Monday 6th September 2010

One year ago.

 

There’s a mini-crisis at breakfast.

“The candle is about to go out!” Suse yells.  We both leap up from the couch and over to the table.  The flame limps lowly, the wick bobbing in a sea of wax.  All around are high resin walls, trapping this moat of molten lava inside.

Over the last hour the flame has burnt high and bright, the strongest it has been for the last four days.   But suddenly it is fading.

I grab the replacement candle, tipping its stem to the blue flame to light it.  A drop of wax beads on it’s coated wick before falling, threatening to put it out.

“Stop, stop!” Suse says.  I take it away, and we both stand there breathless, watching for a moment.

“Hang on a sec, I’ve got an idea,” she says, running to the kitchen.  “I’ll use a match to transfer from one to the other.  That way it’ll be the same flame.”

Suse runs over to grab the matches out of the cupboard above the Rangehood.  She returns, slowing as she arrives.  The flame wavers in her breeze, contemplating death.  She brings the match to the flame, threatening to extinguish it, before the phosphorus crackles brightly.

We both take a breath.

She puts the match against the new wick.

“Isn’t that cheating?” I say.

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“It’s the same flame.”

We stand for a moment, the new flame beginning while the old one limps weakly.

“I think that’s cheating,” I say frowning.  “And I’ve got an idea.”  I slowly tilt the plate of the first candle, letting the wax move to one end of the molten pond, revealing the wick, and causing the flame to jump up.

“Blow out the new one,” I say.

“Really?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I mutter.

Suse blows it out.

“Now light it.”

She takes the blackened wick from the new candle and touches it to the original flame.  It lights quickly.

I resettle the plate flat, causing the first candle to have one final burst and splutter, before turning blue, folding down, and going out.

“That was close,” I say.

“Mmmm.”

We both stand there staring again.

“Does it matter that the new candle wasn’t a virgin one?”

“Like there are rules to superstition, honey.  We make this up.  We can do what we want.”

 

* * * * *

Suse spends the morning at the hypnotist, going for a walk through the Botanic Gardens, and then heading to the acupuncturist for her pre-transfer treatment.

She arrives home just in time for lunch.

“I asked them if there was anything else I should do to increase my chances.  And they said that we should have sex.”

“Really?”

“Supposedly that increases your chances of success even further.  What do you think about that?”

“I don’t ask questions anymore.  I just do what I’m told.”

“So should we get to it?”

“Absolutely.”

“We haven’t got long.  Do you think we have time?”

“Honey.  We’ve been told to do this.  Doctor’s orders.”

I take my wife into an embrace, kissing her deeply.  After a few seconds, I break into laughter.

“What is it?”

“I’ve just realised that I’ve been given carer’s leave to have sex.”

“It’s a great country we live in, isn’t it?”

 

* * * * *

To be continued…

Sunday 5th September 2010

One year ago.

 

The candle continues to burn.

It sits in the middle of the dining table, on a white plate.  Two camellias and some bottle brush stolen from the garden up the street lie on its edge.

This candle from the two-dollar shop has been burning since Thursday night, throwing a glow over the darkness of the room as it rains outside.

And there’s another one ready to go when it finishes.

 

* * * * *

Friday 25th June 2010

Gestation: 39 weeks

One year ago.

Tonight is a full moon.

Well, that’s not entirely true.  Technically, the moon is full between 8.10am and 3.30pm tomorrow.   But unless we want to perform our ‘Ritual for Fertility’ under the searing sun in the middle of the day, we need to do it tonight or tomorrow.  And tonight is our last night on the island.

So we decide to do it tonight.

After dinner, we head back to our beachfront bure and get the things ready.  The ritual came packed in a cardboard box with a curved lid;  like a disposable coffin for a rat.  Inside it sit two candles, a small bottle of oil, a sewing needle, a bell, some horsetail herb, some stallion hair, and a piece of rose quartz.  All on a cushion of hay bale.

There is no way this little baby is getting back in through customs.

Suse picks up the box and turns to me.

“Do you think I’m crazy for bringing this?”

