George Johnston | Author

Fiction Stories Verse

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Story tellers

by

We are all storytellers, gathered around the fire

fired up by limited memory, unlimited by possibility

What lies beyond the fire glow?

Made up, made of, limited memory, unlimited possibility.

We are made to sit around the fire in each other’s hearts

Emotional echoes resonate long after memory fragments

lose any connection to lived reality.

What is made up is made of limited memory unlimited possibility.

But around the fire, around the safe place

of a limited community, unlimited possibility

connects and reconnects memory fragments

with the check and balance of other storytellers

other sets of ears hear the bits that bring them life.

Only in a community of real people in a physical space

can there be the place, the safe space

to develop as storytellers, as people, as all gather around

fired up with the imagination and the courage to take

raw fragments of memory

and live as the author of our own stories.

This is not a solitary journey

for the story not told goes nowhere and does nothing

which would be a shame because it is amazing

just how much, just one story

can bring life in so many different ways

Gather up your stories and do tell

Fishfull Thinking

by


Beneath the hat
his face is red
his nose painted white
his singlet curved
ripped and torn
grey in early light

Perched on rock
patrolled by crabs
waves besiege his ledge
his territory marked
by esky, bait and a flagless pole
 hung over the edge

He held the pole
with meaty paws and tree trunk arms
his face a total blank
a dull expression often seen
on people queuing in a bank

So why do this?
What is his quest?
Here now I’ll take time
to guess.

He may search for rest by sea
to dream by waves alone
he may meditate in peace
away from mobile phone
viewing another world
from the safety of the rock

Of course his purpose may be different
he may have another wish
he may long to make
just one story true
by catching a single fish

The things that broke you

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Recollect the things that broke you
shaped you, made you into who you are today
Burrow deep inside to meet and mourn
who you were, who you could have been
to live with who you are in the light of today
and be sad and happy and washed by tears
that flow from pain and sadness and relief and
all the temporary things that come and go with
everyday life, with every life… and there is the thing
that phrase ‘every life’, everyday every life
has some recollection of the things that
broke, shaped and made what is here today
burrow deep inside to meet the things that broke you
and meet every life as being just like you
even if you can’t burrow inside to meet
and fully connect who they were
who they could have been
and who they are today
Respect the other, the mother , the father
the brother, the sister and as you have
done first for yourself do for them also
Walking on the same beach
with the ocean that ebbs and flows
dredging up from the deep
the lost things that wait for recollection
and all you do is walk together

Making connections

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I am sitting in my seat with my head turned to the left. It rests on the window as I look down. We are at thirty five thousand feet above the ground which is a map transformed into reality. Turbulence makes the plane shake laterally and I can easily imagine pockets of warm and cold air mixing like the different layers I felt while snorkelling on Magnetic Island. These are the layers of reality that are not seen but are certainly felt.

Beneath me the coastal rivers are mud veins that spread sediment across the flat brown landscape. The heart of the country is huge and beats slowly to its own rhythm. A light brown line stretches from horizon to horizon. It is just one of the long roads that cross this country. I wonder what it is like to drive across that desolate place. Maybe there is someone down there driving their car across that vast distance. A rooster tail of dust feathers out behind them which does not trouble the cattle dog that sits in the back. The driver holds the wheel with one hand in the casual twelve o’clock position. He is listening to the rural report on the ABC. If he glanced up he would see me though I am just visible as a contrail. He would see just a light white line that stretches from horizon to horizon.

Now I know this could be seen as daydreaming or idle speculation but somewhere out there is a driver crossing this vast land. As a writer our job can be making the connections that people do not always see. We uncover the layers of reality that are not always seen but are certainly felt. It is not something that we can tell you but we can show you.  All sorts of turbulence can shake you day and the day you map out is always transformed by reality. Our hope as writers is that we can show you something you might not have noticed.

Expectation

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What did you expect to find here?
On this winding road that took you
to the top where the air is cooler
the trees are greener and a carpet
of leaves colour the wet mud floor
Expectation is what you decided
would be there before it discovered you
and moved the goal posts…no
it changed the goal posts
for there is no goal…no score to measure
Trees compete for a space of sky
Bell birds compete to fill the air
with the sound of so many voices
Blended into orchestral harmony
and you are in harmony
with the quest that finds you
When you follow the winding road
without the weight of expectation.

