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Jindabyne and Raymond Carver

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ECU S2, 2020: CCC32111, ASSIGNMENT 2, Option 6, “Jindabyne”

TITLE: “Jindabyne, Water, Water, Everywhere, and…”

Susanne Lorraine Johnston 8 pages
2500 words (without quotes)

Assignment 2, Option 6, CCC32111, S2, 2020

Question:
Answer in a critical essay of 2,500 words, making specific reference to print and

film: How does ‘place’ function in “Jindabyne”?

“Jindabyne” is a 2006 film adaptation by Ray Lawrence and Beatrix Christian of Raymond Carver’s 1981 short fiction “So Much Water So Close to Home”. This critical essay will consider how place, and its absence and water function in Carver’s story, and how in his film, “Jindabyne”, Lawrence causes a magnificent landscape to function as Australian Gothic theatre. Though Carver and Lawrence each engineer the function of place to be the provision of comfort, the main focus of this essay centres around several examples of how Carver’s lack of place functions to amplify the terrifying spectre of gendered violence, and how place assists Lawrence to present gender and race issues.

“Place”, the noun currently has nine definitions and numerous sub-categories, and the verb has four (2020). Many of those definitions of place feature and are in operation in Raymond Carver’s “sparse new fiction” (Mosley, 2006, p. 23), where he provides little “specific background information” (p. 23). Instead, he instils tension in his 2009 work “So Much Water So Close to Home” and Carver describes his practice, saying “It’s true… I try to cut my words to the bone” (cited by Mosley, 2006, p. 23). These quotes explain Carver’s approach to place and setting.

Carver deliberately builds a up a distinct lack of information about place to increase tensions. Carver’s writing strategy forces readers to seek information about location in his modern, everyday “moral dilemma” (McFarlane, 2006, p.1). For Carver

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ECU S2, 2020: CCC32111, ASSIGNMENT 2, Option 6, “Jindabyne”

creates empty spaces where locations should be. He apparently sublimates the importance of place. In this absence of location information, Carver’s unhappy characters experience a series of unsettling events, where, as McFarlane says, Carver leaves out “actuality of place” (2009, p. 1) . Carver explains he omits much information “in order to imply a “landscape just under the smooth, but sometimes broken and unsettled, surface of things” (cited by Mosley, 2006, p. 23). In addition, Carver’s narrative strategy ensures all action first occurs in an unexpected place.

Harking back to the large number of definitions of place, in Carver’s 2009 story his sole narrator’s mind functions as ‘place’. Carver leads the reader into the mind of Claire, wife, mother and his female lead. Claire delivers Carver’s story, as his first-person narrator who sketchily describes life events, generally in real-time. While Claire’s “articulation [is]… time and again brushed off by her husband [it does] reach the reader”, (Kleppe, 2006, p. 39). At the same time, Carver deliberately creates uncertainty, causes Claire to name water sixteen times not counting the title phrase. As Carver’s story progresses the reader gradually realises Claire’s strange fixation with water, much of it real and nearby.

In particular, water appears whenever Claire tells the reader about journeys. An example is Claire’s narration of a short drive with her husband where they stop at a pond near their home. While there, Claire watches other men fish “So much water so close to home” (2009, p. 70), she thinks. Claire then questions Stuart, her husband, one of four men recently returned from a distant camping trip, about his journey: “Why did you have to go miles away?” (p. 70). As Carver’s writing style also provides no specifics of place to Claire, her question seems reasonable, and to operate on one level. For Claire’s stress levels, like community tensions, have risen since the men returned to their town. Yet Stuart, Carver’s male protagonist simply replies: “Don’t rile me”, then opens cans of beer for them both. Stuart’s words and action open the door to another interpretation. For this is the only time Claire drinks in this short story and yet alcohol features twelve times, and here, Carver links place and water to alcohol and combined they function as building blocks; alcohol with further warnings Twice before they complete their drive home Stuart tells Claire he “riled” by her (pp. 70, 71). Carver thus creates a metaphor; alcohol with water signal violence against females and this may happen in this place.

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ECU S2, 2020: CCC32111, ASSIGNMENT 2, Option 6, “Jindabyne”

Carver’s absence of detail here in this sunny, watery, public recreational space is a signal of what may happen to any woman in any place. Claire further recounts “We sit on a bench in the sun”. Where Stuart says “Relax, Claire” (Carver, 2009, p. 70), Claire desperately seeks details about the female body her husband found in the remote region. Claire attempts to gather this information from her husband to “make sense of her place in the family” (Kleppe, 2006, p. 39). She receives no such information. In its place she may expect violence.

Next day, Claire drives from home to town where she is comforted by a visiting her hairdressers. While Claire’s nails are manicured, her hair washed and styled, her stylist Marnie, says “Well get you fixed up for it” (Carver, 2009, pp. 71, 72). Marnie thus gives Claire the only support she receives in this story, and this place of beauty treatments and human warmth functions to provide real solace and safety. This is Claire’s preparation for a long, solo drive to another town. This journey (p. 72) creates another big, empty space where the reader wonders about violence, whether it is perpetrated within these private lives (Hallett, 1990). Water is present, for Claire travels to the unfamiliar place for the funeral of the unknown murdered girl (p. 73).

That girl recently found floating in the Naches river. By four men including Claire’s husband Stuart (Carver, 2009, pp. 68, 69). Carver’s “style” (Hallett, 1990) is

specifically… the fate of women who are victims” (Kleppe, 2006, p. 39). Claire, the stay at home wife-mother, who now drives along alongside that same Naches river the murdered girl was tossed into (Carver, 2009, p.73). Thus Carver’s perspective presents this story, though through his lead character’s mind.

Claire and Stuart’s domestic relationship functions as “subversive practice” where Carver questions his “authorial self” (Berryman, 1990, p. 1). Such “post- modern distress” (Lehman, 2006, p. 2) occurs when relationships fail and apply pressure to masculine identity (Bullock, 1994). Joining water and places fails to make Claire a gendered spectre, while obsessed by places with water Claire is not

his male gaze which here views events about“the lot of women… and more

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mad. She exhibits stress and horror whenever she closely observes the world she must exist in.

The most startling example occurs at book’s end, where, returning home from the funeral she finds her husband drinking whiskey (Carver, 2009, p. 74). This causes Claire to becomes fearful about their child’s safety, then finds their son is in the backyard, away from his father drinking in the kitchen, While Claire hurries her intimacy with Stuart, before their child enters their home, her mind-space again fills with that haunting, repeated phrase about water (p. 74). So much water, again signalling danger, this time to herself and their child, and even to Stuart. For their home is no place of safety.

A literary adaptation by Ray Lawrence and writer Beatrix Christian of Raymond Carver’s 1981 short novel “So Much Water So Close to Home” sits in the dark heart of Lawrence’s 2006 Australian film “Jindabyne”. Lawrence structures Carver’s 1981 core to become one strand in a bunch of “hybrid”, “multifacted” Australian Gothic narratives (Raynor, 2009, p.1). Lawrence’s most important information to his viewer is delivered by landscape. In his 2006 full-length feature film, Lawrence’s chosen landscape. His his chosen cinematography tells the viewer of history, a country and a region; Lawrence’s landscape for Carver’s “urban fiction” (McFarlane, 2006, p. 1). Lawrence displays a landscape filled with direct messages, and almost no blank spaces.

Carver’s core 1981 tale is outfitted with what seems an unnecessary emphasis on aesthetics. Lawrence recalls he said to Beatrix Christian “Let’s go where we want to set it and see what happens” (cited by McFarlane, 2006, p. 2). His 2006 film is not pictorial, rather, the natural beauty jolts in reaction to “the horror perpetuated” (McFarlane, 2006, p. 2). Into the “physical location” Lawrence structures values “fluid, uncertain or shifted“ (Rayner, 2014, p. 2), for he sites Carver’s tale in the company of other stories whose subjects are not fiction.

Auteur director Lawrence chose an arresting arena of Australian countryside. To present ideals about real, historic injustices unresolved in today’s contemporary Australia (Roberts, 2005), Lawrence deliberately “relocated” Carver’s 1981 story,

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and others to sit within an “anterior text”, a brilliant environment filled with dark history (McFarlane, 2006, p. 1). Lawrence’s wants landscape to function as a “superb theatre for implied violence and dark, unresolved conflict” (McFarlane, 2006, p. 3), as multiple layers of Australian Gothic tragedy.

Lawrence here explores conflict between Australia’s original people and “The Crown”. Though Carver’s 1981 story gives Lawrence “other places” gender violence “roots” (McFarlane, 2006, p. 1), Lawrence dedicates his 2006 film to indigenous actor Kevin Smith. Neil Armfield wrote of this NSW Walbunga clan elder, his deep involvement in their long unresolved land claim. His tribe call him “nuyrama”; he knows culture, the land talks to him, he can join “totems and Dreaming” (2005, p. 2). Playing tribal leader and murdered girl’s father, at film’s end Smith devises, conducts a traditional funeral pyre in the grass, and reveals that smoky place’s powers.

In his opening scene, on sleek, bitumen road snaking though primly fenced and farmed colonial-marked landscape, Lawrence deposits contemporary evidence of racial conflict. A hilly region early indigenous people knew well where he films in sacred places. Flooded lake Jindabyne now floats above and covers much evidence of those people (Curiousity Rocks, 2020). This place is not safe for the girl, Susan, an indigenous performer, who drives alone, sings, sweetly yearning “Jindabyne”. Soon she becomes horribly frightened, then violently murdered by a white man on that road in the very region her people come from within the Snowy Monaro.

Early in this 2006 film, with the viewer in freefall about what exactly is going one, Lawrence shows what appears to be firm ground. A place of safety, into homes, and family life there. For those places, with displays of inhabitants’ familial love, to cause the viewer to relax. However, they too soon become sites where family members reveal inhabitants’ important, unresolved and often barbed conflicts.

