Paw Paw Salad

What do you reckon - folk or country??

A Darwin friend of mine posted a comment on Facebook yesterday about some horrific acts of violence that have been reported recently in the NT News, suggesting that they show the dark side of the 'Territory lifestyle'. I immediately thought that there was a song in there somewhere. I used some downtime this morning to give it a first crack...not that I know the first thing about writing songs (there's the small matter of a tune, for starters, and I haven't got a clue how to make progress on that!). I hope this doesn't come across as disrespectful or cheeky, especially considering my newby status as a Territorian. It is written with much affection, from the perspective of someone who has her own love affair with this unique place - and whose family has most definitely fallen for its rugged charms (let's just say that I didn't have to look far for the second verse!!). 

 

The Territory Lifestyle

 

Mike and Nancy hit the road as twenty-something lovers

Tripping round the country with a tent was the idea

Tired and running out of cash they took some jobs in Darwin

Twenty years have drifted by and somehow they're still here.

 

It was the Territory Lifestyle, that special Territory Lifestyle

It's a place so distant, wild and free

Territory Lifestyle, the fabled Territory Lifestyle

Couldn't find a better place to be.

 

Jake and Thomas cried and cried when Daddy said "We're moving!"

Sydney was their home and leaving filled them both with fear

Opening their Darwin gate they saw a pool and palm trees

"Paradise!" Jake cried; now they agree they'll stay right here.

 

It was the Territory Lifestyle, that special Territory Lifestyle

It's a place so distant, wild and free

Territory Lifestyle, the fabled Territory Lifestyle

Couldn't find a better place to be.

 

Lucy was a dreadlocked artist stifled in her hometown

Living as a vegan there meant ordering plain rice

Headed north, found inspiration and like-minded people

Here she can do what she likes and nobody looks twice.

 

It was the Territory Lifestyle, that special Territory Lifestyle

It's a place so distant, wild and free

Territory Lifestyle, the fabled Territory Lifestyle

Couldn't find a better place to be.

 

David was a scientist whose specialty was reptiles

Field trip opportunities up North were simply great

Met himself a girl who studied tropical diseases

Joined some right-on clubs and now has lots of right-on mates.

 

It was the Territory Lifestyle, that special Territory Lifestyle

It's a place so distant, wild and free

Territory Lifestyle, the fabled Territory Lifestyle

Couldn't find a better place to be.

 

Gary fled up North after a nightmare of a childhood

Closest thing to housemates were the demons in his head

Drinking in his shack one day his treasured peace was broken

Neighbour ran his car too loud, so now the neighbour's dead.

 

It was the Territory Lifestyle, that special Territory Lifestyle

It's a place so distant, wild and free

Territory Lifestyle, the fabled Territory Lifestyle

Couldn't find a better place to be.

 

Debbie and her bloke lived in a town camp with their people

Deb kept getting beaten up despite the love she gave

Then one night her boyfriend put a rock behind his punches

Left her by the road, a pile of beer cans marked her grave.

 

It was the Territory Lifestyle, that special Territory Lifestyle

It's a place so distant, wild and free

Territory Lifestyle, the fabled Territory Lifestyle

Couldn't find a better place to be.

 

Well, it's a start. Not sure if there are too many syllables to be sing-able! Criticism, new verses (or ideas for same) and -  ahem - a tune would all be most welcome!!

 

Bullets, Beams, Blowfish, Breast Cancer - On the Squandering of Second Chances.

[It's a year this week since I finished 'active' cancer treatment (that's the slash/poison/burn part - I'll be on hormonal medication for years to come). Wanting to reflect on this milestone, the following is what came forth. Warning: it contains spoilers about The Sopranos!]

Leaving my home, job and loved ones on short notice so that my husband could take up a work opportunity in Darwin, it felt like my little car in the Game of Life had hit a patch of ice. On being diagnosed with an aggressive case of breast cancer a short time later, my once reliable vehicle skidded into a ditch, flipped over and caught fire.

