ON AGEING: a tattered coat upon a stick

The film LUCKY (Harry Dean Stanton), held few surprises. That’s not to say it wasn’t any good. It was pretty good.  But there were things in it, in terms of what LUCKY did, and how Lucky felt, that did not surprise me. I’ve seen some very good films about getting old- the French one by Haneke- AMOUR- comes to mind. And the Paul Cox film, A WOMAN’S TALE. Also something by Sarah Polley- AWAY FROM HER- and older people in some of Mike Leigh’s films as well. LUCKY is as good as most of these.

What wasn’t a surprise was the way in which Lucky did the same thing every day. Got out of bed in his white underwear and did exercises. Then took his crossword to his local coffee shop. Shuffled home again and watched TV even though what was on the screen was crap. Fell asleep. Stared at the alarm clock. Noticed that time was passing. Became irascible with other people and became a bit nasty and anti-social. Began thinking there might not be a good reason for living. Felt very lonely, and after an inexplicable fall, felt more mortal than ever.

Then Lucky was able to tell a kind, female visitor that he felt lonely- or was it scared? Then he accepted an unexpected invitation to a Spanish boy’s birthday. Here he felt moved enough to sing, beautifully, and received genuine, warm applause that touched him. Suddenly life had improved and he felt like he was worth something after all. He looked directly into the camera and smiled for almost the first time- a radiant, beautiful smile, very different to the scowl given by Harriet Anderson in SUMMER WITH MONIKA. And Lucky didn’t die in the end, but walked off into the Arizona distance, possibly even shuffling a little less as well.

I know someone a bit like Lucky.

He stays up very late and becomes very lethargic in the mornings. He shuffles around the unit each day, propped up in his favourite armchair. He sits in that armchair until evening, having short little breaks. These might be regular toilet breaks, or standing up to look out the window at the car that has driven past. He also checks the letterbox at regular intervals. Accompanying him in the armchair is the daily newspaper, the one put out by the Murdoch press, the one he says he loathes.

At the south end of the unit there is the back glass sliding door, and a neat little courtyard, garden table, and garage. It is here that various birds seem to gather during the day. He has always liked birds; always favoured them over cats, for instance. These days’ birds have become more important to him. Something he can talk or whistle to. He also enjoys proffering gifts, such as water, and nibbles and the like.

Memories, the past. These things sometimes invade his thoughts. The issue is, however, that sometimes he is fuzzy on detail. The things that occurred in boyhood, with his parents, are shadowy and far from blunt or acute. Details of the early years of his marriage are easier. But even here he can’t remember the bridal car, the church where the events took place, the details about the honeymoon…except it must have been close. He remembers there wasn’t a lot of money. Like a bright flash in his mind he is suddenly conscious of the money issue again…now. However it wasn’t always like this.

He had money sifting through his leaky hands when he was younger and stronger. He worked more than one job. Sometimes three- well, two at any rate. They were the best of times. The times when he could saunter into a TAB and unleash a whole heap of notes and coins onto the women behind the grill, and take piles of those thin white betting papers into his sweaty palms. He felt like a rich man on these occasions. Money no object. And no matter if he lost. He would work hard and there would be more to play with, and other places to play…poker machines. He deserved it. He worked hard. It was his money. And it was a private matter- that made it more thrilling. He could hide it from his wife.

………………………………………………………

I have had plenty of experience with nursing homes over the years. It may have been visiting relatives, or more commonly, arranged visits associated with my line of work. I have often enjoyed these times. I like talking about different experiences, other people’s families, and memories. Memories are so important. When you’re old I imagine it is very difficult not to look back.

I enjoy associating things with film and literature. When I think about old people and film, I can’t help remembering some awful things, like the young getting onto the old in ‘A Clockwork Orange’ (can you spare some cutter, me brothers?’). In ‘Amour’, Georges has difficulty accepting the state of things when his long time marriage companion, Anne, suffers a debilitating stroke. I can think of at least three films that involve suffocation using a pillow, and this is easily the most moving of them. Old age throws up incredible challenges for the sanest and fittest of the partners. He is grief stricken by his wife’s illness and can’t bear to let go of her, and she simply wants to die.

In Colm Toibin’s beautiful novel, ‘The Heather Blazing’, we are presented with a similar situation. Eamon, the retired judge living in Enniscorthy, has to manage his wife, Carmel, who has had a stroke, and on one terribly sad occasion, has to soap her body when she loses control of her bowels after a mountain walk. It is a difficult thing for him to do because their intimacy has always been uneasy. He is a reserved man who loves his wife but has difficulty reaching out to her. She, on the other hand, has always felt this gap painfully, and is able to reflect, after her illness, that she isn’t certain of his feelings. It becomes very important to her, this idea of just wanting to know, of the reinforcement or acknowledgement of his love for her.