Lawrence imprints Carver’s story into that drowned region. McFarlane (2003) muses how nature supports Lawrence’s mimesis, his intention to realistically convey historic social messages of great importance. The ripples the murderer causes as he tosses in a girl’s deathly still and severely damaged body are soon forgotten by the large lake’s waters, even as he flicks his smoking cigarette down upon her. Here the

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ECU S2, 2020: CCC32111, ASSIGNMENT 2, Option 6, “Jindabyne”

viewer sees “the power of the aesthic principle… more is less (Barth, 1986, p.1), with Lawrence building Carver’s 1981 spare tone into this gender violence landscape.

a Gothic landscape in Lawrence’s 2006 film appears as the men descend steeply, down to that hidden river running though this remote region. First, they see an area already riven with huge power lines, clear signs of modern life. These powerfully affect the youngest male, he is spooked at how they drive up and down the steep hills, wires buzzing through the surrounding region, so he scrambles back up the hill to get away. Then Lawrence frames the specific places where Stewart, in the water, moves the body, ties the leg with a string to a drowned tree, each an Australian Gothic image. Emanating out of what appears to be normalcy, an established Australian tradition when responsible, reliable family men go each year to camp in an isolated place.

In the film, Lawrence shows the four men fish in this remote Nachos river. Here he supports a “parable”, via a “conscious crafting of complex narrative situations” (Raynor, 2014, p. 4). For they stand in that pristine, clear and gently flowing, magnificent waterway, wash their dishes there. Yet all the while all see a real woman’s body floats nearby (Carver, 2009, p. 69). During those days the trout they catch here prove hard. Yet the men’s actions here are far more unpalatable.

In book and film, Claire is further horrified to learn Stuart’s party stay there, and they stay a girl’s body with a tender. To get to that River Nachos, the five-mile walk with their packs over a final rough area is rationale for staying several days (Carver, 2009, p. 67). However, this year, a dead person is there before them in that place, (p. 68). This scene and its breaks function to support further Lawrence’s creation of an Australian Gothic atmosphere. This remote, Australian valley is now forever linked to the tragic decision; four men chose to keep company, here, for several days with the dead body of a girl.

Lawrence finds and uses such details from Carver’s book. His landscape echoes Carver’s 2009 questioning of the places Claire always finds herself. The beauty of Lawrence’s 2006 choice of place matches his bigger tale and he does justice with high Jindabyne, historic, Australian country mise-en-scene (Rayner, 2014, p. 1). In Lawrence’s filme he shows historic Jindabyne hold a up modern

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ECU S2, 2020: CCC32111, ASSIGNMENT 2, Option 6, “Jindabyne”

mirror (Lambert and Simpson, 2008) and shows Australia its history, how it looks today as the awful contemporary Gothic of Australia (Raynor, 2014). Yet while place here supports Lawrence’s primary mimetic desires (McFarlane, 2006), Lawrence here also reflects Carver’s equally effective creation Claire, a creature of his male- gaze horror, the unreliable environment of her mind.

Lack of place functions to ably support of writer Raymond Carver’s 1981 short story “So Much Water So Close to Home”. An abundance of place is everywhere in director Ray Lawrence’s adaptation of that story into his 2006 Australian movie “Jindabyne”. In each, place occasionally functions as comfort zone, yet generally functions to support the presentation of tragedy. Throughout, Carver reduces all unnecessary detail and causes the unsettling spectres of the mad woman and other gender violence to be functioning in every place in his story. Where his story takes place is uncertain; while he presents the mind of Claire, his sole narrator and female lead, as already unstable, still her internal voice still clearly functions as place. For Claire’s mind is the lens through which the reader views all other places of Carver’s story, inside, outside and around the key characters’ home. Which home also functions as the departure point for mostly dangerous journeys. Lawrence discards Carver’s narrative strategy. He choses instead to film his larger, far bigger and entwined version of Carver’s core story, with two of its journeys, in a strange, historic, outback and relocated town and its surrounding, drowned region. An eerie, uniquely Australian landscape. Lawrence’s chosen place functions to superbly assist him, auteur with a great grasp on cinematography, to develop and display his unique form of contemporary Australian Gothic tragedy.

Reference
Armfield, N. (2005, September 24). A Great Spirit Now Returns to the Land.

Sydney Morning Herald.

Barth, J. (1986, December 28). A Few Words About Minimalism. Byline. Book Review Desk. New York Times.

Berryman, C. (1990). Decade of Novels: Fiction of the 1970s: Form and Challenge. Whitston.

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Bullock, C. J. (1994). From Castle to Cathedral: The Architecture of Masculinity

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In R. Carver’s “Cathedral.”

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ECU S2, 2020: CCC32111, ASSIGNMENT 2, Option 6, “Jindabyne”

The Journal of Men’s Studies, 2(4), 343–351. https://doi.org/10.3149/jms.0204.343

Carver, R. (2009). ‘So much water so close to home’.
In R. Carver, What we talk about when we talk about love. Vintage. (Original work published 1981)

Curiousity Rocks. (2020). New South Wales Government

Department of Environment and Heritage. https://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/heritageapp/ViewHeritageItemDetails.aspx?ID=5063428

Kleppe

Lambert, A., & Simpson, C. (2008). Jindabyne’s Haunted Alpine Country: Producing (an) Australian Badland. M/C Journal, 11(5). https://doi.org/10.5204/mcj.81

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Hallett, C. W. (1990) Minimalism and the Short Story: Raymond Carver, Amy Hempel,

and Mary Robinson. Mellen.

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, S. L. (2006). Women and Violence in the Stories of Raymond Carver.

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Journal of the Short Story in English

http://journals.openedition.org/jsse/497

. 46 | Spring.

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Lawrence, R. (Director). (2006). Jindabyne [Film]. April Films.
Lehman, D. W. (2006). Symbolic Significance in the Stories of Raymond Carver.

Chercher. Open Edition Journals. Spring. Special Issue, 75-88 McFarlane, B. (2006). Locations and Relocations: Jindabyne and Macbeth.

Metro Magazine. Issue 150. Bauer Media Group.

Mosley, J. (2006). Senior Paper. Sinking the Titanic: The Iceberg and its Minimalist Implications In

Raymond Carver’s Fiction. The University of North Carolina.

http://toto.lib.unca.edu/sr_papers/literature_sr/srliterature_2006/mozley_john. pdf

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Place. (2020). In Oxford Learner’s Dictionary of Academic English. Place. (2020). In Oxford Learner’s Dictionary of Academic English.

Rayner, J. (2014). Adapting Australian Film: Ray Lawrence from Bliss to Jindabyne. Studies in Australasian Cinema 3(3), 295-308
DOI: 10.1386/sac.3.3.295_1

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Roberts, G. (2015). Discrepant Traumas: Colonial Legacies in Jindabyne. In A. Ward

(Ed.). Postcolonial Traumas. Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137526434_11

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Jindabyne and Raymond Carver

Wasteman, 2020

susanneah, 1 Comment

Assignment 1, CCC32111, S2, 2020: Exegesis: WASTEMAN aka Cinderella WASTEMAN

aka Cinderella

Assignment 1, CCC3211, S2, 2020 Student 100438098. Susanne Lorraine Johnston 961 words

In the 1950s, any Anglo-Celt child might be introduced to a repertoire of narrative elements in ancient fairy tales such as Cinderella, as generally described by Lutz, (1999). WASTEMAN is a fantasy Cinderella of sorts, created for today’s viewers, contorted by requirements for visual storytelling with minimal text, and preparatory to film making. These task stipulations forced me into continuous, substantial adaptations and to discard or replace many initial, nuanced, abstract and atmospheric strands.

Important pedagogic life lessons are presented in Cinderella, via character!

“#$ life-adventure (Lutz, 1999) and in WASTEMAN, three are main themes and

three others deliberately omitted. My narrative is well- aided by Amelia, a child who provided an early critique and several key graphics which appear in my presentation. The great powers of colour, semiotics, and particularly onomatopoeia (Guynes, nd) are essential elements, and strategic sound, music and lyrics placement. This made me made obvious how ageing has reduced my visual narrative skills and how it takes me to fully think through any set university task.

As a young Anglo-Celt Australian child of the 1950s I was introduced to a then current Cinderella., via hearing, and exposure to a sparsely-illustrated text, with

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Assignment 1, CCC32111, S2, 2020: Exegesis: WASTEMAN aka Cinderella
occasional ‘fancy dress’ opportunities. Carey et al, (2007) made me perceive that

fairytale as one link in an always evolving chain descending down the ages from an ancient, original oral, teaching tale (Lutz, 1999). While possibly a part of that ancient chain, WASTEMAN, has been disassembled over and over in efforts to fit the assignment terms and conditions Here, an omniscient storyteller makes stellar observations of varying levels of isolation, dislocation and loneliness experienced by the protagonist. The de-humanised electronic music video by Raja The Resident Alien (2020) “All Distortion is Intended” its speed and disorienting rotation signifies WASTEMAN’S harrowing, lonely journey from someplace far away in the universe. As the journey nears the earth, that dislocation is compounded by the use of erratic, quick long shots, zooms and jumps and changes of pace between backgrounds and locations, all with associated speech, in some cases “cheating” bubbles as described by Guynes,(nd). This also creates an allegory of Cinderella’s rocky life journey where the expectation is she will accept and travel alone through a strictly ordered and demanding social class structure, where even her creature-helpers must adopt mannered and socially appropriate costumes.

Conversely, a child’s drawing of a suited astronaut and ship next defines the character WASTEMAN. His wave, a simple gesture, conveys his warmth of character, confirmed by his arrival where there is a short slowdown of film pace. There WASTEMAN makes his first, astounded and delighted acquaintance with nature and its creatures. Thereafter the film speeds up again, into the climax of the disastrous helmet-removal, disposal notice and subsequent jettison actions, where WASTEMAN’s placid acceptance through these scenes represent

Tutor: Dr. A. Dadswell. Student 10043898. Susanne Lorraine Johnston. 5 pages. 2

Assignment 1, CCC32111, S2, 2020: Exegesis: WASTEMAN aka Cinderella Cinderella’s quiet acceptance of the loss of slipper, dissolution of coach and

elegant gown. The story arc closes at the denouement, when slower action returns after the bird-friend creature saves the protagonist, brings him to safety where offers of companionship and a new way of life synced within the earth’s natural cycles.

