The Art of Listening: Enhancing Dialogue in a Divided World
Photo by Denise Jans on Unsplash
Understanding Gun Culture: A Personal Perspective
Last night in a regular Zoom meeting I participate in each fortnight, I referred to an article in the ABC news that impacted me: ’24 hours, seven mass shootings’ in the US. I had read something earlier in the week how the right to carry guns is integral to the identity of many Americans. It seems odd from where I sit here in Australia and wanted to understand it better.
Childhood Experiences with Guns
I grew up on a farm where guns were kept in the house in an unlocked cupboard, this was the 1960’s. My dad had a double barrel shotgun that had been his father’s, a bolt action shotgun of his own, an ex-army 303, a 22 and his favourite, a wildcat .25-303. The latter was a version of the 303, modified to take a smaller bullet using a modified 303 cartridge. It producer higher muzzle velocity and a flatter trajectory for the bullet.
It was used to ‘control’ kangaroos on the wheat shoots after sewing, and for a time dad would go to the Pittsworth shooters club for competitive events. Two events resulted in that being short lived. Each Saturday the club met, shooters would retire to the pub for a few beers afterwards. Dad was a teetotaller. So the club didn’t offer the kind of male companionship he was looking for. It seemed strange to me at the time that he would go to the gun club in Pittsworth anyway, because it wasn’t part of the church community, it was an outlier. But he spend many nights with his reloading kit, putting new caps in used cartridges, filling them with powder then pressing in a new bullet. The whole business felt dangerous and scared me. I had a fear as a four or five year old that while getting changed for bed at night a shooter out the window in the dark had gun-sights trained on me. Going with dad to shoot kangaroos and to skin them for hides and butcher them for dog food unsettled me to the point of anxiety.
One day at gun club, the last time dad went, he was taking a shot when the cartridge failed at the cap end of the cartridge case. A jet of burning gasses ejected from the breach and into his eye. There was concern for his sight for some time. His vision eventually returned to normal, but his interest in gun club never did. The sheep skin padded jackets and coats that mum had painstakingly fashioned on her treadle Singer hung in the lowboy in the spare room for many years. Eventually they were given away or thrown out.
Comparing Gun Cultures: Australia and the USA
Attitudes to guns remained fairly lay back throughout Australia until 1996 and the shock of Port Arthur. My parents had taken a holiday to Tasmania and had visited Port Arthur the week before the massacre.
I read up on gun laws in Florida last week and was shocked at these particular provisions: ‘open carry’ is permitted in restricted circumstances, a ’stand your ground’ allows the use of deadly force in self-defence without a duty to retreat, ‘Castle Doctrine’ allows the use of deadly force to defend oneselves, your home, vehicle or other legally occupied space without a duty to retreat.
The image of John Wayne in the many frontier confrontations, the common fare of afternoon TV at the time, came immediately. The ‘hordes at the gate’ motif or ‘David and Goliath’ being repeated over and over.
A constitutionally enshrined right to bear arms is a cornerstone of identity for many Americans, and while the opportunity for gun control was embraced in Australia, the context was quite different for Americans.
Given that gun regulation would be near to impossible in the USA, I wondered how much the attitude to guns set the scene for mass shootings and could it be that there is some truth in the gun lobby who emphasise the shooter rather than the gun, a siege mentality writ large, defend or perish.
Which brought me back to Australian frontier wars. The fact that Europeans were rarely willing to negotiate with First Nations Australians. That for many, the ‘defend or perish’ doctrine still applies. Where after all has there been good faith negotiations on land ownership in Australia. The country was claimed for the crown from the outset. Where treaties were attempted, for example the Batman treaty in Victoria, it was rejected by the government. The officially sponsored and condoned massacres, and the ‘Protectorate’ system was clearly designed to protect European interests. Native Title is a legal instrument for European interests to access resources on Aboriginal lands. The defeat of the ‘Voice to Parliament’ referendum suggests that ‘hordes at the gate’ mentality is still a poison running in the veins of this country.
Reflections on the Art of Listening
During my writers group this month, someone made a comment about the art of listening; how in listening we could adopt the position of listening silently and only speaking in a way that supports the trajectory of the speaker, whether we agree or not. Naturally there is no obligation to say anything. When your turn to speak comes, you are afforded the same courtesy and support. The process takes longer but finds agreement through consensus rather than victory (or defeat) through conflict.
Challenges in International Negotiations
This morning I awoke at 4:30 with these things on my mind. So outraged by the laxity of US gun laws it occurred to me that I might have fallen prey to misinformation. I reached for my phone to check. I went recall that Australian gun law had been premised on the perspective of the invader. An attitude that is still prevalent within our society, and while I would cite Howard’s greatest achievement was gun control, his worst legacy was Tampa, an absolute lie that many Australians still cling to, which Baxter, Nauru and numerous other detentions centres attest to.
Regardless of its merits or otherwise, AUKUS nuclear submarines follows those same waggon ruts. Is the reason that we find so much difficulty in trusting international negotiations that we are frightened they might be too much like us collectively?
The beacon that shines through all of this is the earlier reference to the art and craft of listening. I caught myself recently, following a curious reflex. A friend on FB posted about the three types of awareness. My mind immediately went to ‘3’, why this number, surely there are more, why, I don’t know, just seems like it. As I read the post, I was double thinking numbers and descriptions. Is there a hierarchy in the types, are their subsections that should be promoted and are there categories that are omitted. A fight for hemispherical dominance ensued reducing the post to alphabet spaghetti until I recognised the futility of it all and called time. It was clear that the writer of the post recognised a trinity of types in the nature of awareness. It could be a vagary of the English language that these form a constellation anyway.
Consider how there are, some say, 50 Inuit words for snow. On deeper investigation we find that there are numerous Inuit languages not just one. But then there are many more, perhaps descriptions of snow. Defining an actual number will always be context specific.
Promoting Neurological States in Conversations: A Quest for Reciprocal Wisdom
To actually listen in the way described above, I will needs to have an kind of executive awareness of my thinking style in the moment, maybe in time it will become muscle memory and I will experience extended periods of peacefulness in my mind and body. Why body? Because conflicted thinking promoted the production of cortisol, if you’r going to have a fight you have to prepare for it whereas peacefulness is more likely to promote oxytocin, perhaps even dopamine.
Finally I’d like your thoughts or advice; if we are able to these desired neurological states in ourselves, it must be possible to conduct conversations in a way that promote those same states in others. Some people do it naturally, conversations that make us feel better, not only that, but promote a little high as well. How do they do that. And before we go to ‘love bombing’ and cult like behaviours that definitely happen under the ‘hordes at the gate’ warrior archetype, I’m thinking more reciprocal wisdom tradition. Any thoughts?
Navigating Collective Emptiness: Aftermath of the Referendum
The Emptiness Within and Its Tremendous Potential
Over the last couple of days I’ve been listening to podcasts of Nora Bateson and Esther Perel And I’ve listened in relation to the questions I’ve been pondering personally and collectively to see what leans it can bring to bear on the emptiness that follows the referendum, because we cannot help asking the question, If not ‘Yes’ does that mean more of the same. If not here then where does the shift in Australian consciousness begin and if not out there in society does it mean that it must begin within? One of my favourite jokes comes to mind, ”What’s the difference between a jokn and a rhetorical question? … What’s the difference between a joke and a rhetorical question?…”
Ahh, there’s that empiness again.
Relationship Building: Beyond Policies and Politics
But within that empy space there’s an enormous buzzing of something trying to happen. The aftermath of the ‘No’ vote has left the ‘Yes’ campaigner and voters in collective trauma. A small part of us that had invested so much energy in generating new life, for some a large part, is in shock, arrested by shock. For some it will be to much and they will drift away and look for ways to survive the break identity visited upon them, others will come out of the shockened quickened, looking for th eplace to begin whatever comes next. What is felt most deeply by both is the need for self care and self development to go beyond and if possible live a larger life than the one before the referendum defeat. That self care and self development is about building and rebuilding relationationships. For the things we thought a “Yes” vote would instigate in fact do not happen by a government policy, or even a n article in the constitution, but by the quality of the relationship between those moved to vote “yes“ and those moved to vote “no”. We know that referendums in Australia only succeed if they have bipartisan support. In this context, we should see bipartisanship not so much as a temporary political alliance but as an identity relationship. It requires the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition to be together in this undertaking. Rather than relationship building we saw more than a whiff of cancel culture that has such a grip on Australia’s throat.
Embracing Change and Vulnerability
So where do we begin? While there is the temptation to jump quickly to action first there must be self care, and honestly and with integrity allow ourselves to be changed by what has just happened. What terror has the shock of failing in the referendum unearthed? Allowing ourselves to touch that terror will bring us to a sense of our powerlessness, and with the sense of powerlessness the vulnerability of our collective masculinity will be exposed. ’No’ voters will become ever more defensive and resistant to change. It is not the proposition that is being put forward that is so threatening, but the change itself and how that alone threatens the current power equilibrium. The show of conservative force has to be absorbed, perhaps redirected not resisted. Resisting it head on will only make it grow stronger. It must be redirected through another route, and the only other route is through building relationships.
So what does this look like in terms of where we begin and where we go from here? Well, we know what not to do, we know not to try to convince “no” voters they were wrong. In fact they will for a time enjoy an increase in their power and influence for a time as we see now a move against acknowledging country. That trend is still heating up. The only way out of this situation is to grow out of it. So we need to develop those relationships and systems tht help us grow, and grow together. It means to grow our experience of being storng and manly in society for noth men and women. The polarity enforced especially on men but also on women on how men can be needs to grow.
Growing Together: Reimagining Masculinity and Power Dynamics
Trump America and those political players that would emulate his methods in Australia demonstrate the bleakness of the polarity of masculine identity. His is a extreme example, in both power and fragility. But its polar opposite is equally untenable, a kind of meek, power relinquishing, empathy, that still leaves all the heavy lifting to women.
In the subjugation of First Nations People by colonial invaders, them men are suppressed first, disrupting their power is central to the success of their enterprise. Women are seen to have their usefulness, whether powerful or not. If women’s power gets out of hand it can always be dealt with by violence until it is suppressed. Masculine power cannot be suppressed by violence, violence only increases it until it is extinguished, though it capacity for springing up from the ashes has to be continually guarded against. We may have though that the frontier wars were over. It turns out that they have merely moved to another level. It turns out that the australian electorate does not trust the pathway from voice to makarrata to treaty. At some deeper level they feel too vulnerable.
Unveiling Vulnerability: First Nations People and Their Struggles
And it is this sense of vulnerability that we need to counter. Only a small minority would not like to see quality of life improved for first nations people. But that vulnerability is an issue altogether on another level and will continue to be a stumbling block. There is a double bind here. Australians want first nations people to have a better quality of life and to become more empowered to determine their own future. But in giving them more power, they are concerned that that power may be used to disrupt our current way of life because they desire changes that are incompatible with the status quo, that unresolved questions of dispossession and dislocation, and accountability for the atrocities in the frontier wars may need to be accounted for.
If makarrata comes first, is then followed by treaty, the question of voice will become a administrative one. In the question of constitutional recognition, had a treaty been in place, the 1967 referendum would not have been necessary. The fact that human right had to be suspended for the NT Intervention to take place really tells the story. On a personal level to build capacity for connection and relationship, perhaps the same sequence applies, story telling, empowered empathetic communication, creativity.
The question of where shall we begin is really, here, within, together.
Models vs. Ecological Thinking
Tears & Education
This morning I listened to Nora Bateson recount an anecdote in which her father, the esteemed social scientist and anthropologist Gregory Bateson would cry as her put her on the bus to school. He was worried that she would be ruined by school education. The reason this didn’t happen she said, because she was able to hold his tears.
The ‘no’ result in the referendum is a catastrophe for what it might have been for indigenous and non-indigenous people in Australia. Now that path is closed at least for a generation and other approaches must be sought. When taken as feedback rather than rebuttal or refusal, we get a measure of where the Australian electorate is at at this present moment. We can make all kinds of stories of what it means depending on your point of view. Many of these stories are not real or true otherwise how could we accommodate such diverse views from commentators.
Reconciliation and Beyond
What we can say is that Reconciliation has been dealt a blow, perhaps that’s a good thing or maybe a bad thing, maybe both. To my eyes, Makarrata is more ‘authentic’ than Reconciliation, the coming together after a struggle, Australia was, before the struggle. It would seem that perhaps the Australia electorate doesn’t believe there was ever a struggle. It indicates that Australia’s previous course, was on a “hiding to nowhere” and if so, would continue on that trajectory regardless of referenda outcome. Instead we are with the vast emptiness of ‘what now’ that could well be our making.
Models vs. Ecological Thinking
To put it in evolutionary terms, natural selection happens incrementally, evolution does not. Whole system changes follow calamitous events, chaotic randomness reforms and regenerates entrenched systems, knowing that in the biological world there is no such thing as complete randomness and everything is connected. New linkages and relationships are formed and developed ways previously prohibited. Our test now is whether we are able to hold the emptiness of not knowing long enough for new growth to emerge, or do we slide with the tide of rebuff into an abyss of unresolved Groundhog Day, and leave it for others who follow to re-green our world. Of course it’s not really a choice, it’s just that emptiness is so hard to hold on to. Is it possible?
A number of communities I am related to, have now abandoned Reconciliation or had already done so. I believe Reconciliation to be a well intentioned movement but with roots deeply embedded in the problem, not in the ‘solution’. Communities impulse now is to look beyond, to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights For Indigenous Peoples which is yet to be ratified by the Australian Government. Of the two, a Voice to parliament or ratifying the charter, the former easier. The latter however has the advantage, the necessary advantage, of not being embedded in colonial world view. Reconciliation as it stands, is a colonial construct. Its trajectory is towards assimilation whilst holding a special place for Australia's deep history, like remembrance for the fallen at Gallipoli, only not so much. This is a far cry from the rights of indigenous people that are declared in the UN charter, which in the Australian context is of twin complementary, interdependent moieties moving together. One can hear the beating of shields at the very suggestion.
Ecological Thinking
The Batesons propose ecological thinking that is contrary to developing logical models for the future and enacting them step by step. Such models are anti evolutionary. I love models and modelling. As a young boy, I’d spend my pocket money on models of Spitfires and Hurricanes and whatever else was available from the Pittsworth Newsagent. On many a Saturday morning I’d spend a shilling or perhaps 1/6 there on after piano lessons. That modelling over the years has grown to a preferred way of thinking, conceptional modelling of large systems. But I see now that the model is a replica of the thing not a precursor. The process is essentially anti-ecological, antievolutionary. Objectively it creates the opposite result to that intended.
There was a time during my high school education that the topic of evolution entered our fundamentalist household. There was no effort whatever to consider how this new information would encourage us to learn and grow and reinterpret the world view of our forebears. Our minds were closed to new revelation. Even a knowledge of the history of our own history was discouraged, except of course though approved sources. I followed Eve in her quest for meaning. The path left the garden and found a vantage point from which it could be observed from the outside thereby creating an interiority unknown previously. Adam on the other hand, a follower rather than an adventurer, consoled his perceived loss by labouring in the fields eyes to the furrow.
Over the ages the furrow has transmogrified into something far more sparkly and may paradoxically be preferred over relationship to planetary consciousness.
What might going forward look like?
Evolution happens at the edges of things, the margins, where cross fertilisation can happen with something other than itself, at the horizon of unknowing. Jettison the big plans for the future before they take hold and entangle you. Rather be attentive to this moment, what is here and now and discover what is its yearning. What is this moment trying to give birth to? What is here at hand, the resources available, both material but especially the human resources, the conscious ones. Check for the colonial masquerade, it will be everywhere at first because it is everywhere and I say that not as a judgement by as a statement of where we come from. Allow the path to emerge from what is and resist the urge to build a model of what might be knowing that my minds eye is only one of many, simultaneously multifaceted and eye to eye. The moment doesn’t say; ‘look at me’ but ‘look into my eyes’.
Still holding her father’s tears, Nora Bateson explores the difference between the "Situation Room" approaches, driven by immediate problem-solving, and the holistic perspective of the "Meadow," which emphasises ongoing mutual learning, adaptability and context.
Scottish Proverb and Alternate Truths
Im reminded of a favourite saying of a once coworker who in his grinning Scottish brogue would defeatedly say, “Everything in our favour is against us.” The humour, over the years given way to alternate truth, a truth moderated by the consciousness of the utterer, whether it be a self fulfilling prophesy lead by the bleak narrowness of logic into a double bind cul-de-sac, or an emergent opportunity calling by an evolutionary trajectory.
"Decolonising Our Minds: Learning to Hear the Language of the Land"
Introduction: Growing Up on the Southern Darling Downs
As a boy growing up on the southern Darling Downs, my family settled on grazing land to till the soil and begin cropping. But for a kid, time is a durative thing with no real sense of beginnings and ends, a kind of forever thing. Instinctively, I was aware of Aboriginal voices, or rather, their absence, they should have been there. How could they disappear without trace? It was an open secret that we were not the first people to live on that country. In that colonial maelstrom of our little village, my desires to discover either a stone axe head or a nugget of gold were equally matched.