Content

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Content waits for me
for my compulsive
finger touch to flick
and scroll on and on
and on and on with
plans and predictions,
someone’s predilections
there is forever more
calling for me on my feed
but what I have
outside the door
before the light has lit
this hungry world
and its appetite for
more and more
is to be content
in what I have
in who I am
in where I stand
content in cool
predawn air
with no plan
for that was done
yesterday and
waits on the bench
with the rest of
yesterday now shed
like a snake skin
like rumpled covers
on the bed
I sleep, I dream and
I am fed
before a morsel
has touched my lips
it dawns on me
I dawn on it
at break of day
old habits broken
and all without a word
read or spoken
I am content.

Southern Cross

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Some people see a cross but I see a kite tethered to the ground by two stars that belong to a different constellation. From the end of light to a bright new day, it moves up and down. It can dip low on the horizon but it always rises up again just like a kite flown over the earth.

But its journey is our journey as it is actually our world turning that makes it appear to move across the night sky. We make patterns out of the stars based on two things; our position as an observer and our constructed reality or story that we attach to what we see. We live in an objective universe but we perceive that universe through our own stories. We live in a ‘Storyverse’. The best way to move into that Storyverse is to look at it from the outside and the inside. My book ‘Into the Storyverse’ tells a story about someone’s struggle, through traditional narrative and verse.

We see a story from the outside and the inside. We see outside to the stars and inside to the observer. I have no intention to change what anyone sees. The Southern Cross will always be the Southern Cross for it exists in the stories that have accumulated over the years until it seems that they are just objective reality, fixed in the sky. But most of the stars in the sky are great distances from each other and the pattern we see is totally dependent on our position in the Storyverse. ‘Into the Storyverse’ will be published later this year. Till then take some time to avoid over exposure to dreadful pandemic stories and be still under the cool night sky.

There are other stories out there waiting to be seen and heard. Watch this space.

The Black Hole

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What follows is a dialogue of sorts between two people.

Billie:
I stumbled into a black hole, a time and place when I had surgery after surgery. I could not see beyond the black hole. The hole got bigger and I grew into it. The hole had opened in that place between the past and the future where life should flourish. It was defined by pain. The present was no gift at that time. No simple reassuring phrases would cut it. Time revolved around resolving the pain, ending the suffering.

But my words stated intentions and I intended to stay positive. Easier said than done I suppose. What do you do when you are lying in a hospital bed? Not much. I had visitors of course. Some talked about my condition, some talked about the outside world, and then there was George. I will let him take it from here.

George:
I could see someone in a black hole. What do you take into the black hole? It was not my experience. I could not minimize it; I could not make it better. But I could bring some humor into the dark place. Now humor does not have to be superficial. Humor is a serious business. It is a way of being in the moment differently. The profound and the absurd live together in the same moment.

Billie:
It did end. I did find my feet. I will spare you the details regarding spinal surgeries. But things did get better though sometimes better is just the different I had to grow into. But grow I did, and I am still growing and changing. When I was in the black hole the struggle was to get out. Now that I am out it is up to me to find out where I fit. I have retired early and I am happy with my life in the quiet regional town of Alpha. Some people say that I am too young to retire.  It’s funny how people can say that you are too young for something because they can also say you’re too old for something. I think I will decide what’s right for me.

George:
I remember writing a short comical piece for Billie. It was based on something she had told me; so I wrote about it. It is not great writing but it did encourage Billie.

Billie told a story
Of a field with patties
Round and brown and rank
She was happy on the fence
Then her feelings sank
For she heard a rumble
A deep throaty roar
She turned and saw
A beast possessed
With hunger on its mind
Its eyes were red, its drool was wet
That horned beast she would not forget
The ground was a minefield where
Many tails had risen to the sky
But through this bovine doo doo
Billie just……… flew
Tony was stunned
As he could not see her feet
For they spun like cartoon pistons
Round and round and round
Touching not the ground
How did she zig and zag so quickly?
Missing every poo
Maybe Dodge by name
Dodge by nature
Who can say?
But as Billie told this story
From her hospital bed
In another field of poo
I pray she will remember
That then
As now
For her
It can all pass in a Blur.

Billie:
I remember the bull story. It was one small story that made me smile for a moment. I don’t know if things did pass in a blur but it is all a bit of a blur to me now. I have changed and I continue to change. I know that I am more confident, more decisive. I speak my mind more freely now. I hope that people accept the me that I am becoming. But then again why should that matter?

