The Scriveners Review..vol 2…#1.

    The Scriveners Review. 

    For the Murray Mallee and regions.                                Vol. 2 # 1.

                 We know that mysterious spirits do twist and spin,

             With eddys and currents, past river cliff and bend,

                          To lazily tease a dreamer’s dreams

                       From away upstream, to the river’s end.

                                A selection of poems and stories by local writers.

                                       Our motto: “Art not just for art, but for culture’s sake”.

                                         Selected and edited by Helen Tuxford and Joe Carli.

Dear Readers.

I invite you to immerse yourselves in a revitalised arts movement we are attempting to create with this humble review. It can be called ; “The Romantic Movement Reborn”..yes, reborn into the twenty- first century, reborn into a cynical and materialist age where creative arts and crafts are only considered for their “bottom-line value”, ie; what is it worth and is there a market for it?

Art has a social obligation…a social objective , but it has been perverted by a market mechanism. There is a serious distortion of our perceptions of achievement within the realms of creativity once we accept the lie of “art for art’s sake” , this is a postmodern prescription and debasement of a noble act. We have given over both riches and recognition to those who ill deserve and abuse both and we receive (unlike our caveman ancestor with their rock-art paintings) little or no representations of our collective struggles in return.

“art” does not exist in itself, but rather as an adjunct to physical experience and cultural existence!… it is not a separate construction of the imagination. No longer do we aspire to the heroic deed or moment as depicted in The Odyssey or The Aenied, or even in the later mythologies of modern people just going about their everyday lives, easier to descend to the lowest common denominator of cruel brutality. Elitism that has captured our culture in “art” has created a dearth of imagination in the population, a denial of the humanist / emotional centre needed in all creativity.

With this humble publication, we wish to revitalise that emotional centre most lacking in the bigger world of “corporate art” or as it is called; “The Art Industry”. The editors want to encourage the promotion of an older age of arts and craft along with creative writing that best examples and fulfills that knowing hunger for a more emotional involvement, a more romantic viewing of the world around us and our culture in the community.

“Onward, Excelsior!”

Index…

Stories: 1) Snips and snails and puppy dog tales….Joe Carli.

              2) The Third Alternative…………………Helen Tuxford.

              3) The Girl in the Blue Dress…………….Ambrose Quint.

Intermission of poems and pics……………………Helen Tuxford, Kateri Duke, Joe Carli and Clarice Proudthorpe.

Part Three:

Topical Articles and such: …………………………Pietr Howse, Joe Carli and Janice Prinze.

. . . Snips and Snails and puppy dog tails. . .

Spiny Echidna, by; Patricia Hopwood-Wade..( www.pjpaintings.com )

Spiked Echidna.

Just up-river and around a few bends, around ten miles from the main town of the region (I think you know the one I mean), lay the little hamlet of “Spiked Echidna”…the name arising from the government surveyor who set out the village remarking on the surprising number of echidnas in that particular area. It consisted of a small cluster of multi-ethnic families that settled here during and after the Great Depression, along with a smattering of soldier settlers, when the government made land available for the many new arrivals from overseas and other families driven by unemployment and poverty to these and many other regional centres along The Murray River.

The landscape around “Spike”( the shortening of the longer name being a common thing in Australian lingo) was mostly flat or shallow undulating, this is where most of the old pioneer farming families settled and farmed, but the little hamlet we are describing was a descent into gullies, shallow creeks when it rained and a general wasteland that was seen as of no use to the practice of farming, hence the giving over to use of the “sussos” that came in desperation to find and build a home for their family.

The main line of the railway passed nearby, and several quarries suitable for ballast when the railway was first built now lay idle and tempting for local kids to climb and scramble about in. There was a long, high embankment where the rail swept across those gullies toward and away from the regional town..in the days of steam locomotives, lumps of coal from the fuel-tender behind the engine would sometimes fall off or the fireman stoker, in a moment of boredom would hurl at a rabbit sighted near the track..and in time there was a scattering of these lumps that the kids used for marking on flat surfaces drawings of various and innocuous graffiti.

There were several religious creeds among the families, the most favoured being Catholic and Protestant..of which with the “Proddos”, there were several synods of arguable interpretations of their beliefs..the Catholics to a family were in agreeance, but poor..the proddo kids would tease the “mick” kids with a chant ; “Catholic dogs stink like frogs”, which would draw the inevitable hail of stone missiles in retaliation..but when it came to play, it was one in-all in.

