Arm End House, Opossum Bay - Tasmania
After two blessed days of continuous rain, the world awoke fresh as if a pair of loving arms had gently bathed it in the dews of the heavens. Opaque streaks of rays cut through the misty mountains, lending a nostalgic sense to the mind when one reminisces a night we bade farewell only a few hours ago.
It had been one that the crickets sang loud in a frenzy mating ritual. Each male bidding his best to outdo the other while the females huddled amongst their bed of leaves, perhaps giggling like shy lasses at the futile silliness but charming nonetheless, effort to court their passion and favour. In the close distance, a baroque of frogs croaked harmoniously in a delicious, chocolate thick froth punctuated by an ominous, sole mournful boom by what I would imagine as the toad that wished he was born as one of his sinewy cousins.
Was it one of those times in life that you saw the world through the old films? When every blackest black and the whitest white shone in the interrupted-bulb-blown-insect screen that saw the days of Chaplin and an odd Frankenstein roll. When your dogs laid lazily on your carpet, rubbing their faces reflecting the heaviness of an afternoon filled too much with the steaming rice and chicken stewed in red dates and "elephant-eared" fungus. Of course, the lunch was consumed by us, lying sprawled in star form on the same carpet, next to our loyal furry companions that would have sat next to us, imploring such lunch, with their kibbles done in their tummies long a couple of hours ago.
This is one of those odd days when the local tax office closes for its financial year and the week edges grudgingly towards December. It's the "shutting off the doors" to usher an early excuse to begin the yuletide. One of those days which you dream away no matter how chaotic the fallen heroes, the ravaging fights in between that old couple again like clockwork every day, the garbage man coming and going, the paper boy every morning, how your dogs howled off after the scurrying squirrel, and your beeping reminder on your electronics.
I'll write perhaps, another day, about the culture we live in here because we got so comfortable existing in a hypocritical shadow dance of masks, when happiness and frustration mix so potently in a convoluted brew, when it is actually viewed as more important to put up a front of unity than to face your fear of discord. Empty words to fill the air and suck out the air of honesty. Pretense and criss-crossing of conversations in a room. Harsh reprimands and tempers on the loose.
Sometimes in all these, it's not too hard to close the door and dream away about a future that rings in the peace of a world folding out somewhere out there.
