Cataclysmic but slowly and not without joy

We were up to our necks in love. Well that's what it felt like to me as I danced across the kitchen and down the hallway while about a dozen people sang their hearts out in my lounge room. 

The idea was simple. I wanted to drink some and sing a little. Gemma had the bright idea of throwing a singing party at The Peach, so I did. 

The night was dark and stormy (I have always wanted to write that and mean it). Some guests arrived drenched and shivering, clutching a guitar under one arm and a six pack under the other. Some swanned in shaking out umbrellas holding bottles of wine and one or two appeared in the kitchen as though teleportation was possible.

The singing began slowly but the chorus swelled until we were delirious and not one person was silent in the house. We had three people with guitars, Spencer, P. Street and Jeremy Smith, Robert on the floor with a tambourine and a snare and enthusiastic singing from no less than one dozen people at any one time. We wandered recklessly through musical history and modes of good taste, anyone got a go, anyone from Samantha Fox, David Bowie and Robyn Hitchcock to The Pixies and even Counting Crows. No one was more surprised than me to realise that all of us, without exception, knew all the words to Mr Jones.

Someone started up a Neil Young song so Spencer grabbed his bag and tipped eight harmonicas onto the ground, testing them drunkenly one by one to find the right one, he emerged from the floor in the nick of time to perform a note perfect solo. Wild applause erupted from the kitchen where some were making mulled wine and others danced as they poured chips into bowls and piled baklava onto plates.

The weather, jetlag and tour dates kept us to a small and merry band. From time to time one of us would look up and around the room and get a little misty because while we were singing just for the hell of it we were also saying goodbye. At midnight I gave a toast to The Peach and all who have sailed in her because Grizelda and I are moving out, for good.

Mr Oddweird the landlord has gone and done it this time. He has defaulted on his mortgage and The Peach is being repossessed by the bank. I have lived in fear of the day we would be forced, by one disaster or another, to leave this house but when the day arrived I surprised myself. I don't really mind. 

When I first came to The Peach I'd been most thoroughly shredded by the tragic end of a long and dramatic relationship. I wasn't sure it was possible to feel worse than I did, perhaps not even possible to feel like I did and stay alive for a whole day at a time but I did. It hasn't always been easy here in The Peach but I have loved it, every difficult, horrible, euphoric moment of it since I first walked through the door carrying nothing but a game of boggle and a plastic bottle full of water. 

Its been almost seven years since I signed the lease and handed over all of my savings for bond and two weeks rent in advance. The cat and I were both astonished by the light and noise of what we call the city when we first moved in. The cat spent the first fortnight in my wardrobe refusing to come out for anything but to use the litter tray or take a small drink of water. Now the cat roams the house freely and I can sleep through just about anything.

Mr Oddweird has let me down as a landlord over the years. The water has been turned off three times because he didn't pay the bill, he took off with the inside front door handle four years ago and never brought it back. The back door has never had a lock on it and he failed entirely to make any repairs to the bathroom after the mirrored cabinet crashed to the ground and smashed about six years ago.  Last year he began renovating the flat underneath The Peach (which has been vacant the entire time I have lived here) by removing the floors, walls, kitchen and bathroom and digging large holes in the now dirt floor. But this time I suspect he has mostly failed himself.

It seems strange to me that I am almost looking forward to the move. I'm ready for a new adventure. Grizelda and I are headed just three suburbs away but around here that's like a whole new country. We'll be setting up shop in a beautiful little house with polished floorboards, a dishwasher in the kitchen and a neat little courtyard out the back where I can plant strawberries and herbs. Sylvia the cat and Grizelda's new pain in the arse kitten Oscar will be making the move with us as will Edith the gold fish and most of our stuff.

I've been giving away belongings, throwing things out, selling furniture I've carried with me from relationship to relationship. Junking all the built-up useless things and jettisoning the ballast. When I pack my bags and make my way to the new house I'll probably be carrying a few little heartaches and a head full of memories but I'm going to put my teapot in the cupboard anyway and see what happens next.

