"Escape", or "Radically Changing 'Place and Space'" arrangements can be a very successful strategy to employ if you wish to alter any kind of habitual behaviour that no longer serves it's purpose, or endangers your life. In Chinese Medicine terms it could be called a Yang or "masculine" style of strategy. You have to physically move.
Today's article is reprinted without permission of any kind.
Author: Vic Plume
~Cockatoo Concerto in F-Sharp~
A few of days ago I had a couple of thousand drinks with friends in celebration of the Lord Jesus Christ’s birthday, the next day was Boxing Day and over a few more drinks we celebrated the birthday of boxing. The next day we celebrated the amazing fact we were still able to celebrate and, again, after a few too many celebratory drinks I took myself to bed just before the sun hit me and turned me into dust. When I woke, about noon that very same day, I felt crooker than a 2-headed Irish wino after a Saint Patrick’s Day long-weekend and I realised I had a 3-day hangover to deal with, which was when a mate of mine, who’d come down from Brisbane for Christmas, rang and told me he was at my local pub and wanted me to come down and celebrate with him. I told him I’d already been celebrating for 3 days straight and, if I kept it up, the next time he’d be celebrating with me would be at my funeral unless they cremated me in which case he’d be joining me in the afterlife after the alcohol-fuelled fireball sent us both to our great reward. He sent a couple more text messages stating I was weak and how I probably didn’t have a hangover at all and that I was probably just tired from taking knitting classes. I responded that he was correct in that I didn’t have a hangover, in fact, I had 3 hangovers and explained how I wished I had taken knitting classes instead. He sent back another humorous text-message and that’s about the time I contemplated heading down to the pub to have a few brews with him, which was about the time my liver moved into a separate bedroom, which was when I knew it was time to get the hell out of Melbourne.
I was in an alcoholic Christmas rut and needed to go ‘walk-about’, or, more to the point, ‘drive-about’, so I packed my Toyota van, which comes with a double bed, oh what a feeling, and headed north to the river Murray, which is Australia’s longest river and one of the best because, although it looks like the type of river where you’d find Tarzan swinging and crocodiles lurking, there’s no crocodiles anywhere near it and I haven’t yet seen Tarzan swinging... or lurking. I headed for a massive eucalypt-forest I’d been to a fair few times before, on the Victoria-New South Wales border, it’s the biggest river-red-gum forest in the world so I knew I could find somewhere to be alone. I realised there’d be a few scattered Christmas campers here and there but, because there’s only a rough dirt-road going into the forest, the further you go into the forest the less people there are. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against people and, in fact, some of my best friends are people but I needed time-out so I went deeeeep into the forest, about one hour up the bumpy dirt road full of large holes, and selected my home for the next week or two. It was a beautiful open-grassed-space, roughly an acre, surrounded by towering shady river-red-gums and set at the top of a huge, horseshoe bend in the river. It had the perfect swimming spot where you could swim against the current and stay in the same spot, which was just the therapy I needed because I’d fractured the right side of my rib cage a few days earlier while riding my pushbike, with no hands, down a hill alongside 2 magpies who decided not to land in their designated trees every time I squawked loudly and sharply clapped my hands. I’d managed to stop them from landing in 2 trees and was going for a 3rd when I accidentally landed in one myself. A branch had fallen over the road and as I untangled myself from it I heard 2 kookaburras laughing loudly... but I swear it was the 2 magpies. I won’t be tormenting magpies again... not till I’m better anyway.
Here I was at last; I sat on the riverbank and took it all in, the river was wide and flowing like molten chocolate, the sunlit leaves glowed and glistened and waved at me as the warm breeze caressed and cooled my forehead. The flies too were extremely friendly but they weren’t pushing me to have a celebratory drink and, besides, I was miles from any pubs. Before long a Superb-Blue-Wren started dancing around a tree beside me, it whistled and I responded. Its head feathers stood up like a sulphur crested cockatoo, or like hair on an angry dog, but because these critters are only as big as a large thumb it just looked cute. He whistled again and so did I. It was very confused as to where the whistle was coming from and he hopped frantically up and down a tree-trunk looking for another wren and when I whistled a third time his head went from side to side like a confused puppy. I was having a bit of a giggle to myself until I remembered the magpies and then I stopped immediately.
