Okay. It’s been a while. I know. A long long long while. But I’m back and I have soo much to say. Things have changed. THINGS HAVE CHANGED!
So, staring tomorrow, I’m going to try try try to start writing blogs again. There’s a lot to update! My son was 11 when I started this blog and now he’s 14.
so, tomorrow….it’s on
Posted in Livin' la Vida Loca
First, the obligatory posting of the rules:
1. Leave me a comment saying, “Interview me” or something of an equally pithy nature.
2. I will respond by asking you 5 questions of a very personal nature. Be warned!
3. You will update your blog with the answers to the questions, or there will be trouble.
4. You will include this and an offer to interview someone else in the post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them 5 questions.
Questions from Bri:
1. If you actually could pick up and move from B’ham tomorrow, would you? And where? You can be honest, I promise. 
Wow, that’s a hard one. There are so many qualifiers and factors. And it depends on the day and mood you catch me in. But I will try to give a good answer. Most days the answer is yes, I would move. In a New York minute. But there are days that I look around and can not imagine leaving this city.
I actually quite love Birmingham. It’s beautiful and amazing. It is a fantastic blend of city and outdoor living. I have weeks where I kayak, hike, see an amazing art exhibit, enjoy an up and coming band live, attend a charity gala or two (getting my pretty mug in the local “About Town” social mag), and have picnics with tons of great friends all in the same week. I love that I am never lost, never alone, never unknown. The seasons are easy, if you can stand humidity and don’t love snow. The people are friendly. I spent a huge part of my childhood here and I have family and lifelong friends here. But I’ve been here a while now. And the North Wind has been calling me for years. Not answering the is painful. Standing still is like slowly dying. I often feel the need to be in the wind.
The “where” is especially complicated. My standard answer would be Paris. France is the place I have dreamt about since I was a teeny tiny ballerina dreaming of dancing with Baryshnikov. Which might not make sense, but wrapped in pink tutus I dreamt of living abroad and being so beloved by Misha that he would move his dance company to France to incorporate me as the prima. Oh, the dreams of youth. Anyway, Paris is the city love of my life.
New Orleans, my home, would be more likely. I am never more at home and never happier than when I’m roaming the streets of the Big Easy. Even through great tragedy my city remains the same ol’ sinful smelly place of my heart. I have always told my son that I’m showing up for his high school graduation with my car packed and I’m heading down to NO once his little black tassel switches sides! So after May 2014 you can find me down by the Pontchartrain.
And of course there is the obvious Colorado choice. I fell in love with little Leadville. But really, more so with Frisco. Frisco still has a city about it. Leadville is a town. A town of 2000, on a good day. A town you never have to own a car in. A town where the mayor drives a VW with a Grateful Dead sticker. A town where my love is.
Recently I’ve become enamored with Quebec City. And Costa Rica. But they are but whims starting to take shape.
2. What are the three most important life lessons you wish you could be SURE you passed on to your son? The three things you most hope you can impart on him as a parent?
First: Be mindful of the world around you. Acknowledge the people around you, acknowledge all the living creatures in your path. Take responsibility for the imprint you leave on the earth. Take responsibility for the imprint you leave in other peoples lives. Know that you make a difference, for better or worse, in all that you touch.
Second: Strive to be and know that you are the best you you can be. Be yourself and have confidence that you are the you who you are proud of being. Being you should not come at the expense of others. You can do anything, so don’t give up the trying.
Third: Learn from the mistakes that are made around you. Learn from your own mistakes. Don’t let life lessons go by unnoticed. Don’t do what you know is dumb. Know that sometimes you can’t catch others as they fall, still try, but know sometimes they have to fall on their own to get up on their own. And when they do fall learn from it.
3. I know you have a huge love of music – what ONE song do you think is closest to the theme song for your life. You can only pick one.
Damn Bri, that’s nearly impossible. There are so many theme songs to my life. I have a theme song for every person, every moment in my life. Music is the only way I make it through each day. Music is my life-force. Music is my diary. Music is my religion. So to cheat and still answer your question I have to list a few other songs before I come to the one I think is most me.
