Craft For a Dry Lake by Kim Mahood

Author:Kim Mahood
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Random House Australia
Published: 2000-06-30T16:00:00+00:00

I IMAGINE MYSELF AS SOMEONE different, someone who meets life head on, who has fun. When invited by the women to be painted and join the dancing, she does it with respect and a light heart. She does not stand back self-consciously. This woman does not waste things. The taste of dust and ashy damper stay on her tongue with the taste of tea and the smell of burning gum leaves. She hears the creak of the windmill and the sound of women calling and splashing in the dam, and remembers the scent of childhood and the footprints of children in wet mud. This woman takes joy in life, and is not afraid.

Out in the spinifex the women sit in groups painting each other’s bodies, heads leaning in towards one another, hands touching, rubbing, patting, marking. Above the grey-green mounds of the spinifex a circle of heads and arms move and sway like a single many-headed, many-armed creature. When I read their stories I feel as if there is a dimension missing. Maybe it is this dimension, of a shared knowledge so taken for granted that it has no words and therefore no place in the story. I read the stories and they don’t touch me, but when I see them performed, that is something else altogether.

We have been given another piece of news about the helicopter pilot. I don’t know if it is true, but the story is that last night his house in Perth burned down. His wife and child were unhurt.

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