Day 205

The poison ivy is not much better today, and in a really bad place which chafes, so she walks around the meadow slowly with the black dog, noticing things, seeing flowers she usually runs right over, still feeling vaguely miserable, knowing how many days she has to go before all the inflammation and discomfort is gone, the majority of the time her daughters are here, so inconvenient for her body to let her down like this! 

Later she thinks that you just have to get over yourself with this, although no one really understands poison ivy unless they have had it, which not another soul in her family has! 

So she and the eldest child and the eldest child's boyfriend go to the airport to fetch Jess, who was delayed in Amsterdam, but who is supposedly on the same plane she would have been on the day before.  They wait and wait, crying at the old man in the wheelchair whose daughter greets him with love, weeping when the 10 and 12 year old girls race up to their dad, the youngest throwing herself on him, leaping up with abandon, hanging on, her long body too big really, but not caring.  The older one more circumspect, reserved, butting her head under his arm, so sweet.  And the couple kissing for minutes at a time, coming up for air and then kissing deeply again, all they want to do it get to the nearest bed and know one another all over again.  The little grand-daughter put on her feet to run to her grandparents but who decides they actually look a bit scary and instead locks on to her dad's legs and won't budge.  And the woman next to us, who runs up to a girl and takes her into her arms, the girl smiling, then stepping back as they realise that they don't actually know one another at all, the younger one resembles her niece but is not quite right, the 'niece' a bit non-plussed, thinking, "This is a very friendly country!" and a bit sad to walk away from this sweet family.  And all the emotions float on the air and are imbibed by the unsuspecting empathic women like Em and her mother, so that their hearts are full and overflow out of their eyes in salt-water.

And eventually each passenger has been hugged or kissed or slapped on the back, and taken off to cars and buses and trains, but her little trio remains, glued to the barrier, wondering where their beloved person is.  And finally they are the only ones left, and still no sign, and their hearts sink, and they start trying to find out what has happened.  And their imaginations run to places where they have to shut the door quickly because it is too bad to think of. 

And at last, one hour and 40 minutes after they arrived, when only one of the trio is still waiting at the barrier, she walks through the doors, having been searched and questioned and whatnot, it is always the case with this child, she must look wicked or something.

And the mother flies barefoot through the upper floor of the terminal, like Zola Budd, as Stuart says, and flaps down the escalator on ungainly flipflops which you have to wear on an escalator, where she can see this tall daughter running towards her, and the escalator will not go fast enough, as she hurls herself into her daughter's arms, who holds her like a short person, which she is, her head rests on her daughter's chest, the roles reversed, and she weeps big hot tears of relief, the silly mother, but the daughter is weeping too, and they cling to one another after one whole year of no contact.  And it feels sweet.

So now there is a full house, and the table is animated at mealtime, a million conversations going at the same time, the boyfriends, coming from small families, have both been warned about so many constant interruptions in a big family, but they seem to take everything in their stride, and I like them both. 

And so we go on, and it is nearly tomorrow, and my heart is full and my smile is happy, and I could just burst into blossom, as my mother used to say.

Day 204

Umbrels.

I ran 2.10 miles, because the pedometer has somehow jumped on to recording miles, and I don't seem able to change it back to km again!  Sometimes I am technologically challenged, although I am very good with machines that I can take apart and put together again, like the old roneo copying machine we used to have at Nombulelo.  Just things with chips are not easily comprehensible to me.  That is 3.37 km.  It was lovely today, easy again.  Perhaps it is after I have eaten bread the day before, that it is more difficult to run.

So disappointed today because Jess's flight was delayed, so she is only arriving tomorrow, a whole day wasted, although she will have a good time in Amsterdam, at a nice hotel, and with a temporary visa to explore the city.

I am feeling rather miserable too, because I have discovered that what I thought was an inconvenient mosquito bite is actually poison ivy, right right on my inner thigh, and it is probably, like the time I had it before, from peeing in the meadow.  I am always really careful and look before I squat, but must have missed some.  I have no idea why the ubiquitous winter-moth, whose caterpillars strive to eat every leaf on every tree in early spring, don't touch poison ivy.  Why can't it work that they eat every scrap of poison ivy in the forest, so that it will be eradicated!  My children told me that I must not pee in the meadow, most people pee in toilets in the house!  But what am I to do while I am running and need to desperately?  I am, after all, nearly 55 years old and have had four children, two at the same time for the last pregnancy, sitting on that poor bladder.

And it is so unfair, I who love the woods and the meadow, to be afflicted like this!  It is like a spider that you have carefully captured in order to set free, biting you as you let it go.  I am so disappointed. 

Day 203

What happens to a Queen Anne's Lace flower when it is going to seed.

She rushes around dropping boys off at different places, then puts her blue-sky shoes on, collars the dog, and off they go into the bright meadow, where grasshoppers leap away into the grass ahead of her, like dolphins at the front of a boat.  White fluttering of small surprised butterflies as they zoom past, although she does not really zoom, and nor does Molly anymore. 

She arrives home hot and sweaty, although it is a nice dry heat today.  Feeds all the animals, and the birds.  A little nuthatch comes when she throws peanuts out for them, creeps all the way down the tall pine, picks one up, then flies up to a perch where it has to work hard to crack the shell.  Enter another nuthatch, who, instead of getting its own, steals the first one's nut!  The dominant one then proceeds to eat the nut, while the first nuthatch flies back to its station on the pine, telling itself off with little soft peeps.  "Next time, I swear... next time!"

And then it is cleaning, tidying, as she is not a very good housekeeper, does the bare minimum, in fact, so for the past few days has been on her hands and knees, vacuuming under things, in corners, sending all the spiders scuttling, rescuing a few and putting them outside.  Wiping surfaces, dusting, putting things away that had almost found another permanent home.  She supposes it is good to do occasionally, but her nose suffers, and her eyes itch and gum up, her ears and throat are scratchy.  Is it really worth it? 

She hopes her daughters will be pleased with her effort.  She goes to wait at the airport for the first one, the oldest, and is almost beside herself with excitement, so that after 35 minutes, when she finally sees the beloved face, she rushes out of the barrier behind which everyone stands, and she and her beautiful daughter kiss and hug and hug again, with everyone looking on.  She is smiling widely and tears creep out of the corners of her happy eyes.  Twelve days of being able to hug her whenever she wants, to look on her with all the love of 31 years.

This is Emma the last time she was here, on Christmas Day last year. 

Day 202

Flying Thistle seeds, so delicate, so perfect, beautiful.

