This time last week, we sat at Pearl enjoying tropical heat, the tiniest smattering of warm rain, fine French cuisine and ice cold bubbly that, even though it wasn’t French, tasted just a little bit superb because it was part of the dream.
We awoke from the dream in fits and starts during the three and a half hour flight home, not wanting to fully accept that it was all over. Our heads crashed onto familiar pillows even later still, trying to prolong the dream and finally, about 12 hours after leaving the exquisite surrounds (and delicacies) of Restaurant Pearl we awoke fully to the reality that the dream was over. O.V.A. OVA!
We skip forward now, a week of work, a week of memories blending, murkily with the ‘now’, keeping eyes closed as much as possible, not willing to let the everyday in, not just yet.
A week of one foot in Perth (reality) and one foot in Bali (dream). Psychologically weird, but it works for me and I know Peter is very much straddling the fine line between dream and reality – still. And it was a short week.
Then what?
Easter break.
We’re told that Easter isn’t what it was or even is. We’re not allowed to call it Easter and it is pagan worship or it is offensive to people who follow another God, chocolate has nothing to do with Jesus and it’s not really about him anyway and it’s just a holiday and sadly for the ANZACs, they get tacked on the end of the non Easter break and all in all it is just a meaningless five day holiday this year.
Anyway, I praise God for everything, good and bad and think this holiday is a good thing and continue to marvel at how complicated and divisive a thing that was once simple has become.
It’s a holiday!
We’re at our ‘country’, ‘holiday’ house.
We will have four nights here.
Four nights of turning on the old lamp (I inherited from my Mum’s friend’s mother) as the sun dips towards the horizon – my ritual.
Every night that the lamp is turned on is a blessing. Usually it is once only, every couple of weeks, but on these holidays one night is followed by two and two by three and somehow time feels like it is multiplying and we will never have to return to our city or working life, then there is the fourth night of turning on the lamp, knowing it is the last, leaving it on because to turn is off would feel like the end.
Kindly husband, who loves so much, in the beginning, that there will four nights, will be brave enough to face the ‘turning off of the lamp on the LAST night’.
He is good and strong and brave. He knows how to work and he knows how to play and he counts even the smallest blessing and is grateful and sustained until the next one comes along.
The day here. Time to think. Thinking disturbs me. I think too much, about too many things and it is a waste of time. I am barely in the here and now! I would not even begin to share the thoughts on this blog. I think I will start another one, under a pseudonym (can’t believe I even knew how to spell that).
It will be a dark and disturbed blog, but it will be the side of me that loves and longs for tropical storms, black clouds, thunder, lightening, torrential rain, crashing waves and just wild stuff in general.
You won’t know it’s me.
Don’t misunderstand. This is me here. But there is deeper stuff. I wonder (most seriously, I ponder very deeply) if there is such a side to the famed Pioneer Woman or Kelle Hampton. But how could there not be? Where is the balance? Where is their ‘real’ reality? They make even the bad sound sweet. Their bad is sugar coated. That’s what it is. I can’t do the sugar coating, so I just keep quiet.
So, back to our day.
Easter Saturday.
I rose from bed at 5am.
Oh, of course it wasn’t my plan, but I was woken by the idling engine and squeaky brakes of what I will call here ‘some moron’ crawling the kerb (in the dark!) scouring the piles of junk everyone has placed out for the annual collection. Even now, thinking about that person, I want to strangle them! 5am! We went to bed after 2am! That’s another story, where I want to strangle ‘channel 7’ for extending the length of a 90 minute movie to three hours because of advertising every ten minutes.
You see?
All this stuff that makes me so mad I have murderous thoughts?
Out the front window at 5am was a world I felt privileged to observe.
The first thing I noticed was the cool, cool air; a rare gift in this endless Summer (and now Autumn). Then I realised I could hear the ocean; the intermittent roar as the swell became waves that broke on the shore half a kilometre away.
The complete silence of the night was punctuated by the rhythmic pounding of the dark, cold shore by the endless and immeasurable weight of that water that travels to us and to every shore. I heard it. I listened, waiting, knowing the intervals would be short, waiting for the car that has originally woken me to do its return trip down the road (we live in a ‘place’ – you have to come out the way you went in).
And then I noticed the mist (remembered that song ‘Mull of Kintyre’ – ‘Oh, mist rolling in from the sea’). At first I thought I must have been imagining it, but having laid down, tired of waiting for the vehicle to make its return journey, I arose about five minutes later, hearing another vehicle and realised I could barely see across the street. Mist! Fog! Delicious and cool. No one would believe later when the sun had risen, that it had even existed. It was magical and even I think now, in the heat of the day, that I must have imagined it. But I didn’t. It was there. It was 5.30am by then. The car had returned, driving down the street still searching for rubbish that they could collect to sell at some ‘trash and treasure’ event. They stopped further down. I could see their tail lights and hear their squeaking brakes. Again, I wondered how easy it would be for me to strangle them.
The mist rolled in, I went back to bed and pulled an extra blanket over us both.
Mist equals cold, right?
We slept until nine. The sun was high in the sky by then. The heat of the day had dried up the ephemeral qualities of the dark, cold, early morning.
The mist was me. The sun was not.
When will this Summer end?
A lethargic day. Washing laundry. Reading the local papers my neighbour kindly leaves for us over the fence. I read back to the beginning of the month, but around these parts nothing much happens, unless you call petty crime and nightclubbing news.
I notice a branch has been cut from the massive, out of control, gum tree at the front. Good! If we lived here it would be easy to keep these trees under control, but we don’t and they are growing wild. I don’t know what to do with them, so if neighbours have a problem with their growing and wish to cut them up (or down) then they are most welcome to. I must pay them a visit to thank them and apologise for the out-of-control growing that they do while we are elsewhere, working for a living, working to pay for this place and the water bill!
It’s the Easter break.
Everyone and their dogs are down here holidaying. The shops are madness – holiday makers buying out the meat section for their barbeques. We decide on laksa and make do with what is still available on the shelves at 4pm on Easter Saturday in a seaside holiday town.
It’s Monday now.
There was rain yesterday and sometime during the night before.
It is sunshine now, though.
The last Summery holiday for the year?
Hopefully.
Winters by the seaside are soulful and wild and the real me craves that, as much as I don’t like being cold!
Tomorrow we will pack up and head back to the city.
But today, we will make the most of our leisurely existence.
This is the making of our Easter 2011 memories…
Momiji to Mitsukoshi 