Happy fucking new year cocksuckers

I have developed a fondness for swearing, more so than I have ever felt before. I blame Deadwood for this. In an interesting side note I was wearing one of my mother's rings on Christmas day, the gold was dug out of the Black Hills of South Dakota, as was the gold in the necklace now laying on my desk. Both of these were gifts given to my mother by American friends a long time ago. I am sure they never dreamt the greatest joy they would bring to me is to stare at them while I watch Deadwood and yell "cocksucker!".

Oh yes, it is the new year. I can only report that I feel happy. That's right cocksuckers, I feel fucking happy. Spencer and I saw in the ticking of the clock on the Peach Deck with Gemma and one or two select friends. We wanted, I wanted and Spencer's wishes coincided, to have a quiet and drama-free evening doing anything or nothing as the notion took me within the friendly confines of these walls. Mission accomplished.

I am happy, a small part of me hopes you are happy too, the rest of me wants to joyously shout "cocksucker!" in your face and then fire a pistol into the air and gallop away on a horse.

A letter to Spencer in Leipzig, Germany

Dear Spencer,


There's been a Bensplosion round these parts since you've been gone. I'm not talking just one Ben but many. There are many Bens. I have spent time with at least one Ben a day for the last week. In my head I refer to them by their surnames so as not to become confused, like I do with Hunter, and Wilson, and Worrad. I suppose you've being seeing a lot of those folk lately, say hi to them for me.

Gemma has been texting me words like 'Benglorious, Benerific and Benutopia'. She said I have Bens on a revolving schedule but it's entirely unintentional.

A letter to Spencer in North-West France (you told them you'd be back)

Dear Spencer,

You know how pineapple is the king of all fruit? Well I mentioned that last night, in a conversation about artificial fruit scents whilst smelling a scratch'n'sniff sticker. Nobody understood what I meant. The sticker-giving woman thought I meant pineapple was my favourite fruit, Mr X was just puzzled but he leant over a little and said "I like pineapple, it's a good fruit." but quietly, like you might say to a child who got something wrong by mistake. He only said anything at all because he is a kind interlocutor. He is kind in a lot of ways. Today he came to The Peach and drove me and some boxes of magazines to a shop so I wouldn't have to carry them, but then he said he had to do laundry and went home. So you can see it was one of those real kindnesses and not the fake kind, which is actually a little disappointing.

How Slamma got her weird back

I got my weird back. For a little while there strange things happened to Grizelda while my days sailed smooth and boring. Grizelda was horrified, she thought we might have swapped, for good. Meanwhile back at The Peach I was like a painted ship, then yesterday happened.

It started on Facebook where I had a brief scare that maybe Alan Jones was the man behind the $1000 grant PAN magazine was awarded from the Awesome Foundation. I discovered, after some investigation, that The Horrible Mr Jones came on board after PAN received the grant, as one of ten trustees but I didn't learn that until today.

Cake-free and worried about Alan Jones* I headed out the Peach Gate onto the street but bumped head first into a neighbourhood friend of mine, who just happens to be Sam Cutler. Sam was talking about talking to Marianne Faithfull about his upcoming book then he offered me a chapter for the next issue of PAN. I said, "Well, if Marianne likes it then I'll take a look". Which was better than the real answer running around in my head that want a little something like this, "Holy fuck yes! WOOO".  Elegant, I know.

After Sam and I walked up the street just shooting the breeze I hopped on a bus and delivered the biggest bunch of flowers I could afford to my friend Robert at his office, because I felt like it. I can not afford a really big bunch of flowers but he didn't seem to mind.

Later in the evening after attending one of those overly hot and crowded exhibition openings at Gaffa Gallery I headed round the corner to Dymocks on George St. I was pleased to escape the gallery. It was loud as in the inside of a firing cannon and seemed to populated by people I am calling Arthouse Bikies. They were head to toe in shades of grey and faded blue denim. Bikie like patches sewn all over their jackets, there were top hats and walnut smoking pipes and various degrees of greasy lank locks. Seriously, there were hundreds of them.