Any consideration of old age and the confused and traumatic worlds it conjures up must include a reference to ‘King Lear’. Here it is at least two-fold. Firstly, the moving and deep love for Lear by the wounded and dutiful daughter, Cordelia. Near the end, when he partially regains his senses, and realises the folly in his earlier abandonment of his youngest and kindest child, Lear cannot fathom her undying love. He knows he doesn’t deserve it. And yet, due to her unblinking devotion, he is able to imagine, even if it is futile, a world beyond the crushing defeat of his reign:

‘Come, let’s away to prison.

We two alone will sing like birds i' th' cage.

When thou dost ask me blessing, I’ll kneel down

And ask of thee forgiveness. So we’ll live,

And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh

At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues

Talk of court news, and we’ll talk with them too—

Who loses and who wins, who’s in, who’s out—

And take upon’s the mystery of things

As if we were God’s spies. And we’ll wear out

In a walled prison packs and sects of great ones

That ebb and flow by the moon.’

The other side of the coin is the attitude to the twin monsters, Goneril and Regan, Lear’s other daughters. Lear is expendable. He is no longer useful. He has become a foolish old man. And this is what happens sometimes to the elderly. They become foolish old people. I sometimes wonder if quite young people ever fully realise that they, too, will become quite old. I guess it is something we think about as we get older. At the age of 10, or 15, or even 20 or 25, you don’t contemplate things that are so far away and seem somehow intangible.

W B Yeats wrote a poem called ‘Sailing to Byzantium’:

An aged man is but a paltry thing,

A tattered coat upon a stick, unless

Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing

For every tatter in its mortal dress…’

Here, the body has faded, it is beyond use, only scarecrow-like, yet the old man is not defeated. He is raging further along, expressed in his very vibrant and very alive soul that has not departed. He is not falling towards death but rather fighting it and refusing it. He is simply not ready.

………………………………………………………………………………

The man I know feels bereft. He is no longer able to drive. He feels hemmed in, somehow…helpless. Is there any need to dress? Will tomorrow be the same? What of my regrets? Did I work long enough? Do I care that I never went overseas?

The film, LUCKY, throws up new possibilities about getting old. Where routine can be broken and new things and places can be discovered. It doesn’t all have to be futile. For me? All I ask for is the crossword and a pen and a few books if I can still read, and I hope I will still like to talk to other people, but part of me suspects, probably not.

When I walk around shopping centres, in particular, I think about ageing. It’s because here I see teenagers, boys and girls, strutting around, looking for cool clothes and meeting up, maybe seeing a film. They are a world away from getting old, and they know it. Old people have zero significance in their life. The old, grey-haired woman with the walking frame and the slightly sour expression means absolutely nothing to them. They don’t even see her- or, for that matter, the old man in the grey cardigan with balding hair who has allowed his eyebrows to grow wild, as well as the hair in his ears. They are invisible, unless they accidentally stumble and fall, in which they would become a spectacle. Old age, like this, is a world away for them, and they don’t think about it. Like the young Simon and Garfunkel singing OLD FRIENDS- ‘how terribly strange to be seventy’. They surmised that at seventy you would become a ‘bookend’- now, though, they probably see it as not being as old as they once thought (Garfunkel was born in 1941, Simon a month earlier) which makes them both 76. Now, are they both bookends, on park benches?

These teenagers at the shopping centre have a grandfather or grandmother, or Nonno, or Nonna, etc. Living in Rome as a teenager in the 30’s or 40’s, Nonna probably sat on the Spanish Steps in her short skirt, exhibiting almost the exact behaviour as her future granddaughter in Melbourne, or Sydney, etc seventy or eighty years hence.

Someone said the other day- it might have been Barry Humphries- that this is the era of ageism. And I think he is probably right.

The Unfortunate Trout

I fished for the first time in about 30 years the other day, by the banks of the Goulburn River, near Eildon. I felt completely relaxed. I did not expect to catch anything. Inexplicably, however, I somehow landed a good-sized rainbow trout. I didn’t realise this would happen. This is the sorrowful story of the fish I landed.

I skim the surface of the Goulburn River. I am closest to the northern end, a short distance from the small town of Eildon. This has been my home from the time when I was spawned, some eight months ago. I like the way that the currents play with my body, teasing it, encouraging it to go left, then right, then left again, depending, it seems, on the whim of the winds.

