Who is Jill Scott?

So nice to have you knocking around the house for three days. Quietly companionable. Dipping into my salted licorice stash. Playing Alanis Morissette. Bic Runga. Jill Scott. Looking young. Gorgeous. At nineteen.

I lie back. Admiring the Christmas lily. Supping on a naturally brewed Mac's Ale. Gold. Thinking about panoramic pinholes. Dead birds representing dead dreams. Watching life pass by.

Artist/Manet

Exempt, not

The abilities left to me I jealously guard. Aware all the while that even they are slowly seeping away down the big black hole where everything gets sucked. Eventually. But nothing is sacred. No ability so fundamental it warrants exemption.

Artist/Don Binney

Imagining Thunder

Not difficult to imagine thunder. Warm. Humid. Still. Overcast sky, suddenly heavy.

Artist/Toss Woollaston

Watsonia in Repose

I'm still rubbing my eyes in disbelief over this glorious vision before me. You took me completely by surprise.

Artist/Don Binney

Welcome Home

home (n): a dwelling place together with the family or social unit that occupies it; a household; an environment offering security and happiness; a valued place regarded as a refuge or place of origin.

A Remarkably Still Day

A remarkably still day. Rain. Cosmos. Sage. Thriving tomato plants reaching for the sky. An occasional car. All seen through glass. The window. As much a feature of my life as these uncooperative limbs. A ticket to ride the outside world.

Artist/Picasso

To My Surprise

Finally, finally, finally. The lounge repaint is complete. The room slowly reassembles. Comes back together. But differently. Things are added. Things are taken away. Things ae renewed. And all in time for an up and coming Christmas Eve luncheon. Friends from far and near. Gathering. To my surprise. Delight. Relief.


Artist/Max Beckmann

Blood Ties

You come again. Once more I find myself revelling in conversation spanning a diverse range of subject matter. And now, egged on by the spirit of an amber glass Pilsner, I exalt in the power of blood ties. Two women whose fathers are brothers. Whose life paths veered off in different directions. Only to converge under the influence of an unsolicited catalyst for major change.

Artist/Picasso

Imagine Me Deaf

Speaking a language I do not
Always understand, I want to shout:
Talk plainly, elucidate,
I’m trying to hear you. Just this once
Imagine me deaf; use words and
Facial expressions and sign language
And do not suppose it does not
Matter. It does.

6 June/2001

Artist/Picasso

Dinosaur Times

You have brought me closer
to extinction than I have ever been
in the whole of my middle-sized life.

You, who were not even extraordinary!
With your round-toed shoes,
your polite well-modulated voice,

and your way of sometimes using
the word quiet instead of quite,
after which you would bite your lip.

You led me to the very edge
of a ravine on a day so cold that
breathing felt like a payback
for some kind of happiness.

Together we looked down
on road markers of mist
and the grey metallic fingernails of the gulls —
a sight seen more often from below.

And although my lungs hurt
you made me stay and look down further
still to where a desert lay,
scattered with white chalky remains.

Once I had acknowledged the bottom
of the world, you pointed out how far away
from it we were, and how close the sky was
to our faces on that particular day.

If you climbed on my shoulders,
you said, I expect you could touch it.

Then, after we had stood for quite some time
where no one (we believed) had ever stood before,
you took yourself away: neatly,
surgically, with the greatest of skill.
You, who were not even extraordinary!

After your removal I lay quiet
among the bones, listening to the birds cry.
Each day had the potential
to become an age.

And I would say this to you now:
if it were not for my constant vigilance
over the state of my heart,
if not for the hard-won years
stacked at my back like a wall to lean on
in times of fright

— well, let’s just say that
for the first time and because of you,
there was nearly no more of me.

Sarah Quigley

Artwork/Modigliani

The Whole of the Moon

I spoke about wings
You just flew. . . .

I saw the crescent
You saw the whole of the moon

The Waterboys

The God of Small Things

Listening to an unabridged reading of Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things. I am reminded of the irritation I experienced upon first reading it. On one hand, the plot is quite splendid. Masterfully drawn, in terms of its lead-up to the devastating pinnacle. On the other, the repetition, ad nauseum, of particular phrases induced a serious case of exasperation in me. Everytime I heard yet another laboured reference to 'two-egg twins' or 'spoiled puff' or 'dorsal tufts' or 'ambassador E Pelvis' I thought I'd scream. Having said that, the understated and exquisite tenderness expressed in the final pages cannot go unmentioned. But, make up your own mind.