George:
I see the last line of that silly poem. It can all pass in a blur. It states the hope that bad things pass by quickly and the intention is good. No one wants suffering to drag out but maybe this is no longer helpful for Billie today. Does anyone really want life to pass by quickly? I mean we all want to pass the bad things quickly but good and bad things inhabit the same real estate of today.

Billie:
Ok so now I have acceptance of myself and my circumstances. I have discovered art and my colourful sketches are the opposite of the black hole I had been living in. I am watching Anzac the cat doing the cat things. My husband is doing the things that he does. And me I am being who I am which is an evolving mix of who I was and who I am becoming.

George:
Embracing the good and the bad and seeing clearly enough to be fully present in each and every moment, now that’s a challenge. Don’t let anyone tell you it’s easy, just ask Billie. It takes a little faith to bridge the gap between the past and the future.

Something new

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Today let’s observe deep space, the deep ocean and deep within your mind.  You, reader are reading these words, joining them together to form sentences that you hear without your ears. You hear with your mind. It constructs meaning based on the patterns it understands. It can’t observe and understand everything so it connects the dots to form a picture. Let me give you a picture.

You stand under a dark sky. There is no light pollution so it is really dark. You hold your hand up to your face and you can barely see it. What you can see are a vast multitude of stars. I will assume that you can recognize the constellations. You can see the Southern Cross, Orion, Taurus, maybe a few more. If you have never looked at the night sky with a knowledge of the constellations what are you seeing now? I think that your mind will connect the dots automatically to form patterns. It will join the dots to form a picture.

Let me give you another picture. You sit on a cliff looking out on the ocean. A straight line of waves is coming in to the land. As you expand your field of view to take in the whole picture you can see the curve of the earth. The view is so big, it is hard to take it all in. Actually you don’t take it all in. Your eyes are actually sampling portions of the view but your mind is connecting the sight samples to make a picture. It connects the dots to form a picture. You don’t see with your eyes they just collect the light. Your mind joins the dots to make a picture.

Now let’s go to a third picture. Let’s go into your mind. Imagine all of your thoughts to be like stars in the sky all connected in a pattern that seems fixed. These stars fire off messages to each other to help make a picture. Mostly they make the same picture. They make this picture to keep you safe.  They identify a pattern from the past that they project into the future.

Now let’s draw back to see things from a different perspective.  Let’s see the night sky, the ocean and your mind at the same time. Observe it by not thinking about it. See the dark between the stars, the empty space of blue ocean and the dark spaces between your thought patterns where there is nothing. Go to the silence and hear what’s there. Go to the dark and see what’s there. Stop thinking – to see the space between the thoughts. Where there is nothing. It will be hard to do this and you will flick between thought and no thought.

The space between everything holds nothing and everything. It is the empty vast space where you are free from the past and the future to potentially fill the blank page with something new. You can reconfigure what you see and who you are. But it is not a process of rational thought; it is an emptying of thought to see the boundless possibility of the blank page.

Today you will observe many things automatically applying your patterns of learned understanding. If something is not working then maybe you might have it work better by not thinking about it. Maybe you could go to the dark between the stars, the empty blue of the sea and the dark spaces between thoughts where a blank page always waits for something new.

You, reader, can create something new.

Dry Brown Land

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A ribbon of mirrored glass recedes into the dry brown land
it flows with a lazy indolence and a calm assurance that
one day rain will come…. I am not so sure
I see in the distance Hundreds of birds
when they move there is the sound of applause
wings beating out like so many hands but those
wings for all their Furious intensity
keep the birds bound to the water that
is receding into the dry brown land
hemmed in by dry riverbanks
 the water slowly drains into memory
The memory of large trees is preserved with the
huge tree stumps that stand on exposed spider leg roots
one day rain will come, maybe it will come
 I am not so sure, I have paddled
on this ribbon of mirrored glass
in the middle of the wide brown land
if I drift on this river with a lazy indolence
and calm assurance that the wide brown land doesn’t need our help
then maybe one day the ribbons of glass
will recede for good, but I fail to act
Maybe I am bound like the birds to the river
to something that is receding into memory
I am left with the disconnect between wanting to help
and knowing how to help this wide brown land
with its ribbons of mirrored glass