The top five:
A Little Less Conversation: Elvis Presley
Bad Reputation: Joan Jett
Not A Virgin: Poe
Dream A Little Dream: Mama Cass
Lorraine’s Song (My Heart Was A Lonely Hunter): Theresa Andersson and Grayson Capps
and the song that has always been my theme song.. which I guess answers your question
Don’t You Forget About Me: Simple Minds
4. If you could wave a magic wand and instantly have the job of your dreams, what would it be?
Rock star. You know, like Jem! She’s truly outrageous. Or like Dazzler, X-Man style.
Or a Wedding Planner. I would love to be a Wedding Planner. I wish I could go to a wedding every single weekend! If I didn’t have to be married after it, I’d have a wedding at least once a year!
Or a writer for a travel magazine. That would be the best job for me. Traveling all over the world would make me very happy.
Or owning my own store. That has been my dream for many years.
Or wife to Dominic Monaghan. Does that count as a job?!
5. The Sophie’s Choice question – if you had to give up your dog or your cats, which would it be?
Dog. But I would be heartbreakingly destroyed. I can’t really imagine not having any of the pets. Okay, I can imagine life without the puppy (shivers of joy at the thought) and I can see living without Monkey. I love Monkey (Ivanava/KeyKey) but she is a handful and not the most endearing of cats. I could whittle down to (in order of importance) Sorshia, Lucky, and Bob and be quite happy. That’s really an awful question, dear friend!!!
Lyrics to my themes songs:
A Little Less Conversation by Elvis Presley
A little less conversation, a little more action please
All this aggravation ain’t satisfactioning me
A little more bite and a little less bark
A little less fight and a little more spark
Close your mouth and open up your heart and baby satisfy me
Satisfy me baby
Baby close your eyes and listen to the music
Drifting through a summer breeze
Its a groovy night and I can show you how to use it
Come along with me and put your mind at ease
A little less conversation, a little more action please
All this aggravation ain’t satisfactioning me
A little more bite and a little less bark
A little less fight and a little more spark
Close your mouth and open up your heart and baby satisfy me
Satisfy me baby
Come on baby I’m tired of talking
Grab your coat and lets start walking
Come on, come on
Come on, come on
Come on, come on
Don’t procrastinate, don’t articulate
Girl its getting late, getting’ upset waitin’ around
A little less conversation, a little more action please
All this aggravation ain’t satisfactioning me
A little more bite and a little less bark
A little less fight and a little more spark
Close your mouth and open up your heart and baby satisfy me
Satisfy me baby
Bad Reputation by Joan Jett
I don’t give a damn ’bout
my bad reputation
You’re living in the past
it’s a new generation
A girl can do what she
wants to do and that’s
What I’m gonna do
An’ I don’t give a damn
‘ bout my bad
reputation
Oh no not me
No no no no no
Not me me me me me
An’ I don’t give a damn
’bout my bad reputation
Never said I wanted to
improve my station
An’ I’m only doin’ good
When I’m havin’ fun
An’ I don’t have to please no one
An’ I don’t give a damn
‘Bout my bad reputation
Oh no, not me
Oh no, not me
I don’t give a damn
‘Bout my bad reputation
I’ve never been afraid
of any deviation
An’ I don’t really care
If ya think I’m strange
I ain’t gonna change
An’ I’m never gonna care
‘Bout my bad reputation
Oh no, not me
Oh no, not me
Pedal boys!
