Western Walkabout: Drifting Off
Richard Harris drifts away to share a conversation with an owl.
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When I was an infant, my Uncle Tom, who had just drunk most of a bottle of Captain Morgan’s finest Jamaica rum, dropped me on my head.
My Mother screamed at him and ran to pick me up – but, too late, something had been loosened in my head, a separation of the mind and the body.
As I grew up, I realized I had this unusual ability when relaxed to lift up out of my body and float away.
On one of those suffocatingly hot Perth summer days, I was lying in a hammock trying to get comfortable. There was no breeze – too early in the day for the Fremantle doctor, the sanity saving wind from the Indian Ocean.
I thought to myself, ‘How blessed am I to be alive and well and to live in this beautiful modern city, which is surely destined to be one of the world’s great metropolitan centres. Is there anywhere else I’d rather be? I think not.’
As these thoughts crossed my mind, I was looking up the trunk of a large pine tree when my shadow self slipped out of my body and floated up to the crown of the great pine. There I watched a somnolent white owl resting out the day, preparing for a night’s work.
In my shadow self, I’m able to communicate with most living creatures, particularly those of larger intelligence.
“Greetings, Lady Owl” I said.
The owl was thinking of something that tasted like a lemony apricot, and I realized she planned to dine on one of a family of mice who feasted on my windfall lemons.
“Fine feathers to you, good sir,” the owl replied. ‘May your down always be dry.’
“And you, lady, may your larder always be full of fat young mice and delicious frogs.”
“I’ll hoot to that,” the owl nodded.
I drifted on until I heard my neighbor, Bert, call my name.
Suddenly I was back in my hammock.
“There you are,” said Bert. “I thought you’d drifted off somewhere.”
