A one-trick-pony at Rancho Relaxo

October 2019 - October 2020

Adam and I are now living at Rancho Relaxo, on Moa Island, in the Torres Strait. At Rancho Relaxo, it is quiet, unless we speak. It is still, unless we move. The tide’s either coming in or it’s going out. 

There are two buildings at Rancho Relaxo, enclosed by a paling and cyclone fence, the Moa art centre and our little demountable cabin. This is our home now because Adam is the new manager of the art centre. We call this area the CBD because there is a shop next door, and a health clinic and a council office across the road. The ABS says there are 200 people living here, in Kubin Village, but I’ve never seen more than a dozen or so people at a time.

Every morning, before the sun rises, I step outside the ranch gates and walk through the village, past the beach and the air strip, and along the bitumen road to the cattle grid. There is no cattle on this island, never has been, so the grid is just a turning point for morning walkers and their dogs. I’m early enough to see the orange light push through the horizon clouds and turn the pandanus a brilliant green. I say good morning to people and sleepy horses, touch the grid and then walk back. Adam joined me a few times but he refused to touch the grid and said he couldn’t stand walking up and down the same road every morning. I reminded him that there is no other road.

Adam walks to work. It takes him around ten seconds to get there. Sometimes I walk over directly after him and ask how the trip was. Then I go back to my office in the cabin and start writing.

I am using this opportunity to finish my memoir. It’s been a rambling thing for five years now and cost me a million dollars in mentoring and lost income so I am committing this next three months to finishing the-fucking-thing. There will be no distractions at Rancho Relaxo.

We have decided to stay on the ranch for Christmas. We’ll enjoy the monsoon rains and go back to the mainland early next year, when everyone has gone back to work.

Sometimes Adam and I walk around the roads pretending that no one else lives here. It’s hot season now and very quiet so we don’t have to imagine much. We might see one car a week, tops. As we walk, we talk about where everyone went and which houses we would like to move into. I choose the big green house at the top of the village. It has deep verandahs and is surrounded by banana trees, coconut palms, hibiscus bushes and poincianas. When the orange flowers burst against its walls, it is completely Christmas-y. There is a lonely dog that sits outside the gate called Sassy, but I call her The Gate Keeper. We will take her into the green house and also invite the other dogs, Black Eye, One Eye, Princess, Snowy and Limpy, and the tiny pony called Arrow. I think we will all be very happy there.

……….

Adam has stopped using soap and now he has no smell. Not even under his pits. It’s amazing.

When I feel ashamed/concerned about how much meat I eat, I go down to the jetty to fish. There’s always a little throng of people and a pile of fish on the boat ramp. I don’t know anyone so I feel like I’m wandering through someone else’s movie but I don’t mind it so much. I find a gap between kids and dogs and throw my line in. I can watch the gluey blue ocean and feel veils of warm rain on my skin, without having to say a word. I breathe in the smell of the ocean lapping on the rotting wood pylons and watch how the ladies jig their sardines. I can’t catch the sardines so I’m using shit bait from the shop, and the fish know it. I go back home with an empty bucket. I’m a rubbish wife.

……….

One day I love my words, the next day they stink like rubbish. I cry a lot. Even my dreams are frustrating.

For a relaxing ranch, we are making ourselves incredibly busy. There is a lot to do if you imagine big things. The artists are back from holidays so Adam spends most of his time in the office and at the studio, and I have picked up some local work so I get a break from writing by doing video workshops. We are leaving the weeks in our dust. It’s very hot now. I wish we could swim in the clear and bluest water, but crocodiles.

……….

Things are not good in the world. One thousand Italians are dying every day. The people are emerging from their apartments and serenading the world with their trumpets and violins and pots and pans. While the virus moves towards us, their balconies become tiny stages where we can check in to feel a part of something defiant. Their music is the sound of human connection.

……….

Earlier in the week I noticed a disturbing smell in our yard. I said to Adam, There’s a dead dog out there somewhere, somewhere near the back fence. The smell got stronger until I couldn’t stand it anymore and had to close up the house. Every time I step outside I get hit with an intense wave of heat, full of rotting dog. Any clothes on the line are steeped in it.  Adam asked about this smell and discovered that it is coming from the flowers on the dead-dog tree. As it turns out, these are the enormous blooming trees running along the road out the back of our house, directly upwind from us. It’s amazing that we have all identified this smell as dead dog, rather than, say, dead bandicoot or dead horse.