An’ I don’t give a damn
‘Bout my bad reputation
The world’s in trouble
There’s no communication
An’ everyone can say
What they want to say
It never gets better anyway
So why should I care
‘Bout a bad reputation anyway
Oh no, not me
No no, not me
I don’t give a damn ’bout
my bad reputation
You’re living in the past
It’s a new generation
An’ I only feel good
When I got no pain
An’ that’s how I’m gonna stay
An’ I don’t give a damn
‘Bout my bad reputation
Oh no, not me
Oh no, not
Not me, not me
Not A Virgin by Poe
I’m not a virgin anymore
I just thought you should know
Darlin’ I’ve been around
I took a walk up your block
In fact I have been all over town
Down by the lake
And underneath the table in my living room
Outside with the blue blue moon
You can call me what you will
Call me a slut call me a jaded pill
But darlin I’ve got your number now
I’m not a virgin anymore
I’ve been taken
I’ve been hung up
I get down and start it over again
I’ve been open
And I’ve been closed like a book
And burned down like a written sin
I just thought you should know my darling
Before we begin
I’m not a virgin anymore
Just thought you should know
Before you let another lie
Slip through those crooked little teeth
I don’t think you wanna start that shit with me
Much better yet
Tell me something dangerous and true
Oh yeah that looks much sexier on you
Careful what it is you say
‘Cause I can see right through you
On a cloudy day and darlin’ I think you wanna play
I’m not a virgin anymore
I’ve been taken
I’ve been hung up
I get down and start it over again
I’ve been open
And I’ve been closed like a book
And burned down like a written sin
I just thought you should know my darling
So if you wanna play dirty darling I’m gonna win
I’m not a virgin anymore
Been there done that
(Say what?)
Get the hang of it
Get screwed
I screw you I had a whole lot of fun with it
I’ve had enough now so you better take a bow
It’s gonna be a new experience if you wanna play with me
Daisy chains and maryjanes
Happy ending fairy tales
Cannot fool me now
I’ve been taken
I’ve been hung up
I get down and start it over again
I’ve been open
And I’ve been closed like a book
And burned down like a written sin
Hell I’ve been divided
Out of my mind and reinvented again
I’ve been ignited and then uninvited
So honey
You break it up
I’m gonna put it back together again
I just thought you should know my darling
Before we begin
I’m not a virgin anymore
Dream A Little Dream by Mama Cass
Stars shining bright above you
night breezes seem to whisper
I love you
Birds singin’ in the sycamore tree
Dream a little dream of me.
Say “nighty night” and kiss me
just hold me tight and tell me
you’ll miss me.
While I’m alone and blue as can be
Dream a little dream of me.
Stars fading but I linger on
dear
still craving your kiss
I’m longing to linger til dawn
dear
Just saying this
Sweet dreams til sun beams find you
sweet dreams that leave our worries behind you.
But in your dreams
whatever they be
dream a little dream of me.
Stars fading but I linger on
dear
still craving your kiss.
I’m longing to linger til dawn
dear
just saying this
Sweet dreams til sun beams find you
sweet dreams that leave our worries behind you.
But in your dreams
whatever they be
dream a little dream of me.
Lorraine’s Song (My Heart Was A Lonely Hunter) by Theresa Andersson and Grayson CappsYesterday I had a dream…
I could fly through the sky…
Then I woke up in a sweat…
Not dead yet, But on the ground
I’m up in Johnson City Tennessee
looking for the wind in me
Lord fly me over Pontchartrain
back to the land of sugarcane and summer-rain
Nevermore shall we part…. Nevermore shall we part
A little girl was early told
that life was time and time was gold
she took a little everyday till it went away
and she was old
and she cried cause her gold was gone
and she cried for she was all alone
And I’m hunting with a lonely heart
crying nevermore shall we part, shall we part….
Nevermore shall we part… Nevermore shall we part
And all those words that I never said
gently bled from my mouth
and I am ready to embrace…. this place.. where I belong
I’m afraid, but I need to love
If I don’t I’m gonna fly
And I’m calling to you in the dark
just a hunter with a lonely heart, a lonely heart…
Nevermore shall we part… Nevermore shall we part
Don’t You Forget About Me by Simple Minds
Won’t you come see about me
I’ll be alone, dancing — you know it Baby
Tell me your troubles and doubts
Giving me everything inside and out
Love’s strange — so real in the dark
Think of the tender things
That we were working on
Slow change may pull us apart
When the light gets into your heart, Baby
Don’t you forget about me
Don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t
Don’t you forget about me
Will you stand above me
Look my way, never love me
Rain keeps falling
Rain keeps falling
Down, down, down
Will you recognize me
Call my name or walk on by
Rain keeps falling
Rain keeps falling
Down, down, down
Don’t you try and pretend
It’s my beginning
We’ll win in the end
I won’t harm you
Or touch your defenses
Vanity, insecurity
Don’t you forget about me
I’ll be alone, dancing — you know it, Baby
Going to take you apart
I’ll put us back together at heart, Baby
Don’t you forget about me
Don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t
Don’t you forget about me
As you walk on by
Will you call my name
As you walk on by
Will you call my name
When you walk away
Oh, will you walk away
Will walk away
Oh, call my name
Will you call my name
Posted in MEME
I am full of emotion tonight. I should not be allowed to blog in this state. But here I am sitting at my computer trying to find meaning. Trying to work it out in type. So silly. I should be in bed crying it out. Tomorrow will be better. It always is.