Over time, some of the families of Spiked Echidna came to run small shops and cafes in the large, regional town, and even in the main street of Spike itself..one of these families was the Fookes..they started up a fish and chip shop where there was little consideration that such an enterprise could succeed. Mr Fookes was a fisherman who, with his sons, had a camp on the seashore over on the peninsula, where he would spend a week away catching, cleaning and freezing the fish before taking it to the fish market and bringing a required amount home to sell in the shop, the sea-caught fish complementing the river catch of Callop or Murray Cod. His wife ran the shop and cooked the fish and chips and it became a wonder of the local community.

Mrs Fookes, who, by the way, was the second wife of the fisherman, had the voice and stride like a sergeant major..she would call for her only child and he would hear her loud and clear half a mile away!…and woe betide him if he didn’t heed her call.

But she ran the fish shop built by her fisherman husband at the high spot of the carpark that led to the rocky shore there at the river bend of our neighbourhood..the gathering place of a mix of many nations and ages, young folk of both genders..young kids of the boomer generation who framed a collective there of social sharing and support that relied upon Mrs. Fookes’s  generosity as the backbone of our little collective…she was a saint, even if she didn’t realise it.

Spiked Echidna, with its inhabitants of Dutch, Latvian, Scottish, German, Irish and some of dubious parentage altogether, became ‘fellow travelers’ in that poverty enriched neighbourhood  in the foothills on the edge of  “forever”.

By a coincidental twist of fate, while the adults, many of them migrant survivors of a world war, in some cases two wars, an economic depression that impoverished so many, were a motley collection of spiritually broken , in some cases physically broken individuals, who were subjected to the corrupting influence of conservative thinking and propaganda that drove a wedge of fear into their susceptible hearts, their “multi-mix” children, with an improved diet of high protein, clean water, fresh air and unsupervised, unregulated freedom on the wide reaches of  the river, grew into wild free-spirited youths, who found rebellion against the restraints of conservative lifestyle as easy as diving off “Sharkey rock” into a clean , cool river. The young men and women that grew from such a healthy outdoors environment, grew bodies that glowed with a shimmering water-silvered endowment that drew the envy of the gods!

Having no money and no capacity to travel far, all the children congregated in a tribal-like conglomerate on the shoreline. There was nothing in the stultifying doctrine of Catholicism or the Protestant work ethic that could not be laughed off under the pagan influence of sun , river and freedom and the merciful salvation of Fookes’s Fish and Chip Shop.

Ahh!..Mrs. Fookes..never did she know how much she helped create a revolution in her own small way, by her unconnected generosity to the local kids. From behind the counter of that unique fish and chippery, she contributed to the making of “baby-boomer” revolutionaries. She may have had a stride like a parade-ground Sergeant Major, and a voice to match..but her heart was of pure gold. She wasn’t like “Aunt Mary”, the railway porter on the train station who would line the kids up and threaten any delinquents that she would cut their heads off and put a cabbage in its place if’n she had any more cheek!

Mrs. Fookes saw how so many were scrawny kids hungry for a decent bit of daytime tucker, scrounging around for empty cool-drink bottles left behind by the weekend tourists to cash in for a bob’s worth of chips..one of the kids would go inside with a few bottles at threepence each return deposit and Mrs Fookes would dish out more than a shillings chips and sometimes throw in a piece of fish that “was just laying around waiting for a mouth to eat…and there’s a couple extra chips”, or a “ potato pattie for your little plump friend (Maris) there at the door…he looks hungrier than the rest of you!” and the booty was all shared around amongst many..right down to greasy fingers dabbing up even the last salt grains..’all for one, one for all’…till she worked out a way to legitimise her care by pointing one day to some large empty glass jars in an alcove by the counter..”Listen you kids” she said in her commanding voice, “I want some interesting shells and things to make a river-world display for the customers to look at while they wait..if you bring me something interesting or curious from the river, I will give you some fish and chips in return…but it’s gotta be interesting, mind!” and she wagged a finger in warning to not try any silly buggers with her..and she meant it!..and she stuck to her word…The kids would bring their little treasures from Moorundi’s (The local indigenous name for The Murray River) hoard and she’d exchange for tucker…strange twisted and shaped shells, dug out from their wedge in the cliffs…the dried, hollowed out husks of exquisite yabbies and the like…little treasures given up by the river..they brought them to Mrs. Fookes like Fagan’s pickpockets seeking reward for their efforts! Did anyone then realise what this meant, this system of barter ?..It meant freedom!..liberated from going home during the day for food..No longer under the parents watchful eyes the children were free to create their own river-side society from morning to late afternoon,without oversight or consultation with adults!..God bless Mrs. Fookes!..and may a warm fire be forever burning in her hearth and warm slippers handy on a cold night…God bless her.

