Selma In The City

Angry has tagged me for this meme.

RULE: Any image used for this meme must never have been used for any purpose by you before.

INSTRUCTIONS:

1: Take 5 images that you have stored on your computer and post them, each with a title and/or a single line description of what the image is, or represents, or means to you.
2: Tag five people telling them that they are in fact tagged to do this meme, and also asking them to take a look at your 5 images and then email you 1 only Invisible Image from their stash. They should do this within 4 days so that on the fifth day you can post another Invisible Images post as before, but this time using the 5 images that you received from your taggees. Only this time you don’t need to tag anyone. And who knows, you may even get a full post out of one of them.

After the second posting, you have completed all your meme obligations.

Here are my five images:

SYDNEY: You are not an ancient city, brimming with tales older than the trees, but I love you nonetheless.

Swimming underwater is a dance with no music, peaceful as fish coasting in a pond.

I talked to you long distance for three hours and in the final minute you told me the farm was abandoned due to drought.

Bunnies slip out of their hutches at night and bounce under the moonlight.

The dry sky is the colour of grapefruit skin, burning with heat.

I have started to volunteer with the youth group again and I would like some of the photography kids to tackle this. So I tag - LJ, Ozzie, Ryan, Krista and Dan. Give it a try, guys! Thanks, Angry. That was good fun.

Bonnie over at Bonnie’s Books has tagged me for a fun meme.
It is about things we love and things we hate.

I LOVE TO EAT :

Roast chicken sandwiches with salad, avocado and lots of pepper. Mmmmmmm.

I HATE TO EAT:

Capsicum. I try and try but I just don’t like the taste of it.

I LOVE TO GO:

Into the garden at night and watch the shadows fall.

I HATE TO GO:

On an old Sydney Bus on a really hot day. The windows don’t open properly and there is no air conditioning.

I LOVE IT WHEN :

I see baby animals in the wild. It reminds me that we haven’t completely destroyed animal habitats just yet.

I HATE IT WHEN:

People judge others without really knowing them. Why can’t we all just give people a chance?

I LOVE TO SEE:

Rainwater soaking the plants in the garden and their leaves springing up in joy.

I HATE TO SEE:

Old people crying. I can’t bear it.

I HATE TO HEAR:

People fighting. It is an ugly sound.

I LOVE TO HEAR:

The sweet little ‘coo’ a newborn baby makes as he spies his mother. There is nothing like it!

So, there it is. If you would like to give this a go, please do. It was fun. Thanks, Bonnie!

* To those who read this a few hours ago, I apologise. My draft was published by mistake. Sorry about that.

I mentioned in a previous post the saga of my friend, Ellena. She of the husband who likes to have his cake and eat it too.

Ellena and I are good friends. I don’t doubt for a moment that I love her and she loves me. I also don’t doubt that I hate what she is doing to herself and her children by staying with a man who treats her with such disdain, disregard and all the other ‘dis-’ words you can think of as if she were nothing more than a plasma screen TV or an iPod that needs to be replaced every few years.

Ellena’s husband is going away for the weekend. With his mistress. It is the mistress’ birthday. She expects diamonds and room service. Ellena expects tears and acrimony. She has asked me to look after her kids for the weekend so she can go and confront her husband at the hotel. I think she has no intention of confronting her husband, I think she just wants to go the hotel to snoop and play the martyr. I think she wants her husband to rescue her from what she knows she really has to do.

I am miffed. I am peeved, frustrated, perplexed. It’s bad enough her husband waves his infidelity like a flag, like a T-shirt that proclaims : I’m Unfaithful, Get Used to It ; without Ellena pretending it isn’t happening.

‘Confront him now,’ I urge. ‘Don’t let him get away with it. You don’t like it. Stop it. Tell him to take a running jump.’

Ellena is full of her usual excuses : ‘What about the children?’ ‘I don’t want to have to sell the house.’ ‘We’re going to Paris for Easter.’

I am rapidly losing respect for one of my oldest friends. This day would be a good day to not get out of bed. I would have stayed under the covers if I had known. I feel like screaming and weeping at the same time. I go into Ellena’s bathroom that is so white I can’t see myself properly in the mirror. I look like an alien emerging from a spaceship. I run the water but the soap is split down the middle as if someone has hacked at it with a knife, breaking apart at my touch.

‘You will look after the kids for me, won’t you?’ Ellena isn’t about to give up. She has poured herself a glass of wine even though it is only 11AM. Her hand is trembling. She looks like a sketch done in pencil that is slowly being erased.

I am sorry for her but still angry at the way her kids treated Jake. I toy with adding to her pain by telling her how like their father her children have become but I can’t bring myself to do it. Even though the Fiddlewood Club has been disbanded.

When we lived in our old house across the road from Ellena we had a fiddlewood tree in the front garden. These magnificent Caribbean natives grow to heights of over 3 metres. Their wood is so prized they used to make violins from it.