An important key factor in the Cinderella tale is the concept of an uncomplaining acceptance of the vagaries of life, sweetened by a great love of all of nature and its creatures, and accompanied by the desire of the characters to find true love (Lutz, 1999). Studying different text forms derived from “Enduring Love” (McEwan, 2006) helped me spatially and emotionally distance characters and roles, alternate being apart and moving in close, to create story flow with extreme close-ups of eyes, faces, other body parts human, and of the key bird creature. I also rely upon specific colours to convey emotions and freely use semiotics, particularly onomatopoeia (Guynes, nd.).

The recent re-exposure to WATCHMAN (Moore et al, 2014) and my introduction to BEFORE WATCHMEN (Straczynski et al, 2014) assisted me, particularly in how to represent character in alternative ways. Analysing comic formats, Guynes’ paper (nd) and reading Flood’s 2020 article about the delightful picture stories of Sam McBratney somewhat compensate for my inability to keep up with ever-changing electronic tools. After realising the astounding communication values of line, form, colour aligned with semiotics and onomatopoeia I constructed long shots of dwelling, close-ups of tools, waste collection, use inserts shots from WASTEMAN’s POV, alternate longer shots again in scene

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Assignment 1, CCC32111, S2, 2020: Exegesis: WASTEMAN aka Cinderella
where helmet comes off, play occurs with condor, hero eats pretty, yummy fruit.

Then, when he suddenly looks around and up, the camera goes in and out of focus as he realizes the young woman ‘watcher’. Camera switches to her POV seeing how he registers: her, love, panic, grabs helmet, runs to ship, departs. WASTEMAN’S POV again then, with reverses, flashbacks as he flies away. Alone again.

Reading, reflection shows me my WASTEMAN narrative sits squarely upon the foundations of that ancient Anglo-Celt story (Carey et al, 2007), and throughout I try to companion rhythmic, temporal, spatial and graphic of my plot form. To support the action with earlier-era popular romantic songs, lyrics and other sounds and thus present a sense of the characters’ enduring wonder at their diverse, yet finally same, world. Three principal characteristics I rejected as a child are still alive and vital within other Cinderella versions circulating in today’s world I deliberately omit; strict adherence to gender roles; importance of class order; steady development of an inequality between characters.

WASTEMAN grew out of Cinderella, a key Anglo-Celt pedagogic fairytale introduced to me at an early age, when I rejected great parts, and adopted, for life, some vital components. To create WASTEMAN I crash through an uncertain trial and error struggle trying to create an understandable visual text. Substantial changes occurred constantly for I want to deliver forms decipherable today. In this assignment and through personal preference, I vary film speed, camera shots, and angles, use distance, colour, semiotics and incorporate a number of

popular, now dated songs, lyrics, sounds and images to echo the visual and oral

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Assignment 1, CCC32111, S2, 2020: Exegesis: WASTEMAN aka Cinderella narratives of my youth. WASTEMAN, a modern Anglo-Celt pedagogic tool

echoes Cinderella in its acceptance of, wonder and yearning for life, nature, and love.

Reference

BFI. (2020). Teaching Literacy Through Film. Future Learn. (Now Retired). From:https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/teaching-literacy-through-film/0/steps/11363

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Carey, J., Ellinghaus, K., Bourcher, L. (Eds.). (2007). ‘Historicising Whiteness:

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Towards a New Research Agenda’, In Historicising Whiteness: Transnational

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Perspectives on the Construction of an Identity, Melbourne: RMIT Publishing, 2007:

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vi-xxiii.

Flood, A. (2020). Guess How Much I Love You author Sam McBratney dies aged 77.

Book Review. The Guardian.

From: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/sep/21/guess-how-much-i-love-

you-author-sam-mcbratney-dies-aged-

77?fbclid=IwAR0RBF2asRxoqiGXKGDO9XkCLrK4XvOrmoMdnGMwHVyk2_HQ3n

5F7eit8ug

Guynes, S. A. (nd) Four-Colour Sound: A Piercean Semiotocs of Comic Book Onomatopoeia. Public Journal of Semiotics 6 (1).

Johnston, S. (2020). WASTEMAN. Storyboard proposal for short film.

Lutz, R. (1999). Cinderella’s Social Transformations (1999). USFSP Honors
Program Theses (Undergraduate). 101. http://digital.usfsp.edu/honorstheses/101

McEwan, I. (2006). Enduring love. UK: Vintage.
Moore, A., Gibbons, D. (2014). Watchmen International Edition.

Burbank, CA, USA: HBO series DC Comics.

RajaTheResidentAlien. (2020). All Distortion Is Intended. Music Video. From: https://vimeo.com/448031743?fbclid=IwAR2BYc2W2- vq83FE_l8o3SQa4SVkCNDueEyUaWFMczDhEvnZoAP1V2G0xbw

Straczynski, J. M., Hughes, A., Kubert, A., Kubert, J., Sienkiewicz, B., Risso, E. (2014). Before Watchmen. Burbank, CA, USA: DC Comics.

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Wasteman, 2020

8 Wildly Successful Old-Agers, 2021

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Wildly successful true-life stories from the Beyond

Introduction

Today, countless ordinary, very old Australians continue to be capable and happily active throughout the entire last era of their lives and they are admired paid for this. Yet, normally elders such as these, who aren’t billionaires, or millionaires, or even any other form of financially rich, or powerful, are hardly ever acknowledge, nor encouraged. Neither are they normally paid for their extraordinarily faithful, valuable, even sometimes essential services to their societies.

The true life-stories in this book are just some of those in the last two generations, and a tiny few of the many successful lives, little-recorded, in Western World history. These people provide us all with understandable models for successful old life. These are humans to be inspired by, and to learn key life-survival skills from.

For these powerhouse elders show to us all that capable, responsible, strong-willed and everyday people can continue to generate plentiful, personal income. Perhaps these true tales of life also show we should never, ever too quickly discount serendipitous factors.

Peace, happiness, laughter Susanne Johnston

Story 1
Story one is itself a metaphor. The luscious fruits symbolise the old lady and her solo, though lovely life. As is her ascension and descent from a fruit tree each morning and night a life ceremony.

Title: Aged Lady-Expert Fruit Caresser

Many days of every year, particularly from the warm dawn to cooling dusk of every beautiful day of late summer, a tiny, laughing lady of more than 100 years old sits happily high up in some verdant tree. There in the sunshine, she chooses and expertly picks luscious. perfect fruit which she then wraps around with soft tissue. Immediately hereafter, she nestles each picked fruit down, with the others, into a pretty and sturdy though ancient basket right there beside her, up in the tree.

The basket is tied to a strong rope and pulley. When the old lady gives the signal, younger people waiting at the foot of the tree gently lower the basket down. They reverently carry the basket and its aromatic contents off, to be immediately transported to the best fruit markets in the big Japanese city nearby.

Who is this very old lady, and how does she get so happily so high up into that tree? This very old and happy lady is called “The Fruit Caresser”, the most expert picker and packer of her community’s Grade A unblemished, highest quality fruit this community is so famous for. So this old lady is greatly valued, and she is very well- recompensed by her community for her skills. The loss of her skill to her community would be a great blow.

To ensure they, and the old lady, receive maximum benefits from her unique abilities, this community ensures the old lady can continue to carry out her invaluable skill. They prune into the design of their fruit trees, shapes that grow to act like steps, and thus, they design each of their most valuable fruit trees to assist the old lady to mount to where the highest, and also often the choicest fruit, grows.

Meanwhile, the community has arranged younger people below, mainly to draw up and down the baskets so those are ever ready at her side.

Yet, while her community provide the old lady these able companions to assist her deliver their best fruit to market in the best possible condition, she ascends and descends each tree by herself. She uses two sticks to walk between trees as each day progresses, and to board the public bus service to transport her each day.

END

2

Story 2
Story two is of a family where the carrying out of every morning’s game is a symbol of diverse, discrete links to power, wealth and success across three lives.

Title: Aged Experts

Some decades ago, a warm and friendly, slim and healthy, well-known and aged man resides, with his wife, in his own home in an inner-city, leafy Eastern Australian suburb. Where, around 5am almost every morning of each year the man is picked up and driven, by his 71-year-old son, to the local squash court.

There, they undertake a set of games together, and the father often wins. After each showering and dressing, they come together to sit down and enjoy hearty, laughter- filled breakfasts.

Thereafter every weekday, having exchanged sports clothes for impeccable business suits, the younger man drives to his father’s office. After dropping his father off outside, the son waits, watches his father ably mount the stairs, then continues to his own place of business.

Every workday dusk, after the son picks up his father, they often discuss their workdays. They stop to do a little shopping and sight-seeing, greeting of well-known associates in the nearby village shopping streets before driving on to return to their respective homes for dinner with their spouse.

The father and his wife are a close couple who generally enjoy each evening together at home. Sometimes friends and family members of all ages drop in and are made most welcome.

On weekend mornings, husband and wife stay at home and read and relax separately. Each afternoon of each weekend they come together to work in their large and beautiful garden. As they work, they chat about events which have occurred to each of them during the last week, and they plan.

Every year, the entire family spends the whole month of August together at the seaside.

The older man is 93 years old and has for more than a decade headed up one key area of the practice of psychiatry in the state in which he has lived all his life. His develops psychiatric theory and both also remain in private practice for two half-days each week.

This aged father and son still occupy the highest levels of their professions, where both roles are challenging, difficult and absorbing. The older man’s lifelong wife has an equally lifelong and robust editing and publishing career. The results all achieve are universally admired and each is very well-recompensed. All their lives remain happy, healthy, highly productive and fulfilling.

END

3

Story 3

The third story is a magnificent ceremonial act leading to lengthy performance; a life of admirable optimism and reliability, trust, determination, perseverance, and hard work.

Title: Body Builder Buddy, Friendly yet Formidable

When in her 70s, an American married lady has a very close, lifelong, girlfriend, her sister, who suddenly dies. The sisters did many things including watching many body-building competitions together. For months, the lady is inconsolable.

Until, suddenly, she recalls a vow she and her sister made together, not long before her sister’s death. Recently they had become so inspired while watching a particular TV programme they had agreed to find out how to become successful bodybuilders themselves.