Mind you, she had to have a pretty tough hide to handle her fisherman husband ; Edgar Gordon Fookes…a stone-cutter by trade, fisherman by choice and garrulous old bastard by nature. Edgar and his sons from the first marriage, had a fishers camp on the Peninsula, where they would set out to their secret fishing grounds and catch choice fish to clean and put on ice which Edgar would deliver straight back to the shop..never were fresher fish, more delicious fish and chips served to a long queue of faithful customers..so deep at the counter on a Friday night till a ticketing system had to be introduced to maintain order and fair turn in place with the customers.

Edgar would deliver his catch and then lean against the end of the counter smoking his big, fat meerschaum pipe and observing what he called ‘the idle rich” customers coming and going. He was a garrulous old bloke and the kids held their distance when he was around, saving their moments to barter with the kindly Mrs. Fookes when he was away.

Edgar Fookes wasn’t one to be messed around with..story goes that once, in the Fish-market auctions, the independent fishermen were sick and tired of the auctioneer placing their catches down the sale list, even though they could very often be the first there with their lot, just to satisfy and be rewarded by the big corporate fishing companies..one day Edgar challenged the auctioneer on this unfair matter…the auctioneer told him to shut it or else he’ll be last on the list!…Where upon Edgar snatched up a gummy-shark, swung it a couple of times around his head an whalloped the auctioneer off the dias and proceeded to do his own mock auction in place!

One day , on a quiet afternoon, Edgar was “resting” on his arm at the end of the counter watching a matronly tourist lady in heavy fur coat peruse with concerned expression and a pair of  prinz nez opera glasses the trays of select fish in the display fridge…after several sweeps in this manner, Edgar could be observed huffing and puffing in an agitated way on his pipe..Edgar prided himself on the freshness and quality of his catch..Finally, the matron straightened up and dropping her glasses to her bosom, addressed Mrs. Fookes behind the counter.

“ Madam,“ she spoke in a ‘Toorak Gardens’ dialect ,“Are these fish frrrrresh?”.

This was too much for Edgar to take lying down! He swiftly sidled up to the lady and taking his pipe with a sudden but measured movement from his mouth , he looked her square in the eye and informed her using the slighting terminology of the times in a mocking emulation of the lady’s own accent;

“Madam!…if they were any frrrrresher…they’d be indecent!” and he turned abruptly away to resume his place at the end of the counter..huffing and puffing at his pipe.

Joe Carli.

Guido Reni…St Mathew and the Angel.

THE 3rd ALTERNATIVE

Part Three

The sick man was resting, though he was not asleep. We brought him food, and made him as comfortable as was possible, supporting him with pillows so that he could eat and drink, for he was weak and spent. Mindful of Waltheof’s words, we left him as soon as it was apparent that he could feed himself without assistance.

When we returned, later, the broth and the fruit were gone, though the bread remained uneaten. This was unusual, for the people of Clach Thoul snatch all the food that we give them, and then demand, with unpleasant words and threats, more.

We tidied the room, placed water by the bedside of the man who lay so quietly there, and when we were sure that he had all that he needed, left a rush light burning in the little niche on the wall, too high for him to reach, bathed, and climbed the steep flights of steps to the sanctuary. Pileb, when he stopped briefly at my door late that eve, said that the new arrival seemed calm, and his breathing steadier.

Already half asleep, I only nodded, for our day is very long, and the time of repose not to be wasted, and Pileb wished me a good night, and went on to his own chamber.

The summer that year was harsh, and the toll on the unwanted in their pitiful shelters high. Most of those brought to our house needed only the services of Hagraade, the sewer, and Aviv, with his shovel. During the evenings following, only one woman survived the journey in the wagon, and she was so cruelly wasted that we were not surprised when she died early in the dawn.

For the most part, therefore, the sick man was the only occupant of the hospice. He slept often, though not always soundly, and with food and rest, grew a little stronger. Though weak, he could attend to his own small, personal needs, and was beginning, I thought, to take some interest in his surroundings, for now and then his glance rested on Pileb’s or Waltheof’s face, though he kept still his strange silence.

‘If he wishes to reach out, he will speak,’ Waltheof said, but through those lingering summer days, the man in the hospice seemed wrapped in some private inner world of his own. And glancing at his face, when Pileb and I attended to him, I did not think that it was a pleasant world.

On the fifth afternoon, however, when I took food to him before I went to complete my work for the day, his bed was empty. I stood perplexed, with the tray that held the customary bowl of broth, and a dish of freshly picked strawberries, in my hands.

