Every month or so The Spark will tell us about a different time when the good advice of a Spark was ignored.
The Inklings: Chapter 22
An hour later Ark and Jinabu still hadn’t reached a town and Jinabu wasn’t in a good way. She was pale, covered with sweat and couldn’t help bracing herself and gritting her teeth with every contraction.
“What’s wrong?” asked Ark, but Jinabu couldn’t answer. She just glared at him and tried to breathe deeply.
“Oh no!” said Ark and he stopped the truck in a shady spot on the side of the road, got out of the truck and opened the door on Jinabu’s side. Jinabu lay down across the seats and concentrated on her breathing. Ark felt like fainting and so he lay down on the ground saying “I’ll just be a minute”.
Ark woke up sometime later. He sat up. It took him a couple of seconds to remember what he had been doing. Then he noticed the silence and jumped up in fright. Jinabu was sitting up in the truck holding a sleeping baby and smiling. Jinabu and the baby were both covered in blood and Ark could smell vomit. The umbilical cord, still joined to the baby, disappeared over the edge of the seat. Ark imagined that the placenta was lurking somewhere on the truck floor and averted his eyes before he could confirm his suspicion. He went round to the driver’s side and saw that there was a pool of blood on the floor right next to the pedals, and that a line of ants was marching in.
“Are you both ok?” asked Ark. “Yeah” answered Jinabu. She looked tired but seemed happy and healthy. The baby stirred and made a few squawking sounds.
They had to get to a hospital so Ark took a deep breath and climbed into the truck. He tried not to think about what he was putting his feet in and started the truck. Jinabu couldn’t help laughing when she saw Ark’s face.
“Sorry about making a mess” she said, between giggles.
“Yeah, you really sound sorry” said Ark. He was annoyed, but that just made Jinabu laugh even more.
The Inklings: Chapter 21
When Syafika got home from John and D’arby’s place on Sunday afternoon she was feeling tired but excited. She never would have imagined that she’d enjoy the company of people as unconventional as John or D’arby as much as she did. It was as if she’d spent the day in a parallel universe, one where her life wasn’t dominated by feelings of inadequacy, one where she could enjoy doing and learning things instead of having herself at the centre of her thoughts – and she didn’t have to think about herself because she knew she wasn’t being judged. Who’d have thought that Syafika would enjoy something as potentially embarrassing and dirty as scavenging and then learning to screen print? Not even the presence of Ousman and Binta at home could make Syafika angry that afternoon.
Ousman was sitting on the front steps when Syafika arrived. “What are you doing out here?” asked Syafika.
“Sulking” answered Ousman.
“Why?” asked Syafika. She was interested enough to stop and wait for an answer.
Ousman sighed and said “It’s a long story. You probably don’t have time”.
Syafika realized that Ousman was making an observation more than accusing her of not caring. If she’d been in a bad mood she still would have been offended though. Luckily for Ousman, today Syafika realized that what he had just said was true. She never did give him much time so why should he expect her to want to listen now? She was tempted to defend herself but decided it would be more productive if she just sat down and made it clear that she wanted to hear more.
“So?” said Syafika.
Ousman sighed again. He seemed to be having trouble working out what to say. Even this new, improved version of Syafika derived some amusement from this, but it was mixed with pity.
“Imagine if you’d never met your father and if you didn’t even know who he was” said Ousman eventually. “What would you do? Would you just accept it if your Mum didn’t want to tell you anything? Or would you try to find out?”
Syafika was very tempted to tell Ousman what she’d heard about his father, but for some reason she hesitated. She remembered the day she’d heard her mother and father discussing this issue in the kitchen. That was way back when Binta was still pregnant and Syafika was only 13. Festus had been talking about Binta’s anonymous donor so Syafika had asked what that meant. She could still remember the embarrassment she felt when Festus explained how a woman could go to a special kind of bank if she wanted to have a baby without a man. Rose had been so annoyed at this discussion that she’d left the room. At the time Syafika couldn’t understand why her mum was angry, but now she realized that it was probably because Festus had been making up stories as a joke.
“Well?” said Ousman. He was still waiting for Syafika to answer his question.
“I’d want to find out” answered Syafika.
“Me too!” said Ousman. “I wanted to find out, and I did, and now Mum is very angry with me”.
