Aussie Rules and...cracking the shits?

Before I begin, "cracking the shits" is an Aussie term that means getting angry, mad, irate. For example, "I cracked the shits last night after I hung up the phone on the insensitive moron!"
...

Hello! From the depths of a sleepy Sunday morning. Where I have an entire day off and am going to spend it greedily, by myself, wandering the grounds taking pictures, writing poems, and generally soaking up the cool and cloudless sky. And, to be honest, after a night like last night, I deserve it.

I took the guys into Adelaide—capital of South Australia and 2.5 hours away—for they wanted to go to an Australian Football Game, a league otherwise known as "Aussie Rules." Its rough and tumble folks, and these guys are HUGE. We left around noonish and headed south where, 200 km and 3 hours later, we were lost off our asses. So we hit Hungry Jacks (eerily similar to Burger King) where all the guys were more than happy (hungry?) to woof down greasy food while I sat in the van and contemplated our next move.

When most things begin to fail, in Australia, you have three options: fight, get drunk, or head to the beach. Knowing full well that the drinking (and hopefully NOT fighting) would come later, we hit the beach. The ocean down here is ENORMOUS, the South Ocean, the one that laps up against Australia and also Antarctica. Although we were only able to stare into the cold eye of the Gulf of St. Vincent, I could imagine the monstrous water just over the horizon, moving toward the bottom of the world, cold, deep...and full of great whites.

Jaws was filmed down in parts of South Australia. There are few shark attacks (I'm not sure of statistics, but perhaps one or two every few years) but if you were to get a good chomp done on ya, it might be in these waters. Jaws, by the way, thoroughly messed me up for life. Anyone out there ever go swimming with me in a lake (yes, freshwater) only to find me terrified out in the deep water, swearing profusely that “something” was nibbling at my toes!?? Though I could also blame my ridiculous fear of water on the movie, “Piranha”, where these biting frenzied and nasty fish make their way into the river where they happily begin to decimate the young and unsuspecting campers, right along with their rubber tubes! Whew. Memories…

We found the stadium, finally, but I decided not to go. I was really seeking that one thing that normally keeps me sane (or keeps me mad?) and that’s some solo time. Instead, I hit a quaint coffee shop right across from the stadium where I watched fireworks light up the sky (these people really like their “footy”), and already-rowdy Aussie boys and girls rolled their way across the parking lot. Later, as the game was echoing with cheers of madness, I made my way back to our 12-seat van (did I forget to tell anyone I been driving round this whole state? Barely avoiding injury by swerving to the “right” side of the road when I see an oncoming car, and don’t even get me started on avoiding roos at night…). Back at the van I was keen to read for the hour until I met up with the group. During this time I saw a man, along with his two children, walking up and down every aisle of cars, trying the doors, and breaking into a few.

Horrified that he might see me (and react and get pissed because I was a witness) I hid on the bottom of the van floor! Moments later the door handle shook, stopped, shook some more. I felt eyes peering into the large white van—with the words BUDGET RENTAL stenciled on the side (hm…would that be a good target I wonder?)—and so I thrust my face and arms under a sleeping bag. Sketch? After the man and his kids passed me over I leapt out of the van and alerted a policeman, on a horse. He galloped away and that was that. I suppose these sorts of things happen at every large gathering--people take advantage of people. Not the American or Aussie way, the worldly way?

Nonetheless, I survived and at 10:30pm I met up with my group (quite miraculously, actually, that 9 drunk and stumblers could coordinate anything). To make it very short, they were wasted. Not all, but most. Everyone wanted to hug me, tell me stories, tell jokes. I got them in the van in a manic rush, knowing the longer we waited, the more likely it was that I would be too tired to make the 2.5 hour journey north. I put the most sober of the lot in the front with me, then took off. Very pleasant ride, with techno beats thumping, kids laughing and yelling drunken obscenities at one another, until we made our way into the country side. There, the roos came out in full force and slowed the van to a mere 60km/hour (in a 110 km zone). There was no way I wanted to hit one--talk about a long suffering nightmare, not to mention guilt, for the rest of my life! Then, around a series of serious curves, one of the students in the back, yakked. Not a small, dry yak either. Wet slurping sounds slushed through hands, hit the floor and began to slide around on the rubber matting. My scarf was "down there", and my jacket. Eww.... And who could ever forget the smell of bile after a long night!

After a 20 minute pull off, some narrowly missed roos, and much heart pounding on my part, we made it back in one piece, I ate handfuls of chocolate, and passed out.

Now it is morning and I sit with many of the students in our common kitchen area, listening to them tell me all of the stories they told me last night and the puker, Mike, even asks,” I wonder who won the game?” If anyone hasn’t had enough of these drunken stories and stupors, why not sign up to be a project leader with ISV?!

Now, a poem. Hope you enjoy your days. Each one is a gift. It's interesting when we are depressed or just in a relative funk when we think, “Someday it will get better”, or we dream of some distant moment or occurrence when everything will "fall into place." We have all heard this before but its true: Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift, because it is the present. Right now, this moment. This present. What will you do with it?


If you walk just far enough off the track,
through the mallee scrub, the sugarwood,
through all of the
severe branches, over the driest
of earths, crunching stone and scat
under foot, you will find
the bones
resting
under the smoldering eye of the sun.
Not small bones,
not fresh.

I sit close enough to see the whites
adorning the ground like jewelry, and wonder
how and why and
when the bones first fell.

Instinct tells me not to go
where the big predators go,
but here, in the southern desert heat, it is the cat, the
fox, the wedge-tail eagle, the man
that draws the most blood.

When so many years have passed and we are gone, not
only from this land but from this life,
and the feathers fall like cotton, blown
in the wind, and
the flesh of everything roots in the belly of
another,
only the bones will remain of some wiser and
more simple
existence.

In my own skin, the bones ache.
For the earth—for a
resting place, for the bleached skin of the
sun to strip away everything
expose me
from the inside out.

All of these bones that are mine.

I wonder where they will end up,
here,
on, or in American soil,
burned in a forest fire in 2052,
ground to a fine powder or thrown,
with a heavy bag of weighted words,
from the peak
of a chaotic mountain
top

laura