I see my body in the morning reflection upon the water. I am silky and colourful. My scales shine brightly. Sometimes there is a silver sheen like a rainbow when I catch the reflection off the sun. I am of the trout family. We are one of the more beautiful fish in the Goulburn. And one of the most rare.

Sometimes I see myself heading straight towards other, less noble fish, and I do my best to steer my silky body away from them, for fear of contamination. These are ugly, more common fish like Murray cod, redfin, carp. In case you haven’t guessed, I am a rainbow trout, no less.

The rainbow trouts of this world, like me, tend to stick together. We come in all kinds of shapes and sizes, all of us with the distinctive body sheen and rainbow gills and elegant, slender shape. We are a kind of fish that know its family. I am one of many and I see my fish family every day, gliding the currents as I do, looking for food, tearing along the river’s surface, watching the particles of sand rise as leeches, insects and worms naively explore the seabed. Our mouths rise in anticipation and with our little sharp teeth, we rip the heads off the bigger prey, and swallow in one gulp the smaller ones.

Today the sky is cloudy above, but there is no hint of rain. I have just spent some time nestled beside a log with my younger friends and family. We have been joyously flinging ourselves into the air. We get a glimpse of another world when we do this. Air rushes into our gills momentarily and we feel a curious mixture of pleasure and pain. It is as if we want to be land animals for a second or two, before we plunge again into the icy waters that keep us alive.

 I can hear chatter from the nearby bank. Sometimes humans come to explore the creek too, and even wade into the water. This puzzles me because I know how handicapped they are. They are unable to properly swim. Their heaving, clumsy bodies stir up the sand and create a cacophony of noise where only the bravest fish stick around.

I am not particularly hungry this late afternoon. My day has drifted blissfully by. I have eaten when I can be bothered. I have seen plenty of mayflies and midges and consumed any number of them. I am not looking for anything in particular, just planning to head downstream to Thornton and to float across some wild, fun rapids under the bridge. Then I see it. The laziest worm I have ever seen. Thick, and juicy, and virtually impossible to ignore. Its cocky long body is resting on the river floor and it won’t let anything disturb it. It even looks like it might be dead. There is a slender piece of hooked metal next to it, which does not look so appetizing. But the worm? Delicious.

I snap my elegant jaws into the slippery worm and receive the shock of my short life. The curved metal piece hammers into my mouth and I feel it crush painfully across the inside of my mouth near the pharynx. Somehow it is hooked into me. I shake my head in a panic and the pain becomes sharper. I feel as though I am more hooked than ever. I am full of regret for what I have done, but there is little time for regrets. Through an indefinable source I am being dragged across the river by my mouth. My eyes are dazzled by bright light. I am being lifted out of the warm cocoon of the water.

There are humans, people on the bank, and I am inexplicably being hurled towards them. Their faces are shining. Three men. I glide in a dangerous arc towards their feet and smack flat onto a rocky bank. One of the men has grabbed my once proud body in his hands and he is trying to wrench the sharp hook from my gullet. The pain is roaring through me. I want this hook out too, but instead of an unclasping, this awful wrenching continues. My life flashes before me. Blood, my blood, is dripping onto the rocks and I am losing focus, and consciousness. Just when I feel free of the hook at last, and blink to regain my senses, heaving my asphyxiating body across rock, screaming in pain for water- the man lowers a curved blade towards my head, and begins his cutting motion…

Because I Could Not Stop For Death: Terence Davies' Emily Dickinson

I WAS a bit reluctant at first to choose to see A QUIET PASSION. It might be Terence Davies but it is still essentially a biographical film. How many biographical disaster films have there been? You get put off by all the trite. SBS recently screened the one by Oliver Stone about The Doors. OK, lesson learnt. Terence Davies is not Oliver Stone. But that film was an obscene disaster. It made somebody, who was quite interesting in real life, look like a complete idiot. What is the point of making something that is so disrespectful? If the subject matter, according to Stone, is a complete fool, then he is not worthy of biographical treatment. The same goes for the one they did about Sylvia Plath, starring Gwyneth Paltrow. Gossipy, scandalous, sensationalist, controversial, shallow, etc, etc.

There are countless others, probably lesser disasters, just misses. Chaplin, Gandhi, Kahlo, Mozart, Monroe, et al.  I’ve seen all of these and been more or less unimpressed about how, in their ‘commercialism’, they have let their subject down.

Terence Davies, though, is a different kettle of fish, as I was reminded of today. A difficult subject, Emily Dickinson. What did she actually do in her life, except for, introspectively, write great, unheralded poetry?