It is a common enough practice for those who recover from their sickness or fever to return to their own as soon as they are capable of doing so. But I did not think that this man had strength enough to walk more than a very short distance, and even though he had not communicated with us with any but the briefest and simplest of gestures, I did not think him foolish enough to attempt that which was beyond his capabilities.

I put the tray on the table that stood in the centre of the room, walked through the shadowed hallway, and on to the arbour that is situated near the walls of the hospice.

This area is a pleasant corner, being sheltered by an ancient fig tree, whose great branches give a cool shade in even the hottest seasons, and ivy and sorcerer’s violet grow along the base of the low wall that enclose it. Long ago, members of our house laboured to pave it with stone slabs, and there are a few seats, rough enough, but with the hill breeze in the evenings, or the dense shadows of the fig tree in the afternoon, it is always a peaceful retreat.

The man had managed to walk as far as the first seat, but no further – the face that he turned towards me, when I stepped through the doorway, was white and set, and I saw that the short journey had taken all of his strength and endurance.

I began to speak.- to remonstrate, I think, but he spoke, saying, quite matter of factly, ‘I was hungry for the cool air blowing. It is good to feel its touch upon my face once more.’

I was surprised into silence. His voice, despite the pain from which he was obviously suffering, was steady and assured. It was not the kind of voice we usually heard from the unwanted.

But his hands were gripping the edges of the wooden seat. ‘You are the one they call Yonagalde, I think. Is that your name, lad?’

I said, ‘Yes, I am Yonagalde, wondering if I could manage to help him back to the hospice without assistance, or if I should need Pileb’s aid.

‘Perhaps you can tell me how long I have been here. I seem to have lost track of the days.’

‘Four evenings ago, we brought you from Clach Thoul in the wagon – Aviv and I.’

‘Clach Thoul,’ he repeated. ‘Is that how it is known now?’

‘That is the name it has been given,’ I said.

‘Clach Thoul,’ he said again, and a shudder seemed to pass through him. He said wearily, ‘Two days, it may be, that I wandered around the huts, seeking a safe refuge, and finding none. I had no food, and not strength enough to fight for any. A woman gave me water.’

A small breeze rustled the heavy leaves of the fig tree, and I saw his hands relax slightly on the edges of the seat. ‘Do you know,’ he said, ‘how dreadful that place is? You bury the dead from there, but why is it that you dare not extend the same pity to the living?’

I could have told him that Aviv and I risk death each time that we take the wagon to Clach Thoul. Yet that is a choice that we have made.

‘Once,’ I said, ‘we endeavoured to help the unwanted in every way possible. But two of our house were murdered, by the stream, late in the winter. Now we are forbidden to do little more than provide a grave for those who die, and care for the feeble and the sick.’

He was silent for a short time, struggling, I think, with weakness and fatigue. ‘I have wronged you, then, in my thinking,’ he said tiredly. ‘I hope you will forgive me for my ignorance.’

His head was bowed; I saw – or perhaps I thought I saw – a weight of sorrow in that bowed head. He said, speaking quietly, ‘You and your house have helped me much more than you realize, by giving me a safe place to rest and to contemplate the final step of my journey.’

‘For my lot has been to walk in many lands, to gaze upon their splendour, and their wondrous teeming life – and yet recognize, that all exist, in a vast scale of time that is beyond mankind’s comprehension, for but moments.’

‘Fortune too, has given me a glimpse of the infinity between the worlds, and on such journeyings I was inclined to think that each human span was of little more account than a leaf upon a tree.’

‘Only now, at the end, have I been blessed to have seen humanity at its best, and at its very worst, and begin to understand, at last, the sacred path that each soul treads, the miracle of life and death, the dreams that bind the way between them, and the hopes that light the ways beyond them.’

‘But having accepted this knowledge, I can only take responsibility for my own actions, and my own wrongs. So I must ask myself – have I given more than I received? Have I used what was gifted to me to the best of my ability? How heavy does a judgement fall, on those who have, like myself, disregarded the laws of our kind?’

Many of his words, spoken so quietly, were a little incomprehensible to me. But one I understood well enough.

I said, rather doubtfully, knowing nothing of his beliefs, ‘Would you like to talk to Dubricius, our master? If you are ready to confess your sins and seek atonement for them, he is always willing to listen.’

He managed to smile then, but it was a small, very grim smile. ‘I shall confess my soul, I daresay, soon enough,’ he said. ‘But not in this place, and not to your fox eyed old master. I have no need of him.’

I was silent, not quite understanding his words, but suspecting an insult. He looked at me then – a keen and searching look, from steady eyes, though his face was drawn and pale.

