Narrator Magazine Blue Mountains Winter 2011

narrator MAGAZINE

Blue Mountains Quarterly showcase of your region’s creative writing talent.

This issue featuring contributions from:

ISSN: 1838-3289

Michael Burge, Felicity Lynch, Sharon Hammad, Alan Lucas, and more ...

Winter 2011

AUD $9.95

Writer-in-Residence: Paris Portingale

Congratulations!

Blue Mountains

Our third issue, Autumn 2011, was judged by Blue Dragon Books owner Diane O’Neill, Diane’s final choices were: n First prize — $200 to Mary Krone, Glenbrook, for her poem Scarred — ‘a simple and elegant way to convey strong emotions’ n Second prize — $100 to Aristidis Metaxas, Katoomba, for his story Ticket — ‘gets the reader involved with the characters — nice twist at the end’ n Third Prize — $50 to Robyn Chaffey, Hazelbrook, for her poem The Wind At My Door — ‘wonderful imagery!’

Diane also offered high commendations to: n n

Greg North, Linden, for his poem Stick It! and Christina Frost-Clayton, Woodford, for her story Knock ’n Roll

A few words from our Guest Judge ...

I started with quite a long list of stories and poems that I liked—and it took quite a while to finally cut it down to just three. It’s always hard to put personal preferences aside, but I think I ended up with a good mix. I hope you enjoy them too!

Diane O’Neill

Blue Dragon Books Quality second-hand books!

Great range of general fiction, crime and fantasy.

Large range of kids’ and young adult novels.

Shop C, 11 Ross St, Glenbrook Ph/Fax : 4739 2466 Open Mon to Sat bluedragonbooks@aapt.net.au

Welcome to the Fourth Edition of

Narrator MAGAZINE

BLUE MOUNTAINS you can tell, I love technology, and was A few words from As thrilled to receive the image for the cover of this month’s issue—a totally new form of art, the publisher ...

Welcome to this, our fourth created digitally on an iPhone. What we can do these days without wasting paper never edition of Narrator Magazine, Blue Mountains! ceases to amaze me.

First of all, thank you to all Which brings me to my next thought— contributors without whom Narrator being online. We do hope that you’re we wouldn’t have content— enjoying being able to access Narrator online more quickly than before and that you are you support is greatly appreciated. And second—a special thanks to Diane O’Neill of forwarding your friends and relatives links to the electronic versions so that they can see Blue Dragon Books for so willingly reading through all contributions, without illustrations your words in print!

And as a result of now delivering Narrator as a or formatting, as our second judge.

I’ve had an interesting time over the last four free, online magazine, we have reduced the weeks, having enjoyed a long-awaited holiday print run each quarter to 120 copies, so first in, to the west coast of America. From the deserts best dressed—and the environment wins again. and canyons of Arizona and Nevada to the Well, that’s my spiel for the quarter. Happy hustle and bustle of San Francisco and Los reading, tell your friends, and if you know Angeles to the flash and razzle dazzle of Las someone who’s thinking of sending in an Vegas, it was certainly a great experience.

One of the big thrills I had as a publisher was entry, encourage them—the more people we can reach, the more sustainable the magazine to be able to purchase a Barnes and Noble will become.

‘NOOKColor’ e-reader. I have long held the belief that while books, magazines and Jenny Mosher newspapers are wonderful to hold and read, June 2011 for a sustainable future we must start looking to electronic publishing as the norm, with print Caricature: publishing for those things that are special, Jenny Mosher’s caricature (above) by local that should be kept. artist Todd Sharp. For more info, visit As well as being able to purchase ebooks from www.toddasharp.com. many different websites and load them on my NOOK from my PC, I can also put music and APOLOGY videos on it, as well as acquiring many ‘apps’ Narrator Magazine would like to extend our and accessing the internet via the NOOK—so apologies to Kate Santleben for the misprint of her name in our Autumn 2011 edition. it’s almost as good as an iPad, but cheaper.

Please note that as contributors are aged 18 and over, some contributions contain language and concepts that may be considered offensive.

Cover: ‘Self Portrait Drawing on iPhone’ Christina Frost Clayton created this image on her iPhone using an application called Brushes, while her husband drove the car along the F3 during a wild and frightening storm. What a great distraction for a terrified passenger! To understand WHY Christina was so frightened, read her story, Knock ‘n Roll, online in the Autumn 2011 edition.

You can view other art by Christina Frost Clayton on her website: www.frostclayton.com.au

Poetry 2 I Feel Like Writing Today 4 Spin Me Round Sky 15 I Remember You 17 From a Window 20 The Sea Dog’s Last 24 Anna 31 Mercury Rising 37 Hanging Swamp 38 Ode to Tony 39 So You Think Your Truth Trumps Mine?

40 Heartbreak 46 Untitled

Stories 3 Mrs McGinty’s Secret 5 It’s A Bloke!

6 Searching for Sarah 8 With Love comes Blood 10 The Monasteries of Mardan 14 The Baptism 16 Unsolicited 18 The Stranger 19 Cut Grass and Disco 21 Locked in the Corridors of Hell 25 A Quick Fix 28 The Day I Skipped School 29 The Cost of Doing Business 32 Henrietta de Chook and her Totally Awesome Adventure 35 The Red Hart 41 A Wedding 47 Phyllis

Essays 45 Where is the Female Tolstoy?

narrator MAGAZINE is published by MoshPit Publishing, Shop 1, 197 Great Western Highway, Hazelbrook NSW 2779 MoshPit Publishing is an imprint of Mosher’s Business Support Pty Ltd P: 1300 644 680 ABN 48 126 885 309 www.moshpitpublishing.com.au www.narratormagazine.com

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I Feel Like Writing Today

I feel like writing today.

Problem is, I’m not sure what to write.

I could write more of my book, but I’ve stalled a bit in terms of ideas. As per usual, my characters have taken themselves off at a tangent and now the story has diverged rather radically from the careful and thoughtful outline I wrote before I started. So, I keep looking at the outline, then looking at the narrative, and concluding that I don’t know where to go next. Maybe my characters do, but they haven’t let me in on the secret yet, so ...

I could write a love-letter to my wife, but she might wonder why I suddenly did this after 15 years of verbal expressions of affection and lovely messages in birthday and Christmas cards. Not that this is necessarily a good excuse for not writing to your wife. I love her very much. She knows it. I could write and tell her, but it wouldn’t take very long, and it wouldn’t satisfy my need to write today.

My need to write today is a big need. It’s a burning, seething, rocking-tectonic-plates need.

It won’t be satisfied with just any old thing, you know? It’s not satisfied now, for example.

It keeps whispering to me ‘if you’re going to write this sort of drivel, just go back to work, will you?’

What am I to say in response?

‘Bugger off, I’m trying to help you!’

Or, ‘Your commentary is not appreciated at this time, please call back later’.

Or, ‘I’m not at work, you goose!’

The possibilities are endless, but one thing is certain. That little voice of the critic is probably right. I am writing material which is of no earthly use to anyone right now, except, perhaps, me.

And let’s face it, without me, the critic, the characters and the outline wouldn’t have a hope in hell of getting written.

Furthermore, my lovely, beautiful, creative wife would miss me. m

J-L Heylen Hazelbrook

Mrs McGinty’s Secret Mrs McGinty, a small colourless woman, lived in a narrow colourless street, in a deadly boring town in the Blue Mountains.

Every morning, if her neighbours had bothered to look, they would have seen Mrs McGinty, seemingly dressed in the same colourless clothes with a capacious handbag, leaving her house and walking out of the street.

However, if anyone at all had been interested, they would have seen around the next corner, little Mrs McGinty stepping into a luxurious silver limo, with dark windows, being kissed very affectionately, by a most handsome man.

If they had then followed the limo down the Western Highway, they would have seen a small elegant woman being escorted from the limo to disappear into a large office building in the Sydney CBD. Mrs McGinty had vanished. The only remnant of the colourless Mrs McGinty was that this woman too was small; but this woman’s hair was styled into the latest small dark cap, she was beautifully made up, dressed in an elegant suit, with slim legs and high heels – her capacious handbag nowhere to be seen.

Mrs McGinty had a secret. She was in fact the famous author of the Blue Mountains Mysteries, seen often on TV. Being interviewed, she never talked about her private life.

Felicity Lynch Katoomba

Mrs McGinty wasn’t her real name and no one in the street who had read her books associated their colourless neighbour with the glamourous portrait of the author on the book covers.

Mrs McGinty had set all her novels in the most boring town’s most colourless street.

Her intricate plots and dastardly murders were based on the residents. As they were totally uninterested in her they had no idea of this.

Mrs McGinty had been there for many years living this double life. However, her forthcoming wedding to the much loved and wealthy Baron De Rothschild meant

McGinty’s secret. The story was blazoned on the front pages of the main newspapers and T.V. It was reported that the books would be filmed.

Mrs McGinty’s secret was out. It was rumoured that as the baroness she would visit the street and meet the residents there.

Meanwhile the journalists interviewed the residents who really had very little to say.

They expressed great surprise. Who would have thought …?

The people in this very boring street began to talk to their neighbours. Lunches were arranged. People were trying to work out who was who in her novels. They emerged from their own secret boring lives and plans were made to celebrate their new found fame.

It was resolved to be more aware of others in the street.

Houses were painted, lawns mown, children played outside in the street and neighbours talked to each other.

No one could describe or could big changes. remember talking to Mrs McGinty. But the A sign was placed outside her house new-found notoriety of the street pleased stating that it was to be auctioned. Moving those who lived there. They forgot how vans were seen with men carrying many they had ignored her altogether and boxes. The house was emptied of enjoyed their new-found fame, as they everything very quickly. Nobody in the tried to work out who was who in her street noticed anything, even though Mrs stories of murder in the street.

McGinty had lived in this house for many Mrs McGinty was rather bemused by the years. The people in the street were fuss. She was asked if she would continue indifferent to her. to set her novels in the street. She declined The day that Mrs McGinty was to be to comment. m married, the journalists discovered Mrs

People’s Choice Award While the winners of the Winter edition will be selected by a guest judge, readers still have a say!

Visit www.narratormagazine.com/vote.php to submit your vote for the $50 People’s Choice award. One vote per valid email address. The winner will be announced in the Blue Mountains Spring Narrator and by email.

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Spin Me Round Sky

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Cathy Tanaka Blackheath

Spin me round sky On my heels, arms flung high Sketch my form in moonlit dyes And spin me round, spin me round Spin me round sky Make my feet of clay and stones My legs of craggy, weathered bones My belly form of wooded splendor My hair of breezes, keen yet tender Stain my hands heath black with night Reaching out for endless light Bejewel my fingers, one by one And press my nose to stars that hum Though my heart in trepidation Echoes ghostly excitations For hurrying spirits tremble still And long dead elders haunt your hills Becalm my mind with dulcet breath Through the teeth of rugged depths And raise your arms of ragged trees To issue expirations to appease For constellations gathered here With breathless glimmer beckon near And trembling, lilting harmonies Charge this restless joy in me So, spin me round Oh, spin me round sky On my heels, arms flung high Etch my soul with midnight sighs And spin me round, spin me round Spin me round sky m

It’s a Bloke!

An endeavour to pay back Conan McKenney’s debts to redeem his unfavourable behaviour is something to be desired and a matter stemming from any reasonable understanding of how the situation is leading to Conan’s destruction; he is his own worst enemy. Unaware how deep Conan can sink into desperation, he might as well sink in quick sand – it might be kinder. Getting drunk is not the way to do it; running away is not going to do it either, nor will hiding behind his mother’s apron to pull him out of his financial woes.

‘I want to help you,’ said MacGyver, ‘but being friends doesn’t give you license to expect me to save you every time you decide to go on a debt-drive.

I’m done with you, Conan,’ as he leaves the apartment in anger.

‘I’ll remember this MacGyver,’ Conan shouted after him in frustration. ‘Who needs friends like you, anyway?!’

Conan searches for his diary without success. He has everything going for him except his spendthrift attitude. Loving the high life is one thing, paying back what you spend is another. In frustration Conan threw his temper at a vase nearby, recklessly smashing it on the floor.

Conan looks out his window of his 14th floor apartment and observes people going about their way through life. ‘People look like sticks walking on two legs,’ he thought. Conan couldn’t endure the scene any longer, picked up his car keys and drove out to the country - anywhere but where his troubles were. Country people were considered backward and uneducated once upon a time, and now they are considered the lucky people living away from the rat race of the city. Conan could do with some luck. Nevertheless, it still takes money to live out in the country.

These days country properties can fetch prices as high as those in the city and as the suburbs, if not more. He wondered if a change of scenery would get him back on track, if not settle his debts. Conan’s apartment in Sydney would be worth a small fortune; he could sell up, pay his debts and have enough money to buy a small weatherboard house, at least if his calculations are to go by. His antique furniture and items would be more in

M Grace Blackheath keeping in an old house than his soulless modern apartment, anyway. The more he thought of this idea, the more his enthusiasm became part of him and lifted him to a new level of conscience. Keeping up with the Joneses can be exhausting; it ruins romance to say the least. Is it not a person’s right to want things – too much of a good thing has its drawbacks, but you cannot have your cake and eat it too.

Selling up and living in the country meets with his approval.

Before Conan knew it, he had returned to Sydney, sold his apartment, paid his debts and a few months later, bought a weatherboard farmhouse settled in two

acres in a country town called Rydal, a few miles outside of Lithgow. Conan’s antique furniture and items fit in like they own the place. The village recorded having at least eighty people - now eighty one with Conan moving in. The pretty village has a hotel and two churches, but no shops. The hotel could be Conan’s downfall; too close to drink, but he realises that to make his new life work, moderation has to be in play.

Having no shops is a good thing. A drive to Wallerawang about ten minutes away would be a treat.

As time goes by, bored out of his wits, Conan is beginning to wonder about his real intentions wanting a new life in the country. Conan wonders if maybe has he lost sight of the dream. Basking in the sun in his rocking chair in deep thought, Conan overstated the force of the chair, hit the tree at the back of the chair, flew off it from the force, rolled down the grass and landed with his ass facing heaven, and his shorts down around his knees showing off

his red underwear on display for all the world to see… completely unaware of his neighbour arriving to introduce herself.

‘That’s no way to greet your new neighbour,’ said Susan. ‘And what man wears red underwear? It doesn’t do you justice.’

Conan scrambles to his feet, pulls up his shorts and apologises to the lady.

Offering her hand of greeting; ‘I’m Susan Bates, by the way. Your new neighbour.’

‘I’m Conan McKenney,’ as he shakes her hand.

‘And what are you doing here?’

‘Absolutely no idea.’

‘Well, that’s a good start.

You better tell me all about it over a cup of tea.’

‘Tea? You only want to drink tea?’

‘Don’t be surprised! We country people like our tea or coffee, but I prefer tea.’

‘I’ll see if I can accommodate you.’

They talked all afternoon, finding out they have a lot in common like books and antiques. Susan, about Conan’s age in her early thirties, was brought up in Rydal as a farmer, had spent many years on and off in Sydney, but prefers the country.

‘I better get back to the farm,’ says Susan.

‘I’ll drop in tomorrow to check on how you are going.’

Susan drops in tomorrow, the day before and so on.

As time goes on, Conan realises his boredom won’t subside. It’s not as romantic as he thought it might be, and though Susan replaces that idea, he decides to move back to Sydney, and lease his house to an arts and craft business venture with Susan in charge; something she always wanted to do.

Conan goes back to working in the advertising industry, organises a mortgage to buy a small apartment in Balmain and returns to Rydal in the weekends to a thriving business. So much so, a café is put in place not only for the tourists to enjoy, but the locals. Conan’s belongings settle in Susan’s farmhouse, as did he when he went to visit. Only time will know how that will work. m

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Searching for Sarah

Sharon Hammad Winmalee

‘The hardest thing in the world for a wondering how much of a resemblance, if what happened to Sarah – whether or not mother is to give up her child. That’s why any, she bore to Sarah. she had died somewhere, alone and afraid, I have to look for Sarah.’ I broke the news Whatever. I didn’t need anyone’s with no-one to turn to - had become my to Greg as gently as I could. Not every approval. I had already decided which way holy grail. After all, she was my flesh and man is happy to be confronted with his blood. to veer at this particular fork in the road wife’s ‘past’.

But what if Greg was right? Could the and I wasn’t about to change my mind.

Naturally, he had reservations about my harsh circumstances of Sarah’s early life decision. After all, Sarah didn’t share his have turned her into some sort of hardened *** genes, wasn’t part of his history. ‘What’s criminal or ... killer? No, surely not that. done is done. Why do you have to drag it The agency guaranteed to charge like a But what if, despite everything I did to celebrity chef, even if the proof of the find her, Sarah had seemingly disappeared up now?’ pudding wasn’t necessarily edible. I had off the face of the earth, just like all those ‘I don’t know. Somehow, I feel ... dresses in my wardrobe that were older missing persons who could not be located, incomplete.’ Immediately, I knew that this than the consultant, but she appeared even with the help of modern technology? was the wrong thing to have said. professional in a power-suited, highClues disintegrate, documents fall apart, ‘What about our family? Aren’t we good heeled, hair-in-a-bun kind of way. She writing fades, memories die with their enough for you, Lisa?’ warned me it was a difficult case. She’d owners. It becomes more difficult to trace ‘Yes of course. This isn’t about us. It’s run a search: births, deaths, marriages, someone with each passing year. about Sarah. I have to know much of our life savings was I The agency guaranteed to charge like a How what happened to her. Was prepared to risk just to have my she cared for? Was she celebrity chef, even if the proof of the hopes crushed like fruit in a loved? Can’t you blender? understand?’ pudding wasn’t necessarily edible. I had No mother gives up her child Greg wore his I’m-toodresses in my wardrobe that were older willingly. There are always reasons, stubborn-to-admit-it look. pressures that others don’t ‘What if you can’t find her? than the consultant, but she appeared understand. The privileged don’t What if you spend your life to wonder where the next meal professional in a power-suited, high- have looking? You might is coming from, unlike a young uncover things you’d rather woman sent away to a strange place heeled, hair-in-a-bun kind of way. not know. Wouldn’t that without support, forced into giving upset you more?’ up a child that she loves because it’s the court records, immigration. There was a right thing – the only thing - to do. People ‘At least, I won’t die wondering. For strong possibility Sarah had changed her say it’s a choice but, in fact, the notion of heaven’s sake, this all happened long name. Not everyone in her situation before we met. It won’t affect our choice just doesn’t exist. wanted to be discovered. If she had left the relationship. You needn’t be jealous, you A surge of emotion transported me back in country, there might not be anything to know.’ time and space. I was that desperate young find. Overseas investigation – well, that mother, alone and friendless, unable to ‘Jealous? Don’t be ridiculous. I’m not was another kettle of smoked salmon. It provide for the tiny being who relied on jealous.’ Greg slammed his coffee mug on might be painstaking. I must understand me totally. I couldn’t bear to see my baby the kitchen bench and stormed off. there could be ‘additional costs’. suffer - to be the cause of her suffering. It I could hardly blame him. Since our ‘I’ll pay whatever it takes,’ I promised. was an agonising decision. I handed the children had grown up, Greg had had me Better not to think that way. Hope for the infant over, turning away quickly in case I pretty much to himself. Perhaps, needing best. I left, feeling as if I’d just been changed my mind. This I must not do, for to be needed, I’d spoiled him. And now I diagnosed with a potentially fatal disease. it would mean murdering my baby’s expected him to share me with someone that, until recently, he never knew existed. On the way home, I questioned whether or chances in life. not I was being taken for a ride. Desperate As I fled the scene, I told myself the child ‘Don’t worry about Dad,’ Amy, our people often are. At this stage in my life, I didn’t realise what was happening. youngest, advised. ‘He’ll get over it. Don’t had no idea why I was suddenly so Hopefully, she’d be looked after by people you think he’s being a teeny-weeny bit obsessed with finding her, craving the who wouldn’t hold her responsible for her selfish?’ This from one who believes smallest hint about what kind of person humble beginnings, who’d let her grow replacing an empty toilet roll is an act of she turned out to be. For so many years I’d strong and clever. And when she was old mercy. ‘It’s great you’ve finally got told myself not to think about it, to focus enough to know the story of her birth, she something else to think about. Maybe now instead on what was important at the time, might learn to forgive the poor wretch who you’ll stop hassling - I mean worrying rather than worrying about things I thought of her the first and last moments of about - us.’ She floated off, all dark wisps couldn’t change. But lately, the truth about every day. and flashing blue eyes, and I couldn’t help

Somewhere inside me a voice whispered, Why not search for Sarah? Every person has the right to know where she comes from, where she belongs. Once, it was called identity crisis but nowadays tracing your family had become the height of fashion. When Greg and I were first married, we’d struggled to make ends meet, and I’d done my share of going without. Now it was my turn to realise a dream I’d nurtured all of my adult life.

It took weeks: weeks of waiting, checking my emails several times a day, wondering about missed calls from unidentified numbers. I’m ashamed to admit, I almost lost my nerve. Then, finally, the call came.

‘Good news. We’ve found Sarah.’

I was too emotional to take in much detail, so I arranged a meeting with Ms Additional Costs for the next day. She had collected the evidence and could prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the person she’d found was my Sarah.

Amy was suitably impressed that her long lost relative had been located. ‘Go Mum! I want to know everything.’

‘Well -‘ I began.

‘Gotta run right now. Catch you later?’

So when Greg arrived home from work that evening, I hurled myself at him like some sort of desperate housewife. ‘If I’d known finding Sarah would have this effect on you, I wouldn’t have been so negative,‘ he said.

I stroked his face, despite the scrape of his five o’clock shadow. ‘You and the kids are my first priority. But Sarah is part of our family too.’

Greg nodded. ‘I see that now. Come and tell me all about her.’ We sat on the sofa and I nestled into his arms while I filled him in on what I’d learned so far.

‘I’ll find out more tomorrow. The main thing is we’ve found her. After all this time, we know what happened to her.’

‘What did happen to her?’ Greg asked, tentatively.

‘That’s the best part. It’s what I was hoping for all along.’ I sat up and beamed at him. ‘She ended up with Mary.’

