Cross road Thoughts...

In the Era of the Sun   
Awaken to the sound of a Kellogg’s alarm clock, beeping onerously at you. I hit it and fling it across the room with as much vigour you can manage after a night of noisy neighbours and tap dancing, roof scuttling possums. Dragged upwards I stumble into the living room, kiss mum, trip over the dog, grunt at the brother creature, still stirring in his lair. Eggs are given, bunnies of all nationalities, including Bilby's, create a stir. Happiness ensured, back to bed we all trot, for a half hour of non-sleep. Up and about, after breakfast we trek to Hahndorf, the tiny village in the hills, famous for its smelly candles and hippy hangouts. Mum insists on family photos, which throw a pale but warm light over our faces, Mum the fair and small, holding the fair and small dog, Jamie the tall dark and sultry (or just plain grumpy) stands over, too cautious to smile. The bronzed brunette with the pink lips stands in the middle, watching a stranger snap away at her long suffering camera. The day seems glorious, bittersweet, and full of stifled and released laughter, coffee and biscuits.

The small family, which over the years has dragged itself back from the brink of grief, poverty, depression, injury, insult and humiliation, exults in our outing, breathes the fresh release of hopeful dreams: we are sure, that (as we have every other time) this time things will work out. That we are working towards some uniformed goal, where no one need cry over bills in the night, crash cars into trees,  or peel grapes for a living. Where we might not sneak out in the early hours of the morning, pouring grey water into our despairing pot plants, turned upwards to the harsh sun, beyond believing in relief, and hear of yet another ruined farmers' suicide.

Singing to old '90's hits we flip down the highway again, passing like a gale, or a slight breeze, or a bare whisper over the parched ground and the sloping horizons. We pass the empty fountain, one of the many, many, many with the sign "Turned off due to water restrictions". It is now a graveyard for bird dropping and sun bleached marble. The droppings grow less; the birds have become less.

Arriving back home we each head our separate ways, Mum to visit a friend in another mountain, to gain insight, (to gain hope) into this wonderful premise of a future before us, laid out like a simple Tarot desk. Jamie to visit his girlfriend in the quiet back alleys of the mini metropolis, I to my art work, a vision of still life and perspective, where all things may come to balance, and where all things may return.

 Tired of feeling sluggish, alone and mindless, I trek out to take dog for a drag walk. Xander is just not a natural walker. Around 8 kilos of white fluff and Scottish stubbornness, I think he believes 'exercise' to be a foreign country. To walk him you almost have to trick him that you are going somewhere interesting. Like today, for instance, in glorious sunny weather, we marched off to some reserve I vaguely knew to be east, just before the valley hits the hills, around an hour away. Taking water and phone I set off through suburbia, with its perfect fences and quiet streets, snarling dog noses under every gate and killer magpies lying in wait at every turn.  After passing the main roads the path being gradually steeper and steeper, the heat surprising given the mild weather. The dog panted more and more, eventually stopping at odd intervals to give me a rather pained expression, like I was subjecting him to tortures of the foulest kind.

Eventually I glanced up, and saw the towering wattles, bleached and bare from the summer assault. Hiding under their meager shade I darted too and fro, feeding the dog my water, letting myself be drawn to the cool oasis ahead, the dark tropical trees, still living by some vast miracle. My water bottle, still half full, seems every drop worth a bar of gold, a small paradise, an Eden entombed in moisture of a divine sort. Straight out of a salty river it hailed, treated who knows how, and for how long it may last. The sun in its cruel radiance, meters out too much life, sapping all thought of lakes, rives; the vast oceans nothing but salty deserts in liquid form. I reach a plant, a once glorious bush, sprouting purple berries, withered and small. Pouring some water onto its roots, and the same to plants around it; my drops fuel the future which may not come to pass.

Turning round, feeling the light slip behind my back into the cool and quiet sleep of a desert night I walk back, calmly and without despair to my home, and family, and water filled taps full of relief. Though all too brief, water seems worthy of great and tremendous praise metered out as the gift of life, from which we all came from and, surely, must return.