That is very hard to say actually, say it out loud as fast as you can, "Flying Thistle Seeds"!  It is a real tongue-twister, particularly for me, as for some reason I emphasize the 'th' sound, sticking out my tongue more than most people do.  One man I met a long time ago told his wife that for the longest time he thought I had a speech impediment! 

My friend Penelope, who is a speech therapist, theorised that for some reason it was an important sound for me when I was little and that is how I acquired the pronounced "tongue-sticking-out" habit.  I never even knew that I did it until I was an adult and people pointed it out.  Tim and the boys laugh at me a lot every now and then, for example when I say "Three-thirty" when asked the time.  They are mocking me but it is not nasty.  I always feel a bit stupid though, because I saw myself being interviewed on tv when I was about 38, and it is so strange to see yourself on film, my hands waving about in the air, gesticulating left, right, up, down and centre while I talk, and then this stupid tongue reaching out to pronounce 'th' where no one else's tongue thinks of going! 

I have been working all day (well, when I have not been ferrying boys, whose road-test is next Thursday), getting ready for the girls to come.  Such anticipation!  So much work, cleaning and making beds and washing and whatnot!  And all I want to do is read my book!  But I have just managed brief reading interludes, while waiting for the water to boil for the pasta this evening, and while I was eating my lunch outside under the umbrella with the black dog for company.  We are all completely hooked on books at the moment, except for Nick, who is about to start Blood Meridian, by Cormac McCarthy, who is the darkest writer I know!

So, tonight, some more eyes, the gentlest eyes of Molls, the black dog, the nearly 10 year old faithful one, with clouding eyes, strong heart, and an epileptic brain which attacks itself every few weeks.

I didn't run today, just didn't have a chance.  Well, while I was reading I might have had a chance, but then I wouldn't have known what happened next, now would I?

Day 201

Humming-Bee Feeder

For some reason, the water in the ant-moat of the humming-bird feeder has become irresistable to my bees.  Even though there is no sugar in that, and they can't get to the sugar-water in the actual feeder.  It is a mystery.  And every day at least one commits suicide there by drowning.  I am constantly fishing out little dead bee-bodies.

The humming-birds don't seem to mind the bees at all, and the bees tend to ignore them.  I suppose they are used to sharing flowers. 

I ran 3.2 km today, in about 21 minutes, which is 7 minutes per km, which is not bad, really.  But where yesterday all my muscles and tendons and bones and toes and elbows and lungs all worked together in symphonic harmony, today was a struggle.  Why is this the case?  Another mystery for my day.

Sometimes I find myself struggling to puzzle out what someone has said to me, even though we are speaking the same language, English.  Yesterday I was completely non-plussed by a message about Nick's costume for the play, which included two pairs of "leather tie shoes".  My mind saw a tie as the thing men tie around their necks when they want to dress up.  Then I thought it must mean lace-up shoes.  Which apparently it does, but why not say lace-up shoes?  Even my American friend didn't know what a "tie shoe" was!  And because I am a foreigner here I always think that I need to find out what this or that expression means, it is up to me, it is somehow my obligation to do the most understanding.

Tonight I have a picture of my eye.  Almost a smile.  The colour in a face.  Like a shard of sea-glass, blue-green.  And the old crows have walked all around it, laughing their heads off.

Day 200 (165 to go! Woohoo!)

Harvest.

Blackberries picked near the bee-yard.  There are SO many - delicious!  They remind me of mulberries, which I long for almost as much as I miss guavas.  I recently discovered a huge mulberry tree near the sports grounds of the school next to ours, although it is a slightly different species from the one found in South Africa.

Every year when our enormous mulberry tree came into fruit my mother threatened to cut it down (well, have it cut down, she couldn't even change a light-bulb) because of the wicked starlings, who delighted in excreting in purple abundance over her clean white sheets drying on the washing line.  My dad always managed to placate her though, even doing some of the re-washing himself a couple of times!  We had a washing machine which washed everything in a tub, then you had to run the wringer on top of the machine, and carefully feed everything through (keeping your fingers and hair free!) to take out as much water as possible before you pegged everything on the line in the bright summer sunshine to dry.  And later you went to get it all in, carefully folding each item with your mother, the lovely aroma of sunlight remaining on the cotton sheets you slid into at night in your lovely cool bed.

In 16 Cross Street, our beloved Grahamstown home for 15 years, we had a beautiful loquat tree, in the slender space between the outside flat and the house, which also housed our vegetable garden.  It was a prolific happy tree, and when in fruit, was visited by wonderful fruit-bats who gorged on the sweet loquats.  There were always plenty of loquats for our family and for theirs.  Their swooping bodies would swarm the tree at dusk, their little mouse-faces, their beautiful skeletons almost observable in those leathery wings.

They shared a love of large white areas with the starlings of my childhood, so our north-facing wall was always splattered with dark Jackson Pollock splashes.  The woman next door became irate because they abused her pristine walls as well.  She tried really hard to force me to cut down that tree.  But as I pointed out to  her, it was only for a short time of the year, and the rain washed everything clean fairly frequently, so I refused, preferring the enchanting bat-life to an emptiness in the garden and clean walls.

This memory reminded me of an old drawing I did of our little doomed baby fruitbat fast asleep on my hand.  The dear little exotic creature with whom we tried so hard, Batman, who would hang on the bedroom curtain while we were away and when we entered the room he would clamber across to reach us, so happy, little squeaks of joy.  Who would hang like this, anywhere on us, and fall fast asleep, after exhausting himself practicing his flying, hanging upside down from a finger, those strange webby wings flapping away, pure instinct, with no mother to teach him.  Jess would sit with him for hours on the swing, pushing off idly with her foot every now and then, while feeding him or examining him intently.

He stole our hearts (well, not Tim's) and we all wept at his loss.  When you feed and care for a creature you can't help but love it.  I still think of that time as an amazing experience from which the girls and I derived so much, even though he made Tim terribly ill, and for whose recovery I am eternally grateful.

I ran 3.12 km this evening, with the late sun pointing out the glowing beauty of certain trees for my attention.  I felt so good, hot and sweating, but easy in my body, my limbs working in synchrony, ready to run on and on through the fields, toward the dark trees, past hidden loud deer hurtling away in the undergrowth, past yellow flowers glowing in the last flare of the sun, down the path made by the once babbling brook, up through the lilting sunset songs of unknown birds, but my feet took me home, where I wanted, after all, to be. 

Day 199

Polo horse.

