listen to Paul Kelly’s ‘Adelaide’ as you read this, if you will
[click here] to listen.
Travelling is one thing. Being back in your home city is quite another.
Travelling brings you more stories than you could ever tell, though they are the ones we need to tell around a tall glass of beer or a coffee or two, as I bore you with the photos.
Being back rubs out your senses. It is banal and ordinary. It is full of the modern western trappings. Chemists with chocolates and corner shops with deep fried everything. It has tracks and grooves and ruts. It is the same as it ever was.
It is not perhaps, in itself, a bad place. It is a known place. It suffers from the malaise of non-adventure.
It has places you can reach without even thinking. It requires you not to think.
It has street signs and instructions that need not be understood. It requires no understanding.
It is not special. It is ordinary.
It is not bad.
It just is.
back in 5 minutes
Sorry, we’ve just popped out for 5 minutes. We should be back sometime soon*.
* Say, sometime next month…
hot
Yesterday marked the first cool day following the single worst heat wave in my memory. I’ve been through a few bad ones, many without the gracious gift of air-conditioning, but nothing felt as bad as this one.
It broke so many records that it’s not really worth talking about. It broke our people, across the country it broke our lifelines and our transport. For me, the sight of a buckled trainline is as good a sign as any that we’re in a heat wave.
Sometimes, I try to explain why a heatwave isn’t just a few hot days. I’ve given up trying. It’s a heat storm. It’s chaotic and it’s dangerous. It’s disruptive and it can be deadly. It can too often end in devastating bushfires. And for huge parts of the country it has.
In SA, so far we’ve been relatively lucky. There have been deaths from the heat and a few minor fires, but for those in the East, the bushfires still rage and cause havoc and unbearable losses of life. This country is large and crazy, as while many of us burn, some of the rest are coping with horrendous floods. It isn’t over and I can’t imagine what those in Victoria are going through.
Sometimes when I write these things, I try to finish on a positive note and show the good in even the worst of times. But considering the state of the rest of our country, I’ll leave that for another day.
To an end to all of this. My thoughts are with you.
spaces
The room had an almost unreal feel to the air. It was just an abandoned old hall, but it seemed to carry life in it, when all that was usually there was dust and chairs.
A girl sat in the middle of the room, softly calling out a name over and over again.
At the girl’s feet lay a book and a few old photos. Her hands were held close around an old leather keyring, worn thin with use.
The dust in the corners stirred gently with each calling. There was no spell and no magic, it was just a fragile movement of the air, with each impassioned plea.
This was a place where worlds crossed over. This was where they would meet again.
boot recommends: doom!
There are many words of wonder and magic in the house of scrine. And one day we shall speak of these. However, today is a day of DOOM!
At this point, one feels a little evil laughter would be appropriate.
‘But, boot,’ I hear you cry, ‘this is a little gloomy for you, isn’t it?’
Yes and no.
While some of the DOOMED scrines are full of fear and tales of the apocalypse, just as many are full of weirdness, amusement and the occasional chicken.
A few of the DOOMED scrines are the fruit of negative statements. One or two of my own have bubbled up out of extraordinarily negative days. Some not so much (chicken of doom can all be blamed on a tea-towel). This is all about what Scrine is to me. A place of camaraderie. A place where to share means to transform. I’ll never really understand it, but when I come to write here, something happens. The negative thoughts are stripped away into something entertaining, brief or obscure. And even when they remain negative on the page, when this community comes together the negativity is washed away.
Truly, Scrine is a place of wonder. It can turn an unpleasant day or a bitter statement into a thing of beauty or quirkiness.
Scrine. Place of Doom. And loving it.