“How did you find out?” asked Syafika, with some strain. What she’d really wanted to say was “What did you find out!”
“I read Mum’s diaries” replied Ousman. “I think that’s the main reason she’s angry, because she doesn’t…” Ousman stopped talking and looked at Syafika as if he’d just realized who he’d been talking to and had decided that he couldn’t trust her enough to tell her any more.
Wagging Christmas
24th December,10:30am I have just made a decision. I’m not going to participate in Christmas this year.
I’m not a Christian and I don’t agree with obliged present-giving or forced merriness. I don’t see why I should pretend to care that it’s Jesus Christ’s birthday, and use it as an excuse to spend extra money that I don’t have on things that nobody really needs, and eat too much food that I don’t really enjoy, just because everyone else is. I haven’t done any Christmas shopping yet, nor do I plan to do any. What a relief. It’s simple. I don’t believe in Christmas, so I’m not going to celebrate it.
11:15am The more I think about it, the angrier I feel about the Christmases when I have been sucked-in to all that ridiculous last minute preparation. Desperately filling the fridge, buying last-minute unsuitable presents, menu-planning, worrying about having enough supplies. And then there are the contingency plans based on the weather, or how many people end up coming. For Goodness sake! It’s not an air raid or a cyclone about to hit… It’s just another public holiday!
But there’s more to it than just the way Christmas makes people behave irrationally. It’s the sneaky marketing and pressure that is deliberately put on consumers to out-do one another. Is it just me and my cynical outlook, or has Christmas become a competition about who wants to look like they care the most? Since when is love, compassion, generosity and appreciation for one another measured by how much money you can spend on presents or by how much effort you can put into creating extravagant meals? I think about all the Christmases where I have been made to feel inadequate and guilty for not making as much effort for my friends and family as they had done for me. The fact that Christmas can be used as a marketing tool to make people feel “slack” or “stingey”, or even “ungrateful” for not spending as much money on crap as everyone else is, is wrong. And the fact that marketers know this and do it on purpose, is evil.
I have spent all year preaching my anti-consumerist sentiment and criticizing greedy, ruthless, corporate behavior. I am NOT going to let my guard down now and let them trick me into participating in the biggest, most wasteful, consumer orgy of the year!
1:30pm I just called my Mum to tell her I would not be going to Christmas lunch tomorrow at my sister’s place. She wanted to know what my plans were instead. When I told her I was protesting and planned to spend the day at home, she laughed at me, and told me who else would be going and the lovely time I would be missing out on. I had a momentary vision of myself as a crazy, lone demonstrator, wearing a sandwich board and opening a ring-pull can of sardines to the sound of self-indulgent laughter, champagne corks and Christmas crackers and the smell of grilling meat.
Oh no you don’t… I can see what’s happening, and I’m not going to be a sucker for family peer-pressure! They can laugh, but I will not be a hypocrite! I have integrity, and I intend to stand up to what I don’t believe in.
1:45pm I’ve been thinking that in the interests of maintaining my dignity, I will keep a low profile over the next couple of days. That means no Facebook, and I intend to turn off my phone after I call my sister to let her know that I won’t be going to her Christmas lunch tomorrow. This will help me to avoid awkward Christmassy seasons greeting with friends, and stop me from making self-righteous little speeches and announcements. I will simply put Christmas out of my mind altogether and carry on as if it is any other quiet Sunday. If people in the street wish me a Happy Christmas, I will smile and say “I don’t celebrate Christmas, but thank you”.
2:15pm I’m planning to call my sister soon to tell her I won’t be coming.
3:30pm Still working up the courage to call my sister.
5:45pm I just called my sister and told her. She was fine about my decision, and laid no guilt-trips on me whatsoever. If anything, I felt like I was laying a guilt-trip on her. I suspect she secretly wishes she could do the same.
9:30pm Ok, phone is switched off, and that’s all the communication I’m going to do until people get over their Christmas fever. I will confess though, I did go on Facebook very briefly this evening, but only to share a link to the Zeitgeist Moving Forward movie, as a subtle hint in favour of my protest . I’ve spent more energy on Christmas than it deserves already, so that’s all I’m going to say on this topic for now.
25th December, 10:15am It’s a gloriously sunny day with a fresh breeze. Perfect for doing my washing. Housemates have all gone elsewhere for the day, whole house to myself, phone switched off… Bliss!!
