A Scarecrow Soliloqui

Bali scarecrows, what can I say? A parallel nation of plastic and cloth, garish and divine. Perched high above a sea of green they rule, they raise a finger at the wingful sky. An army of avatars, almost-alive, almost-a-lie.

They flap their sleeves and make me shout 'PAGI, PAGI!' as I run by, on my more myopic mornings, dragging school bags, trailed by one barking dog and three calves even more confused than me.

Raising the pulse of the entire winged population with some Darth Vader head gear, are we? Magnificent, I say, although, although....

I'm yet to see. The Greatest. The Scariest. Scarecrow. Of All.

Simple in appearance. Little white T-shirt, no hat. And yet, look at the patch in his care. Birds, bugs? Not a flutter. Grain won't grow. Look how those sun rays only touch the edges. And see that stream turn the corner and slink away.

Bridges

I've been sitting here for a while now, blank day, blank screen. Alastair and the previous blog still on my mind. Some words are harder to follow, with anything - more words, images, games. So what will I write about? Life outside, frantic as always.

I bought too many limes and now they grow old and hard in the fridge. I discovered mango wraps, dragon fruit and some people with too much time on their hands. Two of these are yummy, one is hot pink and one is, alas, unavoidable.

I walked through rice paddies to a bamboo village and there were whispers and rummagings in the green stalks left and right that said 'One wrong step and I'm waiting, love from large lizard / venomous snake / nameless nasty / monster in your head'.

I learned that there is a species called 'third culture kid', and our kids might qualify, but not M. or I. As if we had brainstormed, studied, schemed and then created two aliens. I've always had that feeling anyway.

All these things are bridges, really. The path is a literal bridge, in a sea of green rice. The limes span all the way from the unpalatable to the delightful. The food takes me from hunger to sleep. And the people? From peace to paroxysm, smile to sneer.

Kids? Third culture or not, the classic bridge through time.

And the noise from the building site next door - incessant hammers on metallic sheets? A bridge from the borderline reasonable (which I was, I was!) to the dementedly insane, which I am now, sitting as I do, on the floor, in the furthest corner of the house, which happens to be a bathroom, with headphones on and a towel wrapped around my head, listening to long loops of Yann Tiersen and Portuguese fado, watching the killer-wasp in the corner build its wax palace and procreate, writing strings of nonsense and then, horror of horrors, sending them into the world like hammer blows to the temple. Ke-boom.

Unday'd

I throw days out of the calendar.

I disown them,

Dis-number and dis-month them,

I will not have them change year and come around again.

March Four, March Seven,

April Twenty Seven

June Twenty One, June Twenty Three,

December Eleven.

Now Alastair has gone and

gathered his great verbs, his skylarks and Scotlands
his silver-vowelled Spain.

folded his dawns

to ride over the mist-imprisoned hill - away, beyond away.

That done,

I too dismantle
September Twenty One.

 

*

And if you really want to know

I’ll tell you ‘how’ the days you think I’ve lost 

return to me:

Minute by minute, that is how;

and memory by memory.

An entire childhood to pick from, long summer days with cousins and berries and song; my lovely Maia who smelled of lavender and quince; who told me that thing about God and I believed her even when I didn’t believe Him. Who needs the measly muscle of March Four and March Seven, beside all this and more? 

That Afrikaans rhyme Ingrid sang in the kitchen, Ingrid in her ball-gown ready for a May ball, Ingrid in her good-girl shoes standing in a queue in London to vote for Mr. Mandela. With these moments – and I have so many - I can build endless April 27s.

June 23? I don't see it. I see only Paulo perched on the roof with a pouch full of tools and red plums. Paulo taking a breaking, squinting the sun, eating a plum, plum juice on his chin and I know he is thinking Gaia, when I throw this stone in the grass below, make a tree grow.

December 11.

Does. Not. Exist.

No room for it.What is a day? 

when Dad fills the Everywhere and the Always

and hides the hourglass away.

And now, September 21, away with you too! Shoo!

Leave me with Alastair: aglow

in the Dominican sun, showing me – in Spanish and in rhyme -

How to make bread,

ride bikes, read books, chop limes,
write poetry.

