Interfaith dialogue

A lot of people don’t realise that Jesus has always been much admired within Islam.  While not recognising Jesus as being an equal of God, Islam holds him up as a paragon of mercy and compassion.  The reason Jesus can not be God is because Islam argues that if God is One, the notion of a Trinity seems a bit nonsensical.  God has no partner, I think is the theology.  But a lot of famous Muslims have recognised Jesus as something for ordinary human beings to aspire to, a “kind of” perfection that is attainable within this very life.

I love Sufism, always have and always will, even if I may only approach it from a rather bookish perspective.  Please don’t bother asking anyone if I know what the heck I am talking about, because I freely admit that I do not.  Still, have a listen.  What I want to do in this post is to give you an example of a Sufi teaching story and contrast it with a story from the Gospel.  I aim not to convert anyone to anything; I am writing about justice and mercy and that is all.

From the Way of the Sufi, a story by Attar.

AN ANSWER OF JESUS

Some Israelites reviled Jesus one day as he was walking through their part of the town.

But he answered by repeating prayers in their name.

Someone said to him:

“You prayed for these men, did you not feel incensed against them?”

He answered:

“I could spend only of what I had in my purse.”

(End of story)  I love this little story.  Now, I want to give a teaching story from the Christian tradition

“They went each to his home, and Jesus to the Mount of Olives.  At dawn he appeared once more in the temple; and when all the people started coming to him, he sat down and started to teach them. The doctor of the law and the Pharisees now brought in a woman caught committing adultery.  Making her stand out in the middle they said to him, “Master, this woman was caught in the very act of adultery.  Moses laid it down for us in the Law that such a woman should be stoned.  What do you say about it?”

They put the question to trap him, hoping to frame a charge against him.  Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground.  When they continued to press their question he sat up straight and said, “Let the man amongst you who is without sin be the first to cast a stone at her.”  Then once again he bent down and wrote on the ground.  When they heard what he said, one by one they went away, beginning with the elders; and Jesus was alone with the woman still standing there.  Jesus raised his head and said, “Woman, where are they?  Has no-one condemned you?”  No-one, sir,” she answered.  Jesus said, “Nor do I condemn you.  Go now and sin no more.”

A hero of mine, Metropolitan Anthony Bloom relates the story of asking a parishioner to find themselves in one of their favourite Gospel stories.  The man says, well, I always like the story of the woman who was caught in adultery.  Metropolitan Anthony asks, and who are you in the story.  The man says, sadly, I would have been the only one to cast a stone.

Within Islam, God has many names, one of the key ones being the most Compassionate and the most Merciful.  I agree that Jesus, as a man, can not be more compassionate than God.  It is a logical impossibility.

As Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran plead for clemency, I remind important people of important facts and truths that people in a higher place than me should be paying a little more attention to.  Hey, Kevin, do you want to be Pontius Pilate?  I am not saying that Kevin Rudd can or should do anything.  Or that the Australian government is not doing all they can.  Just make sure of it, guys.  (PS: I use Kevin as a symbol because he holds no major office, and a friend of mine once knew him and I have always tried to believe in him as I have tried to believe in all my representatives in Parliament.)

I really do wish it was as simple as appealing to people’s conscience.  If it was me, I couldn’t fire one of those bullets for the very reason that can be abstracted from this post.  I don’t believe in other governments executing these two Australian citizens for the crime of attempting to smuggle drugs out of  their country and into ours.  Seems like Indonesia would get the better end of that deal anyway.  And what would the nature of the crime be.  I know its drug smuggling, but what does that mean?  Attempted manslaughter?  Big questions.

And I don’t believe in the Australian government not making arguments such as mine publicly.  You guys are doing a great job but you are messing this one thing up.  Surely.

PS:  Been reading Alan Wallace’s seminal text, Boundless Heart, on the four immeasureables.  A promise to my readers, I won’t be this preachy always.  Just wanted to make a few points that matter.  I take themes and run with them.  This was on my mind for a long time and I want to do my bit to make this world better.

