The top of the wardrobe is home to three large, colourful woven baskets from
Ghana in Africa. They are my market baskets. I also have a special collection
of Buka baskets from Papua New Guinea. These are a link to my precious past
and they are not to be used, so instead have taken pride of place on a shelf in
my lounge room. The inside of my wardrobe contains only a few items of
clothing; brightly printed tops, skirts and dresses and a few wraps and
ponchos for winter. I don’t subscribe to a particular style, but rather choose
my clothing in a haphazard way with no conditions other than I like tribal
prints. I’ve walked out of my bedroom ready to go out with one of my
daughters, only to be spun on my heel with, “Nope. No, Mother. Too many
prints!” I see this bossiness as a type of familial connectedness, bound by my
forgiveness. They don’t think much of my market baskets either. I’m not sure
why I favour the large baskets. I’ve always grown organic vegetables, so there
isn’t much I want to buy apart from organic seedlings. And even then I prefer
to plant my own seeds and nurture them into being.
The local farmers’ market is a meeting place for hipsters and old hippies who
shun conventional values, but after going there for three years I’m still met
with a tentative smile of acknowledgement and polite conversation about the
weather. That’s mostly an exchange with the barista, or the flirty guy from the
orchard who also happens to sell free-range eggs. It’s not that I’m
unfriendly. I consider myself a kind, approachable person. My son wrote a
poem at school when he was little boy entitled: “Even babies turn to smile at
my Mum.” As odd as that sounds, it’s true. I smile to connect with strangers,
because smiles encourage and warm the heart. But I admit this
connectedness feels bound by my distance. Several people have told me over
the years that I’m an introvert and I agree. I’m shy in gatherings, hovering
spectator-like on the fringes. I don’t wonder if sometimes I mutter to myself,
probably from spending so much time alone. There are some large
ornamental rocks on the perimeter of the market that I sit on when I drink my
coffee. From there I have an engaging view of the entire goings-on.
The mysterious gypsy-barista with the golden ear gauge has often chatted to a
man named Cam. Cam has salt and peppery wizard-like hair, which is usually
left to fly away in the wind with his long beard, but on a recent visit his hair
was knotted at the nape of his neck, the wild wispy bits hidden underneath a
soiled panama hat. He almost looked respectable when he nodded at me on
his way past my perch, the wafting smell of the weed he’d just smoked
explaining his curious demeanour. Lilting in his loafers, his thin frame floated
across the grass as he wove in and out of the tents and tables, the silver stripes
on his fabric bag caught the sun on his hip in a sparkle. Spread across his
outstretched left palm was a dead butterfly, its transience, his topic du jour
and the perfect prop from which to eke out his mystery. I decided to name
Cam the Butterfly-man. And I delighted in his interaction with the little ones
who gazed wide-eyed. Some tentatively lifted a chubby hand to stroke a
fragile wing with a small pointed finger and as they did, Butterfly-man
revealed his long stained teeth in a broad grin. It was a sight to behold. He
squatted. And the children crowded in. And he told them a mystical tale
about the butterfly’s fleeting journey through the world. I held my breath at
the sight of such magic, my inner child’s eyes glistening with tears.
Despite the extraordinary exchange with the little ones Butterfly-man was not
welcomed with a demonstrative pat on the back like I’d noticed their parents
welcome one another many times before. For all the effort they put into their
image of being the inclusive hipster and hippie altruists, they had boundaries
of exclusivity around their connectedness. It was a clique! The most poignant
aspect of this observation was that in his inner world, joyous Butterfly-man
was oblivious. He smiled while being ostracized by a group of people he felt
akin to. The gathering might have been a field of lavender in bloom the way
his lively eyes surveyed them. Everything was beautiful in his mind.
I knew people like Butterfly-man when I was a child growing up in Papua New
Guinea. Bringers of magic, shamans, you might say. Our house was a big
white Queenslander-style home cut into the green steamy jungle of Mt
Tuaguba Hill. Shrubs and vines lined the deep stairs that reached upward
from the road and had been carved into the clay. Various materials bolstered
the steps to stop erosion from the torrential rain that might occur daily. And
the trek to and from the house was steep and strenuous even for a warrior-like
Chimbu from the highlands. Banana, coconut and mango trees featured
around the perimeter of the garden before the greenery thickened into
impenetrable cover. The stairs continued up to the top of Mt Tuaguba hill,
and might have been a location out of a Tolkien novel.
I can still see my mother’s skeletal frame through the crack between the
slightly ajar bedroom door and its surround, her long tanned legs stretched
along the baby-blue chenille bedspread, the rhythmic ticking sound of the
overhead fan in time with the chocolate wisps of her hair blowing ever so
gently. She was beautiful. And I may have fallen asleep right there on the
floor on occasion. The narrow view through that crack was connectedness
bound by forbidden contact. But it was enough.
The meris would come to the house regularly because Wima, our beloved
home helper had shared that my mother had been ill with malaria for a long time.
“Olgeta wantaim i wokabout nau,” Narmuk would say to me in Tok
Pisin. Meaning she and her friends were going out.
“Mama bilong yu, emi lik die.”
I usually nodded at this point, my mind lingering on the word die, before I
asked them to wait. I ran one last time to press my eye to the crack in the
doorway. Mama belong me had her eyes closed and yes, she did look like she
had died, although ‘emi lik die’ really meant Mama was very ill.
“Mi save kam bak long tri kilok. Lukim!