“Not for bringing this,” I reply, by now my standard answer.  She smiles.  “Honestly, I’m happy to give it a go, honey.  After everything that’s happened, I’m happy to give anything a go.”

 

* * * * *

We prepare in silence.  Suse finds a plate for the oil, setting everything out just right, while I visit reception for a lighter.  We take our little rat coffin, and a sarong, and we head out into the evening air.

Malolo Lalai is the closest of a chain of islands known as the Mamanucas, which sit to the east of Viti Levu, the main island of Fiji.  A number of films have been made in the area, including ‘Castaway’ and ‘The Blue Lagoon’.  It is the epitome of a tropical oasis.  As we walk along the beach tonight, I can’t help but feel like we are in a sound stage.  There air utterly still, the water laps quietly at our feet as if the ocean motor has been turned down to low, and the lone palm tree – the one from my runs – leans out at an impossibly sweeping angle, appearing to be too perfect, too flawless, as if made of papier-mâché.  This evening it is very warm;  the heater has been left on high.  As I look up, I realise that there is a thick cloud covering the entire sky, blanketing us in.

“I can’t see the moon, honey.”

“That’s okay,” Suse says, slinging an arm over my shoulder, “it’ll arrive just in time for the ceremony.”

I keep looking up.

“It’s dense,” I say frowning, “there’s no break in sight.

She grabs me by the hands, swinging me so I face her.

“There will be,” she says.

And I believe her.

* * * * *

We sit in the sand, just beneath the palm.  Its leaves sway softly, a hint of air now beginning to move.  We plant the candles in the sand, and sit cross-legged, opposite each other.

I take the piece of paper and unfold it, happy to be in charge of the instructions, feeling comfortable in this role.

I can do instructions.  They’ve never freaked me out.

So I take my place, looking down at the piece of paper.  I squint hard.

“It’s too dark under that thick cloud,” I say frustratedly.

“Have you got your phone?”

“Yep.”

“Use it as a torch.”

As I fish around in my pocket, suddenly the words light up.  I look above to see realise that the moon has crept out into a clearing;  the only clearing in the entire sky.

I just nod, as I clear my throat.

I no longer question my wife’s intuition.

“Circle of divine light be around me,” I say.

“Circle of divine light be around me,” Suse repeats.

“Spirits of the air whisper to the sky.”

“Spirits of the air whisper to the sky,” she repeats.

“And to all that bears fruit.”

“And to all that bears fruit.”

“Ask Mother Earth to hear me.”

“Ask Mother Earth to hear me.”

We take the oil and pour it into the bowl.  In turn, we inhale the aroma.  We strip off our top halves.  I take the bowl, dipping my fingers in the oil, anointing Suse below her belly button, over her heart, on her throat, across her forehead, and on her crown.  She repeats the process with me.

She then takes the green candle, carving a star into it, symbolising surrender to the spiritual realm.  She draws a ring of oil around its centre, and then she replants it in the sand.  She goes to light it, but as she does, a gust of breeze comes up, blowing out the flame.  She closes her eyes for a moment, and tries again.  From this point on, the air is still.

Just like that, the sound stage fans are off.

 

* * * * *

Suse rings the bell.  The overhead lights are dialled up, as the moon emerges into full view, illuminating all below.

She then takes the orange candle.  Into it, she carves the symbol of Ceres, the Greek Goddess of harvest.  She also covers this in oil, and lights it, before again planting it in the sand.

The wind remains off.

I hand her the horsetail hair and the stallion hair. She takes the first in one hand, and the second in the other.

And then we complete the incantation.

Call me superstitious, call me weird, call me whatever you want – but it feels to me like transcribing what we said in the final part of the incantation ain’t that smart.  I’m not sure exactly what we’re dealing with here.   And, as we’re not pregnant as I write this, I’m simply not going to jinx it.

Suffice to say that we both said that we’re ready and waiting.

Which we are.

And like I said, call me weird all you want.

I just want a kid.

 

* * * * *

As we finish, at the exact moment that we are complete, the wind picks up, blowing both candles out.  And just a few second later, the moon falls back in behind the clouds, completely blanketed once more.