‘Mary?’

‘Her daughter. The one she gave away.

Don’t you see? Mary must have forgiven

her.’

‘That’s important to you, isn’t it?’

‘Of course it is. Sarah wasn’t a bad person, only poor. When her husband died, she had no-one to turn to when she couldn’t manage to bring up her child on her own.

Imagine what it would feel like to have to give up our Amy.’ ‘Mm. I’ll bet you’ve been doing a lot of imagining, haven’t you?’

He knew me well. ‘Oh Greg, it must have been awful for both of them. It helps to know that they were reconciled in the end.’

‘Your great, great grandmother paid a high price for stealing that loaf of bread back in the Old Country.’

‘Poor Sarah. I can’t help feeling grateful that she did. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be here.’

‘You’re not the only one who’s grateful,’ Greg said, drawing me towards him. m Sharon Hammad Winmalee

Correspondence We continue to receive lovely messages from our readers, and just can’t help sharing them. If you would like to give feedback on Narrator, visit narratormagazine.com.au and click ‘Contact’.

I’ve just had a chance to take a look at the Narrator Magazine for the FIRST time ...

I LOVE it!

Congratulations on this fantastic publication and to the contribution you are making in the creative space

Thank you so much for the prize that I won. I was so surprised and happy.

I have bought a Kindle with my prize money. Now I am inspired to write more.

Thanks again.

-Lisa Gorman

- Samantha Miller

Hi There,

Love your magazine. Keep up the great work!

Just wanted to say thanks for publishing my short story ‘All The Worst Jobs’ in the Autumn edition— it's given me a chance to put something out there and get feedback, and I really appreciate the opportunity.

So good that local businesses support your many gifted artists.

- Michael Burge

- J Mancy

Looking forward to reading and re-reading your fine contributions.

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With Love comes Blood You cut me; tore open my throat and it feels like you ripped out my heart; you’ve destroyed my soul. With eyes closed I did my best not to think about you or hear your voice in my mind; for better or worse we belong together; can’t you see that?

Why do you do the things you do to me; are you that broken yourself that you feel the need to bring me down? You walked out the door without a backwards glance and left the pieces of me on the floor. I couldn’t move; couldn’t speak or even moan out loud. My heart and throat were burning with the pain and my body screamed out for you to come back and put me back together. It seemed like hours but it was probably only a few minutes as I remained there; ridged with fear on the floor; cold and starting to feel nothing in a room as silent as a graveyard at midnight.

As I felt the room spinning out of control, memories of when I had drunk too much flooded back to me. An angel looked down on me; she was moving slowly towards the room and I knew just knew that you had sent me to my death once and for all. You cut my throat open almost like a professional; have you done this before; did you break their heart too? I let you know the real me and you betrayed my trust in the worse possible way. I changed so much of myself for you, you never really let me in and now I know why, all those secrets, lies and late nights. So many broken promises so many days spent crying over you and for what; to have it end like this?

I can see my unfinished paintings in the room and I try to cry out at the senseless waste, and the regrets I have.

Was I a random victim or did you stalk me like a cat stalks its next meal? You stretched out on the lounge most days like a cat and purred like a kitten when I stroked your hair; was it all an act? I was putty in your hands; those eyes of yours pulled me in and melted me to my very core. I wish now I had of taken off my blinkers and seen you for who you really

are; but it’s too late now isn’t it, or is it?

Love is a strange and wonderful thing.

We spent countless days out on the open highway free and easy riding on your Harley and I never once suspected you were looking for the right place for me; not us. You told me we needed ‘our’ very own private haven; but it was solely for me wasn’t it? We used the money from the sale of my house and my inheritance to buy it, you said we would start a new life; and I believed you. I wanted to believe you

Elizabeth Diehl Wentworth Falls

you has had me spell bound for a very long time. You towered over me with those dark good looks and bedroom eyes; the softness of your touch melted me that very first time I saw you. Do you remember that night; I do; like it was yesterday. I looked up and there you were holding out your hand silently asking me to dance.

How could I resist you? The women in the room would have given anything to be me.

You moved smoothly like a cat onto the dance floor with such ease; like you have done it all your life and you have, haven’t you? That first dance is so vivid in my mind; you put a hand in the small of my back and pulled me into you with such softness and tenderness I had never known. I felt your thigh brush mine and I let out a sigh, I had come home in your arms. When our hands and fingers touched they melted into each other as if we were one and I wrongly thought we were meant to be together. I felt the thrill of the electricity running through my body as we moved around the dance floor like there was no one else and for me there wasn’t. I lost myself in you that night with no hope of ever recovering.

We danced like that for hours and then you took me outside and made slow sweet love to me; on the bonnet of a car right there in the car park under the stars and moon. It’s there you promised me that you would get them for me along with the sun, remember?

We loved each other from top to bottom all night long in your bed and I knew for sure I had been lost but now I was home. I whispered in your ear; ‘where had you been all my life’ and you so much. I hung on to every crumb you laughed that beautiful laugh of yours and ever gave me and wiped up the mess you said ‘waiting for you my love’ and I often left as the screen door slammed believed you. I was in love with you from behind you and the sound of your bike tore the very first moment I looked into your at my heart as you rode off; leaving me to eyes. wonder what I had said or done to make I want scream out to you to stop and come you so mad. Little did I know then that you back. I want to beg you; don’t leave me were always pretending, holding back the this way, but you don’t hear me and who real you and play acting with me to get would in this isolated place or above the from me what you wanted. The wonder of roar of your bike. But none of these words

come out of my mouth it’s all in my head. gone on that trek I had been meaning to do climaxed I would shudder and come with You have thrown me out like the baby for years. You convinced me it would be a you delighting in it all. You taught me to with the bath water many times never waste of money and time; time you and I do things solely for your pleasure, I never giving a thought to how I feel; each time needed to get to know each other. I can minded because I loved you and I think I making me beg you to let me come back hear a phone ringing and it takes me a still do in a sick kind of way. into the house. I pleaded with you to hold moment to realize that it can’t be ours you Your kisses could transport me to another me, and never let me go and you did. My had it cut off saying we didn’t need the world and I believed you had given me the family and friends are all gone; you intrusion of the outside world when we stars, moon and sun after all. But then one blamed them for trying to break us up. I had each other; so it must be in my head; I day the tender soft touches turned into put my mother into a nursing home am going crazy; like you have been telling beatings and the slow delightful love because you convinced me she would be me? I can’t move; not a muscle. You have making became a nightmare. better off and I would get more rest. It was taken care of that haven’t you? Please I I’m broken dieing and remembering too your way of getting everyone I loved out beg you come save me? No one is coming many things that I would rather not of my life; they have given up on me now. are they? We are so remote not even the remember at all. When you die; you relive I’ve lived an isolated life with only you for postman comes here. your life and as the last breath leaves your company. You took the words out of my Waiting for me are several angels and I body you meet your maker; am I ready for mouth; I have never been allowed to have want to scream out to them that I am not that? I think not. an opinion of my own; I lost all self ready to go, please don’t take me. I haven’t The angels are smiling at me now and I respect and confidence in myself a long lived and loved properly; I need to live. know the time is getting nearer and the time ago. You wouldn’t let me work; I had We all walk around in a daze never fully room will go completely dark and I will be to look after you. With the inheritance living and loving; always too afraid to let gone. Oh please don’t leave me here to die from my favourite Aunt money was never go and experience life to its fullest. Why a real issue for me till you came along and do we humans create wars and starve each alone? Even though you cannot hear me I want you to tell me, why me and why spent it all. I had to give up being a now? Wasn’t I enough vegetarian to cook you those ‘bloody’ you, didn’t I give steaks night after night; always feeling How could I resist you? The women in for you enough pleasure, sick at the sight of them. I cleaned up after you because I never dare complain the room would have given anything to enough money and didn’t I give it all up for fear of you and your temper. You be me.

You moved smoothly like a cat for you just as you didn’t allow me to even go to the hair Anything you dresser; you said I was fine the way I onto the dance floor with such ease; asked? wanted I would do for was and that it was a waste of your like you have done it all your life and you; I was bewitched money. But you seem to forget it was by you. My life was on my money till you came and took over you have, haven’t you? hold and then you my life. I used to look forward to my came and changed it, weekly visits to the spiritual church and and I thought my life had finally started. meditation, you said it was all the devils other of love? Why? Our love is a sick kind of love I know that work and you would have none of that I hear a song; it is playing in my ears and I now but it is too late. They are coming for around here so that stopped too. If only I hum silently to myself, ‘another one bites me and I can feel their wings touching me had have known then that I was living with the dust’. Is it really music or am I and I can feel the love surrounding them. It the devil himself. imagining it? Oh please let me live; let me is pure bliss; I feel no pain and I’m not I had many dreams and now they will know ‘love’ and I promise I will not waste cold anymore; I cry out please I want to never be fulfilled because of you; you a precious moment of any day. I will wake live. The angels are asking me if I had it killed those ages ago. You have been up with enthusiasm for each and all to do again what I would do differently. working towards this very moment for a everything I do. No more moaning about If I could turn back the clock what would I long time; taking pleasure in my my lot in life; just let me live. say and do? This is not such a tough displeasure; why? I try to scream out again How many nights did I soak in the bathtub question because I know; I should never but no sound and one comes; I can feel the only to have you come into the bathroom have let you into my life, but I can’t say life inside of me draining away and the with that nasty look in your eyes and tell that. I thought you had taught me all about warm sticky blood spilling out of me, onto me I was getting fat and had better do love, but it was not love for you; you took the carpet. Once this would have bothered something about it? In reality I was all skin away my friends, family and my life. me but now I feel nothing but regrets for and bone, you hardly ever let me eat.

Who will mourn for me and who will find all the time wasted on you and for all that When you had your dinner and I had me here alone in a pool of my own blood? should have been. How many people out cleaned up I would sit down in the corner If I had my time again I would wake up there let life slip past them and then on of the kitchen to eat any leftover food and each day and say a prayer and thank ‘God’ their death bed have regrets for the ‘love’ you would throw it on the floor and accuse I am alive. I would eat fresh pasta and they should have had; for the ‘life’ they me of eating what belonged to you so I drink chardonnay in Italy. I would cherish wanted but never went after; afraid to step went to bed like a starving wounded and love my family and friends without out of their comfort zone and afraid to take animal. Cringing and praying you would conditions. I would smile more; laugh the chance. I was afraid but you convinced pass out in the living room and leave me often and love deeply and purely. I would me that we were right together and after all alone. dig in my garden and plant flowers and sit you had offered me the moon stars and I can remember the anticipation of our back on the verandah and watch them sun. love making when we first met; the thrill grow. I would climb mountains and swim Now I lay here with the life draining from of your touch on my skin and when you in emerald green oceans and I would learn me and wish I had side stepped you and

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to live all over again and I would never ever moan about my lack of. I would paint like there was no tomorrow and make sure I stopped every so often and smelt the roses. I would make a list and systematically work my way through it, not from the top to the bottom as you would think; I would close my eyes and pick one and get on with it.

Is that laughter I hear; I try to open my eyes but they are heavy now and I am feeling colder. Have you come back to taunt me or am I imaging it all; maybe it’s just another dream or am in hell? The laughter grows dimmer as does the room and I feel like I am fading away and I try with all my might to hold on to stay here and live again. I hear your voice close to my ear, ‘baby it’s time to go’. I cringe inwardly trying with all my might to stay alive.

I call out to the angels and ask them

‘where are they taking me and is it time now’ but they just smile and wait patiently for me to finish my thoughts. I ask them again; ‘why me’? The answer is whispered on the wind; ‘why not you’ and then it’s time to go.

I hear sirens in the distance, they have come too late. When they walk into the room I’m laying there with blood all around me with a smile on my face; and they question each other as to what would possess someone dying such an ugly death to smile in this manner? They start taking photos of me and I wish they wouldn’t do that.

I stand very close to a police officer and try to tell them about you, who you are and what you did to me. No one hears me, no one sees me. That’s when I notice you standing in the corner of the room with a satisfied smirk, arms folded across your chest and blood trickling down your face.

The Monasteries of Mardan

A shaft of white light beams down and you scowl moving towards me, its then I notice for the first time those black menacing figures standing either side of you. They take an elbow each and start moving downwards and your screams are enough to wake the dead.

My sister and another police officer come into the room and her cries of anguish as she looks down at my crumpled lifeless body is heartfelt. The officer mentions the fatal motor bike accident down the road that occurred some hours before. I can hear them speculating that I must have died around the same time as the accident.

He thinks today is not such a good day with both these deaths. But to me it is a good day after all; it’s just a shame our love has turned to blood. m Elizabeth Diehl Wentworth Falls

Bruce Nenke Leura

Mardan is a town; an area in the Northnothing has changed but whether there is a biggest Buddhist statues in Afghanistan, west Frontier Provence of Pakistan. It sits Monastery there or not I don't know but I the ones the Taliban bombed; these on the first foothills of the Hindu Kush know in my memory I did this. As above, students may now regret this but this is the above the Punjabi plains; gateway to Swat in a debate about Truth; honesty wins out. attitude of Muslims. To them it's prevalley. The Swat River runs into the Indus By the time I had figured it out, I'd already history; before the coming of the light, it not far below. In its hills one of the largest passed the place; so I missed out. Below has nothing to do with them, ‘Of interest to Buddhist monastic complexes ever built this complex was the world's largest you.’ They would say to me cynically; lays in complete ruins. It housed 20,000 Buddhist Stupa. Before St Paul's Cathedral meaning Japanese and English speaking monks in its day and rivaled the capitol in Rome it was the largest dome on the tourists. If it's not in the guide book it was Taxila in size and industry. Here planet built by the Kushan Kings. It probably a Japanese Tourist who told me Ghandharian Art had reached its apex but contained a relic; the finger bone of the about the place; they were the only ones that is about all we know of a long Buddha 'Gautama Siddhartha'. The travelling in Pakistan at that time who forgotten Greek Buddhist were just there to see ancient Buddhists Kingdom. Founded by the good He couldn't get out of his head the sites. They knew something Western king, Meander, who by staging a travelers didn't; they had a different debate had chosen Buddhism as sound of ‘Now’. It rang; it echoed, guide book. So it is in Mardan I am the state religion. The winning this story, in this big emptiness rattling off the interior wall of his setting argument being; ‘They are all of a lost Buddhist world; a void of lying and so am I’. In a debate history. Their word for such stories as empty skull. about 'Truth' Meander could pick this is 'Apocryphal' but Ghandhara fell an honest man. Long before Dharumsula; Kushans spoke Aryan; they had to learn long before Islam arrived. Unlike Nuristan when Lhasa was a backwater, Mardan was Sanskrit and Pali. Under the Kushans India the neighboring Kingdom, originally the place where you heard Buddhist was the wealthiest country on earth. There Kafirstan they were never converted by the doctrine debated; Mardan was the place was Pax Romana in the west; Historian sword they had already fallen on their quote these times as being an endless own. The story from now is called 'The where you made your mark. summer of prosperity, for one hundred and birth of Zen'.

I tried to visit this place once. The guide ten years the world was at peace with book said you had to stop the bus; i.e tell the driver to stop ‘Bus Gardi!’, somewhere itself. Rome, Persia, India and China The Birth of Zen traded peacefully with each other and non-descript, somewhere along the road Most people don't know this but there between Malakand and Mardan; walk five before the Silk road Kingdoms; the actually was a 'Zen', a personality; a Kushans were at the centre of this global miles, walk back and then try to hail person. He was the Master and founder of trade. They were the ones who built the passing buses to continue. I am sure

the Orphanage at Mardan Monasteries. In truth only a third of the boys were orphans, most were just from poor families but to them he was 'Master Zen'. Zen was a Persian; a Zoroastrian convert with an accent but to the boys he was foreigner and the butt of all their jokes. One might construe that the boys being Greek by descent were racist in their humor but Greeks and Persians though traditional enemies were both Aryan; they realized they were cousins. The boys may have been bigots but Zen had gotten to expect it at the Monastery where he was the odd one out. Zen was only ever going to be a simple Monk, it was his Karma; incarnated Buddhists Monk's 'Lamas' have Buddhist mother's.

Zen was a strict Father; every boy knew the sound of one hand clapping that was the sound they heard Zen make with his right hand every morning as he woke the boys before dawn. Though Zen picked on all the boys, one boy got it more than any other; he was dyslexic and because of this he was Zen's whipping boy. The boy use to call the teacher 'Zen Master'; this was the first time the term was ever heard. ‘Master Zen!’ Master Zen would point with his finger; ‘Master Zen!’ slap. Zen with that one right index finger from that hand in the air would lecture the boys. ‘You can't be a Buddha by being late’. ‘You can't be a Buddha with dirty finger nails’. ‘You can't be a Buddha by climbing trees’; someone was caught climbing a tree. What the boys basically did was clean the toilets for 20,000 monks. ‘It's your Karma’; Zen would lecture them with the finger. The boys were scared of that finger they had heard stories of where it had been; apocryphal stories.

One day Master Zen had got an invitation to watch a debate. Finally someone in the hierarchy had noticed his good deeds with the children he thought to himself; his work with the Orphanage had accumulated merit. This was an important day for Zen, a day that was written in the stars. The kids would have to manage by themselves; unsupervised, he'd be off for three hours.

‘It's your Karma, Good luck’; he wished them at the same time wishing it on himself; but when Zen got to the debate somehow everything had gone wrong. His chair had been taken by another student, he was told to sit outside where he could hear the debate but not see it. So Zen chose to go home; back to the Orphanage. Poor show thought his peers.

The boys were cleaning the vast complex's kitchen floors when Zen walked in. They didn't expect him back so soon and there was the dyslexic boy pointing

with his right index finger, imitating Zen's accent perfectly, saying ‘It's your Karma; You can't be a Buddha... ‘. Zen immediately interrupted the Boy and shouted ‘You can't be a Buddha by imitation!’ The children laughed, they thought the Master was in on the joke, so well had the boy imitated Zen's lists of don'ts but who knows what was in the Master's mind at that moment. Anger, humiliation; humor was a concept that this most conceptual of Buddhists was unable to grasp. Within a sixth of a second it seemed he had picked up a meat clever and cut off the boy's finger. The boy was immediately 'Enlightened' and in gratitude to his Teacher he grabbed the meat clever and cut off the Master's offending finger saying ‘Now!! It is you who will imitate me!’ In the Master's head all he heard was 'Now' but he was 'Enlightened' and the boy was banished from the Monastery and this is where the story should end but there's more. If humor be the opposite of anger maybe revenge is the opposite of justice.

The Boy's Journey The Boy now basically unemployed gravitated to the Stupa outside the Monastery walls. A thousand pilgrims a day, he thought to himself; if only each threw an Anna that would be a thousand Anna a day, divided amongst a thousand beggars he realized, so he became a beggar at the greatest Stupa in the world. But at this Stupa he saw people he had never seen before, new people. They dressed in green.

'Chillum Worshipers'. 'Malangs', they smoked hashish and ate meat. ‘People of bad Habits’, pious pilgrims would comment. ‘They eat meat but not flesh; so they say’; the comments continued. When you live in the Punjab it's easy to criticize non-vegetatarians but what do you expect Eskimos to eat and to them these Sufi's were as alien as Eskimos. They didn't belong but neither did the Boy so it was amongst them he made his friends. They really were the poorest of beggars, their cotton and wools were rags within a week.

Once they put on a piece of clothing they would never take it off; as if it became part of their skin but they were the most generous of their breed. To the boy they were the Kings amongst Thieves. When the boy had told them the story about how he lost his finger, they were indignant, sad, sympatric and hurt themselves. They confronted Buddhist pilgrims saying ‘Buddha has stolen this boy's finger, when will Buddha give it back’. Passing pilgrims threw coins rather than be faced with the Boy's stump or answer the question. The Boy started making money and he saved it

carefully, like the 'Butterfly'.

One day someone turned up with lots of sparkles and tinsel. The green guy's Guru.

They treated him as a saint and they told him the boy's story. It was a night by the Sufi's fire. Their Father prayed and the Stupa cracked in half as Buddha's finger bone lifted out of the centre of the dome and drifted on to the Boy's stump. His finger had been restored with Buddha's relic. ‘A Kingdom Falls at its Apogee’; was as all Mr. 'No-name' said to them as he walked out into the night back west into the darkness beyond the fire.

The next morning the pilgrims were shocked; the Stupa had been split down the middle from north to south. Only an earthquake could have done such damage and yet no-one had been awoken by a tremor last night. The 'Pujaris', the Monks in charge of the Shrine rushed to Mardan to get the Monastery’s Oracles to see if they could make sense of what had happened. The main Oracle possessed by the deity whirled in the centre of the divided Stupa which was now empty. He looked east at one half of the broken circle and west to the other half. East and then west, he started babbling as if the whole contents of Kali Yug were rushing out of his mouth. Most of it nobody there wanted to hear. ‘The Death of a Buddha’, 'Babble'.

‘The Death of Buddhism’, 'Babble'. ‘The Death of the King’, 'Babble'. ‘The 'Death of the Kingdom’, 'Babble'. ‘The death of 'Babble, babble, babble’. They stopped listening at this point. The last thing the Oracle said before he collapsed was ‘If it comes to war between East and West; East will win’. The people looked to the experts; the ones who had accompanied the now sleeping man and were taking off his heavy head dress. The oracles of the Oracle one might say, heard 'East will win'; om? this was reassuring they thought.

It was a time and a place where three generations of Ghandharians had never seen or known war. The only enemy they could imagine was the Persians but India had never gone to war with Persia nor Persia with India. Unlike Asoka; Ghandharian Kings had never engaged in wars of conquest. They had inherited most of it from previous Kings and Conquers and what they didn't own, belonged to Buddhists too. India was Buddhist, China was Buddhist, even the War-like Tibetans had gone Buddhist. The Mongols were still a threat on the far horizon but when Kublai Khan held a debate like Meander; he too choose the honest answer. The only difference being that at this debate in Xanadu there was a Christian representative; blue eyes and a roman nose.

