SUNNY

PREAMBLE

Sunny has so many contexts from the cliche to the obscure. This is a small series following that trail from a certain face with a sunny disposition in a game of Rugby, sunny when it is not so, to the tribe of the sun. Read on….

The Face

Irritation increases at this person five metres away. The more I am forced to look, the more is visualised of his head in a large vice being re-shaped to something other than this face of Sunny disposition.

Fifteen minutes into the game and smiley faced opposition player has my number. Is as if he can make time his own plaything. Passes he has intercepted when I literally had my hands on the ball, but didn’t. Two tries he ran in from my apparent underestimation.

Back to the centre line face off, the sunny smile, the happy face look of someone who can only think good things about the World. It is not a smug face, it is not a leering F#%k you face, just happy happy happy. He looks around the field, the sky, eyes settle on frustrated poor sod me. “Hey, not so gloomy man, next time eh? You never know your luck, intercept pass and try could be yours. Eyes and brain engaged ok? Biggest sunniest smile.

Next ball out, he is about to receive it, but is laid out in a bone crunching tackle from me before he has it. I had him lined up for it even before the ball came out. I am happy, not smiling, but sneering and leering until I hear the refs whistle, have a yellow card brandished in my face and sin binned 10 minutes for a tackle when the opposition didn’t have possession. My Captain no such sunny disposition. Penalty awarded. Goal kicked. Sunny disposition jogs past the sin bin, announces that he is disappointed that he won’t see my face for a while, with that sunny time smile.

You can’t beat a sunny disposition!

Twinkle

One fine Sunny day and dismal it is. Looking up, stark relief of shadows casts ugly edges to the 1st floor or what is left of it, the hanging by a single reinforcing steel bar concrete slab now tilted in favour of gravity winning. If I still had a car, it would fit nicely within the blasted wall cavity. It used to host the family for a lazy Sunday morning breakfast, looking past the potted trellis tomatoes and cucumbers to the vista that was Homs in Syria before 2012.

Now it hosts the toxic dust of pulverised concrete and brick. The sunlight picks up the dull glint of dust as a small breath of wind moves through, and settles it does at ground level to be stirred up and breathed in by those of us who chose to stay.

Bits of trellis still hang, somehow something green is twining its way to the now blue sunny sky, not to be touched by human hands as existence is now down below. Nothing left to climb upwards. Jagged steel and timber stumps the only reminder of the staircase to above.

The last two years, still every day grey with thoughts back to the days of vicious steel shelled unrelenting assault. Explosive percussion’s drilling into the soul, searching to destroy my hearing, to jello the braincells, kill, maim and pulverise without humanity, without God. Now there is no God. Humanity is up to the individual to scramble, scratch and search for alone in the dust and unrecognisable rubble of what was home.

Guilt drives me to stay alive. The gone, lost and family dead demand this of me.

That day, already six years into the attrition, sporadic power and water supply unreliable. Doing the water run two kilometres away. Rumbling like angry gods above and below. Louder, smoke puff, shrieking, air being vaporised from the ears, overhead rain of death towards the heart of my neighbourhood. Angry Gods erupted from the ground, the air, a storm of death dust coming my way. Cower I did on the floor of the car. Hours or was it minutes? Now cannot recall.

Now there is just me. Stay I do. Home is where the heart is, even if there is the blackest hole instead.

I drag the brick molds over to newly pulverised brick and concrete pile. Momentarily reflect on the muscle laden forearms honed from swinging the demolition hammer, brick making and laying making me the fittest I have ever been. Cry I do at the circumstances that made me so.

I had thought tears would run out at some stage, but no.

Dry mix brick, concrete and the all pervasive scooped up dust. Stored puddle water added to the mix, stirred in and left to harden. Ground floor almost done, weatherproof I now am.

I stand, stretch and glance upwards to that bit of green life above. What is that? Red in the green? Cannot be a tomato? The sun reflects off the gloss, a twinkle, but enough to confirm.

Tomorrow? Hopefully another Sunny day to develop mountain climbing skills and claim that tomato for the humanity of the gone, lost and dead, to briefly taste the sweet life of before, to be able to look forward to the twinkles of more Sunny days.