Well, I guess it is worth looking at the New England of its day, the Amherst of the Victorian era. There was the scepticism about God that was the feature of its time. The look at contemporaries, or near contemporaries, the Bronte’s, Elizabeth Gaskell. No mention of Jane Austen. The limited role of women in society, the great questions about the place of women, as writers, but also about wives and being members of society, mothers. The deep unhappiness of Dickinson’s mother and her lack of fulfilment, her own restlessness, and the restlessness of her friends and other members of her family. The impact of the Civil War on America and her consciousness.  These are all the things worthy of consideration, and Davies considers things. It gives him the opportunity to ensure that things don’t become obsessively internal and cloying, that, through Dickinson, we get offered a glimpse of society as well. I don’t, for instance, remember the Plath film doing these things, although Plath was equally preoccupied about the role of women.

Davies wrote the screenplay and directed the film. The film owes its strength to him- and the actress- Cynthia Nixon- a great, great portrayal. She does everything she can. Smiles convincingly, suffers convincingly, shudders convincingly in her fits and becomes convincingly morose but never dull. Davies makes the film glide and engage with beautiful, slow camera movements. It is the music, the spoken poetry that never obtrudes, the slow camera pans, the subtlety of cinematographic composition, the subdued blues and greys, all these things respect their subject matter and offer it a complex recognition. It is all about respect and love, but not really adoration. Davies is not afraid to sugar coat his subject and make her all nobility and grandeur. Yes she suffers, but only as a flawed human being who becomes bloody-minded and depressingly morose, and in a terrible funk. The film implies that she resents being ‘left on the shelf’, resents her lack of beauty and appeal, suffers because of agnostic point of view, resents the lack of recognition as a writer she feels she deserves. In short, that the world owes her something and that she is too maudlin and introspective. This is all great, though. The balance between utmost respect for his subject, but willing to explore her deficiencies as well.

Also the psychic exploration of the need for recognition. The cost of shutting yourself off from society like that. The need to have what little that is yours, validated, by somebody. Emily anxiously peering over towards a critic in her garden setting. Do you like it? Is there something valuable in my world. Is the sacrifice I am making worthwhile? Or is my reason for living generally not worthwhile. I can't help but think of the sisterhood that could have existed here, across the Atlantic, between Emily D and Emily B, and the other Bronte sisters. After all, a reasonable chunk of their lives were lived at the same time.

So, a flawed Emily Dickinson is what we get, which is what was needed- what is absent is the lack of respect and recognition that some of these other films sometimes conjure. Deeply felt respect- where, perhaps, if it was ever possible Dickinson could view herself on film, she might quietly applaud and write an idiosyncratically punctuated poem about it, saying thank you for creating something that is respectful but in its characterisation, flawed and honest at the same time.

The film reminds me, as in the case of the beautiful films that Paul Cox made about Vincent van Gogh and Vaslav Nijinsky- it is best that a poet or a painter make the tribute to another poet or painter if you want something respectful, meaningful, sincere.

Emily Dickinson in unconventional white, which was her practice. Dying in paroxysms of pain like those before her, but with the added grandeur of a noble funeral shown with the moving ‘Because I Could Not Stop For Death…’ over the soundtrack.

Helen Garner on Sexual Harrassment

JUST caught a train back from the city. The train journey goes so much more quickly when your mind is fully engaged with something. Helen Garner does that to you. I found this when I read the Farquarson drowning story in This House of Grief. Even more so with Joe Cinque’s Consolation. The idea of who Joe was, very intriguing. You felt like you got to know him. The bits at his parents’ house in Newcastle were riveting. Now I am going back in her oeuvre further with The First Stone (I can see I have the ‘trilogy’ backwards).

So I am on this train today, as I said, just getting back now, reading very late into the book, based on the story of the inglorious end of Colin Shepherd’s reign as Master at Ormond House, Melbourne, in 1992-3 (real name Alan Gregory). There was some sort of end of year function- a ‘Smoko’ is what it is apparently called- after a formal Valedictory dinner, where staff and students living at the college get together and drink and dance and probably loosen their inhibitions and have what one would hope would be a fun and scandal free evening for all. During the course of the night, two young women claimed, in separate incidents, that Shepherd touched their breasts. ‘Cupped’, I think was the term they used. The allegations stated that Shepherd began making personal remarks to Elizabeth Rosen when they were alone in his office at some point during the evening. ‘I have indecent thoughts about you’, ‘can I have a real kiss before you go’, etc. This, accompanied by getting on the floor, grasping her hands, then moving his hands to her breasts. The second allegation referred to an incident on the dance floor with one Nicole Stewart, a friend of Elizabeth Rosen. Shepherd agrees he danced with Stewart, and did have a hand on her back during the dance at one point, but vehemently denies moving his hand onto her left breast.