Gold Rush and Historical Significance
Gold had been found 12 miles down the road at Leyburn. A rusted quartz crusher still rests absently there abandoned in the bush where 22 canvass pubs stood in its brief heyday in the 1860s. In the other direction, accounts of the original Domville station said it was built with rifle windows, narrow slits in the walls that enable defence while under siege. What does that say?
Those who see the Voice as a transactional thing, where indigenous people make demands on settlers, are against it. ‘No need to enshrine that,’ they say, ‘legislation will do that and may even be better. There’s plenty of ways of finding out what First Nations people want from settler folk.’ But those voices hush when reading the Uluru Statement from the Heart, and you quickly realise that that is not the proposal at all.
The Misconception of the Voice
Recently, I attended a ‘kitchen table’ conversation in Unley Town Hall, where parts of Australia’s dark history were brought out of the shadows before retiring to tea and biscuits and polite conversation. Moments of guilt and outrage were briefly aired before equanimity was restored.
Again the ‘No’ campaign is instructive, in drawing attention to the question of who should be compelled to listen. ‘No one,’ they say, arguing that there are already many ways, the chief being electoral, for messages to be conveyed to government, or just like any other lobby group. And they would be right if the Voice, in the absence of Uluru, were to be a transactional device. But it isn't.
Connecting with the Land: Yandilla and Cultural Insights
Sitting on the black soil banks of Yandilla (Gaibal = running water), or walking through the Red Gum flood plains, watching the wallaroos and goannas amongst the bloodwoods and Moreton Bay Ashes on the red soil sandy ridge or kangaroos and a very occasional emu in the open country, country talks to your secret inside voice. Not the voices of hunter/gatherers eeking out a squalid existence in a harsh landscape, but an ancient culture finely tuned to the entire ecosystem.
They were voices of a people who observe and monitor relationships of plants and trees, of critters and humans. Knowledge of the seasons, when to move to high ground, when to put restorative flame to the grasslands, when to anticipate flood waters making the country impassable with black soils that become both sticky and slippery, when frosty mornings turn to scorching summers.
Mapping Songlines and Cultural Connections
Earlier this week, a friend, a senior lawman, from the Centre sent me an email with a map of homelands, communities, townships, and regions which I know to be interlinked by a particular set of songlines. It brought ‘Yorro, Yorro: Everything Standing Up Alive’ to mind, a book co-authored by Mowaljarlai in which he illustrates the story matrix embedded in country. I had been reminded of it in a PowerPoint at the ‘kitchen table’ conversation.
You see, I could look at the map with circles and rectangles denoting places that carry songlines, and ‘intuit’ the invisible linkages. Or I could look at Mowaljarlai’s songline matrix and ‘intuit’ the unmarked towns, cities, and regions. The first is a map of the places, the second a diagram of the connections.
Philomena Cunk and the Doomsday Book Analogy
Lately, I found myself captivated by a BBC mockumentary series featuring the comedic character Philomena Cunk and her unique worldview. One particular conversation stood out to me, centred around the Doomsday Book - the earliest surviving written record of land ownership and resources in late 11th century England. In a conversation featuring the famous Book, she asks an historical expert a question that is both absurdly idiotic and profound at the same time. “How did they get the sounds into the ink so that when you read them, the words play back in your head?” she asks.
It brought to mind the koan of the sound of one hand clapping - a paradoxical enigma that, like Philomena's query, both defies and invites understanding. For me, the point is that a voice without an audience is like ink on a forgotten page, a language lost to time. It echoes the silence of the countryside, where the whispers of the land and its people still hold sway if we listen closely enough.
Listening to Overtones and Harmonies
Learning this language takes time and patience, much like unraveling the mysteries of the universe itself. Yet the irony is that our bodies and psyches already possess a deep understanding of it, woven into the very fabric of our being. We need only allow ourselves to break free from the constraints of our modern world, dare I say decolonise our thinking, and embrace the wisdom of our ancestors.
It's a challenge, certainly - one that requires us to resist the urge to turn away from uncomfortable truths or to privilege our own voices over those of others. But by tuning into the overtones and harmonies of a living oral tradition, we can unlock a universe far richer and more vibrant than anything captured on a static page.
I was reminded of a childhood game I used to play, where I would drown out unpleasant sounds by chanting "blah blah blah" and covering my ears. It's a childish impulse, to be sure - but one that we often carry into adulthood, whether through wilful ignorance or outright prejudice. By learning to listen with an open mind and an open heart, we can break free from this narrow worldview and discover a heroic new world beyond ourselves.
It's not always easy, of course. The voices of doubt and fear can be overwhelming, drowning out the subtler melodies of the land and its people. But if we are willing to listen - truly listen - we can hear the resounding "YES!" that echoes through the universe, beckoning us ever closer to a world of being, becoming, and belonging together.
Grain Growers
Childhood Adventures in the Grain Bin
Being grain growers kids there were many delights that other kids never knew. One favourite was to play in the grain bin of a truck just in from the field after harvest. We’d climb up into thee bin and wade around in the grain. Each grain had its own characteristics. Wheat is clean and hard and its seed is shiny with a certain nobility. Linseed was interesting though we only grew it for a short time. It would be prone to heliothis caterpillar strikes. We’d get up early before the school bus came and go out to watch the crop duster fly in and skim over the crops releasing its old of insecticide. As the caterpillars attacked the growing plant rather than the mature plant, sometimes it had to be done a number of time through the growing season. A bin of linseed was particularly fun to play in with its oily seed, a flat oval with a hint at one end. Its oily sheen made it softly stick to your skins but only of kids, uncle were to hairy but the son smooth skin of children was a perfect surface for the seeds to adhere to. We would roll around in the grain and get up with linseed mask covering every square millimetre. It felt a like mail of a medieval knight that we so love to impersonate or a lizard perhaps. It became unprofitable on account of the insecticide and too troublesome since the cut stalk of a harvested plant would occasionally be sharp and strong enough to puncture a tyre of the John Deere header. Other people referred to the machine as a combine harvester but for us it was always ‘the header’ and a combine was the machine you used to sew.
Being American, the header used petrol with a different octane rating than the rest of the vehicles on the farm so it meant that there was always the extra job of handling’s 44 gallon drums. When empty they we fun to put on their side and stand on and roll along by moving your feet like a circus act, but they were heavy and if you fell off in front you’d want to make sure you landed on your feet and jump out of the way of the drum that by then could be moving with some force.
Barley was the worst. It has a seed similarity to wheat but its dust mad you itch like crazy. So much so that you’d make yourself scarce when the trucks came in to empty into the silos, because you knew you’d be sent into the bin to empty out the last couple of bags, that’s the way you’d measure grain, though by then bags were only used at seen at sewing time and everything was handled in bulk at harvest, out of the truck. Sorghum could be itchy too though nothing like barley.
Transition from Bags to Bulk Handling and Storage Changes>
Before bulk handling grain was moved in hessian bags. That was in the first couple of years before we got the first header. We used an old tractor drawn Shine Harvester. You’d work until the harvester bin was full then stop and bag off the grain. Granddad or Papa, mum’s dad would come out sometimes and help sew up the bags. The old ford truck had a hydraulic arm for lift the bags onto the truck to about the shoulder height of a man standing on the tray. There was a cradle at one end so the bag stayed in place. The man on the ground would drop a bag onto the cradle and inso doing pull on a leather strap that would engage the hydraulic ram and the arm would swing the 80 kg bag up onto the waiting many shoulders. It was back breaking work. The bags would then have to be unloaded at the shed so that the harvest could be brought in as quickly as possible. If rain threatened the bags would be sewn up and brought to the shed in the light of a kero lantern or two. It was a stressful time. Then bulk handling came in and much of the work could be done by one or two men rather than aa team.
As bags gave way to bulk handling we needed some way of storing it in the shed. My uncle net door built a shed with a bitumen floor and the grain was dumped in a pile. A long auger meant that the pile of grain could be really high. We only played in that pile once. Climbing onto the wheat hill had spread out the grain making it more difficult to load into the truck at delivery time. The message not to do that was delivered in such a way that it became part of permanent memory.
Life as a Young Tractor Driver
As I got older more country was being cleared and ‘broken’ for cultivation. We had a Caterpillar D6 crawler tractor with a small but heavy eight share plow. It was only used for the first plowing. And so in school holidays I became a tractor driver. I hated it the monotony with a vengeance. In winter time the driver was exposed to the weather from a frosty dawn to dark. Dad would come and give me a break at breakfast time, that would give him a chance to see that that every thing was going all right. I’d come back with sandwiched and a thermos of tea packed in a little port, that what Queenslanders call suitcases. It the milk, supplied in a separate bottle was particularly creamy, a blob of butter would have formed on top of the milk by smoko from the vibration of the tractor. An oily slick formed on the cuppa tea but would just fine. Anything would be fine as an interruption to the boredom. One time I was overjoyed when after about half an hour I had completed a round of the paddock, I saw one of the plough disks lying in the paddock. It had broken the previous round and I hadn’t noticed. Once I realised it wasn’t my fault I was delighted that the work would be halted until repairs were made.
As Dad dismantled, welded and reassembled the plough I went on to scarifying on of the other paddocks in preparation for sewing. The relief was short lived. I think I finished plowing the paddock in time to go back to boarding school. “What did you do in the holidays?” “Ploughed!” It’s the was it was.
Navigating Life's Crossroads
As time went on I became more and more disaffected with farming life. I’d become a machinery operator, mostly cultivation. I was away at boarding school for sewing and harvest and cam home for cultivation and grain delivery. When I was old enough to get a driver’s license I drove a truck into town and pulled up at the police station. The sergeant said, “How did you get here?” “I drove the truck,” I told him. “OK, come out and do the test. Drive up the street, truncates around and come back. I’ll stand here and watch.” I was pretty nervous and thought there must be more to it than that, so I when up an extra block before turning around and coming back. On returning I was greeted with, “What took you so long? I said just up to that street!” As so I got my license. I’d probably been driving for six years by then. When I started driving I had to sit on the very edge of the seat to reach the pedals.
By the time I finished boarding school, and contrary to expectations had decided against going to the Lutheran seminary in Adelaide, dropped out of uni and finished year of Technical College I had no idea of where my life was going. I got a job for a short time working for a guy who was erecting wheat silos on farms. He put on a keg for the workers. I got drunk, got pick up by the price riding my motor bike and spent a night in the cells. My name appeared in the court notices a few days later in the Toowoomba Chronicle a few days later and brought to the notice of my father. My brother was sent to fetch me, my father furious and my mother distraught. I was at home, miserable and directionless. Dad started looking at farms in the district for sale. I realised though there was no discussion that his plan was for me to become a father, I was horrified and so got a job on the weigh bridge out at Wheat Board silos at Bungunya in the Goondiwindi region for a couple of weeks until a job came up in Sydney for which I was most unsuited. I took it. Anywhere had to be better so I hitched a ride down south. Mum was mortified, her eldest son going to work in “sin city”. And so my education began anew.
Embracing Change and Discovering a New Path
It took a lot longer to unlearn the old ways than to learn the new and was deeply depressed, disaffected and dispirited. I worked in the city and travelled to lodgings in the North Shore by train. I was shocked by the inexplicable urge to throw myself off the train while crossing the harbour bridge. I had no idea of how vulnerable I was and that it was my social anxiety that was keeping me safe, parallelised by fear. It was a road of trials that I would wish on anyone. I had two years part time to go in the Technical College course I’d begun in Toowoomba. I turned out that New South Wales didn’t have an equivalent course and so decided to go back to uni. Meanwhile, the Whitlam government had abolished university fees and since I’d just got the sack decided to do a Science degree, Botany major. I was still struggling with the idea inculcated from birth that this life was a vale of tears as an antecedent to the main game in heaven. Uni was the real godsend, I started to develop an awareness of deep ecology, and heard the amazing herbalist Dorothy Hall on radio and decided I would do her training. I was desperate for a new outlook on life and her’s message resonated with me on a spiritual level yet was completely secular. The idea that my life was mine to live was beginning to take root even though my personal life was a complete shambles and in an emotional turmoil. My life was mine to save were I to find a way.
Radical amplification and acceleration of the hear and now
The Monster Called 'Can't': Battling Self-Doubt and Fear
Have you ever had the feeling that you weren’t quite ready…for life, that is? That you need more time to prepare before you take on the great thing that you feel would make all the difference, if only, I don’t know, you could do something different or better. It’s sort of like rolling all your fears of success, all your fears of failure and bundling them up with your, “I’m not good enough”, I”’m not strong enough”, in fact all you “I’m not enoughs” and giving them over to the monster called, “Can’t”, and accepting in return a pile of excuses that you can pick over and savour as your wish box gets fuller and fuller. Oh, wait on, sorry, that was me! But may you have it too, the tension between deep longing and belief in your personal ineffectiveness. I guess that today’s word would be “looser”. Yikes.
A Prank and a Professor: Lessons in Perseverance
For along time I struggled not to feel like a looser, it was my greatest fear and even thinking about it brought a rush of adrenaline, a dead feeling in my gut and a frantic search for a distraction, any distraction. In my first year of uni in Sydney, actually it was the first year of my second go at tertiary education, no,my third go, I had a number of false starts, I was the butt of a practical joke by my fellow students. They told me that the dean of the school wanted to see me. It’s like that gag where you give someone the phone number of the zoo and tell you that a Mr Lyon rang and left a message for you asking to call him back urgently. It a scam like the myriads of scam like we see on the internet today, the phishing (with a ‘ph’), trojan horses, malware, viruses etc, etc.
Anyway I discovered, gullibility and hapless naivety were a powerful combination that made me an easy target and created a good deal of frivolity. There’s a fine line between playing the fool and being a fool and I was prone to getting them mixed up. Anyway, these guys told me that the dean wanted to see me, which made sense given my abysmal academic record that year. So I go up to the professor’s office and make an appointment with his secretary. “What’s it about?” “I don’t know, he wants to see me.” I swear at the time nobody would have been able to convince me it was anything than above board. I had failed organic chemistry and something else that I can’t remember and in a spot of bother to put it mildly. That’s to say nothing of my chaotic personal life at the time. It didn’t occur to me that they might be connected. So I went in to see the professor, ironically by the name of Passmore and said, “I’m David Salomon” and braced myself. He looked at me blankly. I had already decided to not leave without some sort of solution to this mess that I was in. No matter what, I’d take it on the chin.
A Moment of Transformation: Finding Hope in Academic Struggles
Silence, then, “Why are you here?” “I don’t know.” More silence. “How can I help?” Now I was really confused. He got my file and had a look through my exam records. He was an astute man, his field was the philosophy of science and he could tell that something was amiss. Then it happened. He looked at me, I could feel his gaze as I stared down at my sweaty hands and he said, ”Just because you’ve failed a few subjects, doesn’t mean you’re persona non grata,” “What?” I parroted back, with all my skill in idiomatic Latin translation vacating me. He repeated himself, “Just because you’ve failed a couple of subjects doesn’t mean you’re persona non grata.” And as I looked up at him the black cloud I had carried around for the past seven years broke open. And I kid you not, the clouds parted and the sun shone through, you know that special sunlight that comes as rays through the clouds, poets refer to it as the grace of God. I felt buoyant as my heart kept into life. You see I knew that I was smart enough, I had won a university scholarship on merit. There was something else wrong with me that had nothing to do with my studies but I had no way of articulating and now it had lifted and I felt that the moment deserved a full orchestral score with a long camera shot of me receiving a full quotient of grace, permeating, saturating, drinking it in long thirsty draughts. I felt like dancing, and singing and telling everyone the good news, the fantastic news that there was a chance that I might be OK after all, because somebody saw me.
By the time I left the room the euphoria had passed. I just felt my load had been lightened. Though I continued to stumble my way through life for a long time the absolute blessing of that moment has never left me. Nothing had changed in my outer world but everything in my inner world was different.
Seeking a Blessed Childhood: Rediscovering Inner Potential
Years later, one of my teachers talked about how she had had a blessed childhood. It was curious to me because from the stories she told, yes, she had been fortunate in meeting many talented and gifted people growing up. Yes, she clearly had a close relationship with her father, but it was clear problematic. His humour was ruthless. Then a sense of disappointment came over me as I realised that I wanted to have had a blessed childhood too. That the antagonism I felt toward my father for not understanding me, that the love I felt from my mother didn’t come free with anticipation and expectation that I didn’t feel able to fulfil, that the alienation from my extended family that I had brought about to shield me from being judged and ridiculed, even though there was scant evidence that was true.
Then just like that black cloud lifting I realised that I too was a candidate for a blessed childhood, a blessed life in fact, yes, there was some cleaning up to do, but at its core I could have the kind of blessed childhood that would set me to fulfil my life purpose. And that would happen, not by reliving the past, but by a radical appreciation of the now.
