I returned from the wedding triumphant. That had a lot to do with Spencer, Grizelda, my family and a few more friends like Ron and Robert and Mr X, and the usual list of suspects.
You see, about a year ago my brother decided to get married. Some time after that he decided to get married in a park, the same park where I was attacked by a man some years ago. The park is located in the town where I used to live with Artboy.
I haven't really been back there, not since I came crawling into The Peach.
I wanted to attend the wedding I just didn't want to go back to that town or that park or that region. I didn't even want to think about it. Spencer and Grizelda both received invitations so we stuffed ourselves into Grizelda's tiny red car and drove and drove and drove.
I packed brandy for the journey. Brandy and painkillers for my broken foot. By the time we narrowed in our trajectory we were one sheet to the wind. Arriving at the park, grass by a lagoon really, the first thing I noticed was the exact spot I crawled away in the mud, undercover of darkness, when I made my getaway all those years ago. The second thing I noticed was the white cat fur on my black dress left there surreptitiously by Oscar the kitten. I decided to focus on the dress.
I saw my brother arrive in a car full of men wearing tuxedos. A familiar sight thanks to his years of playing in big bands. And then my parents and then the ceremony and then nothing but acres of goodwill.
Spencer and I were drunk and chatty with relatives and friends alike. My parents kept ageing and beaming then tearing up and doing it all over again. I performed one good deed. There was the bridal waltz, and her parents walking up to join in, and my father with his wife and there over at a table sat my mother by herself. Her partner nowhere to be seen, I think she was photographing something. I stood a little uncertainly because of the wine and my broken foot but I made to over to her table and held out my hand. I lead my mother to the dance floor. She said "I'm not sure how to do this". "It doesn't matter", I replied. And so we waltzed on that roomy floor in between the tuxedo-clad big band and the hundreds of pair of eyes.
Afterwards my aunts and uncles came surreptitiously one by one to tell me what a good thing I had done asking my mother to dance. I did not disagree with them but I looked at them a little beadily. Its been some time since a relative thought highly of me. I thought for a moment of my dead grandfather and wondered.
After my brother took his new wife away in a car Spencer and I stole all the wine we could and started drinking while Grizelda worked at driving the car. The turn off to my old house came up ahead of us. I felt uneasy but shouted at the very last second 'turn here I want to see the house'.
Grizelda found the old house easily and brought her small car to a stop across the road from it. The new people had ripped out the old weeping cherry tree and chopped down the jacaranda. There was a white metal letterbox in place of the crazy old wooden one my father bought from a man who carved things with a chainsaw.
I remembered the last time I was there. Half mad and convinced I was being followed by a cube of sorrow. This time I was not alone. We got out of the car and crossed the road. Spencer and Grizelda held back but I walked on my broken foot, all dressed up and drunk. I walked right up the driveway smoking a cigarette and taking huge swigs from a stolen bottle of wine.
Memories that house seemed like a huge shadow falling over everything I do. I stared at the front door and waited for something to hit me until something did. I don't need this anymore. I ground out my cigarette on the red brick driveway, shrugged at the idea of Artboy and walked on back to the car.
Half way home Spencer said "You did good tonight". And I thought yeah, I did.
We sang and drank and laughed our way back towards the city. The street lights started growing on every corner and maybe a plane roared overhead or if it didn't it could have. People were walking everywhere on the streets and there was life more than darkness and the big solid feeling of coming home.
Thanks for listening.
That's a full lid.
Showing posts with label Slammas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Slammas. Show all posts
Shelter
Nothing else feels weatherproof around here. I don't ordinarily have a car so I walk through wind or sun or rain to work and back again. The Peach sighs and breathes while rain breaches roof and windows and cracks in the walls. Even my office is ancient and allows fingers of air under doorways and window sills. But not this car.
This car belongs to my father and like all his possessions has art in its design. My neighbour thought I'd won the lottery when I parked it outside his house. It is large and sleek and every convenience has been thought of but best of all is how it feels to shut the door and turn the key in the ignition. All weekend I have had this car and the accompanying possibility of going anywhere at any moment without physical effort or even the need for shoes.
I opted for practicality and drove myself to the supermarket and then home again with two bags full of heavy cans. I made a long list of places I might like to drive. I thought a little and crossed them out one by one. I didn't really have anywhere to go.
I didn't really have anywhere to go until today. I drove to work, there was nowhere to park. I intended to circle the block and try a different backstreet when I seemed to suddenly arrive on the roof of a supermarket three suburbs away. It was fifteen minutes before I was due at the office. I could have made it to work, maybe even been on time but instead I picked up my phone and said I was feeling sick.