12:15am I’ve had a productive morning painting, doing my washing, and sun-baking. Might cook myself a nice lunch of lentil stew with rice…mmm
1:15pm I just went for a walk and saw a fat kid, already drunk on too much sugar, waddle out of his front door, only to trip and fall down the steps with his hand in a box of Cheezles. Very quiet out there today, apart from a couple of stressed-looking people unloading eskys and bags of ice out of the boots of their cars. Suckers.
3:00pm My brother just called in on his way to my sister’s place. He looked very unimpressed and unsurprised by my protest. I suspect he was thinking that this is just another one of my excuses for a no-show at a family get-together.
5:35pm I just finished listening to Zeitgeist Moving Forward as I paint. I went for another walk earlier. It’s a very spooky atmosphere out there today with everyone hiding away in their bomb shelters. The only audible sounds of life are drunken and oblivious, muffled behind brick walls, stereo speakers and backyard fences. I feel like I am the only one who really knows what’s going on. It’s eery.
I saw a Santa walking down the middle of the road earlier this afternoon, wearing dark sunglasses and carrying a long umbrella under one arm. There isn’t a cloud in the sky today, and it’s hot. Far too hot to be wearing a full length, fleecy red suit in the sun. It suddenly occurred to me that this Santa could easily be hiding a fire arm inside that umbrella…
I was back on Facebook again this afternoon just briefly. Long enough to share another YouTube video with John Lennon singing “So This Is Christmas” over shocking footage of people in war zones, maimed in hospitals, and laying out corpses. Most of the corpses are infant sized. Lots of close-ups of grief-stricken faces. The usual cliché, but it felt good. My friend John commented on the link I put up yesterday, warning me to watch out for that Zeitgeist crowd, and wishing me a merry Christmas (Bless him). Bad Boy Donald put his status as “Merry kiss ma ass!” (Love it).
7:15pm My housemates have returned home sunburnt and exhausted, while I’m feeling quite sprightly and cheerful. Ha ha, they are both tucking into my lentil stew and comparing stories about packed trains, misbehaved toddlers, boring bus rides and embarrassing comments they made. My painting is coming along quite nicely.
26th December, 12:15am Well, I made it through another one, and now we have Boxing Day hangovers and New Year’s Eve to look forward to. With my Inkling challenge successfully completed, I feel now I can rightfully take off this morally superior straightjacket, and go back to being my normal, obnoxious, careless self. Hey, where’s that champagne? Here’s to Christmas being over for another year! And thanks for the soap nuts, and the Kindle, and the lychees and dark chocolate macadamias! And loving the ergonomic meditation stool! And sucked in that I didn’t get you anything! Hahahahaha!!!
26th December 3:30pm There I was feeling all cocky about getting away with wagging Christmas and getting an Inkling Challenge under my belt, only to have my challenge refused by The Inkling for not being challenging enough!! What?!! I don’t know anyone else who has the guts to protest against Christmas! I thought it was a pretty cool and original challenge. But no. Apparently just doing something that I wanted to do anyway, and using the challenge part as an excuse to get away with it is not a valid challenge… Doh! The Inkling did, however like my idea and thought it was entertaining enough to publish, but I needed to add an after thought. How can I make my challenge, or the original idea more challenging?
28th December 4:22pm I’ve been sitting here licking my wounds and thinking about how to salvage something from my failed challenge. A real challenge for me would be to make Christmas a beneficial, enjoyable experience, which celebrates all the original good-will that Christmas intended, without over-indulgence, insincerity or waste. I was talking about this with my sister yesterday. We were remembering how special Christmas was to us when we were kids because it was the one day of the year that we were “allowed” to eat lollies and chocolate and get non-essential “presents” of things that we were meant to enjoy! Not just boring things like school shoes, or other things that we needed for school. Christmas was the one day of the year that we actually did get spoilt!
Today though, there’s nothing very “special” about eating junk food or getting useless novelty gadgets. For most Australian children, and adults, these things are regular weekly, or even daily activities! The only thing that makes Christmas Day any different, is that we are encouraged to do so much more of what we normally do, to kid ourselves into feeling like it’s a special occasion. But really, there’s nothing very special about doing more of the same thing.
Maybe I could begin some new Christmas Day activities that really are special, because nobody ever does them at any other time of the year. And preferably these new Christmas Day traditions would be low consumption, fun and encourage togetherness and sharing.
