life just keeps going except for the little matter of death

There are so many things I want to put down on the blog but it seems that life has just flown by. I remember when Bob Dylan wrote ‘Hard Rains a Gonna Fall’ he said he’d written this one song with so many things in it because he really wanted to write a separate song about every line in it but thought he’d never get it done. he just put it all in the one song. I feel a bit the same. Since i was talking about the hut and tractor I’ve had the road trip visit which involved family/friends ging, walking, riding, campfiring, and maybe best of all just hanging. That was one special week. It was followed by the Kaldors, Trish Watts, Rod Pattenden, my brother Brian and his wife Sandra. We’ve planted trees, we’ve fixed lights, we’ve fixed gates, we’ve fixed pipes and of course we’ve brought the aviary (all 16 metres by 18 metres of it) back to life for our planned four chooks. I’ve applied for funding grants from NT Govt at work and had one approved. We’ve spent a lovely week in Sydney with Hannah and friends and family. Stella has said goodbye to her old friend Karen and I’ve said goodbye to my Auntie.

Life and death has been an underlying theme for some months now. I feel quite unsettled. I have loved every minute of the month yet have hardly had tim eto savour one thing and the next thing is upon me. And yet there have been these experiences of death and end. With David, Karen and Auntie they would probably rate as three pretty special deaths I guess, each for differnet reasons. Maybe a thing they had in common is that all three people had slowed enough to smell the flowers. Actually i think my Auntie had slowed even more than that but none of the three were rushing around living.

We often talk about needing to slow down and thats not what I feel. I actually quite like rushing around and doing things. But I also am hit by that tension of the being. Thats possibly why a week with Hannah is a pretty good thing to do. She lets you rush at one level but also models and encourages you constantly to be.

So no insights just feelings that it has been an amazing month which i wouldnt swap but its also nice to catch air.

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Visitors, death and stars, and Eddie Mabo

I haven’t blogged for ages so I probably should put something out there into cyberspace for those few of you who might be interested. I really have been very busy. We’ve had a lot of wonderful people staying with us since the weather got more temperate here in Alice.  It has been great but when there are all these fantastic people here in real time I tend to neglect the blog. At the moment we have Trish Watts and Rod Pattendon in the house and Glen is still in the cabin and Keith’s brother and sister-in-law have parked their caravan here as well. Glen and Trish are running singing and Interplay  workshops here as well as mens and womens retreats. I did a womens retreat last weekend which gave me a chance to reflect on all that has been going on in my life. The big thing in my life lately has been that my very special friend who I have known and loved for 35 years died a couple of weeks ago. I had to fly to Brisbane and back in a space of a couple of days for the funeral with a brief stop over in Sydney to see Mil and eat Japanese food. It was a great funeral because so much of Karen was present. She had planned a lot of it as she has known she was dying for some time. Before she died she had told us that she was certain that no matter what happend she would remain connected to God and so also connected to us who are connected to God. I can believe that. Out here we have amazing stars and aboriginal people believe the stars are their ancestors looking down on them. I look at the stars and I think of Karen and David and Peter and Maggie, who all died in the last year. It’s been a big year of death for us. Being out here in the desert is a good place to ponder death as everywhere you look life and death are all around. Dead trees and live new leaves all side by side, both part of the pattern of it all. And the amazing big sky full of stars. Last night after work I met Rod and Keith for dinner on Todd Mall and afterwards they went to Trish’s singing workshop. My singing makes a cockatoo sound melodic so I gave it a miss. I walked out of the restaurant onto the Mall and noticed that there were films being shown on Story Wall, a public wall which is the side of a building in front of the Uniting Church where they screen free films. The films last night were positive stories abot men because some poeple have felt there have been too many negative perceptions of men here lately with all the sexual abuse stuff. Any way, they were starting to screen a doco on the life of Eddie Mabo so I thought I would watch because I knew nothing of the man other than his role in overturning the crazy law of Terra Nullius in this country. I sat on a chair on the lawn to watch with a handful of others. Shortly an aboriginal woman asked if she could sit with me and of course I said OK and partly expected her to ask me for money. In the centre of Alice at night you get asked a lot for money by aboriginal people. She didn’t ask me for anything and sat there drinking from a hidden beer can and watching the movie. I guess she figured she was less likely to get harrassed by  police for drinking sitting next to a white woman on the church lawns. The movie was finishing and it was a sad end. Eddie Mabo died of cancer only 5 months before the famous high court decision overturned Terra Nullius. And then some rotten bastards desecrated his grave. I was feeling emotional as the credits started rolling and I looked to the woman next to me thinking she will surely hit me up for money now. Instead she said “Good story” and told me her name and asked for my name and we held hands for a few moments and she left without asking for a cent. I walked down Todd Mall to my car and looked at the stars and felt uplifted.

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