Selma In The City

I don’t know how I did it, but I managed to complete the Script Frenzy organised by the same people who do NaNoWriMo. 100 pages in 30 days. I’m probably about half way through the finished product but I’m really pleased with how it’s turned out. It’s called Two Edges and is about a woman whose husband dies leaving her bankrupt. She doesn’t know what to do and inadvertently gets involved in an armed robbery which nets her a lot of cash. She decides to ‘turn to crime’ to alleviate her debt crisis. It’s a black comedy with a hint of drama. I’ll post some of it here soon.

Yesterday was another morning spent at court - with edifying results. My sister’s lawyer advised her to drop the case, that insisting on a full hearing would cost her upwards of twenty thousand dollars with no guarantee there would be a ruling in her favour. An AVO apparently doesn’t give you a record and is considered to be fairly meaningless by the courts. The lawyer advised her it would be in her best interests not to waste the court’s time unless she wanted the AVO dropped because she planned to reconcile with her husband.

Then he asked the question that had been on everyone’s lips :

‘Do you intend at some stage in the future to reconcile with your husband?’

We held our breath, collectively. The birds were silent in the trees. Traffic stopped.

‘Not ever,’ Millie replied. ‘I never want to see him again.’

Inside we were all doing the happy dance but we retained our cool, trying to look all prim and proper in front of the lawyer. We exhaled simultaneously. A weight had been lifted.

In the evening we had dinner here and got into one of those silly conversations only families can have. It involved an article my father had read about the possibility of transplanting robotic parts into humans in the future. We each had to opt for the body part we’d most like to become robotic. I opted for robotic legs so I could run like my comic superhero, The Flash. My Mum opted for robotic eyes so she could see through walls. Millie opted for robotic hands so she could play an entire concerto without stopping to flex her fingers. Aunt Jo chose a robotic mouth. I got a slap for saying I thought she had already successfully received that part. Haha.

Then it came to the boy. What would he choose? ‘I would have a cyborg testicle,’ he piped up. ‘Just the one. Everyone would call me Freaky One Robot Ball Guy. I would be totally unique.’ Why am I not surprised that my pre-pubescent son who admits that he and his mates spend much of their time at school making penis jokes would choose part of his genitalia to become robotic? You don’t need a robotic testicle to be unique, my son. You’re already there!

Sometimes when a southerly wind hits, blowing all the way from Antarctica, there is an air of melancholy captured within it; the melancholy that comes with imagining winter.

The camellias bend, dropping pink and white petals on the grass like little flower girls filling the world with colour at a wedding. They are cold, the way ice-cream feels when it lands on your fingers.

I decide to go for a walk before the rain hits, racing the clouds to the park. Maple leaves, tawny orange and brown, the colour of the hair of a medieval maiden, jump at my feet. I crunch one with my old running shoes and remember the sense of elation felt as a child when running through fallen autumn leaves. More fun than splashing in summer seas.

The bay is choppy. The toadfish dart, unsettled by the churning sea bed, looking for an unmoving hiding place.

A little dog jumps – straight up, like he has springs on his feet. Trying to catch pockets of freezing wind.

Little girls squeal as their skirts lift, then decide to twirl like ballerinas. A boy on a skateboard uses the wind to propel him along the promenade.

I see a storm petrel, flying in ever-widening circles as if he is pulling the wind in to keep it for himself. His long, black wings soar to every part of the sky, rugged and beautiful.

Then the rain comes, pelting the leaves of the fig trees, clicking like fingernails on a table top. And I run, dodging gusts and jumping puddles, laughing with the joy of it. And suddenly, the melancholy in the wind is gone.

Another fun prompt from Writers Island again this week.

The prompt is - OUTRAGEOUS.

Here’s my little ditty….

The wind was fierce, pulling the branches of the jacaranda down and then releasing them so quickly they looked like fingers flung to the twilight sky. Madeline emerged from the bathroom as mauve clouds began to group. She caught sight of herself in the mirror above the mantel and had to press her hand against her mouth to stop from shrieking. Her hair was blonde, platinum, like a 1950s pin-up or those girls who lived with Hugh Hefner.