Morning Bright and Broken

Walking to the end of the road this morning, carrying school bag, water bottle, a brown banana and a great, sloshing sea of sadness about that thing we heard last night. And this is what we see.

.
And it’s so vivid and joyful that I feel the need to introduce it to the other joyful and vivid thing I know. They blaze together for a while:

And this is how I find exactly where the sun lives, with sun-wife and baby suns and sun-mobile and dandelion tea:

And as I contemplate this new discovery:

 Something at the edge of my eyelid says Wooo-hooo, how about me?

We explore and are forced to conclude that commerce knows no rest or end and what they say is true, it’s a dogs’ world out there…

… and I wish I could say that we ran home, all the way - but no, we opened dazzling wings and launched ourselves into another day…

Paradust Paradise

The day started well.

The sky said: 'I am here for you. Now sit down and meditate. Remember: you are now in Bali, where people practice yoga, meditate and then meet their soul mates and fall in love. But all in good order. Stop looking for the charger. You don't need the blue shirt. In fact, empty your mind. It's goooood for youuuu'.

So sudden and surprising was this that I did. I sat down and meditated. In my case this took the form of a silent, furious fight with my own thoughts: the charger, the blue shirt, the people I need to write to and also some imaginary people that live busy, sophisticated lives inside my head, mostly adoring me. I did not get up. I sat there contemplating this inner buzz and traffic with some bewilderment. No wonder I'm so exhausted by 10 am.

By 10am: the neighbour had decided to knock down a wall standing inches from our house. Two scrawny characters were perched on my wall with sledgehammers. Our gardener couldn't keep up: the moment he'd spruced up one of those glossy, wide-leaved plants, they were back under thick layers of cement dust. It was like trying to remove snowflakes from a football field in a blizzard.

Not finished: besides his building initiative the neighbour appeared to have organised a cremation. I became aware of it when black ash started to fall gently on my computer, shoulders and eye lashes, mixed as I was saying with all that cement powder and in soothing rhythm with the sledge hammers. I don't think I could have missed it: in minutes I was blinded, blackened, smoked and choked.

I stumbled to the gate and ran. To the car, grab the keys, to the car. Coughing like a 60-Marlboros-a-day. I put the windscreen wipers on, and they laboured up and down, pushing about hillocks of ash and dust. As I drove away I thought of Pompeii.

Godzilla's Babies

Can you see it? A dark smudge in the top corner? Guess what.

It's a mini hive. It belongs to a mutant wasp this big. It hangs over the bathtub.

Who would like a bath? Not me. So it's free.

P.S. ... and please don't tell Kira, because if you do she will pack and move out.

P.P.S. ... and if it eats me next time I brush my teeth then you'll be free of any blogs-to-be.  

The Genie is a Lizard

What lives inside a lamp, unseen? And sings, still unseen, at random moments, of unknown longing? Or hunger or lust (which, let us face it, is just another hunger)?

I have a confession to make: I am inordinately fond of a lizard-in-a-lampshade. It is, I swear, the funniest thing on earth. It clings to a light bulb and sings to me at night. What more could anyone want?

We sit in the living room - and here you need to stop for a minute and wipe out any sensible 'living room' images you may have collected in your lives. Replace them with a large terrace, a semi-outdoor area with sofas, mirrors, dining table and TV. Also with rice field, water and moon-silver. Feel the breeze. Hear the mosquitoes circling your earlobe.

The Kiwi and I are alone tonight - I come back from the airport dizzy and drained by the mad, mad roads.

Sometimes I feel like walking in the gate and stepping straight into the pool instead of following the path.

(A young guy fell off his motorbike today, right in front of us - and, coming from the other direction, a bus. Miraculously, all traffic stopped in time and long enough for him to pick himself up. I stared at his white cotton trousers, one leg now completely, uniformly black, as if a nursery kid had coloured it in.  Otherwise he seemed fine, only a grazed arm and mild shock. He sat down by the side of the road, swallowed by a wave of solicitous passers by. M., who doesn't believe such accidents happen, had just run across the road to the pharmacy and missed it.)


Where was I? Oh yes: alone, tonight - and dizzy and blue, when I hear a clicking from the corner - it's a sound test, my genie is getting ready, and I snap up from my slump, with a smile. And when he starts his two-note serenade-in-a-lampshade, I laugh out loud.