And how does my Ipod know exactly what mood I am in. How does it always know exactly what to play on shuffle. It’s damn near scary.
“I wish I could surrender my soul……….Find comfort in pain” ~ Jame Blunt
Yep. I posted a password Protected blog. I needed to say it. But I am too cowardly to say it out loud. It’s sort of a dangerous prospect, I guess. I think that he could figure the password out if he tried. And part of me wishes he would. Then it would be done. But even at thirty four, I am not ready. Sometimes I want so badly for it to be done. And said. And out there. But only if it has a happy ending. Only if it ends with a sunset and his arms around me. Which I can’t rationally believe it would. So, I hide. So don’t ask. I won’t tell you the password. I am sorry. I am not that brave.
I’ve said too much. I’m going to go curl up in the bed with my cats and cry myself to sleep, like all good crazy girls should.
Posted in Livin' la Vida Loca
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Posted in All these men can't keep up, Livin' la Vida Loca, TLOML
I know I’ve been absent and silent. I’ve been busy. First it was busy for fun and good times. Then I was busy being in physical pain. And now I am busy being in emotional pain. I will get back to my self. I will update on all the events that have unfolded around me.
But for now. For now all I am thinking about is the pain I feel and the total uselessness I feel. And my complete inability to help relieve tha pain of those around me.
One of my very dear close friends committed suicide a few nights ago. Her name was Aurora. And she was beautiful and smart and funny. And a fabulous mother. Until now. And I can’t understand why. For starters I have never really been able to comprehend suicide. I have always felt that it a cowardly way to try to solve problems. And beyond selfish. I cannot understand the thought process that leads you to that being the answer. But I have friends that have been there and fought through the urge. And though I don’t understand it, I try to listen. And I would have listend to Aurora, too. Had I any clue that this was anywhere in her mind. Last I saw her, which was just a week or so ago, she seemed very happy.
But, what do I know? Not much, I guess.
Anyway, I loved her. And I miss her already.
Tristan, Aurora, and Bella. 2/07
Posted in Livin' la Vida Loca
I sat down to write a blog.
I stared at the computer.
And then I stared some more.
Nothing.
Wow, there’s shit to say. I swear. Tons. Two book reports. Mother in town. Good friend stories. Love angst. Needs not fullfilled.
Still, nothing.
Man I suck.
I’ll try again later. After Heroes. After Studio 60. Maybe I’ll be inspired.
Posted in Livin' la Vida Loca
Well, damn it. I’ve got lots to blog about. But I keep get distracted by my life. And then there are times that I get distracted by a book. I’ve been off and on with this GAMBLE book club. I’ve skipped a couple. I can’t get into the non fiction books, so I skipped some of those. And then I can’t always afford a new book so there have been some that have been skipped for financial reasons. I did “Devil in the White City” and then skipped to “In a Sunburned Country”. But this year I decided to try to stay with the list. I’m going to have to add some of my own books in between, I tend to have to have two or three books I am reading at a time. So, after I finished Sunburned I diligently went to the bookstore and picked up the next book on the list, “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time”.