Storytelling for Change Makers: Embracing Life's Energizing Moments
Storytelling for Change Makers is about amplifying the moments that carry life energy for us. It’s about accelerating our inner growth by rediscovering and reflecting on those primary moments and transforming our outlook by paying our unique gifts and talents forward centred in who we really are.
Wanna be a Farmer?
A Journey from Biloela to Tummaville
When my grandfather moved form Biloela to Tummaville with his five sons times, were looking up with the difficult war years behind them. As a dairy farmer, he and his boys were classified as having a reserved occupation - not merely exempt from conscription but forbidden military service. Being German speaking and with no soldiers in the family brought it’s own hardship especially in the playground especially from those who had lost brothers and uncles in the European theatre. It was in this context that the teacher at the country school advised my father at the beginning of his intermediate year that he already had all the education he needed. What’s more, he would be the only kid in the class and it would mean a lot of extra work for him. The there would be the added pressure from the fiercely uncompromising district inspector and he didn’t know if he could manage it anyway, un-resourced as he was with so many youngsters coming on and demanding his attention.
So next trip to town, granddad bought may father a pair of boots and long pants, and he became a farmer. Having been barefoot up until this time, the boots were found to be restrictive and uncomfortable. So he took a sharp blade and cut out the dome of the toes, turning them into, what would you say, a kind of elastic sided sandals. That action was immediately regretted not on account of ruining a new pair of boots, but because they now became the perfect vessel for collecting grass seeds that became a constant source of irritation. What’s more, hard earned money had been paid for them. Grandad had tried his hand at growing wheat alongside the dairy pastures. It was a great success and the first crop yielded eleven bags. Since he didn’t have a vehicle at the time he carried the full harvest just shy of a ton, bag by bag on his back the seven miles to the nearest railway siding.
A Rural Community on the Condamine River
The move to the block on the Condamine River would be a hard earned change, establishing a rural community with another large family of sons who already had plans for building a church. The farm was pristine with an elevated red soil sandy ride protruding above the rich alluvial black soil plains. The ridges were populated by Morton Bay Ashes, to me one of the most spectacular and stately eucalypts, crafted as it were, with a utility and precision that suited the germanic temperament. They had a rough tessellated base to about the height of a tall man or greater of scales the size of your hand, in a pattern resembling the black soil as it dried out, shrank and cracked leaving deep furrows between. Above the base a steely blue trunk that roses abruptly straight as a die, unless it had been damaged by fire or lightning in its juvenile stage. Overhead a canopy that whispers in the breeze and cast a cooling shadow in the hottest of summers. The very old ones are habitat trees for flocks of galahs, cockatoos and egg-loving goannas. Where the grassland is more open it is studded with smooth barked apples, actually an angophora species closely related to eucalypts, bloodwoods splashed with wattles and clumps of cyprus pine.
Within a couple of years of arriving the farm was paid off thanks to the buoyant European wool market and the family settles down to clearing the ancient river gums form the black soils plains. The Condamine flooded regularly before being dammed upstream and great expansesof water covered the country in anticipation of the lush grasses that would follow, something that occurs less and less now a-days and when it does it happens with a vengeance.
The family settled in with high prospects. The uncultivated paddocks were cleared of their ancient river gums and the kangaroos moved on. Those that stayed to grow fat on the sweet wheat grass were short lived, finding themselves within the farmers sights. Their carcasestipped the balance in favour of generations of goannas before they too became rare. The sandy ridges were unprofitable for grain growing as so a couple of family groups of euros, a smaller roo that prefers hilly woodland to the open plains stayed on.
So the sons married and had families. The eldest and youngest move away and the ones in the muffle became established. Families grew and soon I arrived, an easy and happy child, my mother said, but there are certain expectations on a first born son that only work were certain types personalities. As a loved up mummy’s boy who was sensitive and empathic with a sort of hapless naivety the incompatibility with those expectations would inevitable become obvious though not before everything else is tries. Old dogs, leopards spots, many aphorisms apply but now amount of teaching and no degree of harshness can make a person become who that are not.
The Abundant Beauty of the Farm
My feet dangled over the edge of the bench seat in the Holden ute, looking ahead to the round lines of the dashboard, feeling my skinny body rock and roll over as we drove over the bumpy track to see where the clearers were working. They had two huge Caterpillar tractors with a chain between them ripping the trees from the ground as the went. Ears filled with the roar of the tractors, diesel in the air gave way to the smell of sap, then the sound of straining wood, creaking, cracking, splintering. It sounded for all the work to me like screaming. I burst into tears overwhelmed by the palpable violence. Is this hell? My dad looks at me kindly, puzzled and says “What wrong?” I start up on the final seat and slide over to him and put my arms around his neck, he takes one hand off the wheel and pulls me close. I am comforted but not consoled, it will just have to take its course as we drive on down that bumpy track.
When I was old enough I was given an air rifle for my birthday. By that time I was seeped in the TV pioneer culture of the American west. Goodness, we call one of our horses “Trigger”! I sometimes trick ride standing on the saddle going down to bring in the house cow and put her calf in a pen over night so that there would be milk for us in the morning. We has a tank stand at the back of the house for rainwater that fed the house and garden. Beside it was a fig tree that bore delicious fruit year after year. It was a magnet to parrots from all around and many seasons they would strip the tree just before the fruit was fully ripe. This year I though I would save the crop, so with John Wayne in mind and slug gun in hand I went to teach them a lesson they would not forget.
The Weight of Guilt: A Lesson Learned
I took aim and pulled the trigger and immediately realised what I had done. I was ashamed that I felt so strongly and hated myself for it. But still this little creature lay dead on the ground. I felt compelled to make restitution form my own benefit but there was no way that I could think of to make amends. I got a spade and gave the little bird a Christian burial nearby, but it would take more than a fig leaf to cover the shame I felt. It didn’t feel as if the little funeral ceremony ‘took’, I felt God had turned away and I was as damed as that beautiful little parrot.
Seeking Forgiveness and Facing Consequences
A few days later I confessed to everyone what I had done in the hope of punishment that would make me feel better. None came. I was bewildered and sentenced to sorting it out on my own.
Foundation Garments
Morning Routines and Creative Thinking
I go to bed when I am tired, usually after nodding off on the couch for a while following a very predictable pattern. “That’s two,” Carol will say after the second yawn knowing that a few seconds after the third I’ll be away in dreamland. It irks me that I’m so transparent, and it’s indiscrete to point it out, but by that time I don’t care anymore. My attention is elsewhere and no longer concerned with protecting my self image to the outside world.
In the morning I get up when I wake up, usually between 4 and 5 am. There’s the waking thoughts to catch, generally the most interesting and insightful ones I’ll have all day. I like to get dressed in the dark. Putting a light on wrenches me out of the creative dreaming/waking state too quickly even though I’m fully present. Bringing those creative ideas across the sleep threshold is a delicate matter and requires some sensitivity. I’m surprised at how many times I forget to put my glasses on, just about every day in fact, because in the part light I can see just as well without my grasses as I can with. Once I put on the light I’m immediately half blind, not from the light but from my limited eyesight. The first job: find your glasses.
The Boarding School Experience
Just about the whole of my time at boarding school I was in a liminal state, the state between what just happened and what happen’s next. It began when I was about 13 or 14. I’m too embarrassed to say when the metaphoric lights actually came on. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the pain of the teenage years as a reminder that it all meant something, somehow, didn’t it? You see, an older cousin and me hatched a plan at the tea table one evening. The school dining room seated all the boarders, just like the Harry Potter scenes, but without the magical food. Our fair was chicken fricassee and mashed potatoes, I can’t remember what else. The girls sat on one side of the room and the boys on the other with an invisible but impenetrable barrierdown the middle. How do I know that it was impenetrable? I’ll tell you: because in the five years I stayed there I didn’t see a single person cross it. Actually there were two people who did, the housemaster and housemistress. Their more intimate setting was a table for two on a raised dais on the mid line up on end of the room, as if on public display. If they spoke to each other it would immediately come to the interest of the assembled, since they so rarely did, and it often intrigued me what they had to say to each other. I mean, if they had free flowing conversation as a matter of course it would pass as normal and be of no interest at all. But people who sat with each other three times a day, every day and rarely spoke must really have something to say when they did. Such exchanges had all the air of an ordeal rather than a tete-a-tete.
The Power of the Bell
Students on the other hand had no restrictions apart from the impenetrable barrier strictly preventing any discourse or romantic liaisons forming. And there was the bell. The bell was one of, if not the most powerful instrument I’ve witnessed in action. With the ringing of the bell a hush fell on the room for a full two minutes and turned everyone’s attention to their watch, traditionally a gift given at confirmation. A second bell in quick succession forbade voices till the end of the meal. It was a custom agreed upon by the entire student body. If you forgot yourself and asked to pass the chicken fricassee down after the bell, you’d get an elbow in the ribs and probably a kick under the table. There was nothing surer to bring on the double bell ring than some halfwit saying, “Pass the chicken please.” The room would collapse in derisive yet ebullient laughter at such a blatant display of individual absent mindedness, one of the cardinal sins for gangish teenagers.
On one occasion the bell went missing. When he realised the instrument was gone, the housemaster’s face turned scarlet with contained rage and powerlessness. The room sat silent, transfixed, anticipating what happens next. Whatever it would be, it promised to be a once in a lifetimer, the kind of story you would tell to your grandchildren or that scriptwriters put into movies. But the moment passed leaving us all a little uncomfortable, awash in our schadenfreude, though there were plenty of minor enmities between students and the housemaster that they would love to see levelled up, if only they didn’t have tobe the instigator. We suspected one of the senior boys or a number of them acting in joint congress. Only they had and escape hatch and parachute by virtue of seniority and timing. The school couldn’t run without them and their term was nearly up and they were pretty cocky. Turns out one of the cleaning staff forgot to replace it after the room had a thorough scrub down. We waited to hear if someone got fired, but we never did. Either way, it’s not the sort of thing you recover from quickly.
A Midnight Adventure
So, my cousin two years older than me was table monitor and I was sitting next to him with four others at the dining room table allocated to us. This was an ordered world where nothing was left to chance. He said, “I dare you to go with me up to the girl’s hostel after lights out.” “Sure I will,” says I, excited at the naughtiness and the opportunity to demonstrate that I could think for myself.”
On the night in question I was woken dearly from sleep. “Come on.” The moon was out as we crossed the main road a couple of hundred metres from our dorms and went round the back of the hostel. He decided to rescue a bra from the clothes line. I felt uneasy about it, not so much the taking, I had no doubt it would be returned promptly once it had provided evidence of our daring, but a bra. One could hardly look at such an item with any more than an averted glance, actually touching one… a step too far. Anyway I was a junior partner in the outfit so we went back to bed and I didn’t think of it again. There was no concern about getting found out since we’d made no secret of our intention. But that arguably harmless event breached a boundary that unleashed a tsunami of trouble, one whose waves and aftershock would reverberate for decades, I kid you not.
That event and against all probability became the Axis Mundi, world centre, the connection between heaven and hell that governed my life for years to come. Storytellers talk about inciting incidents, contrivances of the universe to install a particular trajectory on which events unfold.
We got found out by the authorities by a peculiar happenstance. A classmate, of whom I wasn’t particularly fond, was sweet on my cousin also going to the same school and the same age as us. He was wooing for her affection. When after about three weeks and we had all forgotten about our midnight escapade, she rejected his overtures, he decided upon an unlikely retribution to call her good name and reputation into question by family association. He jabbed mercilessly with the whole deliciously sordid details of her cousin’s in flagrante delicto that is to say my role in the bra theft. At this intolerable attack, and in hot pursuit of her reputation she reported the incident to the housemistress, thence to the housemaster and up every step in the chain of command to the principal. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was discussed in the halls at synod by those who were disgusted by what the school and the church were coming to. Remember this was the 1960’s and the amalgamation of the two Lutheran churches hadn’t happened yet, though discussions had been taking place since, I don’t know, federation. It wasn’t just doctrinal matters at stake, though I couldn’t tell you what they were. What I do know is that the whole question as to whether women would continue to wear hats and gloves in church and would dancing be allowed at church socials was in question. These things would eventually be resolved but not without further division. There were, I think, two churches in Australia before amalgamation and after, four.
The upshot was that my cousin was suspended and sent home for a couple of weeks. From my point of view he was the lucky one. I was put on disciplinary probation for the term and confined to barracks for the next. Talk about misery guts! At the interrogation I bawled uncontrollably, knowing that my life was over. Why did you do it? He asked again and again. I had no answer, only more pathetic sobs. The same reason, I supposed as why anyone does anything. My parents were called in to have a talk. They were more surprised by the fuss than the cause. It even showed a bit of plucky courage. I think if I had been able to get over myself I would have even detected a little bit of pride. Unbeknown to me, dad had his own issues with the principle and the ultra conservative direction he was taking. But inside I was devastated, completely. From then on the principal would address me as young Arn, the leader of the insurrection, after my father.
Next holidays back on the farm, I slipped off the boom spray while dad and me were spraying weeds. Chemical farming was being trialed for the first time. Dad, out of earshot and unaware that I had fallen didn’t stop the tractor for some time. There were still a couple of rounds to do and by the time we got home for lunch, my knee had swollen to the size of a football. We had to interrupt the spraying which really needed to get done since we’d planned a driving holiday to my father’s youngest brother’s farm near the gem fields in central Queensland. Both families would go together and try our fortune for a couple of days.
Going to the doctors mean a trip to town, and waiting around and half the afternoon would be gone before the rest of the spraying could be done. The doctor said it was a typical footballer’s injury, a tear to the anterior cruciate ligament. He would have done an x-ray up at the hospital but there was no-one there who could operate the machine. So he bandaged it up with the double bandages and cotton wool and sent me home with aspirin. It put a dampener on the trip to the gem fields. No luck there either.
In due course the pain went away, of my knee that is, but I found I had lost the ability to lock it back. I got special permission, now that I was confined to barracks to ride my bike down to the hospital casualty department and find out what was wrong. A part of me felt triumphant in being able to game the system and leave the school grounds while technically still confined to barracks. So I got to have that x-ray taken. “Have you had an injury lately?” the doctor asked, bringing back an avalanche of unwanted memories. “You’ve had a broken leg,” he said, “It’s healed up but not quite in the right place.” We’ll take you into surgery, do some manipulation and you’ll have to have a full length paster cast for about three months.” “What about my bike?” I asked, remembering that it was leaning against the wall out the front of the hospital. “We’ll work something out,” he said.
Later, my cousin, a different one, came to pick up my bike and take it back to school. I was a bit concerned. The old style dynamo bicycle light made it hard to get up that last long hill. This is Toowoomba we’re talking about, built in an extinct volcanic crater. But it all worked out. It was winter time and my trousers fitted easily over the plaster cast and thereby able to keep my troubles concealed.
But what stuck with me all this time, and even then in that wounded state was something the school principal said to me in that interrogation and my sense of it was that he had stepped out of the role of interrogator and asked a question that he was grappling with himself. He leaned in, alcohol on breath and asked, “Why is it that you have to break a persons spirit to get them to do the right thing.”
That question was to me the blessing in this whole sorry saga. You see, dear reader, he asked it of me as if I would know the answer. And that seed took root in my churning and chaotic inner world, it was a question to be wrestled with and would eventually reveal that it was based completely on a false premise. I knew he was wrong, I knew it was wrong and I lost all respect for him in that moment. I would find my own way through that brokenness. There is something in us all at our core that knows the answer, though the freedom that it promised would be a long time coming.
I go to bed when I am tired, usually after nodding off on the couch for a while following a very predictable pattern. “That’s two,” Carol will say after the second yawn knowing that a few seconds after the third I’ll be away in dreamland. It irks me that I’m so transparent, and it’s indiscrete to point it out, but by that time I don’t care anymore. My attention is elsewhere and no longer concerned with protecting my self image to the outside world.
In the morning I get up when I wake up, usually between 4 and 5 am. There’s the waking thoughts to catch, generally the most interesting and insightful ones I’ll have all day. I like to get dressed in the dark. Putting a light on wrenches me out of the creative dreaming/waking state too quickly even though I’m fully present. Bringing those creative ideas across the sleep threshold is a delicate matter and requires some sensitivity. I’m surprised at how many times I forget to put my glasses on, just about every day in fact, because in the part light I can see just as well without my grasses as I can with. Once I put on the light I’m immediately half blind, not from the light but from my limited eyesight. The first job: find your glasses.
