time is like a river

“Time is like a river made up of the events which happen, and a violent stream; for as soon as a thing has been seen, it is carried away, and another comes in its place, and this will be carried away too.” Marcus Aurelius

I like it when people remind me of a goodness I knew was there, but had temporarily overlooked.

Life is busy. There are challenges to rise to, people to see, places to go.  I live by a river. I appreciate that it’s there because of the greenery I look out onto from my window. Sometimes I walk or cycle along the path by the river to get somewhere. It’s lovely. But I hadn’t really stopped and thought about the river and really appreciated it for a while.

Last night I spent an hour by the river fishing. We didn’t catch anything but as I was reminded, it’s not always about catching fish. Being by the river in a city isn’t quite being away from it all, with the soothing sounds of the passing trams and cars and the occasional siren as background noise. But somehow at night, these seem more muffled. And down on the jetty, it was a little bit like being away from it all.

The Yarra is teeming with life. There are fish sliding by and insects dancing on the surface. A mother duck watched seemingly unconcerned as one of her 10 ducklings fell from under her wing and rolled down the bank into the river and then tried a few different ways of climbing back up the bank before reaching safety. A stealthy swimmer plopped in the water and torpedoed itself across the river. I wanted it to be a platypus. I’m fairly certain it was a rat. There were bats flying overhead, frogs croaking.

For the aborigines of the Wurundjeri tribe (part of the Kulin nation that had occupied the lands around Port Phillip Bay for at least 30,000 years) the Yarra River was a life-source that had been etched into the landscape by the ancestral creator spirit Bunjil - the wedge tailed eagle.

They called the river Birrarrung - "Place of Mists and Shadows" and it was the dreaming path they followed and camped beside through the calendar of countless seasons.

When white explorers arrived, they naturally saw the river as a means for getting what they needed, and not at all in the same way as the aboriginals saw it. For the white people, it was what made the land an eligible place to settle. They used it for drinking water, washing water, and a place to get rid of waste. It eventually provided them with gold during the gold rush years.

When John Batman met a group of aboriginals on the banks of the Yarra in June, 1835, he gave them scissors, shirts, tomahawks, knives, blankets and handkerchiefs, and in return, secured the signature marks of the chiefs on a grant of land.

As is often the case in such situations, there was a disconnect between parties in terms of language and cultural understanding. While Batman believed he was now the greatest landowner in the world because the grant of land gave him possession of 500,000 acres of land, including the Yarra River, the aboriginals believed they had taken part in a friendship ceremony that would allow Mr Batman temporary rights to cross through their country.

This riverside transaction signalled the beginning of the end of the traditional tribal life of the Wurundjeri.

I don’t know what we can do to change the many things that have gone wrong since then. I wish I did.

No river can return to its source, yet all rivers must have a beginning.

In a small way, and I understand, perhaps in a patronizingly white way, although that’s not how I mean it, stopping to appreciate the river and all that’s in it, fishing out an empty bottle to put in the bin and spending more time with it, might be a step in the right direction.

"We are all visitors to this time, this place. We are just passing through. Our purpose here is to observe, to learn, to grow, to love... and then we return home. "

ABORIGINAL PROVERB

Listen:
Down by the river

Becoming Marguerite

I have done it again; bitten into more of life’s big crème brûlée than I can reasonably handle and am now valiantly swimming upstream like a desperado golden Labrador, stick in mouth, having a great time but with back-of-the-mind terror at the thought of being swept away. And yes, two completely unrelated similes in one sentence. Maybe now you have more of an idea of my state of mind.

Because life as Jo Rittey was already doing a fairly good impersonation of chaos. Now I have thrown teaching my neighbours French once a week and acting in a French play into the mix. The teaching part is fine. The acting…weeeeeelllll, that remains to be seen.

Acting is an art. People devote their lives to it. I, on the other hand, just turn up and hope for the best. And I’m not sure that’s going to cut it.

Exit the King is an absurdist drama written in 1962 in 15 days by Eugène Ionesco who, recovering from a serious illness at the time, felt as though he had perhaps flirted with death and felt compelled to convey those emotions. Exit the King is all about death. A fairly long one act death-knell, in fact, although the Melbourne French Theatre version is considerably shorter than its original incarnation. The King, understandably, does not want to die, despite his first wife Queen Marguerite announcing that he will die in an hour, he will die at the end of the play. Because this is meta-theatre in all its glory. The audience is not for one minute fooled into thinking this is realistic. It’s theatre about theatre, undeniably a work of drama and should be enjoyed as such.