The first part of the challenge would be to come up with ideas for new Christmas Day Traditions. The second part would be to actually practice them myself, and encourage my family to participate with me. If those two steps can be completed successfully, then I can try the real challenge of encouraging others to do the same and reinventing Christmas back into the special, fun day it was supposed to be.
I’m prepared to count my failed wagging Christmas challenge as a temporary set back, but not a complete flop. So stay tuned for the come back!
Anonymous
The Inklings: Chapter 20
Jinabu didn’t ask Ark where he was going and Ark didn’t ask Jinabu where she wanted to go. They were just both happy to be sitting next to each other. Jinabu felt safe and was glad to not have to think about where she was going or what she was going to do. Ark was grinning because he’d found someone stranger than him. They sat in silence until they got out of the city because Jinabu didn’t feel like talking and Ark needed to concentrate on the city traffic.
It was going to be a long drive, especially in the slow old truck. That was the first thing that Ark told Jinabu when the traffic had thinned enough for him to be able to talk. Jinabu said she didn’t mind, but that she would need lots of toilet breaks. What she didn’t tell Ark was that she already needed a toilet break and that she was getting a headache because she was so hungry, or that she didn’t have any money to buy food. When Ark noticed Jinabu’s change in mood he began to feel less happy. He thought she must have been bored with him already.
So they both sat in silence, staring ahead with grey faces, until Jinabu’s stomach began to growl. It was so loud and persistent that Ark couldn’t help himself, and he had to laugh.
“You wouldn’t be hungry, would you?” he managed to ask between chuckles. Jinabu didn’t answer, she just looked daggers at Ark. She always became grumpy when she was hungry. Ark parked outside the first place that looked like it might sell food and have a toilet and Jinabu sighed with relief. While Jinabu went to the toilet, Ark bought some food. Jinabu then went back to the truck to wait for Ark because she was feeling too weak to explain that she didn’t have any money to contribute to the food.
Ark had a few minutes of panic in the shop because he wanted to buy exactly what Jinabu needed, but didn’t know what that was. He couldn’t buy lots of things either, because he didn’t have a lot of money and they still had a long way to go. For some reason he thought that pregnant women liked icecream and so he bought a small container of that. Then he saw some fruit juice with added folate, which he’d heard that pregnant women needed. Finally he bought a fruitcake, because he liked them.
Jinabu’s eyes lit up when she saw what Ark had bought and her headache disappeared after a bit of orange juice. The next bit of the trip was much more fun. Jinabu did all the talking and she fed Ark fruitcake and ice cream as he drove. Ark ate more than he had room for because he didn’t want to upset Jinabu by telling her to stop feeding him.
As the day progressed, Jinabu and Ark got closer to Arks place, but it was a long way in a slow truck and in the afternoon they still had three hours of driving left. Jinabu had begun to feel really uncomfortable. Ark had been generous with toilet and food stops, but something else was bothering Jinabu now. At first she thought it was the truck seat that was giving her a sore back, but she began to recognize a pattern in the pain. Jinabu felt angry with herself. She’d been told so many times by friends and relatives that the baby would probably be overdue that she’d never considered that two weeks early was also possible. Jinabu began to think about the birth centre she’d booked back in Sydney, with the candles and relaxing music. The truck wasn’t much like that. Jinabu considered telling Ark what was happening, but decided to wait until they were approaching a town, as she didn’t want to make him panic and there wasn’t anything he could really do to help (they had no phone, the truck couldn’t go any faster and there was scarcely any traffic on this stretch of road). Anyway, thought Jinabu, there’s probably hours and hours of this to go.
The best things you have to offer are the things that you create yourself.
I am running out of space to put things. I wish my house was bigger, or that we had just one more room so that we could spread out a bit. My husband and I have lived alone in a four bedroom house since our children moved out. Apart from our bedroom, one other bedroom is kept free for visitors, another has been converted into an extended walk-in wardrobe, and the other room is my craft and sewing room. Our garage is so small that my husband can’t even fit the car into it anymore, and I’m sick of our pokey little kitchen with not enough cupboard or bench space. We don’t even have a proper dining room because that is where my husband does his IT work, and the dining table is always full of bits and pieces of computer parts.
