the stories....

A short blog....a decidedly blog lazy month all round!!!! First a quickie overview of June 2010....Jen and Andreas take off for the new experiences of New Zealand and an icier winter than either have likely ever experienced...( maybe not Andreas?? how cold is Nepal in winter??), Mary moves to Melbourne to share with her cousin Charis and attend Uni. , Dian and kate return from their epic ten week journey down the south coast, Riannon sits mid term exams and gets a nasty nasty flu, mike designs t-shirts and a logo for the new long board club and helps orgainse a soul surf event at the hotel and I, well, I oversea and support and continue my meditation classes and astrology articles and the writing of short stories....and walk the dog a lot!!!! I rehearse and my voice has come and gone and come and gone again and I have learnt the art of silence and patience, ( sort of!).

We have had rain and now it truly feels like winter, but we have also had those crisp cold sunny days that I love so much here at this time of year.

And it has been pretty good......

And now for second! Second is me sharing a short story...just a taste, a short and sweet taste so you know I have been busy....

Waiting...... a short story story by Bev Murray (thats me)

Mrs Silver was waiting. Her long slim fingers moved rhythmically, executing the difficult knitting pattern with ease. The colours of the yarn contrasted brilliantly with the dull grey of the shawl spread across her knees. A Mona Lisa smile curled around her lips. Soft brown tendrils of fine wispy hair framed her thin pale face. She was tired. Tired of waiting. But she did not let on. The knitting needles clacked away, the smile never moved. Her eyes dipped as the pattern required her attention and rose up to stare searchingly out of her window when it did not. Dirty white clouds shifted and swayed like exotic dancers across her eye scape. She wished she could make out familiar shapes in their disorder, but lately this ability seemed beyond her.

A comforting waft of freshly brewed coffee reached her nostrils and she sniffed the air like a baby bird starving. But she did not want to interrupt the flow of the knitting. Her eyes glanced at the warm white mug sitting on her bedside table. It would have to wait. She could wait for one more thing. At least she fancied she could.

Coffee was a brewed drink prepared from the roasted seeds of the coffee plant. She thought back to her days in the Islands. Green unroasted coffee was still one of the most traded agricultural commodities in the world. She hated thinking of coffee as a commodity. To her it was friends and laughter and chocolate cake. Tête-à-têtes in sidewalk cafes watching the idle world pass by in impossible heels, sensible flats, office smartness or casual disregard. It was the hard work of simple honest folk and the sticky heat of rainforests. Now she felt the world passing her by, and all she could see of it were the white washed walls of her room, an ancient photo taken somewhere on holiday and the clouds that taunted her from her window. Due to its caffiene content, coffee was known to have stimulating effect. She could do with some stimulation, but now she doubted that even coffee would be able to provide it. All it would achieve was a sort of isolated restlessness that made her skin crawl, her unresponsive muscles twitch involuntarily and her heart, flutter in disquiet.

She continued to knit. Waiting. Waiting to have her coffee, waiting to find a cordial form in the continuously marching clouds, waiting for a momentary visit from some member of her family who had nothing better to do or who was having an attack of guilt, waiting to think of something to say, waiting to die.

A cloud is a visible mass of droplets little drops of water or frozen crystals suspended in the atmosphere above the surface of the earth. She tried to imagine the crystals, like tiny diamonds clinging together. Diamonds that had been mined from the water that had evaporated from rivers, lakes, oceans, moist soil and plants. Diamonds that would eventually find their way back to those very same rivers, lakes and oceans. Diamonds that would fall systematically upon the soil and be consumed or wash the same soil far away from its home. Diamonds that would sustain a life and turn a seed into a tree. A tree is rooted to one spot all its life. She felt a bit like an old tree now. Unable to move about, watching the same slice of world every day over and over.

The only thing that changed was her knitting. The colours and the patterns coming and going with more gusto than all her visitors put together. Forming real things she could hold and feel and understand. Things that were more tangible than the big screen clouds that flatly moved across the even flatter sky, so far away she could barely be sure they were actually real.
Knitting consisted of consecutive loops, each linking together, like the numerous little events of her life, each bound by the other. As each row progressed, a new loop was pulled through an existing loop. Loop after loop until there you have it, something real. A shawl, a pair of gloves, a tea cosy. Something warm and nurturing, something filled with memories and the possibilities of memories to be made. Different yarns and knitting needles were used to achieve different end products by giving the final piece a different colour, texture, weight, or integrity. Using needles of varying sharpness and thickness as well as different varieties of yarn added to the effect. Like her life, she could see how the various thicknesses of her intent, the colours of her choices, affected the texture of her final product, contributed to its integrity or lack thereof. It was important to her now, to have just the right yarn, just the right hue, for the finished product she had in mind.

“Mrs. Silver, your coffee is getting cold again; honestly I don’t know why you even ask for it?”

She looked up at the day nurse and smiled her Mona Lisa smile. She knew why she asked for coffee. It was the smell. The deep, pungent kindness in the smell. The sharing, the memories, the hint of another life. That life where she had waited to be served in the trendy cafes scattered along the main street, where she’d waited in line at the movies, where she’d waited for her hair to be curled and dried and made silkier at the beauty parlor, where she had waited to be asked to dance.

She opened her mouth to speak and waited for the words to tumble out. But all she he heard was the sharp rush of air forcing itself free of her lungs, the click, click of the knitting needles moving almost by themselves.

The day nurse sighed, shaking her head so that the little bun perched on the top of it bounced around like a small child’s ball.

Mrs. Silver’s fingers continued to move with alacrity.

She sniffed the air again, and found the aroma she was looking for. Yes, she was tired of waiting, but the coffee could wait.