…and a Good DJ

The Best Boom and Beat Box in town is happening at the Belvoir Ampitheatre with BreakFest. Fave venue of almost all time. Mid Summer, crystal clear, light sea breeze. Siesta was good after watching Day 1 of the Boxing Day Cricket Test. The food even better – left over Spaghetti Bolognase from the night before. Just the required substance for some heavy duty calorie burning later.

Car fueled, 40 minute drive away from late afternoon Sun towards the Hills. Beats favourite Mix on, volume up and the journey starts. Ending in a Farm paddock. Park Car, walk up a slow and low hill to Entry Gates, small queue, through the gate.

All the way up the hill, ground vibration increasing through the Slipper soles. Like the ghost of long gone earthquake tremors, a ghost that insists more on being noticed though. This ghost swaying and moving it’s way to reality.

The flattened paddock grass absorbs the relentless push of sound waves up and out of the great Belvoir Pit.

A rising steam cloud as if from an invisible Geyser hole jettisoned spaceward. Smoke signals chanting “come here into the bosom of the Pit of delight”, repeated again and again. Hypnotising it is, smoke signals, rhythmic sounds, aromas and vibrations gaining strength. Walk to the Pit rim, and see the steam source. Ten thousand humans all swaying, moving, many belting out perfectly synced vocals to what is loudly coming from the stage.

Dance Pit down the twenty metres descent. Is partly shrouded in a fog of vaporised sweat blended with purple haze and aroma of ‘erb’.

Am prepping for the long descent to Terrace 2 behind the Mixer dead centre back of Dance Pit. Don’t know why, but every year there has always been about 1 metre square clear spot for me as if the Music Gods reserve it for me. I make it, all the while just absorbing the vibe. Really late afternoon sun, dripping an increasing red smudge along the sundown horizon. This wash of aromas, wall of sound, bodies everywhere just moving and swaying and overwhelming happiness that could almost open up a tear duct.

Sun just setting back of stage of the great Terraced Pit of the Belvoir Ampitheatre. Truly something – big dance pit directly in front of stage. The Mixer sits at Terrace 1 of the many other terraces leading up a very steep incline to the farm paddock and gates above.

The ‘Pit’ at stage front, full with the devout in their hundreds, faces Sun glistened and glossed from too many hours facing that general direction. Sun glints off many nude shoulders. A serious pair of sunglasses had to be worn late afternoon to early night. Relentless this late Sun still was, backed by deepening blue sky .

Now full frontal, pulsing deep regular body vibrations of Bass and Drums cannot be ignored, latches onto the brain receptors, waking endorphins to start the body swaying and moving, legs tuning up towards dance auto mode.

Swivel from Stage view towards the terraces. Take my time, just let all senses take it in. No matter where the view, up and down or along – everyone swaying and moving, some frenetically with just enough clothing on, none the same but almost, faces focused on one thing – what is coming from the stage.

Nothing else matters. Smiling, many are. Friends are there next to many, occasional glances, smiles, maybe a bit of hip bump. Swivel they do back towards the stage, the spectacle of the heaving sweaty Pit and the slightly less sweaty, but still heaving, swaying and moving crowd on the terraces.

It is not a hard thing, this swaying, moving and happiness. Combine the feeling of that with the terraced tribe of thousands swaying and moving to these deep Base vibrations, and life is truly beautiful. In unison ‘shout-out to on-stage “A Skillz and Krafty Kuts“, “…..the simple things in life like a beautiful Sunny day and a good DJ”!! It felt as if the whole Planet could hear and feel that shout-out.

Body and mind tuned in, feet thumping to the beats, the relentless timed growl down to the bottom of tricked up synth, loops at play, just a bit of scratch of the decks to twitch the hips, all the while fingers, arms, head, knees all working independently but in serene time with each other. Sound and beats rolls on. Gyrating, roaring and happiness as well, seamlessly until the last beat well after the Sun has decided to glow somewhere else on Planet Earth..

Tribe of the “Sunny Day and a good DJ” we are, as one. A strong Tribe – Delivered we are from the Sins of 364 days before. Collectively cleansed we are – mind, body and soul. Reset in anticipation of 364 days in the future for the annual gathering of the Tribe.

SUNNY Playlist below. Not all Calorie Burning, but is something for everyone to take out, savour or cry over.

Big Sunny Love to you all.