A Journey Between Worlds

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Greg Has A Mermaid

Greg has a mermaid

And she has no name

But she loves him

A mermaid

At least that’s what he calls her

Because of how he found her

On the beach, naked, sandy with

Blood matted in her sun-blonde hair

A woman of the sea washed up on his beach

Like the movie, except in that she was searching and awake, not unconscious

An Aubergine-smeared gash upon her forehead.

He’s picked her up and carried her

Prone

A frigid corpse with heartbeat

To his house

Greg found a mermaid

And he kept her

Like a pretty pebble washed up upon the beach.

Sunrise was his favourite time of day.

On his beach, the sun rose over the ocean and set behind his house. Dawn was the time when red and gold shot over a deep-blue sea to ivory sand, bathing his world (HIS world he thought with pride) with light.

At sunrise, not a cloud marred a sky unbleached by the sun’s full power and he could see the slow creep of the morning across the rocks to the mansion he’d built in the crook of the bay.

At sunrise, the night’s feverish activity had abated, leaving a calm the coming day had not yet destroyed.

As he’d taken his walk along the beach that morning, he’d noted the damage of the storm.

It had been particularly ferocious, as though the earth itself had risen up to rid its coastline of interlopers.

Sunrise was when Greg pointed out that man’s structure, his structures, were still intact. The earth had merely ravished itself.

Greg looked out from his balcony to the quiet beach and contemplated his morning walk.

Sunrise was past. Although the mild heat of noon approached, he shivered a little and pulled his satin robe closer.

Not quite summer. But soon.

He turned to peer into the curtained darkness of his room, where the woman lay sprawled, still naked as he’d found her, on his bed.

He’d bandaged the cut on her forehead as best he might and had washed her of muck and dirt and salt in a shallow bath.

She hadn’t woken and he was now concerned her injuries were more severe then he’d originally thought.

The thought of doctors flitted quickly through his brain.

He studied her again; blonde hair matted by the sea was smooth, long legs, rounded hips, a sleek back and above her nearly-flattened stomach, her breasts showed a brief glimpse of taut flesh. Her whole body, he realised, was one light shade of golden tan. No lines caused by shoes or straps or even clothes marred the even tone.

I want her, he thought with sudden desire.

I want her.

She’s perfect, she’s wild, she’s beautiful and she’s mine.

I found her. I want her. And she’s mine.

Doctors ran through his head, this time faster and more insistent.

Doctors

Questions

Who was she?

Where did she wash ashore from? Where were her papers? Her ID? Her passport?

Doctors.

Police.

A hospital somewhere in a detention centre.

“No doctors,” he said suddenly, out loud. Too loud.

“No doctors” he now whispered, “I found you”.

“I found you, and you’re mine”.

In his dream, he was swimming.

Not swimming.

Not, really.

Actually, he was floating. Meandering through clear water.

The water was warm, and he could breathe. Feel the water flow into this lungs and out again, leaving its precious cargo behind to let him live.

How is this possible? He thought, with a momentary surge of wonder.

And stopped.

Was he up or down? Which was which?

Where was the surface? The sand?

Why did he not drown in the oceans as other men did?

How to find his way to the beach?

An eddie. A current. The water moved around him as if propelled.

A fish. A fin.

Blue eyes.

Blonde hair, swaying like the ocean, wrapping him like the water.

It was her!

All around him.

Her!

He woke.

Woke to blue eyes staring at him and sat up, sharply, the memories of ocean and water receding into disturbed sheets.

His bed.

She was awake.

He looked again to see her staring.

Blue eyes.

Just like the dream.

Wary. Curious, he noted. But scared?

No.

He smiled.

She responded, but shyly, her eyes roaming across his face.

The sheets he’d placed over her the night before had dropped, but she showed no modesty.

Simply stared.

She’d finished her examination of him, it appeared, and her eyes began the same wild roam of the room, furnished in a way both expensive and Spartan.

Her eyes glazed over each detail, showing as much, if not more, interest in the telephone and lamp then the original artwork.

She finished at the full-length mirror, where she stared at herself staring. With him, light brown hair tousled and eyes slightly rimmed with sleep, sitting beside her.

He caught her eyes with his.

“I’m Greg”, he said to the mirror-woman, wishing to draw the attention back upon himself.

She smiled, then swung slowly back to him, no sign of comprehension reaching her eyes.

“Greg,” he said again, tapping his bare chest with the flat palm of one hand.

She smiled again, as though to say that was all she could achieve, then placed her palm where his had been, on his naked chest.

“Greg,” she said softly, and looked up disarmingly.

She felt around a bit to see, he thought, if she could be sure of what she beheld, then laughed and banged his chest with her hand.

“Man!” she pronounced happily.

And promptly kissed him.

Greg found a mermaid.

She has no name.

But she loves him.

