played in the over grown ‘cottage garden’. They stuck their paws out of thick bushes, frightening the living daylights out of me.

‘Jesus, you bloody stupid cat.’

I laughed though, my heart beating too quickly.

I had dinner with Jen and Dave. Nice enough. They did eat chicken. Society will not give up the convenience of meat. When one talks about it they say, 'Sh, don't mention it.' 'Don't think about it.' is another phrase frequently used. Ignorance. Deliberate, lazy ignorance. But I do not yell this in bitterness. A still day. Its hard for me to live.

Down further to the bottom of the property is a huge cluster of red gums. Most of them have been chopped down along the river, but Dave and Jen were lucky enough to find this spectacular reserve. The grass was lush and green in the winter. It was shaded from the too hot sun in Summer. I have a beautiful photo of Dame black and white in the long grass. She was such a beautiful dog. There were rabbits down there. Jimmy used to bring up freshly killed baby rabbits to eat in front of me.

I saw magpies, kookaburras, cockatoos, galhas, finches, tiny little red breasted dancing birds, pelicans, hawks, king fishers-flash of blue, willy wag tails. I walked down there in the evenings. The animals following or racing ahead according to their dispositions. There was a trodden path, over logs, weaving between the tall white trees, leading down to the river. Rabbits would scuttle at our approach, Dame and Jake excited and never quick enough. Birds screamed to each other, the breeze jostled the leaves. From a distance the trees stood tall, changing clour with the rise and fall of the sun, but inside it was as if time was stilled, and there could be no change.

There was a lush richness in those trees. The area was full of moisture and life.

Closer to the river there were lines and rows of wattles. They drooped their branches into the water and marked the twists and turns of the rivers passage.

I can feel madness creeping up to me, laughing with delight at my unstable state. A tick of a clock could have me falling in a moment.

There is no such thing as evil. It is man made.

To know is to take away the question. To understand life is to take it away.

There is a large elongated oval in front of my vision. It is darker, than on the outside of it. I can not see the lighter bits clearly. People put significance on objects, ideas, visions not on anything divine. WAKE-UP. Remain true to yourself. Do not batten yourself down under routine or expectance. You have been offered something more, something more real than all of the illusions around you. Grasp it! Take life and do as you will!

Life is this continual struggle to support both spiritual and physical health. If one is well, the other is sure to be tortured. Must keep the light of All within our breast to help guide the way. Starlight and future.

Whatever is recognized as wrong is wrong. Each for each person. We all contain our own Orisis in our heads. As soon as we fly against our natures we are suffering. Judge yourself. There's no need. Just listen and be guided by the inner self. If it is 'right' then you will know. Accept change as natural, not something that you must fight. If you must fight change, you must begin with trying to hold the earth still.

If I could explain this tingling awareness. But it must remain unexplainable to be passed on. A feeling, a power. Not dominace over me, but a steadiness of being.

Love of all. Nothing, for me, should be above this.

That is the folly of preachers, to make everyone, even those who are not ready to know, pretend to a higher life. So you enforce religion and it becomes hypocricy.

'The outward ceremony is Antichrist.' - William Blake.

One morning I opened my cabin door and looked out to the red gums. They were stark white, the leaves dark, the sun low on the horizon. And there, at the start of the forrest stood two tall kangaroos, their front paws at their chest. Their ears high, they saw me at once and stood still, their slim faces turned to me.

After several moments they bent and moved low to the ground, feeding.
The dogs were whining. They had heard the sound of my door open and I hadn’t let them off their chains yet. But I didn’t want them chasing the kangaroos.

So I watched them until they moved off into where ever they came from.

The dogs hadn’t scented them. They waited for me to go down to the river but I changed the routine and went down later in the morning.

I want to join society.

A large flock of Galahs came to us every morning and evening during late summer and early autumn. They were incredibly loud and were the largest group I’d ever seen. They rose as one, their wings flashing pink and white. They were magical to watch, wheeling this way and that, adhering to some kind of brilliant system that moved them from A to B while looking spectacular at the same time.

They settled in the grasses, moving with their head low, pecking grass seeds. Sometimes it was impossible to see them they were so low, and then a little movement and I saw dozens of them appearing like a visual trick becoming clear. But they were noisy little buggars and Dave hated them. Used to threaten to shoot them. But it was just to here my protests.

It is a beautiful morning. The kind of beginning to a day that perfects part of your heart.

New fresh leaves jostling, twinkling, rustling in the cool breeze. Blue, blue sky with a faint mist on the horizon and thin insubstancial clouds.

So green! And the daisies yellow a springy carpet, a faint sheild over the earth.

Its the breeze, the air itself that is so special.

What I catch the most in my heart is the broken, curved, straight, purely white bark of the redgums.
So pure straight noble. Hardly of this world. Unrecognizable. Queer how the young fresh apricot tree looks more familiar than these sparce, dominant redgums. And their indifferent foliage! The light slashes the bark, blanching it bright, ghostly, with its shadow too.

And it wasn't until the delicate white cup sat in a stream of sunlight that its strark reality came upon me. Its outline, its full body, its reality. So much sharper, more distinguished in the bright sun, than in the pasty, pastel shade. Its shape was lost. And then the dark glitter of the tea. Rocking smoothly in the cup as I softly move my pen across this page. The darkness says 'I am a hollow! In this cup I am the hollow!' To remind us that a cup has a purpose and is not really only pasty white, but filled, a darkly black inner, and a shine of pride, a holding, used cup. It stands so distinguished with this dark liquid.

A most facinating drawing day today. Absolute. Freshening. A caress upon my anxiety for newness. Its smooth soothing calmness. Nothing intense. Nothing forced and brooding as when clouds cluster to hamper the sun and blot the sky. Just clearness and fresh bright life. An enjoyable, sweetly scented day.

Self! A search for the essence of self. There must be a protective veil over the found parts so that the pain of regret is not so often. Its not so bad as it was. A finding of self, and then to live. No wonder people don't think if it is going to lead to this unease.

There were floods that winter. The water level rose several meters above the previous record. The slight curves down by the river became pools. I heard a squealing noise and the dogs barking wildly by the river. I ran out to see, and splashing in the last throes of a horrific death was a rabbit.
I hadn’t seen a wild adult rabbit so close before- but its eyes were empty, its body spazmodically tried to keep itself from going under. I picked up a stick and tried somehow to bring the thrashing animal closer to the bank- but then there was me and the dogs barking. Its eyes were empty black holes.

The river was only half a meter or so from the top of the back. The wattles hardly flowered that year. It was my coldest winter. My feet and finger tips froze. I tried to conserve the gas heater while Jen and Dave were away. At night I wore several layers of clothing and had four blanckets but I still froze.

And I slept 10-11 hours. I would lay in bed waiting for the light. It was just too cold to inspire me to move. Though hot porrige greeted me in the winter and I was still drinking coffee. A great comfort then.

This is most important to remember. Love should never be first, and the falseness of the popular love song is a lie and a false value. Self and God is the most distinctly important. If love comes to undermine the loyalty to All, it should be cast aside. Why does love excuse so many atrosities within the family? STUPID. False loyality.

I find it difficult to keep up with it all. I have tried today, to join myself into the general jovial spirit for our new adventure and I find that I soon fall low and find a distaste in my mouth for the empty joys of mindless living.

‘Girls just want to have fun.’

‘All I want to do is have some fun.’ Insanity.

Then it comes to out an out stupidity and I feel my whole body freezing over in coldness and lack of understanding.