Tiny Stories

It's been a rough 20 months I reflect, as we near the end of 2021. Me? Ups and downs, but nothing I can’t weather with good friends, my constant companion Skylla, and a little money in the bank. Others have done it hard, and my heart reaches out to them. Significant events for my own two sons, who have drawn on the resources they have to brilliantly manage the shituation. I am proud of them both, in only the intense way that parents are. Serious injury, the death of a pet, moving cities and of course, that which shall not be named. It is raining this morning, after a hot, hot, hot day yesterday in the Bay. I welcome the rain, the dry soil thirstily drinking the nectar from the clouds above. The pied stilts in the wetlands are squawking, a handful of the chicks now heading towards adolescence, despite the odds and night-prowling felines. My mate is coming to visit with his husband, and I’m elated. That’s why I chose to move, out of the rat race, swapping my two-beddy terrace for a h...

It is August 1981 when I see the young woman in a vintage poster, an ad for Pears soap, her skin ivory and flawless. It inspires me, and that younger me - fresh back from a year in Japan - is composing a poem. There are no iambic pentameters, no rhyming couplets, just intense emotion and free form verse, a handful of mixed metaphors that don’t sit well with my older self. It is December 2021, 40 years later. My own skin is no longer flawless (was it ever?) but my mind is open, grasping opportunities to learn, again and again. I am in a small provincial town, desolate and desperate as this virus sweeps through the country. My learners are keen - hiding behind masks - as we talk, we share, we listen and we laugh. At lunch time, we head outside, the grey sky reflecting the mood of the town. A young woman, her jeans tattered and torn, approaches and begins to speak to him. He, who was so attentive just 10 minutes before, now applying the newfound knowledge and skills so passionately in the...