I knew my friends Andrew P Street and A.H. Cayley** were hanging around at Dymocks. Well P Street was doing one of those 'in conversation with' things with Marieke Hardy about her new book "You'll Be Sorry When I'm Dead". Poor Marieke was sitting patiently behind a table signing books and being talked at by a man calling himself Edwina. 'Edwina' was sporting a balding bob and what appeared to a miniature safari dress two sizes too small. It seems to me that Ms Hardy is a patient and lovely woman.

I wound up with an invitation to dine with A.H.C, APS, Ms Hardy and her lovely publicist Kate. It was one of those restaurants that I can't afford to eat at. Seriously, I owe the A.H.C and the APS quite a bit of dinner money now. It was mildly delicious but hear this Gemma, not worth the money. The company more than made up for my horror at inadvertently spending so much on dinner. I believe I had what is called a lovely time despite feeling awkward for the poor waiter. I'm not sure how it happened but every time he arrived at our table someone was saying 'anus'.

One day later sitting here thinking about it all, inside my new haircut that makes me look like I'm five years old again, I've come to this conclusion. I've got my weird back. Grizelda, who does not enjoy unexpected events on a daily basis, is certainly glad.


* Alan Jones is the enemy of thinking, the enemy of the arts, the enemy of honest democracies and the enemy of me.
** Listen here APS and A.H.C - can we come to some kind agreement? Either you both have punctuation in your names or neither of you do. It is too hard for a fake intellectual like me to remember who does and who does not have a '.' in their name.

Spencer turned thirty and thought nothing of it

Spencer turned thirty on Saturday. It was about fucking time. He's been in his twenties the whole time I've known him, first he was twenty-one and then a whole year at every age until thirty. It's been a long ride.

Thirty is one of those reflective birthdays where you sit down and have a little think. The first things I thought about were how much he has annoyed me, which is a lot but probably not quite as much as I have annoyed him. Friendship is sometimes a two-way annoyer-annoyee contract. I was thinking about making some notes about the annoying times but that would be easy and a little glib. Then I thought about the moments of support through sorrow, betrayal or ridiculous romantic muddles with hideously inappropriate men. Spencer was there for all of them but that too would be easy.

What is more difficult are moments of friendship and understanding that drop like a mantle pinning you still for just a second while the world glides on your own gentle axis.

Last Saturday I had to read a short story in front of an audience. I did not want to. I was petrified. I was coerced into going through with the deed by a horde of people, Spencer being one of them. I had friends in the crowd, all of them lovely, but Spencer was the one I knew I would go to if I fucked it up royally, made an irredeemable fool of myself and needed someone to make a fast exit with. I shouldn't have been so afraid, writers do this kind of thing all the time, but I was because before that night I've always said no, let my fear guide my answer and just said no.

The reading went with no major hitches, no one was more surprised than me. My next move should have been the bar, but the crowd seemed impenetrable. They were planted wall-to-wall like cross-legged rocks, jagged and unable to be stepped upon. I gave up on the idea of a drink but Spencer went over the back of the armchair he was holed up on and picked his way to the bar.

He strode back towards me, triumphant over the cross-legged crowd, holding two open bottles of beer. I saw he was heading for some difficulty, climbing simultaneously between the red hanging wall partitions and over the back of a sofa. I stood up to help and fell into a five second ballet. He came up suddenly over the back of the sofa rising gracefully as an eagle, passing a bottle into my open hand then placing his empty hand on the top of my head for balance. While he was up there, tall as a rafter, I looked up at the travelling arc of him and realised we were mirroring the same grin, shining and elongated with one long unlit cigarette out of the corner of each of our mouths. I kept looking and grinning as the flat palm of his hand centred his descent and he came to rest feet first on the ground.

It seemed to me that everything was communicated in that five second arc over the back of an old sofa with full beer bottles and unlit cigarettes and stupid grins. It seemed to me like we'd sat for hours talking, me saying how much I had needed him there, him saying of course he was going to be there and that I did alright. Me saying that for years it was him turning his back and taking three tall steps up and onto a stage and that it seemed important somehow that just this once it was me doing the climbing. Him saying that I did it, and he knew all along that I could.