“Look at that,” I say.

“Just like I said,” says my bride.

She strips off her bottom half, and walks slowly towards the water.  I follow her, taking her hand as we walk happily into the shallows.

And there we ablute, in the bath-warm water, on this perfect sound stage in the South Pacific.

 

* * * * *

Wednesday 23rd June 2010

Gestation: 38 weeks, 5 days

One year ago.

So again today, I run.  After realising yesterday how much I am reading into things, I try to drop it.  I try to stop reading into things, but it’s hard.  Because one thing remains constant.

Each day I run, each day in the parching, drenching afternoon sun, I run along the beach, each day clocking a time slower than the day before, each day feeling more and more sapped by the dropping sun.

And one thing remains constant.

As I double back, sprinting home through the spongy sand, my feet sinking in quicksand, I look out at the horizon.  And each day, each and every day, I see a solitary boat – a different one each time, and yet a solitary boat – directly under the light of the sun, infallibly dissected in half by the sun’s ray, slicing vertically through the water, spreading it’s shimmering beam into the azure waters below.

A singleton ship.  Out on the horizon.  Every single day.

In those same waters that our pink and blue boats sailed.

And only the pink boat floating on.

Continuing on, well after we left.

One thing remains constant.

* * * * *

Tuesday 22nd June 2010

Gestation: 38 weeks, 4 days

One year ago.

Each day, I run.  And as I do, I make a choice.  I make a choice about my family, and what it will be.  It goes like this:

 

‘I choose the end result of a healthy, loving happy family.’

 

Running is my form of meditation.  I’m not like other people who can be still in meditation.  I get my meditation – my sense of centredness and presence – only when my brain is oxygen-deprived enough that I can no longer think at a million miles an hour.  It’s as if strangling me is the most effective way to slow me down;  hypoxia is quickest way to send me into alpha waves.

Sweating it out as I churn along the beach, I concentrate on my breathing, and I concentrate on my choice.

 

I choose the end result of a healthy, loving, happy family.

 

There is a school of thought that says the universe is there for the taking, for each of us, wholly ready to provide.  That in essence, our lives are already mapped out, all the major steps already predefined;  like a massive dot to dot of life.

And, let’s say, if this is the case, that there are only about fifteen to twenty dots in total.  The rest of it – all the bits in between – is ours to choose.  We can get as creative as we want with the path.  We can do whatever we want with that line from point to point.

But understand that these points are predestined.

No point sweating them.

 

I choose the end result of a healthy, loving, happy family.

 

However, there is a caveat to this.  And that is, that we can move the dots.  We can shift them around the page like a set of counters.  So in essence, we can move everything.  We can change everything.  Nothing is set in stone, other than birth and death.  Everything else, everything in between, is fluid.  If we can move the dot that makes the neck look crooked, we can change the complexion of the whole picture.

We can move the dots by changing the nature of our thinking.  Physics dictates that all energy will flow along the path of least resistance.  If the things that are most important to us are along a well-worn path that runs downhill – then the universe can’t help but to let it flow to you.

And me.

 

I choose the end result of a healthy, loving, happy family.

 

So I choose my family every day.  I choose it every time I run this beach in Fiji.  I choose it every time I run around the Botanic Gardens in Melbourne, every cold winter’s day when my breath is steamy and the air hurts on its way down, every time I deprive my brain of enough oxygen that it becomes as ingrained as a pathway in my consciousness.

 

I choose the end result of a healthy, loving, happy family.

 

I make that choice, I burn that thought, I repeat it.  I stretch the creative tension like wires in my brain, connected by neurotransmitters, by dopamine firing off.  Each and every day, I do the same.

Bang, bang, bang.

As a synapse of belief, and of thought, that is constant and unchanging and there – physically there – a physical thought, that once started as a belief, but through conditioning, through thinking, through visioning that thought and imagining my family on a daily basis, has actually become as a neuronal connection in my white matter, it has become a fixed synapse.

In doing that, it becomes more true than not.

A fixed truth.

How can it not?