That meant we’d be back around three. Wima patted me on the head as I
went out the door with the women.
Narmuk and the meris were very protective. One would hold my hand and I’d
tell them, “Me happy true,” which would set them off giggling, but it was close
enough in Tok Pisin to mean, ‘I’m very happy’. They’d stroke or plait my long
strawberry blonde hair as we went. The contrasting pattern of their lap-lap
and muumuu was a bright sight to behold, like a bunch of exotic flowers being
blown along a well-worn windy track through the tall kunai grass.
The market itself was nearby a wharf with a spreading structure built out of
wooden poles and a thatched palm leaf roof. Only a third of the vendors
would manage to secure a place out of the sun, the rest were strewed out like a
vivid chunky mosaic. There were no tables, with the produce displayed on
woven matting or in wide Buka baskets. There were as many goings-on at the
market as there were aromas. Bartering and laughter exploded from the
conversations. The meris would fill their billums with fish, yams and fruits. It
wasn’t uncommon for one to carry a live duck or chicken home, wrapped
under one arm, the other arm waving about animatedly as they
talked. Sometimes, I was lucky enough to hold the bird for a little while,
disquiet deep in my heart that its neck was soon for the chopping block. I’d
stroke it and hope it didn’t peck at me while I tried to give it as much love as
possible in the short life it had left. We’d wend our way around the market of
grinning vendors, whose teeth were stained red from chewing Buai; their
bodies warmed by the affect into a lively conviviality. Everything was
beautiful in my mind. I believe it is in that cliqueless world, connected by
guilelessness, that a soul like Butterfly-man belongs.
The busker paused between songs and I heard Butterfly-man’s voice drift over
the shifting sounds of the marketplace. I’m amazed that his dead butterfly
didn’t fly out of his hand drawing gasps from the youngsters the way his wild
arm movements coincided with his enthusiastic exclamations, “It’s all an
illusion” and “the world is a massive hologram we project onto nature.”
He wandered on to the bare-foot-florist, whose hands hitched up his shorts
and moved to his hips. I reckon I saw the florist prime his lips with his tongue
about five times in thirty seconds for a swear word that never made its way
past the frustration in his choked up throat. There stood two men, their
connectedness bound by prejudice.
There are many different ways connectedness has boundaries. For example,
my son, Finn, was born with congenital heart disease that could bring his life
to an end any day. He’s twenty-five. I believe he and I are connected by the
sounds of our broken hearts beating. Mine pounds a rhythmic despair at
somehow giving him this curse and his fibrillates despair that I am wracked by
guilt. That’s a type of connectedness bound by being mother and son.
“You know what that’s called, don’t you?” I heard Finn say from behind
me just the other day. I was busy apologising to a tomato plant for pruning it.
“I dunno, madness maybe?” I muttered.
“Animism,” he continued enthusiastically, pausing only long enough
for me to look up and open my mouth to speak again.
“It’s the belief that all living things have sentience and it goes all the
way back to hunter gatherer days. But you knew that, right?”
I stood upright, my hands immediately rubbing at the creaking arch of my
back, and I turned to look at him.
“You know that your childhood is why you think like this, don’t you,
Ma,” he continued, and he picked up the pot with the sorry looking bare stalk
and headed to the hothouse. “You gave that to us kids, like a gift,” he called,
quite pleased with himself.
“It’s hard to hold on to that idea, though, Finn,” I answered, thinking
about what else I’d given him. But he’d already gone and my voice was really
only a whisper. And then something clicked inside me. There was an unlikely
shaman who gave me that very same gift.
The Reverend Battersby used to pick me up and carry me sometimes during
our excursions into the jungle. On one particular excursion he rushed me over
the deepest part of the creek. I was five, slight in build and easy to tuck under
one arm, a bit like one of those chickens or ducks. I giggled as I hung there,
and let my arms dangle with my long hair watching the Reverend’s boots
splosh into the water. The stream was rocky and noisy in parts and smooth
and quiet in others. This was a typical Sunday School morning. The Reverend
reached the other side and plonked me on the soft sandy bank with some of
the older kids, telling me to stay put until he came back with another
youngster. Some of the adolescents were impatiently inching ahead. Today’s
lesson was about wet quicksand and how an underground spring had caused
the sand to become waterlogged.
“We are like those grains of sand,” the Reverend said mysteriously and
often after that. “Each of us separate, suspended, yet supporting one another.
All of the world is sacred. And we are connected to every bit of it.”
I lived that moment of awe again and again as I grew up. When I collected
baby toads and tried to keep them as pets, or when I swam in the black lagoon
and felt the eels kiss my feet. I lived it when I sat alone with a fishing rod on
the rocky groyne reaching into a turquoise low tide. I caught fish, only to put
them back because, well, just because; or when I gazed up at Mt Tuaguba and
those forbidding stairs that sometimes reached into the low lying clouds of the
Reverend Battersby’s heaven. I lived it in the lively meris and the wise old
men chewing Buai, and in my mother, distant and dying. I live it in my son
and our reciprocating broken hearts. Just as the Butterfly-man lives it when
he walks through that market stoned off his rocker. He’s right, I think, that
Butterfly-man. Perhaps the gypsy-barista had called ‘Sam’ but I misheard,
Cam. Whoever he really is, he isn’t crazy. What we think we know, really is an
illusion. Connectedness is all there is. Boundaries are simply the way we filter
the experience.
Names have been changed to protect people’s privacy.
** Tok Pisin is a form of creole widely spoken in Papua New Guinea.