Quote of the Day: Mether Baba

Wandering back to my car yesterday after my weekly Artist Date .. I came across this quote in the window of a shop. It basically sums up last week for me. Yet another veil has fallen for me.

And yes ... this is my untidy script - quickly scrawled at the end of my musings for the day in my morning pages book.

What have you done this year to dig deeper to find yourself?

Fiction Friday: and Abby met Jamie

FICTION FRIDAY:
What throws your characters off their game? For example, if she’s a shameless flirt, what makes her awkward and shy?

This is the scene I've been dying to write the whole of NaNo, but written at possibly the lowest point of NaNo I'm not sure how it came off. The new character is in the VERY early stages of development and it turned out completely differently to how I intended it to be played out. Those dratted characters doing their do without my consent yet again :o)

~~~~~~~

The (main street) of Newtown was bustling with the late Saturday morning coffee crowd. Laughter and conversation drifted on a warm summer breeze, that cut through the humidity that compressed the city back in on itself. Walking slowly, he felt as though his head would explode. Another late night, another round of meaningless conversation and drinking had come on the heels of yet another difficult week. He knew he looked rough – rougher than usual. His dark hair should have been concealed under a cap, but as usual he couldn’t find it. He ran a hand casually through the mess, but didn’t bother too much. If he was concerned he would have made a pit stop at the mirror on the way out. He tied the checkered shirt around his waist. The morning was far warmer than he’d thought.

He crossed again the traffic lights, moving with an unusual agility. Every cell in his body screamed out for coffee. He had the Moose Expresso bar in his sights. A group of rowdy uni students gathered around a small table on the footpath. A tassel haired blonde, shook her mane as she laughed hoarsely, then inhaled in a whine reminiscent of Sybil Fawlty. He shook his head and died a miserable social death for the girl – who seemed oblivious of her grating social disability.

Despite his pounding, restricted head, he made an effort to keep from making eye contact with anyone. This morning he felt the need for anonymity more than usual.

“Hello hello hello Jamie,” boisterously greeted Tara, the buxom and cheerful waitress. “And how are we this morning darling boy?”
Jamie just shook his head and knew she’d tone it done.
“It’s like that is it. Double long black to go then.”
“Yea. Cheers Tara.”

He looked around the tiny inside of the expresso bar and the collection of shabby retro furniture. The small tables running down the left hand wall looked like the kitchen table his grandparents had had in their small unit when he was a kid. And the great saggy grey vinyl couch in the front was a deadringer for the divan that they had had in their caravan annex.

He was lost reminiscing about the couch and easy, lazy days of surfing and reading as a teenage boy and it didn’t immediately register that someone was sitting on the couch. There was something familiar about the woman who was awkwardly crouched over the table, furiously writing in a battered spiral bound book.

Handing over the five dollar note, he attempted to get a better look at her, though she had her back to him. With his large coffee in hand, he walked slowly to the door.

The woman wore crumpled sage green fisherman pants. One bare foot was casually tucked under her bottom – a pair of well worn Burkenstocks were kicked untidyily under the table. A very fine white cheese cloth shirt covered a skimpy white singlet. A pair of sunglasses caught and pushed her henna rich hair back from her forehead. It was only then that he recognised exactly who she was and at that same moment she looked up, staring him straight in the eye.

It took a moment for the recognition to register and then the colour drained from her tanned face. Feeling as though he had been caught out centre stage, butt naked infront of a hostile audience he shifted his weight from one foot to another trying to find something non offensive to say to her.

“There’s no cameras,” he finally blurted out. “Do you come here often?”

She continued to stare at him, but a sense of bemusement began to creep into her features and finally she smiled. He noticed the difference in her smile, it was calm and relaxed – natural?
“No, this is my first time,” she replied eventually, taking a small amount of cruel enjoyment in his obvious discomfort. It was in such contrast to his onscreen alter ego that she found it almost endearing.
