Moroccan Embrace 2020

We shared no spoken language but she held me and stroked my face, my tears, with her humanity and strength. A gifted moment.  We sat in her Father’s Garden, thick woven cloths on crusts of soil under the shade of date palms, beside rows of carrots and greens, desert dunes all around us.  My new Moroccan friend offered me Moroccan crusty pizza filled with vegetables fresh off the hot earth fire. And tea.

2020 has been a year like no other for most of us, ‘unprecedented’, the word floats around like confetti, but an accurate word. I was fortunate to squeeze in a two-week Moroccan writing and travel adventure in March and just scrambled to fly out on the last day as Morocco closed her borders.

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Evening Walk

The old dog walks a few paces, sniffs the air, then turns and looks back, checking up on the woman. In the western sky a quarter moon hangs. The woman is a silhouette against the evening sky.

I watch her slow steps; she is hunched over a walker. Her white cardigan sits over her light blue dress and highlights her hair. She pushes the walker along the rough grass beside the street, past an empty block. The German Shepherd waits patiently. Behind her is another shape smudged in the darkening light. A cat. Moving slowly too, slower than both of them, following. Read more

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A School’s Journey

A history of Cape Byron Rudolf Steiner School

To purchase contact Cape Byron Rudolf Steiner School
reception@capebyronsteiner.nse.edu.au

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Metal Cries

I drive along the bay into suburbs I once knew and pass a sad, forgotten place. I park and walk settling into the reverent ambiance, looking for letters and numbers. It is 34 years since I stepped on this grass. Finally I find Lawn D, Row F of the Cemetery.

The numbers are not logical, I wander back and forth looking down, counting, confused and then there, in front of me he lies; decayed bones now.  My tears surprise me.

I place a small white rose beside the plaque submerged in healthy grass, and wonder if the white rose bush his mother gave me, is still flowering in the garden of the home where we last made love.

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Wales – from New to Old – A writing retreat

I slept in the pink room at Ty Newydd; the house built in the 1700’s, now the National Centre for Writing in Wales. It was rumoured that Lloyd George, Liberal Prime Minister of the UK from 1916 – 1922 died in this room. It was also rumoured he died in the library.  No matter, there was no ghostly presence, but words hovered and hung in the ether, waiting to be plucked and played with.

As the 11 participants and two facilitators arrived on the first evening, for the three-day writing retreat, so did texts alerting us all to the death of Maggie Thatcher, Conservative Prime Minister of the UK from 1979-1990. Her death rumbled around for the next three days, people both curious and relieved to be away from the media hype and screaming headlines,

‘She saved Britain,’ and ‘She destroyed us.’

These two British Prime Ministers of the last Century were unavoidably with us in Wales. Read more

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