**I wrote this intending it to be posted this Friday just gone. I’m a bit late. Apologies. But seriously - right now the fact that I’m producing anything at all I feel is a small miracle. Just sit happy. You’ll get your $5 worth ;)
These are the days I regret my expatriotism. Hopefully, you’ve found somewhere inhabitable to hide, somewhere dark and cool, maybe in an underground bunker. For the Canadians here, while you enjoy the blissful reprieve of a meter of snow and frigid winter temperatures, down under we’re living in a fan-forced oven.
At least here, close to the coast we’ll get a cracking storm and some reprieve tonight, for those further inland, well, you’re used to this, aren’t you? But wherever you are, if you’re lucky enough to have access to one, a house is a small miracle today.
While traversing the southern coast of Victoria, the wind threatened to blow us off the continent. Every day we would wake to the wind tearing itself along the landscape and straight through our campsite. It paid little heed to the layers of pithy clothing we had packed or the op-shop ones we had bought to wear on top of those, or the extra blankets we had procured from a Kmart along the way. I remember one particularly blustery night on Wilson’s Promontory when the winds were howling at 60km/h, hard enough to lift the back of the hard floor camper off the ground. I was packing up for the night, fantasising about the prospect of four solid walls. Imagine that, I thought, just a structure with four impermeable surfaces that would keep out the worst of it. I was grateful to crawl under the layers of blankets sheltered beneath the canvas, but I knew morning would be here soon enough and we’d have no choice but to be back into the Antarctic gusts that were trying to spur us North and home.
A few weeks later I cried a little when I opened the door of our house. I took one look at our clean, solid, enclosed living room and choked up. It felt ludicrously generous. As much as I didn’t feel ready to come home, there they were - four walls - the very stuff of dreams.
“And tell me…what have you in these houses? And what is it you guard with fastened doors?
Have you peace, the quiet urge that reveals your power?
Have you rememberances, the glimmering arches that span the summits of the mind?
Have you beauty, that leads the heart from things fashioned of wood and stone to the holy mountain?
Tell me, have you these in your houses?
Or have you only comfort, and the lust for comfort, that stealthy thing that enters the house a guest, and then becomes a host, and then a master?
Kahlil Gibran wrote his profound collection of prose poetry, The Prophet, in 1923, but it hasn’t lost any of its edge. If anything, my experience has only sharpened the blade of poems like, ‘On Houses.’ Comfort has an irresistible allure and I’m easily seduced. Warm showers. Dry clothes. Clean sheets. Roofs and walls. Refrigerators with shelves so you don’t have to empty the whole damn thing every time you want the BBQ sauce. I like these things - a lot. Give me someone who doesn’t. Being comfortable is a wonderful thing. But it interests me greatly when it becomes the only thing.
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