The scenery rolls out and away from me. Tumbling out of a cup, all stones and flat pressed fields. I can look skywards and see the endless upturned bowl, beaten metal with a tiny hammer so it shimmers. You are driving. I could reach out and put my hand on your knee, but I don’t. I simply stare out through the glaring window, embedding everything to memory. The arc of the sky is disturbing, and the wind blasted birds topple through it.
I feel this endlessly repeating moment, a cycle that shuffles around and around again. A click and a hiccup in the music. Here I am again. Here I am on this road, this path. I know this place, because I’m sure I’ve dreamed it to me once, twice, a thousand times before. I know what is meant to happen here, it’s just that I’m afraid.
The birds are flying lower now. They keep pace with the car before wheeling again in a tangle, and my eye is drawn up and away over my head. The skeletal trees point. I turn again to the road. You are straight-eyed and determined as I run my gaze over you. I watch, rubbing my thumb over the joints in my hand.
The cracks are more obvious now. I’ve seen them appearing along the inside of my wrist. I know this. I’ve seen this before. There is a line that runs up my neck from my shoulder, a fracture that started last night. You kissed it and didn’t mention it, but I know you knew it was there. By this morning it was rough to the touch and the splitting seam had reached my hairline. We both stayed mute on the subject. It seemed for the best.
So now we’re driving across the wide brown landscape. It looks like a stretched out piece of leather. While I gaze out and away, I’m running my hands over the cracks in my wrists, simply feeling them for the reminder they give me. It is a sly pleasure, like bumping an old wound for the buzz of familiar pain. I pull up my sleeve and see how they’ve unfurled over my skin up to my elbow. You don’t look. Well, not directly at least. We’ve still got a way to drive and we’re trying not to draw attention to the obvious. Not yet.
I know this road. Soon the ageing fenceposts will give way to commuter land. The fences will go higher, and the canker of housing development will spread. The trees will turn their backs and show their shoulders, hunching their heads. There will be paths, and palm trees. There will be RSL clubs and men who spit. The wheeling birds will spin back out and away to the place where we’ve come from. They’ll fall away. I know that this will happen, because it always does. I am consciously trying to slow down time, stretch it out. I will try anything to prevent what happens next.
It never works.
The sound of fragility echoes in my head. The crack runs along my hairline to my temple. I touch it instinctively. You glance across at me as if to warn me against it, but when I look at you, your eyes are soft and forgiving.
“It’s happening again,” I say. Quiet in the car, nothing except the roar of wheels on the road.
“Yes, I know,” you say.
Nothing else we can do.
I make a tent out of my fingers. The cracks are finer between my knuckles, shell-like and fractured. The lines fan out as I watch, and a shudder runs through me. There is a sigh as the shell casing that holds me together breaks down my spine.
“It’s time for me to go,” I say.
“I don’t want you to,” you reply. Such a simple statement. So heavy.
I cannot hold the pieces together. They were not meant to be held. They were meant to split and fracture and take me with it. But you knew that already.
I want to apologise, I want to take it back. But I’ve already gone. I’m wheeling out and above the car, spinning on the air with the tumbling birds. I’m watching the car drive further away. I fall into the colour of the sky until I forget.
These images please me.
We went on a walk tonight, my daughter, the dog and I. An early evening amble through the bush.
“Come on,” I urged. “It will be fun. A short wander through the bush along the path.” She came a little unwillingly but pleased to hold my hand as we clambered over the recently fallen trees and were absorbed into the dense undergrowth. The bush closed around us, swallowing us with ease. We didn’t notice as we were too happy finding the bandicoot diggings and teasing the dog about the path we were choosing to walk down. Would we walk down this one? He raced ahead, tongue lolling and all his silly feet. A change of direction and he looked over his shoulder. Oh no! They’re going another way – must get in front. Scootling past us he dashed ahead. This way! This way!
We walked through the half-rock cave and under the dripping water. The lush green of tree ferns overhead and the dangling vines. We clambered up the rocky slopes of familiar paths and landmarks. I charted our progress against the tree-line. “Up there you can see the road,” I gestured. “If we keep walking this way we can pop out at your grandmother’s house.”
