Living in the Matrix

The shopping centre roars. Instead of tuning it out, I open my ears. It's closing time. The noise is made of individual sounds conglomerating — many loud voices, the clatter and clang of doors and bolts, the wind-rush of all the machinery that keeps this place functioning. That machinery wind-rush — also made up of different individual kinds of noise — is in the ceilings, the walls, and under the floors; it surrounds us. 

Marian at Rainforest Creek

Long dark hair, slim back,

she crouches by the stream.

The small brown ducks,

the towering trees,

the rounded stones, shallow water,
the weeds, the patches of sunny sky

spread themselves before her —

surround, encompass her:

her natural habitat.

This Morning in My Back Yard

The morning is bright early, with the blaze of true summer. Both expectancy and certainty are in the air. Yes it is warm, yes it will get hotter. The leaves are very still — no wind, not the slightest breeze. Even the tendrils of vine questing above the fence are motionless, balancing on air. My neighbour's roof makes patches of red through the green of palms and eucalypts.

The Quiet Street

It's the evening of New Year's Day — an overcast day, all day, though seasonably warm. The street is quiet, no sign of human activity. An unseen bird gives an insistent chirp. Then I realise it is two birds answering each other. I watch as they fly briefly into view from out of the treetops, to disappear over my neighbour's fence and away. I leave my doors wide open, letting in the cooling air.

At My Writing Table

Late afternoon. The hot day cools. I come outside to my back yard writing table, and the cats follow me out and settle themselves in their favourite spots. Levi goes and eats grass and throws up, with much body contortion. I'm glad this happens outside on the concrete, which I can hose down later. He positions himself on the doormat to have another go, but I whisk it out from under him and he chooses the dirt of the yard instead, where it soaks in and disappears. All organic, I tell myself, and biodegradable. Never mind the hose; I fetch a jug from inside and wash the mess on the concrete into the dirt as well. Freya decides to depart, wandering off around the side of the house. I expect she'll end up on the front doorstep, from where she likes to survey the street. (Later I find that she has gone through the cat-door instead, back inside.) I settle to my journalling finally, my water bottle beside me on the table, with my cordless landline phone as well as my mobile. I applied Rid before I came out, to keep me safe from mozzies and midges and other little bitey things. There should be no need to go back inside until I finish my writing. Levi is curled up peacefully now in a patch of late afternoon sunlight.

Nap Time

The 'children' sleep, foetally curled, too deep for purring now; but their little ears are still pointed forwards, part of the cat-brain forever alert.

Return

When I come back after a few days away, she comes to bed with me just as she always used to do, and we have big cuddles. But on subsequent nights she's out through the cat-door again: her new habit. 

I try to be glad she needed so little reassurance.

Echo

I hear myself as I talk to the cats. I hear my dead husband's voice — his tone, his inflection, his phraseology. So perhaps for them he is not quite gone.

I hadn't realised what an echo I had become.

In the Guest Bedroom

1:

Hebe has put me in a bower of green and purple, the colours of feminism — in gentle tonings, leavened with white and accented with wood. There are plain, thin frames of dark wood around the windows and the built-in wardrobe. The bedside tables and the small semi-circular shelf in the corner are of blonder wood. The ceiling, the ceiling fan, and the wardrobe doors are white. So is the background material of doona cover and curtain. But the predominant hues are the soft green walls; the green leafy pot plants, their leaves ranging from dark to almost transparent; the pretty purple flowers on curtain and doona; the blown-up colour photo on the wall, of a spreading bush of mauve bougainevillea. The whole effect is of light and softness. I feel sheltered and expanded at once. I begin to imagine I can smell lavender.

2:

This bed I have never shared with Andrew. Nor this bedroom. It is a place where I can just be me without the memories, just for a few days. I would not want it to be like that all the time — I would not wish to be cut off from the memories — but it's good to have a short space in which they do not HAVE to be there. In my bed at home they are unavoidably ever-present. It's good to get away these few days. I do remember things while I'm here, too, of course, but only as they arise; they are not inevitable. Here I am predominantly myself, not first and foremost Andrew's widow. I am the self I have always been, underneath all the vagaries and vicissitudes of life. I like the experience. It's like a renewal. And I like this me.