There were complaints made, I think, to the Equal Opportunity Board of the college, and somehow the women felt affronted enough to eventually go to the police. A court case ensued- I am, for some reason, very hazy on these details-  however, Shepherd was found not guilty, but the damage for all parties had been done. The two women documented their own personal cost over the ordeal, and Shepherd lost his job- or, rather, he was given no choice because of the scandal but to resign- and the book details the personal cost for he and his family as well. There is a gripping moment in Garner’s research where she visits the Shepherd’s East Malvern home, and Mrs Shepherd cannot stop crying.

The biggest frustration for Garner was the fact that she was unable to gain an interview with the women. The same thing occurs in Joe Cinque’s Consolation. The female murderer in this saga will not reply to Garner’s letters, and in the end the book becomes unbalanced and ends up being a tribute to Joe. In the case of The First Stone, Garner is ‘on Shepherd’s side’ the whole time, but not just because she cannot properly craft the accusers’ story, but the very nature of what happened made her appalled. We get it very early on- from the point of view of a solicitor at the trial who asked one of the women ‘why didn’t you just slap him?’ then Garner herself, who wrote a sympathetic letter to Shepherd- ‘…I’m writing to say how terribly sorry about what has happened to you.’ Again, from Garner, ‘…why didn’t she get her mother or her friends to help her sort him out later, if she couldn’t deal with it herself at the time?’

The implication here, of helplessness or weakness on the women’s part, and solidarity with Shepherd because of the big, damaging fuss that was made of it when a few terse words might have been the outcome, and indeed is probably often the outcome (how many times a day does this kind of thing happen?)- all of this was apparently viewed outrageously by feminists at the time. Although I cannot remember it, I can well imagine the backlash that a well-respected and talented female writer in her fifties must have encountered.

Here, then, on my train, I am looking about, furtively, whilst I am continually dipping, riveted, to the pages. I am sitting opposite an attractive woman, not too far off my own age, thinking about beginning a conversation because she looks nice, and interesting. She has a compact suitcase on wheels with her, and looks slightly out of place as travellers often do when they are travelling to far-flung places. She spoke into her phone a couple of times, with a thick, possibly Spanish or Portuguese accent. I caught her eye a couple of times but I felt awkward and too shy to speak to her. She didn’t encourage me enough to start a conversation. I needed a return smile, or a long glance from her at the cover of my book. How I longed for her to say ‘Ahhh, Helen Garner, she’s an interesting one!’ Of course, no small part of my shyness and reluctance came from the fact that I am a male and she is a female. Will she think that I am ‘making a pass at her’ by opening up a conversation? Will the assumption be that I want to get to know her better and will probably ask for her number if she reciprocates in conversation too often? Am I in some way possibly a danger to her? There was no-one else in our corner of the carriage. Do strange men start up conversations with her all the time, and does she hate it? Conversely, would she be grateful for the energy and interest, and take the opportunity to ask lots of questions about Melbourne and perhaps my life and my book? Sadly, I am one of those people who are cautious and worry that I might offend.

Garner’s book is laced with the stories of women who have had unfortunate encounters with men. Men who have dived their hands under their skirt when they are young and working in shops. A woman raped by a doctor when she was wanting to find out whether or not she was pregnant. Garner herself who was kissed by a male stranger on a country train when she was a teenager, only to be rescued by somebody walking past her carriage. Her numbness and uncertainty and passivity in this encounter was incredible. She also tells a similar story, as an adult, of not having any idea how to deal with an unexpected kiss from a masseur during a session, whom she had already been to on a number of occasions. Completely vulnerable and naked except for a simple towel, she was unable to do anything but clam up, thank him, and leave.

The by-line for the book- ‘Some questions about sex and power’, throws an extraordinary array of different women’s reactions to unwanted gestures by encroaching males. It seems some men are just incredibly lucky, they get off scot-free- maybe they choose their ‘victims’ carefully- women who do not have the confidence or the will to speak up. Or bold women who think they can handle it themselves and say ‘fuck off’ and move on quickly from the whole experience. Or even women who are in some way ‘flattered’ by the approach- (yes, there are some in this book)- and therefore there are no repercussions, and there is no damage done. The men are just ‘finding out’. Some men will say they don’t know whether or not their actions will be welcomed. I dare say, though, that there must be many ‘wolves’ who have no interest in gaining the approval of the other person, that they are simply after gratification, or seeking power, and have no interest in the considerable cost due to their actions.

