... because we humans can only work
for a future we can imagine.
Welcome
to Janet's home page: Painting the future
real 1996/97
IVY VINE
(Written
for the LEAP (Land, Environment Action Program) course being facilitated
at Footscray by the Western Young People's Independent Network with funding
through the Commonwealth Employment Service, 1996.)
The day was hot, we sat on
an oval of green delight - weeds that were headed with small fragile blooms.
Our fingers and nails were stained with green, the delicate skin sore
and tender from juice and the stems' fibres. We took delight in this simple
task, a task we routinely carried out on most fine afternoons, choosing
carefully the spot to start plucking the poor soulsŐ heads. Chains, always
chains and chains of dandelions. It was the year that was to change my
life, seemingly of no significance - having not caused any great changes
overnight nor in later years. It was on reflection my time of self-discovery.
We were bullied by a boy who from my height, seemed impossibly tall. Perhaps
he was or maybe it was his mean attitude. Thin, gangling with carroty
hair, his face screwed up in a most unpleasant way. He teased and pushed
us with casual cruelness, demanding what I donŐt remember. Our lunch money?
I became stubborn, did not budge, I pushed like a breeze on a giant oak.
He jeered and with little effort knocked me onto my backside. Capricorns
have been known to be stubborn and taking the long way. Charging like
a bull, with little strength but with great determination, hot, bothered
and chokng with indignity, I was relentless.
Eventually he became scared he would be seriously hurt. By his expression
you could tell he never expected such a reaction from one so small. He
must at least have been in grade six, we were only in second or third
grade. My shouting about How God Would Punish Him causing students to
gather around; such as was like bee to honey. By then a teacher had come.
I never heard or saw him again except for those occasions he tried making
up for it. I never gave him the chance. He brought about changes in myself
and perhaps I too affected him a little. The funny thing is that at another
time, who knows what could have happened, instead he caught me in a religious
phase. My lecture would have done an old soured-face of a preacher proud.
Such vigour it was blasting away about hale and hell. Screeching like
the sound of nails being dragged along the black boardŐs surface, grating
awfully on his ear drums. It was my first and last experience of this
classic nature, one I hope not to ever be repeated.
(Janet has done a drawing to accompany this piece of creative writing
and we'll scan it and add it to this page as soon as we can. MF)
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[Page history: created and first published on www.ecoversity.org.au as part of Painting the future real (1995-97), the prototype for Redreaming the plain (1998-2002); taken off-line in 1998 and re-posted in its original form in July 2004 as a web archive. For more information contact redreaming@rmit.edu.au.]