Life imagined as fiction…
A place in the world
YELLOW. The fields are splattered with bright yellow as if some careless painter has splashed paint over them. “Silly analogy”, she says to herself. “It’s capeweed. Just a plant with a bright yellow daisy flower that emerges from the wet earth with the arrival of winter’s rains and that nobody hereabouts likes all that much. A unwanted succulent, a weed that blooms at this time of year when the days start to lengthen and the weather begins to emerge from its winter slumber. Unwanted… like that flower… yeah, that was me five years ago…that’s why I am here now, driving down some road in a place I never knew existed.
“Emerging from winter’s slumber… that’s what the weather is doing. Old Brad, the guy who lives next door in the shack in his adult daughter’s backyard said as much. He would know, he’s been here all his life other than when he was away working in the merchant marine. Well, maybe not all of his life, but for a lot of it anyway.”
The road crests the hill where houses give way to farm fields. She knows this road and on passing the 80kph sign she puts her foot down and the van flows over the crest to start its downslope run. Winding the window down, the cool morning air flows through her hair and around her face like a reviving elixir.
It is only two kilometres to the turnoff. Like the road she now drives she knows that sideroad well. She often follows this backroad after waking in the morning to find the wind coming from the north. Then, she knows, it will hold up a decent although small swell. The locals will be out. She considers herself one of them although she lives in the town a good 20 minutes drive away. There are others like her and they might be there too and, like her, they are regarded as locals by those fortunate enough to live close to the beach.
“What is a local, anyway? How close to the beach do you have to live to be a local?”. She often engages with this inner dialog when driving. “Can I be a local just by being a regular at a break although I live some distance away? Local is a thing hereabouts, but not the exclusive thing that manifests as the hostility I’ve seen over on the mainland.”
She slows and takes the turnoff. The big market garden is showing signs of new growth, the green fuzz of a new crop pushing through the dark, fertiliser-laden earth. The road dips to curve through a gully and cross a narrow bridge, then starts its climb as it approaches the town.
“Two vehicles in the car park. That one, that old, dirt-yellow Kombi, I’ve seen it here before”, she says, mentally verbalising her thoughts. “Obviously a local. But that VW minivan, its roofrack is empty of boards so maybe that’s its owner I can see out beyond the break this morning.”
She sits watching. That’s the usual thing to do, sit and watch how the swell is working, where it rises and breaks, the time between waves, their height and velocity, where the rips are. But something else is holding her back this morning, something in her head.
“A year. I’ve been living in town for a year now. That’s how long I agreed to stay, but rather than renew my contract or end it, the manager asked me to join the staff. So, here I am living in a rural centre I had no intention of staying in and in a job I like but had no intention of keeping.
“Do I accept it? The offer to stay means I will no longer follow my wanderings like some pelagic fish in the ocean. It means the regularity of working life, week after week, year after year, were I to stay that long. It means something like a settled life. No way! Well, maybe. It’s sort-of tempting and I’m a bit road weary after five years on the road. So I’ve got a week to consider the offer and I’m as confused as when he offered it to me, dashing from thought to thought, from rejection to what is almost acceptance, back to doubt and on to uncertainty.”
She sits there gazing out to sea in that unfocused way that people do when their mind is some other place but where they are. Her mental conversation with herself wanders on.
“My life since my marriage failed… it’s been one of wandering. My share of money from the sale of the house bought me this Toyota van that I had it fitted out as a home on the road with storage for the few things I salvaged from the marriage… a few kitchen implements, what clothing I’ve kept after giving the most of what I had to Vinnies, my sky blue and white mini-mal now scuffed by the application of numerous rubbings of wax, the Manta boogie board, summer wetsuit and winter steamer, a pack of hiking equipment. Don’t have much use for anything else.”
She sits there this morning, thinking. Once again, after five years her life has come to a decision point. Placing her arms on the steering wheel she leans forward and rests her head on them, her eyes unfocused on the swell. Stay or go? The question bugs her. “Sure, staying means a regular income and new skills to learn. But it’s been a year in one place now. That in itself is surely motivation to quit and go.” The question hangs there in its confusing indecision, buzzing away in the background like a march fly caught between window and insect mesh. “In the time following the breakup I’ve become a creature of the road and a habitué of the beaches… my life one of movement punctuated by short stays in towns where I find work. Why shouldn’t it continue that way?”
Slouched there in her mental turmoil, no, not turmoil, it’s more like confusion, her mind travels the five years since her partner said his unexpected goodbye and walked out the door for the last time. They have been footloose years. North to Darwin then retracing the route south after six months working at the hospital. After that it was southwards, finding short term jobs in her technical specialty while staff were on leave… Brisbane, Newcastle, Bega… only to arrive in grotty graffitified Melbourne where the whiff and congestion of the place encouraged her to catch the car ferry across Bass Strait, in-part because she thought it would be an interesting thing to do and in part because she had never visited Tasmania. It was three weeks roaming the roads here, over to the west coast first, staying in free campsites at the end of bumpy gravel roads and on forlorn, windswept coasts, then through the centre of the island to the city then up the east coast. Then the job in town came up.
She leans there, her mind in that diffuse unfocused space where thoughts come and go. She flicks on the radio — it is the ABC — and listens in a disinterested way to an interview.
“What are they are talking about? Someone called Mark, is it? No, Marcus. Whoever it is he lived a very long time ago and wrote a book that is still read today. That’s remarkable.” She listens and when the interview ends she tries to recall a Latin phrase that comes up. “Amor… Amor something or other… what was it the guy said? Amor what? Two words… Amor… fate? No. Amor fati. Yes, that it. But what does it mean again?”. She can’t remember and her mind dashes back to the question that hangs over her future. “Enough of this moping and indecision. What’s the solution to confusion and indecision? Action!”.
Stepping into the back of the van she squeezes into her wetsuit, takes her mini-mal, closes the door, hides the car keys in the wheel well and walks across the beach.
She wades in. The water is cold but it feels fresh and pure, so different to the tepid waters of northern beaches. She paddles through the white water. Out beyond the break she sits on her board, gently bobbing up and down on the low swell. On the horizon across the bay, the blue-grey of the bushland of the Tasman Peninsula. In front of her the long sweep of the narrow, yellow beach all the way to the river mouth. She looks at the sea to where the breeze churns it beyond the headland. “A confused sea. As confused as I am”, she says to herself.
The only other person out here—presumably the guy from the minivan —is some distance away where the better waves are rising. “Should have walked down the beach and put in there”, she says silently in a tone of reproach. “Unnecessary negative self-talk. Got to stop doing that.”
Sitting there on her board waiting for a new set to come through, those Latin words come to her again. “Amor… amor… Amor fati, was it?”. It is as if this Marcus character is speaking to her through the two thousand years since he wrote those words. “Amor fati. Love your fate. Yes, that’s what it means… making the most of the circumstances you find yourself in, whatever they are and wherever you may be. That is what the man on the radio said.”
Realisation comes as she sits out there. A sense of relaxation come over her, a lifting, a loosening of the tension that having to make a decision about her future has brought. A smile spreads across her face. She looks up at the sky and around at the ocean as if seeing them for the first time as the swell starts to pick up as a new set comes in like a force lifting her into a new life. Now she knows what she will do about the job offer as she repeats to herself the simple phrase that is both realisation and answer. “Amor fati. I am here, these are my circumstances. I accept the offer. I am home.”
Short fiction…
Non-fiction…