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The audience could only imagine the Oracle was talking about the future. ‘That's why he sounded so gabbled’; they reasoned, like a distant transmission from the 'End of Times'. Which was about as far away into the future as they could imagine so they really had nothing to worry about and it was best just to cover up the mess; it felt somewhat embarrassing anyway and to just get on with their life’s. It was still sunny, no one had died which was reassuring so they decided to fixed the Stupa. One might say it was done in the interests of local shop keepers but even the beggars relied on the Stupa getting up and running again. So they encased the broken Stupa inside an even larger Stupa but to save time rather than materials they made it Elliptical; it was no longer a perfect circle. It had two points of focus from where the centre had split apart; one east, one west and no relic. Whether this mattered to the Monks we will never know, it was a topic they never debated.

The Boy was still a Buddhist though and wished to return to the Monastery to see his childhood friends. He thought with his finger back all his sins were forgiven and forgotten or at least hidden. He had leveled his Karma, he reasoned and could return to his Sanhga but before we can tell this story we have to go back to the Monastery itself; back to 'Zen'. Now the story is called 'One Finger Zen'.

1 Honour Avenue Lawson NSW 2783 P: 4759 2882 W: www.mountainsre.com.au become the popular religion of motorcycle mechanics we know today. At this debate, the debate of debates, for the Championship, for the Kingdom; Zen was asked a question. ‘When you talk about the 'Now', do you mean the 'Now' that is happening 'Now' or do you mean the 'Now' that is happening 'Now'; will you tell me 'Now' and he clapped his hands. This was a tricky one for Zen, he thought about it for a minute and then suddenly produced a meat clever and shouted; ‘Now! Now! Now! Now! Now! Now!’ and with the meat clever he had cropped off six of his fingers almost instantaneously and then clapped his trumps. Remember he had already lost one finger when he had arrived on the philosophy of the 'Now'. So now he had really become 'One Finger Zen'. Technically that’s one finger and two thumbs but the questioner had refrained from his next question. He had them written them down on the inside of his sleeve. No he wasn't the Boy but another novice monk. The next question written was ‘When you mean 'Now' aren't you talking about the experience of 'Time'; isn't 'Time' 'Now', tell me this time 'Now'‘. One of the original 'Orphans' had written the questions.

The other Monks got it; Zen meant that all the Now’s are 'Now'. Each and every one of them was 'Now'. What commitment, what dedication to the cause they cheered.

Never had anyone seen a debate won like this before, so convincing was Zen's rebuttal. They were sure this was a demonstration of a 'Siddhi', though they had heard of such things none of the monks had seen one before. ‘Zen was a 'Sidha'‘; they whispered amongst themselves; a man of magic. How the hell was he able to cut off his last three fingers of one hand after cutting off all the fingers on his other hand? Zen had laid his cards on the table leaving himself an Ace and two Clubs; there was the proof. Six fingers and a meat clever, obviously Zen knew underlying 'Laws to Karma' that the others could only imagine, so they voted Zen Abbot.

could deny he was ever such a boy; when he looked into Zen eyes again after so many years he realized the boy was long forgotten. Still the Boy had taken precautions to disguise himself; he had dressed rich. All that time begging with that stump of a finger he had saved his coins and now he used them for this day.

On his return to the Monastery, he had hired some of his begging friends to act as his entourage; they were surprised he had any money at all after regaining his finger.

The Boy now a young adult had brought himself the best suit, the one that the lucky people wear; the people with good Karma and with money he had entered Zen's room for an interview.

Zen was pouring him a cup of tea. The Boy couldn't hold back, realizing that Zen didn't recognize him he blurted it all out.

He really wanted to be a Buddhist. ‘It's my Mother's religion’; he boasted. ‘I was a Buddhist in a previous life’; this was the only way he could hide that he had meant his real mother it was her 'Will' that had him adopted into the Monastic Order and as Zen listened to the boy he kept pouring the tea. The Boy looked at the cup it was over flowing, tea started pouring onto the floor. The Boy thought maybe it's his physical handicap, what with only one finger and two thumbs he probably doesn’t know he is doing it. Zen keep pouring even in the silence and a big river of tea was heading for the Boy's feet. The Boy jumped up and accidently kicked over the One Finger Zen cup. Suddenly it was like the Abbot In the Boy's absence Zen was making noticed him; he'd gained the attention of waves, Zen was on the up. He couldn't get Zen and the first things that Zen said was. out of his head the sound of ‘Now’. It ‘You are too full of yourself, like this cup rang; it echoed, rattling off the interior you have to be empty. At this time it is not wall of his empty skull. Suddenly he your Karma to be a monk but there is work hearing something new as if listening to a in the Monasteries’ kitchens, maybe there distant debate, he heard a sound. Maybe you might find the humility to even be an this is one of those 'Concepts'. He knew Abbot one day but only in the next life’. being conceptual was no way to be a Lucky the Abbot didn't know it but he was Buddha but maybe one wouldn't hurt and referring to his lifetime. Well it was better this one was 'Now'. Zen started sitting than cleaning toilets the Boy thought. The outside debates, Zen started being invited Boy thought by kicking the cup over he to sit inside debates and eventually Zen had stuffed the interview and was lucky to was invited to debate himself. Zen started get anything. The Boy said ‘Yes’. Now the winning debates finally becoming the Boy was called the 'Cup Kicker' still he Abbot of Mardan, the 'Man in Charge'. was caterer for 20,000 monks. He knew The Cup Kicker This is how he won it. how much butter they each had in their tea.

So after some years with the Sufis the Boy This is now the 'Epitaph'.

It was the Apex of debates; the previous try's to return to the Monastery to end his Abbot had passed on. It was from this debate Zen's philosophy would eventually exile from the Sangha; his friends. True The Death of Zen spread all the way to Japan and after sitting enough nobody recognized him; he looked much older, older than his age and despite ‘When brushing teeth, just brushing teeth; there for while eventually hop on ships not God brushing teeth, not Buddha headed across the Pacific Ocean to L.A, to the fact that he had his finger back and

brushing teeth; just brushing teeth’. The buried the body at its centre thus returning foreigners; they had converted to Islam boys remembered 'One Finger Zen's' Buddha's finger bone. The Stupa was generations ago. lectures with affection he was the only whole, it had its heart again; it's relic and So a question could be asked 'What the parent they had known and they loved him began to answer the prays of the pilgrims. Hell Happened to Ghandhara'. Little is like a Father. Now that 'One Finger Zen' The Stupa had become a 'Sidha' but still known; like snippets from ancient was Abbot the boys did well in the some prays it ignored. Those for the King decaying news reels; the last King Monastery after all they were Zen's pupils; and those for the Kingdom. committed suicide, the royal family was 'His boys'. Over time some even reached divided, brother took up arms against positions of authority and responsibility brother over the succession. The Kingdom What the Hell Happened to but the 'Cup Kicker' was never promoted. was never invaded it plunged itself into a Zen was only getting older; he realized he Ghandhara? self-destructive Civil War. Like their was reaching death. 'Nearing Nirvana' was ‘Ghandhara, Ghandhara; they say it is in Christian cousins of Constantinople the India’. 'Monkey goes West'. A thinly Zen's favorite euphemism and talk of population divided itself into factions; red disguised Hanuman does service to succession was in the air. He decided to against Yellow, son against father, father solve the problem of an heir with a debate Buddha to bring back Buddhist scriptures against wife, mother against daughter; from India to China. Even 'Marpa' the of course, simple but ingenious; a debate fratricide. The family traditions were great Tibetan translator when he boasted to about water. destroyed.

All the prospective There is a Zen Koan. 'If a tree Abbots had turned up in The Boy was still a Buddhist though and falls in the forest does it make a Zen's private room. Zen wished to return to the Monastery to see his sound?’ No it doesn't, it makes a was sitting on his bed; vibration that ears pick up but if his death dead and in the childhood friends. He thought with his finthe owners of the ears are asleep middle of the room was a sound is heard. ger back all his sins were forgiven and for- no cup of water. Oddly Consciousness is the source of enough it was the Boy gotten or at least hidden. sound. Like an earthquake that who had filled the cup in happened yet was never felt at its the kitchen and had brought it up to Zen's centre, it ripples where felt elsewhere. A 'Millarepa'. ‘I risked my life four times room, placing it on the middle of the floor travelling to India and back to return these hidden Buddhist Town and Monastery as instructed. ‘Without kicking it over’; built on a fortress like plateau behind the Sutras’. Well, he meant Mardan; two Zen reminded him, still Zen didn't know weeks by donkey or a month’s trek at best Pamir’s; a place of escape and refuge, who the 'Cup Kicker' was. The other boys is the distant between Tibet and Pakistan. abandoned almost as soon as it was built. did; it was the Boy's sense of humor that There is a cave complex in the west of Mardan was the warehouse of Buddhist had given him away. As for his nonscriptures. From this centre Buddhism was China; it shows the whole history of existant/existant finger the proof was there propagated; it was said of Ghandhara that Buddhism; from a Hundred Thousand for all to see. The boys had known for both Hinniyana and Mahayana Buddhism Buddhas to Bodhisattvas. Around this time twenty years or more he was the boy and no one knows why; maybe the 'Hun', was taught. It was as if from this centre whom Zen had chopped off a finger. The they started burying scriptures. Think the they had divided the world amongst Boy was now middle aged, they were all 'Dead Sea Scrolls'; 'The Nag Hammandi themselves like the Portuguese and middle-aged and many of his original Library'. In this one cave they found the Spanish but not East from West; North friends; his Sangha were in the room. The world's first book, printed on paper, from South. Theravada; Buddha's minor Abbot asked the question, ‘Without saying 100AD there about and it's illustrated too. vehicle toddled off South and then went it's a cup of water tell me what it is’.

'The Diamond Sutra'; though now they say East keeping the meridian to the left and Looking at the cup many of the boys had it's title means more like 'The Thunderbolt Buddha's big vehicle charged North and guessed; 'Half full' but somehow Zen had Sutra', diamonds being a cutting tool. then also East keeping the meridian to stumped such a response, it didn't fit the What was threatening this isolated outpost, their right. If any books went west it was question being ask. ‘I suppose you couldn't did they hear that the libraries of Mardan swallowed up by another scripture 'The call it a block of wood’; one of the boys were burning and where there some Monks Koran'. ventured to get the ball rolling and then there who buried books in the surrounding By the time the Sufi missionaries had 'The Cup Kicker' picked up the cup and hills of Mardan as well. Remember this poured it on old Zen's head and said ‘It is returned to the Stupa nothing was left of was a Greek Buddhist Kingdom as well Ghandhara. The Stupa was in tack but it wet; Zen Master’. Suddenly Zen versed in Aristotle as they were in Eastern was no longer visited. The Monasteries remembered who the Boy was; he was religions; amongst these scriptures maybe speechless, a layman, his nemesis had won were abandoned and Taxila was no more lost books of the ancient Greek than a market amongst ruins. One or two the Monastery and was now going to be philosophers, maybe even the complete Abbot. The others agreed 'The Cup Kicker' century later when the first of the Muslim works of Heraclitus. 'You can never step had certainly won the debate just as much invaders, descendants of Genghis Khan into the same river twice'. as water is wet and they were happy about saw the Stupa on their way to India proper; the Sultan must have believed that the it, only Zen voted against the Boy. Stupa was as old as the Pyramids and the ‘Bodhisattva in a Hell Realm' Zen died of a cold a week later, obtaining people who built them; the Buddhist, nirvana but this story contains one more belonged to the age of the ancient W.W.Spont.Samadhi . m death. As time went on 'The Cup Kicker' Egyptians. The locals could only came to be very old himself but when the confirmed Tamburlaine's assessment.

Boy died the Monastery held a massive Bruce Nenke These Buddha statues were as strange and funeral for their most-beloved of Abbots.

Leura unknown to them as they were to visiting They dug a tunnel under the Stupa and

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The Baptism He had seen the other kids do it, plowing through the water like masters of the element. It was just a matter of moving your arms up and down and doing a few kicks, it should be easy to swim really.

Even although his father was a superb swimmer, he had never bothered to teach Steve the fundamentals, let alone hold him up in the water until he had gained enough confidence to keep himself afloat. But then his father never took a lot of notice of him anyway, even when his dad was in a good mood. Steve had grown used to that, but the truth was that he had never learned to tread water. So he decided to surprise his father, and teach himself. He began by awkwardly splashing about in water up to his waist, kicking and moving his arms in an uncoordinated manner, making his mistakes, almost choking at times, and always panicking when he felt out of his depth. This often happened because he was so intent on learning he would drift into water over his head. That would cause him to desperately splash back to solid ground and drag himself out of the water, coughing up any that he had swallowed and panting for air like a dog on a hot day.

People would look at him, but no one ever asked him if he was all right.

After a few weeks of this half drowning, half swimming process, Steve thought that he had the basics of staying afloat down pat, and so, on one very hot summer's day he went to the local bush pool for a swim.

His mother didn't seem worried, and she didn't have time anyway to inquire as to whether he would be safe. Five children are a lot to keep tabs on over a holiday

bluedragonbooks@aapt.net.au

Alan E Lucas Katoomba period, and in those days everyone let their kids run feral, that was after all the idea of a holiday in the bush, to have a break from the kids. Steve wandered off with his swimmers and a towel, heading for the well favored natural rock pool, a kilometer or more down the track. The day was stifling hot, and the closer he got to the pool, the more anxious he was to plunge

in. On arrival he was comforted by the amount of other swimmers present, thinking that if he got into deep water, someone would help him. He went into the men's section of the tin shed that served as a change room, put on his togs and headed straight to where three or four people were standing waist deep in water, either side of a set of carved rock steps. Thinking the water to be shallow, he moved off the last step straight into a ten foot deep hole. That was when he remembered that he still

hadn't learned to tread water, and as he went down floundering, he looked up to see peoples legs moving above him and opened his mouth to call for help. In that instant he lost a third of the air in his lungs, watching the precious stuff escape to the surface in the form of bubbles. In sheer desperation he kicked his legs and floundered his arms enough to get back to the surface. This allowed him to get a gulp of air which he had intended to use to call for help, but went down again in the process, again gulping in water and again watching the air that should have contained his cry for assistance, rise to the surface.

This time he thought of grabbing someone's leg as he sank past, but was afraid he might get kicked. Absolute panic once again forced him to the surface where once more he got a gulp of air before beginning to sink again, for the third time. It now crossed his mind that he was drowning. Going down, he noticed that one of the men standing near the steps gave him a quizzical look but made no attempt to grab at him. Steve had kept his eyes open through the whole sorry process. And noted, as he began to go down for probably the last time, that there was a ledge of rock within his grasp that if he could hold on to, would allow him to pull himself to the surface, hand over hand so to speak. This he did, and with the last bit of air in his lungs, managed to pull himself up and break the water's surface. This time he was on the bottom step again and slowly dragged himself up to the top of the pool, sitting and gasping for air.

The man who had given him the strange look asked, ‘are you orl right mate’? Steve couldn't answer but just nodded. He then got up and sat on the grassy bank for a good half hour, watching all the other children confidently diving and somersaulting into the water.

It was too much for him and he began to weep, great silent tears rolling down his cheeks. m

I Remember You

Mary Krone Glenbrook

Every time I speak to you I remember Your casual stupidity The ease of your cruelty I can’t begin to imagine Yet you make no attempt to try I admire resilient people They’ve gone through so much, they are so brave This is code for They’re not battered by messy grief that makes me uncomfortable The resilient are the lucky ones Fortitude is a gift They are blessed And to be envied, not admired Better to admire the defenceless Those who struggle every day Who crumble and cry Short-changed in resourcefulness Yet they must abide Babies used to die all the time People got on Did they?

The simple ease of your cruelty I remember you Your daughter should think about third world infant mortality The casualness of your stupidity I remember you From my (ex) doctor Lucky he was only 9 weeks old, it would have been worse if he was older The effortlessness of your crushing stupidity Your casual brutality I remember you. m

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Unsolicited

Albany Dighton Faulconbridge

I remember the mechanical purr blistering my ears as I broke from REM. The scent of filthy, acrid petrol permeated through my nasal cavity as my eyes peeled open to the raw panorama of a psychopath igniting a chainsaw. No caveat on Sundays. Act one, scene one, action.

I remember this unsolicited visitor, the violator of our Sunday dreams and corruptor of the dawn. The entry point no-one knows. Some have the gift of clandestine – admission is always free. Clad in a vivid uniform of flannel shirt; overalls; tarnished Wellington’s; an Akubra and monumental gas mask, those beady, bloodthirsty, baneful eyes sent a convoy of adrenalin through my pulsating veins, numbing upon arrival at my waking brain.

I remember the paralysis. The milieu was a haze of horror. Oralie catapulted onto shrieking Kelly who was tangled in the lining of a prehistoric sleeping bag. Deb ceased her snoring to partake in the chorus of terror. I was comfortably subdued, pacified by my subconscious who voiced that I must not flee but checkmate those malevolent eyes, delve a little further into what lay beyond them.

There is always more than meets the eye.

I remember the grand finale. The closing scene hit the crescendo, and we, the amateur players prepared in helplessness for our fate. A bread knife could have sliced this intensifying tension. It was bloodcurdling, debilitating, albeit a tad expected. I lay alone whilst the other girls partially fled, only to discover there was no exit from the stage. I was devoid of choice. I searched those listless eyes for an answer, a reason … until they set upon mine … and they fixed.

I remember when the unsolicited visitor began to peel away his gas mask. Slowly, deviously, knowing three of the four heart rates before him were exceeding any recorded calculation. He peeled away that haunting gas mask with absence of velocity, and I dimmed whilst time stood still, almost fainting at the vision before me. m

From a Window

James Craib Wentworth Falls

In the early hours of the morn as we were borne by bus from London to Dover, We gazed nonplussed from our window at the wide stretches of parkland and clover Called ‘Blackheath’. ‘Good grief’! My old hometown named for this place Where are buried countless victims of the 'Black Death'. But this green space Is where county cricket is played watched by genteel folk sipping lemonade, In Summer. Not daunted by the highwaymen who haunted the passing parade, In the 17th century. Eventually, many dangled from gibbets ‘til their bones bleached.

Later, other flibbertigibbets campaigned here for women's suffrage and free speech.

Other women, not as discriminating, gaze from their shop windows in Amsterdam.

They watch scornfully the punting ‘mugs’ and other thugs who damn Their occupation. Gawking tourists, who stroll by the canal, marked by their banal Comments and apparel, oblivious to the blandishments of hawkers in flannel.

We gazed upon the city of water; from the barge other sights caught our attention.

Anne Frank’s Achterhuis where she hid with her family to avoid detection, From the Nazis, who were particularly nasty; a poignant reminder of a dreadful war.

A happier sight is an ocean liner cruising towards our hotel, seen from the 14th floor.

Later on the Grand Canal, in total bliss, we glistened along by boat and gondola.

Venezia – the city of masks, the city of bridges, St. Mark’s square and laguna.

One tries, in vain, to see the Bridge of Sighs, covered by hoardings, and yet a kiss...

To buttress our union as the legend say; hey! Lord Byron doesn’t know what he missed!

Long colourful mooring poles poke up drunkenly, like oversize drinking straws From the dank water. We saunter beside the canal, ordering white wine – ‘per favore’.

Then pay homage to the ‘Queen of the Adriatic’ despite how aromatic she seems.

A decaying, erratic, erotic dream sinking slowly into the realm of the slipstream.

As we approached in our luxury coach, we gazed, amazed by the hills of Tuscany, The medieval town of San Gimignano arose in fragrant musk. Any...

Chance we took to look for cappuccino in the gorgeous trattorias.

Paintings of Etruscan vases; a perpetual reminder of the long and glorious Past history of this region, visions of the Roman legions heading north To conquer Europe. Inhabitants of Gaul and Hispania also sallied forth.

To no avail, the endless tale of plundering armies assaulting the garrisons, Alas, dear friends, our European adventure now pales in comparison.

From the window of the hospital I gazed, unfazed, upon the city of Lucerne.

The mountain ~ Pilatus stood in ‘stark relief’ and in silent grief I turned...

My mind to contemplate and renegotiate the unlikely status of my life.

In Florence, ‘David’ had looked odd; his upper body and head jaded, in strife.

And here was I just the same, or perhaps I lieth ... I am Goliath instead?

I could find no answer, and with nothing fancier to do, I lay in my bed.

To ponder Renaissance obsession with perfect harmony of form, ratio, expression.

I’ll use other windows in the future to nurture my comprehension. m About James: James is a retired former office manager who completed his Bachelor of Arts (Hons Eng) at UNE a couple of years ago. He is now a full-time dilettante, musician, trivia junkie, wine drinker and occasional radio plays actor. A self confessed pun-tificate, he is now also writing poetry and strumming ukulele ... daily!

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The Stranger I still remember to this day what he looked like. He was not tall, but then he was not short either. You could say that he was of medium height. His hair was light brown and he wore it short, like the men in old pictures of soldiers from the second war.

His face and arms were a deep brown. The sort of brown that only years of work outside in the sun can give. In sharp contrast his eyes were the palest blue that I have ever seen.

I first noticed him when he was still a long way off. I had come down to the beach to be by myself.

It was very early spring and there was still a sharp bite in the wind as it blew the tops off the waves and flung them back in a shower of spray that made a hissing sound as it hit the water. Some were flung so high that they caught the rays of the setting sun and for a brief moment the air was full of sparkling diamonds.

I had pulled on an old pair of ski pants and my warmest coat to keep out the chill. I probably would not have paid him much attention as even on a cold afternoon like this there were usually one or two people walking along the beach. As he came closer it was his clothes that drew my eyes back to him. A pair of tattered pants that had been torn off just above his knees.

A shirt with the sleeves rolled up to above his elbows and an army slouched hat that hung down his back from a strap around his neck and which swung from side to side as he strode up the beach.

He appeared to be heading directly to where I was sitting. I looked away hoping that he would just keep on going and not stop to talk to me. I had come here to try to

John Ross Blackheath pull myself back from the edge of the deep black hole that was threatening to engulf me. My life at that time was in shattered pieces. No matter what I tried or where I turned it ended in grief or bitterness.