We went to watch polo today in Hamilton, about 15 minutes' drive from our house.  By the end of the 2 hours, Tim and I had decided that it was a bit boring and weird, and I felt rather sorry for the horses who get hit a lot with the ball, sometimes deliberately.  One penalty was being shot at the goal-post where we were standing, and the defending team leader yelled to his team-mates, "Deflect the ball with your horse!"  Poor bloody horse!  A man who was hit by a ball was taken off and seen by the EMT, hailed as a hero for coming back on to the field, while the poor horses are hit constantly with no accolades whatsoever.  Do they really like it?  I have no idea. Judging from this horse's expression I don't think he/she likes it very much.  I think horses are really stupid to allow us on their backs at all. 

When I woke up it was hot already, and my ankles and head ached.  But I put on my blue-sky running shoes and off I went with the black dog.  I ran 3.4 km, 2 km rather slowly, the last like a horse bolting for home!  When I give myself permission that this will be the last circuit, my body just takes off, happily outdoing itself!

Tim went off early with one of his club members to a nature reserve in New Hampshire, where he saw Ospreys and Grey Herons feeling their huge babies on these funny untidy nests.  A few couples build their nests on dead trees so that one tree will be a kind of heron colony, with a stick nest on the very top, then several untidy nests on lower rungs.  Right now the young ones are almost ready to fledge, so the nests look too small to fit the big babies, let alone an enormous adult with huge feet!  Such beautiful birds.

When he arrived home I asked him if he had seen anything good, and he said, "You'll be so jealous when I tell you everything I saw," but I replied that I would just be so happy that all these creatures are alive and doing well in this little reserve, it warms the cockles of my heart. 

When we first moved to America we rented a house overlooking the ocean, such a very beautiful view. To see the sea in all its moods, the big storms coming over the vastness of it, the changing light.  The ebb and flow of the tides were part of my daily experience, I knew without looking after a while, exactly what the tide was doing at that particular time.

When we had to move away I believed that I would not cope without the ocean, but for the past five years I have lived here with the woods and meadow as my backyard and they too have become a never-ending source of delight and discovery.  I look forward to entering the magical realm of the meadow every day, you come through the leafy forest road, up a little hill, and then out into the brightness of the open meadow, where there is an abundance of life, birds, butterflies and bugs in summer, radiances of colour in the autumn, white wonders of deep snow and enigmatic animal tracks in the winter, and new green life each spring.

I really believe it is the answer to life. To find this delight in the little things, the everyday things.  To savour the earth, to eat of its berries, to revel in its warmth, to acknowledge and appreciate. Looking, always observant and curious.  Discovery.  I wish everyone could have a little meadow of their own.

When we were little my best friend and I always drew a lot, and by the age of 10 or so we always drew horses.  I remember how awkward their weird feet were, the hocks, the hooves.  My very first oil painting, at the age of 12, was a mare and her foal.  Pictures of horses are mostly overdone and can be sentimental and cloying, but I have attempted another drawing of a horse - a horse dreaming of flight, the harness fallen away.  Faster, faster!

Day 198

Paper Wasp and Dun Skipper chatting over their morning milkweed nectar.

When you lick your lips you discover again that we come from the sea.  Sweat drips off red faces.  You don't want to complain because it is summer, after all, but really, it is too hot and humid and thirsty.  The black dog pants constantly.  The ancient cat lies flat on the tiles and then gets up and moves often because it is not good to leave old bones in one position for too long.  She loves the dog's water bowl. 

You work hard most of the day, cleaning out the garage which has been accumulating dust for about a year, and grass everywhere from the bale you have for the piggie's bedding and food.  After hot hours and a couple of trips to the dump, it is all ordered and swept clean, ready for working at the workbench your dad made mostly from driftwood and an entire weathered table-top or door found on the beach.  You thought he would always be here, but at least it is good to see his workbench still there, strong and heavy.  And some of his old old tools, that you think belonged to your grandfather, his dad.  He brought them over one year, all wrapped up in an old fabric tool-keeper, which probably belonged to his father too.  They must have weighed his suitcase down so much! 

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail visiting my thistle.

My father.  So curious and knowledgeable about so many things.  And he could be ridiculously stubborn and bloody-minded sometimes.  Once when he and my mother went over to England to visit friends and relations, he took a chameleon with him!  He wanted to show his mother what a chameleon looked like!  So he settled it in a little box with some greenery and airholes, packed it in his carry-on luggage, and off they went, my mother completely unsuspecting.  Of course she was horrified when she found out, and justly so.  My grandmother, however, was suitably charmed and impressed by the little creature, and my grandfather was taught how to half-kill flies to feed it, so that the fly was still moving, otherwise the chameleon wouldn't eat it. They learned how to stroke it very very gently, just the way it liked, and it stayed with them.   My father and mother travelled all over the British Isles for 6 weeks, checking in on my grandparents and their little treasure periodically, and then my dad repeated the hand-luggage trick and brought it all the way home to South Africa, where he set it free at 10 Forest Drive, in the hedge in his garden where he had originally found it.  And what a story it had to tell all the other chameleons! 

Day 197

Thistle beauty.

First day of another heat-wave.  Scientists have determined that instead of 1 or 2 hot summers each decade, there will be up to 7 heatwave summers each decade over the next 30 or so years. 

Think of everything that will be affected.  Crops, animals, birds, flora, and people.  Last time there was a bad heatwave in Europe up to 50 000 people died as a direct result of the heat! 

I will have to run early in the morning or late in the evening, and today I managed neither again.  My right leg has been suffering for some reason.  Tim massaged my sciatica last night for ages last night, but it is still excruciatingly painful at odd times.  I thought a run might fix it, but it was not to be. 

This evening there were beautiful lightning flashes from a convectional thunderstorm, then fat drops splashing down, but not very much for the thirsty soul.  Lovely smell of rain though.

I did this drawing of Tim tonight, he agreed to pose, but soon dosed off, so it was hard to do the lovely hands holding the book.  So this is Tim yielding to Sleep, sailing away to dreamland.

Day 196

Lils the ancient one.

Got out while I was bringing all the groceries inside.
Went for a walkabout, on those skinny, crooked legs.
Squinted in the hot bright sunlight coming up the stairs to the deck.
Then lay stretched out as far as she could stretch, looking for all the world like a miniature tiger rug, if tigers came in the colours of a calico cat.
Every time she lifted her head to look up at me affectionately, I laughed out loud at her, as her little face looked all lopsided, the fur on the side she was lying on pressed flat against her skull, giving her a comical expression. 
Dear little cat.

A kindness for today
At the checkout counter at the grocery store I chose the wrong cashier, you know when you are standing in the queue and you realise you've made a misguided decision, but you've already committed yourself to this line and perhaps you've already started unpacking your carriage/trolley.  But you watch the cashier looking puzzled and working really slowly, unsure of everything, and your heart sinks. 

