...the room face east and look out towards the ocean across the expanse of green gully.

I picture a woman sitting on a bed with pillows behind her back. The windows are open. Perhaps it is Saturday morning. On the bedside table is a mug of tea and a photograph of the woman's daughter on her wedding day.

The wind begins to stir the big trees outside and the morning haze is beginning to move and for a short moment the sun lightens the carpet and heavy dark wood furniture. The shadows of the curtains' curves darken the floor, almost invisible to the woman on the bed. The morning sun lightens the CD player, the alarm clock, the piles of books stacked on the revolving Victorian bookcase.

She looks out at the water and at the triangle of beach. Sometimes it seems that nothing much changes out there, although on some days the waves break close to shore and at other times further out to sea. She can see it all from the bed, even at night time. The bed faces the beach and the ocean, and so does the desk. The room is like standing at the rail of a ship.

On the radio: "Waves, to me, are a reason to live," says the surfer. "When you see the roar, the jaws, there is nothing that touches it on the face of the earth."

In June the twilight begins in the afternoon. The days close in on me, here in this room. The infinite possibilities in the sky and the sea and the possibility of nothing.

What is this writing life? It tears me to pieces every day.

Still no rain.

During a cool night, the drought continuing, my nightmare is that I am stuck in a narrow laneway unable to turn back. I get out of the car to attempt to turn it with my bare hands. But when I turn around to pick the car up, it has disappeared. I took my eyes off it for one second and it disappeared. Gone in that second that I lost sight of it. The desperation descends on me.

I snap on the bedside light just before the dawn. Dawn through the gorge. Leaves slight in a breeze, the dark green of the date palms. This shy light is flashing a start to the day. In fifteen minutes the gorge will come alight in all its subtleties, water flowing across rocks, white butterflies.

Two paragraphs--and half the morning gone.

The driest May in over seventy years.

She'd been relieved when he left the room, so probably it's already ending. But she isn't sure. She pays close attention to the surroundings, to the people in tracksuits trudging through the sand on the beach, the noise of the traffic up the hill, the static that immerses the room. He glances at her. At first he looks at her as though he expects her to speak, but she doesn't. So he says, Don't worry, we'll get through it. Then is silent. She doesn't answer. She could reassure him, could say, Yes, that's right, it's a small thing, we'll get through it. She says nothing.

He'd said he hates being lonely. She said she's lonely, horribly lonely. He said: It's a horrible thing loneliness.

Every day my father experienced a deep melancholy about living. Sometimes it lasted, sometimes it would vanish with the night. I had a father so desperate with sadness that sometimes even life's surprises, those very special moments, couldn't make him forget it. It happened every day. It would come on very suddenly. At a given moment every day the melancholy would make its appearance. And after that would follow the struggle to go on, to sleep, to do anything, or sometimes the anger, just the anger, and then the despair.

In the dream I was sleeping in a motel. I saw Father, like a floppy puppet with a wooden head, sitting on the far side of a room. He had strings attached to his hollow body and was unable to speak. The intensity of my grief woke me. I sat up on the big bed and I was by a lake, the sounds of a party under the window. Headlights bounced off the bridge and into the room through the thick curtains of the...

NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.



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