My little prayer for tonight: Just as I want to be happy and don’t want suffering, so does Andrew want to be happy and doesn’t want suffering.  Just as I want to be happy and don’t want suffering so does Myuran want to be happy and doesn’t want suffering.

May you guys be well, may you guys be safe, may you guys be happy, may you guys live with ease.  I believe that God desires mercy not sacrifice.  Some of us are praying for you.

A wisdom story: the Heart.

The following story is taken from one of my favourite daybooks. The story is very simple and it’s called “The Heart”

Someone went up to a madman who was weeping in the bitterest
possible way.
He said:
“Why do you cry?”
The madman answered:
“I am crying to attract the pity of His heart.”
The other told him:
“Your words are nonsense, for He has no physical heart.”
The madman answered:
“It is you who are wrong, for He is the owner of all the hearts which exist. Through your heart you can make your connection with God.”

(Excerpted from The Way of the Sufi by Idries Shah for Andrew and Myuran)

Grant’s guide to world peace (re-edit)

In the press, this week was a very important article.  It was about two young Australians, Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran and their final hope for clemency.  For those of you who have never heard of them, these two young men were part of and perhaps the ringleaders of a group called the Bali Nine, who were caught trying to smuggle heroin out of Indonesia.  As an Australian, I feel that these two men have done enough time to realise the error of their ways.  Were they to be released tomorrow, I believe they would never reoffend in this manner.  Yet, they wait in prison to see whether the sovereign state of Indonesia will spare their lives.  I would ask that nation to be merciful, and at least let them live.  One of the reasons for the death penalty handed to them is to dissuade others from doing the same.  I believe they could do more in this manner alive than dead, outside of prison than inside.  I would like my country, Australia, to do everything in their power diplomatically to aid them.  For me, if this government is to represent my voice, they will at least consider my plea.  I blogged on this a long time ago in Japan, on a website called garantseraph.blogspot.jp.  Now I have reaccessed my account, I have decided to export and rework the original article. 

But before you continue reading further, I would ask that you give serious consideration to signing this petition asking for clemency to be granted. The link is at http://mercycampaign.org/petition

I know I could do a better re-edit, but I choose to make mostly cosmetic changes so it reflects my mood at the time of original writing.  My original piece:

The need for further negotiation
         

This is how I see the world.  Its like a group of people standing in a circle,  as far away from each other as possible.  These people each have a different perspective, or viewpoint.  They remain rooted to their position and yell as loud as possible at all of the other viewpoints, and defend their own position as hard as they can.   They have to yell loud because they are so far away from each other.  This is the ground on which they stand inside of themselves.  Basically, at a certain point of time in life they made up their minds.  They are adamant; their points of view are set in stone.  The positions in the circle, as I see it, have to take a few steps closer together.  Then they can talk a bit quietly.            

This is Grant’s version of how to fix the world, by the way.  Get a football field.  Get a man, woman and child from each country and each religion, dress them up in one of the other people’s clothes.  And stand them at the MCG, while the world watches.  Its Grand Final day, but in the spirit of things that really matter, we change that thing by a week.  We let the kids go first.  They yell as loud as they like.  Hello, konichiwa, annyong, ne hao, jambo, g’day.  No-one can hear each other, so their parents let them take a step forward.  They have to walk.  Then they talk about their really important things.  I have a dog, I have a cat, I like soccer, I play baseball, wow Justin Bieber is so cool, green’s my favorite colour, I like Blue Ranger, I love reading.  Music’s great.  Do you know how to dance. And they say stuff as loud as they can, step by step until they reach the middle.  Some music is playing, just basic piano stuff.  Not too slow, not too fast.  Maybe George Winston or something. 
Then they reach the middle zone. In the middle is a new bicycle for each child, parked neatly, with their name on it.  They can have a bit of a ride around for awhile.  Wow, isn’t this neat.  Then they get to the very centre where each child has a bottle of water made by a different company.  No-one knows whose is whose.   And some pizza.  Just a basic vegetarian pizza.  With some cheese.  Some people don’t eat these things but most people do, so that’s okay.  The kids have to shake hands say hello and give each other a hug.  Then they can take their bikes back to their mothers. 

