El Ganso

Exactly three years ago, I was in El Ganso, just past Léon on the Camino Francés.

If I close my eyes, I can still smell cut grass on the warm evening air, and the sprig of lavender on my pillow as I drifted into sleep in a mercifully snore-free albergue. I can hear the dog’s bark ringing across the field below the town, reminding me that some creatures were working while I rested.

Most of all, I remember the contentment and internal quiet I felt in that town at the end of a tough and sometimes confusing day.

 

If you’ve read Sinning Across Spain, you may recall the story of Domingo, the old gentleman, or gentle old man, I met there. With all my heart, I hope he is still alive and well, and that he and his town have not been too much troubled by the economic crisis. I hope one day that I might return to thank him for the gifts he gave me.

The following passage from the book, and these photos, are to honour him and El Ganso. I hope that you, my village, will forgive me for posting something you may have read. But as Arthur Miller wrote – “Attention must be paid.”

And gratitude must be given.

Gracias, Domingo. Gracias, mi compañero.

Gracias…

At the end of a long hot day’s walking, I’d arrived in El Ganso, a pueblo my guidebook called “hauntingly crumbling”. It was dozing, and yes, perhaps a touch melancholy, with its Cowboy Bar at the entrance decorated in saddles and cowskins.

El Ganso means “wild goose”. I didn’t chase any.

I wandered out of the albergue as the sun flirted with the horizon. A lone dog barked and a bird fluttered among the beams of an abandoned adobe building behind me. To my left was the handful of houses that made up the town. To my right was the road out. Opposite was a narrow dirt lane between two tumbledown buildings, and walking towards me up that lane was a man with broad, open features. His eyes were surrounded by deep lines. He leaned on a walking stick and waved with his free hand.

“Buenas tardes, peregrina,” he called, his face creasing into a grin. That smile was my introduction to Domingo. We stood in the main street, talking about the weather, how far I’d walked, and where I was from.

Australia got a good response.

He held out his free arm and suggested a little walk–un camino pequeno.

We set off at Domingo pace, stopping to sniff the wind, to look and listen.

He gave me the grand tour of El Ganso, where he had spent his entire life. We saw the houses of his brothers and sisters; a big two-storey house–not so nice as the low ones; the vacant land, just waiting for a nice lady from Australia to buy it and build a new home; the abandoned houses, falling into disrepair and back into the ground; the edible rose hips; and the scratching chooks with their scrawny chicks.

Stories everywhere. The house where he was born. The families who went away. The home that waits for his son. The flowers he planted for his sister. The figs, so good, so good…

Then he took me to his house and ushered me inside. He showed me his kitchen, and the kettle his wife favoured, their bedroom and bathroom, both modern and cool; the guest room–for next visit? Then his shed, with its tools and folding garden furniture. His backyard, where he picked for me white roses tinged with softest pink, and two perfect pears. He had sons in Seattle and Madrid, he told me. They made a lot of money but they didn’t come home much.

The whole tour took maybe an hour. Details, affection, the wonder of his almost-abandoned town…

“Te gusta mi pueblo?” You like my town?

I did. I still do.

As the sun set, he walked me back along the empty main street to the albergue, where he left me with a stiff bow and a sweep of his free arm, saying, “Ésta es mi pueblo.”

This is my town.

I watched him walk away, the scent of pears and roses wafting in the warm air as the church steeple turned orange. All around his retreating figure, the stones of the houses glowed. His home was radiant, radiating. I saw how full it was of loves and losses, and how much richer I was for him having stepped into my life to tell me of them.

I took my fruits and flowers to adorn my table at the Cowboy Bar. Cowboys were a disappearing breed, and I wondered about the future of those pueblos. Would they survive the rush of the young to the cities and beyond?

Water

Last week, I was invited to write something to read at the first story-telling night at the Grumpy Swimmer bookshop in Elwood. The theme was “water” – not an element in which I’ve ever felt easy, much as I love it.

At the same time, I was grappling with my piece for Women of Letters. I hadn’t finalised it, and was torn between three wildly different versions. I think the piece for Grumpy might have affected the outcome of my letter. It’s as though I dipped my toes into the water and was able to look back to shore and see where I had come from – and that is what I wrote about.

So, as a way of honouring the process, and as an offering to you, my subscriber-village, I thought I’d post the Grumpy piece here. It’s short – it had to come in under five minutes – but I’m so grateful to it. It is a step on the way to my next major project, I think. And it gave me the first words for my Women of Letters piece, too!

