bilateral kellerberrin

It’s late in the day when I’m writing, and I feel I have lost touch, a bit, with all that happened yesterday. It seems strange to say it, but so many things take place in the course of an ordinary day in a country town.

Sure, the key event of yesterday was the friendly frenzy of the Pipeline Newsletter assembly. The ladies on the committee were very happy to have us on board. I had been meaning to contact “Michelle or Eva” ever since I got here, but somehow never got around to it. Yesterday was the deadline, so it was now or never. I arrived, unannounced after ten. The pages had pretty much already all been laid out, but a opportunity came up to insert an extra page, and I jumped on it. I decided to include some selected excerpts from this blog so far, together with the website address. I wonder how many “hits” I’ll get as a result…

I have, in the last weeks, been thinking a bit about how to let townsfolk know about this blog… and how else I might distribute the writing. I had mused about handing out the Keller Dailies physically, and only to people I happened to bump into. In this way, the distribution points would also be new meeting points, which would in turn generate more writing. A sort of feedback loop. But now (lazy me) it seems like too much work to physically print out the day’s writing, every day, and hand it around. As if it’s not already a lot of material to process. But is the blog really is the ideal place to locate all this stuff? How many people have web access? Should I produce an April book (printed on paper) and then, later, a May book? I have been thinking, at the very least, to make a small card with this URL on it, to hand out to folks who ask me what I have been doing here with my time…

The Pipeline Production Line was really fun. There were about half a dozen women there, and the presence of me (a man!) made it a bit of an “event”. One lady said, “if we’d known there was going to be A MAN helping out, we’d have worn sexier outfits!” I thought that strategy might have the knock-on effect of attracting more volunteers, at the very least.

The sounds that the room produced while we were compiling the pages were marvellous, and I used Cristina’s video camera to record them – the constant schlup schlup of multiple pairs of thimble-fingered hands scooping up pages into piles, and the occasional chunk chunk of the electric stapler binding the completed piles together. Long periods of only these industrious sounds, punctuated by shorter segments of laughing and gossiping. The production line moved very fast, and I agreed with Cristina that it was hard to maintain a conversation and keep up with the pace at the same time. The whole job (binding 350-odd copies of the 58 page journal) seemed to be over in no time. Almost too quickly. Then it was off down the street to do the distro – I took the Tearooms box as it was near where I’m staying in the ex-craft barn.

When it was getting on to sunset Cristina popped around and we decided to get some exercise and walk somewhere, though she had her bike with her. We only got as far as next door when we bumped into Dawn, who recommended first thing in the morning as the best time for walking, not late in the arvo. But I can never get up that early, I said. Dawn had her two beautiful dogs with her: one a whippet, the other a boxer. Two more dissimilar dogs it’d be hard to find – the whippet flighty and emaciated, the boxer bulky and boofy. Out the back of Dawn and Pip’s converted bank building we also met Bruce the pink and grey galah. Bruce had come to visit Cristina last week, and had spent an hour demanding she scratch his neck. Dawn said that when Bruce occasionally escapes, he always toddles over to the back of IASKA (he can’t fly as his wings are clipped). They really like their animals, and we spent quite a while getting to know the galah and dogs, as well as two bright squawking parrots in a big aviary outside the back door.

Pip asked if my friend had gone back to Perth yet (he meant Chris). He asked if Chris was an artist too, and I explained that Chris is a scientist doing research on amphetamine addiction and withdrawal. Dawn said that it was only a particular kind of person who could do that kind of work. They once had a girl who was coming off heroin stay in the back room for a few days, and she had found it very difficult to confront. The first few days of withdrawal are full of intense sickness and torment, but it’s what to fill time with afterwards that was the hardest thing: finding something to put into that empty space formerly occupied by the drug. In her day job Dawn works at a place for people with intellectual disabilities, and Pip helps out one of the men each day too (voluntarily I think), with bathing and shaving etc. Dawn had to rush off to a shire meeting to discuss a prize her organisation had received from the government, and what they were going to do with the money.

As we were leaving, Pip brought out his old mountain bike to lend me and Cristina, so we could at least ride together, until Neville at the tyre place gets in my replacement tubes. We rode due north, quite far on the flat road. The land is so flat, you can pedal and pedal and it feels effortless, and that you have covered no distance at all. We stopped just after sunset to listen to a field filled with the three distinct tones of lambs, sheep, and frogs.

Much much later, around midnight, Anne arrived with her old van, and a vanload of good food. We stayed up much too late yapping about what could be done for my Cunderdin Highschool workshop (tomorrow) and munching on panforte. It’s no wonder (as Dawn helpfully pointed out) I can never get up to walk before noon…