Bird

Run

Bird was like a bird, small, restless, scared and free. She didn't allow her expectations to be moderated by empirical constraints, for her, there was only a shifting horizon and the long white lines on the freeway. She followed them up the east coast to Nimbin in her little blue Mazda once. The highway encircled mountain ranges and pristine forests nudged the shore.

Bega had an easy feeling. She bought organic muesli out of vats from Candelo Bulk, joined a pottery co-op and drove through Tantawangalo State Forest to buy clay from Walkers in Canberra. On her way back a thick mist enveloped the mountain peak, she couldn't see the car in front of her. Matt crossed her path, a sculptor with kind eyes and stringy hair.
"You keen on a game of soccer?" he asked. His voice was reassuring.
"No" she answered defensively, then apologised for being snappish.

"It's like trying to catch your reflection in a pool of water, that's what I know of love" she told him.
He hugged her. When Matt lost his child, he experienced a sorrow of immeasurable depth which rendered him unable to speak. Words flew through the air in disjointed sequences for others to arrange in the order of their choosing. Lark could see some of them hovering between the sink and the compost bucket as they stood at the kitchen bench making dal.
"So what happens at men's group?" she asked.
"Primal screaming mostly." 

Matt occupied her thoughts until she left Candelo and moved toward the subtropical hills of the hinterland.

She continued her search for paradise but began to miss home. Back in Melbourne though, Bird had the jitters. Months of sleeplessness induced a kind of somnambulant state and time lost its meaning. She decided on a sea change and moved into a decaying beach house down the coast with peeling paint a rambling garden.

The trees along the dunes drew her to Seaford, she hoped for a sanctuary on the outskirts of Melbourne. Bird visited the sea to observe it's changing moods. There was a pier. Black mildew enveloped the ghostly piles, braced together with thick, rusted iron bolts. She liked to stand on the deck or sit on the low driftwood bench and stare at the gaping tide. Distance from land created space in her mind.

Run

Birds of different species huddled on the bank. A dying bough cast its reflection in the still, muddy water. Bird walked down a track through the papery trees. Slender limbs grew from the roots in waves sculpted by the sea wind and feathery offshoots entwined like giant nests. They grew in groves and their branches enmeshed to create sheltered spaces. In those spaces, a small fraction was returned to Bird, the rest remained beyond her reach. Things were lost to her over time….memories, dreams, people, big loves and passing whims.

The wet sand was littered with tiny shells. Bird remembered collecting shells as a child, big opalescent shells with spikes and stripes, the ocean whispered as she held them to her ear. She kept a dried seahorse and a starfish in a padded plastic Walt Disney case filled with textas.

She walked along the pier and could see her silhouette in the water. It's arm moved as she waved at her ephemeral self quivering on the surface of the tide. A group of men were fishing on the edge of the deck, the ocean was restive and grey green. She could see someone swimming out to the yellow buoys, he looked up at her as he passed the jetty and she looked away. The air was damp and the waves, persuasive.

Michael was persuasive.
"Have another drink with me" he insisted.
He told her stories about people she used to know and about his travels. He remembered that she sent him a card and that it said something beautiful. It was easier to write because somehow words between them didn't say what they were meant to. He eclipsed her, a little bit like looking into a mirror and seeing nothing there. Michael was older but his eyes still danced.

"It's strange the way I seem to attract people who have OCD" he confided. She could have said something but really didn't want to talk about it.

Pace

Waves rippled like jelly in the breeze. The tide was low, she could see the sand and shells on the ocean floor. Light patterns flickered across the water's surface creating an infinite number of interlocking curves. She stared at the cadaverous logs rising from their tepid foundations. Deep grooves ran down their pallid surfaces where sun and salt made fissures in the wood grain. In the water they were black with a ghoulish quality, as though bearing with them secrets from the deep. Seagulls with beady eyes and bulging abdomens swam in the shallows and stood at the shore, watching. A woman shrieked and laughed in the distance. Tiny white bubbles stepped across the sand, they rested and dissolved. The current rocked and swelled.

She sat on the bench overlooking the water. Birds swam lazily and light touched the waves behind them. Her feet joined with the planks, blood pulsing through her heavy limbs. The balmy sun slowed her thoughts. A cormorant made percussive sounds like a church bell, then moved away. She was conscious of thought fragments like pieces of a jigsaw which don't fit. Spores with long, fine spindles rolled across the water, the wind made them dance. She sensed a need to recall something old, and searched the recesses of her mind. Her mind drifted.

On her way home she passed a sleeping row of houses bordering the river. Every now and then she met someone walking their dog and reminded herself to make eye contact, they always said good morning. The shrubs arched their dry branches over the walking track, scattering light across the grooves in the sand. There was a side street with a tall row of gum trees leaning protectively over the narrow road. She looked down at her feet treading the sandy path and listened to the rhythmic paddle of her thongs. Sand scratched her soles. She passed Isla walking to the shop. Isla lived in the caravan park on the highway.
"Must be nice here with the river so close" she suggested.
"They can keep the river" Isla replied.

He was a self contained child who didn't say much. He was watching the merry go round in the playground, further away from her each time she looked back. His brown hair lay loosely against his forehead and the nape of his neck, his small hands hung at his sides. He vanished silently and resolutely like a pebble swallowed by a river. He died again and again and again until there was nothing inside her but a gaping black hole.

Run

The air was dense and the cars hissed. She ploughed through crowds of pedestrians toward an office building and winced as someone brushed her arm. The elevator was full of men. They were tall, she didn't know them, their smells were unfamiliar. They spoke loudly like dogs snarling. Her breath quickened, she wanted to leave.