Then there are those men who I might say, somewhat sheepishly, may be considered quite unlucky. Was Shepherd one of those? If the allegations are true- and I am guessing Garner has her doubts- did Shepherd merely take on the wrong women in his inebriated state, where many, many males before him may have merely just been put swiftly back in their place?

 I am also thinking, in very, very modern times, of Rolf Harris, who I have no sympathy for, and a little earlier the British con-man, Jimmy Saville, Bill Cosby for a very contemporary case. Here we are in different territory. The shocking abuse of power, and the multiple damaging acts. It is completely different with Shepherd, isn’t it? Did the women need to go to the police? And, interestingly, in these situations, where does the power lie? Is it with Shepherd, older and more experienced, and in a position , as ‘Master’ (interesting title) of authority and respect, possibly admiration or charisma, or is it with the women, young, attractive, possibly beguiling, Rosen for example described by Garner in a photo as ‘a goddess’, ‘daring beauty’, ‘a woman in the full glory of her youth’, even a reference to the ‘the double mass of her splendid bosom…bursting.’ So isn’t she allowed to be enchantingly beautiful?’ one might say.

We keep going back to why the women chose such a strong form of retaliation. I can’t remember who said it, maybe a friend of Garner’s, but somebody said she would hope, if it was her daughter, that she would have the nous to deal with it efficiently, a no-mess implication.

On the train, with all of this on my mind, and my potential friend having just departed, we stopped at Brunswick. A whole lot of hungry-looking, energetic males got on, wearing some kind of haphazard uniform from the local secondary college. They all looked about sixteen, so in about Year 10 or 11. It’s a potential school for my eldest daughter, two years away from high school. The thought struck me. Did I want this collective male gaze settling on her long, brown hair, her wide-eyes and fair complexion, her slim fingers and slender frame…

The title of the book, The First Stone, implies women are equally capable of inappropriate behaviour, that they use their sexual prowess when it is convenient and should be merciful when those of the opposite gender ‘get it wrong’. This line of thinking might consider that men are sometimes clumsy, and awkward, and poor at reading signals, or perhaps oblivious to signals, and that women sometimes ‘send off’ signals, perhaps inadvertently.

Personally, I can’t help but think about those women who reciprocates friendliness- there is no reason to be outright rude, for instance- and smile back, and engage, and even allow the male to buy a drink for them… then the signal is ‘you want to be with me’, ‘you find me mutually appealing’, ‘you want to have sex with me as well…’ It is this part of everything that makes me sad and a bit angry. It’s where, as a woman, you can’t really win.

Gay, Black America: Moonlight

MOONLIGHT is a newish American film with an all- black cast that deals with drug addiction, family dislocation, struggles with personal identity and, especially, the human need for love, connection and physical touch.

It charts the changes that take place in the life of one male and his continual struggles with his identity as a young boy, through to a painful adolescence, and an uncertain adult. Unlike the intelligent film BOYHOOD, which charted growth over a long period of time, played by the same actor, and therefore filmed over many years, MOONLIGHT features three separate actors of different ages representing the main character.

As a young boy, Chiron lives on a council estate in a poor black section of Miami with his crack-addicted mother. She can barely look after him, and the bullying he attracts from his peers goes unnoticed and untended. He is just unable to quite fit in. He has a promising relationship with a surrogate mother and father (Juan) around the corner, and much to his mother’s chagrin, he spends quite a lot of time there. It is here that his issues are sensitively dealt with. He asks for the meaning of ‘faggot’, and is told that it is an unkind word for someone who is gay. It is almost verging on a Scout-Atticus relationship, until the boy finds out that Juan deals in drugs. Not only that, but he supplies the boy’s mother. It’s a depressing coda to the first story. A cut throat and desperate society.

The second story features the boy at about 18. Things are no better. He is still pretty much monosyllabic in his responses to things. There are years of pain in his inability to communicate. His mother is still around, but she is a sad, hopeless case. She demands money from him to support her habit and has taken up prostitution. His relationships with his peers is still pretty much disastrous. Two other boys stand up. One, who calls him ‘black’, but is nevertheless sympathetic, introduces him to weed, and sex. There is a rare moment of softness in the film when the two young men kiss tentatively, and one masturbates the other. The other male is not so comforting. He takes a homophobic stand against him and seems to somehow resent his softness and sensitivity. He bullies the gay friend into bashing him, and after several blows, when he is down on the ground, the cowardly mob kick and continue to bash him. It sparks some sort of resolve and anger because, shortly after somewhat recovering, he marches into school filed with revenge and determination, and smashes a wooden chair over the bully, just as one desperate prisoner might do to another prisoner who has stepped over the mark one time too many. Incarceration follows, although this is a period of his life that is left unexplored.