“Can I buy you a coffee?”
“You could buy me dinner down the road at the African restaurant tonight – if you’re free,” she added, taken aback by her forwardness. Was she flirting?
“I’m pre coffee,” he apologised, holding up the virgin coffee.
“I understand. How do you go with the cross word pre coffee?”
“I’m prepared to give it a go, as I drink my coffee.”

He motioned for him to take a set opposite her.
“I’m hoping you don’t have rabbies,” she joked, closing up the spiral bound book.
“I’ve been accused of being many things, but having rabbies is definitely a new one.”
He sat down on the stool opposite her.

He was completely unprepared to be sitting opposite her, minus her trade mark red and purple suits. It was as though he had stumbled over her twin sister – though which one was the evil one, he was yet to find out.
“I expected a tongue lashing from you.”
“We’re out of school aren’t we,” she replied breezily. “I’d be a prime candidate for a heart attack if I carried around my Canberra personae every day of the week. Though what you guys did was pretty low.”

“It wasn’t my idea,” he defended, realising that he sounded ridiculously like a seven year old boy who’d just been found out.
“My six year old does it far more convincingly.”
“He probably doesn’t get about on a Saturday morning with a god awful hangover.”
“No sympathy – obviously self inflicted.”
“No sympathy required, some asprin wouldn’t go astray.”
“Best I can offer is lavender oil, however you don’t quite look the type. I haven’t had painkillers since before Wil was born.”
“So you really are a hippy at heart,”

She gave herself a once over and laughed.
“Alternate I believe is the politically correct terminology – unless you are my sister and then I’m just feral. Even though I’m now an upstanding member of Parliament.”
He gave a quiet chuckle.

“I have to be somewhere, but I was serious about tonight. I guess that if you were willing to buy me a coffee it must be your shout for dinner.”
“Sure,” he agreed. “Though I’m sure you could always bill it to the taxpayer.”
“And have my travel rout splashed about on the TV Wednesday night. I think I’ll pass. There’s been enough scandal and innuendo on my part for a while I think.”

She picked up her notebook and pen, and dropped them into a small canvas satchel.
“I prefer a late booking,” she stated, standing up.
“Shall I drop over to get you.”
“That’s cute. I might want to keep my enemies close, but I’m not handing out my silent number.”
She winked at him and walked out.

Once out in the street she stopped to look back at him sitting there at the droopy uncomfortable couch sipping his take out coffee. Inside she was screaming ‘FUCK!” but somehow on the outside she had remained cool, calm and flirtaeous.

Grabbing her phone out of her pocket as she strode up the street, she deftly punched out a quick text message to her soul sister in Cairns.
I’ve just chased the Chaser. Two to one xxx

Her reaction to Jamie’s presence had not only surprised, it had knocked her for a six. A month ago when the scandal with Hux finally broke, the he had been there, with one of his mates at Canberra airport waiting for her as she flew in from Brisbane. She was harried and had been anything but a good sport about it. The 30 seconds on the Chaser were the highlight of the torrid week, which had included a press conference calling for the Director of Public Prosecutions in Queensland to look into the relationship and decide if there were charges to answer. The broadsheets had been less kind – but she had cut and pasted each of the editorials damning her and her appropriateness for public office into her growing collection of scrap books.

Cal like the stoic and emotionally blank wives of the British sex scandals had stood by her. He had said nothing until they were offered a joint interview with Womans Weekly to tell their story. She hadn’t wanted to talk to one of the airbrushed journalists from Womans Weekly but they decided as a couple that it would allow the greatest exposure of the truth. The money they were paid went straight to the Midwive’s Community Legal Fund.

And now, having just ridden the tempest and landed relatively unscathed back on the beach she was creating a whole new scandal by going out to dinner with him. The weekend in Sydney was about some time out, away from the scrutiny of the media and some chill out time alone. She shook her head, unable to understand herself at times and walked further up the street realising she’d need a new dress to wear if she was going out to dinner. She hadn’t packed for company.