As if we were in a story, a fable. Where was the fox? The hunter? The basket? Glancing around I wanted to see the red riding hood.
“Let’s go and see your grandmother,” I said, waving vaguely at the dense undergrowth that lay between her house and our path. But there was no entrance into the mat of trees and shrubs. No matter, I thought. We simply climb up and through. Up and through. We’ll pop out at her curved brick driveway that sweeps away from the bush and toward the light.
I noted the angle of the sun as the shadows grew longer. We were not far from home, but not close. Up and through, let’s go. So we did.
Diving into the green, the brown and grey. She followed me with confidence, her mummy, her guiding light. A white t-shirt beacon I became. The dog popping and skipping over tree trunks and branches, ducking under grasses. How am I to lead, he thought, when you do not know the way? He scrabbled in front, checking over his shoulder. This way? This way! The bush closed tighter around us, hugging us to it’s breast. I would turn and see her behind me, singing in her sing-song voice “I am walking and I am whining”. I laughed drily.
“Ow!” she called out as the branches grabbed at her hair and her legs. Stay, the bush whispered. Stay. I clumsily pushed the trees aside, loving them for their strappy beauty. I kept my head down, my eyes seeking out the tiny path we used to use so many years ago. It’s close, the bush whispered, you’re very, very close, but we will keep you closer still.
I admired the red tipped leaves and flaming tongues, but my heart skipped a little as the bush drew the curtains. I could not see the road line, the destination. We were not far, but we were not close. “Ow,” she cried again, this time with her note a little higher and her legs scratched by the whining voices of the bush. They wanted her to stay, I could see them clustered about her with their silver grey faces and pincer fingers. I whipped about, climbing up and through. Just over this rise, and then the next. The light fell away even further and I changed my mind.
“No,” I said. “It’s getting late. We should climb back to the path and scuff our toes all the way home on the crumbling sandstone.” We turned. And we turned again. The light fell further still.
There were times I glimpsed through the densely packed trees the idea of a path, but it was a trick. The bush did not care. It was chewing on us thoughtfully as we scuttled downhill. We will hit the path, I knew we would. But we did not. I turned again, and she turned too. Now there were tears as she fell heavily on a rock and I did not stop. No time. With the light failing, failing, I knew this fear. I had felt it before. All my sense of direction and destination confused and the grey faces laughed while they clattered their pincer fingers.
She could tell I was afraid. I sang a song of out and up, up and through. She didn’t believe me. She could hear my skittering heart, and the dog popped and fizzed beside us. This way? This way?
I halted and breathed. It gripped me closer. Stay. Stay.
No. Out and up, up and through. Determined, I turned a final time and headed up the hill. When in doubt, go up. I repeated the mantra. Up, up and you will hit something eventually. A road, a house, a confused backyard who doesn’t recognise you. But you will be out of the grey fingered grip and the whipping branches. You will be on familiar territory where things care. The Australian bush does not care. Up and out. Out and through.
So who is this mummy? This white t-shirted beacon? What does she know? A hot hand in mine as we plunged in deeper still, where the darkness lay. We were afraid.
We hit the road a breath away from grandmother’s house, and we clung together. My daugher’s legs were scratched and bloody. The dog panted silently.
Stay, the bush had said. Stay and play.
Bottom of the well reworked.
Falling [Bottom of the Well] – 2009
The story relating to this painting can be found here
And the music that inspired it is April and Madison from Ola Gjeilo’s Stone Rose CD
My feet crunched into the lichen as I wandered through dry forest. I’d wandered away from the house, not really intending to go far, but the easy pace and muttered stones had helped me walk further than anticipated. I was meandering in the space beneath the trees. No path to speak of.
I plucked at the strawlike grasses. They plucked back.
I could breathe here, I realised. I stood and listened to the swell of my breath and felt the roundness of the soles of my feet.
The house stood in amongst a group of conspiratorial tight haired eucalypts, its red bricks warm and lickable. If I looked back over my shoulder, I could admire its squat shape in amongst the toast-coloured trees. There was a quiet low hum it gave, singing softly to itself as it squinted over the landscape. Every now and again I could see it weighing me up, the curtained eyes softly blinking. I pretended not to notice and turned towards the fenceline.