Flash forward to when he is at least 30 but possibly more. Not much has changed spiritually. He seems even more distant and empty. He is, however, a mountain of a man, a bit implausibly so. He was always skinny, of slender though tall stature. His mother is sad and regretful for her crap parenting skills, apologizing to him in rehab. She’s quite broken. If he has any purpose now, it is in his huge muscles, gold chains and aggressive exterior, including ‘grills’, or gold false teeth covers.  Out of the blue, a phone call comes from the person all those years ago who introduced him to tenderness. It seems neither of them have forgotten it.

It is a long drive to the café which his old friend runs. The men are very tentative, and this is all nicely and authentically, and touchingly done. Where do each fit now, with the other? The conversation is filled with probings and uncertainties. It has been a long time. Is there still an attraction? One of the final frames of the film show the men holding each other. It is the love, and understanding, and simply the art of comfort and touching, that we all crave. This is probably the most interesting Chiron. Trying to prove himself, in his masculinity, but the same numbness and softness underlies everything.

The story itself is quite good but not overly flash. The film has won plaudits for its ‘brave’ and original take on homosexuality in the black world. The film deserves the most credit, however, for the beauty of its lens work. It is lovely to look at throughout. When the camera glides around, and is hand-held, and the unusual point of view shots are chosen, it’s not because it is trying to be clever and arty. It is part of the way of telling the story in a powerful way. The film begs to be a part of some high school or university film course.

Your world turned upside down: motoring in Gippsland.

GIPPSLAND TRIP

WE climbed into the car and headed south-east, the four of us just last week. I drove, frustrated at times on the journey to one of our favourite haunts, Gippsland. Frustrated because I was outvoted and had to listen to the strident voice of Adele for much of the way. She’s bitter, it seems, over broken relationships.

Still, it didn’t take as long as I expected. Wilson’s Promontory- specifically, Squeaky Beach. M has always wanted to go there, often asking if it really squeaks. We snacked at Fish Creek (Alison Lester, author, has a bookshop there). The weather was ripe for our swim. We followed some German travellers to the shoreline. They spoke of crocodiles. I told them the story of the bright red fingernails found in a crocodile’s belly several years ago in the NT.

We stripped off. Children straight in. Me, holding back like I seem to do more and more these days. Is it my sight? Some newly formed trepidation. The water, up to my thighs, was incredible though. S wanted to go deeper and deeper. She watched the ‘boogie boards’. Her mind ticked over. M was in shallower water. They both sat down at times, making the waves rise to impact their body, and make the waves feel bigger than they were.

I looked over my shoulder and took in the lovely, large boulders and distant mountains. It occurred to me that this must be one of the world’s great beaches. Perfect crystalline white sand. Translucent, sheer, silken water. Tiny dark fishes. Sans seaweed and sharp shells.

I walked over to the marble-like rocks and stood between some, in the deep little watery gullies that they formed. I met a boy that told me there were giant crabs underneath. A man with an impressive-looking camera was taking portraits of his girls adjacent to the rocks. In some shots the thin horizon was behind them, and then he turned them around, and had the mountains as a backdrop, in the opposite direction.

I focused on the smooth, rocky ground and the magnificent boulders. Marvelling at the colours, I called M over, and to my delight she also found them fascinating. The rocky bed beneath our feet was predominately gold. The sides of some of the rocks were a reddish rust-brown in colour. M and I talked about where we had seen that colour before.  We couldn’t, however, remember. Was it on a horse?

S came over to see what the fuss was about and posed for pictures. We began to leave, reluctantly. I thought about other great sea adventures of my own. Cornwall, UK, 1987. After a long journey by train from London, I arrived in the late afternoon at Bodmin Station. There was barely anybody there. It was a Sunday and a camp leader allowed me to return with him to a nearby camp consisting of young adults. The alternative was to be stuck at the station until the morning, and sleep there. I shared a lovely evening with them, and then the same man drove me to Wadebridge in the morning so I could connect with a bus heading west to see my friends who had organized a little yellow cottage called ‘Wave’s End’ at Port Isaac.

I arrived, at around dusk, in an exalted mood, buoyed by my camp experience and fellow kindness, and the sheer beauty and expectation of being in Cornwall. A short distance from our cottage was the bay and shoreline of Port Isaac. A heavy anchor lies beside the water. You can see it in the original series of Poldark, and apparently in the current show called Doc Martin.