When Jake was little he and Ellena’s two kids formed the Fiddlewood Club. They vowed to look after the tree and all the animals and birds that lived in it. They built a tent out of old sheets at the base of it and held meetings discussing how they were going to change the world by planting fiddlewood trees all over the land. It went on for years.

The Fiddlewood Club had its own membership cards and journals, hand-drawn flyers were prepared to attract new members. Last week I found all the old Fiddlewood Club stuff ripped up, thrown in the bin. It broke my heart to see it.

‘I can’t do it,’ I say. ‘You should confront him beforehand. Today. Now.’ Before you disappear. Ellena sits down. Suddenly, as if her legs have given way. She pushes her wine away. Sighs heavily. It sounds like her last breath. ‘Neither can I,’ she says.

Sometimes I am able to accept that there are some people I just can’t save. It surprises me when it happens because it is not in my nature to give up. Ellena’s acceptance of her husband’s double life has worn me down. I grind my teeth at night. I am frightened I will wake in the morning, mumbling, with a mouth full of stumps.

I walk carefully to the front door. It is time to leave for good. Ellena knows it. As I turn the doorhandle I look back. Ellena is twisting her wedding ring round her finger, round and round the way my Grandma used to wind wool for pom poms; her lips are moving but she isn’t looking at me. She has the face of a stranger.

The air is fresh. I am invisible as I walk down the garden path. I am not a good friend but I am free. Nothing happens as I get into the car. No one comes screaming after me. I hope this is a sign that Ellena will face what she has to do, just for once, for better or for worse.

I found a shoe in the bay today, floating with the tide, undulating gently. It was a fancy shoe only someone really glamorous would wear with its high heel and pink frilly gauzy bits. At first I thought it was a fish, a rainbow trout too close to land or a leatherjacket.

I saw fishermen laughing by the breakwater, wanted to run to them and shout : ‘It’s a little beauty!’ but then I realised it was a shoe, toppled on its side, lost at sea.

I looked around for marks in the grass, for signs of a scuffle or for evidence of a possible passionate encounter in the nearby spinifex but there were no clues. The shoe didn’t give off an air of trouble in any case, it was jaunty as a birthday present, bobbing with the gulls and water tern.

A woman caught me looking, her eyes were glinting. ‘When I was a girl we believed there were mermaids in these waters. They came onto land when the moon was full and wore shoes the colour of the summer flowers.’ She winked and walked off.

Come on, I thought. You can’t expect me to believe that.

A little boy crouched on the water’s edge, pointing. ‘Look, Mummy,’ he cried. ‘A fairy has lost her shoe.’ His mother smiled at me, shrugging her shoulders, but the boy and I exchanged looks and a single nod.

A wind blew across the water, raking it into deep blue strips. The gulls and tern flew off. The shoe drifted, spun, then sank below the water. ‘I think the fairy just got her shoe back,’ I said. The little boy smiled, satisfied that someone else besides he understood and began to skip along the foreshore, contented.

A dragonfly hovers above the birdbath, skimming in a flurry of silver and aquamarine. Such compact elegance. I’ve never researched it but to hover in midair like that must take a lot of effort. Those wings which turn gauzy with the sun must move at over a hundred beats a minute. The water churns slightly, as if a sigh has arisen from the depths of the garden and the dragonfly, startled, flies straight upward, pulled on a string. In under a minute he is lost in the sky.

A cockatoo flies into my neighbour’s mulberry tree, scattering fruit. The ground is stained dark purple-red. My neighbour will be furious. She scrubs her tiles with salt and lemon juice to keep the stains at bay. She cleans them at least three times a week. Sometimes the smell of salty lemon is so overpowering I have to go indoors. It is worse than peeling onions.

The cockatoo closes and opens one eye, winking. He is cheeky. The feathers below his neck are stained with mulberry juice. He holds the fruit with one foot while he nibbles with his beak, as dainty as if he is attending a garden party. His little tongue darts in and out, sucking out the sweetness. Every now and then he sings contentedly.

Two geckos bask in the sun, close as lovers. Their tails touch at the tips. It is a gecko first date. They look at one another and open their mouths as if to speak, then settle down onto the warm ground. They breath in synchronicity, heads leaning in together.

Three butterflies come. Small and white, playing follow the leader. They are ballerinas dressed in silk, so perfect I can hardly believe it. They pause on a bright orange hibiscus and for a moment their tutus are sprinkled with gold.

The clouds are stretched out, flossy and thick. I dream of a dress the colour of the sky, so remarkable it would make people turn and stare or stop for a second look. I would float a little in that dress, my imperfections forgotten.

If I was able to put the true meaning of a prayer into words then this sunny afternoon would be it. Wild, precious, vast, rising gracefully into night. I could be wrong but this sunny afternoon could be my own personal heaven. I wouldn’t mind living in a garden if it could always be like this.