Just about the whole of my time at boarding school I was in a liminal state, the state between what just happened and what happen’s next. It began when I was about 13 or 14. I’m too embarrassed to say when the metaphoric lights actually came on. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the pain of the teenage years as a reminder that it all meant something, somehow, didn’t it? You see, an older cousin and me hatched a plan at the tea table one evening. The school dining room seated all the boarders, just like the Harry Potter scenes, but without the magical food. Our fair was chicken fricassee and mashed potatoes, I can’t remember what else. The girls sat on one side of the room and the boys on the other with an invisible but impenetrable barrierdown the middle. How do I know that it was impenetrable? I’ll tell you: because in the five years I stayed there I didn’t see a single person cross it. Actually there were two people who did, the housemaster and housemistress. Their more intimate setting was a table for two on a raised dais on the mid line up on end of the room, as if on public display. If they spoke to each other it would immediately come to the interest of the assembled, since they so rarely did, and it often intrigued me what they had to say to each other. I mean, if they had free flowing conversation as a matter of course it would pass as normal and be of no interest at all. But people who sat with each other three times a day, every day and rarely spoke must really have something to say when they did. Such exchanges had all the air of an ordeal rather than a tete-a-tete.
Students on the other hand had no restrictions apart from the impenetrable barrier strictly preventing any discourse or romantic liaisons forming. And there was the bell. The bell was one of, if not the most powerful instrument I’ve witnessed in action. With the ringing of the bell a hush fell on the room for a full two minutes and turned everyone’s attention to their watch, traditionally a gift given at confirmation. A second bell in quick succession forbade voices till the end of the meal. It was a custom agreed upon by the entire student body. If you forgot yourself and asked to pass the chicken fricassee down after the bell, you’d get an elbow in the ribs and probably a kick under the table. There was nothing surer to bring on the double bell ring than some halfwit saying, “Pass the chicken please.” The room would collapse in derisive yet ebullient laughter at such a blatant display of individual absent mindedness, one of the cardinal sins for gangish teenagers.
On one occasion the bell went missing. When he realised the instrument was gone, the housemaster’s face turned scarlet with contained rage and powerlessness. The room sat silent, transfixed, anticipating what happens next. Whatever it would be, it promised to be a once in a lifetimer, the kind of story you would tell to your grandchildren or that scriptwriters put into movies. But the moment passed leaving us all a little uncomfortable, awash in our schadenfreude, though there were plenty of minor enmities between students and the housemaster that they would love to see levelled up, if only they didn’t have tobe the instigator. We suspected one of the senior boys or a number of them acting in joint congress. Only they had and escape hatch and parachute by virtue of seniority and timing. The school couldn’t run without them and their term was nearly up and they were pretty cocky. Turns out one of the cleaning staff forgot to replace it after the room had a thorough scrub down. We waited to hear if someone got fired, but we never did. Either way, it’s not the sort of thing you recover from quickly.
So, my cousin two years older than me was table monitor and I was sitting next to him with four others at the dining room table allocated to us. This was an ordered world where nothing was left to chance. He said, “I dare you to go with me up to the girl’s hostel after lights out.” “Sure I will,” says I, excited at the naughtiness and the opportunity to demonstrate that I could think for myself.”
On the night in question I was woken dearly from sleep. “Come on.” The moon was out as we crossed the main road a couple of hundred metres from our dorms and went round the back of the hostel. He decided to rescue a bra from the clothes line. I felt uneasy about it, not so much the taking, I had no doubt it would be returned promptly once it had provided evidence of our daring, but a bra. One could hardly look at such an item with any more than an averted glance, actually touching one… a step too far. Anyway I was a junior partner in the outfit so we went back to bed and I didn’t think of it again. There was no concern about getting found out since we’d made no secret of our intention. But that arguably harmless event breached a boundary that unleashed a tsunami of trouble, one whose waves and aftershock would reverberate for decades, I kid you not.
That event and against all probability became the Axis Mundi, world centre, the connection between heaven and hell that governed my life for years to come. Storytellers talk about inciting incidents, contrivances of the universe to install a particular trajectory on which events unfold.
We got found out by the authorities by a peculiar happenstance. A classmate, of whom I wasn’t particularly fond, was sweet on my cousin also going to the same school and the same age as us. He was wooing for her affection. When after about three weeks and we had all forgotten about our midnight escapade, she rejected his overtures, he decided upon an unlikely retribution to call her good name and reputation into question by family association. He jabbed mercilessly with the whole deliciously sordid details of her cousin’s in flagrante delicto that is to say my role in the bra theft. At this intolerable attack, and in hot pursuit of her reputation she reported the incident to the housemistress, thence to the housemaster and up every step in the chain of command to the principal. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was discussed in the halls at synod by those who were disgusted by what the school and the church were coming to. Remember this was the 1960’s and the amalgamation of the two Lutheran churches hadn’t happened yet, though discussions had been taking place since, I don’t know, federation. It wasn’t just doctrinal matters at stake, though I couldn’t tell you what they were. What I do know is that the whole question as to whether women would continue to wear hats and gloves in church and would dancing be allowed at church socials was in question. These things would eventually be resolved but not without further division. There were, I think, two churches in Australia before amalgamation and after, four.
The upshot was that my cousin was suspended and sent home for a couple of weeks. From my point of view he was the lucky one. I was put on disciplinary probation for the term and confined to barracks for the next. Talk about misery guts! At the interrogation I bawled uncontrollably, knowing that my life was over. Why did you do it? He asked again and again. I had no answer, only more pathetic sobs. The same reason, I supposed as why anyone does anything. My parents were called in to have a talk. They were more surprised by the fuss than the cause. It even showed a bit of plucky courage. I think if I had been able to get over myself I would have even detected a little bit of pride. Unbeknown to me, dad had his own issues with the principle and the ultra conservative direction he was taking. But inside I was devastated, completely. From then on the principal would address me as young Arn, the leader of the insurrection, after my father.
Next holidays back on the farm, I slipped off the boom spray while dad and me were spraying weeds. Chemical farming was being trialed for the first time. Dad, out of earshot and unaware that I had fallen didn’t stop the tractor for some time. There were still a couple of rounds to do and by the time we got home for lunch, my knee had swollen to the size of a football. We had to interrupt the spraying which really needed to get done since we’d planned a driving holiday to my father’s youngest brother’s farm near the gem fields in central Queensland. Both families would go together and try our fortune for a couple of days.
Going to the doctors mean a trip to town, and waiting around and half the afternoon would be gone before the rest of the spraying could be done. The doctor said it was a typical footballer’s injury, a tear to the anterior cruciate ligament. He would have done an x-ray up at the hospital but there was no-one there who could operate the machine. So he bandaged it up with the double bandages and cotton wool and sent me home with aspirin. It put a dampener on the trip to the gem fields. No luck there either.
In due course the pain went away, of my knee that is, but I found I had lost the ability to lock it back. I got special permission, now that I was confined to barracks to ride my bike down to the hospital casualty department and find out what was wrong. A part of me felt triumphant in being able to game the system and leave the school grounds while technically still confined to barracks. So I got to have that x-ray taken. “Have you had an injury lately?” the doctor asked, bringing back an avalanche of unwanted memories. “You’ve had a broken leg,” he said, “It’s healed up but not quite in the right place.” We’ll take you into surgery, do some manipulation and you’ll have to have a full length paster cast for about three months.” “What about my bike?” I asked, remembering that it was leaning against the wall out the front of the hospital. “We’ll work something out,” he said.
Later, my cousin, a different one, came to pick up my bike and take it back to school. I was a bit concerned. The old style dynamo bicycle light made it hard to get up that last long hill. This is Toowoomba we’re talking about, built in an extinct volcanic crater. But it all worked out. It was winter time and my trousers fitted easily over the plaster cast and thereby able to keep my troubles concealed.
But what stuck with me all this time, and even then in that wounded state was something the school principal said to me in that interrogation and my sense of it was that he had stepped out of the role of interrogator and asked a question that he was grappling with himself. He leaned in, alcohol on breath and asked, “Why is it that you have to break a persons spirit to get them to do the right thing.”
That question was to me the blessing in this whole sorry saga. You see, dear reader, he asked it of me as if I would know the answer. And that seed took root in my churning and chaotic inner world, it was a question to be wrestled with and would eventually reveal that it was based completely on a false premise. I knew he was wrong, I knew it was wrong and I lost all respect for him in that moment. I would find my own way through that brokenness. There is something in us all at our core that knows the answer, though the freedom that it promised would be a long time coming.
I go to bed when I am tired, usually after nodding off on the couch for a while following a very predictable pattern. “That’s two,” Carol will say after the second yawn knowing that a few seconds after the third I’ll be away in dreamland. It irks me that I’m so transparent, and it’s indiscrete to point it out, but by that time I don’t care anymore. My attention is elsewhere and no longer concerned with protecting my self image to the outside world.
In the morning I get up when I wake up, usually between 4 and 5 am. There’s the waking thoughts to catch, generally the most interesting and insightful ones I’ll have all day. I like to get dressed in the dark. Putting a light on wrenches me out of the creative dreaming/waking state too quickly even though I’m fully present. Bringing those creative ideas across the sleep threshold is a delicate matter and requires some sensitivity. I’m surprised at how many times I forget to put my glasses on, just about every day in fact, because in the part light I can see just as well without my grasses as I can with. Once I put on the light I’m immediately half blind, not from the light but from my limited eyesight. The first job: find your glasses.
Just about the whole of my time at boarding school I was in a liminal state, the state between what just happened and what happen’s next. It began when I was about 13 or 14. I’m too embarrassed to say when the metaphoric lights actually came on. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the pain of the teenage years as a reminder that it all meant something, somehow, didn’t it? You see, an older cousin and me hatched a plan at the tea table one evening. The school dining room seated all the boarders, just like the Harry Potter scenes, but without the magical food. Our fair was chicken fricassee and mashed potatoes, I can’t remember what else. The girls sat on one side of the room and the boys on the other with an invisible but impenetrable barrierdown the middle. How do I know that it was impenetrable? I’ll tell you: because in the five years I stayed there I didn’t see a single person cross it. Actually there were two people who did, the housemaster and housemistress. Their more intimate setting was a table for two on a raised dais on the mid line up on end of the room, as if on public display. If they spoke to each other it would immediately come to the interest of the assembled, since they so rarely did, and it often intrigued me what they had to say to each other. I mean, if they had free flowing conversation as a matter of course it would pass as normal and be of no interest at all. But people who sat with each other three times a day, every day and rarely spoke must really have something to say when they did. Such exchanges had all the air of an ordeal rather than a tete-a-tete.
Students on the other hand had no restrictions apart from the impenetrable barrier strictly preventing any discourse or romantic liaisons forming. And there was the bell. The bell was one of, if not the most powerful instrument I’ve witnessed in action. With the ringing of the bell a hush fell on the room for a full two minutes and turned everyone’s attention to their watch, traditionally a gift given at confirmation. A second bell in quick succession forbade voices till the end of the meal. It was a custom agreed upon by the entire student body. If you forgot yourself and asked to pass the chicken fricassee down after the bell, you’d get an elbow in the ribs and probably a kick under the table. There was nothing surer to bring on the double bell ring than some halfwit saying, “Pass the chicken please.” The room would collapse in derisive yet ebullient laughter at such a blatant display of individual absent mindedness, one of the cardinal sins for gangish teenagers.
On one occasion the bell went missing. When he realised the instrument was gone, the housemaster’s face turned scarlet with contained rage and powerlessness. The room sat silent, transfixed, anticipating what happens next. Whatever it would be, it promised to be a once in a lifetimer, the kind of story you would tell to your grandchildren or that scriptwriters put into movies. But the moment passed leaving us all a little uncomfortable, awash in our schadenfreude, though there were plenty of minor enmities between students and the housemaster that they would love to see levelled up, if only they didn’t have tobe the instigator. We suspected one of the senior boys or a number of them acting in joint congress. Only they had and escape hatch and parachute by virtue of seniority and timing. The school couldn’t run without them and their term was nearly up and they were pretty cocky. Turns out one of the cleaning staff forgot to replace it after the room had a thorough scrub down. We waited to hear if someone got fired, but we never did. Either way, it’s not the sort of thing you recover from quickly.
So, my cousin two years older than me was table monitor and I was sitting next to him with four others at the dining room table allocated to us. This was an ordered world where nothing was left to chance. He said, “I dare you to go with me up to the girl’s hostel after lights out.” “Sure I will,” says I, excited at the naughtiness and the opportunity to demonstrate that I could think for myself.”
On the night in question I was woken dearly from sleep. “Come on.” The moon was out as we crossed the main road a couple of hundred metres from our dorms and went round the back of the hostel. He decided to rescue a bra from the clothes line. I felt uneasy about it, not so much the taking, I had no doubt it would be returned promptly once it had provided evidence of our daring, but a bra. One could hardly look at such an item with any more than an averted glance, actually touching one… a step too far. Anyway I was a junior partner in the outfit so we went back to bed and I didn’t think of it again. There was no concern about getting found out since we’d made no secret of our intention. But that arguably harmless event breached a boundary that unleashed a tsunami of trouble, one whose waves and aftershock would reverberate for decades, I kid you not.
Unraveling a Life-Changing Event
That event and against all probability became the Axis Mundi, world centre, the connection between heaven and hell that governed my life for years to come. Storytellers talk about inciting incidents, contrivances of the universe to install a particular trajectory on which events unfold.
We got found out by the authorities by a peculiar happenstance. A classmate, of whom I wasn’t particularly fond, was sweet on my cousin also going to the same school and the same age as us. He was wooing for her affection. When after about three weeks and we had all forgotten about our midnight escapade, she rejected his overtures, he decided upon an unlikely retribution to call her good name and reputation into question by family association. He jabbed mercilessly with the whole deliciously sordid details of her cousin’s in flagrante delicto that is to say my role in the bra theft. At this intolerable attack, and in hot pursuit of her reputation she reported the incident to the housemistress, thence to the housemaster and up every step in the chain of command to the principal. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was discussed in the halls at synod by those who were disgusted by what the school and the church were coming to. Remember this was the 1960’s and the amalgamation of the two Lutheran churches hadn’t happened yet, though discussions had been taking place since, I don’t know, federation. It wasn’t just doctrinal matters at stake, though I couldn’t tell you what they were. What I do know is that the whole question as to whether women would continue to wear hats and gloves in church and would dancing be allowed at church socials was in question. These things would eventually be resolved but not without further division. There were, I think, two churches in Australia before amalgamation and after, four.
The upshot was that my cousin was suspended and sent home for a couple of weeks. From my point of view he was the lucky one. I was put on disciplinary probation for the term and confined to barracks for the next. Talk about misery guts! At the interrogation I bawled uncontrollably, knowing that my life was over. Why did you do it? He asked again and again. I had no answer, only more pathetic sobs. The same reason, I supposed as why anyone does anything. My parents were called in to have a talk. They were more surprised by the fuss than the cause. It even showed a bit of plucky courage. I think if I had been able to get over myself I would have even detected a little bit of pride. Unbeknown to me, dad had his own issues with the principle and the ultra conservative direction he was taking. But inside I was devastated, completely. From then on the principal would address me as young Arn, the leader of the insurrection, after my father.
A Tearful Injury and Lost Opportunity
Next holidays back on the farm, I slipped off the boom spray while dad and me were spraying weeds. Chemical farming was being trialed for the first time. Dad, out of earshot and unaware that I had fallen didn’t stop the tractor for some time. There were still a couple of rounds to do and by the time we got home for lunch, my knee had swollen to the size of a football. We had to interrupt the spraying which really needed to get done since we’d planned a driving holiday to my father’s youngest brother’s farm near the gem fields in central Queensland. Both families would go together and try our fortune for a couple of days.
Going to the doctors mean a trip to town, and waiting around and half the afternoon would be gone before the rest of the spraying could be done. The doctor said it was a typical footballer’s injury, a tear to the anterior cruciate ligament. He would have done an x-ray up at the hospital but there was no-one there who could operate the machine. So he bandaged it up with the double bandages and cotton wool and sent me home with aspirin. It put a dampener on the trip to the gem fields. No luck there either.
A Painful Discovery
In due course the pain went away, of my knee that is, but I found I had lost the ability to lock it back. I got special permission, now that I was confined to barracks to ride my bike down to the hospital casualty department and find out what was wrong. A part of me felt triumphant in being able to game the system and leave the school grounds while technically still confined to barracks. So I got to have that x-ray taken. “Have you had an injury lately?” the doctor asked, bringing back an avalanche of unwanted memories. “You’ve had a broken leg,” he said, “It’s healed up but not quite in the right place.” We’ll take you into surgery, do some manipulation and you’ll have to have a full length paster cast for about three months.” “What about my bike?” I asked, remembering that it was leaning against the wall out the front of the hospital. “We’ll work something out,” he said.
Later, my cousin, a different one, came to pick up my bike and take it back to school. I was a bit concerned. The old style dynamo bicycle light made it hard to get up that last long hill. This is Toowoomba we’re talking about, built in an extinct volcanic crater. But it all worked out. It was winter time and my trousers fitted easily over the plaster cast and thereby able to keep my troubles concealed.