Over in the paddock, the pockmarked shape of sheep studded the yellow grass. They sailed within it, burnished. The sun was lower now, and there was a shallow silence filled only by the sounds of my feet loudly cracking towards the barbed wire. I raised my hand to my eyes.
“Hello sheep,” I said softly, with the voice of a townie. The sheep were uninterested, with only one raising a mottled tired face, the rounded folds of wool moving with the swell of its chewing. Move along, it seemed to say. Nothing to see here. This was a country that lay sleeping lightly, with its teeth gently bared. I was not needed here. Nothing would miss me when I was gone.
Under my feet lay the bleached bones of trees. Skeletal remains of bloodless elephants.
I wanted to capture some part of the cool diffidence of this place, capture it to me as the sun sunk. I leant down to collect them. I felt the need to weave them into piles in my hands, stitching myself into the landscape and place. I wanted to be recognised. But the sticks cracked in my palms as I collected them, their hollow centred bones snapping like tiny mammals. I was not going to secure my toehold this way, kneeling with my hands listlessly stroking the fallen branches.
I turned back to the house. The house seemed satisfied. It’s arms were folded, and it looked over me and away. The landscape and the house knew each other, and I moved within their spaces with their permission. Any recognition would be accorded to me when they were ready, and not before.
My feet returned me to the garden, and I walked in time with the gently hummed tune the house sang.
Imagery of The Dreaming from Jane Wozniak, and more can be seen of her work here
Latest work from the studio
I dream of stories that involve short, squat women who lean from leg to leg when they walk, as if their knees don’t bend. I think of them with sour faces and slightly blemished skin, arms folded across their chests. I see them plan to catch the bus into town, or turning to shout and gesture at recalcitrant doughy-faced children.
I see their angry meanness that started when they were 16, a sharp acridity that grabbed them when they were smoking Alpines behind the council toilets in the netball park. The anger never left them. It has since been joined with a sense of right and entitlement, a blank stare and a quickly raised temper. They swear hard like troopers, with black eyeliner drawn harshly under their eyes. They once read a magazine story that black eyeliner would make them look ’smokily dangerous’, but in truth all it does is narrow their piggy raisin eyes and draw attention their sloping mouths.
They smell slightly musty. Their scent is a tinny dampness overlaid with a sweet false note of watermelon from a supermarket brand deodorant.
I see them in Kmart clothing and leggings from Supre. They wear plastic jewellery that is meant to look like silver, but doesn’t.
They are the young-old with false nails that click like dead men’s bones.
They told her it was going to be easy.
‘Simple,’ they said, ‘like riding a bike.’
She’d only nodded at the time and didn’t dare tell them of her memories of pedalling while her dad held onto the back of her new two-wheeler bike with the pink plastic streamers flying at the handlebars, and him letting go, and her hitting the gutter and banging her pelvic bone hard on the bike bar.
That had hurt.
They talk about boys having tender nether regions, but no one talked about how the impact would make her eyes water and how she couldn’t tell her dad where it hurt because, well, all of a sudden she just couldn’t. Her underarms had gone all sticky and hot, and she’d refused to cry.
This was going to be straightforward then, was it? She wanted to believe it would be.
Everything had come kind of easily to her, she supposed, and this was just another challenge, or a setback, nothing permanent. Looking around the bustle of people in the cold, clean room who looked like they knew what they were doing, she felt a familiar sensation settle in her stomach like she was lying underneath three folded wet wool blankets.
She didn’t like the smile of that starched young woman. It was a smile that didn’t reach her eyes, and she was holding her paperwork to her chest, marking it with a pen now and again. That concerned her, the pen marking. All of a sudden she felt old. Frail. Fallible.
But people go through worse everyday, she told herself as she ran her hand over her chestbone and breathed slowly through the panic. We all have to learn new ways of living and simply being. We are perennial survivors, she told herself. Doesn’t matter what you chuck at the human race, we still come through it like some nasty infection, just feeding off something or someone different.
The lights of the machine were coolly blinking, awaiting their instruction.
She noted her aged hand and clicked.
“Thank you for using internet banking,” the screen read. “Would you like to make another transaction?”