I wash my hands a lot. We are far enough away to be safe but also isolated enough to be in trouble if it comes down from Papua New Guinea. The jobs I had lined up are now on hold so my plans for travel back to the mainland for work are scratchy. I am now negative money in the world and solely reliant on Adam. I do not like this position but breathing slowly, hoping this passes quickly. This is the perfect space to finish the book, and yet, it’s so hard to be filled with the process of writing, without angst. What happens next? Keep moving. Keep writing.

……….

I went down to the jetty with my new jigging rig, ready to catch my own sardines. I got tangled in my new rig. I have made no progress in all this time and I’m so sick of meat. I sang out loud because I have stopped caring about who’s watching. It is liberating. It is also shaky ground. I think it would be very easy to go openly mad here.

While Adam and I are watching TV, I sometimes get up and do street performance. I walk forward in slow motion across the room, then I walk backwards so it looks like I’m walking forward, but in rewind. I think he prefers this act to the robot dancing.

……….

The borders have closed. The island is closed. No one comes in and no one goes out. Adam and the art centre staff are able to continue working because they have a lot of space between them but my workshops have been cancelled. Friends are posting photos of empty supermarket shelves. People are hoarding. Our meat supplies have become unreliable. I need to learn to fish better. I have a constant feeling of anticipation, but for nothing solid. They estimate 10,000 people will die from this virus. But not before we see the worst of us and the best of us, I reckon.

……….

It’s super quiet now. Just the dogs, lounging about on benches and across the roads. The horses are doing as they always do, eating and shitting, coming and going. Sometimes people jump on them; these ones are pets. When the rain comes down hard, and for days, like it has been, I wonder if they will go mouldy. Do horses go mouldy?

Adam asked me if we have any cupboard flour. I asked what he was talking about and he just kept repeating himself, cupboard flour, cupboard flour.

What is cupboard flour?

Flour that’s in the cupboard.

When did that become a thing? To describe an item with the place it’s kept? So now, do we also have cupboard plates?

Can you please pass the fridge milk? he said.

We were on a walk and Adam spotted a road lizard. We also saw a road horse and a road dog.

……….

In Indonesia, they fall down and die on the road.

I wonder whether I need to tell this story at all. Why am I writing about my past anyway? I thought it would be a hilarious book. As it turns out, things look pretty bleak from some angles. A lot of angles, in fact.

……….

The fish was tiny. I tried to pick him up so I could throw him back in the sea but his fins were sharp. I found a tiny stick so I putted him, like a golf ball, down the boat ramp. He kept stopping in the grooves so I had to stay with him the whole way. In my panic for him not to drown in oxygen(?) I forgot that the ramp is incredibly slippery so it was a surprise when I fell on my arse and slid into the shallows. But I did not take my eyes off the fishy, which I managed to push into enough water for him to swim away. My bum hurt a lot but I was laughing hard because I could imagine how mad I must have looked. Adam stood up the top of the ramp, still fishing. I asked him if he saw me fall in and he said he did.

I am running again, every morning, jumping through the puddles around the airport. The flat country has become a wetland. It is connected to the sea now. The birds are joyous. I hear frog songs and drops falling in the standing water, a delicate orchestra of temporary circles. I make a loud sigh and push it out, sending up my gratitude from the road for the beauty that is naturally here, without any help from people or the gods of people. I run past the grid today. I let the road take me through the pandanus forest where the trees are tall. I could run forever.

……….

There are places that can only belong to me because they are particular to my imagination and my mind and my heart; some of them are crazy and inexplicable but they are also legitimate places because I live in them. I want this book to embrace those places. How did this book become the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I thought I did that already.

I have been practicing my double-takes. This is where something catches your eye so you turn your head quickly to take another look. You see this move performed on comedy shows and cartoons. Adam is quite good at it but when I do it, I look like a crazy person - so he says. So I’ve been practicing a bit, to get it right, so it looks natural. If I feel psyched for a double-take, I tell him he should watch me so he can see how I’ve improved. The last time I demonstrated he laughed and shook his head. Oh my God, he said. He explained to me that he’s no judge of double-takes. What would I know?, he said. I was horrified because I’ve been practicing all this time to impress him and now he tells me, not only is he not an expert, he doesn’t care. So not only are my double-takes bad, I’ve been dedicated for no reason. So there you have it. The double-takes.

……….

There’s only a small face mirror here so I can’t be sure, but I suspect I am a bush pig. My clothes are stained, my boots have rotted, my undies fall down under my shorts when I skip and if my bras weren’t black, they’d be brown. I have decided to take more care with myself. I have ordered a new toothbrush on the internet. There’s nothing I can do about my grey hair though.

……….