Though the sisters often attended gyms during their lives neither had any involvement in bodybuilding. So, the woman decides to honour her vow with a positive frame of mind, and actions, and begins, intellectually and physically, to learn how a person becomes a successful bodybuilder.

The lady has been married to one man for decades and with her husband’s support, she begins. The first cornerstone of the routine they create is they begin each day, in the half-light at 2:30am, with a 20-mile jog.

Suddenly she is out of her fog of sadness and depression and is now positive. Soon very fit, and happy too, by the time she is in her early 80s, she is an international superstar bodybuilder.

She and her husband are rich and successful as they have created hugely successful fitness of mind and body classes, for all ages, and especially for couples and families.

Their deep love and support for each other, their inspiring health and happiness are all admired and loved by countless followers.

4

Story 4
A ‘boys-own’ type of adventurous life-story with great family ties, plus heaps of fame,

fortune and ceremony, forever and ever.
Title: Story-book Life Adventurer surpasses the beyond

As a very young man, a long-term South African citizen of English genes starts his tertiary education in the field of archaeology, where he is a top student. However, halfway through his degree decides he will never get in life where he wants to go. Unless he changes disciplines. So he changes, and then successfully becomes a conceptual exploration geologist – for all his life.

When his career takes him all round the world, his novel geological concepts prove extremely successful, and he gains considerable success, fortune and fame. Throughout his lifetime he continues to work throughout the world in this field, where he successfully develops new theoretical concepts. These are two of his greatest enjoyments in life in companionship with his family, and the love of life itself.

By age 70, his fame and reputation are world-wide. As he grows older, he always ensures he is in top physical form and as time goes on, deliberately develops more closely his closest, long-term family relationships. He returns full-time to his historic domicile in South Africa.

This decision-making means his personal happiness and life-quality has increased vastly. Though he finds ageing and staying in one place now reduces the possible number of new, interesting clients with their new ideas and opportunities.

So he accepts a long-term invitation from his alma mater to expand his regular activities to include part-time lecturing. This proves to be a most serendipitous decision for all, for quickly he becomes extremely popular with students. There is a great demand for his courses which are of much great and unique value, for he has always been delighted to share and exchange information with interested others. In doing so, he provides quality access to his own real-life stories.

Those are of real-world information, via the personal lens of his own vast experience and novel ways of thinking about the physical world. Now he particularly enjoys acting as teacher-guide to show others how to enquire, plan and then carry out the physical activities of exploration, and thereafter to draw conclusion and describe and illustrate those.

By 80, to his great delight, his tutoring opportunities have expanded to include regular trips into diverse geologic realms. He becomes even more famous, and in the process, extremely rich. Still entirely fit and absolutely ready for this type of work in South Africa, he once again returns to his beloved areas of almost every known, or imaginable terrain. Where he delights in teaching the like-minded in return for very high payment.

5

6

Story 5
A dramatic tale of English decisions which led to far-flung choices and chances in life. A heart-rending true tale of love, support and partnership where the last partner continues, to the very end of life.

Title: Englishman in the Antipodes. In old age? To India A life performance across the global theatre and even into the beyond.

An Englishman by birth and education became a qualified agricultural scientist. Fresh out of university and given his family’s traditional volunteering habits, he soon found himself working for a pittance in various the islands surrounding Australia. Due to dangerous work conditions, he soon became badly injured.

Luckily will recuperating he met his lifelong partner who was of Chinese descent. Together and though virtually penniless, they decided to move to Australia. Then in their early thirties, once there, they each took advantage of the free education of that time.

Soon each became an expert gemmologist. Over time they built a substantial reputation and business, however, Australia’s boom and bust cycles proved too much for them. Being of serious, studious mindsets, they had for years read of the projected huge global growth. So they once again agreed to completely change their lives.

Again, with little capital and this time in their mid-60s, they disposed of all their belongings. This time they moved to another somewhere neither had ever set foot before, India. Once there they found paid advisory work in the gem business immediately. At the same time, and against all evidence, this couple and a few relatives successfully invented an on the ground network new to rural India.

They offered a way to loosely interlink landholdings of historically poverty-stricken farmers. Those who each owned a tiny plot of land located within the same area. To do so, they invented novel ways to maintain harmonious agreement within a group of people with a long history of alienation. Here, this Englishman’s dormant, though well-maintained agricultural skills assisted him to sew together this patchwork of small landholdings.

Once amalgamated, he created a realistic, economically successful farm management plan. Now in his late 90s, and though no alone, he still happily continues his advisory work every day, and is well-paid for his expertise. Meanwhile, he maintains the success of those small-farm Indians, and their land bank.

END

7

Story 6

The masterly venerable musicians of New Orleans hardly need any introduction, and their ranks now continue, even into their 100s.

TITLE: Yes, Music is the stuff of every age of life

New Orleans African American masters of jazz are musicians who hardly need any introduction; their fame spreads all through the world with every modern generation.

Nonetheless, these particular, aged individuals remain especially inspiring when seen and heard up close and personal. When they can be met in this life is in a tiny, historic wooden shack they regularly inhabit at night, when they gather to perform together.

There is where normal people can go, too, for they provide a continuing exhibition of their very great talents to all and for modest return. The continuance into old age of their superb performing lives graphically illustrates the great generosity of communal spirit they, and their life-giving sounds foster and nurture.

I know little about the group of very old master musicians I once saw and heard there. For a few hours, in dense and humid heat, and smoke. Only know that I will never forget them, and their sounds. For everything about all those very old people clearly exhibited their enormously positive life-energies to me in ways I could immediately perceive through their magnificent music and their separate and collective presence.

Even though some infirm, some stick-thin and wizened, some far too smooth and rotund, all were masters of their art. Clearly, all loved music so dearly, and their enjoyment, of their own continued abilities to perform superbly, was palpable.

Each there was impeccably and perfectly costumed, each voice memorable. Each instrument glowed. Each in its own perfection. Equally evident the encouragement and admiration each of these inspiring individuals supplied to their peers.

I hear and see them each, still perfectly inspiring me on every possible level of life, at any age.

END.

8

Story 7
A Girls’-Own Tale of High and Turbulent Old times Successfully Sailed

TITLE: Once-Upon a Time Girl’s Life

Once upon a time a happy little girl decided she wanted to have all the marvellous, sea-going adventures only boys usually have. So, she did, because at that time, the world had become ready for what was then a most unusual master achievement for any lady.

This fabulous girl, with the greatest encouragement of her family and friends, first became a very capable and qualitied skipper of large fishing and prawning sea-going vessels with many crew in her command. For years she was extremely competent and also well-paid and that went on until the end of her 40s.

At that point, because of her abilities, another unusual opportunity arose, again to move on and to break ground for her gender once again. She then made sure she was highly qualitied as a harbour-master, if possible an even more unusual and admirable achievement, for any female anywhere in the world, at that time.

Master of the operations of an important port, she successfully held that key position for decades while her fame became legend. Afterwards, she changed her life. Now, instead of successfully conquering the waves she has moved 9 months of each of her later life inland. To again travel and now to act as knowledgeable and well-paid guide to friends. To any others also wishing to travel.

She walks along, along or with others, the entire length of the Italian and Spanish sections of the ancient pilgrims’ ways. Wending, on foot, through the mountains, always with the intent of moving along to visit some of the most famous, venerable Christian holy places.

For relaxation and further happiness, she spends 3 or 4 months every year deeply immersed within her large and happy family. All of her life has kept her superbly fit in mind, body, and spirit.

Happy days of life continue thus for our now herself venerable, admirable, and inspiring, life-adventuress supremo.

END

9

Story 8

Serendipity touches life at all ages. Only some know how to use it well TITLE: “Love Work: want to do so up to the very Day I Die”

Perhaps the early privations and separations led to the extraordinarily early resolve to make the best of life.

A serendipitous suggestion provided on a whim to an impressionable teenager led to a high achievement in education. Then onto a successful working life in the earth- sciences which played out all over the globe, although in his fifties, with his nine lives all nearly used up in dangerous lands, locations, and environments, he encountered some mighty health problems.

Some lingered, for some years, three, perhaps four, remained serious enough to hamper his then 60-year-old life-dreams. Though not for long; soon he was back on his feet and back at work successfully looking at, and for rocks and rivers and many other signs and all their effects upon each other, and upon metals and other materials.

At that stage, and despite some considerable physical disadvantages he decided he wished to learn other facets of the earth-sciences. Immediately he began to do so, through books and by engaging in many actual field practices, some difficult and tiring.

So, very soon he was out under the desert stars at night once again, and round him in his new adventures he gathered a tribe and they all learned entirely new, though related skills.

Some, most, from his oldest and most trusted compatriots, although some also new and till then unknown. Those elders loved their unexpected return to the field life of their earlier years. Every one of them has prospered, and continues to do so, and that allows them in many ways and means to overcome all the aches and pains involved in continuing a very physical old age, and all are happily far more fit than previously. Perhaps they always will remain so, happy and fit, all.

END

10

8 Wildly Successful Old-Agers, 2021

Gatherup work – 2 eco-poems, 2018, & notes

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Assignment 1, Part C.
Ecology considered in too much print
Poem 1
20 lines

CCC3108 S2, 2018: Assignment 1 Part B: Two poems of at least 16 lines.

No metaphor for the faint-hearted

Imagination unlimited springs
Deep. Garners strength, transmits through synapses.
Naked chemicals drift to cells, sparking,
Now darkening, now the nerves know all things.
The eyes window the spirit, the heart sings.
The human unconscious, completely unknown
Perambulates heartstrings, heartening the
Wild blood torrents about the skeleton.
Gristle, sinews, become nitrogelatin, to
Smelt through caverns of still silence. Out to
The Metropolis, Consciousness masses

Runs free of membranous mists, and as that
Beat goes forever on — as it must —who
does not desire to enter the Tourbillon?
Wild world, the worldwide wind, whirlwind, and now
Un-winding, go now wired down to the sea.
Conscious self-will. Slated, elated, arrived.
Arisen from ecstasy, becomes beguiled.
Bath-ed by sunbeams, freely, blithely. So
Alive. Alone. “With nature, reconciled”.

Percy Byce Shelley ‘Mont Blanc: Lines written in the Vale of Chamouni’ (1817), part line 79.