I was born at the end of the world, on the edge of a great ocean. Before my eyes could focus, I was taken to a place in the desert, where, like a cactus, I grew plump, drawing life from the red dust that was my whole world.

One day, they took me back to see that ocean I had not been shown. They told me I could swim in it, walk beside it, make a castle near it. They gave me a bucket and a spade, and I held them close in the hot car for hours while we drove to that great ocean.

They forgot one thing. They didn’t tell me about the noise.

“Look,” they said. “Look at the pretty blue.”

The pretty blue roared and crashed, it thumped and smashed. It frothed and bubbled and hissed, and no amount of cajoling was going to get me to step into its soupy swirls.

I ran from it, craving my desert silence.

When I had grown I went back to the great ocean. It was still loud.

Currents of warmth rose out of frigid depths. Sand slid from under my toes. Seaweed tangled around my thighs, trying to hold me. Water was sirens, sharks and lures. Water was not my element.

Too loud. Too belligerent. Too slippery and unpredictable.

I left the great ocean and returned to the reliable earth, to find my feet and my way. I walked. I walked myself away from my home and into the wide world.

Along the ways, I was always drawn to ocean-people. I loved their roaring laughter, their flicks and head-tosses, their flamboyance. But I couldn’t stay with them. Always I returned to the silence of the earth; to its unassuming wisdom and its wry smile.

One day in the midst of all the ocean-people, I met an earthed man, who brought me to live in his home near a stretch of water that is confident enough about itself not to need to roar. I came home to a sure shore.

On the edge of Port Phillip Bay, there is a trail, where I’ve walked for over two decades now. It is my camino. That word means road, or way, in the Spanish language. It makes a known path feel more seductive to me when I call it a camino. Sometimes, you need to find ways of making the familiar exotic when you walk a road every day.

My camino runs from the end of the Elwood canal, past Point Ormond, and along the beach to Brighton. Sometimes I turn right and head for St Kilda, but it’s busy along there. Too many ocean-people.

On my camino, the rhythm of my feet kicks in, and before I know it I have drifted to other roads…to the desert, to Italy, central Australia, and Tasmania; to the Great Dividing Trail. I can be in Spain, out on the dry meseta tableland.

But then I turn my head, and there beside me on my camino is the bullet-grey of Port Phillip Bay’s water.

Come back. It says. Be here. Be where you are.

Because now, after all these years of tracing that camino bay-trail, it is water that grounds me. Calmer, stiller water. The glint of afternoon sun on that wine-dark bay tells me I’m where I belong. The first pale light of day, sparkling on the lapping edge at my toes, whispers that I’m where I’m meant to be. It is water, that body of water with its softness and its steely grey, that holds me on course and stays the distance. It is that water that calls me home.

End-of-the-world-sunset across my beloved bay

My gratitude to all of you who are subscribers, and in particular to those who have left such rich and thoughtful comments in response to the offerings here. I recently re-read my first ever post, and I remember the skepticism I felt about things digital and social media. I realise I now have new communities. I love sharing snippets and pictures and fast updates on Facebook, and enjoy the thumbs-up LIKEs when they hit a nerve, or give a smile. I have learned that Twitter can take me down tunnels about writers and news outlets I’d never imagined. Here, on the blog, I feel I have conversations with guests at an on-goinng dinner party.

So thank you all, wherever you intersect with me. I will keep trying to offer tasty morsels!

And speaking of giving…

…which is what I was doing in the last post….

I was not intending to write again so soon, and I was certainly not intending to write on the same subject, but I have been reminded tonight about two glaring omissions from my list of book recommendations. I’m further ashamed because both reminders come courtesy of two big-hearted, generous spirits who never forget to offer thanks or give recognition.

Firstly, let me remind you, as if you needed reminding, of the remarkable talent of Favel Parrett. Her first novel, Past the Shallows, has been nominated for, or won, almost every major fiction award in the country this year. It reads like the work of a master. No-one says that it is wonderful “for a first book.” It is wonderful. Full stop. Wonder-full. Master-full. And yet it is also dark, fragile, terrifying. I cared so deeply for the characters, and felt so keenly the place they inhabited. To say more is to reach for a list of superlatives, all of which it deserves – but what it mostly deserves is to be read.

And not overlooked.

