'A blog about living close to the earth as experienced by one girl.'='viewport'/> Francesca Whyte - mothersisterloverme -: 2011

Friday, December 9, 2011

The Pindan

The ancients called it the sympathy of life. That everything; the individual, the universe, was interrelated and mutally attuned. So from Broome she walked the length of the eastern Indian, giddy with footprints, slept perched on red cliffs with the others. She saw those, the road tired gypsies who she felt were more Australian than herself, walking the longitudinal lines of the flat earth, those who had told stories to the truckers roaring through the endless night. She heard the talk of those there first, saw them pacing out their country. And felt herself settling back, deep into happiness. She was alone. She knew now what she was ready for, what she wanted more of, and as she was there, seeing for the first time, without the baggage of the others, even their love, she shook off the city.
While in a place far distant from thought or conception,  he left his friends sleeping on a beach, to play music in a bar for all those stuck in the purgatorial stupor that is the Panama Canal. For five days he played to the smugglers of all imaginable contraband, to the retired Floridian hopefuls, to those salt crusted sailors young and old, unable to stop the stream of wind or rum. On the sixth day, a Briton, the uncertain owner of a concrete schooner, offered him the first leg crewing to the Galapagos.
Striking out the distance from South Melbourne to St Kilda one evening, arm in arm with her mother,  she felt the wind from the Pacific and him blowing across with it. At a crossroads of themselves, across continents, across oceans, to one night in a pub. The door swung open and of all the lives floating through the ether, two spirits reached across a bar. 

Thursday, December 1, 2011



Poem

Suspended by the salt beneath
The glassy mask falls and shifts
My feet astride the groaning teak
The wind doth blow and blow and blow. 
To be unfettered by the others
Yet gaze upon the gum’s soft colours
Allowing for freedom where I took
The first steps of a soul.
As we sail from fading coasts,
Small amidst the tossing troughs
Toughened in spaces, unburdened by shoes
Creating a hive amongst the blue.
Yet now I know the sharp twigs breaking,
Bark curling, twisting, flaking.
From the sandy, shadowed path and uphill past the tamarisk
To the place where they would sit. 
It has gone, my soles remember,
Where? The place that drew my mother,
To the glassy sea recovered.

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Spring Past

An apartment we rented for a year in Vermont was one of the first spaces we had that was ours. It was the top floor of a simple house built in the 1920’s. I used to stomp through the snow, leaving a dirty path round the side of the house, to our door at the back. It was just the door, perhaps there was a small raised area, to bang the snow off, and then the stairs going up to our two rooms. The kitchen was galley style, something we were used to, squashed against the top of the stairs, and there was one door to our unheated bathroom. We smoked our pale blue Drum then and drank jugs of Carlo Rossi red wine in squarish wine glasses my mum had sent from Australia. Rugged up we would blow our smoke out the open window into the white night. Still invincible enough not to care. Enough ourselves still unknown to spend nights revealing.
There was an inlet for a bed and two closets on either side of the sloping roof with a long oil heater between them. As we unpacked that first day, the space for our meagre collection of belongings overwhelmed us even in that tiny apartment, ‘a closet each!?’. Andrew decided to hang a shirt of his in my space, and a skirt of mine in his, keeping our close lives with us.
That winter I went skiing for the first time which terrified me to the extent that I tore a ligament in my knee and spent six weeks confined in that apartment with a cat named Steve. We watched the winter out the window, the cat blinking beside me. 
We had a tv, but no aerial so we just watched videos from our mattress on the floor. Andrew would hire ten movies for me at a time, obscure French ones called ‘Clare’s Knee’, that he thought I would like. I considered sabotaging my life as I knew it by smoking cigarettes in bed while I ate greasy chips and wiped my hands on the sheets. I ended up losing 3 kilos and knitting a beautiful, long, purple scarf that wore for years until I left it at a cafe in Northcote.
The spring made me and the birds happy. The rain fell and Steve and I watched the robins and blackbirds peck long worms out of the soft ground. They flew through the rain, seeking no shelter, relishing the change of season. My knee healed and I went back to work at the bookshop.