Every evening. And at dawn, before she joins him on his morning walk, skipping along the beach she loves and clambering on the rocks before diving into the blue ocean.

He turns toward the house; he knows he will not see her again until evening when she re-appears.

Sandy, salty, alive with pleasure and hungry.

He cooks her fish and rice, which she devours like a child, with a child’s enthusiasm for the beach, the food and for him, in his bedroom overlooking his ocean.

Greg found a mermaid.

And he kept her.

Like a pretty pebble washed up upon the beach.

Greg has a mermaid.

Her name is Claire.

She told him so, after seeing someone with the name on TV.

Claire.

A sweet, gentle name.

Not aggressive or independent.

A Claire was like a little girl.

Sweet and innocent who did as she was instructed and smiled and kissed and hugged a lot.

He approved.

And told her so.

And she smiled and kissed him in that exuberant way of hers and ran toward the ocean.

Her language had improved a lot, he thought as he watched her tumble in the sand.

She’d barely spoken a word when he’d first scooped her off into his arms that day.

She now spoke more often but still infrequently.

Small sentences.

Ideas

He taught her

Like

Yes

I love you

I’m hungry

I’m to the beach

Ideas

He didn’t teach her

Like

No

Don’t want to

Don’t like you

Want to be alone

And at those times, he sometimes thought that maybe he did not really know her at all.

Maybe, he thought, there’s a part of her that I don’t own. Like the water she came from.

The tide, the fickle natures of its moods, the uncertainty in its unknown depths.

Everything I desire in a woman, he thought as he watched her dance across the dunes.

But still just a woman.

“The problems kind of started slowly,” he said to Matthew one day as they sat with a beer overlooking the lifeless beach.

“She was so agreeable at first. Now, it’s like she’s not happy with anything I do.”

“I just don’t know what she wants.”

And Matthew said nothing to his friend, although he should have. Because he knew he didn’t want to hear what he had to say.

Greg found a mermaid

And she loves him

But is confused why he hates to see her learn

Can’t understand his anger when she has her own opinion

Wonders why things were better before she learned to speak them at all.

And is beginning to feel the pull of the sea.

Greg found a mermaid.

And he loved her.

In his way.

And he can’t understand why he failed to keep her

Why she left one day to go back to the storm and the sea

Why he goes to bed alone when he wasn’t ready for her to leave.

And will never understand why she wouldn’t stay.

It was as though, he thought, mystified.

Standing on his beach where he will always be, alone.

It was as though she never belonged to me at all.

Lest We Forget

They are forgotten

Our history whitewashed

The blood swept clean

Until all the atrocities

Shiny and New

Are celebrated

As the bloated man cries

\”War War War\”

The lesson is unlearnt

The black armbands replaced

With pointless pride

They are forgotten

Love, February 2020: Day 5

Love, February is a strange beast. Especially this year when I nearly didn\’t participate.

Last year\’s entries are fun and often frivolous. When they were serious, they were serious in appropriate ways. I had love last year. I do not this year. I\’m empty.

But I\’m still here.

Today\’s piece maybe doesn\’t belong here but I chose it anyway.

I wrote it many years ago – more than a decade ago – and found it in a folder of old writing hidden on my hard drive. Moving files to new computers can unearth a million, dusty things.

This is one of them.

I guess that love is sometimes not enough. Or maybe it\’s just a cautionary tale for a time like now. Maybe it\’s neither. Maybe I just needed to put it out there.

Love, February 2020: Day 5

I am 30 years old, but when I was young I went to London. Of course I did, we all did.
London: land of the great Australian Rite of Passage. Others pierce something, slay something or slice something: we travel. But not to anywhere. No, we go to the land where they speak our language, drink beer, don’t know how to make a decent cup of coffee, and do drugs: lots and lots of drugs.

I am 30 years old, but when I was younger, hipper, happier, social, thinner, more alive, I went to London. It was very impressive, so everyone says, I went ‘by myself’. As though this independence is the true test of adulthood. As though we don’t really need others, even though we contradict this belief in every other aspect of our lives. I went by myself and I found, so many things.

I found a house to visit in, a house to party in and a house to live in. I found new friends, old friends, party friends and endless faceless acquaintances to drink with, dance with and forget with.

This photo is of myself, K and W, partying; this one is of me sitting on C’s lap after giving him the Tim Tam my mother sent him; this one is of W and I wrestling at Christmas; this one is of Alex dancing with L; this of all of us at the pub. Alex has the inevitable cigarette in his hand and his arm around me This photo is of the whole party-house gang, and this is of the night Alex and D paid me with wine to cook them dinner: D threw up in the living room.

This photo is of P and I dying Alex’s hair with red pointed tips for him to go clubbing. He would club all night and come home at 8am and make me tea in bed. He would take speed to dance all night and a joint to come down in the morning.