The second recommendation will come as no surprise I’m sure, but I received an email tonight quoting these lines:

You can have the other words – chance, luck, coincidence, serendipity.
I’ll take grace. I don’t know what it is exactly, but I’ll take it.

It’s a fragment of Mary Oliver, of course. Grace and not knowing are two of her specialties. It made me think that I should remind you again to seek her out, but also it’s an opportunity for you to see her wonderful face.

I’ve an idea she and Favel would get along. They are both keen observers of the natural world, both are born poets, and both make writing appear effortless.

My thanks for the reminders.

And to those of you who have sent in recommendations, muchas gracias. I look forward to hours of pleasure in the company of new voices.

Oh, and one last thing…

I loaned my copy of Wallace Stegner’s Crossing to Safety to someone. Any ideas? Also Michael Cunningham’s A Home At the End of the World has gone walkabout. Both go on the all-time list – when they come home!

                                                                  For Favel…

 

The ones that keep on giving…

One of the most thrilling sentences I’ve heard this year is – “I’ve just given your book as a present because I know that my Dad/friend/cousin will really enjoy it.”

To be “gifted on” has been the unanticipated joy of writing a book. I have one friend who has popped in several times to ask me to inscribe copies, and each time I feel honoured and excited to be the gift given. Maybe it’s because one of my biggest pleasures has always been to go into a bookstore to select a book for someone. Arranging that marriage of writer and recipient is endlessly fascinating as I weigh up whether the relationship should be challenging, consoling, sensual, amusing or intellectual. It’s made even more of a joy when a knowledgeable bookseller makes recommendations and I have to consider stranger, but equally attractive, possibilities than those I had begun with. Such fun!

Then there is the treat of being given a book voucher and browsing the shelves for myself. That almost equals the moment of receiving a book wrapped in crisp paper!

The other deep pleasure is when I’m recommended a book. “You haven’t read it, Ailsa? I can’t believe that. You must! You will love it!” That certainty. That wish to share the story or poem that has shaken someone’s foundations, or made them step into the world and see it with new eyes. I’ve been recommended some wonders in the past few months, and I thought I would pass on a few of my favourites here. These are the books I have given – and they are also books that keep on giving. In no particular order…

I’ve actually read this twice now. I bought it the minute it came out, and gulped it down greedily, loving Sophie Cunningham’s very particular portrait of her Melbourne, which overlaps and intersects with my Melbourne, but which also uncovered aspects that surprised me, both historically and topographically.

I read it again after asking her to sign a copy for me at Byron, and I’m so glad I did. It merits a second, slower read. Rather like Melbourne itself, it is full of by-ways and diversions. It details our clans and allegiances (yes, like the football…our Cats did not make it to the final this year), and focusses on 2009, the year of fires. It is beautifully crafted, seamlessly blending the personal and the public life of the city and the author. Read it wherever you live.

Rodney Hall’s book of short stories – Silence – was an epiphany for me at the beginning of the year. I waxed about it to everyone I met. We created a night of words and music around it at the Airey’s Inlet Festival. I gave it for birthdays and beloveds.

I have read much of Rodney’s work, and always admired it, but these stories woke me to what a master of the short story he is. They are the work of decades, and they reward reading and re-reading. Infinitely varied in tone and setting, they are by turns fierce, tender and always true.

I can’t go another minute without mentioning Charlotte Wood. I know she has had air-time here before, and maybe my admiration for her is already obvious, but she has produced two books in twelve months and both of them are magnificent. Animal People is a novel of dark humour, wisdom and compassion, with a central character who must be put onto a cinema screen. It is one of the most vivid portraits of person and place I’ve ever read, and Sydney streets will always look different after reading this. Love and Hunger is just my favourite book of the year for its generosity, its tender heart, its moral wrangling with contemporary issues and its complexity. Enough said? Not really, but you get the picture!

OK, so there had to be something Spanish!

Lucia Graves is the daughter of Robert Graves. She grew up in Spain, and writes about it with the particular intimacy of an insider/outsider. It is exquisite as biography, as cultural document and as a history of a particular time. It’s not easy to track down but I can’t recommend it enough. And for those of you who enjoy Carlos Ruiz Zafon, it is Lucia Graves who translates his works so brilliantly into English.

Seek her out. Do!

You don’t need me to tell you the wonders inside this cover, but it has been great to go back and re-read, re-savour, replenish.