He said quietly, ‘Soon I will die, and I would like one person, at least, to hear the reason why.’

He looked around at the peaceful arbour, his gaze resting on the deep shadows cast by the fig tree. ‘The last vanity of man -I expect is all that it is.’

‘But I need to speak, and if you have a little time to spare, I should be grateful if you would stay. Do you know how to be still, and to listen?’

‘Oh yes,’ I said, and it was the truth that I spoke. For here, where I am the youngest, I am advised to be silent more often than I am invited to express my thoughts.

He said, ‘Then come lad, sit here-beside me, if you will, for my strength is almost done.’

A little reluctantly, thinking that it would be more sensible to persuade him to rest, but impressed too, with some painful urgency in his voice, I sat down on the wooden bench near him, while he told me his story.

Helen Tuxford.

The Girl in the Blue Dress.

Finally!…lunch time..I squeezed our basket shopping trolley between the seats to a table in the crowded Zuma’s Café there at the Central market. We come to this café for lunch every time we come to the market, which is about once a month..it is always crowded at lunchtime..a popular spot…lots of noise..lots of noise…

Michael, the tall Greek bloke who runs it, has a habit of looking around while he is talking to you..like he cannot stop keeping an eye on the running of the place..

“That girl in the blue dress” I button-hole him “ Is she crying or laughing or just shielding her eyes?”

Michael looks about as he answers..

“Oh she’s crying alright..” he nonchalantly answers…somehow , his dead-certain banality annoys me.

“You seem pretty certain of that”.. I frown.

“Yeah..cause it’s written on the back of the photograph … (he makes quotation marks with his fingers) ; “ London…Girl crying”….He wrote what and where it is on every one of the photographs…”

“He?”

“Yeah..old bloke a couple of houses down from me…I knew him just to say hello every now and then…well..he died and his daughter was cleaning out the garage…she was carrying this heavy box and I saw her and I went to help her…it was full of these small , empty picture frames..these ones here on the wall..and I suddenly got the idea to put some sort of pictures in them and hang them on that wall…so I asked her if I could have them to do just that…and she pointed to another box and asked if I wanted some pictures to put in them , because she was going to throw those out too..”

“Throw out his pictures?” I couldn’t understand that.

“Yeah..you see , they weren’t family pics or anything…just as you see here on the wall..The old bloke wandered aimlessly around Europe back in the sixties with a camera taking these random, candid pictures of people, places and things..anything..with no apparent theme in mind…just click, click, click!..and he wrote a name and location on every one…hundreds of them!”

I gazed along the wall of framed photos…buses, street-scapes..random people..strange little people with quirky dress and sometimes doing strange things..pictures from upstair rooms of dark or lighted corners of streets outside..cars going past…abstracts of anonymity..

“That one with the young man on the stairs fiddling with the model building?”..I ask.

“Rome..; Architectural student making finishing touches to his exam model.” Michael quoted from memory. “That interested me” he added.

“…and that one?” I continue..

“…er..can’t remember..I think ; “Leeds…; Lady waiting for bus”..

“Of course she’s waiting for a bus…it’s a bus stop!” I protest..but I see he’s tired of the game and is taking the mick.. We changed subject and he told me about his holiday to Portugal…

We ordered lunch..and from where I sat , I would look up from my meal and I would see the girl in the blue dress….The picture is obviously from the mid-sixties, as she is wearing a mini-skirt of modest proportions, while the older folk around are still dressed in the gloomy, frumpy style of the fifties..There is a fountain in the background and thousands of pigeons milling around on the ground ..a man stands behind a stall of a kind with a hand drawn sign on the counter requesting : “Please return these”..I cannot quite make out what “these” are, but I would guess from all the pigeons they may be small containers for grains to feed to the birds…

But the scene threw me back to a time in my youth, when I was a shy lad..I was an apprentice..about sixteen years old…I used to catch the train to work and about four stops before I had to get off the train, this young woman..a girl then, around the same age as myself, I would say..got on and used to stand at the opposite side of the compartment….