Questioning Authority and Finding One's Path
But what stuck with me all this time, and even then in that wounded state was something the school principal said to me in that interrogation and my sense of it was that he had stepped out of the role of interrogator and asked a question that he was grappling with himself. He leaned in, alcohol on breath and asked, “Why is it that you have to break a persons spirit to get them to do the right thing.”
That question was to me the blessing in this whole sorry saga. You see, dear reader, he asked it of me as if I would know the answer. And that seed took root in my churning and chaotic inner world, it was a question to be wrestled with and would eventually reveal that it was based completely on a false premise. I knew he was wrong, I knew it was wrong and I lost all respect for him in that moment. I would find my own way through that brokenness. There is something in us all at our core that knows the answer, though the freedom that it promised would be a long time coming.
Mental Health Issues
In my teens and for a good while afterwards, I resisted any notion of having ‘mental health issues’. I certainly had issues, but to call them ‘mental’ ignores the herd of elephants in the room; my body, the world, people, authority and so on, ad infinitum. It feels a euphemistic and pointless avoidance. When confronted by such allegations, I retreated into the belief that my accusers’ judgement of me was simply because I was not like them, kind of like jealousy but not really. Come on, I knew that I was not like normal people and accepted it, much of the time, uncomfortably, but nonetheless. How I was not like them was more difficult to say. Yes, I wasn’t good at sport and no, I didn’t have friends though not for the want of trying. The biggest thing, I figured, was that my inner world didn’t match their’s.
My family was pious and devout, I think in a good way. We said grace before every meal and read devotions on bible stories twice a day. It bred into us a passive attitude towards God and an exclusive one towards the outside world. Our community was strong, based on high moral principles but, I’m afraid to say, with a deep underlying stain of shame, shame born of original sin.
Was the shame an intentional part of the doctrine? I have no idea. By intentional, I mean the inner tensions that cause you to break open. If so, I reasoned, it should have been its own remedy, self correcting, through the prescribed path of forgiveness. Now, half a century later I can say that all paths are paths. But this is now and that was then. “So why wasn’t it working for me?” I’d ask. Was it my personality, that of a naturally compulsive empiricist; some unkind, well meaning persons call it ‘naive’. Or perhaps it was the inherited trauma from parents who in their early years were preoccupied with casting off German parentage and mother tongue in regional wartime playgrounds. Or perhaps being so absorbed in my own concerns that I was incapable of consideration for others, a rebel with an unseen and unknown ‘whatever’. One could hardly say ‘cause’. Oh, yes, I know! A rebel against an unseen, unknown and unknowing self, trapped back by secrets, some good and not so good, and unspoken stories, again both positive and negative. The resultant struggle was completely reflexive, relentless and unresponsive, and pathologically lacking self awareness.
As I contemplate these memories I am taken back to boarding school, an experience that might have been altogether positive and healing. I wonder if my parents sent us three older kids there to complete an education that they weren’t able to. Fascinating though they were, chemical valency and quantum mechanics and the like, didn’t substitute for a solid spiritual breakthrough. God knows we’d done the prep. Some of the historical challenges and trials were held so tightly and so repressed, it was hard to believe they mattered any more. The shock, after many years and considerable expense that boarding school had been a hit and miss affair and had not paid off was devastating. You send away a child and get back a noncompliant and ill-equipped teenager, just like you were, knowing that if you let go of your white knuckle grip on your reality to accept a helping hand, you’d fall into the abyss. So it was for me. I was broke, not broken but completely left wanting.
The notion that at boarding school, I had a ‘personality defect’ seemed completely unfair given the incipient hostility of the outside world as I saw it, the world that was not me. I didn’t yet know there was a seperate inner and an outer world. Still don’t accept that distinction!
In grisly retrospect, those bible stories were out to lunch, God and the devil goofing off after the disappointment of the garden project and amusing themselves with their Job-ish wagers. God’s work was done and what was left could be outsourced to angels. The devil’s on the other hand is intermittent. He’s an independent contractor. Had they thought to include a user manual with the Bible it might have said, “Warning, using this cautionary tale as a rule book voids warranty. Do so at your peril!”
How is it, you may ask, that in this universe, God and the devil are besties. It’s simple, I reply. God’s favourite creation, and this will come as a shock to cats everywhere, is the human being. Dogs don’t care, they love you regardless. When God created Adam, he saw that it was good and was mighty pleased with himself. The Angels were cool too, though a step below humans in the hierarchy. Their commission is to support humans with an unseen hand, you’ve probably seen the pictures. The devil though, is a bit of a maverick, more like humans than other angels with a mind of his own. He took it upon himself to disregard God’s instructions convinced that service should be given to God alone and so refused to serve humans. To do so would be demeaning to him and to God. It’s a point of principle, and an important one. So he was cast into hell.
Now the popular idea of hell is a place where devil hangs out delivering devilish vengeance onto unbelievers. Not so, I protest. It is clear from the good book that this stasis in the popular mind is simply the result of a lack of imagination. Had it not been for the devil, we humans would be no better than the angels, confined to relentless bliss in the garden where nothing happens and no-one realises. The devil on the other hand had a plan to release humans from endless drudgery, blissful as it was, if one can be blissful without realising it.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t aware of any of this in my teens, I was too obsessively compulsively waiting for God, who incidentally didn’t show. So I hung out with the devil ie, bucked convention, not because I liked him but just for the company, endlessly exploring the empirical nature of the good versus evil dichotomy in elaborate thought experiments and occasionally through experience. Ouch! When such experiments lead me into a diabolical life crisis some decades later, witnesses concluded I was possessed by the devil. Or else I was having a mental breakdown. Both were true, neither had a clue and all unhelpful, though I did accrue a lot of data!
I tried to fathom how neither Eve nor the devil were concerned with collateral damage in their decision to take a bite of the apple. God too for that matter, who is too high and mighty to actually turn up. Or could it be that God, Eve and the devil were in cahoots, concerned only with the kernel at the spiritual core, aware the shell that held it would drop away freely after a jolly good clout, and be recycled. It’s the almond that sprouts to make a new tree not the shell. Shells are yesterdays story. Come to think of it, apples and almonds make a delicious combination, to die for, as they say. I’m more like a walnut lacking the perspicacity of the almond.
So that just leaves the one question that I know you must be asking, “Where does that leave shame?” Put simply, the shame is the hell, I mean shell.
https://twitter.com/CNN/status/1162499555289640961?s=20
https://twitter.com/PhillipAdams_1/status/1162231425388597248?s=20
Story is so important because it provides not just the plot lines, something we are so very interested in as change makers it also provides the context. And it is the context that provides much of the energy not only for the structure but also a creative approach to the plot trajectories, if I can put it that way, for where and how and who and what needs to happen.
It is very easy to get caught in the stasis of believing the way things are are the way they are. Of course they are but also never what they seem, nor do they stay the same moment to moment. It’s more a matter of the movie or the poster. While a poster is designed to evoke a feeling response that goes to, “I gotta see that,” it does not reveal the plot line.
There is also another important aspect of mythic stories, be they person or collective myths and that is that myths are more movie like that poster frame. Plot and context, seed and earth, particle and wave, hammer and nail, surfer and wave, rain and umbrella, male and female (I’m talking archetype not gender), these things occur in couples. So with the storytelling for change makers, it is not enough to do something in an isolated way. Doing only makes a difference in the context of being. Out of being and doing emerges becoming.
We can never act alone. We need a group, a community even if it a community of two or three gathered together unified.
Be the change you want to see in the world acting through you sense of purpose based on your authentic self. Plot, trajectory and energy. Once we get stuck on how an outcome should look we can become impotent. Too big, Too hard, wrong direction. It is not the issue that needs to change but the purpose that needs to be fulfilled, and your unique role in contributing to that purpose. Getting stuck on the change makes everything become transaction rather than relational, and forces you to resort to raw power rather than the power of love and compassion.
For my parents it was about devotion to Jesus. That didn’t happen for me. There was too much either or as I was refreshing my personal creation myth based on the story of science, and a multitude of creation myths from many cultures. Now I can find Jesus in my inner world, along with Buddha, Loa Tsu, the Dreaming ancestors, and many others.
If the change you want to make is through your business or organisation, then the process is the same. Make your change through something (Relational) rather than to something (Transactional)
Being Belonging Becoming
A Late Homecoming
“ Not under my roof…” said my father, voice arching up with the frustration of many years.
“Wait on, dad. Wait on.” I interrupted in a tone as even as I could muster.
“It’s not my intention to offend you. It’s OK. We’ll make our own arrangements.”
And in that short moment I slipped from under a shadow that had dogged me my whole life.
Some of my earliest memories were of of vain attempts to have my father’s approval. This time felt different. Our struggle, was the same as those that inspired that great stories throughout history, the son’s ordeal of meeting the Father.
The more one struggles to win the father’s approval the worse it gets. Accidents become mistakes, mistakes misdeeds, misdeeds catastrophes. I gradually came to think that the grand purpose of my life was to be a cautionary tale for others. The triumph of overcoming the need for my father’s approval was immediately set upon by the feeling of loss. In that moment I knew I would never have the relationship I craved. I would be my own man.
The issue at the moment was on that most wayward children of fundamentalist Christian parents face at some time. My father followed the good book and was not an angry man. He was loved and respected by the community and for good reason. But to me he was a harsh disciplinarian especially in the privacy of the family. Not for want of emotional control but on principle, for his own eternal salvation and that of his family. What other people did was their business. But in his home, there would be no exceptions.
Lawerence of Arabia
Background
Navigating Insurmountable Obstacles
I think most people have experienced a time in their lives when they feel like they’re trapped in a bad movie. Have you? It’s like facing a brick wall, with nowhere to go. But if you are able to take a step back, rise above it all or even distance yourself form the scene, a way out that wasn’t obvious before may come into view. Therefore it’s really powerful to practice shifting you point of view, like being both the main character and the author in a story you are writing.
I was about 9 or 10 years old when the epic film, “Lawrence of Arabia” was released in Australia. It coincided with a visit to see relatives living in Brisbane. My uncle suggested were should all go to the movies, it would be a treat for us country folk. Dad wasn’t interested and mum really just wanted to spend time with her eldest sister. But my uncle was really keen. He had served in a transport battalion during the war and this film was one not to be missed. So he took my big sister and me and hiskids about our age to go to and see it.
We sat wondering in darkness as a long musical prelude played. I was overawed, right out of my comfort zone but the action soon got under way, a grand epic of old testament proportions and just as brutal. It would remain one of my favourite movies of all time. I think it left us all disorientated and I clearly remember my uncle describing to mum and dad how the projectionist got the reels of film mixed up and couldn’t find the first reel in time so played music while he organised. Thenin his haste started with the iron reel, so we got to see Lawrence’s death and funeral first, then went back to tell the story of his life.
I knew there was no mistake but didn’t have anything to say about the movie. I wouldn’t know where to start. The locations, the characters, the story arc, I had never experienced anything as grand not even in my imagination. What stayed with me was the scene following the perilous camel treck across the Nefud Desert in which Lawrence, against all advice from those who know better went back to rescue someone who had fallen asleep with exhaustion and was now stranded without water his death certain. After the rescue a fight breaks out between feuding tribes and a man is shot and killed. Unless the murderer is brought to justice there will be an uproar and the entire campaign fail. But the crime demands a life for a life yet if the executioner is from the feuding tribe old wounds would be opened. Therefore Lawrence carries out the execution himself, executing the very person he rescued.
Sherif Ali is resigned, the death is written:
T.E.Lawrence:
Nothing is written.
Sherif Ali:
Truly, for some men nothing is written unless THEY write it themselves.
In the course of our personal, professional, business and organisational lives we face irreconcilable challenges and forced to rewrite our story or succumb to the inevitable.
Joseph Campbell’s insight that all great stories, whether they be cultural Myths or biographies conform to a deeper pattern that alert us to greater freedom that is available to us. But theability to author our own stories past impossible challenges must be earned and it is through a “The Hero’s /Heroine’s Journey” we discover a pathway to a freer, wiser way of living.
Therefore having a sound navigation system stops you from getting lost on the way. But the Hero’s Journey is both a mirror and a window that enables us to reflect on our deepest passions and desires as well as providing us a perspective that can reorient us in our life’s journey.
I find mapping my current circumstances relative to a personal or professional challenge onto the hero’s journey points to the form of what to do next. That in itself is encouraging and opens maybe an escape hatch or even a double barrage door to an alternate trajectory for the story. Knowing that this current road is one of trials also implied that this too shall pass. At another time the realisation of receiving a boon calls for celebration to fortify oneself for the onward journey. At another time it may be the awareness that I am refusing my intuition that may have the key to unlock a mystery.
Fractals and stories
Numbers can be convincing just as much as we are moved by stories. It is a cultural preference. Other cultures prioritise relationships over transactions. What is most important to you, making friends or making deals. I’ve oversimplified here to make a point, and that is that we have a preference that can be confusing if we try to do both simultaneously. But ultimately we make meaning using stories. Numbers need context, that is to say backstory, to have meaning. Furthermore the meaning we make of numbers vary as the stories about them change. In this way I believe stories are primary and being able to write our own stories is extremely powerful way to direct our lives. Whether consciously or unconsciously this is what we do anyway. The polls may predict which political party gains office but it is their narrative the determines if they do or not. Ultimately they are two sides of the same coin.
Stories contain patterns. In its simplest form, let’s say you hear some crying out, “Help!” You can’t get much shorter than that. Just one word. But when we hear that we process it as a story by making various interpretations and assumptions based on that one word. We will infer direction, perhaps the age and sex of the caller. We will also make a judgement on urgency and intensity.
We recognise stories as having a beginning, midle and end and with that comes a sense of satisfaction for the listener and the story teller. Some stories are multi layered and have stories within stories. Often they have repeating patterns either within the story arc or within the story layers, stories within stories. This introduces the second idea, that stories have a fractal quality, the stories within the stories may follow a similar parttern to the larger story, they are self similar on multiple levels.
The purpose of some stories is to repeat a pre-existing pattern, the purpose of other stories is to ‘change the narrative’, and there are many devices through which this takes place. There are ways of drawing the audience into a story, for instance by setting up a story and then not completing it, or by creating an emotional alignment and then avoiding distractions that would break the spell so cast. But most of all “the Hero/Heroine’s journey” illuminates the mostly unconscious workings a story telling and listening and provides not only a predictive tool for how the story might unfold, because this is one of the essential things about stories, our imagination becomes aroused when we catch a wiff of a story and we will provide our own elements for missing parts of the story based on our own experience and then eagerly anticipate being found correct in our assumptions or that there was something altogether different going on.
We are hard wired for story and when there is inadequate data on what is happening in a storied situation we encounter our inclination is to fill in the blanks based on what we already know from other situations encountered previously. It is an emotionally charged instinct for our very survival.
Coming of Consciousness
Becoming self aware
Gaining experience is really just having a story for some phenomena many of which arise incrementally over a long period of time. There are times when our incremental learning is interrupted and we learn something not by gradual accumulation but by an ordeal that changes the way we think about things. What was true before is never so again. There are new factors (data) that have to be taken into consideration that change everything. In short we are in some way not longer who we once were. Sometimes we grapple with finding the new stories that make sense of a new situation so alien is our current circumstance to our previous reality. We find it valuable to have help to map out where we are going either by finding a mentor who has experienced something like this already or we go within and find our own answers, or both. When this happens, and it happens to a greater or lesser degree for all of us, we know we are on a hero or heroine’s journey. Some look to old traditions for answers, others to progressive ideas some do both. Whichever way you choose, you find yourself writing your own story, with a new ending and sometimes it is useful to rewrite some past stories to better fit and provide the foundation for a new trajectory. With current understandings of stories, neuro plasticity and mindfulness we have more power to write our own story than ever before.
Tummaville School
I was resentful for a long time of my father’s propensity to harsh disciplinarianism. It was the was things were done generally and I think stemmed from the anger that arose ion those charged with the responsibility of maintaining good order when they found themselves without control. In order to regain control and respect, a harshness, and sometimes brutality and violence was resorted to generating a n atmosphere of fear and anxiety and sometimes terror.
I want to work with a number of incidents from my first years at school, a small county one-teacher school of about 30 pupils. There was violence there were one would have expected find love and compassion, and us being infants simply put up with things because there wasnot other choice.
The great evil that was perpetrated there was to use corporal punishment for failing to meet learning expectations, being caned for not having learnt spelling words. I recall in the second year of school not knowing spelling and having to stand up on the form. There were big long desks that seated maybe 6 children and a long form to match. If you you didn’t know your spelling you would be told to stand on the forms and hold out your hand for “six of the best”. For me every bit of that school was steeped in violence and terror. We were farm kids and our parents had by and large been raised under a similar rule. The violence felt indiscriminate. It mande me angry and powerless. I recall one of the word abuses was when chub had trouble with something or he may have been a bit cheeky the teach lost control and started laying into him with the cane. Chub fell to the floor and curled up to protect himself while the teacher beat hime with the cane. We felt both the distress of seeing our friend so abused and at the same time feared for our own safety. What went on was literally unbelievable, and when we tried to raise the alarm were simply not believed, that such an atrocity should be happening. I tried to protect myself with illness. Every morning I would be sick and not wan to go to school. The mothers would take turns to car pool. I remember on morning after the holidays that I could not be prised out of the car such was my fear, I don’t know what such consistent resistance to go ing to school didn’t raise concern. I guess it was because our parents had met with similar school experiences.