Even in translation, Lorca’s words pierce psyche, heart, conscience, intellect. All.

They are lush and lovely.

An essential indulgence.

And speaking of lush and lovely…

I couldn’t wait to read Susan Johnson’s new book My Hundred Lovers. I am a paid-up fan over many years. It is one hundred shades of sensuality, and is crafted masterfully. Lap it up. And while you are seeking it out, see if you can find my favourite of hers – A Better Woman. It remains one of those lifelong “besties” for me. I have given it and given it. I re-read it in the light of her new book and it is just as potent and wrenching. Hard to find but you can get it with the help of a good bookseller or online. Maybe we can force a reprint if enough of us ask.

Also potentially hard to get, but worth tracking, is Hilary McPhee’s timeless book Other People’s Words. Hunt it down.

I have loved this since it was first released. It is wise, funny, meticulously observed, full of delicious details, and delivers way more than its humble title suggests.

These are Hilary’s words, and so of course they are gold. If you love Australian writing, this book is almost a primer for you. On every page there is something to savour and remember.

The poet (and friend!) E.A. Horne recommended Bereft at the beginning of the year. I read it in the heat of summer, and couldn’t put it down.

Dark, gothic and poetic, with hints of another favourite, Sonya Hartnett, but entirely individual, it is bound to be a film because every page is so vividly evoked. I could see, smell, taste the place, and held my breath on every page. Brilliant characters and an Australia that is both familiar and strange. Magnificent.

I’m not sure I can add anything to what you already have read about All That I Am. It has won all the big prizes this year, and is a masterly novel that squeezes the heart and challenges the mind. It is also an exercise in writing place – each location is brilliantly evoked. But I did want to remind you about Stasiland, Anna Funder’s previous book, which remains on my all-time top ten. I could just list superlatives endlessly, or you could just get your hands on it!

 

I’m currently finishing off this collection of writings by Robert Dessaix. I would never miss anything he writes, even though I have moments of being shocked by his curmudgeonly take on things.

Or is that why I love him? He’s unflinching and pithy, and his view of the world is particular and incisive. I saw him speak at the Wheeler Centre earlier this year, and just wanted him to go on and on. That mix of generosity and sharpness is entirely seductive. I don’t want the book to end. I know he is not everyone’s taste – I’ve had arguments about this – but I’m in awe of him. And in delight. And anyway, why be to everyone’s taste?

And next?

Well, I’ve already started to delve into Fishing the River of Time, and I know it is going to be a perfect follow-up to Dessaix. Completely different in tone, but equal in craft and detail, from the truly lovely first sentence I was hooked.

Sorry.

Dreadful pun.

Just google it and you will be seduced by the story. The writing lives up to all promises.

I have to stop. I could go on and on, but I have a tale to write for Wednesday’s story-telling night at Grumpy Swimmer bookshop in Elwood, and a letter to pen for Sunday’s Women of Letters event.

And I have books to read. What a privilege that is, and what companions they are.

The list is far from complete. The year has delivered so many other treats – essays and ruminations, picture books and poetry, genre novels and plays. But I offer these up as possibilities. Walk into a bookstore or a library in search of one of them, and I guarantee you will emerge with a friend.

Or a gift – for yourself or someone else. No matter. You will have had pleasure before you even open the pages!

*******************

OOPS! A postscript added later.

The other thrilling sentence of this week was “Did you see that great review in Sunday’s Sun-Herald in Sydney?”

I hadn’t, but friends sent me a photo. And here it is for you. My gratitude for the pic, and also to the reviewer – Rosemarie Milson – for her kind words.

The Fall

Yesterday I fell.

Hard.

Ouch!

My body crashed against concrete, and all my weight came down on my right hip and shoulder, while skin was dragged from my elbow and hand. The action of falling seemed to go on forever. I witnessed the ground rising up to meet me, taking an eternity before it smashed against my bones. I angled my body to the right as it moved through the air, trying to protect my phone in my left pocket. I entertained a parade of thoughts in the second or two before the ground whacked into me: You idiot. You should have been looking down. Put your right arm out to break the fall. This is pride because you were feeling so bloody clever at having finished your tax. Hold your head away so you don’t smash your teeth. How can the great walker fall? You haven’t fallen since Finisterre. Not concrete. Not asphalt. No. No. You were going too fast. You brought this on yourself. You are an idiot. 

THUMP.

And then the tears.