Their mothers can do something similar without the bikes.  They know at least two foreign languages, a little bit.  They have a new camera and the CD of their choice.  That’s their free stuff.  In the middle, they can get a piece of cake, a little bit of whatever drink they want.  They give their favorite CD to one of the other mothers.  They do rock, scissors papers to see who gets to choose the music.  And then they share their Facebook address. And they return to their children, who are in the care of….  the men, their leaders. 

These guys have to yell and shout for a bit, for a day, in the spirit of world peace.  When they get closer together, they should learn to think about what they say, and how they are saying it.  They don’t get any free stuff because they are in charge of whole countries and religious groups and scientific projects.  In their top pocket is one non-negotiable.  Its something that the people of their countries would like to see happen.  This has been vetoed by the world religious church thing with buddhists, hindus, muslims and skeptics.  They have to be small things, very concrete things that will just make the world a better place.  I have my own examples, but they are just mine.  What do you think needs to happen?  Just write it down somewhere and ask a couple of friends.  What’s a non-negotiable?  What do we want as citizens that no-one could possibly object to? Three simple things.  Not, for example, the release of all Australian citizens.  Or get rid of nuclear bombs forever.  Or exact same working conditions for people everywhere.  Simple stuff.  An apology to someone or someone’s familiy or the families of a place.  Simple stuff like that.  There are American, Australian, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Canadian, German, French, Italian, Russian, Brazilian, Kenyan, Vaticanan, Luxemburgian, New Zealandan French Polynesian non- negotiables.
 

Everyone can watch.  It’s just a dream.  It doesn’t need to be a circus like this, but we have to see this world getting better through helping ordinary people in trouble and pain.  I think Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran and Julian Assange are Australians.  They are our Australian story.  For this to be a truly representational government, I believe our leaders are called upon to do their utmost on behalf of all Australian citizens.  I would like a stay of execution for these particular young Australians.  I would put that in their top pocket as a non-negotiable.  Indonesia is a fine country, I am sure, it is an up and coming democracy and a key trading partner.  But for trade to mean anything we should be able to come closer together on other things.  If this message resonates with you please put it in your top pocket and  give it to Kevin, Julia, Wayne, Tony or Malcolm.   Please don’t be too confrontational or angry.  Please do this the right way, with no anger in your heart.  I just want my voice to be heard.  I want to believe in my leaders.  Please help me trust.  In the Spirit of Kurt Vonnegut Jr, my dog and my family and other people’s heroes everywhere.  My hero is my family for putting up with all my shit, and me just for sticking around.  Who’s your hero?  Part of reef relief.

PS: I am a global citizen and one of my key non-negotiables were I an American citizen would be some kind of apology to the family and friends of Aaron Schwartz.  Start with something simple, like, gee whiz, I’m sorry we had to be so incredibly heavy handed.  Maybe that was wrong of us, and we would not do the same again if faced with the same situation.  Were I an American, I’d put that in my pocket and give it to my representatives.  C’mon Barrack.  Don’t you guys feel sorry, just a little bit?  I’d like to vote for you, but…

PPS: As an Australian, one of the things I most admire about America is the notion of free speech.  I think that’s great.  

 

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Revolutionary Road

Have you ever felt like a character from Revolutionary Road? I have. More times than I can count. One of the gifts of Richard Yates’ to the world was his ability to look fearlessly at the world. A writer of what I call kitchen sink dramas, Richard Yates had the unique ability to make the most prosaic moments of life seem like the sinking of the Titanic. Which is real. Who hasn’t had an argument with a loved one, whether that be mother, father, sister, son, that has felt pregnant with the question: How do I get out of this one alive? Richard Yates writes those arguments. He lived the way he wrote, too. He lived fearlessly and was unafraid to make mistakes. He lived life like the living itself was an artform that he didn’t quite know how to master, but he was unafraid to try. If you have a perplexing personal crisis, I recommend you give Richard Yates a try. I find he has a lot in common with Jackson Pollock.