My mentor says I have been trying to fit too many things into the book, that there is too much weight between its covers. You will write other books, she says, you don’t have to fit it all in this one. I’m flattered that she thinks I’ll write other books. I hold onto that.

The wind is up. It rains in fits and bursts; blue skies, broken up with torrential leaks from a different day.

I have acknowledged that I must rewrite the book. I cannot move. Anticipating the coming frustration drives me to tears but it’s the disappointment of not finishing, again, that is most crushing.

……….

We found a gecko, suctioned tightly to the wall above my office. We asked it, how have you been? and other questions usually reserved for the dogs and horses. Hours later, it was still there, its webbed feet unmoved. The stamina is amazing, I thought. I did spy an ant hanging around, so it crossed my mind… but I couldn’t imagine how that would be possible, what with the physics required to stay suctioned to a vertical wall and all. The next morning, he was still there. I consulted with Adam, both of us now feeling unable to defend the poor little man’s breath any longer. Adam saw that the ant had brought his friends and they had gathered under the gecko’s tummy. He got a piece of paper and gently pulled the feet from the wall - still doing their job. He threw him into the bush over the back fence. He will be a plant soon.

You may have heard that I am not writing the book anymore. Not fake news. I want to be a writer so I thought I had to write books, or at least one, but I don’t really. I prefer to write short stories, small windows that hint at a greater view, in the spirit of the great architect, Richard Leplastrier! If people want vistas, then they will be disappointed. I don’t need to write the-story-of-my-life. I wasted enough time in it already. My mentor is shocked, and I am grieving.

I just heard the sound of a car driving along a wet road - it reminded me of a world I once lived in.

When this bloody virus has taken its toll on the poor people and the poor planet, money won’t be worth anything and this capitalist system will die in the arse. Maybe then we can afford to build our own Rancho Relaxo and live out our days in the bush with a couple of dogs. Maybe three dogs.

Another underexposed day. As I ran out of the village, there were gusts of eerie music through the trees. I could see the solid storm rolling over the mountain and I almost turned back. It’s the sound I find unnerving, like a massive industrial fan, bearing down. I said to myself, it’s just water, because someone taught me that once. It is essential to face the rain here; this is the land of rain.

I slowed down as I got close to the horses. They froze behind a wall of water, waiting for directions. When I stopped, the stallion screamed and galloped off through the scrub, towards the sea, the others racing after him, tails up. They disappeared into the weather and then the bush but I could still hear their hooves pounding the earth. It was wild, and it was magic.

This morning I was up early and moving about, and Adam said,

It’s amazing how your eyes have only been open for three seconds and you’re already running around like an ant.

Then he demonstrated by putting two fingers behind his head like antennas and making a clicking sound. That must be what ants do. I built a picture frame around his head with pillows and then took a photo. I promised not to post it on Facey.

……….

The humidity is still hanging around in the cracks but there is a new and fresh light. I have noticed it in the mornings when I’m making coffee, it’s there on the wall and it moves across the stove in strips left by the blinds. It makes my heart light. The winds are coming from New Zealand now, bringing fresh breathing air and I can almost taste the ocean in it. Green is greener and blue is bluer. The water is begging. We walk in when the tide is full, watching out for each other. I had forgotten how young I feel under the water.

It’s not going away. People are just stepping into the spaces. Pivot, they say, as if constantly repeating the word will solve the problem. I am not going to come out the other side of this and say I waited for it to be over. My heart is ready to dig down, and keep writing.

Adam said the other day, that I rarely shut my mouth because I’m always talking. I laughed so hard I almost wet my pants. I said, I know it’s true! which made him laugh at me being OK with being so insulted, which made me cry with laughter and then Adam couldn’t breathe because now there were so many layers. And I said, I don’t even know what’s going on anymore!

One of the ladies gave me a sardine, straight off her own line. I held it tight so as not to let it slip out of my hand. She told me not to crush it. It needs to be alive when it goes in, she said. I said sorry to the sardine, over and over again, as I hooked it up and threw it over the side of the jetty. Within five minutes I had a fish. A young man took the hook out for me and then said I’ll take it back to your bucket for you. I said thank you, big esso! I was too excited to fish any longer so I collected my bucket and started the walk home. When I had gone a little way I noticed that only part of the tail was popping out, which I doubted anyone could see, so I pulled the bag back off the fish so it was clear to everyone that I had caught dinner.

It’s all a-go-go at Rancho Relaxo. I have been rummaging though my bag of tricks and pulling out words and sounds and pictures. I’m throwing them all in together, to see what comes out the other side. The shape of my stories are becoming unwieldy, and surprising. They will not fit between two covers.