After the first two operations it was time to move on to chemotherapy. As previously described, I arrived at hospital for my first treatment carrying a laptop, headphones and series 1 of The Sopranos. Six chemo sessions, each three weeks apart, six Sopranos series – it seemed meant to be. I developed a ritual in which I started a fresh series at each appointment, polishing off the remainder at home in time to begin the next series in The Chair three weeks later. While I was keen to experience a much-lauded tv show, as a mum from the Australian suburbs I didn’t expect that The Sopranos would have great personal resonance. I hadn’t bargained on series six.

As the final series opens, mob boss Tony Soprano lies in a hospital bed. He has been shot in the abdomen, sepsis has set in and the doctors are pessimistic about his chances of survival.  After a vivid dream in which he is living a different, law-abiding man’s life, he regains consciousness. Moved by his experience, he resolves to change, declaring, “From now on, every day is a gift.”

Beset by his usual stresses, however, it soon becomes apparent that lasting change is going to be very difficult for Tony. As he remarks to his therapist in frustration: “Every day is a gift, but why does it have to be a pair of socks?”.  Soon he is indulging in behaviour that breaches his warped but previously inviolable moral code. He gambles, uses drugs and acts viciously towards members of his extended family. Failing to change for the better, he changes for the worse – like a reformed alcoholic who has one drink and then decides that he might as well go on a week-long bender. There is debate about the famously ambiguous ‘cut to black’ final scene of The Sopranos, but my interpretation was that Tony had been the target of a hit, his family bearing witness to his murder. For a bandana-clad viewer, the series contained a chilling moral: he who squanders the gift of a spared life shall suffer damnation - and bring misery to those who love him.

The notion that cancer’s life-threatening nature creates impetus for sufferers to change their lives for the better was a recurring theme of the pamphlets, books and websites that crossed my path after diagnosis. Even the most measured ‘official’ materials bore this message. The National Breast and Ovarian Cancer Centre’s guidebook told me that women can find breast cancer “gives them a new perspective”, “makes them re-think what’s important” and “provides opportunities they would not have considered before their diagnosis”. According to the Breast Cancer Network of Australia, many of the changes I was likely to experience after breast cancer would be “positive...like reassessing what’s important in life.” These were just the broadly distributed publications endorsed by my medical team. Let’s not get started on the contents of an average bookshop’s ‘Health’ section, let alone the internet - or Livestrong.

With surgeries, chemotherapy and radiation treatment behind me and my long-term outlook hopeful but uncertain, I waited for an epiphany. Instead, I found myself growing increasingly confused. Cancer discourse seemed to require contradictory things of me. That I change for the better, while not letting my essential self be changed and thus somehow ‘defeated’ by cancer. That I learn to live ‘in the moment’, while clarifying and achieving my goals.  I found to my distress that answers to some of the ongoing struggles of my (admittedly privileged) life remained maddeningly obscure. How could I reconcile a thirst for change and adventure with a longing for proximity to loved ones? A desire for career progression with a desire to be at home with my kids after school?  A yearning for creative expression with the need to earn a living? My ambition to learn the ukulele with the reading obligations for my book club? Even with Principal Cancer blowing the whistle, my priorities jostled and shoved one another instead of falling into an orderly queue.  My “new perspective” still unclear, and unable to stop sweating small stuff, I appeared to be failing Life Threatening Experiences 101. Soon bad habits started to re-emerge (some of those disorderly children had got tired of waiting and were sneaking off behind the bike sheds for a smoke). Nearly a year after finishing treatment, it seemed that I still wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to be when I grew up, and that I still liked eating ice cream and frittering away time on the internet while I thought about it. How could I maintain the sense of urgency created by fright? Would I emerge from my cancer experience transformed and thus redeemed, or would I be a wishy-washy Mrs Flitcraft?

In The Maltese Falcon Dashiell Hammett tells the story of Mr Flitcraft, a prosperous real estate agent from the suburbs of Tacoma, Washington who never makes it to his four o’clock golf game – or home to his loving wife and children – after leaving his office for lunch one day. When Sam Spade tracks him down five years later, Flitcraft tells him that on the way to lunch a large beam had fallen from high up on a building site, crashing to the sidewalk close enough for a flying splinter to leave a scar on his cheek. With an intense flash of insight into the randomness of existence, Flitcraft had decided that he must overturn his orderly life. He had left town that afternoon and boarded a boat to San Francisco. By the time Spade finds him, however, he has settled back into a moderately-sized city in Washington State, started a car dealership, married a woman very similar to his first wife and had another child. Spade concludes with affection, “He adjusted himself to beams falling, and then no more of them fell, and he adjusted himself to them not falling.”