By this time it was even warmer and the flies were getting even friendlier and had invited their friends and family along to welcome the new, big, 2-legged, wingless fly sitting and whistling on the riverbank, so I decided to escape them for a while. I got my pushbike out of the van and went for a ride down the bumpy dirt road for a couple of hours to check out some of the tracks. On one side of the road the tracks lead to prospective campsites along the river and the tracks on the other side are mostly used by pig shooters although the road and all the tracks, as far as I know, were originally put in for timber cutting. The first track I found was very narrow with mini grand canyons to manoeuvre around along the way. I followed it for about 5-minutes and as I saw the river up ahead I also saw a tent, a 4WD and a very athletic pit-bull terrier that, I reckon, hadn’t seen fresh meat in days. It was a scary looking dog that came charging at me, scary enough to send the flies packing with me close behind. I heard a bloke scolding the dog but with the tone in his voice of “Good doggy, come to daddy and I’ll give you a good pat and some beef jerky.” We made it back to the road, me and the flies, and everything was going smoothly until I went down another track where a fisherman-person had left a lead-sinker attached to 20-feet of fishing line, which in turn attached itself to me and got tangled around my bike. Luckily the fisherman wasn’t there because it would’ve been very embarrassing being seated on my bike while he held me up by the scruff of the neck to take the photo. I was hot and sweaty but got busy with both hands untangling the line, which took about 5 minutes, which was excellent because it gave me and the flies a better opportunity to get to know each other on a whole other level. Finally I was free of the fishing line and down the road again we went. The corrugations and bumps in the road were causing quite a bit of pain to my ribs but I thought I’d be ok and that’ll teach me for thinking. After being chased by another dog, which was much less scary but much more (yap-yap) annoying, we turned around and made our way back to the camp, just me and my 40,000 new, over-friendly, flying friends.
After arriving back at camp I sat my weary ribs down on a chair in front of the sparkling river. The flies were exceptionally grateful that I’d taken them out for a long ride and thanked me by dive-bombing my face and eyeballs with wet kisses and by flying back and forth against the inner-walls of my nostrils and ear-holes. I’d had friends before who were annoying but these guys you couldn’t shake. It wouldn’t be long before the sun would begin to set so I took the opportunity of daylight to get out my guitar and play some songs by the river. The guitar was out of tune so I unpacked my electronic guitar tuner, which is highly sensitive, much more than my ears which were now like amphitheatres filled with an excited, vibrating audience eagerly buzzing in anticipation of their first song. I plucked the first string and tuned it to the key of ‘E’ when, out of the blue, home to roost came 27,000 large white sulphur crested cockatoos all screeching in ‘F –Sharp’. I know it was “F-Sharp’ because my guitar tuner said so just before the casing cracked and springs shot out of it. I’d heard cockies squawk before and I knew they were loud and raucous but so many of them had landed in the trees above me and the noise was so intense that even the flies stopped for a second and poked their heads out of my orifices to see what the racket was. Their shrieking-screams were so harsh it brought tears to my eyes and I apologised to the flies for thinking any less of them, then checked my ears for blood and unintentionally tuned every string of my guitar to ‘F-Sharp’. As the cockies fought and battled for their hierarchical positions in the trees their screeching just intensified but only to the stage that would make a deaf-mute vegetarian Christian-hippy drop to their knees, cover their ears and yell, “Christ on a bike, get me a gun, it’s dinnertime!!” It was hell on Earth but then, quite amazingly, just as I was throwing the noose over the tree branch, the cockies, having finished battling for their positions in the trees, began to quieten down and, even more surprisingly, the flies decided they’d given enough love and left me in peace. It was like a miracle from the bible. The plagues were over and there I was, alone at last, seated in front of the mighty majestic Murray River, taking in its awesome energy and watching the sun set over the magnificent radiant river-red-gum forest. It was too good to be true and then the sky turned black.