Poem 2
29 lines

What’s in a name

Recently decreed, by man:
Man is a ‘species’.
A species alienated from its own, natural self.
An energetic, burrowing species.

Evidence is possible.
Of induced environments everywhere
Man moves, wheel from lovely and living tree
And the table on which man’s food is set
(Which has no place for robins). So
As it is with the mighty Escalator, the Tin Roof, and the Computer
The window of the wise Wendell Berry’s home.
And the rail on the steps leading up to his front porch.
Each crafted from products won underground
By burrowing anew, species man.

So too the windows on most homes, most windows in most buildings, as
These are some of the somethings man
Energetically burrowing species, makes environment with.
Lately, other men found more empathy in species man, burrowing creature.
For things and beings, more than any other creature known.
Evidence is hardly possible.

Wendell Berry one of few do-ers.
Of empathetic ecology.
Of the keep and the come of the house
Of the depend and interdepend economy.
Of honour between others
between species.
Ensure past, present and future

Meanwhile, Eulogy
Man, species, in his infinite vanity decrees
Gaia, in this period must trans-gender to “The Anthropocene”.
The age of man.

Tutor: Dr. Donna Mazza. Student: Susanne Lorraine Harford. student number 10043898. Tuesday, October 9, 2018 page 1

Notes on Poem 1
From Assignment 1 Part C instructions I have chosen the points 1 and 4, below, of CCC3108 Week 1 Tutorial “Topic 3 Activity: Old world Romantics: Revolution, science and nature” (2018).

“1. What language choices indicated the poet’s attitude towards nature?”
Shelley’s poem formally presents his mainly positive visceral reaction to nature, as in his poem Shelley presents awe, fear, engagement, elation, beauty, truth. A strong vein of negativity threads throughout in his rejection of religion. All these points I thought about as I developed my response.
“4. Can you find the sublime in the poetry?”
Shelley’s poetic subject is the intimate relationship of human imagination in a sublime relationship with nature. My poem dwells on the inspirational connections imagination may bring to the physical human interior. My metaphor of the sublime is how human imagination enhances the internal human experience of the infinite universe. This is the natural human existence, unconscious or conscious.
Shelley uses an almost-constant ten ‘beat’ form per line and irregular rhyming pattern, which creates his masterful, formal presentation of the sublime. In my response I adapted his flow and rhythm of his first, and part of his second two stanza, (to line 20). As Shelley presents land forms, the elements affecting them, and describes human imagination and how those aspects of nature can profoundly affect the human. AS Shelley provides grand verbal pictures for the mind’s eye as he presents the sublime, clearly to the reader. To simulate that effect — of the imagination on the human interior universe — I created vivid descriptions of the natural workings of synapses, cells, nerves, sinews, gristle, blood, skeleton, mind, and the rush of the blood, all of which are equally profound and impressive.
The twenty lines I composed here, of irregular rhyme, below, in response to the classic ode by Percy Bysshe Shelley: ‘Mont Blanc: Lines written in the Vale of Chamouni’ (1817) were influenced also by Nagra’s article about Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Nagra discusses the poem “Kubla Khan” (1816), published the year before Shelley wrote his ode and provides an analysis of language construction possibilities (Nagra, 2014).
Notes on Poem 2
Poem 2 is based on CCC3108 Week 1 introductory Wendell Berry tutorial. My focus here is the Assignment 1 suggestion for reading the work: “What role does the physical setting play in the plot of this work?” Wendell Berry sears the physical setting into the human brain, unforgettably, with colourful, graphic, early statements.
“…I’m sorry for getting here
By a sustained explosion thorough the air,
Burning the world…
The world may end in fire”
Berry keeps this up by applying superb pressure throughout this poem. Short, punchy phrases continue to deliver hard ecological news:
“…burn it in our fit… with smokes and smudges, poison… Burning the world… falsify the land”.
The 29 lines of free-verse is a personal response to Berry’s poem, “A Speech to the Garden Club of America” (2009). In my poem I try to develop shock value too, and used recent scientific news: of man’s recent decision to call this era Anthropocene Stromberg, (2013), to do so.
Another facet of my poem is a recent psychological idea, that humans are more empathetic than any of the other species we are blithely decimating (Taylor, 2012). I used the Christian writer Bouma (2013) for details of Wendell Berry’s home and reported valuable recent conversation snippets, in developing my second poem.

Tutor: Dr. Donna Mazza. Student: Susanne Lorraine Harford. student number 10043898. Tuesday, October 9, 2018 page 2

Reference

Berry, W. (2009). “A speech to the Garden Club of America.” Retrieved from the New Yorker Magazine:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/09/28/a-speech-to-the-garden-club-of-america

Bouma, R. (2013). My Afternoon with Wendell Berry. Retrieved from the Web site of Think Christian:
https://thinkchristian.reframemedia.com/my-afternoon-with-wendell-berry
Nagra, D. (2014). Kubla Khan [sic] and Coleridge’s exotic language. Retrieved from The British Library Web site: https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/kubla-khan-and-coleridges-exotic-language
Shelley, P. B. (1817). “Mont Blanc: Lines written in the Vale of Chamouni.” Retrieved from The British Library Web site:
https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/mont-blanc-by-p-b-shelley
Stromberg, J. (2013). The Age of Humans. Retrieved from the Web site of Smithsonian Magazine:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/what-is-the-anthropocene-and-are-we-in-it-164801414/

Taylor, S. (2012). Empathy: The ability that makes us truly human. Retrieved from the Web site of Psychology Today at:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/out-the-darkness/201203/empathy-the-ability-makes-us-truly-human

Wong. B. M., Candolin, U. (2015). Behavioral responses to changing environments, Behavioral Ecology, V 26, 3, pp. 665–673, Retrieved from: https://doi.org/10.1093/beheco/aru183

Tutor: Dr. Donna Mazza. Student: Susanne Lorraine Harford. student number 10043898. Tuesday, October 9, 2018 page 3

Gatherup work – 2 eco-poems, 2018, & notes

REAL LIFE IN THE TIME OF DIGITAL NOMADISM

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Real life in the TIME of Digital Nomadism

               “Mirage–” when then dust subsided around his Kawasaki KL650, he lifted his Araihelmet visor, used the grittyHeadwareto rub the heavy sweat layer from his eyes.

               As he swung his head back around he saw shimmering heat-waves rising up wherever he looked even as he also realised it was now almost sundown. Then he scanned back up the steep rise he’d just passed: “Sure’s still there, though–skinny little thing, scrunched up, right on top of that big bluff. Man, that long blonde-white hair, all tangled up, blowin’ out behind her in this dry desert-sea wind. Nice –skin’s shiny — all-over. Sort of – multi-coloured?”

               “Gone. Yup, she’s a mirage.” He re-started the bike, moved up closer, circling almost right round the big knoll this time, then stopped abruptly. As at one point it went straight down 60 metres or so, right into the excited sea. Once more he looked around, then up again and then nodded, grinned ruefully: “Gotta be more careful–must be dehydrated, seeing things like that. Maybe heat exhaustion — and a pretty little lady, too — that’s a first!”

He’d been alternatively riding and grid-sampling all day, “Guess it’s understandable, out in this hot sun, after 5am start today. Forgot to keep the darn water levels up after I stopped to eat.” Scanning about, he found a safe vantage point where he could still see right out over the sea, he could sleep snug up against this bluff. He backed up the bike.

“Tomorrow I might take a few rock chips off you, big, old bluff.” He looked up, searching again for that strange and beautiful apparition. Thought, “I’ll get a bit of rest, sleep-in tomorrow. Then scout round — it’s pretty alright up here.” He scanned the horizon, smiled, relaxed: “Can see for miles. Come morning I’ll stay here till I load that next grid-sector and check what I’ve got down so far.” He dismounted, stretched, leaned back against the chalky, white, hot stone bluff: “Out of that wicked wind here.” And smiled: I’ll be facing the sunrise.”

               He woke at first light, then lay there, consciously relaxing in his swag for a while. When he sat up he gazed out on a completely serene sea where that just-rising sun picked out and flashed against sets of superb, long, lazy waves as far below him they ambled into the wide bay below, with a fine, shining spray, all sticking out like a crew-cut. Each tip flying off as it curled in a playful breeze: “Perfect slabs” he thought, as his practiced eye ran along those inviting waves. Then he started, looked more closely: “There she is.” The girl. Surfing. Naked. No, almost, in a tiny string bikini. He leaned back, took in that scene with sheer pleasure. Totally at home on her board in those big, big waves,  hair streaming out again, though now lashing about behind her, glinting in the sun and matching the shine on the waves. “An absolute natural, no doubt about that.” He was pleased: “She’s no apparition, that’s one super-fit surfie-chick.” He leaned sideways against the rockface as somewhere on her body he saw another glint: “Ah, it’s metal” he thought: “she’s wearing some jewellery. It’s catching those bright sunrays, too, and making those rainbows.”

               “But what’s she doing way out here?” He rose, stretched, stepped out of his swag, lean, fit, naked, and moved closer to the edge. To where he could see down into the bay’s sparkling white beach: “No one. She’s alone?” he wondered to himself as he scanned along the entire sand: “it’s a long way from anywhere, out here.” For more than half an hour after he put on some shorts and T and came back and then leaned again against the big rock-face, he watched her. Then, while he was scanning the horizon, and the cloudless skies, and thinking about his beloved work: “I really like this new group. They’ve allocated the whole week for me to finish this grid”, he thought, “I’m already ahead, and” — suddenly he saw she had done another disappear.

He leaned out over the cliff-tip again but could not see her. Though he saw her board drawn up and deposited firmly and securely between two big rocks on the beach. Near a shallow cave, really just a hollow and where a little stream ran from there to the sea.

               He smiled happily: “Fresh water! Maybe. So, if the sampling goes as well today, then early tomorrow morning I can stay here and figure out a way down there.” He continued this train of thought as he scanned along the ridge: “Might do a little near-beach body-surfing myself. Good thing I brought my flippers, googles. Take the knife, bag, too. See if I can pry off some oyster breakfast and fill the water tank.” He tidily rolled up his swag but left it where it was and then made some light breakfast from his saddle-bags. 20 minutes later he was one the bike and away and into his day’s work.