I don't suppose it sounds like much, five seconds of grinning and balancing in the quest for beer but just in that moment it was everything. To be wordlessly understood as the somersaulting mix of fear and relief left me giddy. To know absolutely that his open palm on the top of my head was guiding him safely back down no less than his presence was safely guiding me.

Spencer is one hell of a friend. So happy birthday to him.


note: 
       I actually received an overwhelming amount of encouraging advice and support about mastering my stage fright and reading my story. From a whole bunch of people like Gemnastics, Geoff Lemon, Anushka, Spencer, Vanessa Berry, Thomas G Watts, my mum and especially Tim Sinclair who came to my house and got all Geoffrey Rush on my Colin Firth arse but right now this is about Spencer.
       I am grateful to the people who came up to me afterwards and said they liked my story, especially the people who quoted lines of it back to me, that was odd but nice that you remembered some of my words. And to the woman in the red coat at The Duke thank you for coming up to me and saying you liked my story, days and days and days after the fact. That was kind of great.
       Oh and erm, thanks Pip Smith and Penguin Plays Rough for making me do it, giving me free drinks and then paying me money. I hid the money in my sock drawer.

This will be my year of deliberate misrepresentation, where there is livestock there is dead stock

There is an overwhelming desire to express without being understood. Every night as I lay cursing the dark for not being dark enough the same thought enters my head. I want to yell at people in French, or Latin or Estonian. I do not want my words to be understood, I want only the fact that I am speaking them with force and conviction to be conveyed.

I have not been saying what I mean. I have said 'yes' when I meant no, 'no' when I meant yes and 'that is fine' when I meant you are a bloody drongo and I think you just cracked the marble-filled jam jar I've been using for a heart. I haven't been lying on purpose, for most of last year I was remarkably honest until I hit November and performed an involuntary retreat into polite responses and expected conversation and then of course I picked up my own jam jar and smashed it into whatever I could find and the marbles got loose and rolled into my eye sockets and lodged under my tongue.

I spent the first hour of the new year lying drunk in a gutter in Chippendale listening to all the happy chatter happen around me. It wasn't a bad place to be, almost everyone was there, sitting, standing or lying in the road. I could have sat up and joined in the conversation but I found that I was comfortable with my hip on the road, my head on my handbag on the curb, content with my thoughts distinctly my own.

I have been philosophical about my insides. Last year I developed a grudging respect for the vast team of doctors assigned to examine my brain. I even formed a fondness for the young neurologist who delighted in hitting various parts of me with his tiny and delicate hammer. I grew used to the robotic hum of scanners and lying very still in that mechanical tube while nurses counted down the remaining seconds. I made good use of all my limbs, making long lists of things I wanted to do before my gross motor skills took an irreversible turn for the worse and investing in ramps became a priority. I started drumming, moved a piano into the library and impersonated Little Richard, I painted scores of terrible paintings and sketched every small object I could see. I walked everywhere, took up running until a tendon gave out and put a stop to the whole idea and I danced in houses, on streets, in bars, on my bed and I climbed no less than seven separate trees. When the official results came in and I was in fact given the mostly all clear I wasn't really surprised, despite the lists and the activities I had been unable to properly imagine a world where I couldn't walk or wave my arms about on a whim.

This year I have been reexamining my notes on bioethics from law school but they have been unable to explain how I could be so happy to swallow pills to play god but so distressed at the idea of the small life snuffing its own self out for no reason at all.

This year will be my year of deliberate interpersonal misrepresentation. If I meet you on the street I am going to tell you I like tomato juice and I am happy to be here. I am going to be impersonal and polite and offer vague and general descriptions of streetscapes and landscapes and a flat pack idea of being pleased to meet someone like you. I am not going to tell you how I feel. There will of course be exceptions, the people who already know what I'm about, people like Spencer and Gemma and the cast of usual suspects and the hard black letters of written words. I suppose I'm talking about acquaintances and strangers and the inevitable people at parties and gigs, I suppose this a broader affair.

