Chris Smith

We made our home among the mulga trees that night in a red and sandy spot.  We were greeted by  the woo-ing of the wind through the leaves.

The trees were every twisted shape, short and individual. They looked as though they had been holding a wild party dancing and leaping and then they were suddenly frozen into their rigid poses.  They spoke in a song -like  low moaning tone  which echoed across the sandhills.  Later when  I was tucked up that night the sound of the wind seemed  like the hum of many cars.  A whole super highway of humming trees.

Camping is making a temporary home in a place of choice. Let’s hang the billy  on that branch, the towel over the stump. We weren’t slumming it, we were having a camp oven roast. We prepared a little fire to make coals and reverently placed the roast in the camp oven.

As the night deepened  the fire drew our gaze warming our hearts as it did the hearts of our ancestors. In the pitch black night the stars were vivid and plentiful.  We let the fire trail into coals then watched mesmerized as they gleamed and glittered.

Oh yes I was happy there and next morning watched  the dawn from my bed.

I was looking in the hairdressers mirror at myself as she cut my hair.  Her friends turned up and sat behind me so I could see them reflected around me. A ring of faces in the mirror. I became aware of myself as resembling my mother.  Fragility was enveloping like an aura and I prickled with wonder at where did I fit in this earthly venture. Would I be crushed? with these oh so normal women around me.

They were discussing the violent offenders in the town.  How they ‘walked about free’.  Disgust rose taller than the trees.  Race was not mentioned. The elephant in the room.

She finished my hair and I looked awkwardly about before saying ‘see yuh’ and made my bid for fresh air.     

Mother mother you were a delicate soul but you had cheeky cheerful dad to hide behind.          

Chris Smith           

Dear folks,

Soon I will turn seventy five and I am just longing to hear positive things
about ageing. What I am interested in are the visions and realisations
that happen in one’s spirit along with the aches and pains of ageing. I
have heard these moments of light we all experience called ‘Glimmers’.
My mind is going over the past and seeing patterns and meanings and so I
am writing about these ‘glimmers’ so that for me they become moments of
light.

Recently I was studying a unit with Associate Professor Finex Ndhlovu
who was teaching out of Armidale University. I was bungling around
with the technology required for zoom study and I sent him an e mail
phrased in a rather apologetic tone. The e mail shared that I was from the
older generation and finding the requirements for expertise in technology
such a struggle. The next zoom lecture he appeared on screen and said in
a booming voice ‘Christine do not call yourself old! You are not old. You
are an elder. You are our elder and we love you’ Here he was giving me a
role within the class which was comprised of generally much younger
people.

I was familiar with the idea of elder from experiencing Australian
Indigenous culture and for having outlived so many people in the
community living around Wilcannia. Had they lived a full lifespan they
would be the elders in the lands of the Paakantji people of the Darling
River. People. Living with this community I had been called an Elder
which feels like a great honour.

The Western culture does not seem very focused on valuing the Aged
and it seems that the good news comes through other cultures who value
age and experience. This last few years I have had this feeling of
expectation and a sense of coming to fruition. All the bits and pieces of
my past seem to have lead me in a direction which was not apparent as it
unfolded.

Soren Kierkegaard says ‘Life can only be understood backwards but it can
only be lived forwards’. It is amazing what we can see in retrospect.
James Hillman was a psychologist and author and in one of his books on
ageing he says that the last year of our lives are for the weaving of
memories into coherent stories. The complex process of diminishment of
body yet embellishment of spirit I try to express in the following verse

Though my body grows old
I at my core feel new life,
buds within emerging, swelling
about to burst
and this I know
that I am going to blossom
A brew of light and hope
pain and darkness
age is now a sun
to warm my earth
I know deep within
that my best is yet to come
The best of me. .Christine Smith

Some of the good news I am seeking regarding age I hear on Radio
National and the other day there was an interview with Maggie Kirkman
regarding her book “The time of our Lives’ Celebrating Older Woman’
This is full of stories about fruitful ageing and I look forward to all the
stories. If anyone has any other positive spins on ageing, articles, sayings
and books please let me know on smithana7@bigpond.com
A friend (Joan Saboisky) recommended this book:- Joan Chittister
‘The Gift of Years’

Thanks Chris Smith Snapshots and Vistas

Lakemba, Wiley Park and Punchbowl.

We (brother Jeff and I) were ‘cruising’ up and down Haldon Street Lakemba when I spied some clothing shops so I said ‘Let me out’ and alighted from the car to explore the shops. I wanted to find a suitable top to wear for a coming birthday party… I was unaware that I was in fact going into shops which sold ‘modest clothing’ and therefore short sleeves were in limited supply. I was empty handed when I began gave up the search and began to walk up the hill to where my brother’s car was parked at the top of the street.