Big

November has been a huge month for me .... so in the theme of big - here is one of my all time favourite commercials ... and yes!! It just so happens to be about beer (and the first ever brand of beer I ever drank)

Cheers :o)

NaNo Go Bye Bye

It is with mixed blessings that I fell (and that how it literally felt this morning after five hours sleep!) over the finish line of NaNo earlier today. Earlier on in the week Dave had a heart attack scare and spent Monday night in the local hospital under observation. It was enough to set us all back as a family. My problem was that it came a day after some huge realisations about how I worthy myself as a woman and a person ... which unearthed a whole heap of dark and pretty unwelcomed 'stuff'. It also meant that to be with and work through all the subterranean stuff, I have had to begin evaluating and making some tough decisions about how and what I base my self worth on.

With all this going on, I've felt as though I've barely come up for breathe this week. All with 8000 words to go with NaNo. I believe this is probably as bad as it gets for blocking yourself creatively. I stopped sleeping well as I stayed up late, working desperately against and ever increasing block to make it over the winners line. Then my anxiety raised its grim head again, spurred on by the influx of phone calls we received (read: were sent through to the answering machine) as friends were checking in to see how Dave was faring. I stopped eating well and started living again on chocolate and juice. For the last few days I've actually felt horribly nauseous. It all became pretty nasty. Last night with a mere 2553 words to go, I simply couldn't do it. I tapped out a wooden and terrible 1000 words and then fell into the oblivion of a computer game. This only served to further block me.

I was devastated as this was the scene I had been carrying around in my head since before the start of NaNo - this is a pivoutal moment in my novel ... and it was written probably at the lowest point of the whole month. Perhaps it wont be so bad when I go back to re read it and then, *grimace*, go and post it up on the write stuff page for Fiction Friday.

This morning after writing my morning pages - I relented and pull up an old short story that had been part of my exploration of the characters prior to NaNo (and mucho has changed since then) but it was a good spring board .... and I wrote ... and wrote .... and wrote well. Then up came the magic *WINNER* page just after 10am this morning. Phew!

Having written all this I dont quite feel so bad. It's one of those moments where a problem shared is halved - but seeings it shared in cyber space it must have been busted into a million tiny byte sized particules floating about in the ether ....

Now to get the house in order once more (yes it definitely mirrors my static encrusted mental functions) and then sitting down to make some tough decisions. But not only do I think I can ... I know I can.

Rah Rah Fridays

This was a familiar pose on a Friday afternoon for a trusty trio of friends. We would gather around 5:00pm at our favourite bar. There was something very Sex in the Cityesque about it all - except there were only three of us, and we could never agree on just whose personae from SATC we were channeling in any one particular week.

The cocktails were good (and cheap during happy hour!), the boys behind the bar were cute and very attentive, the chairs were super comfy, it was quiet enough to hear your conversation, but loud enough to absorb the old ourburst or peals of laughter and they made amazing pizza. For a while one of the chefs there was a guy who I had worked with years earlier, and we actually got to have a say in what went on the pizza. My regular was a delightful concoction called a 'Sweet Thang' - and didn't I love the way it twanged off my tongue. It was a mixture of Tia Maria, Bourbon and coke - all done up nicely in a martini glass (it also got stronger and stronger the better we got to know the boys behind the bar!

It really was an odd place to gather - the bar was attached to the fine dining restaurant of a presitgious hotel chain. It was the sort of place you went to for your silver wedding anniversary. Yet for a few short hours on a Friday afternoon, fading into the weekend, it belonged to us ... the motley crew that we often were straight from work.

It became a ritual that we all looked forward to, as the time slowly drained away on a Friday afternoon. We all worked together at a high school oringally, but even when we began going our own ways - we always seemed to be able to get back together at Rah Rahs. First it was me, who went on a three month sojourn to NSW to get my head together, but was straight back into it on my first Friday back in Cairns. Then Lisa went to work at a different highschool and then I went to uni (so it was everyone else's shout for a long time), Lisa went overseas, came back and then I finally moved away permanently.