The “compartment” was the open-spaced baggage-car that was always in the middle of the passenger carriages. It was peculiar to the Sth. Aust’ Railways, being based on the American system of rail. As such, it carried those workmen in their overalls and their bags, or sometimes pushbikes in a loose aggregate of silence and styles and dirt…this is where that young woman stood out…she was pure “Carnaby Street”…from her petite shoes to her little red shoulder-strap bag…white stockings, mini-skirt and cute cap…I fell in love with that girl…but damn if I wasn’t too shy (in those days), and perhaps a bit too “working-class” in my overalls, to say a word..and she must have been as shy, the same, because for all that winter and into the summer, we would stand at diagonal point to each other across the carriage, and in that atmosphere of commuter stolidness and silence, we would pretend to be “cold-glancing” around the carriage and then ..our eyes would meet!…(I can close my eyes and see her now..god!..why oh why was I so flamin’ shy?…) and just for that moment we would melt into each other…any of you who have had that experience will know what I mean…our eyes would swim in the other’s lake-of-the-soul..for just that flashing moment..and oh!..the ache of want was almost unbearable..but you had to be careful, because while the commuting public does have the impassive stare of the “undead”, it is all eyes and all ears…”…the eyes are not satisfied with seeing nor the ears filled with hearing..” Ecclesiastes, I believe.

But you know, I never did get to meet her or even say hello..and perhaps it is better that way…for I do believe that for many years afterwards, I sought,( as we all seem fated to do, from when we grow from the child to the adult..we always seek THAT SINGULAR LOVE most denied…) in my male hunger for women , the ideal of that youthful desire.

They do say, and quite truthfully, I believe, that the journey is better than the arriving..so perhaps the “hunger” is better than the “feasting”…but I don’t know….there certainly is some regret…some deep regret…

The girl in the blue dress has her head bent down, with one arm crooked across her waist and the other with her hand cupped over her mouth and partly over her eyes…she looks like she is crying because of something..I can’t stop stealing glances at her..I try not to look too obvious..

I think I may be falling in love with the girl in the blue dress.

Ambrose Quint.

Intermission of Poetry, arts and craft.

Modern Times.

Ship of Fools.

Modern times.

There’s chatter of apparent solutions,

To all such universal problems,

That modern technology could solve,

But actually, there’s no such reality,

Honesty no more is owed fealty,

And all truth is softly dissolved!

The illness is not really cured,

Pockets never really filled,

And for all the saucy dating Apps..

Social media, facebook contacts,

Loneliness seems seldom resolved.

But worse of all is the pomposity,

Their jargon, slogans, accusatory

Proud heads on proud shoulders apparently,

Remain dispiritingly empty,

A cluster of opinion never original,

Would compete with volume immeasurable,

The hot air of a sizable dirigible,

Dribbling a leak, flatuous, unintelligible.

Such is the chatter indecipherable,

Of these modern times.

Clarice Proudthorpe.

                    A FAIRY’S CHILD.    

Little one,

Canst thou be a fairy?

Flying on the wings of wonder,

Chasing rainbow tinted dreams                          

Of childish fantasy?

In a faded green t-shirt,

A length of pink net,

And a pair of limp wings

Bought

From a bargain store.

For the world is very large,

When one is four years old,

Puzzles without questions,

Horizons without end.

But

You can be a fairy,

In a soulless shopping mall,

Colouring that dull world,

With your fairy gold.

For the world is very large,

When you are only four years old.

Monsters in the shadows,

Witches in your dreams;

Dancing in the sunshine,

Sunlight on your wings.

Never lose the magic

Child.

Never lose the magic,

Until you’re grown.

Helen Tuxford.

The Sweet Touch of Melancholy.

History has passed me by.

‘Tis with a sweet touch of melancholy,

I reflect upon my mood today,

‘Twas one of a multiple of simple sayings,

My Irish gran’ had perchance to say..

*

“What you have not gained by age forty-five,

You will never have, no matter the age you survive”.

Now here I am, accrued my three score and ten,

And what I have not gained comes to taunt me again.

*

My moment in history has indeed passed me by,

That moment most desirous for myself to say,

“I am surrounded by what best pleases me, I may,

Now indulge in delightful fantasies, night and day”.

*

But now, in this ghastly, digitalised, parody of life,

I tread soft footfalls to avoid unnecessary strife,

Trying to conjure those spirits of esoteric, fantastic ,

Who do nought but tease me, dancing delightfully erotic.

*

My moment in history may have passed me by,

But in this velvet hiatus of aged life I lay,

Kaleidoscope dreams embracing me by night,

To secure me from snares the wild world lays.

*

And though I ought regret those few chances lost,

They were but fliting moments, chanced on a coin’s toss,

So ‘twould be churlish to recall such opportunity missed,

Then go curse life and all it promised..as but a Judas kiss.

*

Joe Carli.

Kateri’s Statuettes…

The acknowledgement through sculpture of the oneness, the wholeness of motherhood in our social and spiritual lives.

“The wholeness, the oneness of motherhood”.

(Kateri Duke).

“To hold / embrace Earth”.