At first I was skeptical. If I can’t get into a book I can’t read it. I’m not one of those than can just read. I have to be interested. I have to like the style of the writer. Which is why I have a hard time getting through non-ficton books sometimes. I’d be terrible in publishing! So, when I picked up the copy of The Curious Incident I flipped open to the first page and started to read the first paragraph. Right there in the book store. This is my custom. I can tell by the first parapgraph if I’m going to be able to make it through the book. As soon as I started to read I had to turn the book over and check to see if it was meant to be a childrens book. I had not heard anything about it and I was not prepared for it. However, it did grip me from the get go. Once I established that it was written in the voice of a autistic teen I couldn’t book the book down. It’s a short book and an easy read. A note on the book physically, though: the cover is annoying. There is a little cut out of an upsidedown poodle and it gets all bent and snagged. Anyhoo. I enjoyed the book. I would recommend it, but not in a strong “you HAVE to read this book” kinda way. I found that from time to time I was bored with the mathmatical explanations (math is not a subject I love or like or find at all vaguely interesting) and skipped some of the more detailed descriptions. I understand the need to completely get what is going on in young Christophers autistic mind, but I skipped some nonetheless. As a mother I both identified and was horrifed with the parents and adults in the story. I can’t imagine what having a special needs child is like, but I can imagine how very tough it must be. All in all it was entertaining. I liked it.
Posted in GAMBLE
Ah, it’s time for the GAMBLE book review.
In A Sunburned Country ~ Bill Bryson
Let me start by letting you in on a little secret. I am not a fan of non-fiction. If I need to research, I will. If I am interested in learning a particular thing or such, I’ll grab the occasional non-fiction book or two and will be happy to read. But, as a rule I will not grab a non-fiction book, cuddle up on the couch, and leisurely read it just for it. For that I like a good ~take me away from the worries of the day and the reality of my world and let me get lost in some other place that has no bearing on my life~ fiction.
Bill Bryson is the exception to this rule. I love him. And it may come as no shock that his subject matter is always close to my heart. He lives very nearly the perfect life in my mind. His job is to travel. To write about traveling. To always have the wind in his hair and the road ahead of him. So, it makes sense, I guess, that I am never bored reading his books. My love affair with ol’ Bill started many years ago and is one more thing I can blame on my best friend , Bri. Six hour road trips get boring after a while and Bri “turned me on to” books on tape/CD. The convenience of picking one up at the start of my trip and having it ~most of the time~ completed just in time for me to arrive at my destination happily unaware of the last six hours of driving became my addiction. I believe it started with Lemmony Snicket. Bri lent me the first Lemmony Snicket book on tape and I reluctantly popped into my player as I started my trek home. I was hooked from the get go. Over the years, whenever she finishes up one book on tape/CD she’d pass it along and I never got sleepy on the road again. Since my books on tape came second hand, and I was grateful to get anything, I was confined to read what she read. And, as strange as it still is to me, I have never once been dissapointed with any book she has passed along or recommended. She has introduced me to some of my favorite series and continues to recommend authors that never fail to intrigue me. We share a love of detective/murder mysteries and Bill Bryson (and many other things). The very first Bill Bryson she passed to me was “Neither Here Nor There”. I was skeptical. It came in a large pile of books on tape and I immediately threw it to the back of the pile and popped in a James Patterson time passer and forgot. A few weeks later and the only book left in the pile was this “travel” book. “A travel book?! That’s gonna put me right to sleep”, I thought and rolled my eyes. But I was desperate and it was late so I popped it in the ol’ player and gripped my wheel in anticipation of the dronings of a non-fiction book read to me as miles of highway stretched out before me.
Oh boy was I wrong!! Very wrong. The first thing he did was find a pub. A good pub is very important to our dear Mr. Bryson. “Neither Here Nor There” is still probably my favorite of the books. I was so intrigued with his wanderings that as I parked the car in my driveway I grabbed a portable player and took the book in the house with me!
But this is supposed to be about “In a Sunburned Country”…
As I read I marked page after page of passages I wanted to share when I wrote this review. Page after page after anecdote. In the end I realized I would just be copying the book in it’s entirety to share all the parts I loved. The book covers his travels and discoveries in Australia. The country where everything wants to eat you. As you might be starting to guess, I loved it! And as the pages turned (not on tape, this time) I found myself laughing and wondering and interested. It’s a travel book that takes you to places you would actually want to see. He travels the outback listening to throwback radio stations and muses over pubs and historical oddities. He mixes interesting facts and historical knowledge with amazing stories of people and places that will make you long to catch a plane to the down under. I could babble on and on. But I will stop and say that I would highly reccommend this book. Espceially if you want to know where the good pubs are in Australia!