A face materialised like the Cheshire Cat beginning with two rows of perfectly aligned teeth. He leaned toward her, his eyes deep and round.
"Are you an artist? You look like an artist."
"Yes" she said.
Her tiny voice entered the room from somewhere outside her sounding hollow and strange. Her body splintered into shards. He noticed her flushed cheeks and furrowed brow. As she stared into his smiling eyes she felt her fragments collect and reassemble. He peered and her breathing slowed. She tilted her head to one side and tried to remember something, longing for the air of the hills.

"They're gone now."
She was staring at her shoes, the elevator was empty. His eyes were black and his face open.
"Are you sure?" she asked.
One side of his mouth curved upward into a smile.
"I think so."

He cast light like the sun. The pressure eased from her temples as they wandered the winding paths of the Botanic Gardens. They sat under a grove of oak trees, the branches so old they bowed down and touched the earth. A woman hobbled across the lawn. Bird imagined her wispy, grey hair disbursing in the wind like a dandelion. Sparrows chimed softly and the breeze grazed her cheeks. Sounds and voices ebbed and flowed like waves lapping the shore. A blanket of orange leaves tumbled and sprawled. Her seizing stomach stilled. Their shoulders touched as they told each other stories. 

"I've left a few things by the wayside. Things and people." she confided.
"Such as?"
"I can't have anyone that close."
"This close?" he asked, squashing her shoulder with his right arm.

"My world is full, are you gonna freak out?" he wanted to know.
"Full of what?"
"Things. Things and people."
She paused.
"You're not afraid of anything are you?"
He smiled.

“Run away with me" he said, waving a bony, bejewelled hand.
"I'm always running" she answered.

Pace

Bird wondered if the neighbours could hear her as she slammed shards of glass into the rubbish bin. The earth was filled with broken bottles. Agitated, she paced from the bin to the garden bed and plunged her shovel into the ground.

She placed the wheel barrow near the house and counted her steps toward it, "35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43…". She listened to the sound of rocks and stones hitting the hard plastic basin, then looking down, counted her steps back to the garden bed, "1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 ..". Her back ached and her feet were raw and swollen, the sun burned her skin. She couldn't stop until dark. Bird was conscious of rage rising from a deep place. An eagle sailed the clear sky above. She killed a pretty redback spider scurrying across the tarp over the compost. 

The neighbours gradually turned on their lights and Bird listened to the sounds around her. Crickets hummed, birds mimicked, a dog barked. The tired red sun slumped behind someone's silver shed and a breeze stirred. The night sky was thick with stars.

Her stepfather liked rituals so they all had to follow them. Bird placed a jug of water in a basin next to her bed every night. When she woke, she raised the jug with her left hand, poured it over her right hand, raised the jug with her right hand, poured it over her left hand and repeated the motion three times, always in that order. Then she said a prayer, always the same prayer. She repeated the ritual at breakfast, recited a prayer, making sure not to speak before the incantation and first mouth full of food. Each food type was blessed with a different sequence of foreign words.

Food preparation was regulated by rituals. Some animals were "clean" and fit to eat while others were "unclean". Eating an unclean animal was strictly forbidden. Ruminant mammals could be consumed if they had cloven hooves, all other mammals were unclean. Fish with fins and scales could be consumed, fish without fins and scales, with fins but not scales or scales but not fins were unclean. Invertebrates were unclean. Reptiles and amphibians were unclean. Clean animals had to be slaughtered by severing the jugular vein, carotid artery, esophagus and trachea in a single movement with a non serrated blade or they became unclean. The body was then checked for seventy different categories of injury, illness and defect. Consumption of animals with any of these defects was forbidden. Forbidden cuts had to be removed before the meat was sold. The sciatic nerve and parts of the abdomen were unclean. The blood of an animal could not be consumed and was drained from the meat with coarse salt, not fine salt. Fruit picked during the first three years of a tree's life could not be consumed. Wine or bread produced by a non sect member could not be consumed. Eating milk together with meat was prohibited. Six hours must elapse between consumption of dairy and meat, no matter how small the quantity, so the undigested foods do not come into contact with each other in a person's abdomen. There were separate utensils, benchtops, dishes, pots, pans, sinks, ovens and dishwashers for preparation of dairy and meat foods, sect members had two kitchens. If a meat utensil came into contact with a dairy product or vice versa, it became unclean. Foods which came into contact with the utensil before it was ritually cleansed became unclean and could not be consumed. The produce of hybrid plants could not be consumed, different species of plants were to grow at specified distances from one another to prevent cross fertilisation.

Drawing pictures was prohibited on the Sabbath, her plastic texta case was removed from dusk on Friday night until the appearance of three stars in the sky on Saturday night, exactly three. Activities constituting "work" and were prohibited during that time, such as turning electrical devices on or off. Touching electrical devices. Carrying objects outside the perimeter of the house. Using scissors, staplers, sticky tape, pens, paper or glue. Touching scissors, staplers, sticky tape, pens, paper or glue. Cooking, driving, touching a car, riding a bike, touching a bike, gardening, touching gardening implements, lighting a candle, touching a candle, sewing, touching a needle or thread, playing musical instruments, touching musical instruments... She was however, permitted to go to synagogue where women were segregated behind a thick white curtain, their hair covered with wigs and scarves, their bodies concealed under long, formless dresses. 

Bird recoiled at her siblings's touch. She promised herself she would never have children of her own in case she was a monster too. Her mother called her the snake that poisoned the family. Slowly, the friends she had known and trusted from birth accepted the rejection and withdrew. They were sad but not surprised, they’d been around long enough to remember there were other sects, each the only truth. When Bird’s father called, she was not allowed to say "Hi Dad", her siblings were never told she had a different father.

The rituals made her guilty, tired, listless, directionless and empty. A divide sliced its way through her consciousness, separating her so resolutely from loved ones and things that she could barely recall who and what they were.