I am 30 years old but when I was younger, I had a friend called Alex who only seemed to be able to form a bond with those who could ‘have a good time’. His best friends did drugs, he was dumped by endless girls who couldn’t handle being second to his drug dealer, and his personality slowly changed until the friendly, easy-going person I knew became a self-absorbed bastard.

I am 30 years old but when I was younger I danced Sokkie in a Turkish nightclub with Alex. I had to take off my hiking boots and dance barefoot, but it didn’t matter: Alex was always a good dancer. If you ever want to hear of coincidences, hear of me running into him in the middle of a street in Istanbul.

When I was in Turkey, friends I had just met would ask me about my life in London and I would tell them of my lovely South African housemates: the hippie artist, the intense one, and the intelligent, honourable farmer. And then I would mention in passing those who came to the city to get lost in partying, the drug-fucked. When they met Alex they asked if he was one of my lovely South Africans. I had to say no. He was one of the drug-fucked.

The night before I left on my trip, he and others were doing cocaine off a mirror they took off the wall in the living room. I have never been happier or sadder that I didn’t live there. Happy because I could walk away and sadder because I wasn’t there to stop them when they started off on that journey. My friend, F, trailed out after me into the cold autumn air and told me she wanted out of there, she couldn’t stand it anymore. Their partying had turned dark and self-destructive and she now knew why I had refused so often their offers to move in with them.

I am 30 years old and yesterday I found out that my old friend Alex is dead. He sits staring at me from an old photograph but he is a younger, hipper, happier, social, thinner, more alive Alex, in London, so many years ago. My Alex was always going to get better. He was always going to go home, get a job, get married, get off the drugs of London and live the normal life we all want and need. We were going to meet up in some distant place, all of us from the same party crowd, laugh about the old days, discover South Africa and improve our Afrikaans. We were going to be people who lived.

He can’t be that. Ever.

I can.

I am 30 years old and yesterday I found out that my old friend Alex, whom I have neglected for several years, committed suicide after a long history of drug problems.
May he rest in the peace he never found in life.

Love, February

I am…you are…Anzac Day 2001

We gathered in the darkness before dawn.

I\’d love to say we arrived silently, barely disturbing the stillness of mountains and ocean. Instead we roared in. Buses and cars a choking snarl of steel.
We gathered in the darkness. Fifteen thousand people on a pilgrimage to a single ancient battleground.
Anzac Cove
Anzac Day
Anzacs
As dawn broke over the Dardenelles, striking the mountains and beaches of the Gallipoli Pensinsula, those of us who had travelled from across Europe and across the world repeated an 86 year old tradition of commemoration and prayer.
As the flags of Australia, Turkey and New Zealand fluttered in the morning breeze against the brilliance of a clear blue sky, and the strains of The Last Post echoed and then dissipated, I heard the single amazing sound of my life.
The silence of 15,000 people.
Not one rustle, one whisper disturbed the air. The gentle wash of the ocean against a once-bloodied beach the only sound.
At Lone Pine later in the day, where a single Pine tree still sways in the spring breeze, there was an air of celebration and spontaneous joy. The day was hot and bright and blue and we sat in the cemetary among the graves of Aussies and Kiwis and Turks and sang for the dead and for the living.
It\’s unusual to see a group of Australians displaying nationalism in an overt way. Yet that is what we saw on that hill as diggers made their way through a crowd 10,000 strong and received a spontaneous standing ovation. Old men from an old war with tears streaming down their lined faces, their medals proudly displayed on their upright chests.
The New Zealand Memorial Service was no less moving. Chunuk Bair, where the Kiwis hovered on the edge of victory before the English were defeated by Ataturk, is one of the few places on this Earth where a memorial to two opposing forces stand facing each other.
As the crowd finished singing the bi-lingual Kiwi National Anthem, a spontaneous Haka by NZ forces was greeted with cheers. It was an amazing day of celebration, commemoration, sadness, joy and an overwhelming call for peace.
Anzac is not and never should be a glorification of war. That we choose to commemorate Anzac Day and a battle of defeat and skilled evacuation does not just serve as an indication of who we are, of our heart and spirit. The celebration has also shaped us over the past 86 years. And the commemoration has shaped and continues to shape what we think, what we feel about what it means to be an Australian. And as the numbers attending Anzac Day increase the impact it has on our psyche will also grow.
In the end, Anzac Day is less about a battle and more about what it means to be Australian. The Turkish people believe the Gallipoli campaigns gave them their nation, their freedom and their identity because it gave them their father: Mustafa Kemal known lovingly as Ataturk. In the same way, Gallipoli gave us our freedom and our independence by giving us our first sense of nationhood.
And as we stand on the beach and up at The Lone Pine this is what we gain and what becomes strengthened. Many query the journey. Even those involved find it difficult to explain what draws them to this place in greater numbers as each years passes. For me, and I believe for many others, the answers lie in that open applause for the diggers.
I am
You are
We are
Australian

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