It was only a rough estimate but going by the sound of the ever increasing hum and the ever blackening sky I reckoned there would’ve been between 25 and 30 billion mosquitoes descending upon me and upon anything else that may have contained even a drop of any life-sustaining fluid; and it wasn’t even dark yet. I stood up from my chair and saluted the brave men and women of Pearl Harbour and Darwin and apologised to the cockies for thinking any less of them. Oh how I missed their ear-shattering, blood-curdling, screeching shrieks. Oh what I would now give to sit and play my guitar in ‘F-Sharp’ while my old mates, the flies, filled my holes with ever-loving bizz-buzzing. Oh just to be able to enjoy what I was now considering peacetime with my previous flying friends again and avoid the horror that was about to reign down upon me. As I stood at attention, alone for the last time, I now understood why the flies had left in such a hurry and why the cockies had fought so aggressively for the best position in the trees. They knew what was to come. They simply wanted to fly away, again to fly another day... and so did I.
The humming of the mosquito squadrons was now so loud it put the cockies to shame and, with only precious seconds left, I about-faced, withdrew my salute, cried out feebly for my mother and raced for the safety of the van. The vehicle was only a couple of metres away and I must’ve killed 5000 of those wretched bloodsuckers before I even got halfway. One metre to go and the loss of blood was taking its toll, I was weakening but somehow managed to take-out another five or ten thousand of those flying filth before making it to the vehicle. These callous creatures of the night hadn’t seen fresh meat for longer than that pit-bull whom I’m sure was now either hiding in the river and breathing through a piece of bamboo or stopped dead in its tracks halfway to the river like a deflated football. I desperately reached for the door handle but barely had enough strength to open it. It was now do or die. I was fading fast and I knew if I didn’t make it inside the van I was done, these vampires were voracious and I would be their venison. With every last fibre of my body and soul, and with every last ounce of strength, I heaved the door open but the sheer vacuum of air sucked-in a couple of hundred thousand with more flying in every second. I had no choice but to dive inside the van, close the door and take my chances. Better to try and fight off a couple of hundred thousand inside the van than stay outside with billions of them and be sucked drier than a pharaoh’s mummy. I slammed the door shut, turned on the ignition and set the fan to ‘flat-knacker’. It was going to be a rough night... but I had no idea.
The next morning I woke to find I hadn’t slept all night. I’d managed to kill a large percentage of the parasitic pirates but there were always ten or 15 taking bad violin lessons in my ear-holes while the others put-down mine-shafts around my ankles. The pain in my fractured ribs had gotten worse from my long bumpy bike ride, which in turn had caused severe muscle cramps in my upper spine. Standing upright wasn’t too bad but laying down and then trying to move was as much fun as asking your dentist to kick you in the balls during a root-canal operation, so even thinking about swatting a mosquito made me shudder, which in turn made me wince, and it was at about that time they started open-cut mining. By the time they finished with me it looked like I was wearing Red-Rocky-Road ankle bracelets and when I opened the van door next morning the mosquitoes were so bloated they floated out the door and up into the sky like party balloons. I gingerly removed myself from the van and took a look in the driver’s side mirror, I was as pale as a quadriplegic alter-boy at a Christian brother’s nudist camp and when the sun hit me I ran for the shadows. The cockies were already awake and practicing their screeching shrieks for the coming sunset and my furry, flying friends from the bike-ride the day before were back and buzzing with excited anticipation of another trip. My ribs and back-pain, which were throbbing all night, had now magically disappeared and the 8-mile line of marching ants who were dutifully soldiering in and out of my sugar container didn’t seem to worry me a bit. Some campers named, ‘The Grizwalds’, arrived and put their tent so close to me that when I farted I cooked their toast. They were going into town to have a meal before sunset and said they’d be back after dark to avoid the mozzies. “Smart idea, I look forward to your return,” I replied eerily, “try the steakhouse in Echuca, they’ve got the most tender steak around. And oh...” I said as I put-on my sunglasses from the shaded side of my van, “You’ll find they’re best eaten rare.”
THE END
THE END
The following video is also by author, Vic Plume. It is called the "Swearing Chef", and my Mum loves it. The final word. More fun and such can be found at http://www.vicplume.com/
Better and better
Enjoy
a:)
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