But I was a precocious learner. What strikes me most on reflection that there was no instruction on how to learn just an expectation that you would meet the grade. Learn was mostly by rote and memory not an understanding of the material being learnt. Most of the learning exercises felt pointless to me. I remember one craft exercise that I thought was going to be fun. It was simple enough. We had an exercise book with a square with geometrical shapes drawn inside. We were given some squares of glossy coloured paper which we had to cut to size and paste in the shapes.
I though this was going to be easy and felt relieved that it didn’t involve a memory exercise that could bring down punishment for being incorrect. To my horror I soon discovered that there was no method to cut the coloured paper to shape. The paper was too thick to trace through and there were no tools available. I decided to put the paper as close as possible to the shapes and draw the shape on the underside with a pencil. Imagine my alarm when I cut out the shapes and found them wildly inaccurate. You were not permitted a second chance. My world cam crashing down in an instant expecting to caned.
The thing is I loved learning and do to this day but found the tools to learn missing. There seemed to me to be a huge gap between knowing and not knowing with no crossing. After two years of this brutal regime it ended. The country school was closed and we were bussed to Milmerran to the central school. But my basic wariness of teachers had been set and became a potent force in my life and thereafter avoided school learning ensuing it for independent learning undercover. I became fiercely antiauthoritarian but nevertheless scarred, shamed at my lack of perfection and caring a kind of survivor guilt. But I loved learning and was curious about the world. It was inevitable that sooner or later I would have major issues with the authoritarian nature of the Lutheran church and the huge disconnect between the message of the gospel, that of compassion and loving kindness and emphasised the ideas of sin borne of shame and unworthiness.
Over the years I watched as my friends, boys of my own age scrummed to mental illness and in some cases suicide.
As I reflect in order to redeem those memories, that love of learning and a respect for custom it seems impassable. I know that the attitudes generated by those experiences left me wounded and unable to be the person I wanted to be. I became an unhappy child and a social misfit, defensive and craving protection. The time comes now to honouring the suffering of that child knowing that these traumatic experiences were within the context of a dogmatic order that was intolerant of straying from the official line. I was unable settle down to earn a good living but continue to battle my demons.
In this process of writing I have focused mainly on those areas were I felt shame and guilt and much less on traumas that I experienced. I considered my suffering less than others and only have to remember those kids that literally shit themselves with terror from abuse and consider myself fortunate to survive. In comparison tho the horrors we hear on the news we seem to be in a protected par of the world. But when I think of it now That safe secure community that he’d its secrets tight is broken open, like a boil that has been lanced and can now heal. But for real healing there must be restitution, restoration that now at this late stage only I can provide for myself. For this writing is not simply to revealhorrible stories of the past but to apply a remedy for others who my find themselves in this position while reform is carried out by a new generation.
When I think about it, that community had to crumble and disappear, for as much as there were romantic notions about growing up on country there desperately need to be an injection of vitality of regeneration that religion was not providing. I think straight away of the rainbow serpent and hoe that principle was not present. And it is that principle that I call upon now to heal and make whole. A spiritual force above and beyond biological and humanistic reasoning. The God that had been captured and constrained within that little country community had lost power. God had been strangled to death by dogma. God in the heavens too had been relegated it seems to me to a private sector of space time, fragmented and neutered. And for all the talk of an all powerful god it was human vigilantes and henchmen that maintain control where one might have expected freedom and these enclaves need to need lanced also.
This is the sense in which the desert lawmen say that the great stories and body of knowledge they contain are the first owners of this country. The people do not own the stories but belong to the stories and the stories belong to or rise up out of country. And to find healing and regeneration we need to reconnect with the source of all that is. Now I realise that this was the same idea that gave rise to ideas about god and dogma was a rationalisation that tried to understand it. But it no longer fits any more than my cut pieces of craft paper to the image. The method used for sizing them up is in adequate to the task. The meetings come as a result of a flawed perception of how learning works and an over zealous craving for safety thought to come from conforming to the conservative order.
Therefore we turn to the process of storytelling and restore those past experiences into a greater context now that the boil is lanced and the guilty secrets broken. I held my parents and all those entrusted with the care of children accountable for their ignorance. At the same time I know by my own experience that you can never know enough to solve these problems. It can only be done through community renewal and that means that the old communities must be demolished rather than idealised so that fresh life force can re-enter and renew. Sacrifice is necessary. Sacrifice of the adherence to safe views. Courage is needed and a degree of cheekiness and humour.
And what of all those who adhere to the old ways. We must not be impatient. We must not resort to killing fields to quicken regeneration in an effort to capture the new god under whose name a new rule is enforced and the old evils perpetrated. God also must be allowed to evolve, for the god we see reflected in creation id ever changing as our ability to perceive.
I think of returning to Adelaide across the Kookatha plains, the Autumn showers in the golden afternoon sunlight, rainbows and sun showers earnestly restoring country exhausted by labour. I feel myself in loving embrace, a state of grace breaks out in oncoming starlight. And the lone bell of silence peels in the vastness of the night, peace falls upon our troubled soul. Finds rest.
Men with chutzpah Gods agents of becoming, but never forget to grow god.
Crossing Kookatha plains,
Autumn showers late golden sun
Replenish country and my soul
With loving embrace of starlit grace
Vast bell of silence peels against black night
Rest for tomorrow comes anew
It doesn’t have to be good poetry only true.
Blessed Childhood
Thanks for being here. Thanks for turning up. Keep doing that and your success, whatever that might be for you, is guaranteed. Not that you will find all the answers here on this page, but that, thank goodness, is not necessary for you to succeed. Because you already have within you what it takes. Some things you already know about and are already well advanced. Others are in potential, already seeded and the others are somewhere in between. So this bit of information is in away the last piece of the puzzle.
You know those big jigsaw puzzles people do on holidays, do people still do those any more, anyway those big jigsaw puzzles where every time you look for the next piece there's a feeling that there is a piece missing. Perhaps it was mfr's mistake or maybe there was a terrorist on the assembly line intent on causing torment it would remove peace during the packaging. Or you find yourself looking around on the floor to see if one has slid off the table onto the floor Will you find yourself looking at the cat and asking," what do you have your mouth."
Then you happen upon it and declare, "I've got it," and start the process all over again.
Well I've got some good news for you–there are no pieces missing, they’re all there. There's no terrorists in the jigsaw puzzle factory. You didn't accidentally dropped a piece of the floor out of sight, unless of course you did, and the cat is quite content with and actually prefers her regular catfood.
How do I know? Well, it was just a matter of time and continuing to turn up in my life. Any questions?
"Thanks for that piece of the puzzle," I hear someone say, "what about the rest." Look on the floor, check that cat… no forget that. The way, or one way, not the one way, I think is to look inside. And I hear someone say,"I did. It's dark and equally in the, even vacuous."
"That's great," I say, "because now we have something to hold onto." In theatre studies, with actors and all that they talk about the need to suspend disbelief so that your imagination can unfurl, unfettered and free to contemplate the unlikely.
I did the opposite. And started the process of suspending my beliefs. I found my disbelief started to unwind all by themselves and that's how I came to realise that I had had a blizzard childhood. It was something that I wanted for along time. I felt, I was going to say I deserved it, I didn't but I thought it was a reasonable thing to ask would want. I didn't really think there was anyone to ask and by then it was too late anyway you would have to approach this thing from an altogether different direction.
You see I grew up in the country, on the magnificent black source of the common mind replying. My father and his brothers with the young wives to parents and some friends I had met through the National Centre of the Lutheran Church decided to build an intentional community there on the Darling Downs. The German Dyas bro was already establishing yourself there with country churches dotted around the fertile farming lambs. I'm looking forward to broad acre farming in that open country the huge skies and leaving behind the relentless toil of the dairy shed. Great sigh of relief after the war years that had the wrong challenges for men who grew up speaking German who were now the food providers of the nation have found themselves in a reserved occupation and exempt actually forbidden from military service along with bakers, doctors and engineers.
We belong to one of the more conservative synods and the struggle between the Conservatives nd the more progressive Lutherans even as, and perhaps because of discussions about the amalgamation of that two major synods have been progressing for some time. I would eventually joined together I was uneasy marriage for some and the process formed three splinter groups.
Well the internal misalignment was Troublesome even kind full, it was joining the outside world it was so destructive of that paradise, that walled garden that got me started in counting my I'm blessings as I say suspension of belief. And crossing no mans land around the garden was painful to many of my friends, painful for my mother, deeply concerning for my father, and deeply incomprehensible to my siblings, uncles, parties and cousins.
So while many people today are driven by the sense of belonging prevent a job, I Lasting soulmate, a bigger this, a bit of that, comparative improvement, I found myself in golf with the nostalgia for what might have been, hey God not fallen asleep at the wheel.
Who wasn't that said," a computer is like an old Testament god, lots of rules and no mercy." When I realise what I was looking for was a new software engineer, one who had the exquisite ability, but when you make a mistake or just randomly, instead of nyewk!! And Olivia an error message, the operating system would flash up cracking really good joke and once you have recovered from the recoil you were in a deliciously altered state, the superlative artificial intelligence of the computer system would go on to say in well modulated times in your 3-D headset," that reminds me of the story…"
Well here I have to tell you that you have been selected, self-selected 30s, to be that software engineer of the operating system that is your consciousness. And it all has to do with storytelling, something with your hardwired for from birth to do, and the unique creative skill of wish can only see the tip of the iceberg with the rest lurking in the diva prices of your mind. I say looting because it can be scary when you go looking for it, but they're inferior so you last year.
As a story geek it's my job to help you suspect your disbelief that recalibrate your self belief to reveal the real you, the One in hiding.
Growing up in the Mythic landscape of the Old Testament
As a child I found adults strangely incomprehensible, for example, they might say things like, “Now, whatever you do, don’t go anywhere near the river.” It was Easter time. Perhaps the most significant religious and social times of our year. After a sombre and introspective Good Friday one or perhaps two of my mother’s brother’s or sister’s families would come for a farmstay
and hence No what do they mean by that. Do they mean don’t go in the water, or perhaps stay out of sight of it, maybe out of earshot. Or maybe it’s like, don’t go too close to the fire, you’ll get burnt” One thing for certain; there was something interesting going on with the river and it was dangerous, beware. Or they might be saying, “Church is in an hour. Don’t get dirty.”
One thing for certain was that now that the Condamine River, which incidentally was now in flood, had been mention edits allure was irresistible. Precise meanings of words were important. We were Lutheran. Like an arcane doctrinal matter, for instance, should the church dress code for women, that is to say , compulsory hats and gloves or other more recent concerns such as, should gramophones be permitted.
In those days, we Lutherans enjoyed an orderly life. Some might say prescribed but that doesn’t by any means imply that we took things for granted but rather all kinds of issues were thoroughly debated at any and every opportunity. That is except for things that were taboo like sex or money, except where they occurred together, like prostitution. The Old Testament was full of it so it seamed.
Many things don’t require explanations. When to plant crops, how to herd cattle, what punishments should be dealt out to you children, how much to give to the missions. These things were to taken as axiomatic, and if something came up of which you were unsure, you were to follow the example of your elders. Though in truth that approach was not so helpful in explaining matters that were taboo.
Bluey
My father’s youngest brother, in need of some quick cash, bought a mob of store cattle to fatten up on his block next door to us. I sensed my father disapproved. They turned out to be completely unlike the docile animals he selected and bred over many years. There were a wild bush breed unknown to us and since they were more than one person could handle on their own, their presence encroached on our orderly farm life. Come muster time us kids were found to be occupied with other pressing jobs. It wasn’t that we didn’t like to help, we actually fancied ourselves as barefoot cowboys. But these beasts were too much for us, particularly the brindled heifer with big horns that evoked images from grandad’s days as a dairy farmer.
At milking time, so he told us, his cows adopted a fixed routine and day and night and sorted themselves in a fixed order for milking each with a preferred stall. He knew intimately the temperament of each one and named them accordingly, Daisy, Gertrude, Strawberry and of course, Satan.
To avoid his brother’s disdain my uncle fixed upon the idea of getting a blue heeler. He had high hopes that their working partnership would be the way forward to restoring neighbourly relations and retrieving his independence. After all that was the point of the exercise in the first place.
Truth is, we were scared of the wild bush bunch brought in to the lush pastures to fatten and ready for market. Perhaps that’s where Bluey got the idea that he was in charge. He had the enthusiasm and the instinct characteristic of his breed but not the prerequisite training for handling a wild mob. In the paddock he was a menace, his nipping at their heels just got them riled. The ensuing free for all drove them in all directions. The brindled one in particular got worked into a frenzy, bucking and kicking and lashing out until spent. Then she’d turn on the dog inviting a head to head stoush. How Bluey avoided being tossed on horn tip was a marvel in itself and a tribute to his indomitable spirit, and exquisite agility.
Loading the truck for sale ushered in with a sense of relief. Bluey, full of his usual bravado, drovethem up the ramp onto the truck. But the brindled heifer would have the last word. Kicking at her old rival darting and nipping at her heels she smashed his jaw against the bottom rail. The vet said he would have to be muzzled until his wired-up jaw had time to heal.
Muzzling Bluey brought on a couple change of attitude. His boundless energy gave way to complete inertia. He lay motionless for hours until his next mushy meal, his eyes moving, following, pleading.
Every animal on our farm had a personality, every paddock sewn with wheat, barley, sorghum or sunflowers, its story. It might be a good strike, or a poor crop, recovering from a late frost or looking good after the last shower. Everything was embodied in story from fixing machinery, to accessing the condition of crops, animals and country.
Our stories propelled the cycle of seasons, ordering and sanctity a familiar yet enigmatic life. Our personal stories were related over the breakfast, lunch and tea table then sanctified by larger Testaments both Old Testament and New that opened and closed each day.
Our country church nestles amongst Moreton Bay Ashes, men with Akubras and suits squat with straw in hand, to chew over some thought then drawn it out in the sand. Cicadas shriek to our chorus of fervent voices, organ pedals creaking, straining to stay relevant in this land to Luther’s Reformation.
An Easter to Remember
Remembering Easter
The Darling Downs grain growing country lies between two weather systems. Winter rain is fairly predictable and in many seasons spectacular electrical storms bring good summer rain as well.
Sometimes heavy falls come around Easter too. Before the Condamine River was “improved” its flow ambled along contentedly with nary a hint of urgency, kept in check by fallen logs tree stumps and gentle bends, its far flung destination weeks away in the Great Australian Bight. When rains persisted water level rose, flooding the river flats, rehydrating and regenerating the deep alluvial soils. On our farm, water backed up through the Canal creek system into Dog Trap Creek and the black soil plains became a shallow sea for frogs and wading birds. It’s one of the most compelling phenomena one experiences living on the Condamine. It forced a reprieve from the endless hours of tractor work for a couple of weeks before efforts were reinvigorated to reclaim order as Bathurst Burr, Stramonium and other weeds germinated.
Change was in the air for our little country church of perhaps 60 souls. Amalgamation with the progressive Lutheran Synod had been cautiously discussed for decades. Many on our side were skeptical. Both branches struggled to get enough pastors to serve the German farming diaspora of small congregations scattered across the country side. Each pastor had a flock divided into three or four parishes that he administered to in turn. It was beyond his powers to attend to each parish every week. Sometimes a retired paster would ‘fill in’. One of our favourites from the fire and brimstone variety caught the early rail motor from Toowoomba and walked the remaining ten miles to preach and exhort the congregation to give generously to the boarding school in Toowoomba. We did.
Before my time, parishes had pooled their resources to buy him an automobile, the caveat being that it had to have a strong enough engine to drive everywhere in third gear. He had never mastered the gear change. However, the initiative proved unsuccessful. Weather was against it. There was no vehicle on the market that could accomodate both sandy roads in the dry and greasy black clay roads during the wet in third gear.Lay preachers with printed sermons were elected and stepped in to conduct ‘reading’ services. There was no other choice. But attendances suffered from shortened liturgies, which us kids found a blessing, since in the absence of an ordained servant of the word sacramental rites could not be accomplished.
Easter was as big a time for adults as Christmas was for children. Uncles, Aunties and cousins would come for a farm-stay. Mum felt the isolation of a famers wife and loved family get togethers. Eider downs would be laid out on the floors for the kids as adults spilled into the bedrooms. I had thirteen families of sixty-five first cousins, and the house was jammed to capacity many holidays, except when it was their turn to put us up in Kumbia, Brisbane or Harvey Bay. Sometimes we’d all rent a house at the beach either Caloundra or Coolum. Best of all was family camp in the Bunya mountains.