The sound of his footsteps in the sand

stopped directly in front of me. Feeling a slight sense of alarm, as we were the only people on a long stretch of desolate beach I looked up at him.

The sun was shining full on his face and I knew immediately that I did not need to be afraid of him.

For a long moment he just stared at me and

then gesturing behind him with one hand said, ‘Beautiful isn’t it?’

Then, unasked he sat down on the sand next to me. For many minutes we both just stared out at the ocean as the shadows reached out from the land and began to claim the sea.

He turned to look at me and said, ‘Many years ago I waded ashore on a beach very similar to this. All around me was death and great suffering. It was early in the morning and no doubt it was as beautiful as this but I never saw that. All I saw was the chaos and destruction and all I felt was an overwhelming despair. I thought then that I would never recover from that and that my life would never be the same again.’

‘Well my life did change after that day. But not in a bad way and not quickly.’

‘Years later I went back to that same beach and sat looking out at the ocean just like you are here today. It was the same as on that earlier day, except this time there was no pain and no despair just peace and beauty. I realised that even at the darkest times these things exist. Look for them and be patient. They are there.’

I looked away from him and back at the sea. The last rays of the sun were just touching the tops of the waves. I felt my soul rejoice at the splendour of it.

I turned back to speak to him but he was gone. m About John: A 64 year-old retired airline employee, John moved to the Mountains with his wife six years ago and enjoys writing short stories and science fiction.

Cut Grass and Disco At the time I became aware of my surroundings in life we lived across the road from the cricket field. This was the social hub of village life throughout the summer. On the adjacent side of field was the pavilion accessible from a side road.

Horseheath cricket club was very proud of its pavilion, a brick structure with changing rooms to one side a kitchen with a bar at the back and a largish front with tables set before a large picture window.

The local people raised the funds and built it themselves (many of the cricketers seemed to be tradesmen).

Horseheath was a village of about 100 houses at this time. I know because when I was fourteen I took over the paper round. On a Wednesday the free weekly paper came out, a copy of which was delivered to every house.

None of this chucking it out of a moving car in our village, thank you very much. My instructions were to push each paper firmly through the letter box in the door of each house to fall on the mat below. Any papers left sticking out would indicate that nobody was at home and therefore would be a security risk. That was a strange emphasis in a village where we never even locked our door.

The field across the road was always kept meticulously. Mowing and rolling took place weekly and each time, we were sent over by my parents to collect the grass cuttings to feed to our guinea pigs. The cricket field provided all the senses of summer; the smell of that cut grass was hanging in the air through the summer months, the sound of the ball on the bat and the cheers of the spectators lulled us through the season and during the summer night storms the lit-up field was the view from our front windows.

The club was very successful in the county cricket scene. So much so, that it had an A team and a B team, no mean feat for a small village. My dad was in the B team.

Every weekend there would be games that seemed to last forever. All the kids knew where they could find each other at these times. Behind the pavilion to the right hand side was a raised hillock topped by a concrete drain cover. This made an excellent fort and even doubled as a stage for girls to sing to each other into their hairbrushes. We were forbidden the fields behind the pitch as a mean farmer had planted some man traps, one of which had

caught our cat’s leg. When we were older the ditches between the fields proved excellent locations for forbidden trysts without appearing to leave our parents supervision.

In the late mornings the mums were to be found inside the pavilion making sandwiches for the tea. Not my mum, though as she was a feminist and worked a lot. Later she was busy doing her degree.

The other mums would give us sandwiches to eat if we helped fetch and carry and of course, if there was anything left from the tea, we could eat it. The sandwich fillings were exotic to my taste, as they were not the kind of thing found at our house and

the fairy cakes were something to be savoured indeed, my family’s diet ranging from ‘how to feed five kids for not much money’ to ‘experiments in ethnic cooking’.

The evenings were the best, especially when we won. Derek Barker would get out his record deck and there would be a disco.

The tea bar became a drinks bar and the mums put on their high fashion gear. Derek’s unaccountably much more attractive brother Les would be there with his glamorous wife Margaret.

As early teen this was an education; watching the adults drink, flirt, dance and sing. It seems such a shame that karaoke was years away. The desperate hoarse tones of Errol Brown asking ‘Where did you come from, Baby?’, to the cringingly maudlin Charlene D’Angelo claiming ‘I’ve never been to me’. Derek’s record collection was a testament to the lack of subtlety involved in village flirtations.

Songs I will forever associate with those days; ‘Three times a Lady’, ‘Don’t it make

Samantha Miller Faulconbridge your Brown Eyes Blue’ and ‘You’re so Vain’ shaped my musical tastes in a completely different direction, but remain so tinted with nostalgia for me that they can hardly exist outside of that realm. An unexpected attack of some golden oldie radio station in a supermarket can fling me so forcefully back in time that I am convinced this is a condition afflicting many a person causing them to become catatonic in the dry goods isle and leading to a pile-up of shoppers.

One summer my dad arranged for a group of his journalist mates to come from London to play a friendly match against the village team. It had to be the most lopsided game ever, but a jolly good time was had by all both during and afterwards when a huge party took place at our house. It went all night and under the cover of the music noone noticed my brothers and I slinking around sipping out of the grown-up drink glasses and generally spying on people. They were a decadent crowd, they always seemed to be with a new partner every time we kids met them and we soon learned not to ask such embarrassing questions as ‘So, what happened to Barbara?’

I have an enduring memory from this party of one of the London friends stamping through the living room pumping his arm in the air to ‘Jumping Jack Flash’, no doubt assisted by the fug in the room, heavy with a smell I did not yet recognize.

Late that night all of us kids were rounded up and put to sleep in mum and dads room top to tail in their bed and on the floor. In the middle of the night one of my brothers sat bolt upright and shouted ‘The Dogs!’

Something that causes much hilarity even today.

The morning brought a houseful of people to breakfast at tables inside and outside.

Bacon, eggs and toast were cooked in never ending batches and finally all the London journalists were dispatched back to their homes. As everyone had such a great time it was decided that it should be an annual event, but it never did happen again.

These days, I never watch cricket. I don’t think I ever had much interest in the sport.

I don’t know any of the rules, but I do know that you should never walk around the outside of the pitch during play. I do know what a ball to head feels like. m

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The Sea Dog’s Last The old ship’s captain, anchor shed, coughed his last stranded fast upon the shoal of his neat bed; mast sheets down, his empty vessel far-shore-bound.

Once strong bellows stretch of his own billowed sails folded, with finality, airless and slack in last liquid gurgle from that pilotless sack.

Fighter’s scowl upon a brow deep frowned, with no compass point the Plimosoll line drowned the stars all gone black the old sea dog shipped out with a saltwater hack.

Hands catching at a seasoned wheel pawed back from sea of memory, crossed the bar with buried keel upon his final, landlocked, scow to the tilt-headed, stare-eyed gaze of his shipmate dog there at the bow. m

Stephen Studach Katoomba

Locked in the Corridors of Hell

Karen Easton Wentworth Falls

In my young days I wore my auburn hair nerve up to ask the girls to dance but never move yet afraid not to move, what if Mary down to my waist with braids for school before. Mum especially loved to wear her Baker the local tart got to him first, no one and out for best and when I became a favourite pink frock with low heeled pump stood a chance of getting a man if she set married woman I wore it up. Now my shoes and her pearl necklace. Even at her sights on him. He looked like one of short white hair is cut into a bob and is home she wore her hair up; it showed off those famous screen idols Ethel and I much easier to manage. I was agile and her long slender neck and the pearls admired so much. He had dark chocolate had a slender frame which made for a good perfectly; but mostly I remember my brown bedroom eyes with thick black athlete, I could out run and out swim the mother in a worn faded house dress with lashes; a faint smile touched his full best of them. Once it was frowned on for an apron over the top. She would wear low kissable lips as he tipped his head in girls to participate in sports but I loved it comfortable farm shoes and have a weary acknowledgement and looked straight at all. I still have my slender body but these look on her face as she bent over the me and that’s when I felt my legs go days I do not walk or run fast and I don’t cement tub scrubbing dad’s and my weaker and Ethel taking me by the elbow, remember the last time I went swimming; I brothers overalls before they went into the sitting me down on the nearest chair; all am 92 years old and my back is bent and the while fanning me with her copper. my legs wobble so I use a walking frame handkerchief and giggling. Her giggles At the dance we girls would giggle and or I sit in a wheel chair and get pushed were getting on my nerves and her pretend to be shy all the while silently around when the others are in a hurry. I praying the man of our dreams would ask hovering was making it hard for me to have seen and done many wonderful and us to dance. It will be forever etched in my breathe. I was wishing she would just go not so wonderful things in my life. It’s not mind the night my sister Ethel and I away. Its right about then that he chose to so wonderful now. I have lived stride over to me and through the war and depression I should have taken the quick easy plan without a word spoken he years and I have seen man walk held out his hand. I put my on the moon. I have always said and did a ‘Thelma and Louise’ off the cliff small soft hand into his man’s greatest achievement is large rough hand and we tops of Katoomba years ago before it the washing machine; it made moved onto the dance became too late. I remember watching that floor as if we were one; he washing days more bearable. held me firmly yet with When I was not needed to help movie with my grand daughter and such tenderness I felt faint with the chores my favourite past all over again and as they time would be to go horse riding wondered at the time what sort of person say in the movies the rest on our property. I would ride for could do that, I know now I could. is history. hours and quench my thirst from the river; laying flat on my We were married 6 months stomach I would scoop the water up in my walked into the CWA hall all giggles with later and moved onto our own small but cupped hands and splash it onto my face to apprehension of what the night might workable property down in the valley of cool down. As it passed my dry cracked bring. Ethel and I stood in the doorway Little Hartley and had a good life together. lips and slipped down my parched throat I scanning the room; she whispered into my Alfred was the love of my life and my sighed and rolled over; soft velvet green ear and pointed; I looked in the direction reason for living; not a day went by that I grass felt cool and welcoming after the of her finger and there leaning casually on did not thank God and the angels for heat of the day on my back. I would watch the bar was the son of the Wilson family giving me such a wonderful man. the scattered white fluffy clouds moving who had recently moved onto a property Sunday’s we went to church; and if the swiftly and not so swiftly across otherwise over the mountain from us; he was weather permitted we would take a picnic drinking a beer and talking to Ed from the and go down by the river and eat home clear blue sky. grown corned beef and pickle sandwiches On Saturday nights if the chores were done local green grocers. He was tall, much taller than most of the local boys and made fresh that morning from my very and our father was in a good mood we rugged looking; huge hands and muscles in own pantry. One of the local boys hung a were allowed to squeeze into the old ford; places I had never seen.

My family were of rope off a branch; they would take turns to 4 abreast in the front and 6 in the back and average build and height so this man run and jump into the river. It was a lovely off we’d go into town to the local CWA looked like a giant to me.

His straight way to pass the afternoon until the day hall for the dance. If you stood near a Tom Maxwell dived in and broke his neck; group of adults the talk was always on the black hair fell down across his right eye and his forehead was white, like my needless to say our picnics were never the weather and cattle prices; our parents same. loved to catch up with friends and discuss fathers and brothers from wearing their akubra hats all day out in the relentless My life, my story is not a completely these same topics week after week. sun. happy one, but mostly it was a good one.

Mum would make her famous sultana and I felt like I had stopped breathing; my Now I sit here day after day with only nut cake for the refreshment table with homemade lemonade for those who did not heart raced up into my throat and beads of memories locked in what I call ‘the drink. My brothers would push and shove perspiration ran down between my breasts. corridors of hell’. When I first arrived I I clutched hold of my sister and whispered thought; ‘oh this is not too bad I can each other as they shouted to their mates back that I might faint at the sight of such manage living here’ and with many regular across the room and joined them in a good looking man. All she could do was visitors life was bearable. But now very friendly banter and beer drinking. When they were all primed they would get their giggle. I Maude Edwards who was afraid few come; one by one they stopped of nothing was glued to the spot; afraid to coming ages ago. Apparently the sight of

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GRAFFITI HOTLINE - 4759 2592 Help create a graffiti–free area by reporting all graffiti in Woodford, Hazelbrook, Lawson and Bullaburra.

A Hazelbrook Association and Mid Mountains Neighbourhood Centre Volunteer Community Program me upsets them too much; and the smells offend their well appointed noses. So all day long I sit here and listen to the babbling of the other residents, that’s what they like to call us; ‘the residents’. The old and not so old; the sick and the dying all cohabit here locked in the corridors of hell; we eat and we shit together; but never sleep together. Once we were proud lively souls now we are like the living dead. It’s almost like we are in the movie ‘Ground Hog Day’ doing the same thing over and over again, except here we might wake up and find an old darling down the hall has gone to meet their maker, lucky devil.

Some days I feel like I have out stayed my welcome here; they keep us alive with more pills and potions that seem decent.

They prod and poke us to make sure we are still alive and not just sleeping in our wheel chairs.

Why do they insist on keeping us alive what is the point in it all? On the rare occasions a visitor comes to see me they cry and say, ‘I miss you, please don’t die on me’ but they don’t miss me enough to visit more often.

Don’t they know how we all crave death that it would be a release from these corridors of hell? In here death is welcomed with open arms; some even pray for it, I know I do. We are at the mercy of the ‘carers’ and we don’t like it very much but what can we do? The simple things in life have now become all too hard for some of us; many can’t even toilet themselves and this is so degrading. We have buzzers to push for assistance; but it is always slow

at coming; when I need to sit on the toilet they never come on time; I hear a sigh and they say ‘not again Maude’. ‘Yes again I think to myself; again you took too long to answer my buzzer’ but I say nothing, I just stare at her with a blank look.

Who can blame you for taking so long; you have so many of us to toilet and feed all those beds to make and clothes to hang and endless paperwork; I can hear you complaining about it all the time. You think we don’t understand because some have stepped out of their minds and gone

became too late. I remember watching that movie with my grand daughter and wondered at the time what sort of person could do that, I know now I could. Here I am locked here in the corridors of hell and pray each day that ‘God’ will send for me and I can go home to my Alfred. He went many years ago of a heart attack, quick and easy; he was a wonderful caring man. I feel him around me and when I think no one is listening I talk to him and ask him ‘when can I come to you’; and he says ‘not yet my darling be patient a little longer my love’.

We had a good strong marriage filled with love and laughter.

Now that is something we do not hear much unless it is a hysterical laugh from one of us residents.

The carers think we are dotty, but little do they know we just need to hear the sound of laughter and not cross words and sighs of dismay from them when one of us has vomited or dirtied ourselves.

People walk around whispering except when elsewhere. We have our own thoughts and they talk to us, they shout in our ears and feelings but are too tired to share them almost deafen us some more. Our hearing with you; you never have the time or want aids are turned up and the music is turned listen to us; the old and feeble; so I down. I loved to listen to ‘The Glen Miller personally have chosen to remain silent.

Band’ with Alfred; we would waltz around My family put me in here when I dirtied the living room; holding each other with myself once too often and was found out in such tenderness and love. Alfred always the garden dribbling and babbling to kissed me lightly on the lips and would say myself. Didn’t they know I was talking to ‘that’s my girl’. Oh how I miss music, my Alfred the love of my life? I was too dancing and the touch of my Alfred; or any exhausted from the fighting and crying to touch for that matter. When I am being explain myself so I came here meek and washed and fed is about the only time I mild thinking it would be better for them feel touch now. The rare occasions one of my daughters or sons come in to see me and me but how wrong I was. they barely touch me. It’s like I am a leper I should have taken the quick easy plan and did a ‘Thelma and Louise’ off the cliff or one of the many unwashed. They wrinkle up their noses and I hear them tops of Katoomba years ago before it

whisper to each other how it smells like urine in my room; they open my window and I shiver with the cold. Their talk of how my room smells and the looks on their faces makes me feel dirty and degrades me even more if that is possible. Sometimes the grand children and great grandchildren come to visit but only stay a very short while and most of that time they are playing with those new confounded I pods or are on their mobile phones texting; I think that’s what they call it. They bring me chocolates and eat the lot saying things like, ‘you won’t want these Grammy they are all hard centres’.

I sit there saying nothing but wondering all the while why they bothered to bring them in for me in the first place and yes I do like hard centres. I love nothing more than sucking the chocolate off them and feeling the sweet taste explode in my mouth. They bend over close to my ear and I think they are going to kiss me; but no it’s then that they say ‘nice to see you Grammy’ and off they go without a backwards look or a wave. It makes me sad when they sit around my room talking amongst themselves as if I am not there. They never come alone, always in a small group, that way they can pretend to visit me and they can go home happy with themselves that they have done their duty by me. I used to wash most of their backsides and change their nappies; and I never complained but if I so much as break wind or spill my tea I am frowned at and deemed a nuisance; and to be left here locked in the corridors of hell. Alone and frightened I sit here most days wondering how did my life come to this?

Our men in the district went off to fight when the war broke out and promised to be home soon. Many did not return and when Alfred did he was never the same. We moved off the property into a small but comfortable house in Lithgow and got on with life as best we could. Alfred got a job working in the mines and provided for his family with a sturdy roof over our heads.

We were a family of eight till the day tragedy struck us and little Henry was taken with consumption. From birth to the day the angels took Henry he had problems with his breathing. It took awhile for life to become normal after his death; we buried him in a small wooden box; some would say it was cheap. But we didn’t have a lot of money in those days; what with the war and the depression years things were tight for everyone. Our children wore hand me downs and we grew our own vegetables; collected eggs from our bantam hens and had several fruit trees in the back garden.

We used to save the string and brown paper off any parcel; we fed our kitchen

scraps to the chickens and Alfred poured the contents of the toilet onto the vegetable beds and the passion fruit vine growing over the outback loo; I think my grand children would call it recycling. We saved up for our annual family holiday by the sea once a year if we were lucky. Life was simple and filled with pleasurable days and nights back then, not now.

Everything was made to last and last it did.

On the day they brought me to live here I still had my original toaster much to the family’s disgust. They thought I was too mean to spend my pennies on a new one, I still think in pounds shillings and pence.

Little did they know that my Alfred had brought it with is first pay packet from the mines and it was our pride and joy; parting with it was like parting with Alfred all over again. The family came and cleaned up my house and took boxes of what they called rubbish away; those boxes contained my memories. What did they do with my toaster, I begged them to let me bring it with me; they laughed and said I was being rather silly.

Jean’s in the room next to mine moaning and crying again, she cries out for someone to help her; but they are slow at coming because it is an everyday occurrence; ‘ground hog day’ all over again. She is going blind and is frightened because she does not understand why she is in these corridors of hell. I try to raise myself up to go to her to tell her it is alright, but my legs will not work and the strength in my arms is not what it used to be; so I stay on my bed and try to block her shouts for help out. Alfred was good at blocking out what he did not want to hear; I wish I was. This morning sitting in my room looking out the window and feeling the winter sun on my face; I was thinking what a lovely day it was outside when the two carers came in to change my bed. Totally ignoring me; they started talking about the shitty job they have to endure here.



Do you enjoy cleaning up old men’s ball sacks, that look like old chicken necks Carol was laughing so hard she had to sit on the edge of the bed and Lyn continued with her description of their job.



Do you enjoy feeding 84 year olds who spit their chewy bits into your face



Do you like changing shitty beds and dirty backsides



Do you love catching the diarrhoea and vomiting bug every winter



If you can imagine being screwed and paid a pittance for a wage then this is the job for you!

Then Carol added her thoughts on the job description



If you can imagine yourself in this wonderful environment please contact our admin staff



If you can stand the smell of urine and shit in your nostrils even when you go home then this is the job for you’.

Their sighs and laughter filled my room and yet still not one of them took any notice of me sitting by the window. How do they think all this talk makes me feel? I will tell you how it makes me feel; worthless and a nuisance and once again I wondered why I was still here if I was such a burden; why couldn’t I go to heaven and lighten their load; why keep giving me more pills to keep me alive?

Lyn sighed and said, ‘I have to work hard at staying sane in this loony bin’.

‘I try to use humour but it’s a bit hard day after day wiping up shit and dribble only to be abused for it,’ laughed Carol.

My thoughts were on the exact same thing; how does one stay sane in these corridors I heard Lyn say to Carol, ‘Hey, would you of hell? Do they think we enjoy it; would have taken this job if the position in the we be here if we could get up and walk away from this hell? None of us like the paper read; we are given to eat, it’s like vomit  Do you like being worked hard and on food resurrected with little lumps in it and it is your feet for 6 to 8 hours, almost running usually cold. I can’t remember the last time the complete time I was given a nice ‘hot’ cup of tea; it’s always weak and barely warm so we won’t  Do you like not having tea breaks; because when you do a buzzer or two rings burn ourselves. and they need attention again Lyn put her hand on my shoulder and asked if I needed anything?  Do you enjoy being slapped or I looked up at her, smiled and said, ‘Yes, punched let me out of these corridors of hell, or let  Do you like being verbally abused day me die’. after day Carol looked shocked, laughed and said, ‘I

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24 can’t believe it, that’s the first time I have heard Maude talk, she just sits there day after day, what an odd expression to use’.

And with that she shook her head and walked out the door mumbling to her self; what a silly old bat Maude is.

Again she talked about me like I was not there.

Lyn looked at me with pity in her eyes and said, ‘I’m sorry Maude not today, maybe tomorrow’ and then she left me sitting there to my own thoughts. Alfred would say they were rude talking like that in front of me and I certainly would agree with him but who am I to judge when it’s not me being slapped and spat at every day I come to work. Are some of us that bad, is it rebellion or is it anger that makes them do

these things? A buzzer went off and a second buzzer and then I heard shouting from down the corridor and I knew; I just knew that some lucky old darling was moving out of the corridors of hell and going to meet their maker. After the ambulance had left and all the commotion settled down things became much quieter and eerie even. At dinner that night I heard them talking about old Fred; how it was best he had died because he was living in such pain. Didn’t they know most of us here were in pain; physical and emotional; didn’t they know we all wanted to die. The carers on the night shift sounded just like the morning ones. Complaining about us and how hard they had to work for such low wages. It was the beginning of ‘Ground Hog Day’ all over again. I heard

their footsteps pass my room as I drifted asleep; they walk the corridors one last time checking on us before they go and sit and watch the television and drink hot tea.

