Making time and lasagne
I have lost my recipe for making timebut it must be similar to making lasagne._______The meat sauce of opportunity,_______the pasta strips of memory_______and the cheese roux of anticipation.In fact I'm making some moments right now,and I'm hoping they don't over-cook.The trick is to layer the ingredients gently.Don't worry if you lose precious minutespicking mozzarella up off the floor.You have to be willing to lose some time to make some time.You don't need to pour the seconds like salt through your fingers;perhaps throw some over your shoulder.And when the oven timer ringssavour every moment you've made.
Tony Brennan
Walk
The way you walk is your walk.From a great distance I can identify my brother from the shape of his walka mile awayYour walk is your spirit saddling your body like a horse and taking it for a rideit's your DNA in motion.When you meet someone for the first time and they walk towards you,you witness their vulnerability though the nakedness of spaceyou see their whole body unconsciously attempt to own the earth in the face of impossibility.It's why when you see someone with a swagger, or a rehearsed dance move, it gives you a sense of sorrow.These are moves for an earth unowned, a life unlived.It's also why a walking conversation with a good friend is one of the loveliest things possible.And you are never alone. If you want to summon the familiarity of your spirit, all you have to do iswalk the earth.Even if it's down to the milkbar.
Darby Hudson
Walking alone
There are too many days now when there are no listeners,When even the attendant interlocutor, in his faithfulness, is gone,Listening, we must presume, if we are allowed to presume,To his own silences, filling them with new maps.His directory is a volume of veins, vessels and capillaries,Arterial direction to each destination as an orbPolished to the point of reflection, it takes time, it comes.Patience can be tiresome, but hurrying only meansWe miss out on so much, the alleys and the arcades,The lanes and cobbled endpieces, all part of the plan.
It isn't unusual to think that no one will botherTo know or need to know that others have been before,All owning a selection of special solitudes, ways of coping,Distinct in their art, and artful in their aloneness.
Peter Gebhardt
Tony Brennan is a teacher who lives in Claremont, Tasmania. He is songwriter and lead-singer for The Ray Martians, playing quirky acoustic contemporary rock-jazz-punk-folk fusion.
Darby