Every time I go shopping now, I have to be creative about finding new places to store my purchases, and I sometimes even have to buy new things when I need them, just because I can’t find the ones I already have.
My husband won’t listen to me when I tell him that we need to add another room to our house. He just grumbles and tells me that I have too many things! My children threaten to “help” me to clean up whenever they come to visit, but they have no idea. They are always trying to throw away or use my good things that I have been keeping safe for years. They have no respect for my possessions and I feel very threatened when they come to visit because they move things, and often things go missing. I am even afraid to go away to visit my daughter who lives interstate because I worry about what my family will do with my things when I’m not there.
If I had just one more room, I could put all my valuables into it and lock the door. At least then I would be able to leave the house without fear of my best things being thrown away, taken or broken. What can I do to convince my husband to understand how difficult he is making my life for me?
How many of these “things” are actually being used or are ever likely to be used? It sounds to me that you do a lot of “storing” or “hoarding”, and that a large percentage of your possessions are kept away in safe hiding places. Is there any specific reason for you to be doing this? Like, for example, are you stocking up on provisions in preparation for the apocalypse, or do you intend to donate these goods to disadvantaged families, or open a second-hand shop to sell your wares? If not, then why on Earth would you burden yourself and your husband with so much stuff? It sounds as if your possessions have taken over your house and you and your husband are forced to live around them, caring for them, and in your case, protecting them from thieves and looters. Is this what you intended? Do you miss your children? Do you feel that you need things to look after and fuss over? Would you feel unsafe without the security of a bounty of potentially essential items that will “come in handy” one day? Would you feel unprepared to face life without a full stock of everything you might possibly ever need?
There are all sorts of organizational tips for uncluttering and stream-lining your living areas. There are even special “coaches” who assist people to lose material weight from their homes, in the same way as you humans have personal trainers to lose weight from your bodies. These solutions may work to immediately shed a few hundred kilos of clutter, but unless you can fully understand your needs/motives/compulsions to accumulate so many things in the first place, you are just likely to go and take great delight in filling all that new space in your home with more “things”.
I suggest you take some time to really think about what non-material, long-lasting, and fulfilling sustenance is missing from your life. Do you love and appreciate yourself and your talents? Do you lack a sense of satisfaction and achievement from your sewing and craft projects? Have you invested enough effort and care into yourself and your own artistic development? How are your relationships with your husband and children? Do you feel connected to them emotionally? How well do you understand and acknowledge their needs, desires and passions? How well do they understand and acknowledge your own?
Before you reach compulsively for the most automatic and familiar forms of self acknowledgement that you know (buying and storing material goods), think about how good you would feel, if rather than adding to your external inventory, you were to add to your internal inventory. What is missing inside of you? Create some more of that for yourself, by doing, being, and appreciating all the things you like best about yourself. You don’t need to extend yourself through material possessions to become more of a worthy human being. The best things you have to offer are the things that you create for yourself.
The Spark.
The Inklings: Chapter 19
It was a boring Sunday morning and Syafika and Fanta were not doing much, just sitting around at Syafika’s place and wishing that something would happen. They were both looking forward to their Monday night meeting with John and D’arby. Both of them had already done their homework for the meeting, which was to write a list of things that they thought were wrong in the world and things they could do to make everything better. It was hard to resist discussing these lists before the meeting, but so far they had both managed to avoid the topic.
Then the phone rang. It was John. He said he needed Fanta and Syafika’s help urgently and that it had something to do with T-shirts. Then he said where to meet him and hung up.
Fortunately Syafika and Fanta were in the type of mood where they would volunteer for anything rather than stay at home doing nothing and so they left to meet John immediately. After a bit of walking Fanta and Syafika found John and D’arby right where they said they’d be – in the alley behind an old warehouse. Someone had left an enormous box of T-shirts out on the street, with a cardboard sign saying “Free to a good home”. John was sure that his place was as good a home as any. As soon as he and D’arby had come across the T-shirts they had thought of a way to use them. D’arby had once been a fan of screen printing and still had all the equipment. He and John were going to print T-shirts and give them away at the restaurant. They just had to get them home first.
Fanta and Syafika were assigned the task of convincing a taxi driver to come up the back alley and let them fill the taxi full of T-shirts. It was easy enough to stop a taxi on the busy road nearby but when the taxi driver got to where John and D’arby were sorting through the T-shirts he had to be offered double the fare to let them stuff them in the taxi.