Just before nightfall he gathered some firewood, cooked a few eggs. Salt, pepper a tomato and strong billy-tea. He slept a perfect sleep, awoke again early, refreshed and energized. Immediately dressed very lightly, filled up his backpack, found an easy descent down the cliff. Soon he too was enjoying the surf. The waves came in over a big heap of rocks, but he was a strong surfer so they presented little difficulty. After an hour or so, and during a lull in the wave-sets he lay back, floated in the water, looked up at the cliff, enjoying the sheer pleasure of the clear, fresh, cold water and the sheer natural beauty of this arid, unfamiliar landscape. Then sat up: “There she is” Above — right where he’d camped, and left his bike, computer, gear — “now she’s the one looking down at me.” No wind today, so her hair, still tangled, golden-white, hung down past her waist, and again he saw that metallic flash, now quite big. After he gathered and ate a couple of dozen oysters off the rocks, he returned across the sand, filled his water container, drank some and then sat on the edge of her surfboard where it sat between the rocks on the sand. “Nice,” he thought, softly running his hands down the board: “Expensive, four fins, brand new – she hasn’t had this long.” She watched him.

               Then he rapidly climbed the cliff, walked to his campsite. No one. He looked around, no evidence of her. Nothing disturbed, all just as he’d left it.  Again, he rode off, worked throughout another day, further away, all the while half-thinking about the girl. “Way out here on this desert coast and on her own?” By now he really wanted to meet her. “So, tomorrow morning–” What could he do? — Nothing. “Tonight I can spend camped at that rock but tomorrow I have to go way further down the big block of land that’s been allocated to grid and sample. Or I won’t do it right.”

               When he awoke to the next bright and early morning, he found her sitting on the rock. He stood up, pulled the sheet around his body — up close she looked amazing, even more so than at a distance. Her string bikini enhanced her beautiful form: “What?” He could see her bikini though she was fully covered in some type of thick blanket. Which had energy, shimmered and glistened as it changed from skin colour to many different hues, and textures, and pulsated at the same time, lengthening and contracting. “A solar blanket?” he wondered. Whatever it was, it was special.

               “Hello” she said.

He replied:

“What’s that amazing thing you’ve got ‘round you?” She moved ever so slightly, and the blanket slipped fully off, down from her shoulders, spread out onto the rock. She looked at it there.

“My boyfriend adapted this, it’s Mantel. He also adapted my body, so Mantel fits here.” She held up her other arm, till then out of sight. Then he really saw what that metallic flash was. Her arm: a complicated prosthesis from shoulder socket almost right down to her hand, with a big oval socket in her back, towards the shoulder blade.

“Wow. Nice.” He looked around: “Is your boyfriend way out here, too, then?” She looked calmly at him:

“No, I’m way out here by myself. He’s always with me, though – he died out there- ” she gestured out over the waves: “Where he wanted. Surfing.”

               He thought about that for a minute, then said: “So, you gonna come down? Want some breakfast — tomatoes, eggs and sardines – tinned? Then I’ve gotta go — leaving this morning, about an hour or so. I’m Robbie.”

She’d slid swiftly all the way down a smooth curve of the big bluff, and lightly dropped to the ground. Fearless.

“Thanks,” She put out her hand: “Pearla” he shook it, folded one of his blankets to make her a cushion, then glanced up the rock: “You left your blanket behind. Let me go get it for you.” She looked at him, shook her head: “Mantel’s fine, he’s made his own way down to the sea by now – through the guts of the rock. He can slide through any tiny crack, you see. He’s gotta get back in the water, now – been out a coupla hours.”

               He nodded as they scouted around for some wood, and he quickly lit the fire, then looked seawards: “Wow. So, Pearla, your boyfriend, who was he – to make stuff like that, and this?”  He indicated her arm.

“AI, medico, marine, scientist.”As he quickly tipped butter, eggs, tomatoes, some chilli and the last of his bread into the pan he said, “And what happened to you?”

 She looked down. “Ah. I’ve been surfing since I was 10, and after I survived about 20 drownings, the sea finally got really mad one day, and I ripped off more than skin. On those rocks you took the oysters off yesterday. When my boyfriend put my arm back together he re-built me so I can survive under water for long periods.” She lifted her arm and showed him the socket, with pride: “This is where Mantel fits, so I can breathe using his huge air streams.”

               “Mantel–you mean that amazingly beautiful thing you were wearing this morning, up there on the rock?” As he handed her a tin plate with half the hot food, and a fork he noticed her skin was cold. Even though by now the sun was already extremely hot. Then he saw her eyes fully open and gazing at him. An extraordinary green. Horizontal pupils.

He gulped: “Did you damage your eyes too — though they are really beautiful?”  She ate immediately.

“Yes, Mantel, and No, my eyes are another type of bonus. I wish he could see what happened after he joined me and Mantel up.” He was running out of time:

“So, help me here”, he smiled, “Your boyfriend didn’t make Mantel?” She looked up at him, smiled, watched his face closely, now: “Mantel was my boyfriend’s other best friend. He looks after me now. My boyfriend fixed me up, and at the same time joined Mantel and me. We’re a symbiotic partnership. You know?”

He put down his plate, looked at her: “Um, I don’t get it?” 

She smiled: “Mantel’s a Giant Pacific octopus. About 5 years old now, which is as long as they normally survive. This socket joins me to his air, and Mantel to my heart. Now Mantel’s gonna live as long as I do. Provided we stay by the sea.”

They sat and ate in silence, then.

               “So, are you out here all the time?” he asked her.

“Only leave when I have to. So yes, about 90% of the time I’m here, I guess. Why? This is home.”

END

REAL LIFE IN THE TIME OF DIGITAL NOMADISM

The Ocean of Death and Life

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The Ocean of Death and Life

Youth and beauty did not change her conviction – she would not grow old the way most others did  – that death was a natural part of life.

“When will I die, and how?” she straightaway asked herself: “After all, you’ve all the known world to provide you with resources so you can achieve whichever outcomes you want.”

She left it at that then, knowing her internal dialogue was always extraordinarily productive and to re-visit these subjects in a month or so. Then several important points were already available: that her death not in any way be subject to interference; that it was immediately clear there was a necessity for secrecy; her intentions should not be thwarted, or distorted, by those who might announce her immature, or irresponsible, or incapable of caring for herself. Yet wonderfully, occasionally she found others who expressed similar leanings who cleaved to her, and so she had to pretend ignorance and incomprehension; though love of life and laughter burst through, often. Then those who really aligned with her found her out, and then those never again left her side for long, lest, unexpectedly they be left behind when the time came. So together these, a small band of young and not so young desired and built an entirely new type of glorious, and voluntarily shared home.

Time went on and they sat together one night, and knew then their desired reality was no longer so far away and though the group agreed there were limits to any plan’s effectiveness, especially as now their joint goal encompassed many virile lives – no longer one life, at that late point in a long and gorgeous Indian summer they deemed their plan well-crafted. Now they knew the time and they had all the knowledge they needed to remove their minds from their bodies, which in the end is all Death can comprise of. As they had grown together by now so as to be as one they knew how privileged they were in finding each other – eight in total with minds, spirits and hearts already well past everything in life but each other and their goal. While she came from family love and generosity of spirit and resources, others in the group had endured pain and deprivation throughout their lifetimes until they happened together. Their unusual mixture of joined sensitivities, to each other and to the seriousness of their venture, meant total commitment in the greatest degree, to William Heinesen’s statement: “life is not despair, and death shall not rule”. They all reached towards this idea and their desires bound them into a family and her parents welcomed them, made them at home, and so they had grown into a life never expected till now in this world. Those who stood with her did not consider her leader, nor any other, as all looked forward to their future together far from the deafening clangors of men, and each know his role in making it so and all saw her every move as those of quick-silver being, never  leading, simply glistening, glowing in the gloaming of life, in her every move.

Her family were always free thinkers and at birth she arrived, fortunate, into a group that entirely tolerated her rights when and if she so chose, and they all knew of her intentions, her future appointment with death. A mutually admiring and non competitive group, with simple pride, and no mantras, signs or symbols in the practical life their forebears had crafted for them, who removed their home as far as possible away from the economics-sodden, class-ridden 21st century. In her case she arrived, the sole child of her generation in that family group, and received their gifts to her mind, body and spirit. When she was young, and thereafter throughout her life, her kin swelled their ranks with adoptions and fostering and guardianships, and so in life her clan was large and with much diversity to be found. Sound practices by hard-working, good people who believed all were equal and all deserved and owned a fair chance at life.

After the last great war her group had chosen to live simply on the outskirts of a large city where they personally worked together to create their home, a complex of comfortable buildings, conjured by her kin out of many different, simple materials, whatever they could pay for, or find, and so they created an environment of beauty, around they grew all their diverse foodstuffs, and flowers for beauty, and wood to surround them, and for them to admire and grow strength from, as well as to build and to burn. Her family’s life, and home always had room for other creatures, all sorts of animals, the well and the needy, and their belief was they could always fit others, still free to roam and of all types into their well-functioning environment, where they cared for them, fed and loved them all, without reserve. So many were her family and she knew all by name, and well, too, and kept in close contact, by many methods, though none of them electronic.

And the sea was their great friend, and the river, and streams, and all the creatures that lived there, too, were part of their family and their home, for their land verged the sun and wind-swept ocean, where along one side a great river coursed, fed by many pretty streams that tinkled and sparkled across all the parts of their land, and there they were happy, as her parents described, so ironically, “for we are all little creatures that happily form the Great Unwashed”. The family spent lovely hours with the wilder creatures and knew their habits entirely and throughout these all of our globe’s dimensions, they looked after those creatures numerous and luminous, of the air too, catching only what they needed to exist, and asking each’s forgiveness, and making offerings to their divine spirits, set free in the taking of their lives.

For all her years her parents and all her big family were happy as she lived there, too, and her part of this home was in a Winnebago made to her design, exactly perfect in all respects for her entirely straightforward needs, which she bought from her very first year of earnings. She was a sound technician. (Michele Hobbs), and regularly she turned home to vehicle, disconnecting the solar power lines and travelling whither her wont as it took her far and wide, all over the country, and sometimes further she took her home elsewhere. For much as she loved her home and her people, and she always returned there, and her followers knew she always would, before she departed truly, she also loved to travel. Each year she found some new idea to follow, new place to visit, and so she did – always to return. The wide world offers much to learn to someone like her, and as each year passed she grew more wise, and more determined in her life plan.

