When to Take a Life

 

26.8.23  

 

When to take a life?

 

A high pitched eeeeee - pulses in and out of our strained aural range. The relax into that sweet, dark cocoon of sleep forever disturbed. This sound is enough to create the heart of a mad murderer or a desperate sheet tent builder in us all. When eating marmite, icepacks and bugoff just don’t work; death is the only alternative.

 

One early morning at school in ’94, a hoard of cockroaches, distracted by my footsteps (from their feasting on what may have been a devon sandwich poked into a crack of a retaining wall) spilled across the veranda like a tsunami. The faster, lighter ones crawling over the top of the larger ones, forming crests, until they dropped off down cracks behind a planter box full of flowering murraya. Despite my armful of marking, my immediate reaction was to kill. No Spanish flamenco dancer could have pounded with more passion than I did in that moment. Remorse however rose in my throat when I looked down beyond my box of books, and saw my kill. A giant, flat roach at the climax of a white gut rainbow. A flash of 6^th Form biology, re spiracles in exoskeletons, forced up bile to meet the remorse.

 

Do carrots scream as they are pulled from the ground before they seed?

Is pest spraying a persuasion against redback invasion?

Are abattoirs – humane?

Is euthanasia kind?

 

M and I brace ourselves for the kindness we will be asked to deliver in the next few days. Everything is tight and blurry at the same time. Our precious, best boy, groans to find a comfy position from the lymphoma racking his corn chip smelling, bean shaped, sleep curl. The question is when. When do we help him into that sweet; dark cocoon of sleep?

 

The Ground Loves Me

 

19.8.23

The ground loves me.

Maybe its because my mum taught me how to cloud gaze or because Dad encouraged me to rootle around potato plants hunting for ladybirds before I could talk. Maybe the ground loves me because it thought I loved it so much. When a little older I’d lie on it under the shade of a Kowhai or blackcurrant bush and read – for long stretches. I certainly lingered face down on it through long weekends at Swain’s farm learning to ride a two wheeler.

 

As I got older the ground became the means of purchase for my hurrying, maybe I just haven’t paid enough attention to the old friend that heard my childish joys and woes. I always tell it how I love it’s perfume in rain after hot days and thank it for the roses and citrus it grows for me.

 

The ground is not satisfied.

 

Lately it has been more assertive to regain my attention. Leading a class from Chapel one week a power cord colluded to provide a close conversation. Winded, I barely noticed that my skirt was up and my head was down. A couple of lovely Yr8 boys grabbed me under my arms and hurriedly lifted me, returning the hem to it’s proper place. With a group of colleagues, walking to parent teacher interviews after school, I found myself hugging my old friend again. The ground found itself insulted at how fast others try to get me away from it.

 

I only pray that this jealousy for my attention does not lead to an early, permanent intimacy. I feel that lying around on it a bit more, cloud gazing and reading, may stay the ground’s desperation for that exclusive friendship.