(Kateri Duke).

Third Part . . .

The Ties that Bind.             

              “Wanderer above a sea of fog.”

 Where I live.

I have opened a new blogger account specifically for this area where I live so as to promote stories and history placed in this locale.. https://underthemalleebough.blogspot.com/ for it is imperative to preserve what I call the “Historical watermark” that has been “impressed” upon a region…it is such a thing that fixes and holds a place in time and works done, and allows the people living there to feel..and that is the correct emotion..”to feel” a part of that history and so identify with confidence to a place where they are living their lives…to destroy the in-situ history of a place is to debase one’s own life..It is why I feel a strange comfort whenever I descent off the higher land down into the Barossa Valley. it is because the old Germanic families and their Lutheran faith still hold control of the administration of the district and they are mostly containing any post-modern, ugliness that raises its development head be it architectural or social, and the towns sited within that valley all have a deeply settled, rooted life of their own..You go into these towns and you can still read the Germanic names on the shops and businesses there….more power to those Germans!

The Murray Flats have a similar historical footprint, except here there is a solid mix of the original Anglo ancestry and development along the Murray River, with the Riverboat traffic and system in situ and the more Anglo-centric governance of the towns here, though the farming areas have the unmistakable influence of those hardy Germanic families still in remnant pockets….also, I have to make point of my own Italian connection to these Flats in that my Father, along with many other Italians coming earlier to the region around the twenties and thirties, than the post-war migration waves, were interned during the war years to cut / burn charcoal in the Blanchetown region to contribute to the war effort..and it was here that my father met my mother; of Anglo/Irish descent, a servant girl in both Punyelroo and Portee stations before/during the war…so I too have a solid connection and emotional tie to the history of the district..

As a consequence, I feel more at home here in the Murray Mallee than I did where I was born and grew up, THOSE coastal locales now suffering from a dismantling of any recognisable cultural tie to both myself and those neighbours and friends I grew up with..the history has been lost..whereas here, there remains that emotional recognition of “where it all began” on both sides of the family..; the Italian and the Anglo heritage, plus the Aunties that married into the Germanic connections in the district…THAT is the “Historical watermark”..THAT is “the tie that binds”.

Joe Carli.

My reply to Miriam.

Frans Hals..”Young Man and Woman in an Inn.”

My answer to a lady on a social media blog on the virtue of sobriety in life.

Miriam…I could, I suppose send you a flippant reply replete with obtuse witticism and exchange banter on the subject for a period of posts and time..But perhaps this is the time we..and others here give some thought to the subject of what constitutes a well-lived life.
Your attitude promoting a higher level of sobriety in life can be seen as noble..perhaps even inspirational…but speaking personally..having “sailed thru’ the storms of vicissitude” on life’s seas, and now reaching 74yrs. in a reasonable state of body health and sanity (touch wood!)…I have held most dear to myself those youthful memories of many “wasted nights” of boozy behaviour shared with those many, and some who have, unfortunately, fallen by the wayside, and it could have been me, some through alcohol abuse that led to motor accidents and other disasters…some through failed health through the over use of the drug..but still, of all the times I have regret from my own inebriated state and my actions within that state…I could fairly say that the path trod was a worthy one with little remorse…NOT necessarily with saintly virtue..as I have demonstrated enough times..and let us reflect on the sober truth that if Mother Theresa had a couple of dirty little secrets hidden away from her image of saintly virtue (as we now know she had!), then there is little hope for the rest of us!…and I reflect that along the way I have gathered from the verge of that most perilous road, a veritable armful bouquet of the most beautiful wild flowers of observed experiences..many of which I share with strangers on here as elsewhere…and as for the lessons of sober experience over drunken foolishness…I lean toward the latter…because a fool at least has a chance to redeem themselves by the gaining of wisdom, and folk will praise him for his endeavour, similarly as a drunk has of getting sober…yet the wise person, having fallen into foolishness (a state easily gained and sometimes readily accepted ) will forever be tainted by the memory and the reminders of those around him, of the height from which he may have fallen…of “the person they used to be”…
There are many parables and examples of the pitfalls that lead any one of us into the dreaded perdition of scandal and abuse…off the top of my head as universal example we have that movie : “The Blue Angel” with Marlene Dietrich …and of course there is the always handy the biblical “Parable of The Pounds”…

Of course, exemplar society and graceful manners will back your position everyday to the hilt..I..have NO social claim to state my case upon…for “success in life’s pursuit” is STILL measured in the cut of one’s cloth and the fatness of one’s material portfolio…even clever Oscar Wilde, I believe died in a gutter..but then I never was one to bow my scruffy neck to the rule of social order and good manners..Besides..I would never have gained this repertoire of yarns without some sort of skewed outlook on life, and as a by-word, I might offer a warning to any who wish to hear, of the perils of entering the grinding maw of old age stone-cold sober.
Bon Appétit !

