Draft for Creative Piece

A hushed gust of wind sweeps a fog of the rich, red soil across my feet. The glass that I had been sipping at
since midday, is coated with the glaring dust, clinging to its condensation. I yearn for its familiar tarting pierce,
though am met with nothing but the remnants of melted ice, a by-product of the unwavering and ferocious heat.
Amidst the scorching humidity, the discomfort and restlessness protruded by the glazing sun and its stark
indifference, I’ve found a haven beside my faithful red-gum tree, its flowing leaves and burly presence, shielding me
from the summer’s sear. To me, it’s us against the world. This world. A world to which I am alien. A nearby crow
screeches its ‘caw’. The crows were all I feared within this foreign landscape. Perhaps then, it is us against the world,
and its crows. I chuckle at this thought, as I record it in the trusty notebook that I had inherited from my mother.
Flickering through, an internal warmth caresses my emotions, as I observe the image s of our family, loosely pasted
between the worn, crumpled pages. My mother and I of course, and Feliks. I smile as I envision him in the garden
bed beside me, working away at the soil with his large hands and straw hat, speaking to the liriopes and daffodils
with such gentleness, you would assume they were his own blood. Though I myself, am not his blood, he loved me as
if I were, something which I reciprocated. Nie mogę bez niego żyć. I could not live without him. Without failure,
Feliks habitually burrows a smile from beneath the depths of my emotions, whether it’s surfaced by a day of joy or
suppressed by one of sorrow. His reluctance to embrace the ‘Australian way’, to learn English and integrate within
the culture was an element of Feliks that frustrated, though one that I internally admired, an intrinsic desperation to
retain a past life – something to which I could profusely relate. At his core, Feliks’ compassion and empathy
replenishes the emotional void excavated by my biological father, whose face, I had never laid eyes upon.

Tucking the notebook inside my pocket, I notice a smaller, crumpled paper, stowed away within its inner
linings. For days on end, I have disregarded it, though today, this parchment vocalises itself, as if discontent with my
incompetence in acknowledging its presence. Intrigued yet cautious, three unfamiliar faces return my dazed,
confused stare, the scrappy paper now staining my fingertips. Who are you? I clutch at the photograph, clinging on
as if I were to be stripped of it, a foreign and threatening object. Though it is surely innocent, possessing this feels
intrinsically criminal. Who are you? Why did my mother have this photograph, shielding it so precisely from the light
of day? The man afront smiles. The sun’s scorching heat catalyses an internal boiling of my emotions, frustrated over
questions that no one could possibly answer – or wish to answer. In a blitz of fury, I find myself tearing at the paper,
infuriated with every ounce of its existence and the added burden of confusion it bears. Panting out of the sheer
tension of anger and the fatigue of the now debilitating heat, I glare at the man’s smile, a patronisingly mocking
smile.

A torturous darting sensation suddenly pierces my head, as if an arrow had been speared directly into my skull. The
unbearable throbbing pain periodically thumps as I grimace to combat its malice. My thoughts begin to drift and fade
as I sense my grip upon consciousness relaxing. Above all, my instincts urge me to clutch at the glass, its cooling
sensation upon my skin, a stark contrast to the internal heat I now sense. Empty. I yearn for its quenching
satisfaction and relief to counter the void of thirst engulfing me. The world around me, the unfamiliar landscape, is
wiped clear of my sight as the crow screeches its ominous tune.

The throbbing sensation is a distant but ever-present burden, niggling the back of my mind. Dazed and only slightly
aware of my surroundings, my vision is tainted, though I am able to distinguish a larger, looming figure before me.
Observing the figure’s headwear, my instinctual reflexes cause me to think of Feliks, recalling his faithful straw hat,
the one that accompanied him over the course of countless garden endeavours. Yet, the hat appears unfamiliar. It is
not Feliks’ hat, but a hard-hat. A helmet. It is only as the figure smiles, that despite my blurred vision, I recognise.

“Peter, son”, a gentle, alien voice confirms my initial conclusion

I sense an overwhelming atmosphere of sombreness and notice his eyes fill with tears. As if paranormally on cue, my
eyes begin to wet. By this stage, I am gasping for breath, the desperation I sense mingling with the salinity of my
tears. Above all, the internal conflict of resentment, tenderness and sympathy amplifies the magnitude of the
throbbing within my head.

“I’m sorry”
The anger melts away at this, like the floating ice cubes in my favourite drink amidst the ferocious heat. I
unknowingly nod my head, fixed within a trance.

“Take care of yourself, son”. The man offers one last toothy smile and turns his back on me. I watch as he lumbers
away into the dark horizon, the eleven years of bitterness alongside him.

“Goodbye”, I muster, certain I will never see his face again, but content with the sense of closure at knowing.

Peter. Peter. A narrative, god-like voice awakens me to a state of dysfunction. My stomach lurches as I gasp for air,
jolting upright yet finding a large pair of hands supporting me. Feliks, of course. I know instantly, that the hellish heat
of the foreign land that I had come to love, had overcome me. Feliks guides my hand, raising a fresh glass of
lemonade to quell the dryness of my mouth. As he holds me and wipes the sweat from my forehead, I notice the
remnants of my preceding fury scattered beside me, somehow surviving the clutches of the summer breeze. I stare,
fixated, as a gust of wind suddenly engulfs the pieces, as if patiently waiting for me to notice before doing so. The
flakes of the aged, browned paper are gracefully displaced, the man standing afront returning my stare, his toothy
smile beaming ever-so brightly. I return my head such that it sits upon Feliks’ shoulder.

“Take care of yourself, son”, he gently reminds me, as I am met with the earthly scent of the soil that I have now
come to associate with him, my real father.

Statement of Intention

As part of my creative response, I have chosen to exploit the themes of family and in particular, exploring Peter’s
frustrations and contempt against his biological father. I achieved this by incorporating ideas from ‘One Photograph’,
whereby Peter finds the image in the poem within a notebook that he had inherited from his mother. I also utilised
ideas from ‘Summer in the Country’, touching upon Peter’s love of his new country, namely the red gum-tree that he
sits beneath within my piece and the one mentioned in the poem. I chose to adopt an untouched side of Peter’s
relationship with his biological father through the ‘vision’ that he has of him as he succumbs to heatstroke. Through
this, I wished to offer a different perception of one’s relationship with an estranged relative, targeting audience
members that perhaps have a long-lost family member.

I also incorporated family values as part of my response, expanding upon Peter and Feliks’ relationship as per ‘Feliks
Skryznecki’. I chose to perceive Feliks as a loving father figure for Peter, though highlighted the ‘culture clash’ that
occurred between them, something to which Peter mentions in his poems – particularly ‘Feliks Skryznecki’. As such, I
also targeted those that may relate, such as individuals with stepparents or guardians that are not their biological
parents. In particular, emphasis was placed upon the fact that although they may not be blood related and will
intrinsically have their differences, at the core of such relationships is the love and respect that they hold for one
another. One creative element that I heavily incorporated was regularly referring to minor symbols throughout my
piece. In particular, the cawing of the crows signified the ‘hellish’ landscape of the Australian outback and the fact
that although Peter grew to love it, there remained aspects of the land that he could not become accustomed to,
being a migrant. Hence, I also targeted migrants and how their experiences may be shared with those of Peter.
Another technical element that I interweaved was the idea that a fathers and father-figures are alike in their intrinsic
love of the child in their care, symbolised by the “take care of yourself, son” remarked by both Feliks and Peter’s
biological father.