Friday afternoon at Rah Rahs was the blow off - it was the best way to debrief, decompress and delineate - the week from the weekend. We would sit and sip our cocktails (rather than guzzle because we were always driving) and talk about the men that were or weren't in our lives, about what had shat us off at work that week. It was here on these comfy couches, cradling martini glasses that our love interests all were Christened with new names - there was The Princess, The Spy Who Shagged me, Captain Arsehole and Corporeal Threesome just to name a couple.

Often we would wander up the road to play pool for the free hour that one of the pubs had, other times we'd just go home. For a very long time, it was the warm up to what would be a home bender for Lisa and I, as we drank rum and coke, watched movies, talked about everything under the sun, dabbled in some photography and modelling and during summer, took midnight dips. Later on, it was my only social outting for the week, such was my budget at uni as a mature aged student. It was however always the highlight of my week - especially when our lives diverged.

I miss Friday - the way it was, when we were all just friends - before partners and husbands, kids and complicated responsibilites. When three friends just got together for a drink and a museevery Friday.

What is it in your life that you miss as a result of a huge change in life circumstances?

A trip of destiny: Jeff and Abby

It's election night and Abby is about to realise that trusting in the Universe brings things to fruition in a way in which you would never believe ...

In the moonlight she stripped off her long purple strapless batik dress and threw it over one of the wooden outdoor chairs. Quietly opening and closing the gate she stood for a moment on the edge of the deep end before diving confidently in the water. The moon was full and luminescent above her. Instead of swimming mindless from end to end, she floated on her back and stared up at the moon, marvelling at the depth of originality in its surface and how it seemed to morph and change the more she stared at it. The Chinese believed that it wasn’t a man in the moon, but a rabbit. She could see the Rabbit, she could see the man and she could even see what she thought was the Sea of Tranquillity.

“The arms of Orion that's where I wanna be
Since you’ve been gone
I've been searching for a lover
In the Sea of Tranquility
I'm drowning without you here, my dear”

Her eyes stung with the first prickling of tears. It had been years since she’d last heard that Prince song. Immediately she is transported back to a queen sized bed, in a room that smelt like a combination of Kouros after shave and stale sweat from the king gee workclothes scattered across the floor. Above her the thin lace curtains billowed out over her head, as a warm breeze gusted inwards. It was the start of summer and the first storm of the season. The room was lit in weird dark umber and tangerine tones, of the storm smudged dusk. Thunder cracked over head, getting closer each few minutes. Lightning illuminated the room and the two naked bodies on the bed, in brief flashes. On the stereo Prince played as the cataract of sexual tension built, like the storm outside and cascaded through them as they become one in a sweaty heaving mass.

The clink of the gate broke her out of her nostalgia. Diving under the water she swum to the end and broke the surface at the steps expecting to see Cal sitting there. Seeing no one she wondered if she really had heard the gate, or if it were the new next door neighbours indulging in a night swim as well. In the wake of the memory, the water felt ice cold against her hot skin. Looking up at the moon one last time, she climbed slowly out of the pool and walked the few steps over to the pool gate before she realised that the towels that usually hung over the pool fence, were neatly folded by Cal that afternoon and put away in the laundry.

Thankful that the night was warm, she opened the gate and walked under the canvas pergola hoping that the laundry door was still unlocked. Looking about in the hope that someone had left a stray towel behind she saw him sitting there staring at her.

“Nice butt,” he commented in a sarcastic tone. “Too bad I don’t have my camera with me this time.”

Like a rabbit caught in the headlights of an oncoming car, she froze in her naked vulnerability before him.
“Tits a bit on the saggy side.”

She instinctively raised her hands to cup and hide her bare breasts, without taking her eyes off him as the shock of his presence wore off.