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Departure

The Marquesas was the ideal place to give birth. A land overflowing with running rivers, streams rushing to the sea, rock faces awash. We had met two midwives at the Birthing Centre, one gentle, one kind. They relaxed me. The air was green and the birthing rooms glowed white. We walked around the wooden verandah, the louvered windows open to the verdant garden, overcome with hibiscus and frangipani. It could happen here, my baby; you could arrive. However upon our arrival to Nuku Hiva, they were already waiting for us, ready to stamp in our passports an imminent departure date.During our first few days in French Polynesia we asked too many questions. We had heard that if a foreign child was born on one of the islands they would automatically receive citizenship, which would then mean being able to live and work in the EU. We had made inquiries to that effect, and furthermore whether we would be able to give birth free of charge, under the care of the government. The government officials had answered our questions with attention and without any evidential bother, yet it now seemed that someone had been unhappy with our familial plans. It was decided by the Immigration Officials that once I left French Polynesia the crew and Andrew could stay the length of their original visa - 3 months, but I had to leave to give birth elsewhere. His father, unseen for 3 years was due to fly in, so Andrew was to stay and I was to go. 
We had dropped anchor in the horseshoe shaped bay in Nuku Hiva, where the rain kept steadily falling. It ran down the teak decking, and pooled in gullies made by the steps between the stern and the bow. Water dribbled down the walls below deck, whilst the Navigation Station held a steady downpour, a constant drip, drip that filled more than one bucket. The air was heavy with moisture, lending a dampness and stickiness to all things. Fruit tied to the stern lent a sense of colour and I felt like making banana bread. As the air filled with the smell of baking, his voice sang to me from the radio. The rain cascaded off the biminy,  and I sat in our steamy wooden boat with the waterfalls surrounding us, listening to your father’s familiar voice, and I wept, because I must leave. 
**********************************************************
The alarm on our unused mobile phone woke us. Andrew still heavily asleep from a night of pint sized Tahitian beers with our crew, I had slept lightly, filled with our child, unconsciously aware of the days journey ahead of me, taking my body by plane this time, back home, back to Australia, where the landscape is a sad green. I heaved my body over the safety rails into the dinghy, Andrew waiting, holding the revving outboard. The boats were still sleeping, slapping in the small dark, early morning waves, as we weaved towards the lights of shore.
We didn’t talk much. Our shadows were dark in the yellow streetlights, and I looked so round.  His hand out, hitching as the first cars began to make their way to work in Papeete. Someone stopped, our first ride and we went straight there.
It always seems too soon, the flight is called, our coffee cups are left.
We walked outside to say goodbye, and he bent his head. I watched him walk. His tall back, long steps, moving quickly away, back to the boat, back to it all without me.
And then life carries you on, he walks one way I walk the other, we are both alone. I checked in, went through security. I remember a man tried to guess the sex of my baby as I tried not to cry. 

Monday, February 14, 2011

A Deep Skip

The Shangri La was moored in Antigua for 2 weeks in 2003. Andrew flew back to America for his brother's graduation while I stayed with Captain Stu. The boat was tied with spring lines running from the bow to the dock, and to disembark one had to somehow swing themselves along the thick line, twisting in a manner so as to land feet first on the wooden dock. I worked with Stu during the morning; sanding, sewing some sails, doing what needed to be done until the afternoons, which were mine. We were moored in English Harbour, another harbour was just a short walk away over what was called the 'middle ground'..so every afternoon I slung a small bag with my book over my shoulder and headed towards the end of the cliffs. The area was known as Nelson's Dockyard, all grey stone, and eighteenth century buildings, ruined forts and embattlements to clamber over..very beautiful and gothic. A steep little path lead me up over the mountain. A Spanish mountain side, or somehow Australian, red coloured dirt with khaki scrubby bushes. Goats scared the hell out of me and I actually picked up a decent sized rock. Tourists then gave me more of a fright and startled me into dropping my rock out of fear I would scare them...After about 40 minutes the path wound its way down to Falmouth Harbour. I treaded through the dusty carpark to the open sandy beach. A decent swim, a lie in the sun, another swim. Then walk back under the sun, late now, but still hot, damp from the sea and buzzing from the salt. The wind buffeting me about me as I crested the 'middle ground', looking down to each harbour to see boats anchored on both sides.
Stu and I spent the evenings sitting on stools at a wooden bar, getting drunk on rum punch and talking, often politics....he was an earnest conversationalist, and the conversation would inevitably run on until we would miraculously get ourselves back on board, and I remember one night gorging on canned corn in my cabin before crashing out into rum punch bliss.

Saturday, January 1, 2011

Footsteps

Today it was warm, probably about 2 or 3 degrees Celcius, and I walked by myself in the evening and let my Blundstones take me down the snowy road - the wind blew warm and my hair fell behind and I didn't need my gloves. One forgets what they miss -or miss without really knowing what - I listened to Sarah Blasko and  John Butler and thought of balmier times.Did you have a bath on the verandah as the sun was setting over the fields? Did you watch the bush fade from colour? I can feel dry grass, rough beneath my feet, my hand brushing the tips, sinking sun making my face hot, the Australian insects buzzing. My feet on the red dirt of Broome, treading the path to the sea. So soft from the city, encased in shoes, finally feeling the earth beneath. Or padding over the teak boards of the Shangri La, immune to the silver nails jutting out, hard, bright colours of white and brown, with the endless sea beyond.I know in many places New Years Eve was warm, with you swimming around a Melbourne party, your shoulder blades bare, the heat of the day settling into your skin. Happy New Year to you, and see you there next time.