Dear World,

Due to the behaviour of your chosen representatives I find I have no inclination to further our friendship. There is no room for new friends in here. My replacement marble-filled-jam-jar  heart has shattered and that was the final object I had saved for installing in the ticking part that should beat. These rattling disconsolate marbles now control my in-flight interaction system and they only steady into a gentle rolling flicker in the presence of genuine friends. I am neither hopeless nor depressed. I am simply drawing a line in your stupid sand. This will be your year of leaving me alone.

Regards
Dale R Slamma

Gemma's back online

And how I have missed her.

Typewriter vs submarine

There's a very good reason for my radio silence, I think. Lord knows I've pissed off approximately most people I know at one point or another by writing about them. I sometimes do it without a second thought for their good opinion of me because words have always been more important. Everybody knows words are how I make maps of myself. There has been the odd exception where I care a great deal and go to lengths to unruffle, apologise or explain but ordinarily the words will win every internal battle and come out some way or another which is why right now I'm feeling kind of strange.

I have an almost unstoppable urge to turn typewriter and clatter this thing out one black letter at a time only the thing that is stopping me is powerful. This is alien territory like a mountain range without ridges or satellite pictures of the wrong planet beamed straight into my GPS. Gemma tells me the thing is called respect and this disturbs me not a little because always in the back of my head is the idea that I have a great deal of respect for the people in my life but Gemma is usually right when it comes to matters of my brain.

It seems this automatic decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into. I'm going to dust off my imaginary submarine and take an ordinary plunge. I will navigate this situation, whatever it turns out to be, with my onboard human tools with no recourse to the atom splitting power of typing. There will be a calm echo bouncing off the shells of privacy and respect but don't misunderstand me, everything else I'm doing will be, as usual, subjected to my incessant reworking with pens.

 

I've lost that and now it's gone

Newtown can turn on you, offer one of those knife-edge shoulder blades poking out of the backs of things. I knew this but I don't think Newtown knew that I would turn on her. I saw Gemma today and she said she thought I'd been turning on Newtown for a while now, figured out the code while I slept by night.

He started out speaking words and those stupid proclamations people utter before they realise what the worst is and that it sometimes happens to you, it made more sense than I'd care to admit. He rotated a hung apple until the worm hole hit the light.

Return to Newtown

Any type of happiness will do, even the synthetic kind caused by Mexican stairwells and an old white car. The drum kit was a surprise. I'll admit it was the last thing I was expecting to see as the door opened and the light switched on but there it sat tom upon tom like it had always been purple and covered in polka dots.

I watched diners sip at wine while I emptied my bladder, I suppose they could have seen me, if they had looked up. This is only one of the hazards of Spencer's wonderful labyrinthine house.

Spencer was waiting for me on a public chair one whole block before the cafe where we had agreed to meet. He was giving me a heads up. Said there was an unfriendly patrolling the streets, that he tried to say hello to the unfriendly but that it hadn't really worked. That must be why everyone has taken to calling him the unfriendly.

We sat in the cafe anyway, to prove that we didn't care, drinking tea and hot chocolate. We read through a review of Spencer's latest gig. I took out my pen and gave the review a double tick. Well done Paul Smith from Drum Media, you got it just about right. I was thinking about St Kilda and my discomfort on discovering how easily I slipped into feeling at home. It frightened me to think that home could be where I decide it is and not here where I have always been, give or take a 100km or so.

I've been staying at The Hive where Gemma lives with her books and vegetables and dog. We drank and slept and wandered along the beach. I was in company with writers and the feeling was strange. Up here I operate solo like an undercover agent in a land of musicians. Gemma said it doesn't have to be like that, I can move to Melbourne and find myself surrounded by people who carry small books and many pens. We ate lunch in a laneway and drank cocktails by the river. I stood on one side of the tram stop watching Gemma on the opposite platfrom. I was headed for the airport, she was headed for home. I don't like those moments where loved ones slide in the oposite direction. I am not powerful enough to overcome the mechanical will of a tram. I'll find consolation in aeroplanes, email and three small photographs of Gemma wearing pink washing up gloves safe and happy in the heart of The Hive.