Limping and sore footed I was looking out for somewhere I could rest for a while. I saw a seat occupied by a woman with parcels strewn clear across the space. She was fully decked out in a burka. Her two little girls were playing nearby. She must have caught my glance as she said. ‘do you want to sit down’? And she cleared a spot for me. I gratefully sat down and took a long look at mine host. All I could see were her brown eyes through her little eye opening in her burka. I could tell she was slim and her voice was young.

We gazed at each other and the little girls stared at me. ‘I used to live around here’ I ventured….she straight away was interested….’ I came to Australia ten years ago…and lived at Bankstown, now I live here ‘ she said. I smiled and her eyes smiled. So we sat chatting…She opened a pizza box which had pieces of hot pizza..’.Would you like a piece’? I took a slice. ‘This is my sister’ she said as another young woman appeared in a burka. Her garments were being caught by the breeze and seemed to billow up around her.

I had to move on as I was expected at the car. Although it was just a short encounter, the connection between us was intense and seemed beset with longing and gratitude and joy all mixed together. Two worlds briefly met and I was tearing myself away. I walked on a little and glanced back and saw that she was watching me go….I went a little further and glanced back again.

‘I would never starve in Lakemba’ was my thought, I had no doubt that I would be offered a nibble here and some pizza there. Hospitality was in the air. I hoped she and I would meet again someday when I could take more time in Lakemba.

Christine

Chris Smith

The result of the referendum for me was a shock, this was not because the
‘no’ vote won, but because of the magnitude of the ‘no’ response. I did
anticipate more of a contest. There seems to be no one single idea about
why so many people said ‘no’, however a possible aspect I thought of is
this:- that those who were supportive of recognition to be recorded in
the constitution but were not for ‘the voice,’ may be saying that it is
acceptable to have indigenous people mentioned in history, after all that
fact is indisputable however enshrining the voice in the Constitution
would mean they are speaking in the present day. I remember hearing in
my student days that in power politics, conquering a people isn’t enough
for some victors, silencing them is part of the process.

For me it wasn’t a case of Indigenous people getting ‘no’ as a separate
entity with them over in the distance somewhere. I think it effects us all. I
find the indigenous culture a point of meditation upon our own culture and
a critique of the more dehumanising aspects of economic rationalism
such as the commodification of everything and the increasing
fragmentation of the society. Aboriginal people have a culture that values
connection above all else and that value is confronting to a materialistic
ethos. The kind of world that crushes Aboriginal culture is a pretty tough
world to live in. They in fact hold a treasure in an alternative way of
seeing things. And so it is this result of the Referendum, the
overwhelming ‘no’ that clarified the situation. Some people are saying
‘Let us retire hope, let us stop asking for acceptance, as the colonial world
can’t give it. Let us instead turn inwards and affirm ourselves and stop
begging and asking. Let us enter the field of human rights.’

Indigenous people know about living in the no, this ‘no’ has shadowed
them over decades and into centuries and they have survived in spite of it.
It is a wider ‘no’ and something also sensed and encountered by people
who have a vision other than the dominant one that drives the society. It is
our liberation that is tied up with theirs. The forty percent who said ‘Yes’
could be imagined to share something of a vision and this is also
significant. We need the indigenous people and what they have to offer.
Bring them forward and may they be heard loud and clear.
‘If you have come to help us you are wasting your time, but if you have
come because your liberation is tied up with ours then come let us work
together.’ Lilla Watson

Connecting up the various parts.

As a child I would walk the two miles to school and the two miles home mostly on my own after all the children who lived closer to the school had peeled off and gone to their homes….It was a long trudge, uphill and down….however the thing I had to amuse myself with were my thoughts….they were vivid and colourful and provided me with a kaleidoscope of entertainment. It was as though I wasn’t the one generating them as they tumbled in…I loved ‘thinking’ which seemed an occupation and when we as kids were sent to bed before the adults I would love that time in the dark to dream and imagine.

Later on in life when I lived with others in a community, I was puzzled by a feeling I had of disconnection it was as though I had a subterranean life but my mind was not connected to it and I was locked in the exterior world unable to access my deeper parts. The deeper parts made themselves felt however they seemed far far away way and I wasn’t reaching them.

It wasn’t until I was living on my own in the outback in a semi desert area…in a house that was a little isolated from near neighbours when 45 degrees was too hot to go ouy seeking distraction .that I brought together these two things, that is my interior life and my exterior life. What did I go to the desert to find? it was me that I met there. I met the good and the bad, the injured and the whole the strong parts and the weak parts of me. This delving was painful and I felt there was something like a front end loader inside me digging tunnels and pathways. As Nietzsche says;

Only great pain, (the long slow pain that takes its time)

compels us to descend to our ultimate depths.

and so that is my tale of solitude and connecting my parts. Luckily I still love ‘thinking’ and look forward to unbroken stretches of time where I can think and come up with ideas. So the long walks to and from school and hat desert experience stands me in good stead on many occasions.