This must be what paradise is like.

One night- it must have been the first night- or hang on, I think it was the second- it was by moonlight, just after the period we call dusk. We were there in winter, January 1987. It was pretty cold, especially by Australian standards, which is of course what I was used to. The adrenaline flowed as I stepped outside the door, and I ran the 400 or so metres down to the inlet madly and exalted. I stared out at the calm, black water, and the dark green mountains surrounding I, and felt the crashing winds.  I thought of my childhood dreams which were all centred around Cornwall. Books, mythology, adventure, smuggling. I could scarce believe where I was standing. The old, ancient and rusted anchor on my left, I thought about the centuries lived in that very spot. The majesty of the scene made me blink back tears. Not long afterwards, I wrote a postcard to my English aunt in Melbourne, and told her, with absolute sincerity, that Port Isaac was the most magical and beautiful place I had ever visited.

I thought about all this as I looked at the mountains and smooth rocks of Squeaky Beach, Victoria. The crystal clear water, yellow pristine sand. Beware of the power of moods. It was the night time and coldness and wildness and ruggedness that made me love Cornwall. But in a different mood, and at a different time, I could see that Squeaky beach could be the most magnificent place on Earth as well.

We left, reluctantly, all four of us, and headed off to east Leongatha- our home for the next two nights- Walnut Farm Cottage. Lovely gardens filled with avocado trees, five gaggling geese, and a run down but adequate tennis court.

Next day, the dawn was a brilliant fiery red.

Somewhere in Gippsland there lives a man who ‘owns’ about 60-70 dogs. He sells them not too long after they are born, sometimes for several thousand dollars. They are housed in concrete runs and bark excitedly when you put your fingers through the metal grate. He has one small pup with an unusual blue tinge in its fur. He says there is something rare about it, and that he might get a bit more for it.

The dogs are all associated with poodles. The letters ‘…oodle’ are all in their breed. A man with 60-70 dogs, the number increasing by the day. A man with about 60-70 dogs. All ‘oodles’. You could say there are ‘oodles’ of them. He has 60-70 dogs. He sells them when they have grown up a bit. They are being born every day. The poodle influence is everywhere. He has 60-70 dogs, which he regularly sells as new ones are born. You can see the poodle influence in them. And the cavalier… dogs everywhere held up for inspection for potential buyers. He has at any one time 60-70 dogs, and this number might grow. The dogs have soft fur and kind clear eyes. There are a good number of them. For sale.

At the pub near Foster. A young girl is dressed up as the main character from the film ‘Frozen’. Families are inside sitting at tables waiting for meals. They are mostly over 65, 70, probably retired. I don’t like this pub much. There are more people outside. They look like they haven’t a care in the world. A much younger crowd, drinking and smoking, and swearing. For someone from Melbourne’s suburbs it’s a different experience. They are probably nice people. There is just something about their casualness and indifference to everything which is slightly repugnant. Difficult to put your finger on. I’m thinking of farms and cattle and utes with kelpies in the back. I don’t know if I am ready for this lifestyle, but at the same time I don’t like the city much. I am in no man’s land. Everything seems wrong, somehow.

The meal comes. It is supposed to be pork medallions. It might be pork, ugly and hard and burnt as it is. And flavourless. But it certainly ain’t medallions. They are supposed to be round. The waitress comes, and I am alert and expectant. But she doesn’t ask the customary ‘how was your meal?’ She must think better of it.

Inverloch is nice, on a barely bearable hot day. How lucky we are to find that park. How skilful we are at getting in our bathers either inside or beside the car. The waves are inviting and cool. But I had that scare years ago. I don’t go far in. Still, it’s beautiful. S and I stay in for eternity. Magnetised. The sky and the horizon are worlds away. We are just little dots in an expansive ocean, boogie boards flying harmlessly around us. Will we ever feel ready to get out of the water. I have had this feeling on other trips, wanting time to stand still. Bobbing and drifting like we are self-contained little boats.

Cars fly by in the traffic on the way home. In the heat of the car, our bathers slowly dry. It’s my turn for music and I listen to live Van Morrison. He is covering an old song by Sam Cooke and the charm of the words make me smile:

‘Eyes turned away, I know
And music soft and slow
With someone you love so
That's where it's at.

Your world turned upside down
You're making not a sound
No one else around
That's where it's at.

Yeah, let me tell you
Your heart beatin' fast
You're knowin' that time will pass
But hopin' that it lasts
That's where it's at.’