old friends, a bookend + a sunburnt country.

each week, for one term in year six, we were given a poem/lyrics and asked to illustrate our interpretation. i recall these tasks with great fondness. [and i sound like an old lady terming it in such a manner.] two tasks stick in my mind.

first, dorothea mckellar's poem 'my country'. we were given the second verse, which i still recite every now and then.

i love a sunburnt country,

a land of sweeping plains,

of ragged mountain ranges,

of droughts and flooding rains.

i love her far horizons,

i love her jewel-sea,

her beauty and her terror -

the wide brown land for me!

my only experience of the australian centre is from an airplane on my journey home from india, in 2004. i unconsciously found myself whispering the words; the red landscape sliding beneath me - a sudden sense of place and 'i am home' came over me.

second, simon & garfunkel's 'old friends'. until today, i didn't realise it was a song. all i recalled were the first three lines,

old friends,

sat on their park bench

like bookends.

these words have developed an inseparable connection to self. they hold many iterations of memory and notions of friendship, which have evolved and strengthened since their conception in my memory, at age eleven. particularly potent is the idea of growing old with someone. sitting, quietly, with them. the need for words to slip between each other void. communication and knowing passes into something metaphysical.

just being. and being utterly content in each other's presence.