“How dare you come into my house,” she finally managed, grabbing the discarded dress from the back of the chair and awkwardly yanking it over her wet body.

“Truth be known it’s actually your back yard. Technically I’m no’ in your house.”
“Don’t be a shit Harrington, just leave or I’ll call my husband down here to get rid of you.”

He laughed in a horrible guffawing manner, that set her skin on edge.
“And he’s no’ going to ask what I’m doin’ here.”
“What are you doing here Harrington?”
“I came to celebrate with you. After all I’m guessin’ that the whole team was here tonight. The delicious Violet Cunningham and all those hippy braless, hair armpitted bitches you call you mates.”
“Just leave Jeff,” smouldered Abby, in a barely contained fashion. “This is my home and I wont have you slagging off at my friend here. OUT!”
“Woooah A-bby” he drawled, relaxing further back into the chair he was sitting in. “As I said I came to celebrate with the team.”

“You’re not part of the team, even in that deluded mind of yours you can’t honestly believe that you in any way contributed to the success of this campaign.”
“Re-ally A-bby. Well lady, that’s where you are wrong.”
“It’s really late at night Jeff, its been a long day and I just want you to leave please.”
“Where’s your hospitality.”
“It fucked off about the same time you let yourself in here uninvited,” she swore, standing with her hands on her hips.
“Well I’m not going until you at the very least offer me a beer and give me a chance to tell you a little story.”

“We’re all out of beer,” lied Abby. “So I guess you’ll just have to be on your way and maybe you can ring for an appointment and we can chat then – like the old mates that we are.”

He reached down beside his seat and lifted one of Cal’s Belgium beers onto the table.
“Don’t suppose you’ve got a bottle opener down here?”
Abby reeled at the sight of the beer and the inherent message that it carried – he’d been inside her home. She reached across the table to the waiters friend that had been left downstairs earlier on in the evening and passed it across to him.
“My thanks to the lady of the house,” he mocked, tipping his finger to his eyebrow just as he’d done the night of the debate.

Abby quickly disappeared into the laundry and found a discarded pair of jeans and top to change into, throwing the wet dress into the washing machine. She knew that Harrington was not going to leave until he’d dispensed with whatever story he’d come to tell. She couldn’t risk creating a raucous and bringing Cal down here. Sitting down opposite him, she wrapped her hands around her glass of mineral water.

“Now you’ve got a beer and my undivided attention, please…” she invited, gesturing a welcome with her hands.
“How about we slip on over into the deck chairs. You remember the Addams Family? I always loved Morticia and her moon baking. You reminded me of her floating naked in the pool earlier on.”
“She was my favourite character too,” admited Abby uncomfortably, more than a little disturbed that she had something in common with this person who she detested so intensely.

Laying in the deck chairs under the full moon, Abby remembered what her Mum said about the moon and how the psych-ward was always chock-a-block on a full moon. She was almost certain now that Harrington was mentally unstable – he was not his moody, passive aggressive self though she wasn’t about to be lulled into a false sense of security by his magnanimous disposition. Minutes passed as hours, as they lay there, Abby waiting for Harrington to say something.

“I really pissed my Boss off with you, did you know that Abby,” began Harrington, taking a long swig of beer from the bottle. “You should be greetin’ me with open arms lady. I saved you from inevitable political destruction by taking your money and keepin’ my mouth shut about your little affair with pretty boy footballer.”
“Are you suggesting someone paid you to dig dirt on me.”
“Bingo!”
“Why didn’t you sell it?”
“I could make more money blackmailing. A steady stream of income.”

“Why do you hate me so badly Jeff?” she asked. “I’m pretty sure that I never once did anything to hurt you.”
“It’s not personal A-bby,” he replied, setting the beer down on the paving and staring up at the sky. “I decided a long time ago that I was going to grow up to be the biggest mysoginistic bastard that I could.”
“To be the antithesis of everything that you’re mother wrote and promoted.”
“You know nothing about my mother,” he snapped, sitting up to glare at her.