In the depths of the night Alfred came to me and whispered in my ear, ‘It’s time my girl’. I did not hesitate to put my hand in his hand, and as we drifted up and out of the room I never looked back once. They found me the next morning, cold and lifeless with a smile on my face, another had escaped the corridors of hell, creating more paperwork. Oh what a shame. m

Anna

Karen Easton Wentworth Falls

Paris Portingale Mt Victoria

The sun comes up Anna comes out The day begins The seasons pass And leaves fall to mark the page And Anna walks on, and through, and over, and around and returns again And the leaves grow back and the seasons pass and leaves fall again and again This is in the time of the ringing phone And things grow where they will and at their own pace And each side asks God if they could please win And Anna walks over and through and wins the game herself And claims the day, for better or worse And now the leaves fall in slow motion And you can hold your breath and never see one settle But Anna walks through and somehow they set on her And stay till the last frame When they curl and are loosed And as is the way with seasons, they pass and pass again without comment If you hold your breath the sun is like a yoyo And Anna’s shadow flicks like a nervous tail And if Anna could fly, she surely would, and shame the gulls And rise perhaps above the seasons themselves And see them fall away down there somewhere below And how do you tell the winner that was not God’s plan As He hasn’t got to that one yet And then Anna’s gone But if you hold your breath again And look down close You can see the steps and smell the air And if you close your eyes as well While opening something else inside there It’s almost like—ever so almost like She could still be there. m

A Quick Fix

Michael Burge Leura

I understand what you say, but I still Brian and he said no, his special friend don’t think that means we can’t see Uncle (James) was not going to come to Family Brian. It’s not fair really. That’s why I Day. He might come next year, but Uncle Brian seemed to think it best if only he rang him and asked him to Family Day. came along the first time. He said you and I didn’t think he’d come. I didn’t think he’d even want to talk to me. He was very Mummy have never met James. Is that right Daddy? calm. The counsellor said he might be Dear Daddy, angry and that he might hang up on me, Kylie dared me to ask if Uncle Brian and or be rude and aggressive. But he was James were going in the Mardi Gras This is going to be a really, really long nothing like that. He said it was a pleasant parade, but I didn’t want to ask anything email because I have so much to say after surprise to hear from me, and asked how I like that. Kylie has a cousin who’s a your email last week. I can hardly was doing at school, and was glad to hear woman who has a special friend who’s a remember all my questions, there are just I was doing Special English because he woman, and none of her family ever sees so many. It was so nice to see you and liked English at school too. He asked me them. The only thing any of the family Mummy at school Family Day. Fiona and if we’d done ‘Pride and Prejudice’ yet know about them is that they both have Becka think you look like an actor off an and I told him we had and we laughed short hair. One of them works for the American TV show, one of the detective about Mr. D’Arcy and how the girls were Council. Belinda said she probably drives ones. They get to watch it in the school all so silly about him. Uncle Brian said he trucks, but Belinda just likes to get the holidays. I just shrugged because I didn’t always thought Mr. Wickham sounded attention. know what they were talking about, but I tried to make you can probably be flattered by the comparison and not at The school counsellor said that Uncle Brian might it that you, Mummy and all offended, the way they Uncle Brian have a special friend who might like to come too. were going on about it, okay? weren’t going I think I understand most of I asked Uncle Brian and he said no, his special to have to see your email, and I am glad you much of each friend (James) was not going to come to Family wrote. You and mummy other on looked so sad (or something) Family Day. Day. He might come next year, but Uncle Brian before you left. I knew you’d That’s why I had a bit of a shock because of seemed to think it best if only he came along the asked you and Uncle Brian being there.

Mummy to first time.

He said you and Mummy have never It was the school counsellor come at lunch who suggested I invite Uncle met James. Is that right, Daddy? and not Brian to Family Day. She also earlier. I know said I should tell you first, but I didn’t, like much more of a catch. I have to say you wondered why I asked you that, and I and I am truly sorry for that, but I hope that gave me a bit of a shock, but I just couldn’t tell you why, but I never told you will understand that I knew you’d say laughed. Uncle Brian laughed too. There you a lie about it, did I? I asked Uncle no or get upset and I wouldn’t get to see was a bit of an awkward pause, then Brian to the morning tea and he thought you and Mummy properly on that day Uncle Brian asked me if you and mummy that sounded splendid and that he’d wear either. It’s such a long time until the end had told me about him and his lifestyle. I his best tie. When I told him it was on a of term and we have all the exams before said yes, we knew about it. He asked me terrace he guessed there’d be wisteria or that and I wanted to see my Daddy and if it mattered that he was the kind of man something, and I said the magnolias were Mummy. who liked Mr. Wickham instead of coming into flower then. He said he’d get I don’t want you to be angry at the school Elizabeth Bennet, and I said that I didn’t me to put one on his lapel. You saw it think it mattered much. Uncle Brian then there, I know. I noticed you looking at it. counsellor. She’s not one of those ferals or anything. She’s really nice, and I want asked me if I was sure I knew what you Daddy you weren’t supposed to meet and Mummy meant. His voice was a bit you to go easy on her if you complain. I Uncle Brian on the terrace. I wanted you wobbly, like he was getting a bit upset. I all to meet at the lunch when there were told her about Uncle Brian last year, because of something we’d been reading asked him if he was upset, and he just more people around and I could be sure at school. I’m not going to tell you what it said he was relieved more than anything you’d all behave yourselves. The was so you can’t complain about it, okay? else. counsellor agreed with me on that point.

But something in it made me think about I got his email address and we’ve been But when I saw you and Mummy walking what you and Mummy told us about emailing a lot since, so when Family Day up the front steps my heart sank, because Uncle Brian, and I asked the counsellor to came up again this year I thought I’d ask I could see it was all going to be a disaster help me understand it. She took me aside him to come along. Please don’t get angry and that you hadn’t listened to me when I and we talked it through, and now I reading this Daddy. Please take some needed you to. You didn’t give me time understand better than I did before about time before you just get angry again. to explain to you and Mummy in private Uncle Brian. about what was happening, and I am still The school counsellor said that Uncle a bit angry about that. I hope I will get She told me something similar to what Brian might have a special friend who over it soon though. you said last year, and I want you to know might like to come too. I asked Uncle TO: dadandmum1067@hotmail.com FROM: libbyloo22@hotmail.com RE: Hi from school DATE: August 27th 2009

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26 26 I thought Uncle Brian was very polite in the circumstances. He left us alone for a while and got us all a cup of tea and some of the nicest cakes, and talked with some of the other parents while we had our first talk about it. I’m glad you didn’t blow your top Daddy, but I do think you might have shaken Uncle Brian’s hand when he offered it to you. When you think about it, there was no-one on the terrace who could have told that Uncle Brian is a homosexual, just by looking. He was wearing a suit just like yours, and he was quite comfortable talking with the other adults. I saw him talk to the Headmistress for a long time and she seemed quite at ease with him, and Mr. and Mrs. Banks wanted him to sit with them at lunch because they found him so entertaining.

I suppose Uncle Brian should have taken them up on their offer because lunch with us was no fun for him. I didn’t think it was fun either. You and Mummy didn’t make much of an effort to ask about Uncle Brian, and I know the last time you saw him was at my christening. A lot can happen in fifteen years. To just sit there, ignoring his questions, was so embarrassing Daddy. Your face was very red and Mummy looked as though she was going to cry. Even when the Banks family came up with Fiona you still didn’t lighten up. Can you blame Uncle Brian for excusing himself and having his coffee with them instead of us?

I saw Uncle Brian for a minute before he left. It was when I went to the toilet. I was crying and I could see he had been. He said perhaps we’d made a mistake, and gave me a little hug. Mrs. Taylor our English teacher was coming out of the ladies and I introduced her to Uncle Brian.

She said it must be very nice to have my uncle here. I said yes, and had a little more of a cry, and he gave me another hug.

Uncle Brian said to Mrs. Taylor we were having a few family problems, and that the school counsellor was aware of them, and that I was going to be okay in a little while, and I was. Mrs. Taylor patted Uncle

Brian on the shoulder and said he was a very nice man to be so caring of his niece.

He nodded, and he was gone in ten minutes, saying he thought it was best, and that he’d be in touch soon, and I wasn’t to stay upset, but to have a great afternoon and he’d come and see me in another piece of drama another time. He didn’t want me to be upset and forget my lines or anything.

He gave me a present then, and I am not giving it back. It’s too lovely Daddy. I’m not telling you what it is. I’m doing this because I know you told me a lie when you said Uncle Brian couldn’t even pay you and Mummy the courtesy of saying goodbye. You thought I was in the toilet,

Romeo and Juliet wasn’t as fun as I’d hoped it would be, not after the lunch we’d had. Mummy was supposed to help me with my hair, but she had half an eye on where you’d got to and I needed to ask Mrs. Simms to put my hair up for me.

Mummy made no secret of the fact that she wished I was in a dress and not dressed up as the apothecary. Mrs. Taylor could see how disappointed Mummy was about that, but Kylie played Macbeth last year and it was her turn to play one of the female parts and as Mrs. Taylor told us all at the last rehearsal that the apothecary plays a major role in the tragedy, being the one who gives Romeo the draught to make him sleep and appear dead.

but I was watching you, and you were so angry you didn’t even turn your back to say goodbye to Uncle Brian. Mummy looked at him and nodded, but you didn’t say anything. I think he was crying a little when he left. The Banks family tried to get him to come with them. I think they could see why, but he very politely excused himself, saying he needed to be at work for the afternoon.

I had to go and get ready for Romeo and Juliet. I know you sent Mummy with me so you could go and get angry at the counsellor. But she’s there so we can tell her things we need to tell her. Things that we can’t say to other people, even our parents. She never said a word about what you’d said to her, just that I should try to understand your response too, and that is why I am writing, to let you know I am trying to understand.

And anyway all the roles were played by men when they were first performed, even in front of Kings and Queens of England, so there should be no problem for girls in our class to dress as men. It’s a girls’ school daddy, you know that.

I think Mummy was just not herself after seeing Uncle Brian. Uncle Brian said he thought it might have something to do with an idea you and Mummy might have about homosexual people dressing up like the opposite sex? I don’t know. I was too upset by then to care and I fluffed most of my lines and you didn’t see any of it anyway because you were busy with the counsellor and the day was pretty much over by then anyway.

When I said that I didn’t want us to sit down with the counsellor that afternoon I meant it because I was too upset. You were angry and just wanted one of your

quick fixes, but Daddy I honestly think, feel deep down about what you wrote.

After all, Mummy didn’t take a lamb to be from the bottom of my heart, that this is Yes, in Leviticus chapter 18, verse 22 it sacrificed a year after I was born, did she? something that cannot benefit from one of says ‘Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as And you have shaved your sideburns off, your quick fixes. I know you’ve had some with womankind: it is abomination.’ I and we all like seafood when we go to the success at Church with your quick fixes, know you were worried that I would not coast, and if we stuck to what it says in but somehow I think it was best just to understand what ‘lie down with’ means, Leviticus, we’d have to be doing all that, leave the day as it was and for you and but as Mummy told you we have had our and you’d only have a right to take one Mummy to go home and for me to eat my sex education classes last year, and I kind slave girl, and no more. We don’t have dinner by myself so I could think. I know of know what it all means. I think there is slaves Daddy. you were shocked when I said that so a lot more to know.

Before you blame anyone for this you strongly, but I meant it. I gave you a kiss Anyway, back to the point, and that is this must blame Mummy first, because it was and a hug and I meant those too. I love you - by following the meaning of the words, she who told me I even had an uncle.

Daddy, you know that, but right then I was from ‘abomination’ we get the meaning There was a photo of the two of you so stirred up I couldn’t sit down anywhere. ‘different,’ and that is all. Do you see what together in an album she got out one rainy I went for a long walk around the oval.

I am getting at Daddy? Uncle Brian might day when we couldn’t go to the zoo. You Kylie found me when she’d said goodbye lie down with a man, which is just were both in your school uniforms (and to her parents, and we walked and walked. different to what you might want to do, you both had some pretty big sideburns!)

She thought Uncle Brian was charming, different in purpose. Do you see what I am and I asked who was that friend of yours and we made it like a scene out of Pride you had your arm around, and didn’t he getting at? and Prejudice and that look like Daddy? got my sense of humour Mummy looked at the After all, Mummy didn’t take a lamb to be back and I half hoped photo a bit closer. I you and Mummy would think she was actually sacrificed a year after I was born, did she? And still be there when we a bit confused about got back, but you’d gone you have shaved your sideburns off, and we all which of you was and I don’t blame you. I like seafood when we go to the coast, and if we which. She said you ate with my home room were the one on the left class, some of whom stuck to what it says in Leviticus, we’d have to and Uncle Brian was have no parents, or ones one on the right. be doing all that, and you’d only have a right to the that couldn’t come, and I asked her who Uncle that made me feel very take one slave girl, and no more. We don’t have Brian was, and she said grateful to have a family to ask you. You never slaves Daddy. at all. would tell me, and A few days later I got Kylie found him on your email. We don’t get much time in the I read some of the other chapters of Facebook because she is allowed to use internet room, so it took me two sessions Leviticus, and looked it up on the internet. Facebook at home when she’s on holidays. to read it and I had to get permission to I asked permission for this from the Please forgive me Daddy, and try to print it out so I could look at it in my internet room prefect and she watched me understand. One more thing to help you, dorm. I can see you’ve thought very long while I did it. Here is what I found and I hope it is a quick fix. I found it in and hard about it all, but as I said before I interesting.

Leviticus 19 verse 17 - ‘Thou shalt not don’t think one of your quick fixes will It says ‘Leviticus contains laws and hate thy brother in thine heart.’ work in this situation Daddy, it’s too priestly rituals, but in a wider sense is complicated for just one of your talks and about the working out of God’s Covenant a session with the Bible. Without you here with Israel set out in Genesis and Exodus - Lots of love, to guide me I had to set it all up for myself what is seen in the Torah as the Your Libby xoxoxox and read the section you’re talking about, consequences of entering into a special and that took me the rest of the week relationship with God (specifically PS. I am going to pray about all this in because we had a lot of homework and the Yahweh). These consequences are set out chapel, but I am going to pray for Uncle exams coming up. in terms of community relationships and Brian as well as you and Mummy. m It’s pretty clear from the bits you quoted behaviour.’ from Leviticus that you think Uncle Brian And from this I see that Uncle Brian just Michael Burge is an abomination. I had to look that word does not want a special relationship with Leura up in the dictionary. In my dictionary, it God. But this does not mean we shouldn’t says this - ‘Something or someone that speak to him, or that I shouldn’t have causes great revulsion or abhorrence.’ I asked him to Family Day, or that you and About Michael: then had to look up the word abhorrence Mummy shouldn’t be civil to him if you Michael has lived in the Blue Mountains and found this - ‘Disgusting, loathsome, see him somewhere, even unexpectedly. I for three decades. A NIDA graduate who repellant. In opposition; completely would be very surprised Daddy if you said has written for News Limited, Intermedia, contrary.’ I then had to look up the word that was true, that you could sit me down Fairfax, United News & Media and Rural contrary and found this ‘Opposed, as in in front of me and tell me that if Uncle Press, he currently edits and writes for character or purpose; completely Brian has a ‘different purpose’ to you that Blue Mountains Life Magazine. different.’ we shouldn’t talk to him or know what Please follow me on this Daddy, because I he’s up to in his life. am trying to show you how I really, truly

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The Day I Skipped School Living, as we did, on the very outskirts of Kingston, we walked precisely double the proverbial country mile to get to our one teacher school. We thought it a wonderful school! Our teacher was a middle aged man who lived next to the school with his wife. They were both so kind hearted! His wife taught us sewing and art, and she loved arranging special treats for us at Christmas and Easter … really any time she thought she could make an occasion.

I don’t think they had any children of their own. This always seemed to me such a shame as it was plain to all of us that they adored us, and we loved them and our school. It was a rare occurrence for any of us to play the fool.

I had several brothers and sisters and usually walked with them on strict orders from our father. However one day, for reasons I do not remember, I walked alone.

It was my habit, to sing in my loudest and best voice as I walked. We had a little concert coming up and so this solitary walk was an ideal opportunity to practice anyway. A farmer drove by, smiling and waving as he passed, and I returned his acknowledgement. I kicked at the stones on the road to see how far I could make them travel and which shapes and sizes worked the best. Surely I could win the kicking competition with my siblings the next day as we walked together.

Then I lost myself in the study of the new sprays of wattle and the silver-green foliage of the trees. I would have something to talk about next time we did nature study.

It was a lovely sunny day and the sky was mostly blue with only a patchy few pale grey, watery clouds. There was that faint sweet smell and muggy feel of possible rain but I was not worried. It felt good to walk alone on such a lovely morning. This

was a rare luxury and one I was determined to savour every step of the way.

I was perhaps a third of the way along the pitted and corrugated road when I began to feel the cool, soft patter of drizzling rain on my skin. More in a happy daze than out of frustration, I looked heavenward, smiled and then glanced back to the road.

Robyn Chaffey Hazelbrook

change the hue of the greens and the earthen colours of the bush.

Suddenly the soothing sounds of running water, and the realisation that I was on the little wooden bridge I loved. We told each other such stories as we walked over that bridge - of trolls, fairies and leprechauns, and the stories led to the most wonderful games which seemed to shorten our walk day by day.

Like every day before, I was compelled to peer over the side of the bridge to see what magic it might reveal today.

Mesmerising light-plays on the water as the sun shone through the foliage and patterns formed as the water rippled and swirled its way around the rocks and debris making soapy -looking foam and kept my attention. I lost myself in wonderment at how the foam was formed.

Soon I spied some little fish and was drawn down into the gully to have a closer look.

They glistened silver in the reflected green of the water and brought an impulsive smile to my face. Kneeling down in the cool mud and weeds I leaned forward to scoop at the water and watch as the fish darted in all directions, making me laugh out loud.

The water was so cool and inviting! It wasn’t long before I had taken off my shoes and socks to sit on a good rock and dangle my feet.

I was still singing, smiling, lost in my own carefree world, tucked away under the bridge My eyes almost popped right out of my where I was out of sight and mind. I had head! It was raining only on that side of played with the fairies, roused at the troll, the road on which I walked. The other side talked back to the frogs … then suddenly I was still bathed in sunlight and I could see became aware of the sounds of my the dark line of the showers’ edge right siblings. They were making their return down the middle of the road. journey and questioning how I had I was gob-smacked! Still I walked on! Still managed to dupe our mother into allowing me a day off school. m I felt just so at peace and free on my rare lone walk. The little shower had seemed to

The Cost of Doing Business

David Bowden Medlow Bath

Big changes came in the wake of the crash music which sounded familiar yet different Sims. For example once he of 2017. The state had to intervene in areas different. Innovation within the department mastered the weepy teen ballads beloved where the free market had failed. For a was controlled under very strict guidelines of Zammit Dooley fans he moved into upstart there was a massive crackdown on & nothing was released to the public tempo tech pop, writing for artists like fraud & organised crime. It was decided without being approved by a series of Snug Fit & the Very Nearlys, before trying that identity theft was too big a problem to committees first. Avant Gardists were very his hand at the adult rock flavours of ignore. Common surnames were a major quickly weeded out. Too many minor keys Drenched Rebellion & then graduating to obstacle so a central registry was set up to & your career could be over. Although it become the primary songwriter for the issue everyone a unique code. It took some was never included in official most popular band of the modern era, getting used to but after a few years people documentation everyone knew the 2 International Love Magnet. Whatever style second rule - atonality must be resolved he attempted he quickly became a master grew accustomed to the new way. within 2 seconds or your work would be of, conjuring a seemingly endless stream Secondly the government took over the rejected without further discussion. of variations sculpted from the same entertainment industry. Thanks to the Everyone worked for wages, with a bonus twelve notes. internet the recording business had been dying for years & the movie industry was system for ‘hits’, so there were no royalty Despite only being a wage earner like all payments as such. By paying a compulsory other staff in the Bureau, Steven’s bonuses going the same way. As soon as the entertainment tax the public could access investment opportunities shrank the became increasing frequent & generous so bankers whose money had propelled these music & other arts freely, without the consequently he grew quite wealthy for hassle of transactions. enterprises for years bailed out for less someone of his age & despite his natural risky ventures. Everyone seemed to agree Steven’s first assignment was to ‘fix’ a shyness became something of a celebrity. that the arts were valuable to the troublesome middle eight on a new single He wasn’t a womaniser, nor a drug taker, community but nobody wanted to foot the proposed for Zammit Dooley, a simulated not an adventurous traveler to foreign bill. The state saw a chance to achieve a 18 year old male who had a huge countries nor committed to any political following with teenage girls. Steven cause, he only lived to write music & number of key objectives & stepped in. listened to the original arrangement of the record it. Money was not interesting to him The first thing they did after taking over song (called ‘Baby You’re My One & & what he earned he either spent wantonly was an audit of musical tastes. The results Only’) & immediately suggested a new on new sound tools or gave away to family showed a befuddling array of genres & sub chord structure for this section, as well as a & friends. His wealth was transient & the -genres, most of which were catering to ease with which he had accumulated it tiny minorities. An executive decision was counter - melody for the final chorus made to confine production to the 10 or so which when adopted turned the song into immunised him from concern about the possibility of things ever not core styles, after financial being so. modeling demonstrated that 97% He was listening to a master of the money was going to less However, although humble by than 10% of the music made. Pop composer at the peak of his creativity nature, he gradually realised that & rock were retained, some singer people would give him whatever express himself fully within the art songwriter balladry, 4/4 dance he asked for. Not having to music, the less controversial persuade, beg, cajole or form he was born to inhabit. forms of hip hop &, of course, negotiate seemed on the surface country & blues. Classical music to be a wonderfully comfortable was also kept but with plans to stick with Dooley’s most requested work yet. state within which to live one’s life but Steven’s star was on the rise. the more popular streams. Jazz was after a while it grew tiring for Steven. He dropped as obsolete, as was anything In the 3 years which followed he had a slowly began to cultivate contempt for stunning series of successes. Steven had a those around him who never argued back experimental. remarkable knack for delivering happiness & with an increasing frequency tested So into this world was born Steven in the form of perfect pop confection. His them by extending the scope of his GF174B in 2040, a child possessed of melodies were intoxicatingly joyous, demands into the realms of the blatantly prodigious musical gifts. From an early played against harmonic progressions unreasonable & yet the result was always age he was able to remember complex which were sophisticated without being the same, blind obeisance. musical passages after hearing them once too unnecessarily challenging.