So you carry on unpacking your full carriage, hopefully optimistic that things will work out when she gets to your stuff.  You notice an old man watching you unpack, he is in the next line, and you look up a couple of times, because he is staring at you.  Then he mouths, "Nice."  And you wonder what he means.  He is standing with his wife, who seems to be in charge of unpacking and paying, he is just a hanger-on.  He keeps on staring, and eventually you look up again into his eyes and he mouths, "You look nice." and you mouth "Thank you" without thinking, because he has just paid you a compliment.  You wonder briefly if he is a dirty old man, but he turns away then, helps his wife as they leave the store, and you feel sure that he was genuine, you decide he was because it makes you feel good. 

And of course you are still stuck in the store, with the WORST CASHIER IN THE WORLD.  Finally she starts on your items, and you discover that she is teamed with the WORST PACKER in the world.  I have nothing against mentally challenged people, but I bring all my own bags, which are large and roomy and can carry a lot, then I carefully unpack my groceries in order so that all the cold things will go together, all the vegetables are at the end so they don't get bruised by having canned goods stacked on top of them, for example.  He treats my ecologically sound bags like small plastic bags, putting in just a few items and then plonking them haphazardly in the carriage.  I take out a few and tell him he can put more things in them, but he finishes them and starts using the dreaded plastic bags for the rest, which is so unnecessary.  I don't want to seem like I am being nasty to a mentally challenged person, so I grit my teeth and leave him be.

At last, it seems like hours later, everything has gone through the cashier's hands, through the packer's hands, into the bags, and it is time to pay.  The total is $214.65.  She asks if I want cash back.  I say "Yes, forty please," in my best American accent, because people don't understand forty how I say it.  She thinks for a long time and then rings up $244.65 and asks me to hit the "yes" button to approve it.  I know this is wrong and she will get into trouble for the loss of $10 to her till, so I say helpfully, "No, it's 254."  She looks at me furiously, "You want $50 now?" and I smile nicely and repeat that it is 254 and her total is wrong.  After a long time spent staring at the screen, saying, "But 214 + 40 is 244, isn't it?" she realises her mistake and rectifies it, only she hits the wrong button and the slip starts twirling out of the machine, without me having done my little sliding-the-card bit.  She looks angry and scared and calls the managing cashier, tells her that she thought I was giving cash and so sent it through as a cash sale.  I keep quiet and let them think it is my fault, follow the managing cashier obediently as she pulls the front of my carriage through the crowds to CUSTOMER SERVICE, where we wait patiently for another 15 minutes until we can be served.

I felt so sorry for her in the end, those sad eyes, that empty face.

I didn't manage a run or a drawing today, so here is a photograph of the afternoon light on the way home from the meadow with Molly.  
 

Day 195

Oh beautiful, for spacious wings...

I forgot to write about running yesterday.  It was tough, so hot, about 90F, super-humid, and after running 3.5km, and thereafter taking a cold shower, my face took 45 minutes to return from beetroot to its normal colour!  And it was a little rosy for a long time after that too!

Today was lovely, soft and damp, 66F, positively cool!  I ran 5.14km.  Molly refuses to go down Babbling Brook Hill, absolutely refuses, because she knows that it is hard on the knees, the lungs and the soul.  It took me 41 minutes, which means 8 minutes per km, which isn't terribly good, but still.

So this Gulf Oil Disaster.  It is such a mess, such a terrible mess.  It is incomprehensible to me that we continue to do this kind of thing, we do not learn.  The ocean is not endlessly able to fix itself.  The earth is not infinitely available for abuse. 

Obama put a moratorium on oil drilling for six months and immediately was taken to the courts, the plaintiffs claiming that too many people would be out of work if they were to stop drilling. 

Here's the thing.  We need to put all ALL ALL our resources into weaning ourselves off all the products that contain oil, like pesticides, a petrochemical product which enters our bodies through things like apples, bananas, cantaloupes, carrots and broccoli are all rife with these chemicals.  plastics.  All plastics are made from petroleum, and are easily absorbed by meat, cheese and other fatty foods.  Cosmetics, medicines, soaps, sunscreens, hair products, clothing, tampons, etc.  The list is endless. 

And all our resources should be going into alternative forms of energy, like solar, wind, hydro-electric power. 

The way to find money to do this is to dismantle the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.  In the former, tribalism will take over as soon as the Americans depart, which is supposedly next year, according to plan, so why not just hurry the withdrawal up by a few months?  I'm afraid that we have to leave countries like that to their own devices, it is too dangerous to waste another minute there, another billion dollars every two days!  It is ridiculous.  All we are fighting for is control of the oil, and we don't need it, the world doesn't need it, not in such vast quantities.

We have brilliant minds here in America and elsewhere in the world, let them get to work to solve these problems, put a moratorium on drilling for oil in the ocean forever! 

It is unimaginable that we will go on doing the same thing, I even heard someone on the radio today saying that what we have learnt from this oil spill will do us well in the next disaster!  So there WILL be another one, but don't worry, we learned stuff the last time around.  Oh yes, like how long a brown pelican takes to die, in agony, drowning in oil?  Or a dolphin coming up for air, and slowly suffocating from oil coating its blowhole, its breath, unable to swim through brown oily water, the clear blue only a memory now, and then not even a memory.  Just death, death and more death, for months, for years, whole species extinct!

It is the same with nuclear power.  I cannot and never could understand how after Chernobyl anyone with any intelligence at all could possible imagine building another nuclear power plant.  And yet they did, and they continue to do so.  The spent fuel from these plants takes 10 000 years to be broken down.  10 000 years!  How can you even begin to think about such a number with a clear mind?  How can you imagine that there will never again be human error which will cause another disaster, which could be fatal to the earth this time?

We need to put a moratorium on greed.  We need to listen to the earth.  We need to care.

Day 194

Queen Anne's Lace and visitors

I love this flower, it is considered a noxious weed by some, but is actually good for tomato plants when grown nearby, also beneficial to lettuce.  There is usually a little red centre to the umbrel, and this is where Queen Anne pricked her finger while making lace. 

It reminds me of my mother, who learned to make lace when she was in her 70's!  She just set her mind to something and then did it.  For her 80th birthday we gave her a computer and she learned how to use email so that she could better communicate with us in America, and with others all over the world!  She was an extremely intelligent woman, who should have been a doctor or someone amazing like that.  Queen Joan.

We only have just one life, and what does one do with it?  I think that women often don't reach their full potential because they are weathered down like rocks at the shore, by pregnancy and childbirth, the raising of children and the keeping of the home. 

