Small Stones and Boomerangs

He writes pieces of memory. He writes ideas. He makes things up. ‘That’s fiction!’ I protest. He says it doesn’t matter.

It doesn’t matter, for the writing. He writes beautifully always. I love his writing. But these things he writes are not ‘small stones’; they don’t come from paying attention to the world around him here and now, from being in the present moment. He is trying to write small stones for this month of July — it was his idea — and for the most part he can’t, no matter how I explain or what I suggest. I begin to think he is unable to pay attention.

His youngest, last visit, yelled at him: ‘Get out of your head! Listen to someone else for a change! I was trying to tell you something important and you didn’t even hear me. You’ve gone straight back to talking about you. I hate the way you do that! I had it all through my childhood, and you still haven’t changed.’

I’ve had it all through my marriage to him. I’ve said much the same to him, often, though with exasperation rather than rage. He is hurt and puzzled by such remarks. He doesn’t know what I’m talking about, just as he couldn’t understand why his son yelled at him that time.

It’s the same when I tell him that a small stone is a moment of paying attention, that it’s about looking (or listening) outside yourself, of finding something to wonder at in the physical world. He just can’t seem to grasp it. I am horrified, thinking that, at 82 years old already, he might go through his whole life without ever experiencing that wonder, without ever letting the wonderful world pour in.

This can’t be true. He watches wildlife programs on television with rapt delight. Every time we go out our door and it’s a clear day, he wants to go back and grab the camera to photograph Mt Warning from the end of our street, even though he knows by now we can’t get a good shot from here because the light is always wrong. He has taken many photos of the mountain from other vantage points. This is not a man impervious to the natural world.

And yet, when I say, ‘Look around. Find something, anything, and just describe it,’ he says he can’t think of anything.

‘It’s not a matter of thinking,’ I say, ‘It’s about seeing. What about those boomerangs on the TV?’ (We are watching an episode of Collectors. A man who collects boomerangs is talking about them and showing them off. Wonderful shapes and colours.)

Inspired, he writes in his notebook, then reads it to me. It’s a memory of watching the boomerang throwers at the Show when he was a little boy. It’s lovely, but he hasn’t even mentioned what he is seeing or hearing on the TV.

‘I love it,’ I say. ‘But it’s something for your memoir. It’s a memory. You need something in the here and now to inspire you.’ I look around the room and see a photo of him and me with our god-daughter Flo, when she was just a new baby. We bend our heads over her, cradling her lovingly. That’ll do it, I think. He adores Flo. ‘Write about this photo.’

He writes. He reads it out. ‘In the photo,’ he begins, ‘I am surrounded by little Aboriginal children. They are holding boomerangs....’