So it has all come to this. I woke up this morning as I wake up most mornings now. Recently, I came back from my Seven Years in Japan. At the time, I planned to write a book called Halfway Home. I had spent the most part of six weeks blogging everyday, and trying to cram all of life into a very small box of time. I was living as though the test would be held tomorrow: you know, that test where after death one is either interrogated by God, interrogated by the self, or comes back for yet another shot at this strange and messy thing called life. Do you know that test? I’m sure you’ve at least read about it or seen it captured on camera. What do you take away from the fire? I mean, I’d had this extraordinarily messy relationship with my wife where there seemed so many things to say that had been left unsaid because neither of us knew our lines. I had formed this intense bond with my animal, my child substitute, my little man, my dog, Seraph. Don’t call him a toy poodle, because, for me he was the furthest thing from a toy. Even though he often behaved like some sort of crazy, windup, thing with Everlasting batteries. And I had all of these half formed relationships with people living now halfway across the world. And I couldn’t take any of those things with me.

I couldn’t even take my real stuff. All of the CDs and novels and books and memorabilia that you acquire in seven years of not-quite-living sits unused in an apartment a long way away.

So what do I have now? I have a computer that my father bought me, food my parents buy, a very small amount of savings, two blogs and a self-started charity that very few people seem interested in. And I have a pristine view of trees, blue skies, a million people to meet in a city I once knew well, some sort of ill-defined relationship with my wife, and all the books I could ever read. I have the web, two good fingers for typing (I don’t know how to use the rest), a functional body.

Thank God I am alive. In my next post I might write about all of the wonderful things I am finding on the web. Oh, first, I better change out of my pyjamas, and have a shave. What a glorious Sunday morning.

PS: Last night, I went to an Indian dinner at my parent’s church. The church was hosting some visitors from East Timor. I didn’t know anyone and I felt quite alone. There was a barbershop group singing accapella (spellcheck? who cares?) that really wasn’t my cup of tea. So I went outside, smoked a cigarette, and helped a man do the washing up.

A gatha from Thich Nhat Hanh:

Washing the dishes
is like bathing a baby Buddha.
The profane is the sacred.
Everyday mind is Buddha’s mind.

Gestalt prayer

Yesterday, I blogged a little on DBT and compassion. Today I wanted to share you with you a very special prayer- the Gestalt prayer by Fritz Perls. Gestalt therapy was a new therapy in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. I’m not sure exactly when it was most in vogue, but the leader in the field was a man by the name of Fritz Perls. Here is his prayer:

I do my thing and you do your thing.
I am not in this world to live up to your expectations,
And you are not in this world to live up to mine.
You are you, and I am I, and if by chance we find each other, it’s beautiful.
If not, it can’t be helped.

(Fritz Perls, 1969)

I cam across it last year in my role as an assistant English teacher in Japan. The head of my department was a really cool guy by the name of Mr Matsumoto. We were learning about mottos through the story of Aragaki Tsutomu. Aragaki Tsutomu was born in Okinawa, and his father was a Mexican American GI while his mother was Japanese. I think he never knew his parents, and he was born blind. The story, which can be found in New Horizon 2, a text for Junior High School English students in Japan, begins something like: “Why did my grandmother die? I hate my mother and father,” said the boy as the sun shone in the blue sky…. So it starts off kind of depressing, but talks about how he heard some hymns on the radio, and walked into a Catholic Church. The priest and his family took him in, he learnt to sing and wanted to be a minister, but instead went to Italy and learnt opera. His motto was “try to be the only one, not just the number one.” and I thought that was great.