His peculiar & could play them flawlessly back with At first Steven merely applied these skill was implying a faint shade of embellishments. His composition & behavioural experiments to his fellow playing skills earned him prize after prize melancholy without actually depressing functionaries, still essentially remaining listeners. Like a wine which held a trace of subservient to his departmental masters & & it was with some pride that his parents watched him graduate from Talent School bitterness almost buried beneath the rich churning out hit after hit. But like a disease sweetness, the audience found themselves once caught then impossible to conceal a & take a junior position in the Music craving a second helping without really Division within the Bureau of Public touch more of this arrogance & cynicism understanding why. It was almost like the began to creep into his writing. He Happiness at the age of 18. call of an ancestral feeling in which they composed songs which gently parodied Although ‘pop stars’ as such had been shared an illicit pleasure, beneath a cheery those written by his songwriter colleagues, virtual for some time when Steven joined cloak of frothy happiness. before beginning to quote his own works the department it was still necessary to in a less than complimentary manner. So in write fresh material to maintain the variety As time went by he was able to maintain some diversity in his output by writing for this way he challenged both his bosses & listeners liked. It was a dilemma - to make

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So after these years of early glory Steven began to crave new challenges. He started to pester his bosses to write music with more substance. The teen candy he had been so good at felt hollow & stale to him. Manipulating pre-pubescent emotions was really too easy & the music of happiness bored him. He wasn’t foolish enough to think he could simply walk away from it without some compromise so when after many refusals his department manager eventually agreed that he could take some time out to write a symphonic piece on the proviso that he continued to provide 5 hits a year he readily accepted.

And thus Steven began to compose his first serious classical work. It started as a fairly conventional piece, a little bit Prokofiev with a hint of Grieg, but after a while this too failed to satisfy him. He wanted to write something which went deeper than anything he had previously written. Prettiness was obviously within his repertoire but his initial attempts just sounded like a longer version of his pop tunes stitched together.

It simply wasn’t good enough.

This project became an obsession for Steven. He worked 14 hour days at it, week after week, month after month. At a painstaking rate the piece took shape but still something was lacking. Technically it

was a masterpiece, with strong melodic content underpinned by complex contrasting counterpoint lines, with a well balanced structure of 3 movements sweeping from authoritative to tender & then to an emotive climax. But he thought it flat & was often heard by those around him discussing concepts like ‘vertical sound’ & ‘molecular tonalities’.

Everything should have worked but the more Steven put into it the more he hated it. And the more he hated it, the worse he

under the guise of a jilted love song. No, things were not working out.

Then, suddenly, Steven’s father George died unexpectedly from a heart attack.

Steven’s last words to him were ‘not now dad, I haven’t got the time’ & this fact haunted him far more than he would ever admit. After all of the support given & sacrifices his father had made it seemed a shabby way to say goodbye. That his father was proud & fully understood Steven’s motivations did not occur to him, it suited him rather to magnify the significance of this ending as an illustration of his own character failings.

Steven’s mood darkened considerably & he began to believe that people blamed him for his father’s death.

After months of depression & inertia he decided to rewrite the symphony as a eulogy to his departed father.

This meant diving into the minor keys, writing extended passages using dissonant treated those around him as well as, it intervals, basically divesting himself of should be added, himself. He couldn’t all of the restrictions placed upon him by sleep, wasn’t eating well, grew the Bureau. It was a whole new world of perpetually irritable & was missing feeling which Steven had suspected deadline after deadline. existed but which he had been prohibited Back at the Bureau, concerns were being from experiencing, like a natural gourmet raised. The latest batch of songs they brought up only on sweets who finally launched were not proving a success with discovers savouries. And someone with the audience & Steven had delivered only unfettered gifts like Steven could not one of his promised five pop numbers. resist indulging in the possibilities This too had been a relative failure by his presented. It nearly sent him mad but standards. Entitled ‘You Don’t Love Me through this process his symphony was Like You Should’ it was a thinly veiled totally transformed & the dimensions he attack on the Bureau & the listenership, had been seeking were at last realised. carrying a note of strong censure for Coincidentally as Steven reached the final perceived persecution &/or abandonment,

stages of his symphonic masterwork the Bureau’s Response Committee decided that his services were needed urgently.

His boon period had driven audience expectations to levels that were difficult, if not impossible, to sustain. Other departments were quick to seize on the downward turn in the feedback results, usually to mask their own poor performances but also due to the fact that the very doubts investors used to express in the capitalist market when dealing in the arts were frequently also felt by their corresponding government sectors. Once an economic rationalist always an economic rationalist.

So with this in mind a member of the committee with whom Steven had many favourable dealings, Geoffrey BH33GJ was elected to approach him with a stern proposition - either he return to hit making or the funds dry up. However, given that Steven was a government employee on wages this was a rather toothless threat. If they sacked him or withdrew payment there would be a court case & given the absence of demonstrable warnings issued thus far the whole process could take some time. So Geoffrey was banking on Steven being intimidated by the threat of having his compositions suppressed.

Turning up at Steven’s house Geoffrey was warmly received. Yet the two of them were at complete cross purposes.

Geoffrey was there to beg Steven’s return to a mindset he had now outgrown.

Steven wanted him to hear a work which Geoffrey could not possibly fit into his department’s release schedule. This was a meeting from which both could not expect to emerge fully happy.

After some preliminary discussions Steven finally played Geoffrey a recording of his symphony in the half lit

studio room within which it had been conceived. Across from a blown up photo portrait of Steven aged 10 arm in arm with his smiling, loving father, Geoffrey was utterly transported by the sounds he heard. He was listening to a master composer at the peak of his creativity express himself fully within the art form he was born to inhabit. Where the music rode to lofty peaks the tremendous ecstacy he felt swept up in was palpable & where despair took over he could not help but weep. It was unlike anything else he had ever experienced.

Geoffrey sat in traumatised silence for ten minutes afterwards. There was no question of his asking Steven to return to cartoon music after hearing this. That request would have to come from another, less sensitive departmental missionary.

Despite a heartfelt conviction that the world ought to be able to share in the wonder he had just witnessed he could not begin to believe that any more than 10 people in the world would ever be able to hear Steven’s symphony. He sobbed quietly in the back of the taxi which anonymously deposited him outside his outer city suburban house. He barely comprehended the multifaceted layering of reasons why. He was not an intellectual. He just cried as though he had somehow been privy to an unerring forecast of disaster.

He was right. The following week the department sent out a less diplomatic functionary, one concerned primarily with delivering results to his demanding overlords. Steven rebuffed his oafish overtures & the situation descended into a standoff. The department was not to be bullied & thus nearly five years to the day since he joined Steven’s time in the music business ended with a relatively modest payout, a terse unusable reference & no

Mercury Rising

word of thanks.

Shortly afterwards a highly skilled composer was discovered in Talent School whose gifts strongly recommended him to a key position in the Music Division. He was good. Very good.

But not great. However, given the range of emotions permitted expression by the Bureau of Happiness he proved more than adequate in providing material for public consumption on the level they were accustomed to. The feedback reports grew healthy, smiles were returned once again to the committee members, who could once again hold their heads high in departmental meetings. Confidence was restored.

Following a lean patch Steven eventually found employment in the service industry.

He worked in a small restaurant in a town near to where he was born. On Saturday nights after work he would sometimes play the piano at his local pub, usually when very drunk & most often for short periods only. Since the publican usually objected to his atonal, unhummable, rambling explorations after a few years he simply stopped altogether.

And he never again listened to the radio or watched TV. m David Bowden Medlow Bath About David: David was born in Bowdon, United Kingdom. Raised by humans, educated by wolves & angels — touched by music now and then. David wrote this piece in two days.

Albany Dighton Faulconbridge

Mercury rising, The desert jungle glitters.

Lights, Vegas, Action. m

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Henrietta de Chook and her Totally Awesome Adventure

Aristidis Katoomba

Once upon a time in fair France there lived hushed sotto voices about this land of the officer Le Clerc suddenly, due to an a chookette named Henrietta, who, along inexplicable and when pressed, utterly and unfortunate lunch of bad Coq au Vin, with her girlfriends spent her daily and totally refused to discuss the subject any developed an unexpected cramp in her uneventful life in a large Free Range further, which - Henrietta suspected, really right hand thereby contracting her trigger Barnyard Henament far out in the Country. meant that they knew absolutely nothing finger, and so releasing a torrential blast of Henrietta was an average French Hen, whatsoever about this place except that it radar beams down the road in the direction dressed in a modest brown feathery of our hen heroine. This blast, in itself was forbidden territory.

Blouse, fluffy brown Witches Britches, a completely harmless, was (due to the And so, with much trepidation but great little red bonnet and Aviator Goggles. sweaty palm), supplemented by a determination, Henrietta set, (an act of Why Goggles you may ask, well, she was complete heroism and an event to be temporary electrical malfunction in known among the henfolk as a rebel and Marianne's radar gun, and therefore recorded in the ‘Chook Chronicles’ for adventurer, that’s why. evermore), her right foot Outside-the-Gate. establishing a brief but effective link between her brain, the radar beam and the Her life, like the life of so many other She paused momentarily, her left foot chooks, consisted mainly of pecking corn, suspended in mid air ready to take the next Henrietta’s consciousness and instantly transmitting pretty much all of the contents eating worms, laying eggs, running around step, (she was waiting for lighting to of Marianne’s accumulated knowledge the Barnyard like a mad ninnie, and strike, or the great Purple Chicken from into the mind of the chicken. occasionally going to the farmyard next the sky to cast a thunderbolt at her and door in order to socialise with the many destroy her utterly and totally), but nothing The blast caught poor Chookie right in the handsome French roosters who would be happened. Crickets chirped, frogs croaked, middle of her corpus callosum and hanging around all day instantly fused both halves playing cards and telling of her brain together into stories. At night they one, everything went blue, As she returned home and stood outside the would fuss and argue as to black, green and purple, gate of her familiar nesting place called ‘La who would sleep where stars appeared in her inner and getting their hottie vision, she experienced Ferme’, Henrietta suddenly, with a shock, bottles ready in case there Satori and utter and understood that her mind, which had been was a unexpected cold complete N-O-T-H-I-N-G snap, even in high summer.

-N-E-S-SSSS enveloped until now been occupied with simple things Thus, a blissful life was her frail and gentle being. lived free from worries or When she finally came to like corn, eggs and survival of the fittest, everyday concerns, with herself, Henrietta first presently realised that her world had become checked that all her bits the occasional hen parties and the annual ‘Tour de and pieces were still in unfamiliar and w-i-d-e.

Chook’ 1K endurance foot place, and apart from the race around the barnyard, elastic having snapped in or perhaps the ever present floating anxiety birds sang, and nothing-at-all-happened. her Witches Britches everything seemed of possibly being the next meal in the pot So, encouraged with her action of normal and yet, and yet and avoiding being run over by Dolly the complete anarchy, Henrietta proceeded, e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g was different. step by step, to reach the other side of this, sheep.

As she returned home and stood outside to her eyes, black ‘Chickenland of utter One sunny day, it must have been late the gate of her familiar nesting place called voidness’, which to us humans is known as August, the daily ablutions were ‘La Ferme’, Henrietta suddenly, with a completed, all the girls had their dust bath, merely ‘Route 102’. As she was about to shock, understood that her mind, which and it seemed the day would offer nothing cross this vast expanse of black had been until now been occupied with nothingness, there lurked, unbeknown to more than the day before. Henrietta, simple things like corn, eggs and survival feeling restless and bored witless, decided Henrietta, just a hundred yards down the of the fittest, presently realised that her road to her left, officer Marianne Le Clerc to explore the unknown territory, a place world had become unfamiliar and w-i-d-e. with her ever-ready and trusty radar gun in steeped in chicken lore since time Her mind was now filled with all kinds of immemorial, better known as ‘The World her sweaty hand, waiting for unsuspecting insights, possibilities and knowing, things Beyond The Gate’, a space of the unknown motorists to fall within the perimeter of the such as Vogue Magazine, shopping at never sleeping eye of her aforementioned and a land of mystery in the chicken Woolworths, Truffles, Abbey Road, Skiing radar gun instant cash converter. universe ever since Henrietta was a little at Aspen, Pantyhose, Plasma 3D TV’s, egg. The elders in the coop used to talk in As Henrietta was about to cross-the-road, Playstation 3, Oprah, where to get the best

leg wax, Isosceles Triangles, Wikipedia, Bob Dylan, Google, how to apply mascara, decorating tips for Home renovators, Consumer Magazine, MasterChef, French Champagne, The Rolling Stones, Police Procedures, Pavlova recipes, Women’s rights, Global Warming, Taser Maintenance, Chopin Nocturnes, volunteer work in Africa, who gave the best deals in frequent flyer points, save the Whales, when to rotate the tyres on your car, and all kinds of other wonderful and mysterious things than had been, until now, utterly and completely unknown to Henrietta.

Chooky was totally excited out of her wits (she even had notions of writing a book about her experience, she would call it ‘Hen and the art of Motorcycle Maintenance’ and become fabulously wealthy and famous with a string of sexy Italian Rooster Boyfriends and living on the Amalfi Coast), she headlong rushed into the chook yard where her fellow hens were doing their usual daily hen stuff, stomped her right foot three times on the floor (and we all know how hard it is for a chicken to stomp her feet) and called out: ‘Girlfriends, Girlfriends, listen to me, stop what you’re doing, there is so much more to life than we know, there are wonderful things to explore, experience and to see, come, I have good news for you, I have seen more than you can imagine.’

Her fellow Hens stood dumbfounded, they listened to what she was trying to say, they clucked, but had no idea what on earth Henrietta was raving on about, none of it made any sense, they could not even comprehend what she was saying, their Hen minds had not been expanded to this new level of consciousness and it was all

and months passed, the seasons changed, life returned to normal in the chicken yard, frogs croaked, birds sang, Henrietta was declared the resident nutter by consensus and someone to be avoided at all costs.

Her fellow hens began whispering behind her back, young chicks with their fluff still on their heads would laugh at her and call her funny names, and so, Henrietta lived her life as an exile for a while, doing the best she could to be like the other chickens around her, but her life never was the same as before, no matter how she tried she couldn’t fake it, too much had happened and she knew that she couldn’t go back to the way things were. Not that she wanted to, not really, and the memory of her astounding experience of this other world and the feeling that something extraordinary had happened remained with her for the rest of her life. But just what it was, well, she sometimes cluckled to herself, it was her secret and she knew better than to talk about it ever again.

Henrietta eventually met and lived with a beautiful old Capricorn French rooster named Pierre the Philosopher who could quote Plato, had a wooden leg and was able to help her slowly come to terms with the mind blowing experience she had gone through. They both lived to a ripe old age, every Friday they would organize a soup kitchen for elderly crickets down on their luck and in the evenings, when sky was dark and clear, they would sit outside their little chook house that Pierre had built from an old discarded Apple crate, and watch the moon rise and the stars come out. Pierre would crow and Henrietta would sing ‘Alouette’.

And the moral of the story? Well, Henrietta had to learn the hard lesson that with frequent flyer point Platinum Cards or the difference between a wise hen and a wearing pantyhose or appearing on the mad chook is that the wise hen knows Oprah show as a celebrity guest, or writing when to keep her beak shut. m a novel or Blogging on Facebook?

So, she thought ‘twas a far better thing to Aristidis keep her beak shut, her social life declined Katoomba to absolute zero virtually overnight, days ‘too far out’.

Sadly, Henrietta quickly realised that all her talking would do no good, nobody else understood what she had experienced anyway, and how could they, they had not been exposed to this mysterious and mind expanding power that she, through sheer accident, had been subjected to. And besides, what were they going to do with all this new knowledge anyway, how was it of any use to them, after all who ever heard of a chicken shopping for Perfume at Printemps or Gucci

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Specialising in Gastric Banding Hypnotherapy Patricia O’Brien Operating from clinics in Glenbrook and Katoomba

Call 02 4782 5596 or 0466 989 721 www.inbalancehypnotherapy.com.au

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Image credits Cover: Self Portrait Drawing on iPhone by Christina Frost Clayton Pg 1: Jenny Mosher by Todd Sharp Pg 5: Sunset by Jenny Mosher Pg 15: Gardens by Jenny Mosher Pg 17: Venice by Jenny Mosher

Pg 20: Skies by Ally Mosher Pg 24: Autumn by Jenny Mosher Pg 31: Vegas by Jenny Mosher Pg 37: Hanging Swamp by Jenny Mosher Pg 40: Sand by Jenny Mosher All other images purchased from iStockphoto.com

The Red Hart A large deep blue bird stood upon a smooth orangey brown rock. The cool breeze slid through the clear azure sky rippling the bird’s feathers. Beneath, a green-eyed girl gazed up at the bird with her telescope. She could see the feathers like scales, shiny and dark blue. She had wavy ebony hair and a pointy nose. She put one hand on her hip absently, as she gazed at the beautiful bird.

‘No dawdling, Marion!’ called a croaky, bitter voice. It sounded clunky to Marion’s ears like when she had tripped over a rusted iron bucket and three wooden brooms in the shed the day before. Aunt Jasmine was an uncomfortable person to be around at the best of times. She would often mutter to herself about ‘useless people’.

Marion had heard names she knew and ones she did not. Marion would spend time looking at seemingly insignificant things like the cracks in the wood of old brooms, jars of water and people walking down the street. Men would often take it wrongly and wink or approach her.

As Marion’s interests lay elsewhere, it was fortunate for her that when they did approach, Aunt Jasmine would walk out the door and ‘shoo’ them off.

The bird opened its wings and flew away.

Marion watched it flying away. As it became a dot in the distance she still watched.

‘Marion!’

Marion looked back to the white mud brick home. The brown terracotta roof had a colourful garden bed edging it. No cobwebs or grime of any sort were staining the structure.

‘Marion!’

She hurried away and opened the door.

She stared across the red carpet to a

Jordan Russo Bullaburra counter. Numerous vases of all sizes and colours stood around the room. A path was formed by their absence through the middle of the room, leading straight to the counter.

‘Marion, you lazy slug!’

Marion held her skirts and rushed down the room past blue vases with gold trim, red vases with yellow images, vases big, vases small. She slid past a big tan vase, moved past the counter and walked through a little door.

‘Marion!’

Marion entered a storeroom packed high with shelves of salves and potions. Aunt Jasmine stood with her hands on her hips beside a simple wooden stool. She pointed at the shelves. ‘We have cockroaches

the markets with a basket previously of eggs. She had dropped the eggs off at the market where Aunt Jasmine sold jams and eggs to rake in extra profit (Aunt liked to make as much money as possible). She stopped as she saw a bald man walk past with a small smile on his face and a big beautiful red hart on his forest green cloak. He smiled at her on his way. It was a warm smile and Marion smiled back without even thinking. She looked down at the ground, blushing. She gave out a heavy sigh as he walked past. The next day Marion was wiping the shop windows clean and Aunt Jasmine, as usual, kept telling Marion to hurry up. Marion would finish one window and head to the next without any hesitation. She finally finished all the windows and wiped her forehead with her sleeve.

She turned around and saw the same bald man watching her.

On another occasion in a raised section of the town she had simply happened upon him gazing over a fence and smiling (so it seemed).

Again, she found herself smiling back.

She thought he had very Marion, little rotten cockroaches. Get rid soft eyes when he smiled. The next day of them and dust the surfaces!’ she said in Marion was outside eating a piece of a huff and walked off. ‘Then you can tend bread. She thought she saw a red hart bound up the town steps. When she to the chickens while I’m at the shops.’ looked around for it, it seemed to not Marion climbed the stool and gazed into exist. She went back to her work. When the dusty edge against the wall. Gazing she stopped to wipe her brow, she saw the into it she lost focus, sinking into the swampy mire of her thoughts. As long as bald man again. This time he came down the hill toward her. she got the job done, she had a bed to sleep in and a meal to eat, water to drink. ‘I have been watching you a little the last What more was there then, after all? She few days. You caught me in the act three times,’ he said. Marion stared at him. The knew from stories she was not the worst off in the world. So she rolled her sleeves man held his hand out, ‘My name is Paul.’ up and went to fetch the cleaning Marion did not move her hand to his but materials. She vigorously skimmed her she did say, ‘Mine is Marion’. The man hand over the rough grainy wooden took his hand away and laughed. Marion shelves. could not help but smile back at his Then one day she was walking back from infectiously warm and smiling face. His

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Call Mosher’s Business Support on 1300 644 380 today or contact us via www.narratormagazine.com whole face seemed to be lit with the and considering how weird he looked in Marion still stood staring at him. Paul was warmth of his smile. She felt warm and the mirror, which he had always admitted still smiling. As she thought about what safe with him. He knelt down to level was a strange thought. A sense of peace he’d said, she realised she did do pretty entered him that day, yet it had always good work, she did see deep down the fear more with her height. been.

He left the city and met me on the in herself, and deeper still, a desire to be ‘I want you to know that I think you do better, a deep, deep desire to be very good window cleaning,’ he said, more. That had to start with now. ‘...and I see you are a very sensitive As long as she got the job done, girl with a bright mind. I want to say Paul would often visit her over the something and I hope you’ll think very she had a bed to sleep in and a coming years. Every time he left her feeling better and she would cry with carefully about it.’ meal to eat, water to drink. hope. One day her Aunt was sick in Marion had her eyes as wide and bed. Marion cared for her, but when round as her Aunt’s good plates (very her Aunt was well, Marion left that wide and very round). ’ Things can be very road one rainy day. The other friend was a same night. She met up with the man. She subtle, like how your Aunt does not see woman, Mary. She realised she had never squinted; Paul was beginning to gray in the who you are because she has too many liked her life – she left her life as it was to beard. But her smile had never been bigger thoughts about everything else from her live an ascetic one in a spiritual as the two left town on a journey with no point of view and then unfairly throws you community. She then left the spiritual decided destination. Except for one, ’ into that, releasing her own unnoticed community and met Rob and I at a lake.