She began to panic, feeling her vision blur. She thought she might faint. I can’t do this, she thought. I’m not a real blonde, everyone will know. Everyone will see me as a fake. Roger had been right when he had called her a plain Jane. That’s what she was. And a plain Jane should never try and change her spots.

She had married Roger ten years ago when she was 22, shortly after her mother died. Her father had left when she was baby and it had always been she and her mother, a life of books, crossword puzzles and early nights. What did she know of men and their ways?

Roger was her English professor in her final year of University. He was thirty years older and swept her away with his intelligence and worldliness. He asked her to marry him on Graduation Day.

Their marriage was safe, comfortable as old chairs gathering dust in a room. They lived in Roger’s house he had bought as a bachelor, disregarded for years with its chipped kitchen surfaces and old-fashioned furniture. Madeline suggested an upgrade, a renovation, but Roger said he liked things as they were.

Roger insisted Madeline didn’t work, saying she could keep house. She filled her days with cleaning, cooking and drinking instant coffee from heavy-handled mugs. She longed for walks along the beach and cozy chats in cafes in the evenings but Roger didn’t like to go out. ‘I’m out all day,’ he said.

To Madeline’s relief, they made love infrequently. Roger was rough of hand and less than thoughtful. Afterwards Madeline lay awake for hours, feeling like she was dying in the dark.

She bought a dress once. A purple dress flecked with tiny pink flowers. Low cut and above the knee. She had read an article in Cosmo about ways to dress to please your man. The model in the article had been wearing the same dress. Madeline thought it might cheer Roger up if she looked pretty for once, he always appeared so grim. She looked good in it – hopeful. Roger told her to take it back. ‘You look ridiculous,’ he said. ‘Cheap. That you think I would like that is outrageous.’

From then on Roger bought all Madeline’s clothes from a catalogue recommended by one of his work colleagues. A woman in her 60s. Every outfit had three things in common – beige, shapeless, drip dry. He bought her sensible shoes and tan pantyhose. She wore no make-up and her hair in a bun. She took to making predictions about the weather and discussing the decline in quality of supermarket produce.

Sometimes Madeline stood in the garden, cradling the pink and purple bells of the fuschia she cultivated so carefully. ‘If only I could dress like you do, just once,’ she whispered. ‘If only I could shine.’

One day Roger fell ill with a pain in his chest. He died three days later. ‘We did all we could,’ said the doctor. Madeline cried for what might have been.

She bought a bottle of colour for her hair called Golden Sunrise. The model on the box glowed with vivacity. Madeline applied the contents of the tube with shaking fingers, feeling sick as she watched her mousy brown hair turn golden white.

She bought a dress – red and slinky – a word she had never used in connection with herself before – and knee-high black boots. When she put them on she didn’t recognise herself, she felt like she was floating, an onlooker in her own life.

The doorbell rang. It was her new friend, her neighbour, Daisy. They were going out for a night on the town. ‘Well, well, well, what do we have here?’ Daisy said.

‘I look ridiculous, don’t I?’ Madeline said. ‘Outrageous. I will embarrass myself if I go out like this in public, won’t I?’

‘On the contrary,’ Daisy said. ‘You look like someone who is ready to live in this world. You have a face full of fire.’

Madeline inhaled deeply, feeling every step forward would change her sublimely, wordlessly, as if she was being moulded from hot wax, as if she was learning to walk again, but she found she couldn’t stop, she didn’t want to stop.

‘Let’s go,’ she said. ‘Let’s go and have some fun.’

Debt. The sub prime crisis. Interest rate hikes - another, then another, then another, and why not another. Supposed to lower inflation, but guess what? It’s still rising.

Everyone pays on credit cards because they have no cash. Some interest rates are above 20%. By the time you pay off the balance you have paid double, triple, quadruple what the goods were worth. If you can’t pay off the balance and you reach your limit the minimum amount due every month can be up to $500.00. Five hundred bucks to keep a credit card that is crippling you. Five hundred bucks for nothing.