So Mr M asked me to come up with a list of mottos, I think I did about 30. But I also made a really beautiful worksheet explaining seven. Each motto was linked to ACTION words- Smile, Believe, Don’t give up, Practice hard, Do your best, prepare fully and Start Now in that order. So I asked him, what”s your motto. He gave me two 1) Knock and the door will be opened to you and 2) The gestalt prayer which he pulled out from somewhere in his home room.

Mr M was great. He was the kind of teacher who always seemed tired, but sometimes didn’t seem to put everything out there on the table while being involved heavily in the running of the school itself. He was into a book called I’m OK, You”re Ok- one of the big books on Transactional Analysis. He made me laugh, and I made him laugh a bit, too. He was always reading books on either history or self-sufficiency. He wanted to move to New Zealand and keep bees. He would have loved Emerson or my little Shambhala classic, Walden. On the last day of my contract, Feb 8, I looked for his familiar face. He ws sick that day. So many times jhe had come to school, fighting off sickness to take care of his classes, but on my last day it must have just been too much for him. I went back to the school on the last Wednesday I was in Japan. He had received a promotion and a new school. I wish him well and I was sorry we had to go our different ways. Every meeting ends in separation, as the Buddhists say. I wish him well.

PS: I went to the hospice book shop yesterday and they had some amazing stuff. I bought books on Feldenkrais, neuroscience, Catholicism, Buddhism and Sufism for under 10 bucks. I was just lucky that day, I guess. The books: Between Heaven and Mirth by Father James Martin, S.J., poems by Hafiz, and a book by Thich Nhat Hanh that I had never seen before. It was translated from the French. Plus the other two. Good people, good cause, good shop

PPS: Rereading bits of Sadhana by Anthony De Mello and Armchair Mystic by Mark Thibodeux, two respected Jesuit pray-ers

Stories from the Desert (5)

What am I supposed to do? Well… I know three things
– Don’t think too much of yourself.
– Don’t want too much for yourself.
– Don’t try to fix others, just try and fix yourself.

Stories from the Desert (4)

Fish die on land. We can all agree with that. So, if we spend all our time in the most ridiculous places, or hanging out with the wrong kinds of people, we will lose ourselves. Just like fish have to go back to the sea, you have to check back in with yourself, be able to look yourself in the mirror. Otherwise you will become a bit lost and confused.

May 3rd

I have just woken up, had my coffee and checked my mail. I have recently been learning about DBT, an innovative and interesting therapeutical approach. One of the things I have to learn to do is to identify my feelings. I am not very good at that and would like to get better. One of the skills I have to learn to do is to put a name to my feelings. I have to (well, I don’t have to… who has to do anything?) try to put a name to my feelings, to label them. This is a really good question I am trying to incorporate into my life: What are two words to describe the way I am feeling in this moment right now? The truth is I don’t know. I guess I would say doubtful and inspired. There seems to be a big gap between those two feelings. They almost seem like opposites. For now, I will have to try to put up with the conflict that arises through that, to some how accept the contradictions.

PS: In my mail, I got a timely reminder that I have yet to use my new stumbleupon account. I thought I would try that: Here is an interesting account of a man who was born into a black and white world. Completely color blind form birth, he now wears some kind of cyberchip to help him process the world as other people do… ie. in color.

PPS: I recently remembered that Blue Day, which then became Blue Month, has now finished. The reality though, for many people who have autism or know someone who do is that every day is autism awareness day. One can’t help being aware of conditions that are close to home. I wish all of those people a little bit of serenity, a little bit of wisdom, and a little bit of hope.

My metta for the day: May all beings be safe, may all beings be happy, may all beings be healthy, may all beings live with ease.

From my Tibetan mind training book, Cultivating Compassion by Jeffrey Hopkins, I am learning to try and be very specific in the people I wish these things for, to think of concrete people, to let about ten people come to mind, as a kind of limit to what the mind is capable of and to prevent my metta, or equanimity practice being empty.