Women spend so much time doing housework, which is the most ridiculously boring occupation.  Even babies can be really tedious, when you have to watch them constantly, cater to their many needs of being kept dry and full-tummied.  And all you long to do is read a book! I mean, I loved all my babies, but they are trying when you have them full-time!  I remember when the boys were tiny, I seemed to be a kind of cow, just producing liters and liters of milk, feeding them and changing them and hoping that they would sleep long enough, at the same time, for me to have 20 minutes to myself!  And how lovely it was when the girls came home from school, I would long for them, and overwhelm them with talking, hugs, attention.  They were capable of intelligent conversation, of doing things for themselves.  

I think the washing machine is the greatest invention ever, and so much of obstetric and domestic life in the Western world is easier due to technology, so I am glad that I am a woman living here in the 20th and 21st centuries, in that respect, but I am sad that we live in an era where we are killing the earth, causing mass extinctions, raping the ocean floor for oil, stomping away from the natural world in our quest for more.  More things, more possessions, more ways of escaping from the tedium of life in video games, virtual reality, drugs, the 3-minute sound-bite or video. 

Perhaps there will be another transformative turnaround, which is in the nature of humankind, towards a more spiritual connection with the earth, towards solar and wind energy, gardening, growing good food and not just corn, towards treating animals as sentient beings worthy of care and respect, towards quieter pursuits like reading, playing imaginary games, which all my children have done with wonderful creativity and abandon.  (When the boys came to America they couldn't at first find anyone who played such games, but then they gravitated towards kindred spirits like Matt P. and instructed several other children of the neighbourhood in their inventive ways.)

We we'll live with optimism, doing our bit, hoping others will too. 

Here is a quick little drawing I did of Nick sitting waiting his turn at the orthodontist this afternoon, huge hands holding the magazine, this long-limbed child of mine.

Day 193

Happy 18th Birthday car!

So there was once this crook called Leo, 6ft 3in, 300 lb, scary-looking dude!  He sold a nice-looking car (on the outside) which was not actually such a nice car once you looked at everything else to do with the engine, the frame, etc., to the unsuspecting and rather naive Bouwer couple.  Even though they are both in their fifties now, they can still be somewhat gullible, believing in the best of people, only to be disappointed, time and again.

So they return this lemon of a car, do all the fancy paperwork and eventually, they get their money back!  Yay!

So, she looks again on Craigslist, and after a few miss-steps, she finds this amazing ad, which is basically an essay detailing all the pros and cons of the owner's car, almost akin to a praise-poem!  And, he is willing to bring it all the way up to their town, to be seen by the old town mechanic. 

He turns out to be a short Bulgarian man, the angel to Leo's devil.  He has taken good care of the car, and is even willing to go down in price.  She is so happy and relieved, that she wants to feed this man delectable tea with scones and jam and cream, but instead they take him home to complete the paperwork and give him coffee and delicious cold watermelon.   He restores their faith in humankind.

And the boys, the boys are overjoyed, ecstatic, leaping about like puppies, big smiles, grateful hugs and kisses. 

Maybe you always have to go through some kind of trial by fire.  To appreciate the good.

Walked the meadow today, I have had a sore leg and am giving it a rest.  Tomorrow I will run again.

And the story is having a rest too.  In Campagny will return after my daughters have left, at the end of the first week of August.  In the mean time I will anticipate their arrival with great happiness, then make the memories while they are here, then live on those memories until the next time.  Which is what my mother taught me.  You see, you really do turn into your mother.

A drawing of a black-eyed susan plant.  In South Africa,  the black-eyed susan is a beautiful creeper, with little orange flowers with the darkest blackest centres, so dark that you can't see the bottom.  Which is what eyes are like really, you can't see the bottom, you can't see into a person's very soul, there is always something hidden, something not open to you, no matter how well you know and love them. 

Day 192

Monarch and tortoise beetle dancing.

So, look at this picture and imagine you are in a meadow, the sun beating down on your head, lucky you wore your son's Celtics cap, so the sun does not burn as hard, and the mosquitoes can't bite your head.  There is a pleasant buzzing all around you as the bees land heavily on the little yellow Celandine flowers, the petals willingly bending under their weight. 

Everything is super-alive this morning, everything standing straight up after the lovely rain, all the stems full of sap, refreshed and strong.  Every little creature ventures out into the moist meadow, the tortoise beetles, the bees, the grasshoppers, the butterflies.   And wasn't Refrigerator Corner wonderfully cool?

What a lovely walk, hot and humid, celandine blossoming, radiant purple thistles, the second round of milkweed blooms, and everything baking under the hot hot sun, the wide blue sky.

On Friday night our oldest American friends took us out to dinner for the boys' birthday and for Tim's birthday.  The picture is not that good because Tim forgot to show the waitress how to focus, but captures the happy spirit of the occasion nevertheless.  So this is instead of a drawing tonight.  


In Campagny (continued)
Beeze woke Luca when the sun came up, by calling his name in her strange way, from the mouth of the cave, "Looker, Looker!  Wake up!"  His stomach was concave with hunger, but his head was much better.

He hadn't been walking for very long when they came to a large clearing, where a long white building could be seen among gardens.  There were several docking stations with white vehicles parked next to them.  Luca vaguely remembered seeing similar designs from long ago.

The little green parrot seemed ill at ease here.  She perched on a young oak tree near one of the doors and told him where to go but would not enter the building with him.  So he had to go on all by himself.  He did not feel any better than she did.  He entered what seemed to be the main door, to find himself in a beautifully lit area, natural light coming in from skylights in the roof, feeding sunlight to a veritable jungle growing around a large pond with water splashing continuously out of the fish-mouth of a statue in the middle.  He had never seen anything like it.  It stopped him in his tracks with its beauty.

"Can I help you?" asked a young man, eyeing Luca's numerous-pocketed coat with some suspicion.
"What is this place?" asked Luca.
"This is the western edge clearport."  replied the youngster.  "What do you want?"
"I need to find Norena Skull-Engraver," said Luca. "It is very important that I find her."
"Oh yes, it's always VERY important, " responded the young man.  " What do you want with this woman?"
"I need to tell her something, and I know she will want to hear it..."
"How do you know?"
"It really is very important but I can't tell just anyone..."
He could see that the young man was getting annoyed with him, he tended to have this effect on people.
"I need to ride in a flier to First Town, please." he blurted out.
Just then a young woman with a good face walked into the beautiful room, which was acquiring an unpleasant ambience from Young Annoyed Person.
"Hello, I'm Jada Airbat. And you are...?"
"Luca Leonid" replied Luca, grateful that someone was here to rescue him from Young Annoyed Person. "
"Well I'm going to First Town. . Just give me a few and I'll be there.  Wait at Elephant landing for me.  It's just outside to your left."  and she made a face at Young Annoyed Person.
Luca hurriedly retreated after thanking her and left the watery room to find Beeze still perched in the same place, blending in with the leaves.
"I've got a ride!" he told her, and he thought she looked happy.  He was beginning to sense her moods from her looks, even though parrots' faces were not very expressive.

