Here are the quotations for this week (May 29th to
June 4th): 1. ...Morning
brought the penetrating chill of the Northern December, the layers of woodsmoke,
the dusty gray blue of the tamarisks, the domes of ruined tombs, and all the
smell of the white Northern plains … The South of pagodas and palm trees, the
over-populated Hindu South, was done with…
2. …The green growths in the sides of the ravines burned up
to broken wires and curled films of dead stuff; the hidden pools sank down and
caked over, keeping the last least footmark on their edges as if it had been
cast in iron; the juicy-stemmed creepers fell away from the trees they clung to
and died at their feet… and the moss peeled off the rocks … till they were as
bare and hot as the quivering blue boulders in the bed of the stream…
3. …It was a pitchy black night, as stifling as a June night can
be, and the loo, the red-hot wind from the westward, was booming among
the tinder-dry trees and pretending that the rain was on its heels. Now and
again a spot of almost boiling water would fall on the dust with the flop of a
frog, but all our weary world knew that was only pretence…
Ths sources of last week's extracts (May 22nd to
28th) are as follows:
1. (...now and then a hot wind, like
the loo of the Punjab, boomed out of the emptiness. A hard land, it
seemed to me...) This is from Something of Myself.
2. (...'he'd ridden, driven - what's
the word ? - conducted sheep for his father for thousands of miles on end,
months an' months at a time, alone with these black fellers...') This is
from "A Friend of the Family" in Debits and Credits.
3. (...he ran through the blue gums; he
ran through the spinifex; he ran till his front legs ached...) This is
from "The Sing-song of Old Man Kangaroo" in Just So Stories.
Good wishes to all, John
R