Recently visited the Ipswich library. They have a book called Understanding Depression by Paul Gilbert. Paul is from the UK and I have read parts of his book the Compassionate Mind. It’s a good book, but his books are very thick. They also have a book called Self Compassion that might be a useful read. Other books I noticed were a book on meditating on compassion by Kathleeen McDonald, who has written one of the big little books called How to Meditate. You can get that one at Archives at the moment.

In Archives at the moment, they also have Lovingkindness by Sharon Salzberg, which will teach you how to do metta, and a few staples by Thich Nhat Hanh, like Living Buddha, Living Christ, and I think they also have the Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching.

I also found a book called The Wisdom of No Self, by Rodney Smith, a hospice worker, at the Ipswich library. Living in the Light of Death by Larry Rosenberg at Archives (2 copies!) and a book called Authentic Happiness by Martin Seligberg (I think his name is) for only $2 at the Ipswich Hospice book shop. QBD also has some great stuff at the moment, especially a book called the Book of Awakening by Mark Nepo, a cancer survivor and a book by a surviving Rajneshee, if you know what that is. I think that would be an interesting read.

PPS: Lay/buyed a book on Orthodoxy at Lifeline on Adelaide Street. It was a bit expensive but might be worthwhile. The other book they had that might be interesting for someone, I thought, was Zen Gifts for Christians.

I have a fair bit of spare time right now, so I am just doing a little bit of browsing. I applied for some voluntary work and also some casual work but haven’t heard back yet. I want to occupy my time a bit more fruitfully.

My book is a little bit on the backburner until I have access to Microsoft Word. I also have to clarify its direction. I am looking for a publisher who likes my story.

I miss my dog and my wife. I worry about our future.

The Right to Write

I am hoping people don’t misunderstand the nature of some of my writing.  But if that happens, so be it.  I am far from a perfect person, terribly far from a perfect writer.  Maybe my sensibility is all wrong.  Not always but sometimes.  I recently wrote a short story that someone didn’t take kindly to.  I am sorry for that.  It is, however, borne in my own experience.  I trained as a teacher near this area.  I taught a young kid.  I could see he didn’t enjoy school, and actually rarely attended.  I always thought there wasn’t enough in the curriculum for him.  After that I always wondered what happened to him.  I don’t think it’s wrong for us to imagine the lives of others, but that’s just me.  I do think all of the events that occurred in my story could happen, even if they didn’t happen to me.  If anyone wants to find a theme here, it is about suffering and the human response to it.  I don’t think I am the first person to write about that.  Nor will I be the last.  If no-one has ever expressed sadness over random terrible tragedies that haven’t directly involved them, I would be very surprised.  Nevertheless, I can see the guy’s point.  That’s about all I have to say, and I have said it before anyway.  Interested readers might want to read my film reviews of Life is Beautiful and Central Station.  Maybe my story is poorly executed.  Who knows.  All I know is it won’t be the best thing I’ll ever do in my life and it won’t be the worst.  People want to believe in free speech, and then tell other people what to write, that’s okay.  Just think it’s contradictory.