Here’s an excerpt from the book:
Chapter 1
Flying into australia, I realized with a sigh that I had forgotten again who their prime minister is. I am forever doing this with the Australian prime minister—committing the name to memory, forgetting it (generally more or less instantly), then feeling terribly guilty. My thinking is that there ought to be one person outside Australia who knows.
But then Australia is such a difficult country to keep track of. On my first visit, some years ago, I passed the time on the long flight reading a history of Australian politics in the twentieth century, wherein I encountered the startling fact that in 1967 the prime minister, Harold Holt, was strolling along a beach in Victoria when he plunged into the surf and vanished. No trace of the poor man was ever seen again. This seemed doubly astounding to me—first that Australia could just lose a prime minister (I mean, come on) and second that news of this had never reached me.
The fact is, of course, we pay shamefully scant attention to our dear cousins Down Under—not entirely without reason, of course. Australia is after all mostly empty and a long way away. Its population, just over 18 million, is small by world standards—China grows by a larger amount each year—and its place in the world economy is consequently peripheral; as an economic entity, it ranks about level with Illinois. Its sports are of little interest to us and the last television series it made that we watched with avidity was Skippy. From time to time it sends us useful things—opals, merino wool, Errol Flynn, the boomerang—but nothing we can’t actually do without. Above all, Australia doesn’t misbehave. It is stable and peaceful and good. It doesn’t have coups, recklessly overfish, arm disagreeable despots, grow coca in provocative quantities, or throw its weight around in a brash and unseemly manner.
But even allowing for all this, our neglect of Australian affairs is curious. Just before I set off on this trip I went to my local library in New Hampshire and looked Australia up in the New York Times Index to see how much it had engaged our attention in recent years. I began with the 1997 volume for no other reason than that it was open on the table. In that year across the full range of possible interests—politics, sports, travel, the coming Olympics in Sydney, food and wine, the arts, obituaries, and so on—the Times ran 20 articles that were predominantly on or about Australian affairs. In the same period, for purposes of comparison, the Times ran 120 articles on Peru, 150 or so on Albania and a similar number on Cambodia, more than 300 on each of the Koreas, and well over 500 on Israel. As a place that caught our interest Australia ranked about level with Belarus and Burundi. Among the general subjects that outstripped it were balloons and balloonists, the Church of Scientology, dogs (though not dog sledding), Barneys, Inc., and Pamela Harriman, the former ambassador and socialite who died in February 1997, a misfortune that evidently required recording 22 times in the Times. Put in the crudest terms, Australia was slightly more important to us in 1997 than bananas, but not nearly as important as ice cream.
As it turns out, 1997 was actually quite a good year for Australian news. In 1996 the country was the subject of just nine news reports and in 1998 a mere six. Australians can’t bear it that we pay so little attention to them, and I don’t blame them. This is a country where interesting things happen, and all the time.
Consider just one of those stories that did make it into the Times in 1997, though buried away in the odd-sock drawer of Section C. In January of that year, according to a report written in America by a Times reporter, scientists were seriously investigating the possibility that a mysterious seismic disturbance in the remote Australian outback almost four years earlier had been a nuclear explosion set off by members of the Japanese doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo.
It happens that at 11:03 p.m. local time on May 28, 1993, seismograph needles all over the Pacific region twitched and scribbled in response to a very large-scale disturbance near a place called Banjawarn Station in the Great Victoria Desert of Western Australia. Some long-distance truckers and prospectors, virtually the only people out in that lonely expanse, reported seeing a sudden flash in the sky and hearing or feeling the boom of a mighty but far-off explosion. One reported that a can of beer had danced off the table in his tent.
The problem was that there was no obvious explanation. The seismograph traces didn’t fit the profile for an earthquake or mining explosion, and anyway the blast was 170 times more power- ful than the most powerful mining explosion ever recorded in Western Australia. The shock was consistent with a large meteorite strike, but the impact would have blown a crater hundreds of feet in circumference, and no such crater could be found. The upshot is that scientists puzzled over the incident for a day or two, then filed it away as an unexplained curiosity—the sort of thing that presumably happens from time to time.