Day 191

Two in the meadow.

Three turkey toms ambled through the meadow in front of me, and a deer held up its sinewy neck to see me, stretching out its super-sensitive ears.  I tried to stalk the deer, but of course my gumboots' squeaky flap against my calves with each step gave me away, and presently they thundered past me, on the other side of a copse of trees.  Two adults and two darker speckled fawns, the adults way ahead of the shorter-limbed babies, so sweet, but my pictures were just blurred, too excited to hold the camera still!

I walked today with Molly, as I was in a hurry because I still had so much to do before the visitors arrived.  

There were two young siblings in the party, 10 and 6, who performed America the Beautiful in 4 variations, rock, opera, country and regular, which was very funny and very sweet.  They stood there, so beautiful and young themselves, so proud of their creation, belting out the words, in tune with one another, Gina and Chris the Beautiful.

Amazing how children are mostly so happy to perform, how wonderful it is to see them singing like that, or dancing with abandon, like my little girls used to do when we would go to live concerts.  And all the videos Emma and Jess made me take of them and their friends, making up plays, doing their own creative dances to the tunes of the day, Cher's It's in his Kiss, for example.  And the boys asking me to film them doing funny routines with long staffs they had made from driftwood on the beach, or singing, or just clowning around, and eventually making their own videos, filming elaborate stories.  All those creative moments captured, all those fragments of childhood, of my beloved offspring, my darlings, all those dancing singing performing genes handed down from those of their bloodline who came before: a pretty young grandmother cooking sausages and mash, singing in the kitchen, a great-uncle playing the violin on stage for the soldiers of the Great War, a great-grandfather performing in private for his wife, to make her laugh, a father playing the guitar and singing in his beautiful voice for his friends. 

Today a quick sketch of a seagull.

In Campagny (continued)
The flutter of green wings. "Looker!  Looker!"  He awoke again with a start to find Beeze fanning his face with her flight.  "Come with me," she ordered, "Hurry, Looker!"

He rose with difficulty and followed the green beacon through the dim forest, as it was almost dark now.  She led him to an wizened tree next to a flat grey rock.  As he approached the rock he could see and hear honeybees.  They were buzzing around on the rock, not too many, but enough to give a good stinging if they were not careful.

Beeze told him to ignore them and eat the honeycomb.  "Eat this and you will be fine, the honey badger left you some."  His hungry stomach longed for the honey, so he searched his pockets for his gloves and hat.  Pulling the hat down over his face as far as possible, and putting up his collar, he gingerly reached for the honeycomb.

He managed to eat most of it and use some for his head wound, and was only stung once, which was good.  Beeze congratulated him.  "It looks like you are feeling better now, so we will continue down.  There is a cave where you can sleep, not very far from here, and in the morning we will find a clearport and hitch a ride on a flier."

Luca had no idea what she was talking about, but he did feel better, and looked forward to sleep, so he put one foot in front of the other, as his mother had taught him for difficult and exhausted times, and in this way they made it down to the cave.

The cave had sleeping supplies which he had not expected, soft blankets, with lightsticks and firesticks.  No food though.  He wrapped himself in one of the warm blankets and fell asleep at once.    

Day 190

Invitation to a meadow.

I ran 2.5km today, getting red-faced and exhausted very quickly - this heatwave is going on and on.  I was going so slowly I could almost have walked next to myself.

I ran just over two km yesterday but forgot to write about it.  It was still very hot, and as I ran along the new path on Refrigerator Corner (which came about from my plodding feet due to the ploughing, which took away my old path), I did little leaps and twirls, avoiding the new fronds of a leggy Queen Anne's Lace plant, several baby Milkweed, and some pure white funnel-shaped bindweed flowers, looking up from the parched ground like perfect stars in a dark sky.  As I ran a kind wind whispered through the thirsty leaves of the trees, telling them of rain to come, just two more sleeps and water will pour down the furrowed bark, splatter on the breathless grass, tumble down the stony hill.

Today I attempted a self-portrait (which I haven't done for a long time) with pastels and charcoal, sort of pleased with it, but struggled with the eyes especially. It is hard to make yourself old.  I want to see the young in me, it is a shock each day to watch yourself becoming an old lady like your mother.

In Campagny (continued)
Luca stumbled, could not catch himself, and fell.   Beeze flapping into the air in an instant, as birds can.  He wished for wings as he lay there a minute, then sat up, gathering himself together, checking his many pockets for loss.  Beeze flew to a perch nearby and informed him that his head was bleeding, "a lot of blood.  I am not happy about blood."  And indeed yes, he felt a little odd, felt the trickling liquid down his neck.  He lay down again and watched at the green parrot spread her wings and, without offering him any explanation, flew off.

After a few minutes of staring up at the amazing canopy of shifting green light and shadow, Luca thought how he had been walking for a long long time.  He realised that he was very tired and allowed himself to drift off to sleep.

In his dream he was home with his mother.  Her white hair bright-lit on one side from the three scintillants, their moving images illuminating the page she was studying.  It was a very old book that she was looking at, falling apart really, with exquisite paintings of insects from long ago.  (He had copied several of them while learning his illustrative art, although he had never managed the rich jewel-like colours of the originals.)  He wasn't exactly there with her, he was kind of floating above her, like the omnipresent narrator of an old flick, some of which could still be found on the scintillants.  He watched as a man came striding into the room and sat down opposite her.  The man was gesticulating as he spoke, but his mother remained calm.  He knew what the man was saying, even though for some reason he couldn't hear him.  Then there were loud flashes outside, and both people turned anxious faces to the doorway.   He woke himself up, glad to be here in the dappled light of a million trees, but sad, so sad.  Weren't dreams supposed to take you away from your real life?  

His head hurt but the bleeding had stopped.  He sat up gingerly.  Where was Beeze?  He was lost in the forest without a guide, lost and injured.  And hungry.

Day 189

In our family of six, we all have our birthdays within a 3 month period.  We were all born on a Wednesday, except for Emma, who was born on a Saturday.  And five have their birthdays within 5 weeks!  So, today is the fifth birthday of the year, the fifty-first birthday of Tim. 

