EYES AND EARS

Ears

The dogs bark. They bark and bark, like a dissonant symphony. The kids play. They laugh and sing and shout and swear. There are cars, with heavy engine noises and tooting horns. There is a strange language, which when spoken softly sounds like running water. Sometimes there is screaming, but only sometimes. There are desert noises, like the wind and the birds and no rain. On my walks, there is nothing except a vast, genuine silence. At night there is the god-music – synthy, slow wail-songs that stretch on into the darkness. And from my bedroom I can hear the mice in the kitchen, scurrying for a cheeky feed, and the dogs, always the dogs. At times, for a lark, a lonesome donkey is honking in the distance.

Eyes

The colour: shimmery red earth, green bush, and an aching blue sky that spins into an opalescent twilight with the sinking sun. A rocky hill on either side of town, both gentle and near treeless, belittled by the overbearing sky. Houses of brick and tin painted in bright colours, with the yapa, living around them as much as in them. Roads and buildings and satellite dishes on roofs. Naked toddlers with melted ice creams and disarming smiles and wide brown eyes to ease the angst. Packs of limping, mange-ridden street mongrels, bronzed from camp breeding and weary from camp life. Young men in fast cars with shiny wheels and throbbing basslines. And people on foot, with a darting gaze or a gentle hello or sometimes nothing.

DEATH

One of my students died on Thursday. He was only 14. The cause is not yet known but whatever the case it was sudden and unexpected. He was a considerate lad with a calm, quiet way. Death seems to be unnecessarily familiar around here, but to happen so abruptly to someone so young makes it seem all the more unjust.

Things will be quiet at the school while the community deals with his passing in their own way. While it is impossible for me to truly understand the goings on of 'sorry business' (the term used up here for ceremonial and cultural activity relating to death), it seems to me to be a dignified and sensible way to deal with grief. The space for mourning is so clearly defined, offering people a more familiar and communal way to respond to such a tragedy; something that seems so desperately lacking in our own culture. Not that this necessarily lessens their pain or justifies the condition... it is just an observation.

On a more positive note I got to go on a trip with the kids to the Gold Coast last term, which in itself is worthy of a 10,000 word entry. I don't have the energy nor the time just now, but here are some pics from the beach...

SUICIDAL ANTS AND AUSPICIOUS SPIDERS

Insects are silently plaguing my life. Perhaps plaguing is too harsh a word, more like silently inhabiting my space. I don’t mind them most of the time, especially the spiders. The huntsman’s just do their thing, hanging out on the same spot on the wall for days on end. And the daddy-long-legs, of which there are too many, make huge sticky webs that serve as the perfect organic trap for the countless mobs of other miniature creatures that stealth their way into my house after dark. Plus, a trusted source tells me, that from an extrasensory viewpoint spiders are a particularly auspicious being to have around.

However, despite my holistic stance on pest-control, the limits of my hospitality are currently being tested by the bizarre behaviour of the FUCKEN ants. I’ve never seen this before, but the ants seem to be drawn to electrical appliances. So as I’m typing I’ve got a swarm of ants trying to molest my laptop, while another mob are teeming over the power-board on the floor. What is even more peculiar is that the ants are willing to sacrifice their own to lives in attempt to quench this insatiable thirst for high-voltage energy. They also crawl into the recesses of the powerpoints while the plugs are still in them, so every time I remove a plug I find several little ant corpses, frizzled to death. Perhaps I am being naïve and this is actually common behaviour for ants?? It’s just that I’ve never seen this before and, you know, given the throbbing nature of my social life out here in the ‘mu, it was one of the few things that I could think to write about. Plus I’ve got some cool pics to go with the story… Enjoy!