“You’re mother was Ava Louise. How did she die Jeff?”
“I made her life such a living hell that she didn’t want to be around any longer. I bought up a whole heap of pills, left them lying around in the kitchen and one day she was dead in a pool of her own vomit and shit. Pretty nifty huh?”
“Chas told you about me didn’t he.”
“Now that was pure gold,” he laughed manically, draining the bottle of beer. “I’ll just help myself to another.”

When he came back, he settled back into the deck chair and spent a long time drinking before he said anything.
“I knew about you long before you were anyone. Every weekend durin’ football season Chas would sit there off his tree, and bang on how he was friends with pretty boy footballer. Then he’d bang on about the teacher they had at school with the tight white pants, how they’d all spent three days in detention in your room. How they all wanted to get into your pants and how they all said that you fucked one of them, but no one ever knew who it was.

“He recognised your photo lying on the table. Told me that you were the Miss Paisley.”
“Serendipity,” commented Abby almost believing in some warped fashion that the universe intended for it to be played out this way.

Fiction Friday: Wil and Abby go to the mountains

[Fiction] Friday Challenge for November, 23 2007:
Reveal something about your character by telling about one of their Thanksgivings–it can be present, past, or even backstory (if your setting doesn’t include Thanksgiving, make it a similar family-oriented holiday).

In this extract Abby has taken her 5 year old son to the mountains for a quick break while the counting of votes continues. The vote has gone to preferences, absentee and postal votes for the seat to be definitively decided. Opting out of the waiting game in Brisbane and without the blessings of her husband, Abby has retreated to the mountains ...

The stillness of the mountains soothed her tired and aching soul. Each morning Wil made a simple breakfast of toast and vegemite for them, then they walked down into the temperate rainforest. They explored every dimension of the rainforest – the smells, the textures, the sounds and picture that each small and large section presented. With his own pair of tiny binoculars around his neck, he looked like a mini version of his Dad. The binoculars were a gift for Christmas - the last time that they were in the mountains. Together playing happy families, thought Abby with a terrible twist of irony striking at her heart.

They consulted the bird book regularly as Wil worked towards marking off more birds in his book. Abby knew that he missed his Dad. While she was interested, the real passion for bird watching was Cal’s. He had the patience with Wil to correctly identify each bird and then carefully scribe the place and date into the bird book for Wil, who refused to put his large untidy script into his prized ‘birdie bible’.

In the afternoons they relaxed at the chalet. Abby read, did yoga or meditated, while Wil explored the small pocket of bush behind their temporary home, flushing out bush turkeys and wallabies along his adventures. Mid afternoon they sat on the large deck and waited for all the birds to come in. First of the birds, was the squadron of the brilliantly coloured King Parrots, that swooped in to sit on the railing. Wil had been beside himself with excitement the first year he had seen the brightly coloured green and red parrots descend. Each afternoon there were at least six parrots that came to visit and they picked which ones were the males and which were the females. After that came the satin bower birds and on their first afternon there they spotted a rifle bird – simmering with irredsecent green from the feeder in the branch above them. Wil had been really excited about that.

As the sun went down, they drove to the summit, with the collection of radio towers and sat in the long dry grass, watching the sun go down. They told stories as they waited for it to get dark and return to their chalet to cook a simple dinner. Before dinner they played snakes and ladders, snap or just lay around reading books together.

On the second day they hiked along the ridge to Cherry Plains lookout. It was a warm day and they spent a long time looking through the binoculars at the valley below, drinking water from their bottles and enjoying the stonefruit that they had picked up at Gatton on their way through the day before. Abby was in a particularly good mood on the walk, taking the time to breathe deeply in a hypnotic fashion. Her body felt alive for the first time in weeks, perhaps even months. The constant stream of thoughts that disturbed her mental equilibrium had ceased.

