Dave arrived home from the Northern Territory yesterday afternoon after two weeks there for work. Our kitchen is regularly a place for fun and frivolity and last night, I couldn't help but grab a very scratchy video of Dave and Dylan dancing together to The Gorillaz. Go boys go ....
Our birth photographer Gemma-Rose Turnball has an album on her website called 'Bird Watching.' I remembered that it had pictures that made the ordinary look extraordinary (there's even a photo from my birth in this album!)
I got to thinking about 'bird watching' and what the same type of thing might mean for me as a writer. The inspiration was going along to Dylan's kindy disco on Friday night. It's was a weird juxtaposition - flashing lights and music, the closeness created in a room by the heat of too many bodies and not enough fresh air ... that drag you back to times and places long ago, memories that surface without bidding. Memories that are interupted by a tug on your hand, a strain of the chicken dance music or the mad squeals of a group of kids chasing each other over a grassy knoll. All quite strange.
But the aspect of the whole night that got me, and got me thinking about Gemma's take on 'bird watching' was coming across one particular Dad on the sidelines. He was much taller than me, well over six foot tall, with dark brown hair, messily curling (the way hair does when its outgrown its original cut). He had a good three day growth on his face. He looked rugged, but this wasn't the first thing that caught my eye, in fact it was the last. What originally caught my eye was the black patent leather bag under one arm and the bright pink my little pony being held in the other. The three aspects, rugged looking man, black hand bag and pink stuffed pony should not have been in the same sentence, let along the same space in time, it should not have worked would not have worked in any other place other than a kindy disco.
The last thing that amazed me was how at ease he was, it was if he was oblivious to the fact of what he was actually holding. He could well have been holding a beer, he was that comfortable.
It was the extraordinary in the ordinary.
Yet it almost became my biggest fauxpas. I immediately had to go out and tell someone what I had seen - Dave wasn't with us. The first person I found was another Mum from Dylan's class that I sort of know. I started to gush it out, and then put a disclaimer on it, "Oh I had better be careful, it may have been your husand,' before I embarked once more upon my description. And you betcha .. it was this lady's huband (of the 50 or so families that were there!) But she took it in her stride, she probably took it as a compliment - not to mention that I'm sure she would have been happy to have offloaded her two kids, her hand bag and the my little pony onto him. I know I would have been.
Looking for the extraordinary in the ordinary keeps life exciting, it throws up all manner of possibilities that we're closed to if we wandered through life blinkered by any sense of monotony. The challenge - to go out and bird watch, to scrutinse "for subtle detail in size, shape, plummage and behaviour" and tell us all what you see.
We're pretty slack when it comes to the weekend - we've gravitated, rather unnaturally for all of us, to being homebodies. Not this weekend though. Our house mate Phil decided during the week that he wanted to climb Mount Tibrogargan (one of the ten extinct volcanoes that makes up the Glass House Mountains in the hinterlands of the Sunshine Coast about an hour and a quarter from Brisbane) Dave decided that he was up for an adventure, after missing out on the chance to hike Mount Warning a few weeks ago. Mount Tibogargan is 364 metres high making the climb the equivalent of going up the Eiffel Tower! Dylan and I weren't up for the walk, and we planned to go up later on and meet up at the picnic area for lunch and then a bush walk. Plan set!
Mount Tibrogargan looks like a man or ape hunched down. It was more pronounced before the 'eye' bits of the mountain eroded and broke off a few years ago. Aboriginal legend holds that Tibrogaran (whose name comes from the Undanbi words for flying squirrel and biting) was the father of the Glass House Mountains - Beerwah was his wife. One day Tibrogargan, gazing out over the sea, saw it rise. Fearful for his family, Tibrogargan asked his son eldest son, Coonowrin to help his mother to safety in the West (as she was pregnant again) while he gathered all the other brothers and sisters. When Tibrogargan looked back Coonowrin was running off alone, which angered him. He beat him on the head, dislocating his neck. All the family cried tears of shame over Coonowrin's behaviour when they returned to their land after the floods. When asked why Coonowrin, said she was the biggest of all of them and should be able to take care of herself. He did not know she was with child. Tibrogargan so upset by his son's cowardise has forever turned his back on Coonowrin.
Dylan and I spent the hour and a half trip flying along the highway and singing along to our favourite CDs ... all the time I was thinking of Dave and Phil dragging their way up the mountain. I told Dylan was we turned off the main road and down towards the picnic area how we'd been there before, when he was a baby in my womb. He told me that he'd really wanted to get out and look then. "But thankfully you waited a little while longer to come out," I commented, looking for the turn off. Dylan told me how much he really wanted to climb up the mountain too - just like Daddy and Uncle Phil. Little were we to know at that stage that the morning's climb hadn't been as successful as Phil's climb of Mount Warning last last month!
Dave and Phil only made it half way up and were apparently passed on the way down by a spritely couple in their 60's who were descending from the summit. They had already climbed Beerwah that morning (this was around 11am) which is the highest of the Glass House Mountains. Dave said he didn't feel old - just very unfit!! The description of the climb left them quite unprepared for how difficult it was. They found out later, that they had actually climbed the hardest part - but that's the beauty of finding out that info only AFTER you've made the decision and begun your descent.
then groovy little round ones ...
e picture here is a very happy little fella (who had by this time taken his shoes off - pointing to the track that he walked!) Not surprisingly, and despite the lolly snakes he scoffed when he got in the car - he was asleep within ten minutes of hitting the high way - which in the short term was a bonus for me because I didn't have to share what was playing on the stereo. In the long term it meant betime was long after 9:00pm - but you get that. I was happy to have got out on the high way with the music up loud and to have wandered in the warm bush. Best of both worlds.