They, the parents and family, and the newcomers, had a few key and common convictions, that humans were good yet generally not deep-thinking, and evil was banal, and it went wherever it chose, as the world was now ruled, and fuelled, still, by “the hideous gang of Great Unthinking”. They knew them and stood against those awful beings, and, whilst fierce in their devotion to the good of all, they steadfastly allowed no harm to come to others, whether human creature or another and from all these factors  came the foundation of her ideas – and those of her dedicated band and while all were pathfinders, none were completely lonely, nor yet together – as all were freely involved and all felt at home – where all were equal. So  they slept well, and their home and all its gifts to them kept them thankful and made them strong, and thoughtful.

So, though they had no intention to return they each bought their return air ticket to Copenhagen, so as to arrive there in good time of year, towards the end of summer. They travelled together, yet in small groups and, because so few blood links were involved, they were not apparent as one people to others, even when in their midst. Though many were extremely well-skilled, highly successful technicians none were leaders within their family group, and so none stood out more than any others around them.

Because all were good, and hard-working, kind and faithful, they had earned complete freedom throughout their  beloved, though now-depraved planet, with the glorious trappings of late summer draped all round them they boarded their plane, en-masse. For now all, their entire familial group, some twenty-six, having some months prior heard the rationale and that the time of the plan had come, had decided to join also. The family had many years prior forged other strong friendships and relationships with many like-minded, round them and within their wide-spread community far and near,  who already had many times prior entered into and enjoyed this unique life. Now the family invited those they cleaved to most – to share in all they had built, and soon those invited readily came and agreed with and took up their new roles to perpetuate that warm family for all creatures. Thus all was signed over to those arrivals, as it was necessary to the awful authorities and so the group’s paths were forever inextricably linked at the same time it was physically broken. As the idea was definitely valid, and those joining entered with complete conviction of the value of the life of the still-living, and thus all the first family might go along with her group to their ultimate goal.

No children came, as within the first family group all were now of age, and so with themselves and everything they needed, except for one thing, and, along that early short way, they read or watched the plane’s entertaining literature, and chatted, and gazed out the window, and all were calm and as all were in fine health they breathed in deeply of the cooling air, of what would soon be their last days on this now saddened earth, and none either ate or drank. No chance encounters stopped them, no one recognised them and with their great freedom these peoples arrived at the first point of their momentous journey, and being who they were, simply alighted, collected their little baggages and embarked for an evening. Though they came for some months, they brought nothing at all with them that gave the slightest indication of their intentions, and nor did they create any manifesto, or record to leave, and so they mingled with locals, bought food and drink and visited various shops, where one of their number, as a trader would do, bought, and paid in cash for the single other thing they needed; extremely sharp, strong, concealable knives, in sufficient number each person to have at least two in their possession – nothing unusual in the part of the world. Early the next morning, beautiful, now already more cold, as they had travelled North, all went down to the little harbour with their every possession and all waited to board a single friendly, strong and seaworthy vessel for the next voyage of their intention. That area was bustling, strong, optimistic, as almost always the case where humans live along the seaside, and they wrought fine energy from the magnificent vistas, the deep blue ocean before them, and those sea-peoples all round.  Again they moved naturally, full of life; love, happiness and laughter as they went onto the big ferry easily, where now, by necessity and ease, they came closer together again, and mainly stood along the deck for as long as they could, for although the day was very fine, the extreme cold soon forced them all inside and thus they sailed for more than thirty hours, through short day and long night.

At the last, they went, that July, down through the archipelago, on the old Faroese wood ship, and they breathed in the deep silence and deeply of the clear air, so delightful, and admired the beautiful tones of brilliant green spread all over the smoothed hills and deep, deep valleys. They mingled, and discussed how sometimes the green came all the way down to the sea, and how in other high areas, cliffs, some sheer black, and some cleanest white, cut straight down to the awaiting waves, and in so doing created sheltered, small, encircled harbours, many, on every side of every isle they passed, of the group of eighteen islands. Privileged they felt to see all of this, as they watched the sea birds in their thousands overhead, to hear their cries and the creaking of the old schooner and to feel as they did on that day strengthened again the positive and loving emotions in the group on that day’s sea journey.

So they arrived. Coming immediately to them from the shore were the marvellous sounds of another language, Faroese, arisen from the Old Norse mainly, as the sun went down even as they alighted on that day. Each day thereafter they swam the brilliant, cold waters even as the days softly grew ever shorter, and they joined in, here and there, in the life of the community going on around them. And on an autumn-brilliant day of sunshine and white clouds, and sweet light winds, and bright birds wheeling, when news of the Gridadrap was sounded they too, could stand up, leave what they were doing at that exact moment and all go down to where that bright gateway of death, with those creatures, tha had at once, there, opened up.

Not a word they then spoke to each other, only to the local people, and entirely naturally too, as their sharp new knives did they work, and still others never noticed the silken chords that by then loosely bound the group member’s all together, yet sat tight on over each writst, or even as they moved towards the shallows, on the side of that which has now been made into spectacle, how their family rejoined, for love and warmth. They then watched that red spread throughout that threshed water, waited until the pink on the edges reached the shore nearby, and then they all walked forwards into the sea, each loosening their own wrist chords as they did so . To meet that grisly pink wash there, so it covered their own feet and legs; higher and higher that dreadful moisture reached, as still they moved slowly forward into the deeper water, till each of their wrists, all hanging down were just above the water. Moving ever forward into the deep, they watched their blood flow, and soon they gave the softly pink colouration around them a new strength, now turned it into bright vermillion, and increased, as still entirely unnoticed, slid each one, softly, so softly, into that now-mixed red tide, all without a single sound, and thus their bodies, minds and spirits joined those friendly creatures all destined to die at that same place and time.

Then that is how they went down all twenty-six with those vital killed creatures, their kin of this world, to live on with them forever, wherever they all now went, as their shared home together had gone from this earth –  and home was now elsewhere.

The Ocean of Death and Life

Moon Base, Victor Papanek and the necessity of Socially Engaged Design

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Yes, and Yes. Still entirely valid. C’mon, peoples! peace, S

Ciarán Swan's avatarDesign Research Group

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In 1970 Victor Papanek (1927-1999), an Austrian designer and educator wrote a book called ‘Design for the Real World’. Originally published in Sweden, so popular was it that it was translated into English only a year later. The idea behind it was what Papanek felt was a mismatch between the power of design in contemporary societies and the lack of moral responsibility felt by the broad product design profession. As he noted himself ‘no a single volume on the responsibility of the designer, no book on design that considers the public in this way, has ever been published anywhere’. And from this Papanek developed a critique of this form of design and how it dovetailed with capitalism and sought to present a sort of roadmap for those involved in design. He argued that consumerist design was akin to medicine and ‘comparable to what would happen if all medical doctors were…

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Moon Base, Victor Papanek and the necessity of Socially Engaged Design

Marcuse on Freud & on others

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9 January, 2016

This Part 1. Begun on Mauritius – with Patrick’s gift, and at Patrick’s request.

From: Herbert Marcuse, (1955, 1966).

Eros & Civilisation: A philosophical enquiry into Freud.

Reading that rather bleak tome, I came to this, in part in the area I assume is Marcuse’s summary. There he says: “Freudian theory seemed to imply that the humanitarian ideals of socialism were humanly unattainable” (pp. 238, 239). It is unclear, to me at this point how he draws this stupendous (in times of written political philosophy, historical & future) conclusion.

Marcuse’s statement, I reject on a number of levels. However, it rather well sets today’s tone. More of that view when I finally write Parts 2, 3, 4, and so on. His abrupt dismissal of Jung’s work is startling: does he see something I do not?  So far in my reading Marcuse has not provided (me) ways to collectively and alternatively consider any  overarching ideas he might propose about Freud.

Marcuse, as when considering Adorno’s writings,  I see as essentially negative. He is faced with an unacceptable situation he knows only too well. As a writer, he is, to me, using an essentially negative perspective about our (the people, the globe) chances to be equally equal, all, forever and ever. He may do this to arrest us, focus us, force us to consider what we are prepared to do – outside our safe, little boxes  – when we are forced to do something.

Marcuse’s lens is thus narrowed down to a piercing incentivising pronouncement. Yet I found new tools, as the book has some positive specifics. These may be useful in ways , as of our lives are hampered in varying ways, and degrees.

The fascinating ideas Marcuse does present are, less about politics, they are more general. He cites Enrich Fromm (1932), who he says “understands the socio-psychological phenomena as… processes of active and passive adjustment of the instinctual apparatus to the socio-economic situation”. In my life I am fully aware of this ‘balance/re-balance’. It occurs to me every, single day. Sometimes more than once, an adjustment so autonomous I assume everyone wears one.

Marcuse describes Fromm as he works on the “connection between instinctual and economic structure” (p. 241), and what might happen outside what he terms the “patricentric-acquisitive”(p. 241). Which is what all non-men must deal with, one way or another, and tellingly, Marcuse labels this “the performance principle”, (p. 242). Certainly I am much interested in the hold “performance” -as in work – still has on me. And how I am dis-allowed to do any type of work that evidences value. Totally, entirely removed from that opportunity.

Fromm explains: “the instinctual apparatus itself is – in certain of its foundations – a biological datum”, and I feel this strongly, I desire to work. He goes on to explain the factor I believe hampers me in my desire, most, that it is “to a high degree modifiable;” sexual-based love can, and in non-men’s lives, and almost without fail, get in the way.  Meanwhile, there is another, insidious and most powerful element; “the economic conditions”. As Fromm already agrees, the last “are the primary modifying factors” Fromm, cited by Marcuse, p. 241).

While I agree with Fromm’s statement, above, (cited by Marcuse) to a high degree, it is my experience, without the (personally negative sexual love element), Fromm’s “biological datum” remains immute. In the non-man, which is where I remain.