Marion, I have a friend I think you would insecurities in the form of criticisms We got along very well so the three of us really like. She lives over the mountain.’ against you. If you cannot see into the travelled around for a few years. Then future of other people, do not assume that Marion noticed a red hart preening itself things changed. Rob died – fell off a you can see yours – it might be your on the path in front of them – it looked up mountain. We knew he was happy in the emotions talking. Not knowing the future, at her for a moment, then bounded away. next place of existence. Mary met a man to me, is hope. I had two friends once: we ‘Did you see that red hart?’ Marion asked and settled into a life of partnership with all went our separate ways but our him. But I kept travelling. I was a spiritual Paul. Paul smiled ,’No’. m connection forever remains. We all seeker for a long time and still am in many changed one at a time. One was Rob. He ways ‘ Jordan Russo was an accountant – one day he was going Bullaburra Paul clicked his fingers and a blue tulip for a walk through the city and as he was appeared.

‘I can teach you to do this.’ thinking about his life and other’s lives

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narrator MAGAZINE On Sale September 1st

Hanging Swamp

We took the track around the lake that gray day, the chill of Autumn was in the air, and I noted my mood, and how everything looked flat, silhouetted really.

Flat tree against flat shrub leaf layered on leaf, branch and twig against each other, flattened.

We veered to the right, away from the main track, but spiders had spread their nets across the path, and we had to retreat.

Everything was layered against the blue gray sky, as flat as a stage set.

Voices floated from the lake, yet we may have been lost for all I knew.

Tracks went in all directions. we sank to our boot tops down by the lake's edge, and tuned back again, the prickle and spike of bushland closing in.

Everything we touched Or brushed against seemed to sting.

Small black insects clung to us, golden bottle brush was in it's prime, and the mountain devil flowers were attracting Lewin Honey eaters, but I could not shake the feeling That I had been walking for aeons, In a silhouette world,.

Alan E Lucas Katoomba

On the small lake A breeze turned the water white In the intermittent sun light.

A dog's bark echoed At a distance, and a man Cried out in annoyance, And everywhere I saw An unfamiliar world.

It was a new way of seeing that seemed to lay the weight of worlds on my shoulders, the feeling of lives lived, endlessly in silhouette.

Autumnal trees along the lake's edge moved in a breeze that stripped the leaves from branches, floating them in sunlight and spreading the grass with colour.

Somewhere geese were honking, then came into view, paddling around an inlet, they too were flat, only I was three dimensional, and I seemed to be moving towards a strange de'noue'ment.

Yet the world was still beautiful, this state, this thing I saw was not despair, rather a new way of seeing, a different path with a new perspective.

This sack of bones, this static electricity of mind, seemed temporarily caught in a cage of time, and nothing more. m

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Ode to Tony

Brendan Doyle Wentworth Falls

O Tony of TLC Auto Repairs, may your business flourish ever more, may the tooth fairy replace your top plate with metallic finish white pearls.

O Tony, my heart stalled, I swear, when the bloke at Waitara said ‘I can see a thousand bucks there just for the rust’ and sent me to the old Hungarian at Betta Batteries who quoted me six hundred for windscreen scratches, welding and a brake pedal rubber.

But you, Tony, whom I had not seen for almost a summer, welcomed me with your shiny smile: ‘Is that door lock still working?’ and I knew your friendship had not wavered.

O Tony, when you handed over that pink slip and said ‘Eighteen dollars’ I wanted to win the lottery and give you half, I wanted to replace all the seals on your Datsun ZX and personally blacken the tyres, but I just reached into my pocket and gave you ten bucks ‘for a beer’.

You’d made my day, my month, my year! m

About Brendan: Brendan grew up in a house without books.

Now he's trying to build a house of poetry.

So You Think Your Truth Trumps Mine?

Karen Lane Leura

You, who have worked in the same job you’ve hated for decades You, who have stayed in the same loveless relationship for years You, what is your truth?

What is the root of your unhappiness?

You don’t know, do you?

You haven’t got a clue!

Stuck in a mire of your own creation Glued to the familiar You know only one thing Here, perhaps, you are safe Yet, this year of 2011, has shown that no soul is safe on familiar ground Waves of emotion have flooded lives in Queensland, New Zealand and Japan Yet, you still don’t know do you?

You still don’t get it!

Do you need a tidal wave of emotion to untighten your emotional belt?

Or do you have the courage to untighten it yourself?

To fully feel the uncomfortableness of the life you’ve chosen To feel WHAT you really need to do To move WHERE you really need to be To say WORDS you really need to say Feeling your truth, saying your truth Now that truth would be something I value. m

About Karen: As I have yet to be published, I only recently felt comfortable enough to call myself 'a writer'. It was only when I stopped writing Letters to the Editor and started writing on a regular basis that I realised 'yes I am a writer, even if no one pays me'.

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If you have a friend or loved one suffering from depression, trauma or anxiety, read CJ’s story to grasp how an ordinary person can be rendered helpless as a result of trauma.

Running Over a Chinaman by Blue Mountains author Julie Thredgold Jones Ebook and limited first edition copies available at www.themoshshop.com.au

Heartbreak

Julitha De La Force Katoomba

Every day my heart breaks Life is one endless ache When’s my emotional torment Ever going to end?

The man I loved broke up with me Said he wanted to be friends but …

He keeps tormenting me His emotional cruelty is hard to bear He plays mind games and doesn’t care One moment he’s loving then …

His verbal viciousness leaves me bare Why’s he doing this to me?

Why’s he being so cruel to me?

Doesn’t he care what it’s doing to me?

Every day is torture for me My emotional pain is so raw I can’t take this anymore I wish he’d explain His compulsive need To cause me pain I gave him my love I gave him my heart Now his cruelty is Tearing me apart m

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A Wedding

Adrian Johnstone Hawkesbury Heights

Besides having to deal with the immensely committed to the Toque Blanche have rising vicious vulture population forming hot sun bearing down atop of my been following me most observantly, throughout the Southern hemisphere. No sweltering head, the swirl of ultra atomic exercising with a municipal argot of longer encircling the skies, waiting for that radiation curling its massive universal scintillating audacity the temperament of inevitable period when the prey plods its arms round in high five motion, their tortured whim. With slicing blade and final, defeated step to the ground and congratulating itself upon its insipid sharpened malice, congregations are awaits death till they strike - some don't harassment, the gelatinous mould making planned and meddled over how best to even consider the flesh of a newly rotting up the majority of my exotic Asian infused beget me. I hurry my steps, over the pink carcass to be numero uno on their choice cuisine wobbling gently inside a plastic flamingos swarming the grounds and under of delicacies - but poised fervently for the petrii dish would soon surely melt away to the hanging women fastened with garter kill, they attack in large numbers, picking nothing. I needed to find a refrigerator fast belts and only wearing designer market and tearing at the innocent victims on the or the shaving of American Scallop, Louis Vuitton stiletto heels. Their ground below. If one is lucky enough, they Manuka and Brioche Glazed Walnuts perspicuously tender hypertrophic genitalia flurry away victoriously with hunks of mixed finely with SautĂŠed Capers and dangling upside down, hanging from the meat from still alive and kicking prey, hooks of industrial tower cranes, retreating to the top of the wind blown Gazpacho Roe Jelly would surely perish. immaculately suspended by a trapeze of skyscrapers after excreting corrosive uric Before me, lined immaculately along the acid on the bystanders below before satin dental floss. centre street - up along the harbour settling down to nestle and feed their ebbing tides and flows nipped slightly into It didn't have to happen so quickly; I had anabolic robotic young. the Chinese washroom area of the front only just gotten hold of Marionette steps. The entrance alcove of business yesterday and already this shit is Warranting themselves bad enough and shops were pristine certainly horrific and redefining the for us Glazed above their doorstep, like a rambling profusion enough fashionable postsymbiotic modern charismatic of enraged debasement and pupal enlightenment, were xenophobic appeal that in the organisms, they are the detailed and stately prose intricacies marked past could not be still no match for the achieved by ferocity of the within time immemorial by Alighieri - the father of smudging red spots vulture killing, one against sharp patches Italian. Having shifted away from the relative confines tonne giants: the of black scagliola. lime green and violet of orthodox passage and divine comedic poetry, the And I, like the mutated Chinese insurgent Afghan man of much too late had his endowment meddled and Panda Bears which militia on perpetual infest, roam and tear fornicated with, till nothing more of what scholars stand-by, nearby, through buildings Tarquin - Proud and the night. If would recently decipher as 'Elogio Allah' filled their during Gallant - customarily not from the dining al fresco on academic books with much consternation and delight. constant plummet of the roof at The Pen Pandas accidentally on 39, one red hand on his mistress's thigh, happening. I was very amazed, even so tripping over their hydroponic bamboo keeps his steadfast inordinate guard on the much that my consternation, from their leaves draping the sides of the abandoned quick formation which had developed buildings, crushing helpless victims into Etruscans. tremendously after such a short absence pickled garnishes, the relish should guard Glazed above their doorstep, like a against what residing vultures there are rambling profusion of enraged debasement of which I knew from what previous and repulse them enough, if, for instance, and pupal enlightenment, were the detailed underestimated cynicism I had about the the person were to survive a rush of greedy and stately prose intricacies marked within Three Legged Chair Formation gastronomical vermin wielding Chinese time immemorial by Alighieri - the father Transformation Organization - would surely be nothing in comparison to their pork blades, for the victim to maybe live of Italian. Having shifted away from the new-found pugnaciously barbaric yet another harrowing day. relative confines of orthodox passage and proficiency. divine comedic poetry, the man of much The Toque Blanche shouted with too late had his endowment meddled and From a small mason jar I quickly filled the endearment, praising the hydraulic blade fornicated with, till nothing more of what lining of my tweed jacket with rhubarb that was passed to him. As the Sous chased scholars would recently decipher as 'Elogio relish, a recently discovered substance, not him down from behind, pardoning himself Allah' filled their academic books with only once just a delicious gastronomical most embarrassingly - begging mercy for concoction, but now also, from rigorously his lateness - the Toque Blanche stripped much consternation and delight. down the traditional knotted cloth-button The dribbling precipitation from the petrii intricate and meticulous scientific study conducted by the octogenarian, Hans double breasted jacket and said most dish was sliding down my fingers and Goldzimmer, at the Humboldt University deliciously to pass him the oil-based arms. of Berlin, founded by the liberal Prussian lubricant.

It allured me only temporarily before I educational reformer and linguist, Wilhelm 'Are you certain that's wise, sir? It's only managed to duck another inept avaricious von Humboldt, in Germany, a unique and midday and you haven't had your Boudin bastard. Unctuously obsequious posses highly potent deterrent used against the Noir Skillet and Dried Potato-Chip on Fig

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42 Salad and Vin Ordinaire Borlotti Cassoulet with Double-Sweet Vouvray; how will you survive?' the doubtful Sous embrangled.

The Toque Blanche held the small plastic bottle of lubricant high over his head and, proclaiming with shaking might- as he sighed erotically into the bright day above - squeezed the contents over his gelatinous encumbered body. He moaned until the confluence of translucent slime curled and oozed around his black chest hairs and past his navel before dripping finally upon the tarmac at his feet. It was only when he shivered and convulsed with delight that a lone Anteater trailed by nonchalantly and licked clean the trapped ants held fast by its sticky substance.

'Damn it, Gunter, don't you see that this is the most tumultuous time for me to extend my influence? I have been aching oh so into the morning hour.'

'So sorry, Sir. Not to besmirch your great name.

Do accept our most humble, sincere and gastronomical apologies.'

'And so you should ... infidel.'

Unto me the crumbling crack of vegetable flaked pastry, supporting an egg cream centre, undulates my nostrils.

I lighten the exterior for the soft texture to ramify me with utmost daft; its simple pleasures— as Camus felt in the Algerian sun—I succumbed wholly to.

I tread in puddles of decrepitly ulcerous fermenting liquidations, curdling and thrusting with encroaching globules of air conditioned filtered water. Its vivific glisten entranced me only momentarily to see its putrid base purl over unwanted Styrofoam containers and Polyvinyl Chloride insulated electronic cables before rushing down into the sewer.

I recoiled.

Beside me, saturated in an chrome detailed vehicular edifice, pulsating rhythms of African Voodoo combos blare incessantly into my hip, inhibiting in me utter atrophy, excluding the swaying sensation of my bootilicious pelvis.

Solicit shouts curtailed from the other side of the street, over the flooding rainfall, and

the circus clown, complete with slender flower tie and bright shots of pink on snow white, executes an elaborate technique of back flips over toward my side, narrowly missing traffic. He lands immaculately with a smoke already lit between his middle and index. With arms outstretched, his stern posture slowly sagged. He then dogged down a sausage filled doughnut handed to him by a dominatrix patrol officer in red latex sporting baby seal ugg boots. From flawless undisputed sources -

blows a thick cloud of smoke at the Toque Blanche as they pass by.

Quickly the puff of smoke reaches all remaining.

All white falls to the postulated metaphysical enterprise of the grey beneath in a heavy pensive assortment of Mishimaesque empirical reasoning.

'Did you ever expect that?'

'No. They may slide away but the options are just totally incomparable.'

I turned to the gal by my side.

She reformed herself by sticking a finger inside her left nostril. Afterwards, having removed from it a detailed piece of Victorian ivory embroidered patchwork - a small knitted number with minute letters, 'only to the waste end' - did she reinstate that which she so intently and most dramatically implored unto me years ago.

'Not to what the Platonic scholars had announced back in the Hellenic Parliament do I now feel the beautifully sequenced transmogrification that is about to unfold.'

Uh-huh, I replied. 'Yes, it too could do with a touch of work, most definitely.

Listen, doll...there's this thing I've gotta do. I'm needed back at the office, pronto. So, why don't we say we'll shake this leg later, eh?'

Gracefully, as when a butterfly carefully leaves it comforting cocoon, she lashed me with an intent look of tearful yet hopeful exasperation.

'Don't worry, baby, we'll be in each other’s arms soon enough.' microscopic surveillance cameras mounted directly around the purveying street - the A tear rushed from her eye and a shadow lauding couch-potatoes were able to spot leered by, long enough for me to catch his with every successive cycle of hands Masonic reasoning. He disappeared when I meeting upon the ground the nurtured seed glanced toward his vector. to which the clown placed caressingly into But soon she spoke again and I was yet after sowing the soil beneath the ravaged again cast down by her hypnotic harpoon. concrete.

Her soft globulous mouth was poised for Chrysanthemum Coronarium bloomed in the moment and ventured forth even his wake. though it was chemically imbalanced.

Walking up the enclosed street hand in 'Yes, oh yes, dear...when the moonlit stars hand, the chivalrous latex bound officer are far and wide, when Apollo speaks my

name do the windmills of Evergreen fly monetary conversations confabulated out some major inconsistencies regarding high toward the plummeting bottom of the disgustingly over simmering bowls of the hero's mane - Tom Selleck - film meteor crater, and when their insides spill vegetable Seui Gau Mein before daily critics found something more politically from the gooey mess contained, I will then billion dollar realty auctions. sinister. A few months after its Blu-Ray sense the touch of your warm vastitude. I 'I know you'd love it too, Agnus. How release, and following the movie's will gaze far from the height of the eternal you'd love to see the confounding image. increasing popularity - especially among lighthouse.'

In all its resplendence, I could not but once the retro favoured anesthetised bohemians - due to an anonymous tip, several heavily She stepped into a nearby store before we confer to think triumphantly of your willing despondence. When that homicidal armed government entrepreneurs wanted had the chance to express anymore. continuous press interviews and all maniac tore loose through the pillage of Floundering through massive junctures, exclusive coverage to be stricken from broken homes, you, and you alone, were the rising water was levelling the city by public access. Incriminating evidence had the minute. Rushing to a nearby shopping the only one who stood up to him, who been filed against his father's name. vestibule, I was cornered off by deliberate stood up and fought for your wooden Analysing several précis reports written by cuspidor. And, buckled head to toe in shortcomings. The remaining entrance to several undergraduate literary students, the the shop, and suddenly the district around dazzling armoury you swung diligently police found massive, irrefutable evidence and heroically the raving feral cat by the me - arcades, promenades - had been supporting the double lives of the tail at your feigned assailant.

But alas, he conveniently replaced with an inseparable Backstreet Boys, and their swindling was too quick.

Knocked about your head concrete edifice. Residing internal power within the heavily adamant A tear rushed from her eye and a shadow leered by, struggles for resilience of the concrete world structure, reaching further long enough for me to catch his Masonic domination, than the eye could casually reasoning. He disappeared when I glanced toward hidden perceive, one exclusive subliminally accessible passage could be within his father's his vector. detected although it were movie. Quicker only a passing route for those than a flash of with a rule of thumb. Three But soon she spoke again and I was yet again cast lighting, not only identical segmented shapes down by her hypnotic harpoon. Her soft globulous were the were carved into the structure Backstreet Boys and coruscating neon lights mouth was poised for the moment and ventured whose alluring aligned immaculately within forth even though it was chemically imbalanced. and sexually the holes sprang vibrant enflamed timeless agnostically induced hits have flung Cupid arrows of prewith a second inferior bucket that he left temporalities into spiralling bombastic pubescent love to millions of heated severities of mystically contorted cerebral you with after he made his dashing exit, I remembered your saddened cry as you lay teenagers frustrated with wanton desire fascinations. taken into a restricted access military there with bucket to die.

I shaved hard. Harder than any man has operational containment facility stationed a Shit! You were absolutely covered in it. done before, waxing intently my hard hundred miles below the removed You had landed directly into the pile the worn nipples until they became red raw, correctional facility at Treblinka, but also even at the splicing spasmodic consistency neighbour had reposed upon your lawn, Samson's father. In these times, to speak of and I dared not waste my princely hands to of the flashing blue lights. such atrocities is not only considered yours of filth and muck. Might I digress?’ highly illegal and strictly classified but it's Words and interpretations broke and ‘Ok-ok...ok. Sure, we can do that.' also ultimately forbidden; a sentence popped open the pharmaceutical doppelganger upon a Nodachi Black forest Samson's reply was as virulent as possible punishable by necrophilia slumber. To spend the rest of your waking life locked but none too desecrating for me to be pendulum. up, naked, with a late world leader of the persuaded otherwise.

I, as still, so became my ears, and then, once again, for they were the silent matter. We headed directly for the old swimming jury's choice, to be forced to fornicate at irregular intervals or suffer a slow release It was only when I hunched down and took pool that day. of phosphoric nerve agents, which is to be a step back momentarily that I noticed the He later cracked his head open upon a later viewed on satellite television aimed at three large holes carved into the wall were splintered rock when diving from the a substantial market for reasonably formed like an electrical socket. highest region of the cascade. moderate prices.

Symmetrical and collectively rejecting art The police hauled his body off with nouveau, pragmatically aligned dystopian flashing red electrical tape to the premiere Viewed beyond the sediment of pulsating vibrancy, fermented bean curds collected temporality, a quasi-supernal figurehead of his father's latest movie: 'Revenge of in a finely ornamented drinking vessel cosmically contained, unconditional, Turtle Neck'. The press reviews, although shaped like the firm rendering of a mountainous, a delicate blossom of often too accommodating, were impressionist conceivability contemplating consistently mediocre and proving only to curvaceous bosom - electronically objective systematic unity by squashing its be mildly successful when compared to his implemented with musical micro-chips when tilted upwards 90degrees upon its puny head against the path edge, swiping other previous astounding blockbusters flat axis sing the lamenting queenly woes shattered teeth, pulverising them with fish until one cleverly conceived article from ‘Oooooh, I want some more’ were into pungent little balls for the steaming the space times presented his father's film slammed down onto the lacquered alpine nagging inconsolable pretentious children in dramatic new light. Not only did they business bench in outrage, bemusement for their meandering and acquisitive uncover alluring circumstances pointing and agreement.

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I checked my side. The water level was repulsive detail of his exposed pubic line nothing more than an ethereal Baconian softening my shoe and was now within the popping up gently from atop his slowly blur. entrance of the building. The suited sagging pants were only a few initial It stopped, affix with a deathly smile. He individuals indicate through articulated things that haunted my mind as I spoke, not a word. and formulated gesticulation a number the reluctantly crossed over. I could discern at During his suffocating pitch-bended catastrophic events relating to the closer range the slant in his eyes, and his haemoptysis, spasmodic abnormal imminent problem of commercial housing, Asian inheritance were not the primary congenital agenesis was coughed up quite to which - displayed against a concrete cause of his excitement. And crooked distinctly, and fortunately, I did however wall - were the expenditures and hazards teeth, to which he placed three already lit understand his particular plea - as was so now inherent in relocating and smokes surprisingly into his mouth. Two ethnically portrayed through his foul constructing formidable living were to be later excluded importantly from language - and resorting to trusty measures accommodation around the already rapidly his smacked gob to the outer protrusions - not to let suspicion escape from his growing infrastructure and population. To constituting the soft flexible tissue above otherwise private colic confession where do they place the ever exceeding the sides of his jaw. desultorily, I remained. population, expressed profoundly with tip- An industrial toxic waste disposal unit Dozens of leeches were sucking happily all pointed markers attached to their pulled up alongside his person. And for round his torso. This came as quite a shoulders? In any indication of referral, if one ghastly moment his hysterical face phenomenal shock as his hellacious needed to be exhibited to the Egyptian Iris break-dancing other board members, must now reciprocating formational routine The man began to cry. He then since infused with said elongated abruptly halted by the zippering attachment - be expressed by started moaning in utter despair; extension from top to bottom placing one's hands against their magically revealing his lacerated hips to be then followed through yet remarkably thrust his arms top and exposed body. As informed with fluid torso twists accordingly outwardly at my cheek, tapping through his native tongue, a rare from left to right. Generally, treat - to which any man could when conducting the them in goodwill as if to hint to easily recognize - was nestled deep aforementioned meeting, one within his arm pit hair. Just grazing both I and he that all things will must now address the other board the swollen welts on his body, he members by facing northerly managed to scrape away most of according to their easterly in the cardboard biscuit without practise with standard ergonomic retained the utmost ardent pride and hindering its fragile complexity and regulations as outlined by the board seriousness as he flanked them down, smearing too much purulent blood. members. shouted something in Cantonese, smiled, He emphatically mouthed words.

