It struck me last night, as I was driving to and from the local shop in the evening as the sun was going down, what a storybook place I live in. A country village with a population of around 700, settled on the banks of a river and nestled in a valley of rolling green hills where ‘agricultural industry’ means dairy cattle, beef cattle, and horses. Koalas in our back yards (truly, I kid you not), always surrounded by the beautiful birdsong of carolling magpies, butcherbirds and currawongs, and, at this time of year, the special sound of rainbirds. Kids still ride the streets on their pushbikes. We have a local hall, a teensy museum, a butcher, a take-away shop, and the General Store. You’re old-fashioned country general store, which is also the local post office, dvd rental, ‘newsagents’ (of a sort–well, they do sell newspapers and magazines) and all important grog-shop. (And one sole petrol pump.) Where everyone knows your name, where you go to get all the goss, and where, when we are all flooded in, we go to find out about what roads are opened or closed. Yet we are only 10 mins drive from a major regional centre in one direction and 10 mins drive from a charming country town in the other. And only 20 minutes to the local beaches.

And it is spring, and around my little dollshouse of a cottage the flowers are blooming:

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and the moon loves green-eyed people. So says Baudelaire…

This which I have posted before but am doing so again, because I am the Cancerian moon-child green-eyed pale-skinned ocean/clouds/silence lover who loves the full moon back…

THE MOON, who is caprice itself, looked through the window while you were sleeping in your cradle, and said to herself: ‘I like this child.’ And softly she descended her staircase of clouds and, noiselessly, passed through the window-panes. Then she stretched herself out over you with the supple tenderness of a mother, and laid down her colors on your face.

Ever since, the pupils of your eyes have remained green and your cheeks unusually pale. It was while contemplating this visitor that your eyes became so strangely enlarged; and she clasped your neck so tenderly that you have retained for ever the desire to weep. However, in the expansion of her joy, the Moon filled the whole room with phosphorescent vapour, like a luminous poison; and all the living light thought and said: ‘You shall suffer for ever the influence of my kiss. You shall be beautiful in my fashion. You shall love that which I love and that which loves me: water, clouds, silence and the night; the immense green sea; the formless and multiform streams; the place where you shall not be; the lover whom you shall not know; flowers of monstrous shape; perfumes that cause delirium; cats that shudder, swoon and curl up on pianos and groan like women, with a voice that is hoarse and gentle!

And you shall be loved by my lovers, courted by my courtiers. You shall be the queen of all men that have green eyes, whose necks also I have clasped in my nocturnal caresses; of those who love the sea, the sea that is immense, tumultuous and green, the formless and multiform streams, the place where they are not, the woman whom they do not know, sinister flowers that resemble the censers of a strange religion, perfumes that confound the will; and the savage and voluptuous animals which are the emblems of their dementia.

~ The Favours of the Moon by Charles Baudelaire – 1869

(I can’t help thinking it’s rather unfortunate that
Charles Baudelaire looks like a cranky old man…
“Hey! You kids! GET OFF MY LAWN!”)