The wind buffeted the car and there I sat with my eyes closed while the car rocked and the clear light stayed steady. After I'd been motionless and without thought in the back seat for half an hour I started to realise something was probably wrong. I felt fine, motionless and empty-headed but fine yet not quite right either. Why was I here? When did I make the decision to drive here? Why did I call in sick for work at the last possible moment when I woke myself sneezing five hours ago? And the larger more important question of what the fuck was I doing sitting motionless in a car on top of a supermarket half an hour after I figured it probably wasn't a normal thing to be doing?
I need to be at the airport to meet my father tomorrow afternoon when he flies back into town. He'll drop me at The Peach and then drive four hours home. After that I suppose I'll be back to normal, shoving tea towels in cracks in the walls to keep the wind out and life limited to walking distance.
A new kind of sponge
I can't stop listening. From the moment I leave the house in the morning until I come home in the afternoon, and sometimes again after that in the evening. It's not music. I've gone off music. These are words. Podcasts and audiobooks. Interviews and recordings of long dead poets, children's books, even American radio programs, anything I can get my hands on.
I think I've become a new kind of sponge. I haven't been this excited about anything since I learned to read my own bedtime story, all by myself, and spent the next ten years reading every book* in the house, even the dictionaries. I remember my mother looking horrified when she came in to tell me to turn off the light and there I was, propped up in bed, reading my Junior Macquarie Dictionary like it was a story. She asked me what I was doing and I replied "reading the dictionary". She left it at that and didn't mention it again until years later, when she used it as an example of my excessive reading habits. I think this is a good example of my mother's storytelling habits. Maybe I'll make a podcast about it...
*It might have taken longer to read all the books in the house, there were so many and new ones kept appearing all the time.
Some call it the Emerald City
My brother sat perched on a bar stool peering out the window at people scurrying around in Surry Hills. He kept exclaiming, "Look at all the people! All those people going places! Look at that guy, and that guy, look at them over there!" like he couldn't believe the volume and variety of humanity of going about its business.
I used to exclaim like that when I first moved to the city, even sit for hours making notes. I couldn't believe my eyes. It felt so strange to see so many people moving about all around me after decades of knowing three streets away from wherever I was there was nothing but distance, mountains and sky. You could walk out the front door of my old house and walk for hours without arriving anywhere at all.
The city feels like a dreamscape sometimes and I still want to exclaim but I'm more likely to close my eyes and see if I can feel it, as well as see it. I'm still waiting to wake up back in the old town and realise I've had the most amazing dream.
I used to exclaim like that when I first moved to the city, even sit for hours making notes. I couldn't believe my eyes. It felt so strange to see so many people moving about all around me after decades of knowing three streets away from wherever I was there was nothing but distance, mountains and sky. You could walk out the front door of my old house and walk for hours without arriving anywhere at all.
The city feels like a dreamscape sometimes and I still want to exclaim but I'm more likely to close my eyes and see if I can feel it, as well as see it. I'm still waiting to wake up back in the old town and realise I've had the most amazing dream.
You are boring
Work - challenging (in an odd but not bad way)
Home - peaceful (and mildly clean)
Friends - all fine (unless they are pretending)
Family - no problems (and presumably still alive)
Manuscript - going (yes)
PAN - in progress (a way to go but in progress)
BORING.
All work and no play makes Dale a dull girl.
I'm not seducing disaster, merely making an observation, pass me the champagne.
Home - peaceful (and mildly clean)
Friends - all fine (unless they are pretending)
Family - no problems (and presumably still alive)
Manuscript - going (yes)
PAN - in progress (a way to go but in progress)
BORING.
All work and no play makes Dale a dull girl.
I'm not seducing disaster, merely making an observation, pass me the champagne.
Why am I here?
What the hell is going on? Is what I should have demanded far more often than I did this weekend.
The above satellite photo shows the location of the chain restaurant where I had breakfast with family on Sunday. Note it is situated in the middle of a paddock and across the road from the vile Hawkesbury-Nepean River.
It is a strange location for a chain restaurant. I can't help but think I might have enjoyed it's oddness more if it was the ambitious project of some enterprising farmer who had always cherished a secret love of cooking instead one of those franchised chains. I'm quite sure the farmer would not have made me dry pancakes nor raised an eyebrow when I requested bacon instead of ice cream. He is probably also a painter, with oils, who sits speakers in the windows of his house so the horses can hear the music too. He uses only the best coffee beans and sometimes chops wood using an axe.
Dead sea captains, my very own pile of bones and the United Nations
This is the very first draft of a letter I intend to send to a friend.
Dear Friend,
Firstly, this is a kind of letter of thanks. Secondly, this is the first letter I have written on HAL so in this way at least it is special. I don't know what in the fuck came over you to make you decide to give me my very own ticket to see PJ Harvey at the State Theatre. There is no possible way I could have accepted such a generous gift if it wasn't for the kind and equally generous words that accompanied the giving. I suppose this letter will be entirely redundant by the time you receive it seeing as you are going to the very same PJ Harvey show tomorrow night but I'm not afraid of a little redundancy, every now and then.