1
One Easter it was our turn, and Dad been impressed on my siblings and me that we should be on our best behaviour in front of our guests. “Best behaviour” was never really spelt out. We were God fearing, obedient children on the whole. The plaque on the wall a reminder: “Christ is the head of this house, an unseen guest at every meal and a silent listener at every conversation.” We were pretty clear on the hierarchy from there down. But the fact that it had been thought necessary to remind us created an air of tension. Such occasions often didn’t end well since our fear of misstep made us timid and unsociable and given the chance overanxious to please. I, being the eldest, lead the way.
If asked what bad behaviour was I could tell you; swearing, showing off, asserting yourself, being cheeky, leaving a mess after yourself. Then there was the ill defined, “being bad”. It was really had to be a matter of trial and error. On the whole we were pretty good and happy but we didn’t operate well under pressure. Nevertheless the popular child rearing practices of expectation, warning, scolding and punishment would all pass without anyone being any the wiser. We came to understand that life surprised you with challengers for which you would be responsible. In social situations you are responsible for everyone’s reputation not just your own. Experience is a good teacher.
Lutherans are people of faith. Having faith is the key that unlocks God’s Grace. You’ve all seen it, the rays of light that shines down between the clouds on summer afternoons. And by grace we are saved through Jesus’ blood. Having faith meant that you were able to read and interpret the Bible correctly and thereby have faith. It is through faith we are saved by the blood of the Lamb. I already knew a lot but still very confused. It only I knew the questions to ask.
We were well versed with Bible readings and devotions twice daily, yet doctrinal certainty was elusive and contentious and occupied a lot of the adults free time. I’m not saying people weren’t certain, they just didn’t always agree.
From a young age I had a very active religious imagination. I grew up in a mythic world of heaven and hell with earth here as proxy. But I had mixed feelings, the idea of heaven was poorly sold, an eternity of singing praise. Frankly, I felt better where I was, the world was really good. Hell on the other hand was easy to imagine. Years later I would discover I was a mis-matcher, learning doing and eliminating the things that don’t fit by trial and error. It’s not a very efficient strategy in religious or social life and to my chagrin I found trying to not do the wrong thing was fraught. Eternity is a long time so best sort things out before we get there.
My parents aspirations were for their eldest son (me) to become a pastor and serve the congregations so in need. To visit the poor and comfort the sick and provide guidance and support to the less fortunate. Not everyone had the certainty and assurance that our little community enjoyed. We were truly blessed. And we were. In early years I though it was a good idea too, until one day I climbed up on the sofa in the lounge room, imitating the preachers I had so often seen in the pulpit, only to be shocked to find I had nothing to say.
Our rellies had come up from Brisbane early, arriving in plenty time for a late Easter Sunday church.There had been a lot of rain all up the catchment so they came around the long way over Grasstree Creek just in case the lower bridge over the North Branch of the Condamine was flooded. There was a lot of speculation about whether it would be or not, but no one had been to have a look.
Mum had a little custom for the occasions we we had to hang around waiting until it was time for church. She signalled that we were in in-between time by not having us dress in our Sunday best too early. Instead we would put on shorts and a clean white singlet. Boys being boys we would only get good clothes dirty, and we couldn’t play normally because then we would need another bath.
While the women and big girls are doing the prep for after church, Dad, the Uncles and cousins are wondering what to do. Some farm entertainment is required for our visitors. That presented an immediate challenge since regular farm stuff was forbidden during this ‘singlet time’. My father said to me, “Look after your cousins, will you and David, don’t go near the river.” Now all I heard was “River.” He might as well have said, “David do you know if the flood waters have gone over the bridge yet. It sure would be interesting to find out but don’t even think about it.”
It was about then that I though of going for a walk, not near the river but maybe in that direction. So off we went like ducks in a row, oblivious to the mud puddles and Sunday dresses of the girl cousins who didn’t know about the singlet protocol, and had left their homes dressed for church. Being girls they probably didn’t need to know about it either.
What does near the river mean anyway? Does it mean out of sight, or ear shot or the more likely don’t touch. Not that it mattered because we were not going to go near the river anyway. Yet somehow I found myself leading my little flock, with all the confidence of a farm bred six year old towards the Condamine bridge. It would be ages before we were anywhere “near” it anyway.
As we drew closer I though probably it meant not past the grid at the top of the approaches. Yet when we got that far, it seemed more likely that it meant don’t paddle in the water. I already knew how to inspect the waterline to see if the level was rising or falling. So I went for a look and perhaps all would become clear. My little flock were getting restless and wanted to go back but by now weren’t sure of the way. There might be wild bulls and other scary things too. They were from town after all.
When I discovered that water level still rising it suddenly occurred to me that I was probably too near the river. In a panic I wondered if the presence of the cousins who were now waiting for me up at the grid would alleviate or exacerbate my predicament. After all they hadn’t gone near the river, had they.
Running back home I discovered that when your feet are cold and muddy you can step on bindi-eyes and they don’t even hurt. It’s even fun.
As we approached the house we met a search party coming towards us. Someone quite unnecessarily remarked, “Boy, are you in trouble!” It made me curious how punishment worked in other families.
Within a minute our motley little mud spattered flock was gathered on the lawn by the house. Dad arrived from somewhere. I had no idea where he had been. In front of the assemblage of uncles and cousins, Dad with exasperation demanded, “David, where have you been, it’s time for church.” I looked down at my pink toe tips peeping out from mud covered legs. My ears burned with embarrassment, self conscious under the eyes of the uncles. Thankfully the mothers were inside doing their hair up. They had been dying to try the new hair drier that one of the teenage girl cousins had brought along. They intended to do themselves up at the last minute demonstrating they were across the latest fashions. It was as sort of mini hot air, reverse vacuum cleaner with a hose and plastic bag you tie on your head. It must be a city thing.
“ Did you take these kids to the river?”
I was shocked by a question so completely without nuance and honestly think my reply was not so much a lie as a plee for more time to prosecute my case.
“No…”
There are moments in life when in the blink of an eye your destiny is realised and all chance of redemption is forfeit.
“Well actually,” began an older cousin who knew from experience that a lie was a lie, and intuitively reached for his lifeline, said, “he did.”
The girls were sent inside to the horrors of “What have you done to your clothes? You’ve nothing else to wear!” and roughly tugged to the now overflowing bathroom. They should not have to witness what was about to happen.
A child’s behaviour is a yard stick by which his parents are measured. His father, ultimately responsible for his child’s training and direction is on public display and in a case such as this provides an inexhaustible case study for disciplining children. I pictured being sent inside to retrieve the leather strap or perhaps a bare-handed walloping.
I had placed my father in an intolerable position; he was called upon to urgently administer stern discipline in a perfect storm; the kids are a mess, your late for church, you are under close scrutiny by your brothers in law and your eldest son has lied, been defiant and left you exposed. Incorrigible!
“ Get inside and clean yourself up. Stay in your room.” Now I was confused. This was new. The strap I understood, it was administered swiftly and you could just as quickly return to living on the edge. I found disgrace and banishment the harshest punishment of all.
My relationship with Dad would never recover. Mostly we were respectful to each other, nothing more. We were simply at odds. He was admired even revered in our small community. He was a stalwart, a temperate man, dependable, reliable.He answers were clear and certain.
I, though it would take many years to discover had a kind of naive curiosity that abhorred predictability. In school holidays it fell to me to drive the tractor round after round yearning to see beneath the endlessness of it all.
I loved my dad, and told him so. His reply didn’t satisfy, correct though it was. It wasn’t his words I wanted to hear, I hopelessly craved the emotional connection between father and his eldest son, but not like crucifixion and stuff. And banishment reminded me of the Israelite priest putting the sins of the people on a poor goat then sent out into the wilderness.
Self imposed banishment would in time become a reminder of irreconcilable disappointment. Our clashes would become more intense and less frequent.
Twice we briefly broke through to each other, the first time during a heart to heart when my first marriage disintegrated. He when he told me how he was unable to take on the role of brass band leader for the men of the congregation, he simply didn’t have the confidence.
The second time was as he lay in hospital, broken in the car accident in which our beloved wife and mother died. He surfaced out of his delirium and asked, “Was I too harsh on you?” Shocked by the unaccustomed candour I said, “what did you say?” When he replied I was no longer afraid of him, “Dad, it’s Okay. We do the best we can.”
From time to time I would revisit this memory and reexamine it with the unflattering lens I had become accustomed to, that of the misunderstood country yokel. For many years I had taken refuge in self pity believing I was powerless to do otherwise. The view of this world as a vale of tears was deeply rooted.It was a kind of negative fractal that crystallised on relationships with authority as it wrought havoc on my personal and professional relationships as I became ever more reactive and defensive.
I knew I was in trouble. I went searching for answers both in science and religion. Years later I experimented with different religions.For a time I was for a time a eucharistic minister in a the local Catholic church. The priest was one of the earliest to be jailed for pedophilia. I was briefly a member of a lay Anglican order based in Kent in the whose founder was caught up in a scandal for being in a same sex relationship with one of the other founders. At around the same time I visited a Yoga Ashram. There the director was later convicted of sexually abusing the teenage girls of members under the guise of spiritual practice.
As I sunk deeper and deeper into desperation and that utter conviction that I was irreparably broken, hopelessly trodding a rocky path to nowhere. Nevertheless there was always something of value to be gained in each of these encounters. Even though their overall trajectory revealed an unpalatable truth they led to new alternatives.
Fast forward to about 25 years. I came upon the recordings of Jean Houston’s three or for day seminar on Pazival and the search for the Holy Grail. By this time I discovered that my relationships with wise women teachers were positive experiences. Through the cassette tapes I met with Jean’s treatment of Pazival, a country bumpkin, unskilled in the ways of the world and unaware of himself. I found his casual attitude to tradition appealing and his naive curiosity familiar.It would be a significant turning point and life line.
Later I attended many ofJean’s seminars and began to reconstructed my world view, my relation to it and my own, shall we say, operating system. Amongst a wash of nourishing ideas and psychodramatic exercises she declared what I thought to be an improvable claim. She said, “I am fortunate to have had a blessed childhood.”
But this time I had heard her tell a series of childhood stories and knew them well. They were revelatory and inspirational but in my mind to claim them as blessed was either a misrepresentation or delusional. Yet in the wallow of heavily disguised self pity the idea struck me, of how fortunate one would be if you were one of the lucky few, unlike me, to have had a blessed childhood. I didn’t reject Jean’s claim outright but was in a state of unbelief. My attitude shifted from “o mea miserum!” to “what about me?” Parzifal’s awareness of his unschooled and unskilled experience combined with his naive curiosity left him in a perpetual state of me too to any new or broadening experience. I found some of that in myself too. “Me too.” I want to have had a have had a blessed childhood too so I set about finding out how to acquire one. From what I had learn about neuro-plasticity it was all a matter of brain rewiring. There was no in function between a brain that had resulted from a blessed childhood and one that behaved as if it had. I would be more than content with the second. How to go about it.
I had heard that studies of memory had discovered that we don’t actually remember an event as a fixed entity but rather our memories drift over time and we recall the contents of a memory as it was at the last time we thought about it. Eureka! I would rewrite, as if in the draft of a movie script, as many debilitating memories I could find. The tools I would use were those I had read about in Neuro-Linguistic Programming many years before, but had been too frightened to use.
At Atatjara
Being an unquestioning eldest son of a devout Lutheran family I went to boarding school in order to become a pastor. Then puberty hit and where once stood a dutiful son, now you see a rabble rousing miscreant, constantly challenging authority and destabilising the good order of the classroom. Faith was not enough. But that is a whole other story and I won’t tease you with the details here.
Year eight was a smorgasbord board of subjects. You could try a bit of everything and your make firm choices next year. I just went with the prescribed program, choice never really entered into it, I would do Latin, Greek maybe Ancient and Modern History the obligatory English and Maths I and one other. That’s what you do if you want to become a paster.
Others were doing Chemistry and Physics and Maths II, learning about the physical world which in my world view at the time was simply a temporary state that required some careful handling if you had any hope of getting through to the next level. Girls could do the ‘commercial’ course, Pitmans Short Hand and Typing, which could be useful for those whose families had small businesses.
‘Commercial’ was somewhat frowned upon by the more scholarly types who were doing history and geography. Some would even venture into the boys territory of the sciences, Chemistry and Physics, and in many cases were very good at it but it left them rather over qualified if they were to be wives of farmers and truck drivers. They could of course be teachers.
Then there was music as an option, beautiful church music, as you would expect remembering the contribution of music to Luther’s Reformation. During that time all the iconography and artistic expression in the German (Protestant) Church was removed and music sung in the vernacular replaced the Latin Mass.
But then at around the time my voice broke and weird, incomprehensible and uncontrollable things started happening in my body I recall over-hearing some older boys talking about ‘valency’ as it relates to chemistry. Let’s think of it as the combining power of atoms. Waiting for meals, in the dining room, on the way to chapel, this word kept cropping up. It was an arcane topic that many struggled to grasp and the boys who ‘got it’ commanded the attention of those who had not.
Here, I began to think, we may have stumbled upon an incontrovertible truth not referenced in either old or new testaments. My ignorance brought forth envy. It seemed that those destined to the ministry would follow the path of sound reason and logic, based on faith in the Bible, while those on other paths were free to follow more creative subjects like physics and chemistry. It may seem strange in this day and age but you must remember that these were the days when thorny problems like, ‘whether hats and gloves should be compulsory for women during church services’ were being hotly debated and contested. They were at the tip of the theological iceberg which at the time of the amalgamation of the two Lutheran Churches in Australia ironically resulted in more splinter groups than before.
I’m not sure why this idea of valency was so disturbing; could atoms really combine with other atoms in a variety of ways, not just one? Theologically, it felt unsafe. It suggested ‘choice’ was a fundamental principle not exclusive to erring humans navigating this vale of tears. ‘Choice’, if if that’s what it is, at an atomic level would have serious implications for free will and original sin that would have to be reworked. And all this at a time when so many resources were taken up with bringing forward the argument, based on the second law of thermodynamics no less, against evolution.
So you really can see that ‘valency’ is the nub at the very heart of my teenage existential crisis awash with uncontrollable hormones. The idea that a set limited number of atoms, that were then thought to be or close to being fundamental particles, could combine in different ways to form completely different substances, every substance in fact. Could this be a Trojan Horse to the Creation Story of Genesis about to do it’s devilish work while the masses are of defending against evolution?
The second idea , if you are willing to accept the first, is that atoms are able to have different energy states; a resting state and a specific number of excited states for any given atom that cause them to absorb and emit energy.
In contrast, stories can be thought of as being constant. Take the Bible, for instance, where the interpretation arrived at by learned men can be considered singular, reliable and irrefutable, so long as this idea of valency and similar heresies don’t take hold. That, dear reader, was a long time ago but not so long ago as the creations stories of the central desert, and all over Australia.
I now know that stories have valency. They connect forward and back, left and right, up and down, inner and outer. They connect trans-dimensionally, through and across time, metaphorically, literally and poetically. A dreaming story, can be rendered as a cartoon or as a children’s book on the one hand or you can hear them in their intended state, on country, evoked by actual places, refined as memory bites into songs and offering multi level interpretations in various contexts, the same story informing language, country, kinship and ceremony. They tell us how to understand the world, ourselves and our place in it, how the world works and what we should tell our kids. Stories link to other stories not only as a chain but also as a net that hold country and consciousness together.
So when I tell you about arriving at the place near Atatjara, the story will light up and with numerous connections if you think about it with both imaginative and rational mind together, prioritising one over the other as the context demands.
I once witnessed someone, who was struggling to resolve once and for all whether a particular dreaming ancestor was a human being or the animal they represent, ask the question, were they ‘this’ or were they ‘that’. No answer was given and I never did find out what happened to the person asking the question, but I recognised it as a ‘valency moment’, a valency of zero.
The country in front of us was traversed by two sisters, the kind of women you might see walking that country today. They are also dreaming ancestors whose digging for game, particularly water snakes, formed Tjawarapitja Creek. Trying to catch a big water snake whose tracks they had seen at the entrance of an underground tunnel system, they built a fire and fanned smoke through the burrows so they could see where they might flush him out. Smoke came out in many places, near Pimba over 700 km away, back at Piltarti the waterhole at the head of this songline in the Mann Ranges and at other places.
Two Brothers, their husbands or husbands to be depending on when you pick up the story, are in pursuit of them and want them to come back and stay at Piltarti. They travel though, not as men but transformed into Wanampi, carpet snake, water snake, forming the underground water courses and seapages that link and refill the rock holes as do the women the creeks. You can see what is going to happen, can’t you?
Think of this happening not a long time ago, but in the durative realm, the eternal now, the Dreaming. Trying to put it on a linear timeline is fraught. Time is not what what we think it is but an abstraction of consciousness. If you wanted the theory I’d have to go into Quantum Physics, a subject well beyond me. Alternatively you could listen on country to the wisdom of First Nations Peoples where even kids and teenagers follow the drift with fascination.
