just mercedes
Unregistered
A long way back, two sisters
coming home for a bunya nut ceremony
stopped to rest by a waterhole.
A baby was born.
The smell of blood woke
the snake who lived there.
This was his totem place.
He rose, and the plains flooded .
The sisters waited out the flood
on a rise. The snake reared up and
swallowed their camp: sisters, baby, and fire.
He swam back to the bottom of the
billabong, but fire burned inside him.
Bellowing with pain he fled, making a trail
that filled up, and became a river.
He spewed his stomach empty.
When the waters dried, the sisters
woke up, and set out again
with their baby, for their homeland.
https://flic.kr/p/3ciRAd
Posts: 1,215
Threads: 250
Joined: Nov 2015
A very nice story from an unfamiliar (to me) mythos. Perfectly clear before Googling, nonchalance of the women particularly impressive. Enriched by Googling - the Rainbow Snake, etc.. Tone and pacing are very good. Thanks for posting!
(07-20-2017, 05:27 PM)just mercedes Wrote: A long way back, two sisters
coming home for a bunya nut ceremony
stopped to rest by a waterhole.
A baby was born.
The smell of blood woke
the snake who lived there.
This was his totem place.
He rose, and the plains flooded .
The sisters waited out the flood
on a rise. The snake reared up and
swallowed their camp: sisters, baby, and fire.
He swam back to the bottom of the
billabong, but fire burned inside him.
Bellowing with pain he fled, making a trail
that filled up, and became a river.
He spewed his stomach empty.
When the waters dried, the sisters
woke up, and set out again
with their baby, for their homeland.
https://flic.kr/p/3ciRAd
Non-practicing atheist
just mercedes
Unregistered
Thanks for reading and comment! The Dreamtime of Australian aborigines has always fascinated me - the past that is in the present. They understood a lot about time and place, that we're just becoming aware of, I think.
Posts: 1,568
Threads: 317
Joined: Jun 2011
07-23-2017, 06:27 AM
(This post was last modified: 07-23-2017, 06:30 AM by Leanne.)
What works best for me is the matter-of-fact phrasing, "this happened". "A long way back" is a perfect campfire opening. They are not heroes, there's no real happy ending, it's not a story. This to me is the essence of the Dreaming. It is unapologetic and unembellished; if it is unbelievable, then it's not for you. I remember seeing this made into a short film clip once and I did a bit of googling to see if I could find it, but no luck -- on the way, though, I ran across a site that called the sisters "goddesses" of the Australian Aboriginal "mythos", and that made me perhaps unreasonably angry. Just another example of Europeans trying to dismiss another culture by trivialising it the same way they've trivialised the history of their own continent that doesn't suit their glorious image of benevolent bringers of civilisation and majesty to the primitive savages.
I'd say that a tradition and unbroken ancestry that stretches back around 50,000 years at least is a better sign of humanity working as a force of good in the world than a few thousand years of war, plague, pollution, famine and oligarchic avarice.
*Damn. The video was on Dust Echoes (ABC) as the Wagalak Sisters, but it's expired. The study guide is still there. That's a gorgeous site, if you haven't seen it before.
It could be worse
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I like how the poem ends. It's abrupt, seemingly pointless, and captures the spirit of dreaming stories, which are all mysterious like that.
~ I think I just quoted myself - Achebe
just mercedes
Unregistered
Leanne - thanks for that site. I didn't know it. I agree with you 100% about Europeans trivializing the aboriginal culture. I think it stems from a feeling of guilt.
Achebe - thank you. Yes, mysterious. It hints at time/place displacement, as does the legend of the coming of death, with its Yowee in the hollow tree, flying into the sky, and the two white cockatoos flapping hard to catch up. This becomes the Southern Cross and the pointer stars.