In addition, there  are points I will not pass, or have not. These points are personally sacred, and most often not swayed by economics. At least to this point. In my variegated-privileged, and economically-varying yet still extraordinarily privileged, middle-class life.

Thereafter, Marcuse continues to quote Fromm, who describes the “underlying the societal organisation of the human existence”. Fromm then describes much of those “basic libidinal wants” I mentioned above. From this aged, and thus relatively unemotional point, I dispute they are, as he describes, “needs”

However, I certainly agree Fromm’s “wants” are highly plastic and pliable, especially in the young. Indeed, in our society, as has been the case for aeons, these “wants” are shaped and utilised – to “cement” the given society” (Fromm, cited by Marcuse, p. 241).

Again from my experience I agree, while specifying this is not necessarily so – for those of us who are the most privileged. In this my senior, hormonally mal-nourished, years,  I none of Viagra-commodities or HRT support. So libido is much-reduced, and thus, from that perspective it is clear this deadly “cement” holds much of the masses – firmly in their much-impoverished, 6-children lives.

Particular information about further reading also interested. For example,
Marcuse then briefly discussed Wilhelm Reich (1931). He sets out an explanation of Reich’s  “social and instinctual structures” (p. 239), shows, in this vein he writes of the “revisionist schools” of “Freud’s theory”.

Reich describes how those revisions “reveal more than ever … its elements, that transcend the prevailing order”. These are “elements” of repression, dragoon-ment of the general populace – by the elite). Freud thus does “link the theory of repression with that of its abolition” (p. 241). I would like to follow that trail.

END of this part. XS

Marcuse on Freud & on others

Solidarity, transgender, 2016

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We need Solidarity: while I did not get to know the transgender world it is perceivable.  Though a dark, very dark, mirror I have owned most of my adult life. As one of those termed ‘woMAN’,  ‘feMALE. This life,  gone now  almost, has also been spent in total refutation of demeaning describers,  of misogynic branding; in the stand against ‘face value’. And In dancing the suicide fox-trop when young, final waltz when old.

Nick Adams, Director of Programs, Transgender Media at GLAAD, states: “forty-one percent of transgender people report attempting suicide—not thinking about suicide, but attempting suicide”. I wonder if these awful statistics also appear in women’s lives. If they too bear witness to  ‘attempts at suicide’. As an adult I’ve always known suicide as such a ‘life’ option.

From this perspective, Adams’ rationale is unshakeable. He continues: “it’s because we live in a culture which makes it seem like it’s nearly impossible to be a happy, successful transgender person”. Our culture makes many, many woMen extremely depressed and unhappy. Our culture  is not a proper life,  does not provide proper life skills, opportunities and support in this wilderness – that is modern life.

Adams’ goes onto state the importance of education about the problems transgender people face, that: “transgender people are just like everyone else. We can be your coworkers, we can be your friends, we can be your neighbors”. Transgender people are everyone else.

As I think about how difficult the environment transgender people must occupy, still I  see strong comparisons in my life as woMAN. Especially dark times, many. Then, and inevitably, my suicide impulses were strongly fostered by outside influences, attitudes and environments.

Yet this might all change, if we pull together. Adams quotes Transparent creator Jill Soloway, who says, “anytime someone makes a break for freedom to be their true self, it can be a challenge, but it’s also incredibly exciting.”

So, to me it seems entirely logical when Adams says he looks “forward to the day when people say, ‘I’m transgender,’ and people go, ‘So? What else is interesting about you?'” That day will come. It will take time and it will take – Solidarity. Perhaps the only option is to delete the term ‘gender’? To eradicate that polarising BRAND entirely?

WoMen are too. So, Solidarity TO ALL: Peace, goodwill, prosperity, health, wealth & happiness….  lots and lots of laughter, together. old Susanne xs

 

Solidarity, transgender, 2016

The Broken Window channeling Saki

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  1. Try to restructure the narrative of the story so that a different character undergoes the transformation.
    Re-structure the narrative of Saki’s story of “The Open Window”

Now “The Broken Window”
“My aunt will be most unhappy, Miss Nuttel,” said the somewhat rattled young man; “You must come down immediately”.
As she swung a final, large arc on the brightly-lit antique chandelier, the beautiful Framtona Nuttel knew she was behaving outrageously. Especially in front of another perfect, interesting other. His aunt’s arrival was imminent, so she smoothed down her long, shiny hair, re-arranged her long strands of pearls, and reluctantly acknowledged, to herself, it was vital she create a superb first impression with the oldies. Now was a time to showcase herself and her particular talents. She dropped lithely down onto the carpet.
“With your perverse sense of humour you will definitely have fun.” Her girlfriend was absolutely correct when she told Framtona of this hidden country village. “A group of the usual eccentric, odd English. There’s always somebody around our own age. Our whole family spends months at a time down there – doing boring, disgustingly healthy things. There’s often other young guests – I’ve stayed a few times. Everyone our age goes out of their minds – eating salad all day… only wheat-grass juice to wash it down…. Ughh! ” So, I’ve asked Mummy and she’s written you letters to introduce…. just go down for a few weeks, you will create havoc in that uptight society – I know it!”
“Come closer… I like you… what’s your name? And what do you do for fun down here? Are there any discos around here, or do you have a fast car – so we can escape – do somewhere exciting?” asked Framtona, as she reclined on the carpet, a seductive smile playing on her lips. The young man stayed where he was: “Fun? Here?… You must be mad, it’s so quiet. No discos. No cars here. Even the bus out only stops once every two weeks, as nothing ever happens here. We are so totally boring.” He regarded Framtona warily, almost as if he had found a wild beast on the loose in the house. “And, although I can’t imagine why you are asking me, my name’s Alex.”
Framtona said: “Oh, I like you, and, Alex, you have the wrong idea. That event before? … really, I’m absolutely harmless. I just want to have a bit of fun…. and I’ve never swung from a real chandelier. before…. just toooo tempting.” Framtona looked fondly up at the chandelier. Gorgeous.” “He’s rather good looking,” thought Framtona to herself, as she rose lithely, moved closer to Alex.
“You are trouble, I can tell!” said Alex, “and my mother’s not here now. My Aunt is extremely delicate and nervous – unlike my mother, she likes everything just so. She also has a very short fuse…. can I see your letter?” Framtona fished a crumpled envelope out of her skirt pocket and handed it over. Alex took the document, moved a little away and quickly read the contents. He looked up…. “Oh, oh, I see, the Osborne side of the family recommended you, to my mother. That explains a lot; Oliviana’s trouble, too.”
“Oh, that’s so unfair! I’m no trouble – although all this Nature frightens me quite a bit.” She shivered. “And, why on earth would you say that about Oliviana? She’s my very best friend, a darling, quiet as a mouse – most of the time!”
“You see that great big boarded-up part of this room? There was a marvellous window there. One you could walk through, straight out onto the terrace, the lawn. Until this time last year, when Oliviana set up a great big bucket of Supaglue on the top sill. She fixed it so it spilled all over some of the family who were just returning, with the dog, through that window. Coming back from a fox hunt. It’s been boarded up ever since, as the whole pane of glass had to be removed – along with all of them – dog included. They all instantly stuck to to the glass, and the ambulance had to come. Load them all in – together – and take them to the hospital. They weren’t hurt though it took days to remove the glue. Some didn’t come off. The glass was as ancient as the house and the glass panes were handblown. So there was a big conservation job to do, and that’s taking months. Oliviana’s an animal lover. Just so I know – what are you?”
As she closed in on Alex again, that last statement caught Framtona a little off-guard. Did it indicate Alex may have a few more brains than she had calculated, she wondered? “Oh, I’m Australian! Is that what you mean… or, I love animals too! Though I’m really, really scared – half to death – of some of the bigger ones” Framtona shivered, then smiled. “But, I’m good at cooking, too! But really what I love most, is fun. More than anything else! And, I want to avoid being bored – I want excitement… I want a bit of danger. And I love laughing!” She laughed as she put her arm through Alex’s. He gave her the letter, which she put back into her pocket. Swishing her skirts coquettishly, Framtona flashed Alex her winning, most seductive look.
“You are trouble, I can feel it.” growled Alex, looking down at her. Then he appeared to soften, moved, took her hand. Together they walked out through a set of French windows, onto a terrace. Alex smiled at her: ” No more playing about now. My mother is in London for a fortnight.” Framtona fluttered her eyelashes at him, and he smiled again. “Aunt Gywnndolina will welcome you properly as our guest. Come and sit next to me – in the summerhouse, for a bit. Calm down” The house stood in its lovely garden, quite a way from the road. In the late afternoon it was still, beautiful in the summerhouse, yet Framtona was puzzled by a shaking she felt through her feet. Through the beams of slanting English-summer sunlight, Framtona saw something approaching rapidly across the lawn. A rather large bear.
“Hellooo… Alex!” came a muffled hail. Alex waved a happy greeting, “Thought you were throwing your hurley again, today, Aunt Gywnndolina! How’d you go?” “The bear plonked down next to Alex. “Ah, no, Alex, no throwing, not today… just the regular ‘clash of the ash’ – Yes, a really good game. To celebrate we girls put our big fake fun-furs on. Then we went running around. Growling. Even went into the park for a bit! I love a good practical joke – all really good, clean fun – all above board, mostly! We scared a few nature-lovers, I think. Didn’t we all laugh, then! Aunt Gywnndolina took off the bear-head, smiled, showing a few gaps where teeth were missing.
“Who’s that? Pretty little thing…. did she go upstairs? Now..? I wonder why on earth… she’s staying? oh, I do hope so! She looks fit, and we’ve another game tomorrow! I’ve an extra hurley stick – she can have it. ” Alex said: “That’s Framtona, and yes, she is staying with us – for two weeks!” He smiled as his aunt became wildly excited: “Oh, there’s a slinky panther costume in the cupboards upstairs – it would fit her perfectly!” Alex nodded: “I know she is a wonderful climber.” “Perfect! – Will you come with us, Alex? After the game we can go out in the woods again. With her! we’ll run around, growling – and have some fun!”
Alex gave his Aunty Gywnndolina – a great big bear hug, and a kiss. “Purrfect” he said, smiling.

The Broken Window channeling Saki