Dear Melbourne

I love you.

Drone and spike

I'm reviewing The Drones for Liveguide this weekend. I used to be excited about it but something has happened. Something very important has happened. My hair has ceased to cooperate with me. I used to scoff at women who worried more about their appearance than anything else but that was before my hair went psycho. I have half a mind to give myself my very first spray tan just to see if my orangeness will distract people from my hair.

My hair has betrayed me before. When I went to visit Gemma in Melbourne and one year at This Is Not Art. Both times I forgave my hair and blamed the unfamiliar water but not this time. Oh no. It is most definitely a full scale hair mutiny rendering me incapable of leaving the house without a hat. My hair might be laughing now but just wait til it sees the scissors.

I've been thinking about a man named Spike. He's the answer to the Who Am I question. I don't know him very well yet but he seems to have a beautiful way of thinking about things. He radiates simplicity. He seems open, uncomplicated and fair. He was telling me about how he found a band to drum with. He replied to advertisements and went along to auditions. He said most of the time he was just doing it for joy of meeting someone new and experiencing their music from the inside. He is joyful and kind and generous. He makes paint splattered shorts and a bandana seem like a good fashion decision. I have decided that if one day I am struck by a sudden bolt of magic and become a man that I would like to be just like Spike.

Three jobs, one woman, five kinds of toilet, a brief note on the goodness of Gemma and waiting for a bus

This week I have started three new jobs. They say that starting a new job is one of the most stressful things a person can endure, that and death and divorce and moving house. I have caught buses without being sure of just where exactly to press the dinger button and alight. I have risen earlier and earlier each day to drag combs through my hair and locate something respectable to wear. I have argued with my digestive system to avoid doing strange things in strange toilets. This week is wearing me down, erasing my sketch marks and shading to leave only the vaguest indicators of my own personal shape but I'm beginning to think of it as a kind of inevitable fated voayge. Call me Ishmael and locate Ahab, I need to have a word with him.

Job one was a job for one day and one day only, it was planned that way. I sat with my back to the ocean until I realised that the ocean was not just at my back but all around me. Jelly fish floated beneath my feet. If it was not the world's most inconvenient office to travel to I might have wished to work there like a lighthouse for a day or two longer. I performed a single task over and over until even my thoughts were stilled. I turned off my ipod and experienced the absence of sound, thought and reason.

Job two requires me to stand outside the Olympia Milkbar to catch a bus every morning, this is the one and only highlight of the job. The toilet is on the other side of the wall from my supervisor, I have learned the art of silent weeing. Cigarette breaks are not permitted, there is no soy milk for tea of coffee, the company mugs are made of plastic and the walls are all painted grey. I have to ask for work every three minutes. I am given a small and simple task, complete it half an hour before they expect me to then ask for something else to do. I am not convinced that they need me.

Job Three is not technically a job though I do have a deadline, an editor and a publishing date. It is an intermittent sort of thing where I email the editor something I might like to write about and then he goes through a mysterious process of deciding and organising. Ordinarily this is something I might imagine, like opening the wardrobe to find it suddenly a thriving fish tank or walking out the front door and ponies, tea pots and cup cakes instead of cars.

What I really want to talk about today is Gemma. If was The Captain of Giving Out Gold Stars then I would award 53 to Gemma. Gemma is the most articulate person I have ever met and I am strangely blessed with articulate friends. I could stay up til fifty three a.m. writing about Gemma and still not be able to explain her goodness, but still another day I might attempt it.

When this week is over, when I have pressed send late Sunday afternoon and my review is vanishing and reappearing somewhere else entirely, I will have time to sit and ponder with a tea cup or two. I will have time to sit on my chair on The Peach Deck under the mulberry tree and count silently along with my breathing while the cat sleeps curled as a question mark.