A little boy approached on his bike. He slowed to look at this unexpected sight – a lady face down on the pavement, crying.

“Are you ok?” he said.

“Yes,” I sniffed.

He nodded. “Be careful,” he said, then pedalled away at speed.

Be careful.

I don’t want to be careful. I don’t want to watch my back and check the path for cracks. I don’t want to pack seconds of everything “just in case”. I don’t want to think of rainy days. I don’t want to walk in a world where every pace is monitored.

But I also don’t want to fall. It’s scary. Something happens when we fall. Something decidedly outside of our normal, constructed, adult world.

There I lay on the ground by the Elwood canal, sobbing into the dirt. I couldn’t stop. I was like a child, choking on sobs as the adult part of me looked around to make sure no-one could see. I knew this was shameful somehow, but couldn’t stop it. Yes, there was pain. Skin had ripped and bones were assuredly bruised. But that didn’t account for the wracking, choking sounds and the tears that would not stop coursing down my face. I tried to stand and could barely drag myself to a sitting position. When eventually I began to move, it was in the gait of an ancient, feet not trusting the earth to hold me upright.

I was old. I was a child. I was ashamed. I was afraid.

What is it about falling that shook me so? A dent to the ego? The realisation that I’m getting  old? Children fall and pick themselves up in an instant, but old people’s lives can be cut short by a fall. Some never recover from the earth rushing toward them in that telescopic fracturing of all that is normal.

Yesterday I fell from a kind of gracelessness – a lack of gratitude. I take for granted that I can stand. That I can walk. That I am strong. I also take for granted that the earth doesn’t betray me, and maybe that is arrogant. Maybe I need to pay more attention. To take for granted is not to love. Maybe I was so caught in my own petty triumph over paperwork that I had forgotten to pay attention to the earth.

Today, everything hurts. Hips, shoulder, elbow, skin, ego – they are all shouting. But when next I walk, I will remember to check the earth as well as the sky. The cracks in the pavement have their own story to tell.

While we are talking about falling, I have been prompted once again to consider modern sins. Caroline Baum asked some pertinent questions about contemporary misdemeanours, and the authors we look to for moral guidance, over at the Booktopia site. Have a look.

She set me to thinking.

Is it a “sin” not to tick the carbon offset box when I book an airline ticket, if I believe in action to arrest climate change? Is it a lie to say that I don’t believe that the airline will do something honourable with that money? Is it selfishness?

And coming through customs, is it honesty that sees me declaring every single thing in my luggage, or is it really just fear? No, there’s no righteousness to be had in that moment! Fear wins every time. I’d like to say I was taking the high road, but fear keeps me true. What does that say about the settings of my moral compass, I wonder?

Thanks Ms Baum for making me ponder again.

If you’d like to see a conversation about how tricky it is to be good, Big Ideas recorded a panel at the Byron Bay Writers Festival. It’s between me, Caroline, Hannie Rayson and Charlotte Wood, and the link for it is below in blue. They are deeply thoughtful women and I was fortunate to share a stage with them. I apologise in advance for my dodgy American accent!

http://www.abc.net.au/tv/bigideas/stories/2012/08/27/3576562.htm

It’s the little things that are hardest, isn’t it? The nuances? As Bertolt Brecht said…

The sharks I dodged

The tigers I slew

What ate me up

Was the bedbugs

May you keep escaping the bedbugs!

I’m planning on being back in form for a couple of bookish Melbourne events in the next week or so, and would love your company at them.

Next Wednesday 12th September, I’ll be at the Grumpy Swimmer Bookstore in Ormond Road Elwood from 7pm, where Clifford is hosting a night of story-telling on the theme of water. Ten people each speak for five minutes. $10 admission includes wine, or coffee, and all the stories. Come along and hear tales of waves and rivers and waterfalls and maybe tears. I promise I won’t repeat this one!

And on Sunday September 16th from 2.30pm, I will be at the Thornbury Theatre for Women of Letters from 2.30pm. Five of us – Sally Heath, Sarah Blasko, Helen Garner, Kate Mulvany and me – have been invited by Marieke Hardy and Michaela McGuire to deliver a Letter to our Unfinished Business. I’m still wrangling mine, but I have given up on writng to the Elwood pavement! The show is sold out, but Marieke says they may release balcony tickets and she will let me know if that happens, so let me know if you want to be advised – or check on Facebook.

Watch the cracks!