Category: Story

The Choice We Made to Kill the King

You just ran over a snake   she cried
The ute tyering heavily across the leaf strewn bitumen on the way home
I pulled up immediately to look into the rear view
And there it was flaying the air
Struggling for the fluid movement it no longer possessed
Such a creature – magnificent light brown – sleek powerful and known to be deadly
A two metre adult King Brown snake

We sat and watched it curl and recurl
Unable to move beyond the road
One third down its back had been crushed – what to do for this writhing being?
I’ll go home to get the shovel and come back    I said
Should you just leave it    she asked  –   my darling Jan concerned for my wellbeing
Yeah I have to – can’t leave it to suffer and die a lingering death

I returned five minutes later to the same spot
The shadows across the road making it hard to see the Brown and it’s broken magnificence
I picked up the long handled shovel and stepped carefully out of the car
I stood for several minutes perplexed – what was the right thing to do?
Kill it or leave it – which was more humane?
A voice in my head reminded me that most people bitten by snakes are trying to do them harm at the time they’re bitten – I checked myself
A cocktail of emotions bubbling inside my gut
sorrow – pity – fear – concern – wonder – guilt – maybe grief
the wounded king who was once magnificent now broken by my wheel

I stood immobilised unable to decide
And then returned home to call my cousin Chris – I needed his counsel – his brotherhood
Chris is a man of the earth – a wiry wiley soul – his hair often spiked with the dried salt licks from his last surf – his eyes full of spark and purpose – a man to trust – a man to turn the soil with

I called him and we spoke for a bit – probably should kill it he said – yeah probably best – I’ll be up the hill in a bit – I’ll bring my gun he said as he hung up

A little later he pulled up – I jumped in beside him and his gun – better bring your shovel he said – so I did

We drove the two kilometres back to the spot – the Brown had not moved beyond the place of its crushing
You can hardly see it in the shade   Chris said    no wonder you ran over it
Can’t use the gun – too close to the houses he mused

Without hesitation Chris drove again over the deadly king – there was no more deliberation – what had to be done had to be done

We left the car – it’s head is still moving     I said
Carefully, carefully in full regard  Chris inched forward and delivered the death blow with the shovel blade behind its head

The snake was dead

On the way back to the house we talked about the snake with great reverence – a creature of the wild that we admire and for the most part fear

Chris shared that a snake of that size would feed a family for a few days – we reflected on how this country’s first people’s – our indigenous brothers and sisters have a deep relationship with all its creatures and would have given thanks for this King’s ultimate surrender

Chris dropped me at the front of our place
Thanks for your help bro – I said – such a shame about the snake
Yeah he said – it happens
It was the choice we had to make

I waved him down the hill

Yes it was – and I will never forget the day we had to make it

The choice to kill the king.

 

Martinos © 2018

I Judged Her Until Yesterday

(Reprinted from July 2007)

It was a Sunday in September. The afternoon breeze fresh from the south. The sun gently warming. It was the kind of afternoon where one might pause and feel good with the world. The streets of Eagle Junction were quiet and mostly empty, occasionally a child’s voice could be heard or some distant chatter from the neighbour’s radio three doors down. All the Sunday mowers had long since been retired for the day, their drivers resting in the shade with a cold ale and contentment.

She and I were resting. Lazing. Relaxing. It was a peaceful time and did not often occur in the days of raising a young family. For all our struggles and battles, for we had many, it was a moment as I remember where all else was put aside. There was no conversation. Simply two people lying side by side, resting.

I recall feeling at the time, that if that moment could somehow be extended and built on, it might mean our marriage could improve and regain some stability and balance. It was even possible to pretend that it had always been so.

She rolled over and asked me where our youngest son had got to. I said I wasn’t sure but I thought he was across the road playing with some friends. She said she was worried and asked if I would go and check. I said it would be OK to leave it for a while and I would go check a little later. I was not ready for the moment we were sharing to end. She said she was worried and I said she needn’t. All was OK.

Before I knew it, the next few exchanges had gone from mere conversation to accusation. She became very concerned about his safety. I could not see any reason for this as he often played across the road with friends. It was a quiet street with many families with young children like ours. She accused me of not caring for his safety. For being a negligent father, for always resisting doing what she requested, and on it went.

I became incredulous and deeply disturbed that in such a short time our peaceful, everything is OK with the world afternoon, had been shattered. As it turned out before I could get half way down the stairs and up the street to look for him, he had decided to come back from playing with his friends. He must have wondered why his parents were shouting at each other again. And I can only imagine how heavy his heart grew with this. My heart aches even now, some 15 years later when I think of it.

My judgment about her then and until very recently was that she had catastrophised and wrecked a perfectly beautiful moment and that this was typical of the way our marriage had gone right up till the time we separated. Which occurred some 18 months after this particular day.

I have always acknowledged my part in our marriage failure but until recently had never quite understood the occurrence of events such as the one I describe. And I have always judged her for it. I have judged her for her anger, for her rage, for the moments where in an instant she would turn form loving wife to hateful accuser. I have judged her and in some way judged myself for being the cause of this behaviour.