“See you back at our place!” said D’arby as he left in the taxi. Fanta and Syafika were beginning to wish they were still sitting around doing nothing as they began the walk back with John. All three of them were carrying large piles of T-shirts that hadn’t fitted in the taxi.
“At least this pile is so high that nobody passing can see my face” said Syafika. She was embarrassed. She didn’t want to be seen scavenging.
“Yeah, the disadvantage is that I can’t see where I’m going” said Fanta and then walked straight into a post. After that, John insisted on carrying all of Fanta’s T-shirts, as well as his own. Fanta walked in front and guided John and Syafika past any obstacles on the footpath.
“Dog pooh coming up” said Fanta “At the third step, take an extra large one.” She was enjoying herself. There seemed to be a lot more dog poohs on the walk back than John or Syafika had ever remembered.
——————————-
“So, what are you going to print on them?” asked Fanta when they were all back at John and D’arby’s place.
John and D’arby were arranging the T-shirts in piles on the floor of the lounge room.
“Something risqué” said D’arby. “The point is to see what ridiculous slogans we can make people wear by making them free.”
“Free to a good home?” asked Syafika
“I’m free, take me?” said Fanta
“Discarded” said John
“I was thinking about something to do with money” said D’arby. “Only I can’t think of a way to say what I want to say”
“Try” said Fanta
“Something distilling how I feel about the importance we give the economy not being justified – that it has become a beast that we are slaves to” said D’arby
“Why don’t you just say ‘Fuck the economy’” said John.
“Ha ha, won’t people get arrested for wearing something like that?” said Syafika
“I wonder” said Fanta. “Why don’t you ask Vincent?”
“Why don’t we just try it!” said John “Lets print some up now and I’ll give them away at the restaurant tonight.
The Inklings: Chapter 18
It was early on Sunday morning. D’arby’s sister Jinabu woke up and made herself a cup of peppermint tea. She sat on the sofa, enjoying the warmth of the cup in her hands and the smell of peppermint. She stared out the window and started thinking about what she would do that day. It looked like it was going to be a sunny day, and probably not too hot to be outside. Jinabu decided that she would put a load of washing on and then go for a walk in the park. Then she’d make a nice lunch and read baby books all afternoon. Then her husband Andrew appeared. He was dressed for a day out shopping. He wanted to buy all the baby stuff in one go.
“Aren’t you even dressed yet?” complained Andrew when he saw that Jinabu was still wearing her nightie and hadn’t brushed her hair. “Have you got that shopping list I asked you to write? Why have you become so lazy?”
Jinabu didn’t really feel like answering. She hadn’t made a shopping list and didn’t want to go shopping. “Do we need to buy anything?” asked Jinabu. “I’m not even sure of what we will need. I’ve got some second hand stuff from my friends anyway. Can’t we just wait and see if we need anything else when the baby is here?”
Andrew shook his head and frowned. “I don’t want my child to be a bludger before it is even born. How do we know that the stuff your friends gave us is any good? You might not care about using other people’s cast-offs but I do. Why don’t you care what people think of you?”
Andrew turned his back to Jinabu and looked out the window, watching the neighbours put their kids into their big, shiny car. He decided it was time to put his foot down.
“I know you can’t help having been born into a family of useless hippies, but as the mother of my child you will have to make more of an effort to be a normal person. I don’t have to stay married to you, you know. There are plenty of other women who would happily take your place. I don’t want to have to make up excuses for you for the rest of my life. See how the neighbours are? I want us to be like them. They know how to be respectable.” said Andrew.
Jinabu felt that she should have been more shocked than she was. She stared into space and wondered how she had got here. How had she married this man? How had she moved into this big house? How had she ever considered that a relationship with someone who hated everything she believed in could ever work? She didn’t understand anything. Her thoughts were cloudy.
Jinabu didn’t pack a bag. She just told Andrew that she needed to go away and think about things and then she wandered out of the house and down the street in her bare feet, still wearing her floral cotton nightie.
Jinabu was out the door before Andrew could respond. He really didn’t want Jinabu going out of the house dressed like that, especially not without shoes on. There was a strong chance that some of the neighbours would see her, especially as he expected that she would go and sit in the nearby park to do her thinking. Andrew started to follow Jinabu, but then stopped, deciding it would probably be less embarrassing for her to go alone than for anyone to see him trying to get her back inside – they’d probably argue.