On reading this tale in the wake of cancer treatment – Tony Soprano fresh in my mind - I initially saw Flitcraft as demonstrating a pathetic lack of imagination and resolve. Sure, unlike Tony he hadn’t killed anyone, but in failing to achieve lasting change in the face of death it seemed he had shown a similar weakness of character. The disdain in which his and Tony’s failures should be held was, I feared (looking down at my ice cream) only a matter of degree.

But now, some months later, I favour a more positive interpretation. Perhaps the tale of Flitcraft illustrates the folly of trying to deny one’s essential nature. Perhaps it shows that before the beam fell Flitcraft had been a shrewd judge of his own character, and had chosen a life that suited him well. After a period of confusion he had ultimately re-built something that most people would regard as a good life – family, diverting work, a comfortable home. Surely this can be read as a tale of success instead of failure? Isn’t there something praiseworthy in recognising one’s blessings and deciding to be content with one’s lot? Does lasting dramatic change require a significant level of dissatisfaction – a churlish state for someone with an enviably pleasant life that has (for the moment) been spared?

Despite my post-treatment confusion, I have managed some small changes. I’ve become involved in breast cancer support, and have enjoyed meeting others who’ve been grazed by falling beams. In person they don’t make me feel inadequate, and they tend to have wry senses of humour. I am also eating better. I often think of the Simpsons episode in which Homer escapes a predicted death-by-blowfish, and declares that he is going to change his life. As the end credits roll he is seen sitting happily in front of his television - eating light pork rinds.

As for sorting out my priorities, cancer-inspired clarity continues to elude me. But I’m working on it, mulling it over as I sit on the couch with my low-fat snack foods. I am trying to be patient with myself. I have come to appreciate the degree of difficulty involved in preventing a precariously-balanced beam from casting a shadow over my life, while letting the sight of my reconstructed breast provide a useful reminder of the graze on Flitcraft’s cheek. When searching for cultural touchstones I’m trying not to look to cancer literature (with its intimidating over-achievers), Tony Soprano (with his terrifying slippery slope) or Flitcraft (with his misjudged and short-lived change for change’s sake). My revised ambitions are modest. I’m aiming a little beyond Homer’s new pork rinds, and feeling an affinity with the female Simpsons. Right now, I’m a bit like Marge in the opening credits. My little car is back on the road, and while I may be a rather distracted driver I’m smiling a lot, and blowing my horn now and then just for the hell of it. A year out from cancer treatment, I reckon that isn’t too bad. I’m almost feeling ready to embrace Lisa as my next role model. I think of the way she twirls out of the classroom jamming on her sax, and decide that Principal Cancer should give me a respectable pass if I at least learn to play the ukulele.

A Darwinian Christmas Carol

This morning at Rapid Creek Markets, my regular mango supplier told me that he’s done for the season, and offered to sell me a carton of ripe mangoes (perfect for chopping and freezing) for the princely sum of $4. He sliced one open for me to try before I committed this enormous sum – it was delicious, and I left a puddle of juice where I stood. Feeling amused at the ultimate ‘non-White Christmas’ nature of a day upon which my family would combine wrapping presents and chopping mangoes, I jotted this down on getting home. Only a first draft, but I hope it give a flavour of a tropical Christmas! Ahem....

 

In Darwin, Christmas comes in Build Up season

The nicest place to be is in the pool

And if you plan on cooking up a Christmas roast

Anywhere except your barbie, you’re a fool.

 

Our present-wrapping fingers are all sticky from

The mangoes that we’re chopping up to freeze

And Santa’s sitting underneath the ceiling fan

Saying that he’s just too hot to leave.

 

The trees are white, but it’s not snow they’re covered with

It’s fragrant frangipanis in full bloom

A nightly carol session is provided by

A choir of tree frogs croaking in the gloom.

 

Our present-wrapping fingers are all sticky from

The mangoes that we’re chopping up to freeze

And Santa’s sitting underneath the ceiling fan

Stripping off his hat to catch the breeze.