Then in 1995 Aum Shinrikyo gained sudden notoriety when it released extravagant quantities of the nerve gas sarin into the Tokyo subway system, killing twelve people. In the investigations that followed, it emerged that Aum’s substantial holdings included a 500,000-acre desert property in Western Australia very near the site of the mystery event. There, authorities found a laboratory of unusual sophistication and focus, and evidence that cult members had been mining uranium. It separately emerged that Aum had recruited into its ranks two nuclear engineers from the former Soviet Union. The group’s avowed aim was the destruction of the world, and it appears that the event in the desert may have been a dry run for blowing up Tokyo.
You take my point, of course. This is a country that loses a prime minister and that is so vast and empty that a band of amateur enthusiasts could conceivably set off the world’s first nongovernmental atomic bomb on its mainland and almost four years would pass before anyone noticed.* Clearly this is a place worth getting to know.
* Interestingly, no Australian newspapers seem to have picked up on this story and the New York Times never returned to it, so what happened in the desert remains a mystery. Aum Shinrikyo sold its desert property in August 1994, fifteen months after the mysterious blast but seven months before it gained notoriety with its sarin attack in the Tokyo subway system. If any investigating authority took the obvious step of measuring the area around Banjawarn Station for increased levels of radiation, it has not been reported.
and so, because we know so little about it, perhaps a few facts would be in order:
Australia is the world’s sixth largest country and its largest island. It is the only island that is also a continent, and the only continent that is also a country. It was the first continent conquered from the sea, and the last. It is the only nation that began as a prison.
It is the home of the largest living thing on earth, the Great Barrier Reef, and of the largest monolith, Ayers Rock (or Uluru to use its now-official, more respectful Aboriginal name). It has more things that will kill you than anywhere else. Of the world’s ten most poisonous snakes, all are Australian. Five of its creatures—the funnel web spider, box jellyfish, blue-ringed octopus, paralysis tick, and stonefish—are the most lethal of their type in the world. This is a country where even the fluffiest of caterpillars can lay you out with a toxic nip, where seashells will not just sting you but actually sometimes go for you. Pick up an innocuous cone shell from a Queensland beach, as innocent tourists are all too wont to do, and you will discover that the little fellow inside is not just astoundingly swift and testy but exceedingly venomous. If you are not stung or pronged to death in some unexpected manner, you may be fatally chomped by sharks or crocodiles, or carried helplessly out to sea by irresistible currents, or left to stagger to an unhappy death in the baking outback. It’s a tough place.
And it is old. For 60 million years since the formation of the Great Dividing Range, the low but deeply fetching mountains that run down its eastern flank, Australia has been all but silent geologically. In consequence, things, once created, have tended just to lie there. So many of the oldest objects ever found on earth— the most ancient rocks and fossils, the earliest animal tracks and riverbeds, the first faint signs of life itself—have come from Australia.
At some undetermined point in the great immensity of its past—perhaps 45,000 years ago, perhaps 60,000, but certainly before there were modern humans in the Americas or Europe—it was quietly invaded by a deeply inscrutable people, the Aborigines, who have no clearly evident racial or linguistic kinship to their neighbors in the region, and whose presence in Australia can only be explained by positing that they invented and mastered ocean- going craft at least 30,000 years in advance of anyone else, in order to undertake an exodus, then forgot or abandoned nearly all that they had learned and scarcely ever bothered with the open sea again.
It is an accomplishment so singular and extraordinary, so uncomfortable with scrutiny, that most histories breeze over it in a paragraph or two, then move on to the second, more explicable invasion—the one that begins with the arrival of Captain James Cook and his doughty little ship HMS Endeavour in Botany Bay in 1770. Never mind that Captain Cook didn’t discover Australia and that he wasn’t even yet a captain at the time of his visit. For most people, including most Australians, this is where the story begins.
