An absolutely ordinary pelican

My last two blogs have been about one-off encounters (with a pineapple tin and an echidna) that inspired stories. They inspired writing because they were—at the time—unusual and memorable. Really, however, all of life is unusual. It’s just that we get so used to some of it that we don’t think about it much. We think it’s ordinary.

My poem titled “The Pelican”, which I posted on Facebook, and here on Blogspot earlier this month (as my poem of the month) was an example of a piece of writing based on something ordinary. Ordinary for me, I mean. That’s because, in the coastal area where I live, pelicans are common. On most days, I see them sailing across the sky, large yet graceful—masters of the wind. They glide with imperceptible adjustments of their flight feathers; they’re the largest birds in the sky, larger even than the sea eagles.

But when you see them close up on land, it’s another story. Their largeness is accentuated. The Australian Pelican (Pelecanus conspicillatus) is the largest of the world’s seven species of pelican. Its plumage is undeniable handsome, a smart mix of black and white, giving it the appearance of a bird dressed in the top half of a tuxedo; yet it also looks ungainly and comical, and that—on land—is its downfall. With its fat stomach and enormous pouched bill, it is extremely difficult to take a pelican seriously. On the beach, people routinely laugh at them. Pelicans don’t strut majestically (like herons do, for example); they waddle. Their stomachs and bill seem to constantly get in the way. On land, pelicans are more like clowns or buffoons.

Thus you have the two extremes of pelicans: the sheer enchantment of their flight compared with what seems likes gross tomfoolery when they land. For the poet, it’s inspiration served up fresh on a plate. It’s all there, just waiting to be written down.

But, of course, the poet has to notice it.

One day I noticed it enough to write the poem that became “The Pelican”. Thus a bird which was an everyday sight, became something special to me in words. I chose to write three stanzas about the pelican on land (the butt of jokes, the misunderstood buffoon). But then I turned the poem and wrote a fourth stanza about the pelican’s utter transformation in the sky. I had grown to love the pelican over the years; that’s why I wanted to make the majesty of its flight the climax of the poem. Its behaviour on land was no more than a tongue-in-cheek joke in view of what the pelican routinely becomes when it takes to the air. 

The constant challenge for a poet is to notice things, and not just new things, but old, everyday things as well. I’m not any better at this than most people, I have to prod myself. I have to remind myself to purposefully see the things I look at every day. Even then, a poem has barely begun. I still have to allow the words to play in my head and become music (for that is what poetry is). But, in seeing, I have at least begun.


                        THE PELICAN

                        The pelican struts, and he gawks at the air

                        with a bill that’s too large for his head,
                        and he gobbles and gulps, turning here and then there,
                        just as if he had never been fed.

                        Then he turns on a show for the people that come
                        (just to watch how he swallows his food)
                        and he waddles around till the people become
                        quite amused at his merry old mood.

                        How they laugh at this slow and preposterous bird
                        and they smile at his stomach so large,
                        then they say to themselves, “For a bird, he’s absurd,
                        with a belly as big as a barge!”

                        But then in a moment, the bird is all changed,
                        his wings are outstretched by his sides,
                        and up in the air he seems all rearranged
                        as he swiftly and gracefully glides.

                       Poem © Peter Friend. First published by the NSW Dept of Educ. The School Magazine Aug 2011

The echidna that wouldn't budge

The short story that became the cover story of the magazine pictured (above) almost wrote itself. Not really, of course, but that’s how it felt, and that’s why I’m telling you about it. It was a fictional story based on a real-life encounter with one of Australia’s oddest mammals, the echidna—and it taught me both about echidnas and about writing stories.

At the time, we were visiting my parents’ farm in rough, hilly bushland a few hours west of Sydney. We knew echidnas were around because we had often seen the gashes they left in the large ants’ nests and termite mounds. But we had rarely ever spotted one in real life because they preferred night-time and they kept to themselves. It was often years between sightings, and even then it was usually just a momentary glimpse on a far-off hillside.