 

The monsoon’s on its way, and radar-watching’s fun

We're guessing when the lightning’s going to hit

As well as buying all your Christmas food and gifts

You’ve also got to stock your cyclone kit.

 

Our present-wrapping fingers are all sticky from

The mangoes that we’re chopping up to freeze

And Santa’s sitting underneath the ceiling fan...

Says he wants a beer before he leaves.

 

There are only locals left at all the markets

You’ll see a mellow smile on every face

People from all backgrounds mingle cheerfully

The sweaty throng embodies Christmas grace.

 

Our present-wrapping fingers are all sticky from

The mangoes that we’re chopping up to freeze

And Santa’s sitting underneath the ceiling fan

...saying that he likes it here...

...locals are a friendly bunch...

...thongs are nicer than those boots...

...reindeers are on croc alert...

And it’s just too bloody hot to leave.

Jagged Little Pill

This xkcd comic strip, entitled 'Lanes', is one of the pithiest descriptions that I’ve seen of the situation that one faces after finishing active treatment for breast cancer. You don't know which lane you're in - and you won't see the turn until it's too late.

 

My sons tell me that the creator of the famed xkcd online comics used to work for NASA. It makes me feel slightly less stupid to know that - until his partner went through treatment - a scientist of this calibre had shared some of my misapprehensions about breast cancer. Like him, I’d previously thought that after the prescribed combination of surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy was completed, you would know one way or another if you would survive the disease. I hadn’t realised that on finishing these treatments there would be no way of telling whether or not the cancer would metastasise except....waiting. While it has no end date, the risk of recurrence is greatest in the first five years after finishing 'active' treatment. Throughout those five years, for many of us, treatment will actually continue – on a daily basis, in the form of a powerful little pill.

Women who (like me) had cancers triggered by oestrogen are typically prescribed medication to block the hormone from acting on any cancer cells that remain in the body. Every morning, when I take my Tamoxifen, I jot a note on a piece of paper. When a tablet may be playing a crucial role in saving your life, you don’t want to get confused about whether or not you’ve taken it.

 

Chances are that I’ll be producing lists like this for at least five years - quite possibly longer, as my oncologist may decide to continue hormonal medications well beyond that time.

Some women suffer dreadful side effects on Tamoxifen, and it carries risks including blood clots and uterine cancer (says she, with a bark of hoarse laughter), but I’ve been extremely lucky so far and have barely noticed a thing. I feel fortunate to be able to take it, as its efficacy is well-established and it’s one more weapon in the arsenal. But starting the day with an anti-cancer medication can really mess with a gal’s ability to get her groove back. The caution on the packaging (“May affect mental alertness - beware of driving”) is less than encouraging. And any desire to just forget about cancer for a while tends to be thwarted when each morning starts with greetings from a little white friend. “Good morning!” it chirps. “Just a reminder: there might be cancer cells in your body that are trying to metastasize right now! Don’t know if I’ll manage to stop them, but I’ll do my best. Have a nice day!!”.

Recently we went camping in Kakadu National Park, and explored scenery like this:

 

On getting home, I noticed that my Tamoxifen bottle was looking rather dirty and battered. And for the first time, the sight of it made me smile.

I've decided that this is just the way my Tamoxifen bottle should look. It’s not a bottle to be kept pristine in a medicine cabinet - I want it to be tossed into suitcases, kept cold in dust-covered eskies, dropped on the floor in the morning flurry. I'm hoping that my daily reminder of cancer will, as often as possible, be washed down with camp-stove coffee. And I’m thinking that the last pill of each year’s prescription demands a champagne and strawberry chaser.

Streets of Darwin (with thanks to Mr McTell).

Have you seen the old man who drifted around Asia

Looking for some peace and a place where he felt sane?

Broke and growing fragile, can't bear to leave the tropics

One bag and a crook hip, he stumbles off the plane.

 

So how can you tell me you're lonely

And say for you that the sun don't shine?

Let me take you by the hand and lead you through the streets of Darwin

I'll show you something to make you change your mind.

 

Have you seen the woman who lives under the house stilts

Room of fibro planks, a camp stove and a bed?

For one of these boxes she pays two hundred dollars

Better have no windows than the bastard whom she fled.

 

So how can you tell me you're lonely

And say for you that the sun don't shine?

