Archive for February, 2015

another roadside attraction

We first saw the Old Faithful geyser in January 2008, and I’d always wanted to relive that happy day. Most do-overs are anticlimactic, but this one wasn’t.

The geyser geysed.

Such geysing!

“Everybody smile! Milo, leave your brother alone.”

Then we visited the Petrified Forest and saw this majestic California oak springing from the fossilized remains of its ancestor. Plus a bunch of trees.

I wheedled our way into the hot springs but my phone was out of juice, so you’ll have to take my word for it that they were even warmer and more jewel-like and delightful than I remembered.

Nearly forgot the best part. The sun set and Venus and Mars shone by a Cheshire moon. Salome and I discussed the physics of such a moon until it set, orange, behind Coit Tower.  I said: “City’s always beautiful, but that was… Unf.” Salome said: “I arranged it all specially for your birthday.”


photo by Jules Ellingson

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Here’s what I wrote when I turned 35:

I called Mum and said “Congratulations! I’m AWESOME!”

Only one tiny thing is needed to complete my happiness: a Swedish Warmblood mare, six years old, 16.2hh, bright bay with a white blaze and four white stockings, a trot that levitates, a huge jump and a kind and willing disposition.

Here’s me at lunchtime today:

He’s far from six and he’s no mare. And I sure do miss my mother, not to mention my Dad. But despite everything, it’s been a pretty okay birthday so far.

men we reaped, by jesmyn ward

I think my love for books sprang from my need to escape the world I was born into, to slide into another where words were straightforward and honest, where there was clearly delineated good and evil, where I found girls who were strong and smart and creative and foolish enough to fight dragons, to run away from home to live in museums, to become child spies, to make new friends and build secret gardens. Perhaps it was easier for me to navigate that world than my home

Perhaps it was easier for me to sink into those worlds than to navigate a world that would not explain anything to me, where I could not delineate good and bad

How the privilege of my education, my eventual ascent into another class, was born in the inexorable push of my mother’s hands. How unfair it all seemed.

After I left New York, I found the adage about time healing all wounds to be false: grief doesn’t fade. Grief scabs over like my scars and pulls into new, painful configurations as it knits. It hurts in new ways. We are never free from grief.

this house of grief, by helen garner

The water in the glass he sipped from trembled; but still he gave off that little buzz of glamour peculiar to the Australian tradie

Crop-haired and wiry in her dark blue uniform, a huge diver’s watch on her wrist, Senior Constable Rebecca Caskey of the Search and Rescue Squad stood in the witness stand with her hands clasped loosely behind her. Something in her easy posture reminded me of nurses I had seen at work: women of few words, unflappable, alert and calm.

His responses were so inadequate to the gravity of the situation that it hurt to look at him.

Oh, how bleak and windswept it seems to women, the landscape of what some men call friendship.

station eleven, by emily mandel

“It must’ve been so beautiful” is the inevitable reply. “It was,” he tells them, “it is,” and then finds a way to change the subject because it’s difficult to explain this next part. Yes, it was beautiful. It was the most beautiful place I have ever seen. It was gorgeous and claustrophobic. I loved it and I always wanted to escape.

In art school they talked about day jobs in tones of horror. She never would have imagined that her day job would be the calmest and least cluttered part of her life.

Perhaps soon humanity would simply flicker out, but Kirsten found this thought more peaceful than sad. So many species had appeared and later vanished from this earth; what was one more?

like the corporate world’s full of ghosts. And actually, let me revise that, my parents are in academia so I’ve had front-row seats for that horror show, I know academia’s no different, so maybe a fairer way of putting this would be to say that adulthood’s full of ghosts.”

“I just mean, my life must’ve seemed unfathomable to him.” “Your life’s probably unfathomable to most people.

falling into the fire, by christine montross

“Sometimes holding all the blackness they feel is the only thing you can do. That’s not nothing. And sometimes it is enough.”

I question my intuition rigorously and routinely, but I rely upon it nonetheless.

Don’t just do something, stand there.

If I am to abide with these patients, then I must accompany them to that place among the rocks, to the sweating wall. I must face with them the uncertainty of what lies beyond. I must stand at the edge with them and peer over into the fathomless depths. If I tell my patients, as I do, that this life can be a tolerable one, that they can face their fears and their traumas, their visions and voices, their misery, then I must look at what I am asking them to endure and I must look at it full in the face.

How do we do it? How do we bear the unbearable realities of our human lives? Someday I will die and leave Deborah, and our son, and our daughter. Or someday each of them will die and leave me. How do we reckon with this inconceivable a loss?

my brother robin, by barbara williams

From left: Brenda, Robin, Barbara, Colin

My Brother Robin

Our Robin was born in Mosman, Sydney on September 5th 1935, the youngest of three children of Army Captain Kenneth Chalmers and his wife Brenda (nee King). His siblings were, sister Barbara, born 1930 and brother, Colin born 1933. In the summer of his second year he contracted a serious gastric infection which lasted for many weeks and effectively retarded his physical development at a crucial time in his young life.

