The Watermelon Blog Green on the outside, social justice inside
"We can do better" (Kennedy)
Richest fluency
"This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem, and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body." Walt Whitman
Well, it's that time of the year when we are meant to ponder the past and contemplate the future. It is also a time when, as we bury the old year, it's not seen, briefly, as the done thing to speak ill of politicians or climate change deniers. But it is a time, in spite of the fact that since the invention of written languages and formal calendars, there have been about 5000 New Years, celebrated by 133 million writers and poets (I made that number up), every writer worth his or her salt has to find something new to say about the passing of time that Shakespeare didn't say. Or Robbie Burns. Or Thomas Gray for that matter, so an elegy on a Yass churchyard isn't going to do it.
When I was young my grandmother, born in the north of England, insisted on the tradition of "First Footing". Like so many other traditions imported from Britain to Australia (fire works for Guy Fawkes Day, hot Christmas dinners, clearing trees) it had become partly forgotten, a bit lost in translation, and was not really appropriate. According to Wikipedia "Good luck is believed to be brought to the house by the First-Foot, and a female First-Foot is regarded with dread. In Lancashire a light-haired man is as unlucky as a woman, and it became a custom for a dark-haired male to be the one and only first-foot... In Yorkshire it must always be a male who enters the house first, but his fairness is no objection. The first-foot usually brings a gift of coal and salt. In the North they bring coal, a drink (usually Whisky) and should have some money in their pocket. The coal representing "warmth" for the year ahead and the salt representing "flavour". A drink is to offer the host, and money is to bring wealth and happiness to the house. Often bread is regarded as a good sign, indicating that the household won't go hungry in the year to come." And so on. Well in spite of Yorkshire connections my fair head wasn't allowed, and we had to use my uncle, when available, whose luxurious curly black hair (a sign, it was thought, of some distant Welsh ancestry) should have been lucky indeed. Later, when he wasn't, I did it, as the only other male in the family, but I had to carry a black cat to cancel out the blonde head. No whisky was carried (my grandmother was teetotal), coal was not needed in the middle of a Perth summer, and there would have been precious little money. Perhaps my uncle had salt, but if so it never seemed enough to ensure the good luck, and bread, but my grandmother ensured that we never went hungry anyway, no matter what else we lacked.
All seems like another world, another time, now, and of course it was. My children know nothing of such customs, and their children will know less. Instead we have developed our own customs in this odd southern land my grandmother had such mixed feelings about. We sit with friends on verandas, offering our guests a beer (or a chardonnay, that's the kind of people we are), the remains of barbecued food on a table, the gentle buzz of mosquitos and young children and sheep in the background; gum tree leaves moving slightly in a gentle breeze; the world's problems being solved even as we speak under the wide and coal black sky with sparkling diamond stars. A boobook owl is likely to call down in the valley and the kangaroos grazing on the drive will lazily move when the guests depart at 2am; a dog will bark somewhere in the hills; and there will be memories or premonitions of smoke in the air from bushfires.
And memories of permanently absent family, and friends, and yes, cats (and dogs). All of those earlier generations, those old long since times, good and bad, lucky and unlucky, all roll around once more on New Year's Eve, come out of nowhere and surprise you like a knock on the door from a dark stranger. Bringing who knows what for 2009.
I hope it brings you all warmth and flavour, and if not wealth then good food and much happiness. For auld lang syne my dears.
"You are a person of some interest,one comes to you and takes strange gain away." (Pound)
"I find that I can have no enjoyment in the world but the continual drinking of knowledge. I find there is no worthy pursuit but the idea of doing some good for the world." (Keats)
"nothing startles me beyond the moment. The setting sun will always set me to rights - or if a sparrow come before my window I take part in its existence and pick about the gravel." (Keats)