* * * * *

Today, as I run along the beach, I repeat my mantra.

 

I choose the end result of a healthy, loving, happy family.

 

On this day, today, I struggle with this logic, my artistic brain at the tender mercies of my scientific mind.  It sits there in a headlock, a vicious half-Nelson that leaves my weak little pansy artistic mind panting.  Today, it is at the mercy of my brutal, beefed-up, loved-up, greased-up scientific thoughts, obliterating this philosophical waif of consciousness into a million smashed up thoughts.

And yet I continue.  I root for the underdog.  I cheer for the pansy.  I keep thinking about my family.

 

I choose the end result of a healthy, loving, happy family.

 

As I run, I take in the world around.  I look at the beach, the children in the surf, and then I start to see it differently.  As I head along the coast, I see a plane, a solitary aeroplane, perched at the edge of the landing strip.

A singleton.

But then I notice its twin engines.  They start up, flicking over;  once, twice, and then whirring to life.  As I watch it, I see in the distance a second plane, a second twin-engine plane, coming in low and fast, flying in from out of the glare of the sun.  It is close, less than twenty metres ahead, on this island, the brother to its twin sister, already whirring, already fired up, already ready to take off in flight.

It’s twins.

The plane lands with a jolt, a puff of dusty air spewing up behind it’s wheel, on this strip – uncordoned – that I am to run over to get to the next part of the island.  As I go, the sister slows to a stop, and the brother continues in an arc, following his bigger sister’s path in, disappearing to a dot;  the same size as she was when I first spotted her, back out towards the sun.

As I continue, all I can see is twins.  Another couple, walking towards me.  Hands linked, twins.  Then a family, with two boys the same height, the same sandy hair.  Twins.

My scientific brain threatens to go into overdrive, yet the sweat of the day saps me of cogent thought, and my dream starts to grow.

 

I choose the end result of a healthy, loving, happy family.

 

I follow the crest of the beach out.  As I go, the story changes.  This time, as I reach the rocky outcrop, the place we sailed the boats from four days ago, I again note the lone palm.

A singleton.

There it sits, all on it’s own, reaching out over the water, threatening to lean down and scoop it up and drink it in.

I turn and look, the light of the day fading.  There in the distance is the sun, shimmering on the deep still water, and on it, right on the brim of the horizon, right on the edge where it threatens to tip off the edge of the world, is a boat, sailing along, like a ridiculously beautiful postcard.

Another singleton.

I turn and head back, picking up speed.  There again I see one half of a couple I’ve seen from earlier in our travels.

Singleton.

And out of the bushes comes her partner, to join her, to grab at his hand and cup him in her arms.

Twins.

I look back out at the lone sailing boat, the lone sun above it, only to notice, up to its right, balancing, almost laughing at me, subtle in comparison, is the moon – bright and pale in this early evening light.

Twins.

I pick up my speed, the sun diving lower, the light starting to fade, the sweat coming harder, pooling in my eyes.  I cross the landing strip, my limbs getting heavy, the sand getting softer, the blood failing in its quest to provide oxygen, and in doing so, the clarity of the message, the choice I have made coming ever closer.

 

I choose the end result of a healthy, loving, happy family.

 

I sprint the last berth, past another singleton, another set of twins, yet another set of twins, then a singleton.  And then in the distance, I can see it, my target, my finish line;  the end of my run.  I pick it up even faster, the sting of the sweat in my eyes, my calves cramping, and I push even further, pull even deeper, and I sprint, hard up the sand, to my finishing post, to my point, hanging there, like a bird perched on the edge of a branch.

I touch it as I arrive, panting, an outstretched hand.  It is Suse.

 

I choose the end result of a healthy, loving, happy family.

 

Twins.  Singleton.  Who cares?

I choose the end result of a healthy, loving, happy family.

I’ve already got one.  My wife, the second half of my self;  my own twin, my own singleton.

And so I realise:  fuck the symbolism.

It doesn’t matter.

What matters is this:

The other day we released the spirits – two spirits – in a ceremony in the ocean, to let them know that we are now ready.

We are ready.

 

* * * * *