I took this short video clip on my phone after Witjiti, Murray and me decided on the spur of the moment to go find Keith and go down to Atatjara. Keith's Tjamu, Richard, who was one of the kids when we shot Two Brothers Walking segments at Piltarti came along too. It was about a six hour drive for Witjiti, Murray and me in all. Murray suggested we tidy ourselves up a bit when we do the proper picture.
Back to Adelaide
I arranged the night before to take the three youngens back to Adelaide with me. So when asked if I had a seat for an old man as far as Port Augusta, I said Palya. I was looking for another driver to share the trip. As it happened the joungens mum and dad decided they wanted to come after all so that would be extra drivers. I thought, great. As it happened, neither had a full license so once again, things never come out the way you picture them in your head. I used to experience this as a disappointment, a letdown; that things never work out the way I thought or imagined they would until it occurred to me after many years of trying to plan or anticipate better, that that is the way it is, not something you have to accept, but the way it is meant to be. All the old chestnuts: The best laid plans etc, etc miss one essential point. Plans are more like a rudder than a boat. I'd put a lot of effort into trying to build a better boat over the years when what was needed moment to moment was agility with the rudder.
It was dark when we set off thinking. There would be little traffic. I was particularly conscious of animals on the road, donkeys, camels, bullocks but the only animal we saw was what looked to me like a very unusual black rabbit darting across the road. Deep in contemplation of how such a thing had come to be, a black rabbit here in the bush rather than a suburban pet, I was coming up with some pretty convincing possibilities until it was pointed out that it was in fact a brown rabbit and what I had seen so clearly was the shadow in the headlights. My theories of the genesis of this black rabbit, a number of which in this very short time I was already becoming quite attached to, was about as substantial as the black rabbit itself, nothing but shadow.
If you are a practical type of person who loves learning by doing, that is, learning from experience, it's important to be happy to be wrong most of the time. Many things are rarely what they seem at first and how they came about is be different to what you think. My uncle had a saying that I first though was clever and later realised it was a piece of homespun wisdom. When asked for his opinion on some controversial matter, "It's anybody's guess," he would say, "but nobody would know!"
A crack of light was starting to form at the horizon, a couple of shades of grey difference. You couldn't make anything out in the low light but you could clearly see where it was. There should be a word for that, the sense of optimism that you feel in your whole body, a pure sensation, unsullied by content, an absolute assurance of potentiality. "Let there be light," comes to mind, a kind of light that doesn't make black rabbits.
As quickly as I notice the light on the horizon the vehicle is enveloped in a pall of dust. We have to slow down to that bone shaking speed at which the Landcruiser relinquishes its 'King of the Road' status and is is not better than any other rattle trap. Below a particular speed the vehicle faithfully follows the corrugations of the road like every other. I wonder who else is out on the road early like us. Speculation from the back seat, usually accurate, says it's the Mai Wiru truck, a tripple trailer road train that comes in to restock the community stores twice a week. Now there is a third driving hazard; the light, the shadows, the dust.
If you know the road well you can read it as you go and build on you prior experience. I don't and can't. I have to interpret, not remember what I see in this partial low contrast light. It's like this: If you put white text on a mid grey background, then you wan to see what black writing looks like instead you can change the colour. If you have a slider to take you through a continuum of greys from white to black, at the point the text vanishes as it transits for lighter to darker than the background. The same happens with colours. While the text might not vanish completely there is a range in which you can't read it clearly. The closer you are, the easier it is to see the boundaries.The further away you are the closer your are to the vanishing point.
A small region on the horizon turns the rosiest colour of rose I can recall. It is stunning. There is enough cloud cover to catch and hold the spectacular scene for us. The dust alternately drifts away and hangs over the road. After about 20 minutes we see that the lights of the semi seem to hang on the top of the next hill about a kilometre away. he must have pulled up to check his load or to let us past or both. Drawing near we see it's not Mai Wiru but a load of camels, the third one in the last two days. That's nine trailer loads of camel being trucked out.
The dust gone, we can increase to a more comfortable driving speed, but not too much because I don't know the road. The changes in the colour of the road from white to red are so abrupt that in this light that on this undulating country I sometimes interpret the colour boundary as road edge profile against the brighter sky. I should prepare for a sharp corner ahead. On closer inspection it is simply a change in soil colour and the road continues straight on. I should know this because there are no sharp bends on these roads only sweeping curves. My eyes and senses are playing tricks in the early morning light.
There's enough cloud in the sky to treat us to a spectacular display but not enough to shield the blast of the rising sun itself. We are travelling due east and a new choice presents itself. The changing light leaves us as blind as the dust. Keeping your eye on the edges of the very wide road is essential. It is the most distinguishable thing in the field of view at the moment. I understand now why leaving at four is so often talked about. It is so obvious to everyone else but I didn't have a clue, till now. But hey, had I known and we'd left earlier, we would have missed a feature sunrise.
By the time we reach the bitumen we have full daylight. As we hit it I have a pang of regret and a flash of fear that I will forget everything and fall back into city sleep. I search for something to hold on to, but there is nothing. Now is a new moment.
The rose red sunrise
offers a moment
to remember.
That Night
I set my swag up on Murrays verandah. Actually I set up a little office there with a collapsable table and a couple of camp chairs. I've brought a lead to connect into his power supply to recharge my camera batteries, run my laptop for data wrangling and added a little gas stove for numerous kuppatees and cooking. I fancy myself as a bit of a cook whether it's the simple corned beef and potatoes we had with tomatoes last night or a pot of my legendary 'Greek Stew'. if we are camping in the bush or on the sand hills or perhaps at Mulga Bore, Witjiiti's homeland that I told you about last time and have waru (firewood, fire) at hand I like to use the camp oven for damper or anything really. Let me know below if you want a copy of my Greek stew recipe. It's as much a method as a recipe and can be used to cook what ever you have on hand.
I usually wake up a couple of times through the night when camping. If you don't you miss a lot, maybe a donkey, or what sounds like a donkey stampede, dingoes coming in looking for any meat scraps and bones and stuff like that. Sometimes it gets pretty busy when the humans are sleeping. It also means you can stoke the fire up a bit through cold night's, though I don't usually bother because my swag has a canopy zipped on. It's like a cocoon and one of the warmest beds I've ever slept in. One time, I gotta laugh, we were camping at Mulga Bore, it was freezing, the waru had gone out, and when I got up to make the early morning cuppa, I looked over to Murray and saw frost formed in his hair over night and his hair had turned into mini icicles. He prefers to sleep on a mattress roll with a couple of blankets.
Me, I like creature comforts and I want to take the opportunity to share one of my biggest tips for campers. It really simple, and people who have adopted this initiative agree. And it more for older people who don't do yoga and don't mind taking a bit of trouble for some extra comfort, It is this; a small mat beside your swag means you can take your boots of at bed time and keep your bed and the sand separate - take you boots off while your standing on your mat and step into you swag with clean feet. It might sound like a simple thing, but people who eat in bed, I don't understand the practise myself, can testify that crumbs in the bed and sand even more so, is the enemy of a good night's rest. If you implement the mat beside the sway initiative you'll never stop singing it's praises. People will immediate know that you are a practical person who lives by experience and not by other peoples theories and, AND you will have a ready subject for small talk with strangers who enquire. I've seen people leave that conversation with a sense of purpose that I hadn't noticed in them before. As for crumbs in the bed, my advice is don't do it. The mat method can help you there.
But I digress. It's about 1.15 am and hearing a noise, I look out of the swag to see that a donkey has wondered into the yard looking for feed. If you saw all the tussocks of bufflelgrass in the back yards you could be forgiven for thinking they come in for that. But no, there is negligible nutritional value in dry Buffelgrass. But that's not the end of it. Buffelgrass burns at a higher temperature than native grasses (that are nutritious) and bring burning temperatures onto the landscape higher than native grasses can't tolerate. It out competes native grasses, provides less nutrition and spreads very quickly. Being brought in from outside means it has no natural predators to keep it in balance and is a serious threat.
So the donkeys eat what they can find and depart. I'm surprised that the numerous dogs don't move them on earlier. I guess the more rambunctious ones have received the donkey's back hooves at speed and thought better of it. Later on a brumby came in which is quite unusual, so unusual in fact that when I reported it later some wondered if this city slicker could tell the difference between a horse and a donkey.
I went back to sleep, only to be woken a short while later, as it happened by a bad small. I say bad smell but that doesn't cover the half of it. PWAAAH! That was a first - being woken by a bad smell. It took some time to orient myself. It reminds me of when as a kid you wake up in the middle of the night upside down in bed with your head at the feet end and visa versa. You feel around in the dark and discover that the wall that you bed is up against had moved over to the other side. When you get up to turn on the light to find out what is going on, you can't find the switch because the door is at the opposite corner of the room to normal. The experience has been known to induce quite a panic until you work your way round to find the door, turn the light on and you see that everything is in its proper place and you wonder, what was that all about? I still do, so if you have any theories I would like to hear them.
So this smell has woken me up. It's like someone has dumped a kangaroo carcass under my nose. It is so strong that even now, days later, I have to hold my breath as I write about it so as to not wake the memory of that smell. Then I realise there's most likely a dog curled up on the other side of the canvass only centimetres away. The next thing that happens is like turning on that light at the wrong end of the room and It all comes home to me in an instant as I realise the true purpose of the special stick Murray said we should make and that I should bring to the APY Lands every time I come. I now think and you'll soon see why it rivals the mat as a most useful camping innovation, though it's utility is restricted to a short, intense time frame, while the mat provides a degree of comfort that lasts the whole night.
The stick has to be long enough to discourage dogs out of the smell zone from your swag without you having to get up. If you have to get up for other reasons that's OK, but it is pointless to get up in the middle of the cold night to chase a dog away from your nice warm swag. It just won't work. He'll wait a few minutes till you've gone back to sleep and sneak in silently again and once you realise it will be too late.
If they see the stick there where they want to lay, you wont even have to use it. They are clever animals and will work out the safe distance from the length of the stick themselves, though some of the younger ones resort to trial and error before they get the hang of judging distance.
I lay there contemplating how I wished the dogs would eat their meat in a fresher state before coming in for a comfortable nap smelling like rank carrion. Then I remembered I left my coat next to the sway last night, to make it more comfortable if I had to get up though the night that happens sometimes after too many cups of tea or ready for the morning. But now the dog had my attention quicker than finding the wall on the wrong side of the bed and in a greater panic, worried that the coat I would have to wear if it was cold when we arrive back in Adelaide around midnight tonight was polluted with the smell of carrion. I would rather that Carol was glad to see me when I got home.
I moved as fast as I could, as if it wasn't already too late. I reached out and yes, there was a dog there and he didn't want to be moved. A short altercation ensued and I was relieved to see that my coat had been spared and that he had curled up, a beautiful sight if the olfactory senses are turned off, on a pillow/blanked my mother made decades ago, bless her. She was handy with a sewing machine and made all her children this simple but ingenious travel rug that folded into twelve and had a pocket that you turned in on itself, thereby folding the blanket inside and turning the blanket into a pillow and at the same time revealing a handy carry strap for your wrist, altogether more useful for carrying stuff to the car for packing especially when you don't want to hold the pillow/blanket with your mouth for obvious reasons that I have just explained.
As well thought out as it was, the object did have one drawback, and that is that if your were using it as a pillow, you didn't have a blanket. I find that if you need a blanket you often need a pillow too though not necessarily the other way around. I would love to know your thoughts or solutions on this. Please let me know below. If you want, I could even provide you with a little sketch with measurements if you are handy with a sewing machine and like the idea. Just ask, because it is something I would probably enjoy doing if anyone was interested and it would save you from having to go through back issues of the Australian Women's Weekly.
You might be tempted to think that today's story is rather trivial and inconsequential compared to some of the previous missives. But if you were to do so, you would be wrong because these simple approaches to life are in fact a doorway into the profoundly creative thinking. Whether it is working out how to attach a cutting stone to the handle of a spear thrower using kiti derived from spinifex or acacia plants or mapping a navigational route with a story, it is all based on simple technologies that are well practised and applied in an inventive and creative way.
It's not like coding software, although now that I think about it...It's not like building in a two-cubit gate for a quantum computer, but is a critical way of thinking that can lead to profound observations. It is a way of thinking that leads to challenges and problems working themselves out by letting them push against their opposite and having a solution arise spontaneously from the tjuni, the gut, we might say, intuitively.
Take, for example the pillow/blanket example; logical, rational thinking brings us to an impasse, you can have one or the other, not pillow and blanket together. The logic about it is certain. When we look at this trivial example in context rather than with logic, my brain gets happy. I hope yours does too. I like to sit with a paradox and wait for a solution. It is a skill you need for using stories and songs as maps and linking things through neural nets rather than logical chain and a critical orientation in thinking necessary to reboot your brain in mythic rather than numerate and classifying processing.
Artists do it all the time and naturally, but most of all it is something that can be learnt. The western world heavily prioritises logical rational over intuitive mythic thinking. We may fall into the trap of thinking that the opposite of rational is irrational. It is not. The opposite is intuitive and something desperately needed in our modern world to find solutions to the complex problems of today. Problems like how to live well and in harmony with nature in a drying and warming landscape as first nations people did millenia ago.
I'm not saying we should go back to hunting with kulata miru (speer and woomera) but that there are ways of thinking developed by first nations peoples that are sorely needed today, ways that even the fastest super computers cannot model and solve but those same complex and paradoxical questions can have solutions in a moment with the right thinking. It's the difference between being clever and being wise.
I had intended to tell you about the trip home but you have already been too generous with your time so I will leave it to next time so that you can make yourself a nice cuppa and have a minute or two to watch your thoughts before you get on with what you have to do.
Dreaming of Wanampi
I dream I'm driving the Toyota down towards the Kunamata crossroads, Witjiti beside me and the other senior men in the back. He calls out, "Stop, Stop!. Back up, back up." I reverse back through a small depression in the ground along side a couple of trees close to the road that are rounder and a deeper green that all the others and with much denser foliage.
"See that line," I look to the west and then east perpendicular to the road and see that there is a slight depression, a swale running diagonally across the road where it dips to come back up again. The swale starts on higher ground out of sight on the western side and runs across the road continuing until it disappears in the grass and trees to the east. (People interested in permaculture will know the term 'swale' very well. It is a way to slow the passage of surface water through the landscape thereby rehydrating the country.)
"Those two brothers, that Wanampi came through here, see?" All through the conversation, he uses the terms, Two Brothers, the human form of the dreaming ancestors interchangeably with Wanampi, the same dreaming ancestor but now in the form with which he travels across country, also referred to as water snake. It is a poetic sensibility that comes into play here, too subtle for science to grasp. Earlier on I mentioned rebooting my brain into a mythic or narrative way of processing information. It is bigger and more encompassing than the one I use in the city, the one best for numbers, data and linear rational thinking, but about as useful as a stopwatch and hammer and nailbag full of nails out here.
In the dream I have the image of what Murray was talking about as we drove from Fregon to Nyapari. Do you remember, dear reader, I told you how Murray talked to me in one ear about the place names, geography, hydrology and passage of surface water during flood time, while Witjiti told me stories about the two women and the two brothers as Wanampi travelling across the country in the other ear. We had stopped during the drive to point out the positions of tjukala, rock holes, across the landscape.
"That one over there is a big one," you can get kapi (water) out with a bill can. At another time he might say, "That one you have to use a jam tin, billy can wont fit in. It never dries up." And he goes on to explain how the porous rock directs the underground water flow across the landscape and can be accessed where the rock has been opened up to form a crack.
I understand that this country is not what some think of as desert at all. Just underneath the surface is plenty of water and you can access it if you know the way the two sisters and the Wanampi travelled across the country. The story is your map.
In my dream, I feel the earth viscerally, the cracks full of kapi that have opened up to the surface as rockholes. I can feel it in my body, I'm part of the earth and that Wanampi is there too, in my guts, moving slowly in the same direction as the swale.
In a moment I am woken up by my own crying. I feel really good but filled to the brim and over flowing. The same thing happened when we were shooting "Two Brothers Walking" at the Laura Dance festival in Far North Queensland. It had been a long trip and I was tired from filming on the run. I came out of the tent for breakfast that first day and the ladies were laughing at me, in a sweet way, and said I had been crying in my sleep through the night.
I didn't remember then but now I know it is from feeling the deep connection, no not deep connection, but actually feeling a part of country, continuous with it. My body, country, same. We may all be made of stardust but it is the earth that has borne us. Earth is our mother and to her we will return. Scientific fact! But our spirit has altogether a different story.
Later on I call some of my good friends, senior men and check to see that it is OK to talk about this in a public way. In a conversations that goes for a couple of hours they say, "Palya, yes, it's OK." For some time afterwards, I have to choke down tears, not like crying from your eyes, but from your belly each time I talk about it. I really can't say what it is, but I am grateful.