Let me take you by the hand and lead you through the streets of Darwin

I'll show you something to make you change your mind.

Have you seen the black man who grew up on an island

Speaking his own language beneath a distant sky?

Kidneys now have failed him, can't go back to his country

Barked at by the guard dogs as he slowly wanders by.

 

So how can you tell me you're lonely

And say for you that the sun don't shine?

Let me take you by the hand and lead you through the streets of Darwin

I'll show you something to make you change your mind.

 

I hope the above doesn't cause offence. I am still very new to this town, and my job means that I am coming to know it in an unusual way - one crisis shelter at a time. The above was inspired by the kinds of life story I commonly hear rather than by specific people - you can swap the gender and the pen pictures apply just as easily, as I've met both men and women who are (a) frail and just arrived in Darwin after years in Asia, (b) stuck in Darwin for dialysis or (c) paying exorbitant sums to live under elevated houses. It is, of course, to be sung to the tune of the classic below - please dig the 80s fashions in the audience!

 

When a leaf falls in the tropics, you'd better not stand near.

Almost daily, I find one or more of these muthas lying on the grass, or squashing some poor fellow plant or an item of garden furniture.

I drag them around the corner of our house and add them to this pile - a spectacle I have seen beside many local homes:

In most parts of the world, leaves falls gently, soundlessly, and can be tidied up with rakes before rotting into mulch. In Darwin, massive palm fronds tear away at the base without warning. (If you hear a ripping sound from above, drop your G&T and move! Once one of these landed on a chair - thankfully empty - that I'd placed beside the pool only hours beforehand). Their fibrous forms will take forever to decompose, so they are disposed of with the help of a mulching machine - a long, noisy and sweaty business.

Quite possibly because I'm not the one who does the mulching, I find something delightfully exotic - and satisfying - in clearing up massive palm fronds from around our home. For starters, the place looks so much tidier after a few minutes of effort. "Look at me, gardening!", I chuckle to myself. Wrestling croc-length pieces of dead tree (muttering "You call that a leaf? This is a leaf!"), I am reminded that in the tropics, there's no pretence of an even contest between humankind and nature. Round here, even plants don't do things by halves.

 

Ordinary beauty # 3

I bought this painting in Bali during our post-treatment family holiday. Travelling around the island one sees a number of artistic styles and themes repeated from place to place, aimed at the tourist market. Close-ups of Buddha’s face, detailed tropical forest scenes and bright, impressionistic paintings of local people seem to be everywhere. There is nothing original about my woman in blue. But she caught my eye in a gallery a short distance from Ubud, and we haggled over her still-damp, thwacked-onto-canvas form. When the boys asked why I chose this painting, I explained that it was my ‘strong woman’ picture. They seemed to get why this appealed to me at the time – my hair barely an inch long, my arm encased in a compression stocking during our plane flights. On bringing her home and having her framed, I decided that I wanted to hang her next to my side of our bed.

Now, during these scary, early-remission days, I like looking at her as I get up each morning. She provides a healthy reminder that by contrast to countless women around the globe, my life – cancer and all – is an easy one. But mostly, I like the nonchalance with which she carries her heavy burden. I imagine her putting out her dawn offerings to the gods, praying that they will be kind but accepting that they may not be. At peace with this uncertainty she lifts her basket, counterbalancing its weight with a sashay of her hips, and steps purposefully into the fray.

She may not be great art, but I love my woman in blue.

Ordinary beauty #2

Very much enjoying this little blogosphere theme. Must be quick with my next contribution, as I'm running out the door to the last day of my training course. A Darwin ritual in which I joyfully participate most weekends is bringing home a huge bunch of helliconias - known here as 'crab claws' - from one of the local markets. 'Bunch' doesn't seem quite the right word for such cumbersome and awkward blooms - must think of a better one!

They make me happy. Such kick-arse flowers.