This is Tim blowing out his birthday candles, and although it seems as if the cake is on fire, it is not.  It is another of the messy creations I am destined to bake forever after. Tim called it a minefield (!). I think that I am happy this is the last birthday for which I need to make a cake, and I hope I never have to make another cake, although this one did taste particularly nice. 

Tim has always been my knight in shining armour, which is a cliche I like.  Once we were having an accident, travelling sideways at breakneck speed towards a major intersection, my mouth trapped open in terror, and he's holding the steering wheel with one hand, patting my knee with the other, saying, "We'll be fine, Anne!"

We tried to raise a baby fruit-bat that Emma found clinging to its dead mother's body once, and Tim had hardly anything to do with it, he felt some aversion to it although he tolerated our desperate love for the creature.   Then the little bat sickened after 9 weeks, but Tim was the one who got deathly sick from it, landing in the hospital for 3 days on an IV pumping all kinds of drugs into him, touch and go.  (We found out later that no one handles fruit-bats, they carry the deadliest diseases on earth, for some weird reason.)

I had had an operation removing a pterygium in my eye, so was wearing an eyepatch, and had to drive him to the hospital with very little depth perception, using my good eye.  He could barely open his eyes, having had a the worst headache in the world all day, having actually vomited big gobbets of blood, which was why I was taking him to the hospital.  He was in such pain that he barely felt the lumbar puncture they gave him, which is very painful indeed, apparently.  Anyway, we're driving in the car, and I am totally overcome with worry, when he pats my leg again, and says, "I'll be fine, Anne, you should have those people over to dinner anyway!" 

In the night the bat died in my hand, and I buried him, our little Batman, and I drove to the hospital very early in the morning, and sat there sobbing at Tim's bedside.  He woke up and said, "I'm going to be ok, Anne," and I replied, in a barely intelligible voice from all the crying, "No, the bat died!" and carried on weeping. 

And once, our friend Keith acquired a brand new state of the art mountain bike, and offered Tim a go on it.  So he goes off down the street and we're all standing on the stoop, watching, so when he comes past he does a trick, or attempts a trick, the one where you put on your brakes so that your front wheel remains on the ground and the back one lifts up like a bucking bronco?  But Tim didn't realize how strong those new brakes were, and so when he pulled hard on the brakes, the bike stopped so violently that it actually did buck him up into the air, so high in fact that a car-driver coming along the road in the opposite direction thought that he was falling out of a tree!  On the way down to the ground he locks eyes with me and shouts, "I'm fine, Anne!" and then splats on to the tarmac! 

We were riding home in his car on Tuesday after dropping off our lemon of a car that we bought for the boys, and I had driven it down to Medford and become enraged at how we had once again allowed ourselves to be diddled.  So he says, "Well, perhaps it stems from an eternal optimism, perhaps we just want to believe that people are inherently good, which is a good thing, don't you think?"  And yes, it is, and it made me laugh, and I laugh as I write this because here we are, two people who are side by side on this journey through life, the weirdness of it all, the terrible amazing frightening surprising beautiful world.  Our experiences are unique and individual and modified by our sexes, but the joy is in our accord, in the telling of our stories, in our 26 years of shared history.

So thank you Tim for all these years together, for restoring my faith in men, for choosing me when you were only 24 years old - amazing!  I am so lucky to have found such a lovely lover, such a good friend, such a great father to my girls and then our boys.  I hope to celebrate many more things, including birthdays, with you. 

Here is another picture I took of Tim (and THE MESSY CAKE) tonight, quite blurry and strange, but nice nonetheless.

In Campagny will be continued tomorrow.

Day 188

The Meadow experience.

Firstly:  The woman who was the child in the story yesterday, never held her friend to blame.  She hated the other girls, she never hated her friend, who was not a part of it in her head.  And she has wondered and worried all day if she had hurt this friend by her words, and hopes that she hasn't.  The experience was revisited by her as an example, because of a hurtful experience she has just had, a similar rejection experience, because people don't really become nicer with age, cruelty has no age limits. 

Such a strange thing has happened.  My very first International Baccalaureate (IB) student graduated two years ago, and I still teach his brother.  They are great kids, artistic and stable, one an introvert, the other the extrovert, and they really like each other, which is unusual for boys.  They can't remember ever fighting.   They have always believed that they are Canadians, but their parents were arrested as Russian spies a few days ago!  I have had quite a lot of interaction with the mother, and I was quite fond of her.  She always made it a point to come in when she fetched the kids, to have a little friendly chat, as we had a connection while she was on my jury when we chose work for the very first art exposition, and she even took me out to lunch with her son once he had completed his IB exam.  I am sad for the younger son in particular, as he still has two years of high school left.

Such a strange thing to do, to lead a double life.  In Grahamstown in 1986, there was a double agent named Olivia who had us all fooled.  She was one of the most left of the "lefties", had sexual affairs with both black and white activists, and was good friends with several prominent anti-government people.  How do they do it?  How do you look out at the world with your two-faced eyes, look your 'friend' in the eye, and not confess everything?  If the eyes are mirrors to the soul, how did she draw curtains over them?

And these spies in Cambridge, how did they lie so utterly to their own children?  To live my life with integrity is of the utmost importance, to teach my children by example.  How do you do this when you are living a lie?

Today at the library (the best library in the world), I took back a whole bag of books I had had for a while, as I have not been able to get there for the past two weeks.  I had received a list of outstanding books from the librarian last week and handed them all in today, all but one.  The chief librarian is on vacation, so the retired librarian was on duty.

So I approach the counter to check out my new books, and she discovers that there's a note suspending my library privileges until ALL the books are back.  She is more crestfallen than I am!  She reckons that the chief librarian must have received nasty letters or phone calls from the other libraries from where my books came, and this is why she had made this note in my file.  I tell her not to worry, it's fine, but she says, "I can always put them on your son's card," with a big smile, which is what she does.

I love that kind of bending of the rules!  After all, she has known me for 5 years now, knows I am a good person, knows my sons, we have a shared love of reading, and only one book is missing, probably at school, so it WILL come back.  It made me feel good, made me feel worthwhile, it was an honour she bestowed on me.

So again it is late and I am using one of my drawings from last week, made on the very first day of the course, my first male model. 