The world those first Englishmen found was famously inverted—its seasons back to front, its constellations upside down—and unlike anything any of them had seen before even in the near latitudes of the Pacific. Its creatures seemed to have evolved as if they had misread the manual. The most characteristic of them didn’t run or lope or canter, but bounced across the landscape, like dropped balls. The continent teemed with unlikely life. It contained a fish that could climb trees; a fox that flew (it was actually a very large bat); crustaceans so large that a grown man could climb inside their shells.
In short, there was no place in the world like it. There still isn’t. Eighty percent of all that lives in Australia, plant and animal, exists nowhere else. More than this, it exists in an abundance that seems incompatible with the harshness of the environment. Australia is the driest, flattest, hottest, most desiccated, infertile, and climatically aggressive of all the inhabited continents. (Only Antarctica is more hostile to life.) This is a place so inert that even the soil is, technically speaking, a fossil. And yet it teems with life in numbers uncounted. For insects alone, scientists haven’t the faintest idea whether the total number of species is 100,000 or more than twice that. As many as a third of those species remain entirely unknown to science. For spiders, the proportion rises to 80 percent.
I mention insects in particular because I have a story about a little bug called Nothomyrmecia macrops that I think illustrates perfectly, if a bit obliquely, what an exceptional country this is. It’s a slightly involved tale but a good one, so bear with me, please.
In 1931 on the Cape Arid peninsula in Western Australia, some amateur naturalists were poking about in the scrubby wastes when they found an insect none had seen before. It looked vaguely like an ant, but was an unusual pale yellow and had strange, staring, distinctly unsettling eyes. Some specimens were collected and these found their way to the desk of an expert at the National Museum of Victoria in Melbourne, who identified the insect at once as Nothomyrmecia. The discovery caused great excitement because, as far as anyone knew, nothing like it had existed on earth for a hundred million years. Nothomyrmecia was a proto-ant, a living relic from a time when ants were evolving from wasps. In entomological terms, it was as extraordinary as if someone had found a herd of triceratops grazing on some distant grassy plain.
An expedition was organized at once, but despite the most scrupulous searching, no one could find the Cape Arid colony. Subsequent searches came up equally empty-handed. Almost half a century later, when word got out that a team of American scientists was planning to search for the ant, almost certainly with the kind of high-tech gadgetry that would make the Australians look amateurish and underorganized, government scientists in Canberra decided to make one final, preemptive effort to find the ants alive. So a party of them set off in convoy across the country.
On the second day out, while driving across the South Australia desert, one of their vehicles began to smoke and sputter, and they were forced to make an unscheduled overnight stop at a lonely pause in the highway called Poochera. During the evening one of the scientists, a man named Bob Taylor, stepped out for a breath of air and idly played his flashlight over the surrounding terrain. You may imagine his astonishment when he discovered, crawling over the trunk of a eucalyptus beside their campsite, a thriving colony of none other than Nothomyrmecia.
Now consider the probabilities. Taylor and his colleagues were eight hundred miles from their intended search site. In the almost 3 million square miles of emptiness that is Australia, one of the handful of people able to identify it had just found one of the rarest, most sought-after insects on earth—an insect seen alive just once, almost half a century earlier—and all because their van had broken down where it did. Nothomyrmecia, incidentally, has still never been found at its original site.
You take my point again, I’m sure. This is a country that is at once staggeringly empty and yet packed with stuff. Interesting stuff, ancient stuff, stuff not readily explained. Stuff yet to be found.
Trust me, this is an interesting place.
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Excerpted from In a Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson Copyright © 2001 by Bill Bryson. Excerpted by permission of Broadway, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Posted in GAMBLE
Half way through my dream last night the landscape changed. The colors became a technicolor nightmare. It was very weird. Very weird. It was like watching a huge budget film and that was spliced halfway through with a 70′s B-Movie flick! Suddenly the explosions looked fake and the acting was bad. And it went downhill from there. What is going on in this little brain of mine? Is this some hideous side effect of these awful meds I am being forced to imbibe? The dream had a happy ending: I was reunited with my love, blah blah blah. But, god damn it, I want the fog machines to work and the sunset I am prancing off into to look real and not like a background painting……
Maybe it had something to do with going to see “Epic Movie” yesterday with my kid. It rotted my brain. Funny, but brain-rotting……
Posted in Livin' la Vida Loca