The consequence of that was that he was always smaller than his peers which earned him, at high school, the nickname “Massive Muscles the Mighty Midget Mosquito” or “Massive” for short.

IN 1939 the family moved to Port Moresby in what is now Papua New Guinea where our father was detailed to provide fortification for the strategically important harbour in the event of war. The contingent was made up of 22 army personnel, two howitzer anti-aircraft guns, two searchlights, one army wife and three children. Port Moresby boasted a population of about 700 “whites” and a similar number of native Papuans, two schools for white children, one state and one catholic, each with 22 pupils, and one for natives. The rivalry between the two white schools was intense and we children were divided between the two. Stone fights in the main street of town were not uncommon. We had to call a truce when we got home. Robin, being the youngest was often caught in the middle or left standing looking bewildered. Nevertheless we children had many happy and sometimes disastrous adventures together and with our friends.

World War II intervened and our tropical idyll ended with a move to Melbourne and to the Blue Mountains when Dad was posted to the Middle East in 1941. This was a period of adventure and, looking back, amazing freedom, for we three as we explored the bushland and invented games centred around the wilderness at our back door in Hazelbrook. There were few children in our village so we became a tight-knit trio for the next couple of years.

Our Mother’s untimely death in the latter half of 1942 brought an abrupt end to all this and we found ourselves back in Sydney in the care of Mum’s two Aunts who selflessly stepped in. These two women were then in their sixties and the elder one had raised our Mother from the age of five. It is hard to imagine their courage in taking on three unruly pre-teenagers. Robin was only seven. In recent years he told me that he really could not remember our Mother – a sad blank in his life and the possible reason that he did not relate to the kind and oh so tolerant lady, Rosa Heath, that our father married when we were teen-agers.

The disruption caused by the war and the demands of army life was probably felt more by Robin than Colin and I. By the time he finished high school he had attended 11 schools in two States, city and country public and private, and sat for University entry exams in the UK. One story of high school life he would tell related to compulsory School Cadets at that time. Not being sports minded or attracted to the army, he wangled his way into the ordnance section where he could sit with his feet up and avoids any physical activity. And his father a Brigadier!

Others will have to tell you about his years in England. What I do know is that he graduated in engineering at what was to become the University of Sussex and eventually part of the University of London – much to Robin’s dismay. His first job in engineering was with Sperry Rand. I also know that he became an expert curry maker and married Jean Ellison, returning to Australia in 1968 with Sarah and Iain at their feet. Alain and Rachel followed in due course.

As an engineer working in Australia he worked initially for AWA, a pioneer electronics company in this country, moving to other jobs throughout his working life. He was involved in many exciting projects. Software for the original Collins Class submarines; software for the automated on course betting at racecourses; the acoustic system for the new Sydney Opera House are some that come to mind.

As he and Jean settled in Sydney and we live in Brisbane we have not spent much time together over the years but I do know that whenever we were able to get together it was such fun to be part of their lovely family.

Robin was a man dedicated to serving the community in which he lived. He was prominent in the school Parents and Citizens organization during his family’s school years, spent a number of years as a volunteer guide at Taronga Zoo and compiling a data base of the animals there. In retirement he and Jean travelled in their motorhome for ten years during which time he helped a traveller friend compile and publish a guide book of information about the many, many towns and villages he visited in their travels.

Settling in Barraba saw him still looking for ways and means that he could contribute to the community and the town that he loved so much until his sad decline into dementia.

He was a self confessed sceptic, read widely, thrived on animated discussion always taking the lead role, read widely, loved to perform and entertain and enjoyed life to the full.

For me, he was my little brother and I loved him. May he rest in peace.

for the barraba gazette

Robin Paul Chalmers
1935 – 2015

Robin was much-loved husband to Jean, father of Sarah, Iain, Alain and Rachel, father-in-law to Ian, Jeremy and Rachel, and grandfather of Kelly, Ross, Claire and Julia. A brilliant engineer and a man of integrity and kindness, he bore his difficult last illness with dignity.

The family wishes to thank Doctor Piet, the staff of Barraba Hospital and the staff of McKay House in Tamworth for their care for Dad; and our friends in Barraba, who have supported us with such generosity of spirit.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations to the Centre for Research on Ageing, Health and Welfare’s Dementia Research Endowment or to the Battersea Dogs’ Home.

buffalo bill’s, by e e cummings

Buffalo Bill’s

defunct

who used to

ride a watersmooth-silver

stallion

and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat

Jesus

he was a handsome man

and what i want to know is

how do you like your blueeyed boy

Mister Death

robin paul chalmers, 1935-2015

Travel hopefully.