Nods of agreement prevailed against and then dismissed them. inconclusive arrangements.

'OK'.

They left as soon they came.

Glasses clinked, coffee splattered, and His face retained this searing pompous taut Placing the small piece of cardboard under violent red paint was thrown against walls expression of austerity until the truck my tongue, like melting wax-works, the and one another as tables flew high toward turned off left by the interstate sign after paper mache buildings began to slide away the ceiling in an abject display of financial the five kilometre long stretch of with the rushing current now torso deep. sentiment. Later, when the dust had lifted motorway.

Amusement overcame my senses. from the oppressive dim canopy of the Enflamed by extreme hypertrophy that I turned to the behaviourally transforming room, their bodies remained sparkling inflated his face of hot air, the man medically deformed Asian with innocent clean alongside and within the spectacle of resumed his otherwise incredible hysterical affection as one would like an infant chaotic artistic semblance. ornamentation. exploring the new found world.

'Ahoy there, me dear matey' came from The man began to cry. He then started A gelatinous white mould formed his afar. moaning in utter despair; yet remarkably chocolate-chip ridden tummy. I prodded Hysterically pronounced through serrated thrust his arms outwardly at my cheek, his tummy with curiosity. tongues, a distant man beyond the torrent, tapping them in goodwill as if to hint to He began to laugh as I did. under his loquacious amused embodiment, both I and he that all things will turn out We laughed. hailed me down. okay. After a time, the man then We heckled.

From this distance I couldn't quite make transformed once again to his previous out the millinery of sporting goods he hysterical beastly behaviour. The flux of The water flooding the city eventually adorned. The baseball cap, his orange bifurcated personalities zigzagged and swept his melted face out into the ocean. nylon tight singlet with self made tears crossed paths quite spasmodically, yet was I've gotta find a refrigerator. m mainly along the neck line and consistently marked by the consecutive contrastingly matched with an unusually sequence of laughter, pride and depression.

Adrian Johnstone pair of baggy black white striped Adidas It continued until nothing much of his face training pants only came to me upon could be resembled as entirely normal and Hawkesbury Heights further scrutiny. Not to mention the of which, in his penultimate stature, was

Where is the Female Tolstoy?

Where is the female Tolstoy? Is a question that has plagued women’s writing for decades. Usually this question is asked with the sneer of derision, as men and the establishment seek to devalue the contribution of women’s writing. The female Tolstoy is as elusive a creature as the African Tolstoy. Taken from this angle the question is used to reinforce male intellectual superiority and to make genius a quality exclusive to men.

Ask the question again; where is the female Tolstoy? And by that I mean why among all the many brilliant women writers have none gained the space in the literary cannon anywhere equal to their male contemporaries?

This is a difficult question to answer.

For female novelists of the 19th century who have been admitted to the literary cannon, George Eliot, Charlotte Bronte, and perhaps most interestingly of all Jane Austen, society and prejudice hung heavy on them and on their literary activities.

George Eliot and Charlotte Bronte were initially published under male pseudonyms. Jane Austen was merely published as ‘a lady’. Opportunities to publish and the possible damage to reputation forced such compromises from women writers. Yet these are writers of genius whose work was initially accepted as the work of men, giving a lie to the notion that genius is a particular trait of those endowed with an XY chromosome pair. Of the three Jane Austen is perhaps the most interesting in terms of her legacy in the 21st century.

In her essay A room of one’s own.

Virginia Woolf describes Jane Austen as a writer who wrote ‘without hate, without bitterness, without fear, without protest, without preaching.’ (68) She wrote according to Woolf the way Shakespeare wrote, so fully consumed by the work that they efface all trace of themselves. The great tragedy of Jane Austen is that today she has been dragged unwillingly out from behind her novels, which she so carefully wrote herself out of. Jane Austen has become a cottage industry with films, seminars, spin offs and the romanticising of Regency England. She, like Shakespeare before her, has become a national icon in Britain, and most of the English-speaking world. The downside of this is the fact that the work itself loses its meaning and its impact. Pride and

Prejudice is not a pretty Regency romance, in fact it is as far from the romantic tradition as you could hope to get. Pride and Prejudice is a satirical and scathing novel about the importance of marrying money. It is about the calculations, and jockeying for position that women had to engage in to succeed in the marriage market. Mr Darcy is neither described, nor given much character development. He doesn’t need it! His place in the story is to be a desirable object to be fought over by the women. To reduce Jane Austen to a romance writer, like a genteel precursor to

Mills and Boon novels, is to rob her of her dignity and her genius as a writer.

If trivialising the work of women is one way to silence their claims to genius, another is to declare them mad. This is the fate that has unfortunately befallen Virginia Woolf. Yes, it is an undisputable fact that Virginia Woolf suffered from a reoccurring mental illness, which ultimately claimed her life. Virginia Woolf also wrote some of the most brilliant modernist fiction in the 20th century, including Mrs Dalloway, Orlando, and my personal favourite Flush, a biography of

Natalie Muller Katoomba Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s spaniel. Here was a woman who wrote without fear or favour, she had the freedom to write what she wanted, without having compromise it for the dictates of market forces. And yet say the name Virginia Woolf and the first reaction by many, no doubt influenced by the film The Hours, is that she was ‘mad’.

To be declared mad is to be disenfranchised, a thing Virginia new well.

The wealth of correspondence and diaries left by Woolf has become for many, more important than her works of fiction. Just as Jane Austen has lost her genius to the heritage and tourism industry, so Virginia Woolf has lost hers to the medical fraternity.

Posthumous reduction of women’s writing is one thing that has prevented the birth of a female Tolstoy, but in this so called enlightened modern age, what now prevents women from assuming this mantle?

Many traditional, as well as some new factors discriminate against women’s writing in the 21st century.

Many women, even in the privileged West still do not have a room of their own, and certainly not a private income to support it. Economic necessity drives women into the labour market, where unless they are highly skilled and can afford work part time, end up in jobs, which allow little time or energy for writing. Society still expects that women will enter a relationship and bear children, and to place writing, or indeed any career, ahead of these traditional roles can be seen as selfish. A woman who is a wife and mother will find that the room of her own is unattainable; or at least unattainable without a large serving of guilt, which will ultimately mar her writing.

The reduction of women’s writing to autobiography is a new factor, which has discriminated against women’s writing in recent decades. Women’s writing has for the main part been marginal. Women are heavily represented in children’s fiction, romance fiction, and chick-lit, all genres considered beneath the attention of male writers. Just as teaching and nursing have become the domain of women professionals, while men aspire to higher

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paid and more prestigious roles as academics and doctors. When women’s writing does not constrain itself with the genre fiction assigned to it, but aspires to write literary fiction, women find that the goal posts are constantly being moved. For many women, attempting to write ‘literary fiction’ usually involves the use of the self as subject, especially if the writer is young and inexperienced. Young writers are often advised to write about what they know, to write from experience. What at first glance sounds like an innocuous and reasonable statement, is too often taken literally by the aspiring woman writer, and she proceeds to write about her own life. The reduction of women’s creative power to the recreation of the world in which, they live is a more sure constraint on women’s genius than all the posthumous tinkering.

If women censor their own writing to the level of experience then no matter how well written their work is it will never have the universal transcendence that marks a true work of art.

This reduction to autobiography is possibly most obviously felt in the writing of Jeanette Winterson, who’s first novel Oranges are not the only fruit has been read as autobiography by naive readers for the past twenty odd years. Winterson herself is adamant that her work is not

autobiographical, and nor should it be read as such. She makes it very clear that like all writers she uses the experiences of her life to create her work, but that this scavenging of ones own past for material does not constitute biography. When Charles Dickens uses early life experiences to write David Copperfield the reader does not automatically assume that the author and character are one and the same. Men are gifted with the resource of imagination and women, through the insistence on autobiography are denied it.

Finally the different content of men and women’s writing also works against the female Tolstoy. Male writers dominate the cannon of world literature, thus the reasoning here would argue, what men have to say is more important. Men write about grand world changing events, they write about topics that will be of interest to men. Which at this time usually means world politics, crime and war, all told in a rational and objective manner. Women write about love, especially romantic love, and human relationships. They write in an emotional and subjective manner. In theory women would have to write like men to be valued in the same way as a man. In theory all a woman has to do is write about what men feel is important in a rational and objective manner and she will

Untitled

be their equal. This theory unfortunately does not hold up to fact. Just as careers become devalued in the eyes of men when women enter them in large numbers, so too do intellectual positions. Prior to the late 18th century, emotion and fine sensibilities were the dominion of men. Women were regarded to have a highly inferior emotional life, one that centred mainly on the bearing of children. Women were lusty, beautiful, silly creatures, who had to be protected from themselves like children.

With the advent of the enlightenment and the rise of science, emotion and sentiment were cast off as manly virtues in favour of reason and objectivity. Women were, and are, now silly, emotional beings who cannot view the world in a rational manner. Women thus play catch up with the men, who just as we grasp their coat tails they sip it off and into a new one.

What is needed is not a female Tolstoy, but rather a valuing of women’s writing and female experience in it’s own right. A woman may not be able to write War and Peace, but nor would she want to. She could perhaps write Anna Karenina, though. However a woman’s Anna may not slip under the wheels. m Natalie Muller Katoomba

Christina Frost Clayton Woodford

The lack of ability To cre ate some st il a b it Y Concludes my brevity On pending

IN sa N it Y... m

And our final contribution to this issue of narrator MAGAZINE is from our Writer-in-Residence, Paris Portingale.

Paris’s first novel, Art and the Drug Addict’s Dog, was launched in 2010. and is available from The MoshShop at www.themoshshop.com.au Until you get your copy, here’s a little something to keep you interested ... with love from Paris!

Phyllis Phyllis. Lumpen named Phyllis. Phyllis with the lumpen leg; swinging thing, left wrong by a childhood illness. Phyllis the cripple, made strange by her difference.

Phyllis with the wide mouth and the downward looking eyes, brown and sad, weathered by distain and indifference. The Phyllis whose name was sometimes an abuse in the yard amongst less kind souls without limps. Among the peer-souls, all started together but somehow over the spin of time from then till now, made better; more right and whole and stronglegged. A Phyllis whom it could be easily imagined possessed no soul at all. Soul exchanged for a leaden name and a swinging leg and downward eyes and a flat chest and a back, even at sixteen, already hunched as to fold herself in and down, perhaps small and tight enough to fold herself entirely away. And it all stretched on and out into her own personal infinity.

On without change. The dull pain of being, glowing a faint dull line into a distance to be travelled with the ache of a soul that knows itself to be quite alone.

And then there was Lucy. Finger fucked Lucy. Finger fucked by pretty much all the boys whose balls had dropped. Lucy who wore make-up and a perfume from the bargain shop that scented her like a slut and drove the ball-dropped boys to explosive, wicked, shameful self abuse in the school toilet blocks. ‘Why don’t you just die, Phyllis?’ Lucy would whisper from the seat behind, and it was in its own way a genuine question and one which Phyllis would often invite for discussion.

And in the discussions, passionless and steered by a suffering-burdened logic, it was never made clear why she should hang on. Suffer the cancer-pain of an undeserved fortune, passed down by a casual universe, so much a doodle created and discarded by an indifferent God. But it’s not always that easy to let go, and that’s the cruel trick of it. It’s not always

Paris Portingale Mt Victoria that simple to bypass the fail-safe mechanisms. The fear of death. The terror of an eternity in which you no longer exist, because eternity goes on beyond forever so it’s a hard bond to break, the tenuous connection between being and not being, when not being is so frighteningly

absorbed the abuse, depending on the circumstances or her state of mind. But the thing is with souls, even the most trampled, demeaned, abuse-scoured of them can hold within themselves an ember of something. A glow, infinitely small, somehow cheating the extinguishing pall of life’s cold breaths. And the glow had a focus and the focus was filtered through meshes of hope and despair, and guiding it was a longing and an aching that would sometimes stop her heart and leave her in a vacuum that would suck to pull out her soul.

So then there was Stefan. Stefan also existed on the periphery, but by choice. Stefan was different, but in a different way, and his difference was quietly accepted, and while no-one clapped his back or joke-tackled him in the corridors, no-one asked from the seat behind why he didn’t just kill himself. He was dark and his voice had the edge of central Europe but you couldn’t quite put your finger on where, and if you asked, he would purposely reply in Romanian, or possibly Polish, or Russian, and sometimes it would be a single word and sometimes a sentence, but never with any deference to the questioner.

And it came to be Stefan who drew the focus of Phyllis’ tiny ember. He spoke to her once when they were in a queue and he was behind her and he said, ‘You are permanent. And death is not the sleep the Phyllis,’ and she turned and slightly raised poets describe. You don’t wake up from her head and then her gaze so she saw first not being. You don’t die, to later rise and his chin, then mouth, then eyes to see he stretch and make a cup of coffee and plan was looking at her gravely. The sentence a new day. So even in the pain there is a was a statement and no reply would come knot, a Gordian entanglement that holds us and she turned back and the queue back when we stand on the edge of advanced, and then they were all inside extinction and look over the lip and down and when she thought of, ‘And you are and feel the pull that would draw us into Stefan,’ he was on the other side of the itself. room and doing something with his bag, So Phyllis, lumpen, limping Phyllis, and and what could she do? Limp somehow her solitary soul limped on and ignored or across the separating abyss to stand flat-

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chested and shapeless grey before him and white wings flap above me, Lucy was sure Phyllis was looking and say, ‘And you are Stefan?’

And you would pick at my flesh and pluck noting, she took a folded yellow page from her pocket and, pointing at Phyllis, she But it’s funny how a single, ‘You are at my organs, Phyllis,’ can start something and impart to And I would reach a terrible and trembling handed it to him with a laugh. Phyllis saw Lucy skip away and Stefan open the page it such a force and intensity it possesses a orgasm, and she felt herself redden and burn and momentum generated by nothing but itself Flapping and twisting beneath you, she turned and, more than ever conscious and builds without the consent or wish or of her dragging limp, strode her awkward While my own wings reach to embrace involvement of the receiver. Three words way towards another gate on far side of the you, that somehow held a universe of meaning, yard and once free of the crowd and alone ‘You are Phyllis,’ a silly, obvious Now, once, in the final moment.’ statement of self-evidence that carried with And the poem was tucked inside a special she stopped and beat her fists against her so flat chest and cried and the sobs tore so it a terrible yet wonderful hidden baggage, book which she hugged to herself before to be opened time and again and inspected tucking it away and undressing and turning deep as to stop her breath entirely. afresh with each new exposure. out the lamp and getting into bed, perhaps, She didn’t write that night. There was nothing to tell her special books. She had And it came that in the evenings, at her in her mind, to nuzzle his cheek through around her a dark, aching emptiness and desk in a small pool of lamplight in her the last moments before sleep. she floated lost in waters so far beyond darkened bedroom, Phyllis would write in And as sometimes happens, perhaps not rescue and from which all hope had been her special book and it was as though she torn. were speaking straight to him, and while the name that night, in his room, So Phyllis, lumpen, limping Phyllis, and her And Stefan was never put to the Stefan unfolded the yellow solitary soul limped on and ignored or paper, it was all to him. page and read again the And her quiet self would verses Phyllis had lost. absorbed the abuse, depending on the become alight and her ‘I am just here and you are virgin parts grow damp and circumstances or her state of mind. But the all around me the turmoil of the pleasure thing is with souls, even the most trampled, I sense you in the air and and pain would swirl and you burst me aflame engulf her and she would demeaned, abuse-scoured of them can hold I am here and feel your soul have no lumpen leg or within themselves an ember of something. as it slides beside me downcast frown and she would cross the room’s To nudge and nuzzle as it abyss and stand before him circles and entwines entirely by accident and perhaps not on proper legs and say, ‘And you are entirely by conscious design, something To finally enter me so I explode in Stefan.’ slipped. Through a dreary class on the wrenching spasms of pleasure.

And when she found herself filling with faded history of a far-past war she felt the And my dampness is on you him she wrote him poetry, in secret, on familiar stir of something inside and on a And we are still, but for the gentle panting sheets of yellow paper, and in the night her yellow page she wrote two stanzas and, And there is nothing else, no universe, no special books filled and filled and spilled having finished, moved to tuck the paper pain, to form a library, and the tiny ember of away. But it slipped from her hand and, light became fanned and glowed brighter. catching the air, slid away and behind her No taunting doubts, and it was noticed by Lucy in the seat And she wrote in her book, ‘Tonight I’m And for once the torment’s open welts are dancing with you and as I’ve never danced behind who trod it to the floor with a quick closed and healed, before you gently lead me with your body. foot, and picked it up. Of course she read it And I’m happy here, with and in you, in and she knew the focus of the thing and You have an arm about my waist to hold the gentle moment.’ she found it funny because it was a piece me, and as you dance me against you I And the next day, after they’d queued into of lumpen Phyllis’ soul bared before her gain confidence and twirl and spin and I the morning class, Stefan, from across the and she laughed out loud, both for Phyllis rise on my toes which have never been room, caught Phyllis’ downward eyes and and herself, causing Mr Atchison from his risen upon before. My head is rested on he raised them to his and when they locked desk at the front to ask what was so funny, your shoulder and I fill with your scent as he took from his pocket the yellow page Lucy Wills.

Phyllis, being who she was, we spin and turn on a chequered floor that and held it out to show her, then, with their and knowing who she was, was powerless stretches bare and away to the four in the situation and she sat, rigidly facing eyes still caught together, he stepped out infinities and we are as alone together as and beyond the abyss and crossed the no two souls have ever been in all of time.’ front as Lucy, leaning forward, read room and, standing face to face, they said whispered lines in a way that tore the And she wrote on her yellow paper, each other’s name. m verses, ripped and abraded them with a ‘I would be your carrion goose, laughing mockery.

Fallen down from the skies and laid before When school ended for the day, amid the Paris Portingale you. exodus, Phyllis saw across the concrete Mt Victoria And lying there I would open as your yard Lucy approaching Stefan, and when

About ...

What



Narrator Magazine is a free online, quarterly, regional magazine from MoshPit Publishing. It has been designed as a vehicle to provide an outlet for local writers and their short stories, poems and essays of less than 5,000 words.

When



The magazine is produced quarterly and as well as being online, a limited number of copies are printed for sale.

 

It is generally available from the first week of each season.



Each quarter a secret guest judge is asked to review the contributions and nominate those three they think most worthy. These three are then awarded small cash prizes of $200, $100 or $50, for first, second and third most worthy works and their ‘wins’ publicised in the next issue of Narrator.

During the eight weeks following publication, readers are encouraged to go online and vote for their favourite story, poem or essay as part of the ‘People’s Choice’ award. Only one vote per email address is allowed.

Prizes

  

The ‘secret judge’ will be someone with a literary or writing background or interest and will be revealed in the following issue.

The People’s Choice prize is $50.

Other than the four prizes mentioned above, all contributions are unpaid. The magazine is an opportunity for writers and artists to gain exposure for their previously unpublished works.



Winners’ names are published in the next issue and awarded their prizes – $200, $100 and $50.

Copyright



All contributors (writers and artists) retain full copyright in and ownership of their contributions.

Advertising

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For validation purposes, all writing and artistic contributors must provide full contact details including home address.

These details will be suppressed from publication.

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All contributors may choose how to have their entry credited, but will be required to offer a name and village/ town e.g. Jenny, Hazelbrook or a pseudonym and village/ town e.g. MoshPit, Hazelbrook.

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Contributions will generally not be edited, save for a light spelling, grammar and punctuation check.

The act of uploading a submission via the Narrator website or in any other manner implies that the contributor is the owner of the work, that the submission is their original work, that it has never been published before, that they are a resident of the region and that they are 18 years of age or over.

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The publisher retains the right to refuse publication of any submission without explanation. Items deemed offensive or potentially offensive, or items deemed to be propaganda will not be published. No correspondence will be entered into.

After publication

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With the establishment of other regional Narrator magazines, a ‘best of the best’ will be published annually showcasing the overall winners. Winners have the right to refuse permission for their submission to be included in this compilation. There will be no payment for inclusion in the annual compilation.

How to submit

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Upload your story, poem or essay in Word, .txt or other MS Word-compatible format via the Submit pages at www.narratormagazine.com

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You will be required to go through the Submit process for each individual submission.

Prizes Judged prizes will be awarded to the three entries (across all The cost of the magazine is subsidised by advertising. Each categories) as chosen by that quarter’s ‘secret judge’ as follows: page is available for sponsorship, and a maximum of 10% of each content page is reserved for advertising. The 1st prize—$200 remaining 90% of each page will be dedicated to content.

Advertisers are ‘first come first serve’—the sooner an 2nd prize—$100 advertiser reserves and pays for space, the closer to the 3rd prize—$50 front of the magazine their ad will appear.

In the downloadable PDF and online versions, advertisers’ websites will be hyperlinked to their ads.

Opportunities for local artists Local artists are invited to submit images to appear on the cover. These will not be paid for.

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Writing contributors may also submit an artwork (theirs or another regional resident’s) to accompany their submission when published. The publisher reserves the right to print the submission without the accompanying artwork.

Restrictions

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Contributors must be aged 18 or over.

Advertisers must reside in or service the region.

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People’s Choice voting will open on 1 June 2011 at

www.narratormagazine.com/vote.php Voting will close on 31 July 2011.

Only one entry per email address allowed. $50 will be awarded to the entry which receives the most votes.

Winners’ details will be published in the Spring issue due out 1 September 2011 and on the website at

www.narratormagazine.com

Contributions must be no more than 5,000 words each.

Contributors must reside in the region.

Advertisers must deliver goods or services to that region, but may be located outside of it.

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