In Campagny (continued)
And then the huge animal turned away, a large rounded back, a small tail unworthy of such a grandiose creature, down a seemingly invisible path, gracefully, with deliberate movements, and swayed off out of sight. 
Luca breathed more easily as Beeze returned to her perch on his head.
"You have no forest elephants?" she asked him, "in your time?"
"No," and he shuddered, "Why are they so big?"
"Well, that is like asking, Why do parrots lay eggs?" she replied.  "They just do.  And elephants just are. Big.  Are there no animals left in your time?"
"Oh yes, there are big cats, like tigers and leopards, who are taught to attack, all the Raidars have them.  And there are little cats, which some people like to keep, and there are dogs..." and he shuddered again.
"Are there no wild animals left?"
"Wild means to live free, no?  Then no, there are no wild animals, except for insects."
"And birds?"
"Yes, there are 7 different types where I live, and there are parrots who live in cages, kept with people.  And there are even some who don't."
It was Beeze's turn to shudder at the thought of parrots in cages.
"Is it a bad place, where you live?"
"Yes."
And after a couple of thoughts floated up out of their heads, took a good look at one another before disappearing above the trees, they went on through the darkening forest, onward towards First Town.

Day 187

Green frog and salad for lunch.

Once there was a child who loved her best friend the most that any six-year-old heart could love.  They were inseparable, really, they told everyone they were twins.  Although it would have been hard to believe, the one so skinny and sickly, blonde and blue-eyed, the other healthy and strong, dark wavy pony-tail and big brown eyes.

When they started school, the child was put into the next grade after two days, because her father had taught her to read when she was four.  She couldn't understand why she was being punished.  Her best friend was drawn into the first grade group of girls while she was lost among the older second grade kids, who treated her like the freak they saw her as, the teachers skivvy, being used to read whole books aloud to the class while the teacher graded their notebooks at the desk. 

Sometimes she saw her friend at recess, and they could sit together and eat their lunch, but one day she came out late to the playground, to find her friend part of a larger circle of girls, all sitting cross-legged on the ground.  When she went to sit next to her friend, they all scooched up close, knees touching one another so that there was no room for her.  She heard their sniggering as she moved away.

Such deep cutting striations children suffer, the cruelty of others.  Years later, the grown-up can go back instantly to that day, to herself as a child.  She knew the saying "Sticks and stones can break my bones, but names can never hurt me!"  was a load of codswallop, but it was something to strive for, and that was probably its point.  Character-building, if you can steer past all that hurt, absorb it, let it flow slowly out. 

No running today, there was a warning for people with heart or respiratory diseases to take it easy, due to the high temperatures causing bad air quality.  I was happy to oblige.  It hit 100F in Boston today, 97F here, with so much humidity, it was hard even for me to deal with. 

I found another quick drawing I did of the model Myra.


In Campagny (continued)
Luca stood a while and let the feeling wash over and through him.  His eyes stung.  He felt in his pocket for his drawing of her.  He did not take it out, just felt it, knew it, remembered her. 

Then they went on, the little green bird and the tall and bony young man.  He told Beeze she could sit on his shoulder if she liked, but she chose to stand on his head, clutching his curls with her delicate claws, giving him directions every now and then.  She told him she would take him to First Town, where he could begin looking for Norena.

They were in a forest now, with a dappled floor of mulchy leaves, as after rain.  Luca preferred the shadows, felt more at ease in the gloom, although he had never seen such trees, thick trunks, so tall and branched that he couldn't see the tops of them.

And out of the corner of his eye, glimpses of large grey shapes now and then, although he couldn't be sure, but the thought of forest monsters scared him a little, although Beeze seemed unperturbed.   

They rounded a place of rock and undergrowth, coming face to face with an enormous grey animal, possessed of a long kind of arm at the end of its face, giant teeth jutting out from either side, and huge flaps on each side of its head.  A Forest-Monster!  Luca stopped dead.  

But Beeze flew up to perch on the central arm and chatted cordially to the strange creature in an odd language, which seemed to be very quiet and consisted mostly of waiting, so that Luca found that he could barely hear them. 

Day 186

Clouds from the car.

3.17km today in the morning, day 2 of a possible 7-day heatwave.  The sun beating down from above, steaming up from the ground below, me sandwiched in between!  Molly lying down in a patch of dry shade, waiting for me to re-appear, she just couldn't be bothered.  So hot!

But I won't complain.  I long for summer when it is snowing and frozen outside, I love the warmth of these months, swimming in the sea, not having to put on a million clothes before you go outside.  I just feel bad for the birds and animals who must be suffering in this heat-wave.  When you have attained a certain age, or acquired a certain wisdom as a thinking person, you realise that there is always a bad side to every good thing.  Like this weather, which has everyone so happy that it is so hot on  a holiday, that the sea is 9 or 10 degrees hotter than it should be at this time of year, that it hasn't rained for a while.  The sea being warmer does not bode well for various sea-creatures, and our dam is drying up, the water just evaporating away!

Lily is lying in the Lily-lounge under the fan tonight, which is blowing cooler air, but this afternoon I had to lure her out of there and shut the door, it was so hot I feared she was baking, that skinny little body covered with moth-eaten fur.  And the piggy upstairs, I took her a swimming pool, a shallow plate filled with water, into which she plopped and lay there looking smug and cool.  Funny little innocents, these strange animals with whom we share our lives. 

I think this is the last of my sketches and drawings.  Tomorrow I will have to produce a new one, I've kind of been cheating using all these.

In Campagny (continued)
"How did you think of that?" 
"My mother always asks me riddles, questions.  She has trained me to use my mind like fast steps," Luca replied. "Is that the answer?"
"Oh, no, but it is an answer I like." 
The green parrot suddenly took off.  Luca strained to see her path, but she disappeared higher up the mountain. 
He felt that he should wait, so, pushing away the thought of his mother with her long grey braid swishing down her back as she walked in front of him, he stood and took everything in, the vast flourishing valley with its land-farms and small towns, the sea in the far distance with  its water-farms that he recognised from Norena's descriptions.  It was indeed beautiful.  Hard for his eyes to adjust to, everything clean and bright.
Beeze re-appeared with another smaller parrot.  "This is Farley, he will be the guard now.  I will come with you.  I like this boy.  Come, Looker."
They were up on a ledge above the valley, and Luca took a long time to thread his way down through the rocks and slabs.  Beeze was patient with him, practicing long swoops on the thermals,or perching on a small tree along the way and using the time to preen her graceful little wings. 

He was actually surprised how many trees there were growing on the mountain itself, and then, seeing their pattern, realised that they had all been planted by people.  His mother had been a planter of seeds, a raiser of young green things, a raiser of him.  He felt a sharp pain remembering her loss.  Since it had happened, he had only allowed himself small glimpses of the pain, but this one hit him unawares and he was nearly felled by the force of it.