Celebrating the Ordinary

The lovely, inspirational Marie from Journeying Beyond Breast Cancer has set the breast cancer blogosphere a little project this week - to take photos of things that make us feel grateful. In her words, it’s about "celebrating the ordinary simple things we can sometimes take for granted each day". With about ten minutes to spare before running off to a training course this morning, I don't have time to wax lyrical, but thought I'd post this little pic of our Darwin verandah - my favourite place for reading and thinking, and a perfect spot for brekkie and a pot of tea. (Previously a coffee addict, I'm trying to develop a green tea habit and have decided to coax myself into this by using it as an excuse to form a collection of teapots - my parents bought me a lovely Indonesian pot from the Parap Markets on a recent visit, and I found this one at the Craft Fair at the NT Gallery). There is something about gazing at the rippling palm fronds from this table that fills me with contentment - sorely needed at this time in my life - and I feel a sense of peace and gratitude whenever I sit there. 

On that note, I must gulp down the last of my green tea and bolt off to Day 2 of a course about working with clients who have dementia. Predictably, yesterday I managed to get briefly lost AND leave my mobile at home.

Of Beswick and Beatles.

Last weekend the guys and I hired a four wheel drive, packed our camping gear and set off with three other families to the Walking with Spirits festival. The Beswick Aboriginal Community are Jawoyn people who live around 100 km south east of Katherine. Members of the general public are granted entry to this land only once each year, when a limited number of tickets are sold to the festival. The event culminates in a show that combines corroboree, story-telling, fire displays and other performance styles, presented at a sacred site known as Malkgulumbu. At this beautiful location – accessible only via a rough four wheel drive track – the bush gives way to a lake. The stage is erected on the sand, with the water behind it and a backdrop formed by the tall rock faces that border the opposite bank.  Stage lights splash the cliffs with shapes and colours after the orange hues drawn out by sunset fade away.

This year’s show starts with a series of corroboree-style dances. To the accompaniment of clapping sticks and didgeridoo, members of the audience are encouraged to join local people of all ages as they kick and sway across the sand. After this there is talk, more music, an animation. Then a group of middle aged and elderly women come onto the stage and sit down cross-legged. Colourful dresses and shocks of frizzy white hair stand out under the stage lights. Expecting a traditional song, I am startled to hear the opening bars of the Beatles’ ‘Golden Slumbers’.

I fell in love with the Beatles backwards, when, as a teenager, I discovered my father’s old vinyl copy of ‘Abbey Road’- the last album they recorded. From the first shuffling beats of ‘Come Together’, I was hooked. I would shut myself away in the lounge room of our house in suburban Canberra, put the needle on the record, lie down on the couch and lose myself. This ritual was reserved for evenings, as I had decided that it was an album best listened to around sunset. 

Side 2 of ‘Abbey Road’ is mostly comprised of a medley - brief snatches of songs that, threaded together, somehow create a compelling whole. The original of ‘Golden Slumbers’ is only about 90 seconds long, but under a chilly dry season sky the song is instantly recognisable, even with George Martin’s artifice and McCartney’s distinctive vocals stripped away. The women’s singing has a raw, nasal quality. "Once there was a way to get back homeward, once there was a way to get back home, sleep pretty darling, do not cry, and I will sing a lullaby...". Soon the women introduce lyrics in their own tongue, creating new verses, moving from one language to the other and back again. Then a group of children appears and parades in front of the stage holding up models of sea-creatures made of foil, with long silver tails dangling and sparkling behind.

I wonder how the women of Beswick took this little tune into their hearts. By Beatles standards, the song is obscure - it's not one that gets played on the radio. However they came to know it, they have made it their own. At the opening of the show, the MC told us that music has been performed at this site for tens of thousands of years, and asked us to acknowledge the spirits of these departed musicians. As ‘Golden Slumbers’ shifts between languages I think of George Harrison, dying of cancer in a Hollywood mansion, and of John Lennon, stepping out the front door of the Dakota building to his doom. I wonder what they would make of this moment. I like to think that they would enjoy it very much. I can’t help imagining their spirits and those of a couple of ancient local elders standing up the back watching the show, then meeting each others’ eyes across the heads of the crowd and smiling.

And for a moment – no more than the flick of a silver fish tail - I feel like I catch hold of something. Something more than just ‘music brings us together’. Something about there being feelings of such subtlety that they escape the grasp of language - and render it unecessary. Something about the little miracle of a suburban teenage girl and an elderly Jawoyn woman both being able to spot the genius in a quirky suite of music created by some Liverpudlians. And something oddly hopeful in their shared view that it is suited to the time around sunset.