Proof reading my story

G’day, you guys at Meanjin,
The reason why I’m writing you is because this is my story. My name is Ernie Cookson, but you can call me Cook. I’m not much of a writer but I like reading. I’ve read a few books now, and I like what they have to say to me. This is the first story what I’ve written. I know my granma isn’t perfect yet, and nor’s my spelling (that’s a joke), but please read it, because I’d do the same for you. It’s called “I dream of Uluru” and it’s about being homeless.
I dream of Uluru
Yo, reader, whatever you’re doing right now just stop, and take a pause in your busy life to read my story. Why? Because I would do the same for you. See, here’s the thing, I love reading. I’ll read anything, anywhere , anytime and anyplace. But it wasn’t always like that. My name is Ernie Abrahams, but people call me Cook, because I like cooking.
I recently lost my wife and daughter, and I want to tell you how and why that happened. Sometimes though, I think I’ll never know. My wife’s family buried her but I want to take my little girl up to Uluru and lay her down at the foot of that great mountain, that piece of solid rock.
Most of the rest of what I tell you will be true. Not perfectly, in all the details, but for the most part.
The reason people called me Ernie was because when I was younger, my favourite TV show was Sesame Street. You know how they talk about being stuck to the screen. Well, my mother just about had to scrape me off. I had to help out around the house a bit with the youngest. My real name is Errol by the way.
At school, I didn’t go much. Why? I guess I just didn’t like it. They didn’t talk about anything I was interested in. See, I like fishing and camping. Always have and always will. Oh, and I love kicking a football and hitting a ball. I was actually pretty good at both of them, especially football. I wanted to go pro before I did my knee. I could’ve been another Karmichael, my cousin reckons.
But I never liked books, not at school anyway. I hated maths, and I hated reading. Why? Because I’m black. And it just seemed like part of the white man’s world to me and the teachers never liked me anyway. Besides, I wasn’t any good at it. I kind of fell through the cracks, but they were some pretty deep cracks. I asked for a better word the other day. My reading coach told me a “crevice” was a pretty good word to describe what I fell through.
Me and my friends used to do crazy stuff when we should have been at school. When did yous learn to drive, for instance? I learnt to drive when I was ten! I could barely see the windscreen. We took it slow at first so the cops wouldn’t catch us. One day, I went fishing with my uncle and his friend. He parked the ute and we offloaded this canoe. God, that thing was heavy. Then, my mad bastard uncle said, “Here’s what I want you to do, Ernie.” I want you to paddle down the river for a bit, just past the old flour mill. We’ll park the ute and get the fishing gear out.”
“That’s ages,” I said. He said it was “a couple hundred meters.” This was at Cooper’s Crossing, by the way. Mad bastards sent me on a wild goose chase that day. I was paddling for hours. I started to cry at one point, but sometimes you’ve just got to pull yourself together and keep going. So that’s what I did. After a while, I thought I’d never find the bloody flour mill. So I tried to park the canoe by the river bank. And I literally, fell out the boat! Suddenly, you won’t believe this, a fish jumped in! I didn’t have a rod so I beat it, until it stopped. Breathing, that is.
I’m going to tell you quickly about Abraham, my best friend. If I don’t put my best friend in my story, what kind of a man am I? Abraham was crazy, but the thing about Abe is he is the kind of guy who would give you his own shirt off his own back if you didn’t have one. I’ve seen him do it once. He just did it and said, “No sweat, I’ve got too many, anyway. Plus its hot.” The thing with Abraham is he loves women. We both used to. I settled down but Abe’s got five, already. He used to call me Flynn and I used to call him Father sometimes. As in “Father Abraham’s got many sons.” It was an old church song we learnt at Cub Scouts. We used to sing it on and on, until he was red with anger or blue with laughter. But, he’s still my friend.
Let me explain what happened to me later. Do you remember the floods a few years ago? Well, my family used to live near Riverbank. Not the best place to be when the rivers overflow. Those were some crazy times, man. We even had bull sharks roaming the streets! It was like your whole life was being washed away. Everyone was going kind of survivalist, rowing boats to get supplies, and waiting on rooves for helicopters to come. I was lucky to survive. My house was destroyed and so I had to move into a temporary shelter. I’m still living there now. Everyone kind of forgets after the really bad stuff happens. It makes me angry, sometimes, but it’s just part of life. The same sort of stuff happens all over the world. A friend of mine told me about a place called Tohoku where he used to live. 20 000 people died. Talk about being homeless. Those guys were house less, they were apartment less, they were car less, they were- well there was a lot less of everything after that. I thought we had it bad. But it’s not the scale that matters, I guess. It’s just that bad things happen to people everywhere. You know what I mean?