Suddenly it costs you two hundred dollars a week to get to work and back because fuel is so expensive and you have a six cylinder car. You want to downsize, to get a more fuel- efficient model but you can’t because you’d need a loan to buy the car and you can’t get one because you have missed your last two mortgage payments and the bank is threatening foreclosure.

You work and work and work. You have no fun. You can’t remember the last time you laughed out loud. You get a bill and your heart skips a beat. Something goes wrong - you fall ill and can’t pay the medical bills -you consider driving your car into the harbour to collect the insurance.

You say a word you have never said before - drudgery. It is a word without hope. You become aware of the increasing gap between rich and poor. You see a homeless man in the park eating garbage from a bin and have a panic attack thinking that if things continue as they are that could be you.

You grow tired of watching every dollar. Of denying the kids new shoes, of buying clothes that smell like moth balls from thrift stores. You consider selling your house but house prices have dropped and rents in your area are higher than mortgages. In under two years any money you made as a result of capital gain would be gone. And you would be back where you started when you moved out of home, except you would be twenty five years older.

As many of you know we have a shop in the Sydney CBD. The last independent CD shop in the city. We are hanging by a thread, but our loyal customers are keeping us afloat. Some of our fellow shopkeepers are not so lucky. The Reserve Bank raised interest rates several times with the aim of lowering inflation. The rises didn’t lower inflation but they did split consumer confidence into thousands of pieces. The result is that no one is spending money. In many ways it is a good thing to cut consumption but for the retailers who earn their livelihoods from selling things it is one more kick in the teeth.

Our friend, Nicos, owns the newsagency around the corner. His magazine sales have dropped by 75%. His sales of greeting cards are non-existent. There has been a steady decrease in the number of people requesting newspaper deliveries. Two weeks ago, Nicos, aged 46, had a stroke. He may not recover sufficiently to return to work. He doesn’t want to return to work. He is afraid that there will be more interest rate rises which will succeed in crushing him completely.

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that my friend Nat was admitted to hospital suffering from a nervous breakdown. She is doing better but has admitted that one of the things that pushed her over the edge was discovering her husband had taken a business loan out against their house two years ago and was now about to go bankrupt. ‘I am suffering from fiscal stress,’ she said. ‘How can I clear all that debt?’

Where is this all going to end? Forget terrorism or global warming, it’s our debt crisis that is going to finish us off. I was ashamed to read that in Australia in 2007 there were at least 35,000 homeless people aged under 25. That’s an entire city raised on hopelessness.

George Orwell said in his 1949 novel 1984 :

“If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever.”

I fear that for many people that vision of the future is already here.

Today is Anzac Day in Australia and New Zealand. ANZAC stands for the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps. April 25 was the day the ANZACs landed at Gallipoli in 1915 with the intention of knocking Turkey out of the First World War. Their campaign failed. Read about it here.

Many people get up at dawn to attend memorial services while others attend the ANZAC Day march that takes place down Sydney’s George Street. In recent years there has been a surge of interest in Anzac Day. Many people used to regard it as just another day off but now there seems to be a genuine desire to remember those who served and those who fell. We are proud of our Diggers (Aussie soldiers) and want to pay our respects. For years this song written by Eric Bogle and sung so beautifully here by the Irish folk singer, Liam Clancy, summed up how many felt about war and Anzac Day.

The last line speaks of the dwindling number of soldiers left to march in Anzac Day parades -

Someday no one will march there at all

which was probably true several years ago but is not the case now. Soldiers from World War Two, the Korean War, the Vietnam War and those who have recently served in places like Iraq and Afghanistan are now free to march. As are the descendants of the original Anzacs. It is so heart-warming to see children and young adults in the parade proudly wearing their grandfather’s or in many cases, their great-grandfather’s medals. We need to remember these honourable men, these everyday blokes, who left everything they knew to go and fight for their country. I raise my glass to you, dear Anzacs, may we never forget. May we always have people to march and remember.