Loo With A View
The best vistas can be seen sitting down
They tell us to beware of the light at the end of the tunnel for it might be a train, or the police, coming the other way. But this wasn’t a tunnel for it was square. And there was no light. It was pitch dark as my eyes adjusted from the bright sunshine outside.
I stood at the open door, puffing from the walk up along the cliff edge and noticed the rough door was rusted open. Or was it hooked back? It wouldn’t move. I didn’t care for there was no one nearby – only the other twenty a hundred yards away down the track, through the bush, on the spiritual retreat.
On a spiritual retreat and I was retreating further? Well, yes, I just needed my own space. I also needed a basic human function.
I expected a rotten stink but it was okay, as if Mother Earth had opened her armpits, showing she was a working girl … earthy, fecund, musty, not fragrant but not unpleasant.
I expected the buzz of a thousand flies but, as my eyes adjusted to the gloom, I saw why not – fly intruders were stuck to cobwebs. The struggling ones were kicking up dust that was everywhere – sprinkled on the few horizontal surfaces and quietly floating in the uncertain breeze.
An old woollen hat hung on a rusty nail, covered in an icing of cobwebs that’d stop it blowing off in any wind. And other trinkets of human visits, like quaint offerings to the gods. An earring. A couple of beer bottle tops. Two rusty keys hanging in mute impotence, a sacrifice to the God of Freedom – I hadn’t seen a lock in the last three days.
An orange and a blue jandal[1], both left ones, hanging at the back. Lots of rocks on the exposed dwangs[2] of the unlined, timber walls. As I blew on the rocks some shined a little. Aha, crystals. Something more utilitarian – an old dog collar, wrinkled with age, hanging there … a smile on the face of the God of Contradiction since dogs weren’t allowed in this 9,000-acre bushland, a sanctuary for native birds. There were no animals in New Zealand when humans arrived, so many birds had no need to fly.
The bench itself was faintly dusted but well used – shiny round the hole in it. I waved off a few spiders, dropped my jeans, turned and sat. Then looked up and gasped.
Through that rough, open door was a stride to the cliff edge and, past that, a breathtaking vista of green and green and green – every shade of that clean, clear colour. Huge trees, below, climbed a hill and that hill climbed another hill of trees and on and on into the distance, all cleft by a ragged ravine, like a row of bottoms, green and soft, with the central abyss disappearing into blackness.
Beyond the rotund, verdant hills and their splendid arboreal covering there rose a mountain, stark in contrast. As if sucked up by the pale blue sky, it was rugged, pointed and grey. Or purple? Mauve? It seemed to shimmer in and out of focus, a gigantic chameleon unsure what colour to take on as the rising sun sparkled in shards on its sharp flanks.
I forgot what I was there for and just stared, trying to absorb what I hadn’t seen while puffing up the path. I felt like I was the only human – the only human, apart from a few relaxing spiders – in this immense green, grey and blue vista. I was so small, so insignificant. Almost pointless. It was a relief not to matter.
I looked down and the only undusted object was a beer bottle with butts in the bottom. It seemed entirely appropriate to sit here, inhale a cigarette and the silent, solid significance before me. I could have sat, stared and smiled all day but, suddenly, felt conscious of time in this timeless euphoria.
I did my business, sprinkled it with sawdust from the bucket nearby and stood in the doorway, unwilling to move, till a voice called from below, “You finished?”
[1] Jandal is the New Zealand name for this footwear – Japanese sandal. In Australia they’re called thongs and, in the UK, flip flops.
[2] The horizontal 4” x 2” timber between the uprights in a wall, also called nogs and noggins.
This story is from My Whispering Teachers, a book of amazing (!!) short stories, available as a paperback or e-book.