Hello fellow pawns,
In the process of trying to cobble together my Yuendumu story (which incidentally is tentatively titled ‘Resilience’) I’ve once again pondered the nature of memories and the associated pitfalls.
My father’s anecdotes which I wrote up more than a decade ago had the following footnote:
G.M.Edelman in “The Remembered Present: A Biological Theory of Consciousness”(1989) wrote:
“Every act of perception, is to some degree an act of creation, and every act of memory is to some degree an act of imagination”
Thus I remembered the fairy tale of the Prince who rescued the Princess and as a reward asked the King for a grain of wheat on the first square of a chess board, two grains on the second square, four grains on the third square, eight grains on the fourth square….” anyway you know the rest.
In this instance the Princess turns out to be an act of imagination, borrowed from another story altogether.
Thanks to that time trap known as Google (the erroneous spelling of ‘googel’, a very large number) I can now save you the trouble of adding it all up- the chess board will have 18,446,744,073,709,551,615 grains of wheat weighing approximately 1.2 trillion metric tons (in continental Europe they use full stops, in Australia we use commas. Why? Possibly for the same reason as our water runs out of the bath in the opposite direction).
This is more than half a century of Australia’s total wheat production.
So all of a sudden those of us who thought we would never have to consciously use mathematics ever again are bombarded with “flattening the curve”, the threat of the exponential spread of the virus, logarithmic axis on graphs, and the time lapsed between doubling of infections.
I remember Dr. Julius Sumner Miller on TV explaining nuclear chain reactions by having a room full of ping pong ball armed mouse traps. Throw in a single ball and all hell broke loose. Not unlike the arrival of the First Fleet in Botany Bay in 1788, or the return of the Ruby Princess to our shores in 2020.
So how is Yuendumu coping? Heaven forbid that our ping pong balls take off.
There are strange things happening every day (Str. Rosetta Tharpe)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-88l-M0KgkI
Let me digress and tell you a Jukurrpa story (apologies to the Traditional Owners of this story for any errors and liberties taken):
Around Ngalikirlangu the Wardilyka (BushTurkey) collected lots of yakajirri (bush tomatoes) and made them into round flat cakes called pirdijirri. The Turkey hoarded a large quantity of the cakes. She was the Gina Rinehart of Central Australia.
During the Turkey’s absence, the Yankirri (Emu), rummaging through the Turkey’s camp discovered a huge hidden hoard of cakes. This made the Emu very angry “That Turkey she has only two chicks and I have a clutch of children to feed!” The Emu kicked and broke the cakes and scattered them all around. When the Turkey returned and saw what had happened she was very upset and flew away, never to return.
At Ngalikirlangu there is an outcrop of granite and scattered around its base there are many dark brown granite boulders. But we know the granite hill and scattered boulders were, are and always will be, a Yankirri and lots of smashed pirdijirri, and a cautionary tale against hoarding.
Warlpiri people are not natural hoarders. Our shop shelves are well stocked. We did not need a Prime Minister admonishing us on television like so many naughty children: “Stop it! Just don’t do it!”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pei0qERW5b4
to prevent Yuendumu people from panic buying toilet rolls. They’re still available on our shop shelves.
As for the police being out in force to ensure we don’t do the wrong thing, that we behave ourselves and do what we’re told, so what has changed here?
Nah, as long as our ping pong balls stay resting on the mouse traps, Yuendumu is probably one of the safest places to be at the moment.
Shalom
Frank
PS- So have those people whose houses were burnt down a few months ago suddenly miraculously found shelter in which to self isolate?
All they talk about is the medical and economic crises. Are we all supposed to conveniently forget the bushfire victims, coral bleaching, climate change, offshore-detention, Syrian refugees, the bombing of Yemen, the Mexican wall, Guantanamo Bay, the Weegas, the pork barrels …. I just realised I could go on forever.
Lest we forget.
Tom Rush- Remember Song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yN-6PbqAPM
And as per usual a non-sequitur nice bit of music to finish with- Pajaro Chogui from Paraguay
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nf9ksMrSDy0
What the hell as we sit in self-isolation, one more: Pajaro Campana:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UhE4ouXjRg
In case you didn’t know Pajaro is Spanish for bird.