So, Andrew let Jinabu go outside to be embarrassing on her own. He stewed for a while and then picked up one of Jinabu’s baby books. In the back of the book there was a list of essential baby equipment. “How easy is that?” thought Andrew and he set off to buy everything on the list.
Jinabu’s messy hair was hanging down her back and around her shoulders. All she could bear to think about was how nice and warm the sun was and how cold and hard the footpath was. Jinabu didn’t care where she was going or what she was going to do. She just followed her feet down the street, and that was how Ark’s eyes first found Jinabu. When Ark saw Jinabu he couldn’t believe that she was real. Then when she turned and looked at him he lost control of his limbs and stalled his truck.
Jinabu was focusing on enjoying the way the sun fell through the leaves of the trees that lined the street when she thought she could smell popcorn. The smell became stronger so she looked around to see what it could be, but the only sign of life was an old, open truck full of furniture coming along the street. As the truck passed her it stalled.
Jinabu looked at the driver of the truck, and at the same time she noticed her own reflection in the passenger side window. It amused her how similar they looked. His hair was long, wild and wispy and he too looked like he was just drifting along without thinking much. Ark was always like that though. He did what he thought was the right thing at the time but hardly ever made plans for his future. He was usually too busy helping someone or fighting for some cause to think about himself much. At that moment, he was moving a friend’s furniture. His friend Ian had been sent to gaol for becoming violent at a protest. Today Ark was moving Ian’s furniture from the flat Ian had been renting and was going to keep Ian’s stuff at his place in the country until he could come and get it.
Jinabu walked over to the truck and Ark leant over and opened the passenger side door.
“Can you smell popcorn?” Jinabu asked
That was when Ark noticed Jinabu’s huge stomach. She looked like she could give birth at any moment.”Not another one.” thought Ark. He was always meeting lovely women who wanted to have kids, but he didn’t want any more kids, or to have to look after them. He’d been a teenage Dad and was content with the one son he had. “It’s probably the truck” said Ark, trying not to look disappointed, and when Jinabu looked confused he got out and showed her a drum in the back of the truck. “Smell this” he said as he opened the drum. “The truck runs on biodiesel that is made from old cooking oil”. Jinabu smelt it and remarked that the exhaust smelt better, then she asked Ark if he had made it himself and if it wasn’t bad for the engine. Ark was always ready to defend biodiesel and began a spiel about how it is actually good for diesel engines when he realized that he was blocking the traffic so he got back into the truck. Jinabu got in too and they drove off together.
Feed The Inkling
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The Inkling 
Your honesty could be the best present you give to your family this year.
I’m really dreading Christmas this year. The last couple of weeks at work before the end of year break are always frantic for me, and then when I finally do get some time off, my leave just gets spent organizing and recovering from Christmas!
I’m so sick and tired of cooking the same old bland roast turkey lunch that is almost as much of a chore to eat as it is to prepare, and having to pretend to be jolly as we sit around exchanging unwanted rubbish and making ourselves sick on novelty Xmas nibbles that nobody really likes.
I don’t think I can cope with another bout of cleaning, shopping, cooking, obnoxious comments from drunken guests, resentful looks from in-laws, and shrieking children fighting over their presents. Why do we bother? Nobody seems to be really enjoying themselves. I know I don’t!
It’s just occurred to me that maybe I would be doing us all a favour if I were to cancel the traditional get-together at our house this year, and spend Christmas volunteering at my local soup kitchen instead. Even though it feels like I’m letting my family down, I have a suspicion that allowing them to do their own thing this year would be a relief to everyone. What do you think?
That sounds like the most common-sense idea I have heard all year! By all means, yes. Give it a try this year, and see what happens. From what you tell me, I don’t think you would be offending your family anymore than you would normally do by offering your regular, insincere Christmas gesture.
Just be civilized about it and try to avoid showing your resentment or making defiant announcements. Your honesty could be the best present you give to your family this year.
The Spark.
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Leave a comment | tags: cancel the family get-together, Christmas, Christmas nibbles, Obnoxious comments by drunken guests, resentful looks from the in-laws, Roast Turkey, The Inkling, volunteer at a soup kitchen | posted in Advice