Improbable impromtu partakings

Gemma came to stay at The Peach so we made with the merry. The first night we saw Spencer play us some rock which was grand but the second night The Peach threw open its doors for an impromptu party of unreasonable excellence. Retro from The Hive made a special guest appearance for dinner which was super but perhaps the real star of The Peach was the frozen cocktail machine that was improbably produced out of thin air for our drinking pleasure. There is photographic evidence but it is inside The Spatula's camera.

At one point in the evening Gemma took an extensive photographic survey of The Peach Bathroom, this was before we sensibly decided that what Superman does in the shower, besides washing, is practice Elvis karate.

The impromptu party was wildly succesful. We took turns at singing songs using a cheese encyclopedia to supply alternative lyrics. Spencer played themes from 80's television shows on Superman's guitar, Gemma knew all the words. The police snuck down into The Cowboy's backyard and shone torches up at The Peach Deck. We weren't sure what they wanted so we just sat very still until Gemma jumped up and said hello. They wanted us to be quiet which is exciting, we've never been shut down by the police before.

This evening, reflecting on the weekend's events, I became so happy that I invented a new kind of dance.

Dear Melbourne

Please attend the launch of Sunblind by Geoff Lemon

Thursday 27th November at 7pm
The Dan O'Connell Hotel function room (the old back bar)
Corner of Princess and Canning streets, Carlton.

I have been reading and rereading this book and can't quite make out what I think of it, I'm taking this as a good sign.


Geoff Lemon is a known associate of The Hivesters. Gemma once described him as an 'increasingly attractive man', the more you stare at him the more attractive he becomes. I did intend to test that theory but was distracted by beating him at Balderdash. That's right, I beat Geoff Lemon at Balderdash, I am adding this to my list of triumphs.

I sail

It rains. The chimney catches air like a phantasm or a ship. I have this idea of weighing anchor and steaming south through wind and rain. I will drop anchor in the vacant block of land next door to The Hive. I am sure they have built something terrible on it by now but when I last walked out of Gemma's front door and crossed the road in search of cake there was nothing but a hole in the ground, three workers sitting on eskys and poorly erected cyclone fencing.

There is room there for The Peach, her deck, a garden and all who sail in her. Spencer will carry his things in boxes and sail onboard The Peach wearing his hat and a guitar. He will then establish himself in a flat in The Hive. My brother will lash ropes round his townhouse and be towed as Ron & Rita row down from the mountains. The Cowboy has attached twin diesel engines to his flat. Robert's house shimmers and slips coordinates with grace at warp speed. Superman will know where to come, he sees all from the Fortress of Solitude.

We are all here. A great fleet pushing south through haunted rain. I am standing on the bow of The Peach, eyes closed against the fierce salt spray.

By christ you should have seen us

Breaking news: Gemma is shutting down Gempires.

Gemma used to exist for me as the alphabet rearranged and the vague memory of a woman sitting behind a desk on a panel at TINA. I sat in that audience and heard her speak and thought "Blog? What is blog?".

I found Gempires about a year later just when my life got smashed with a hammer and as I read Gemma's words I thought I could do that and so I did. At first it was an involuntary exhalation, a daily reminder to keep breathing and then it changed and I used this space to make a map of my existence as proof, for myself, that I was real.

People started reading my blog, I don't know how, I suspect that the link on Gempires was the cause of it. My soy cheese tastes of vinegar, this is not related to Gempires. This blog used to be the result of things but now sometimes it is the cause. It is the reason that Gemma suggested we meet for a drink when she came to visit Sydney last year, it is the reason Gemma now exists for me as a whole and wondrous human. It is the reason I had phone sex with a man I'd never met, had no less than five separate strangers write to me and tell me that I should kill myself. It is the reason I met the excellent Superman, I have eaten my very own packet of Dale Biscuits, performed social experiments on myself, been stalked, had enormous fallings out with people and been recognised by strangers in the street. Once a woman had a blog that seemed almost entirely devoted to slagging off both Gemma and myself. To say that these results are unexpected would be an enormous understatement.

