forgetting to remember

Joe and I hammered the 60km into town on Saturday night, heading for a very special birthday party.  We'd never met Bec, but she'd been recommended to us by our friend Helen and we were so honoured to have been invited. 

This talk of friends is not casual.  As creatives, out here, away from the city tribes of like minds, fellow freaks are rare as hen's teeth.  There are people we know and see from time to time, but very few whose eyes don't start to glaze over at the first mention of "projects", "writing" and painting anything other than trees and water.  I drive the Murray Valley Highway to town a couple of times a week, if I'm feeling brave. There are always a thousand errands to run, and friends are squeezed in.  My Albury friend Nick once criticised me for always having one foot out the door. And he told me off for drinking in a frenzy when I took him to Prudence (last house I ever shared, now a very fine bar) in West Melbourne.

I read once that our seafaring ancestors, and the landlocked sailors who shore, waltzed and jobbed their way around this continent, have a bit to do with the way we still drink.  For three quarters of the year you get work, isolation, lack of water. Then, when the sheds cut out and you're cashed up, you roll into town, blow the dough as fast as possible, and then drag yourself back out to necessary deprivations. And family. Personally, I feel I spent most of my youth coming down on Greyhounds.

So. Last Saturday I partied like a sailor and Joe did too, fuelled, most of all, by the joy of association with like minds. Singing, dancing, dressing up, flirting, feasting, cocktails, yarns, kids, balloons, fire. Ahh.

But before the party I actually stopped, and pulled over to photograph the landscape that I only ever seem to watch out of the corner of my eyes as we barrel by.  At the time I was frustrated by the lack of zoom (too rough on cameras to risk anything that sticks its neck out too far) and by the time I got the camera sorted the sun had all but set.

Sometimes I forget to remember that I live in this wonderful place.

Looking at the shot now, I see that the annoying red blur below the half sunk sun looks, ever so slightly, like a flame crowned heart. 

PS A short story has emerged in time for The Write Around The Murray literary festival competition. Thanks to Felicity of The Witches Garden for scaring me into doing it!  A little tweak today, and it will be posted.

PPS Wish me happy birthday!

XX Char.