I judged her until yesterday.

In a teary and honest phone call she informed me that as a young girl she had been sexually abused. She was attending counseling and felt she had lifted an enormous burden by naming it and sharing it with her children and now me. She felt free. However she felt great pain and regret for past events.

I explained to her that from my point of view the past must be let go and that our work in the here and now is to look at everything with love and understanding. The past is useful to us now if we see the benefits of the journey and the benefits of the learning, no matter how painful they might be. Our focus now was to work with love and let go all else. She was grateful for my words and I was grateful for hers.

The information she shared put a lot into perspective. It helped me understand many things. With this knowledge and as I reflect on that Sunday in September something is different. I don’t hear a nagging, overly stressed wife berating me. I hear a little girl, terrified that harm will come to the little boy just as it had come to her. She doesn’t know exactly where he is so she panics, she imagines the worst. She can’t share this of course because as an adult she probably does not know shy she is worried. The little girl inside her is terrified.

Had I known, what might I have done with this understanding and insight? How differently might I have reacted? How much less defensive and self righteous might I have been? At the time I could only see the manifested behaviour and judged her for it. Knowing what I now know I can piece together possible causes for this event and others that occurred. And I can see that some of her actions were informed by deeply enmeshed and subconscious fears.

With this insight and reflection I look to myself. I look to others around me.

How often do I judge a person for their behaviour? How often do I make these judgments of another? When might I alter my perspective to simply judge the behaviour and seek more to understand the person? Is it possible to understand the person, to simply love the person and separate them from their behaviour? Perhaps the simple answer is to do this through the love of oneself and the love of others. And to understand that the cause of disruptive and destructive behaviours can never be healed by judgment.

With the benefit of hindsight and a little insight what might I say now to the little girl who panicked? “Sure hon I’ll go and check on him and when I come back after finding him let’s go back to that lovely rest we were sharing.”

 

 

Applied Theatre and the Story of Axel

On reading Plato’s dialogues I came across this forward by W.H.D Rouse:

Socrates himself described his object as that of a midwife, to bring other men’s thoughts to birth, to stimulate them to think and to criticise themselves, not to instruct them.”

More and more I see the power of non-didactic learning through forms of applied theatre – how through dialogue, metaphor and the creation of a fictional world we facilitate the transposition of an actual world and interweave it with the consideration of new perspectives, alternate possibilities and trialed scenarios. In Applied Theatre we separate or distance ourselves from the everyday and fictionalise the characters and the world we inhabit.

Whether they be scenes, monologues, interviews or soliloquies I relate to the scenarios that are being played before me because I see others and myself with new eyes. My learning and growth are enabled by my capacity to discover myself through observation and reflection. I separate myself from conditioned patterns in order to integrate new perspectives. By engaging in this form of theatre I become more whole.

Axel

Axel, who never had a rocking horse, once rode a bright blue tricycle. He called it his ‘Athenian Rhapsody’. He loved to play the tuba in bed, and when he was feeling particularly happy, would sit on the loo in the outside shed, pants around his ankles oompa-pa’ing till the cows came home.

That was quite a while ago; the tuba and the tricycle have gone, yet he can still hear the triangle sound the bell made on his tricycle, and still remembers the scraping of the old keys on the ancient tuba.

Axel listens to old sounds very well (all the time): he loves Bach, Mendelssohn and Donovan. He loves to eat crumpets with honey and drink a large white mug of milky tea; it reminds him of summer fishing trips to Lake Eucumbine, mushrooms and gnats in the full-sun morning air, (he loves to talk fishing when he’s playing chess with Carl the orderly, often quoting from his favourite magazine, ‘Modern Fly Fishing’).

Axel was once an expert at fly fishing; tying the ‘super moonshadow’ to perfection (he named the fly after what he thought was a Donovan song, written by Cat Stevens).

When the hospital staff remember to buy him a new box, Axel loves to drink Lady Grey tea made from tea bags, he prefers tea bags, he feels that somehow they bring clearer definition to tea making.

Axel thinks a lot about definition, noting how the edges of his bed are very clearly defined by the clean-blue hospital blankets that drop suddenly to the ocean of the grey linoleum floor. He likes the smell of cleanblue, it’s somehow a new sea to sail and sometimes the feel of his favourite jumper when he was a boy: a definite edge of beginning and end. He knows that soon he’ll cross the floor-grey ocean, sailing under a white sheet. But this is not a thing Axel dwells on for very long, he prefers to think of such things as his next chess move and flirting with Miriam the night nurse.

Axel has just beaten Carl in a game of chess. He’s said goodnight to Miriam, a long quiet goodnight, a good long, good night. He won’t wake again, he senses this  –  and is peaceful.

When his last breath comes he hears; a faint scraping sound and a single precious note from a triangle bell on a bright blue tricycle.

They’re good sounds.

They are old sounds.

They bring him…