Vinnies

 

I went for a walk the other day and I visited the Vinnies of Crows Nest and found a jacket for the cool nights on the coast that I will be feeling in a week or so. It looked a little drab, being a man's jacket after all, and I thought a little trim would be the perfect pick-me-up. Finding a notions store on the lower north shore is not an easy task for the walking population. Nevertheless if you venture far enough and down just the right side street you never know what you will find. To cut the story short, I found too many choices but settled on a trim that is dark red and pale green bands gathered randomly to resemble flowers and leaves. Sufficiently feminine without too much prettiness! I also found a very nice bi-coloured beige ribbon that would have been ideal for a bit of an embroidery touch which I will save for Arizona. Boy it would have worked perfectly on the brown material I had to leave behind. - no regrets now!

I had a very interesting conversation in the Vinnies. The lady behind the counter was in conversation with a regular and they paused as I approached the counter. The employee took care of business, pointing out there were other jackets on sale. I thanked her but said I was on my way out of town. "Oh, where," she asked. "Back to America" I replied. Then started the conversation about how I didn't sound American. No but that is where I have been living. And out it popped, my dismay of finding Australia so changed. Of course I was talking to the kind of people I expected to find here. Friendly, outgoing, meeting-people kind of people. As I tried to move out of the store - sorry - shop, the other customer followed to continue the conversation. We chatted for a while and then I set off on the hunt for a notions store/shop/whatever.

I have been doing quite a bit of reading here Chez Son. The last book was written by Helen Barnacle about her life on heroin. An uplifting story if you can get through the "What it was like" part. Somehow the "what it is like now" is never told as grippingly as the descent into hell. Oh the Open Speaker-meetings of my other life. If I could find a way of telling it that would be funny or meaningful and not just a litany of the misery and heartache. But just how does one recount the day you came home from work at 11:00pm to find that he had this time taken all the groceries from the shop-before-going-to-work. Yep I could recount the anger, frustration and hunger but that would be an invitation to self to feel all those emotions again. No thanks. I would rather think about how I am in search of peace not excitment today.

Tomorrow I am going to find out why people in Australia today rarely smile as they go about in their apparent abundance.

Sydney still...

What happened to the weather in Sydney. I can't believe it was ever as bad as this in October - back in the day....

These birds visited the garden in Hunters'Hill every day. One day he brough two girls with him. I think the trees would astound the monks who planted them in the 1870's. A Brother living there told me that the banyon trees dropped seed pods so big and from such a height that it was not wise to walk down the path to the little chapel. One day while sitting at the front of the library where the classes my daughter-in-law was attending were held a kookaburra flew into the nearest tree with a little worm, or could it have been a baby snake? hanging out of its mouth. It spent a few minutes checking that he/she was not being followed and then flew off. Muggings my mynahs must be a frequent problem in that neck of the woods.

Step One

Well gave my friend back her space and moved myself via a GETZ to Sydney. After a quick unload and another trip to Vinnies we settled in for the night. Grand daughter growing wonderfully and so inquisitive already. But I have far too much stuff to be schlepping up and down railway stations. The dilemma is send by mail or throw away. Just how uncluttered should one arrive at the next destination?

Good byes to friends are very different when you know they will remember you, there is nothing final because the momentum of memories will not allow the vacuum to form behind you. I must say the memory of the cold, bitter, thin, mean wind of Canberra will be dropped down a very deep well when I find one. But on the other hand I miss the cockatoos screeching their way across Ainslie Avenue.

Friends took me out to dinner on the 'one-before-last' evening and after eating we adjourned to a bookshop across the street. A tremendous find was a collection of books for Grand daughter. The Magic Pudding - because I loved it so much as a child, a new Dreaming story of a hawk, crow and cockatoo - because it is the new Australia. Another book - BARBAR because in France it was a favourite book of her father's family and finally an Oxford book of childhood poems and rhymes - because her father was born in England. Hopefully she will grow up knowing that belonging comes from the heart not from where you were born. Hopefully she will feel sufficiently confident to be a citizen of the world calling everyone her neighbour.



Why do Indian Minahs torment crows and why do crows put up with it? I have been watching a repeated battle between several - up to six or seven pecky minahs dive bomb and herd crows out of the garden at the Villa Maria monastery. This is the venue for the baby-sitting I have been doing. It could not be better. Very old norfolk pines and such creating deep shade for the baby and I to stroll about in as we take a break from sleeping, her, and reading a book, me. I have been reading a biography of Galileo - appropriately. I have realized that the ignorance of today's church is nothing new - just a repetition of the old stuff. A major reminder to make religion a faith matter not a culture affair. I think that God is the crow and we are the minahs.