Gemma did warn me, she told me how my freedom in this space would shrink. She told me how people would overreact when I write about them, how people would assume the worst. She was right, my freedom here is diminished, Artboy saw to that, then Elliot, then almost everyone I know found their way here some way or another even Superman has misunderstood my meaning but here I am typing into white void with my hair wrapped in a towel and a cigarette burning in the ashtray, just like at the beginning. Right now this blog is not my reason to breathe but I need it still, could not manage without these unedited spontaneous words and for that Gemma I thank you.

Insensible

Superman was walking up and down the hallway with a raw egg in a small white bowl first thing this morning. He said "I've got this egg. Do you sometimes wish your surname was Wow?", I do so I nodded and turned left into the bathroom, Superman continued on his way down the hall, this is unrelated to my party.

At one point late on Saturday night I feared for the lives of everybody. Superman and Spencer had linked arms and were dancing in circles at an alarming velocity, jumping over furniture and narrowly missing Robert and his snare drum. Robert, Madam Squeeze and Boli were cranking out some kind of Freylekh on drum, accordion and clarinet. The Peach Deck was in danger of crashing to the ground killing everybody at once or at least horribly maiming people with large splintery bits of wood that poking right through their middles, that would teach them not to stamp their feet enthusiastically to Gypsy music whilst seated drunkenly on The Peach Deck. The stamping was repeated, the music ranged from the bizarre to the sublime but the deck and I survived.

I have never thrown a party by myself before, there has always been someone, a brother, a housemate or a partner. I anticipated that nobody would come, not just for me. I had planned in my mind how I would walk slowly from one end of The Peach Deck to the other packing away chairs and taking lanterns down from the trees. I would put away the clean glasses and plates and lock the front door. I would shower and turn on my electric blanket. I would wake in the morning diminished. I did not anticipate that every single person would turn up with a bottle under their arm and a smile on their face. I did not anticipate that sitting on a cushion on a milk crate under the curved branch of a mulberry tree I could look in any direction and see someone that I loved.

A party is a wondrous thing where it is appropriate to laugh or sing or dance or jump around for no reason and instead of staring at you weirdly people join in. I drew sharks and aeroplanes on the fridge with Ronita, I danced like pirate with Madam Squeeze, I offered round warm things that were thoughtfully provided by Rita, I showed everyone my library, my bedside table and my brand new chair, I talked and laughed and ran around waving my arms with glee.

I wanted to draw bricks in the gaps between the shoulders of my friends until I was fortress. I wanted to spin slowly in the centre of the deck until everyone I love blurred into lines of colour and it was all I could see. I didn't manage any spinning but I'm not sure that I needed to.

Retardedly exhausted

I'm sketching in hours with cigarettes and phone calls thinking about Gemma on her birthday and wishing I could pop in for a cup of tea with a surprise cake in a white box but Melbourne is nowhere near Sydney, I think this might be a design flaw.

I'm waiting for words or the space that words arrive in. Daily is difficult when you need to make room for words. I was glad this weekend for Superman's company with his easy way of letting me be unfiltered, tired and badly dressed. I was glad last night when Spencer and Madam Squeeze came to visit. We stuffed ourselves with Turkish food and I demonstrated my newly perfected Pirate Chicken Dance and my ability to play a G major scale slowly but just the way Superman taught me to on guitar.

Spencer sometimes talks about the geography of sound but now I'm thinking about the geography of self. We all sat in The Peach stuffing ourselves with Turkish food and listening to records like they were just invented. Superman put on God Gave Rock'n'Roll To You and it was ridiculous but we all knew the words. I sat on the floor with pide half way to my face singing God gave rock'n'roll to you, put it in the soul of everyone. We were all singing and it was good and ridiculous and if scribes were taking notes they would have called it cartography.

I'm retardedly exhausted and happy in a flopsy kind of way. I had a good weekend, those are small words, the answer to a Monday question. They should be bigger or interstellar or revealed in ancient bones because its a way of making maps when you have a good weekend.