Sunday fiction: Sugar
By Jim Noonan
So it was no surprise that morning as he looked over his day planner that he felt no alarm at the course his penciled notes charted:
1). Shop for groceries
2). Pick up dry cleaning
3). Kill Rose
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Saturday poem: Inner wakefulness
Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi
By Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi (1207-1273)
This place is a dream
only a sleeper considers it real
then death comes like dawn
and you wake up laughing
at what you thought
was your grief
Sunday story: An Old Woman near Ballinsloe
There are many forths around, and in that one beyond, there is often music heard. The smith’s father heard the music one time he was passing and he could not stop from dancing till he was tired. I heard him tell that myself.
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Saturday poem 1: At the end of a crazy-moon night
by Lalla (Lal Ded), (14th century)
At the end of a crazy-moon night
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Sunday fiction: The Adventures of Aladdin
By the Grimm brothers
Once upon a time . . . a widow had an only son whose name was Aladdin. They were very poor and lived from hand to mouth, though Aladdin did what he could to earn some pennies, by picking bananas in faraway places.
One day, as he was looking for wild figs in a grove some way from the town, Aladdin met a mysterious stranger. This smartly dressed dark-eyed man with a trim black beard and a splendid sapphire in his turban, asked Aladdin an unusual question: Continue Reading »
Saturday poem 2: The peace of wild things
By Wendell Berry
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
Saturday poem 1: Why I Voted the Socialist Ticket
by Vachel Lindsay, from General William Booth Enters into Heaven, and Other Poems (1919)
I am unjust, but I can strive for justice.
My life’s unkind, but I can vote for kindness.
Sunday fiction: How the Cinderella Story probably actually happened
Scornful Woman, by Egon Schiele
And Then the Prince Knelt Down and Tried to Put the Glass Slipper on Cinderella’s Foot
By Judith Viorst
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Saturday poem: Everything is plundered, betrayed, sold
by Anna Akhmatova
Everything is plundered, betrayed, sold, Continue Reading »
Chapter 15
CI concludes its serialisation of The Illness and the Cure
(START AT THE BEGINNING, CHAPTER 1)
Then six months passed and they heard nothing from Isabella. Paulo rang the Catholic Relief people in the Port but they had moved. He sent telegrams, he wrote letters begging her to come, but there was no reply. He feared she had died alone at the wrong end of the world.
It was a Monday morning, and he kissed little Luzo goodbye and was cuddling Simone, now seven months pregnant. He had decided to raise hell at the Australian Consul, to at least put an end to his miserable uncertainty. There came a knock at the door and they all turned. He looked at Simone and swallowed.
‘Open it,’ she said.
He walked over, bamboo matting squeaking underfoot, pulled it open, and sharp blue morning light cut through the room. There was a silence.
Sunday fiction: Hans and Lotte’s Big Adventure
The children ran around and gathered up snowballs and threw them at one another, screaming with laughter, till one little girl was hit in the face by one. Licking her lips, she yelled to the others, ‘It’s not snow, it’s icing sugar!’
A story for children, by Pieter Muller
A strange thing happened to her when she was about half way through the piece – her feet lifted off the ground. She panicked for a moment and stopped playing, and her feet touched the floor again. She cleared her throat and looked around the room, as if someone might be playing a dirty trick on her, but no, no one was there. She could hear Hilde doing Parting Wild Horse’s Mane in the lounge room in her Calamity Jane outfit, Hans licking out the honey jar, and Dieter clicking away happily at the blue patches of sky. She recommenced where she’d left off, a little cautious this time, and as the notes glided around the room, she took off again. With her heart in her mouth, she kept playing, and this time she rose well up off the floor, started flying in graceful little curves and arcs around her room.
Saturday poem: The Shape of Love
By Adyashanti
What we see is not the most important.
Could dust rise without the invisible
hand of the wind?
Chapter 14
CI continues its serialisation of The Illness and the Cure
(START AT THE BEGINNING, CHAPTER 1)
‘Look, don’t worry about it sonny, all right? I’ll just go.’
‘Sorry, sir, if you’ve got a crime to report you’d better report it. That’d be obstructing justice, wouldn’t it?’
‘Never mind.’
He turned to go. A door swung open behind him.
‘My old mate. Me old horse breaker. Me old red ragger from way back. How can I help you Seamus?’ Continue Reading »
Chapter 13 (at last, the truth about Harold Holt’s disappearance)
CI continues its serialisation of The Illness and the Cure
(START AT THE BEGINNING, CHAPTER 1)
‘I’ll not let him be! He is a bloody ratbag!’ She said it in English and Arabella stared at her.
‘What’s that?’
‘I don’t know, but I’ll curse him until I blow the roof of his house away.’
Arabella said; ‘My first singing teacher taught me to choose happiness.’
‘Paah to your first singing teacher! Your first singing teacher. Thank you for the advice. You who show the scars on your face. You who the fascists nearly killed. You can choose to hide your face behind your hair, to flee to the other side of the world, but I take the other path. I choose vingança. It gives me more pleasure by far.’
Saying the word vingança Isabella pulled the corners of her mouth back and bared her teeth.
‘It does you no good,’ Arabella said.
‘Aaiee!’ Isabella bellowed. ‘Vingança fits me like a glove! You should try it. I’ll not bottle up my poison. I’ll pour it out over this man who takes my boys from me. You! You go upstairs and go to bed. Go hide! Let me alone to fight the Guterres-Bragas’ battles.’
‘No,’ Arabella replied quietly. ‘The Guterres-Bragas don’t hide.’ Continue Reading »
Sunday fiction: Pataggonia
To buy yourself a country… What a dream, ho, ho, ho… But an Empire?! Well! That’s what I call a bargain! But Belbbo Atipal was missing few good billions. So he went on 42nd, at “Frotex Ltd.” to buy himself a little country named Pataggonia. Continue Reading »
Chapter 12
CI continues its serialisation of The Illness and the Cure
(START AT THE BEGINNING, CHAPTER 1)
Paulo walks to him and takes him by the shoulders, watches the tears roll down his cheeks then clasps him to his chest, the boys a flawed mirror image of one another.
‘Go to Melbourne,’ Paulo whispers. ‘Get out of here. People will know. If we both leave it’ll be our secret.’
‘Will I find Dad in Melbourne?’
‘No.’
‘Why did Daddy leave us? Didn’t he want us any more?’
Paulo looks into his eyes and is astonished by the bewilderment there.
‘I don’t know. I mean yes, of course he wanted us.’
‘Will he come back?’
‘No.’
‘Not ever?’
‘No. He’s gone.’
‘Where did he go to?’
‘To Heaven.’