She had dreamt that morning that she was meeting Hux in a library – a library that was in an airport terminal lounge. Looking through each of the isles for him, she’d started to panic because she couldn’t locate him – he was meant to be there, they had arranged to meet there.

She went out into the bright, sterile concourse, with people busily bustling past her. She pulled her phone out to send him a text message to ask him where he was. The next thing she knew he was walking out of the library and over to her.
“Where were you?” she asked.
“I was always here,” he’d replied smiling at her. “I never went anywhere.”

Like some self imposed purgatory she purposely didn’t search out the news reports in the print or the electronic media to find out what had happened to Hux after she’d left his apartment that afternoon. She had oscillated in the final two weeks of the election campaign between utter despair at the thought that he was dead and that it was all her fault, and a sense of innate ease that told her that he was not dead. He was gone, but he was in safe and healing hands. Now with the dream, she was certain that he was OK. When they returned home to Brisbane she intended to find out exactly what had happened.

“Mum do you think they planted Cherry trees down there and that’s why they called it Cherry Plains?” asked the ever inquiring Wil, looking down on the abstract patchwork of the valley below.
“I don’t know darling. Perhaps that was the surname of the family that first settled there.”
“That’s a funny name,” he remarked with a giggle.
“I’m sure that Mr and Mrs Cherry don’t think that it’s a funny name.”
“But it’s a fruit Mum. It’s like calling someone Mr and Mrs Banana – that’s just silly.”

Abby giggled with him at his reasoning.
“I knew a girl once called Cherry. She was a friend of your Auntie’s when we were kids, going to the beach in Victoria.”
“Did she have red hair?”
“No, why do you ask?”
“Well it would be a sensible name for someone if their hair was red – red like a cherry.”
“I guess it would,” nodded Abby, amazed at the reasoning that came out of his mouth. “Actually she was blonde.”

After a time of just sitting and being in the peace on the ridge, the warm refreshing smell of eucalyptus washing over them, Abby stood up and stretch – first her legs and then her arms, with hands clinched, pushing out above her head.

“Shall we keep on walking?”
“OK,” he agreed. “Do you think we’ll find bark to paint on, like we did last time we were here?”
“I’m sure we’ll find something along here that will be an interesting thing to paint on.”

Bouyed by her mood and the crisp mountain air they walked until the sun was high in the sky and they were both tired. Along the way they came across some smaller pieces of flat strong bark that they put in the backpack to paint on when they got back to the chalet. It had become a tradition each time they came up to the mountain, to search out some bark and paint on it. There was a small wall in their home dedicated to the masterpieces they created on the mountain from bark and coloured art glue.

They stopped to eat the rough sandwiches that they had put together in the tiny kitchen of their cottage, after they had washed up the breakfast dishes. While Abby was lost in her thoughts and absently chewing her sandwiches, Wil rifled through the backpack to find the small yellow disposable camera that his mother had bought for him on the trip up to the mountains.

He sat near her on a warm rock and quietly snapped a picture of her. He loved the way she looked off in the distance, her chin on her hand, her elbow on her knee. She had her purple top tied around her waist, her cap on backwards and sunglasses pushed up onto her head. From the past, he knew her eyes were fixed on something, but that she wasn’t really looking at. She somehow seemed to be serious, but happy at the same time. Sort of lost in a way too.

His Dad joked that she was off in Abby’s world and when he’d asked where Abby’s world was, was it like Todd’s world where everyone was different colours his Dad had laughed. He told Wil he wasn’t sure what was in Abby’s world, but it was probably beautiful because it belonged to his Mum. For the longest time he wanted to go to Abby’s world until his Mum told him that in his head he had Wil’s world and he could go there whenever he wanted and it was probably better than Abby’s world because it was his. He didn’t get what they meant, and still didn’t. Grown ups were strange and confusing sometimes. In that moment, on the side of the ridge, looking through the little view finder of the camera, he knew he loved his Mum and loved the fact that she went to Abby’s world sometimes, even if he couldn’t find the way to go there with her.