So. How to approach the role of Marguerite.

She is portrayed as the voice of reason, a pragmatist whose duty it is to ensure the King understands that he is dying and to prepare him for his death. In comparison to Marie, the King's second wife, who is light and bright, pretty and optimistic, Marguerite is often seen as severe and unfeeling. Ageless and somewhat hard, she embodies the truth. Hers is a difficult and thankless task, but one which must be done. In some respects her role is that of psychopomp, or spiritual guide, nurturing the king's soul as he approaches death.

I asked the drama teachers at school for some ideas on how to portray this complex character and how to manage her/my interactions with the other characters. They talked about the importance of knowing what it is I want to have happen from the words that I'm saying and so allowing that intention to guide the delivery.

I needed more.

Dee Cannon from London’s RADA, has 10 questions she believes are crucial to discovering your character and which will inform the way you bring the dialogue to life.

1. Who am I?

2. Where am I?

3. When is it?

4. Where have I just come from?

5. What do I want?

6. Why do I want it?

7. Why do I want it now?

8. What will happen if I don't get it now?

9. How will I get what I want by doing what?

10. What must I overcome?

The key question is really what do I want? What is my intention, my motivation. Want also means, what do I need. Dee says you should never walk on stage just to play a scene. You should always have an objective and then know what it is you need to do to get what you want or need.

It’s like life really. What do I want from the relationships I have with other people? What do I need? What do I need to do to get these desires and needs met? And I don’t mean that it’s all about me and how I can manipulate others to my own ends. Not at all. It’s just not  about operating in the space, saying my piece into a void. It’s about making myself heard, but also listening and responding to what others are saying to me. And most importantly, it’s about timing. There is no point rushing headlong into a monologue or a plaintive appeal if the person I am saying it to is not ready to receive it or is looking in the other direction or hasn’t even come onto the stage yet.

One of the other vital questions is what must I overcome in order to make things happen the way I want; the inner and outer obstacles that are imposed or that we impose on ourselves. We do need to be clear about what the obstacles are in order to convincingly overcome them. And in fact, we do need the obstacles, as annoying as they may be, because they galvanise our resolve and our desire.

As with acting, so it is with life. To paraphrase Lyn Gardner, a Guardian Theatre Critic, you can teach people timing, you can teach them how to stand; you can provide them with a setting that will allow them to take risks, but you can’t teach them to be in touch with their own spirit.

Much to learn, I still have.

the truffle

Single ingredient festivals. Why not? It’s all about celebrating the season, the products that are available and those that cultivate and harvest them.

There have been coffee, chocolate and mussel festivals. So why not truffles? Now in its second year, the Truffle Festival at Prahran market this weekend is all about making accessible these little black shrivelled up nuggets of gold.

Truffles. Mysterious, highly flavoursome, highly expensive and difficult to use. That’s the perception, but as Chef Guy Grossi points out, they don’t have to be. You only need a shaving of a truffle to add volumes of flavour to a dish. Festival Director, Nigel Wood, explains, the price tag for 50 grams of black truffles may well be $135, but that would lift the profile of a whole lot of dishes, and you wouldn’t need as much as that to add that certain je ne sais quoi to your next dinner party.

What ARE truffles and why the hype? Truffles, like mushrooms, are the fruit of a fungus. They are pretty high maintenance little things as they grow underground and need trees to host them and animals to eat them and distribute their spores. They are also pretty needy because they can’t make their own food, so they form symbiotic relationships with deciduous trees. They do give a little back  to the relationship as they coat the roots of the tree and help it absorb minerals and as a kickback, they get their nutrients from the tree.

Truffles are at their best and most prolific in the winter months and like any high maintenance entity, they don’t just sit around waiting to be found. They nestle in between fallen leaves and bits of branch and mineral-rich soil. Hence the need for specially trained dogs or pigs to locate them.

There is plenty of opportunity to try these little black diamonds in all their glory at the Prahran Market this weekend (20 and 21^st June). Dispel all the myths, by watching cooking demonstrations, sampling truffle enhanced culinary delights and watching truffle dogs in action.

If, as French writer Alexandre Dumas claimed, “they can, on certain occasions, make women more tender and men more lovable,” Prahran Market will be a wonderful place to be this weekend.