So, I want to tell you about how I learned to read. After the floods, I was living in a temporary shelter. It wasn’t much really. There were a lot of scared and lonely and angry people around, I remember that much. But there wasn’t much to do. Suddenly, these guys started coming by with all of these books. They had comics, so I used to look at them, because at least I could understand the pictures. They had kids’ books too. I looked at them and thought, this is for babies and I can’t even read it.
Then this guy, Mark, came around and started asking us if anyone liked hip hop. Man, it was about the only music I listened to. He said, “Do you know the words?” And I said, “Sure.” He said, “How good’s your rap. Show me a bit of breaking if you know how to do that first.” “Piss off, man”, I said, “What do you really want.” And he said, “I want to teach you how to read because it looks like you’re not quite sure how to.” So he told me this plan, I didn’t have to do it if I didn’t want to, but if you slow down your rap a bit you can learn to read.
“I don’t want to read man, I hate reading,” I said, even though I didn’t. Just didn’t know how. “That’s cool,” he said, and grabbed this short book and said “Look at these pictures, listen to these rhymes- what’s the story really about?” He said, “No, it’s not about breakfast. It’s about triumph and overcoming” and a couple of words like that. “It’s about learning to like stuff you didn’t know how to do before.” I said “So why’s it called Green Eggs and Ham.” He said, because Green Eggs and Ham only exist inside the imagination, but imagination is the realest thing of all.
So I was pretty unsure about this at first. I liked the hip hop part but that other stuff seemed kind of whack, still baby stuff. And then he told me a story about a guy called Joseph who started off with an overcoat that was over used and old and worn out like he felt sometimes. But you can only make do with what you’ve got. So the overcoat gets smaller and smaller and changes into all of these different things and so does all of this different stuff until finally it becomes a button and gets lost. “The only thing you can do with nothing is this, use your imagination to make a story which shows you can always make something out of nothing.” And then he showed me the book.
After that, I started paying more attention to that part of the program. And that was how I met my wife. She was from Kenya and used to live near Inala. She had stories like you wouldn’t believe. Her family were part of a tribe of Bushmen- Bush people she used to say, because she was studying too. She used to tell me about her culture and I told her about mine. We had a lot in common. What I write now I write as my way of remembering her because she took care of me. She opened up her heart and let me in.
Dear Xixu,
I will always love you. I’m entering a short story competition baby, it’s about homelessness. We’ve been there. Now you and my little girl have both up and died, and I lost my temporary shelter. But I wouldn’t change a thing. I am so sad our child was still-born because you had Ross River fever.
Our peoples have always been homeless. The concept of having a home never seemed real to us. Not really like it does to others. Within our culture we have always thought we shared the land. We have always thought that this land is our land. So long as we were under a sky, of whatever color or whatever hue, we always felt at home. When other people were under that canopy with us, that tent shaped by countless stars, we saw that they were family, that they were brothers, sisters and cousins. You saw land differently. You thought it was no-one’s and everyone’s. You taught me again that home was as far as the eye could wander. But several generations ago our dreams were taken from us, bit by bit our vision was stolen and our dreams were not kept. Now we dream dreams of isolation and despair. How I want to escape from the modern world sometimes. Even inside my mind’s eye I can see myself in Africa in that boundless terrain you talked about, running, forever free. How do I get there now? How can I go walkabout and feel good about it, in this world of broken bottles? I hope I get there one day, to that place you talked about. But for now I dream of Uluru. I love you Xixu. I hope you are in a good place. And you too, Kuki.
Kuki, my poem for you reads like this: Dear kuki. I’m sorry. The heart beat. Stopped. Love Erroll. It’s like a haiku, and I mean every little word of it. Now, I want to bury my little girl in Arnham Land, right at the foot of Uluru, right where that other white lady’s baby girl was taken by the dingo. Because someone took mine too.
got a dollar, bro…

END OF STORY: I was writing here partly because it has a wordcount! I also want to acknowledge a wonderful children’s book called something like Joseph Had an Overcoat. And to apologise to Strunk and White, for the punctuation.