Pietr Howse.

The Phoney Peace.

Francisco Goya.

The Phoney Peace.

Know this: Delusion is a necessity..Without a delusion of empire, Rome would never have been birthed. Without the delusion of everlasting life, religion would never have been able to overcome death..Without our own individual illusions, we would never be capable of aspiring toward our own version of “success”.

We all have read of the hiatus leading up to the outbreak of conflict that was the second world war which was referred to in those days as; “The Phoney War”..as indeed it turned out to be, when the Axis powers were arming up to commence operations against the Allied powers. In these times, the opposing powers are already “armed and dangerous” and there is no end of proxy wars being constructed and maintained in the interests of the West’s military industrial complex that has an interest also in claiming it is doing so to “protect” the citizens of xyz nations, so to allow this mega-expensive activity to continue, there has to be compensation given to the citizen body financing the economics of “eternal war” …in this activity, there is employed that ancient Roman philosophy of “bread and circuses” to both entertain and distract the citizen body so as to maintain the delusion that all is well on the home front..all is at peace…a phoney peace!

But the difference between the crude Roman intent of keeping the plebs’ amused and this modern time of keeping the plebs’ feeling comfortably secure, is while the first was so obvious blatant bribery, we in these times have a completely coordinated system of confected social envelopment of total immersion in a soporific will-o-the-wisp, soma-like comforting existence..that we call; “transparency”..but all is false, all is fake, all is delusion..but done so well, so precise in its exacting fitting parts with the total coordination of a consciousness of kind demographic in subconscious agreement..and there is the total delusion of a society chained to a doomed and sinking vessel, a victim of its own mute inertia of mutually beneficial purpose.

We, in our home often relent to using online streaming to watch television in the evenings. Mainly drama in the variety of crime or spy thrillers etc. ..after a while, one becomes inured to the graphic violence, the predictable characters, plot and story-lines but not the scenic views so that when the run of one series ends we go scrolling for another among the Nordic noir or the Franco noir or even the Eastern blok countries noir…but there’s the rub, after a while, you get the feeling that they are really at base, all the same..: “Haven’t we seen this one before?” I’ll ask and the partner will hunch his shoulders in questioning…because, you see, they really ARE all the same…with the same objective I believe..and that is to push a similar agenda of unease in the strange, uncertainty in an ideal and perhaps even the comfort of the portrayed guilty getting their come-uppence from the “good guys”…ie; us, the Western ideology cabal. But then, if all is of the like or at least so similar as to be familiar, where is the creativity..the new art?..it certainly is not in the pastiche plots and story-lines of commercial entertainment, possibly because in these times of “bottom-line” profit demand, the familiar is gold, while the untried creative talent is “a worry” to be avoided until it too becomes a certainty and THAT is only achieved by entrance into the collegiate of “renowned artists clique” scouted and managed by entrepreneurial executives or their accountants, in keeping with the old Greek saying : “It’s NOT what you know, nor WHO you know, but rather; who knows YOU”!

So I cannot help but have this feeling of unease as I watch the news, current events, sports and other entertainments…it all seems similar, confected, all is alike; outrage when outrage is called for, cheering when cheering is called for, weeping when weeping is called for..protesting when…well, I think you must get my drift..and I ask; where is the sudden, the impromptu, the wild creativity of these times…the Puccini, Rossini, Tchaikovsky et al…where are the crazy James Joyces and Dostoyevskies of our times?…or is the blancmange bleaching out of the demons that drive the La beta humanie also washing out the creative angels of the wild spirit of humanity?

Janice Prinze.

Invitation!
To anyone interested in this publication, or to those wishing to contribute to the continuation of a literary magazine dedicated to the region of the Murray Mallee and Murray River and its environs. We, the editors of this publication invite you to send feedback to our email address or to simply telephone us on the supplied number to either make comment on the contents, presentation or give your opinion on how best to present the cultural variations, past, present and future of this region.
Our aim is to create specific cultural / social identification of the region from the eastern hills face, to the river..from Morgan to Mannum, by using story and social history to imprint this area with its own indelible “watermark” that says; “THIS is the Murray Mallee region”.
So please, if you want to contribute to future publications or simply get in touch, our email is : jaysee423@gmail.com or telephone : 85652256. And ask for Joe Carli.