And then one day, an echidna just wandered onto the dirt track we were driving slowly along in broad daylight. We shouted out in delight. The echidna spotted us as we spotted it, and it immediately did something which echidnas naturally do when startled at close quarters. Seeing nowhere to flee, it sank. With a flurry of movement and a churning of its heavy spade-like limbs, it dug itself straight down into the ground several centimetres. Its limbs and head disappeared. All that remained was its large arching back, bristling with spines.

And there it remained. It wouldn’t budge. By now, we had stopped the car, and were crowding around it. We had never been this close to an echidna before, not even at a zoo. With hushed voices, we took photos at close range. We softly ran our fingers along its thick spines. The echidna just stayed there, probably wondering who on earth we were.

But the key point—and the one that would later become the climax of my short story—was that I saw, for the first time ever, that an echidna was a real-life breathing mammal. From a distance, all you see are the spikes. But when you are right there, literally on top of it (as we were), you see that the spines are interspersed with soft, brown fur, and through the spines you see the echidna’s body gently moving as it breathes in and out.

It wasn’t too hard to turn this encounter into a fictional story. I made up a couple of human characters: a boy from the city visiting his cousin on an Australian farm; they ended up running after an echidna which came to a stop and half buried itself, just as our one had done. They too were amazed at the reality of the furry, breathing mammal under the spines. It was a moment of discovery for them, just as it was for us. Later, once I had written and submitted the story, the editors of The School Magazine very kindly made it the cover story of their Blast Off magazine, with some great illustrations by Peter Sheehan. To me, it was a prime example of just getting out into nature, encountering something wild, and then reimagining it as a story. That’s why I still try to get out into the wild when I can.

Poem of the month - January 2015

The story that popped from a pineapple tin

This is the tale of a wacky idea for a kids’ story. It was an idea that seemed to pop out of nowhere. Actually (to be precise) it was an idea that popped out of a pineapple tin.

You see, one day I was at home, trying really hard to write a new kids’ story. But I couldn’t think of one new good idea. It was extremely depressing. No matter how hard I tried to make a new idea come into my head, it just wouldn’t. I fidgeted, I squirmed at my desk, I looked out the window in case an idea was just flying by (sometimes that works). But … nothing. Finally, I got up from my chair and began wandering sadly around the house. There was nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing.

I wandered into the kitchen, and then I saw it … a pineapple tin with a rip-pull lid sitting on the kitchen bench. It was an ordinary-looking pineapple tin. It was sitting there because we were going to make ham-and-pineapple pizzas later in the week.

But it got me suddenly thinking. What if? ...What if? And then I had my idea (because my mind works in funny ways). What if I opened up the tin and there weren’t any pineapple pieces in there? What if—instead—there were two tiny aliens in silver space suits.

Then it all came in a rush. I had my story idea. It was about a little girl making pizza with her mum, who opened up a tin of pineapple (with its rip-pull lid) and found two tiny aliens in shiny silver space suits who were extremely grateful to get out. (Apparently the aliens had crashed their tiny spaceship into a pineapple factory on Earth, and had been accidentally canned by mistake.) The end of the story would be about how the girl figured out a way to get the aliens back to the pineapple factory so they could find their spaceship. Wow. I hadn’t been expecting that story to suddenly pop into my head.

I ended up calling the story “Pizza, Special Delivery”. It was about 1800 words long. I typed it all up, and I sent it to the editor of a kids’ magazine (called The School Magazine). The editor emailed me back (I’ve still got the email). She said, “I just read this story and it’s delightful … I must say you have a real knack at making the incredible credible; keep 'em coming,” which I thought was very nice, although I knew that, actually, it was all because of the pineapple tin on the kitchen bench.

I often think of that pineapple tin. For me, it showed that story ideas can come from the oddest places. You just have to look at things with new eyes.