I think I've come away changed. It was her quiet deliberateness that's done it. She was so sure, moving in and out of the light, making use of shadows. She was so sure of every exchange of silence for sound. I'm thinking my pile of bones will be talking about the time I saw PJ Harvey long after the rest of me has vanished.
She began in darkness, edged forwards into a dim light and cast a tall shadow up the vaulted walls of the theatre. There are angels in the architecture here. I couldn't tear myself away from the dark image, the long feather tendrils of her headdress casting ideas of ragged bones and fallen wings while she sang and strummed that damn autoharp like it was easier than breathing.
I used to play the autoharp, when I was a kid, in the garage. It was where all the interesting things were, old ammunition boxes, glockenspiels, melodicas, tamborines, guitars, an ancient upright piano, basses, amps, quad boxes, wood blocks, workbenches, train sets, easels, paints, a banjo, jars fulls of coloured picks and an autoharp. Dad covered the floor in avocado green carpet tiles that scratched and itched bare flesh mercilessly. It was basically coloured sandpaper. I'm not sure why he did that. Between the carpet tiles tearing at the backs of my legs and the autoharp taking the tops off my fingers I don't really know why I spent so much time in there.
If I had to state my purpose in spending so much time in a hostile garage I'd choose possibility. The sense of possibility, you could do or make or play anything in that room, nothing was off limits, no flight of fancy I couldn't at least make a decent attempt at turning into fact. I eventually came out of that garage with the knowledge that not every idea works, a series of crazy attempts at weird instruments, a detective agency, a solid sense where I fail creatively and the ability to fall steadfastly into an idea.
This is where I'm going to try and make a point, I think I might have one. I feel like PJ Harvey came out of that garage in a way that I didn't and it has filled me with awe. Sitting under the gilt vaults and arches in the theatre tonight I struggled to comprehend something, it seems just beyond my reach, a sense of power and wonder unlike anything people call religious. Ideas turned tangible.
She was tiny, wrapped in that big black dress, trailing feathers down the back of her hair. Tiny but solid as definite as a tree. I believed, without struggle, every word she sang, wailed and uttered. Followed her without question down the thick path of mourning for a country I've never seen.
My friend N, whose ticket I had arranged to collect and hold for her, arrived two minutes before the show started so we barrelled in and took our seats as fast we could. Once the light died and we spied shadowy figures making their way onto the stage I sat in silence. Uttered not one word, shared not one thought, glance or movement. You have given me the indulgence of solitude. The unfettered joy of witnessing without the burden of being obliged to hack off part of my experience and give it away. I've collected each moment and pressed them into private unvarnished memory.
I don't need to talk about the music, you already know what I mean.
Last night you called the Sydney Festival "art served on white bread", which is just about perfect for everything, except this. So thank you for the ticket, in case it wasn't clear from this letter, I'm saying thank you for the ticket.
I'm glad you've travelled round the world and back again. You're a pal and a confidante.
With actual sincerity for once,
DS
Dear Friend,
Firstly, this is a kind of letter of thanks. Secondly, this is the first letter I have written on HAL so in this way at least it is special. I don't know what in the fuck came over you to make you decide to give me my very own ticket to see PJ Harvey at the State Theatre. There is no possible way I could have accepted such a generous gift if it wasn't for the kind and equally generous words that accompanied the giving. I suppose this letter will be entirely redundant by the time you receive it seeing as you are going to the very same PJ Harvey show tomorrow night but I'm not afraid of a little redundancy, every now and then.
I think I've come away changed. It was her quiet deliberateness that's done it. She was so sure, moving in and out of the light, making use of shadows. She was so sure of every exchange of silence for sound. I'm thinking my pile of bones will be talking about the time I saw PJ Harvey long after the rest of me has vanished.
She began in darkness, edged forwards into a dim light and cast a tall shadow up the vaulted walls of the theatre. There are angels in the architecture here. I couldn't tear myself away from the dark image, the long feather tendrils of her headdress casting ideas of ragged bones and fallen wings while she sang and strummed that damn autoharp like it was easier than breathing.
I used to play the autoharp, when I was a kid, in the garage. It was where all the interesting things were, old ammunition boxes, glockenspiels, melodicas, tamborines, guitars, an ancient upright piano, basses, amps, quad boxes, wood blocks, workbenches, train sets, easels, paints, a banjo, jars fulls of coloured picks and an autoharp. Dad covered the floor in avocado green carpet tiles that scratched and itched bare flesh mercilessly. It was basically coloured sandpaper. I'm not sure why he did that. Between the carpet tiles tearing at the backs of my legs and the autoharp taking the tops off my fingers I don't really know why I spent so much time in there.
If I had to state my purpose in spending so much time in a hostile garage I'd choose possibility. The sense of possibility, you could do or make or play anything in that room, nothing was off limits, no flight of fancy I couldn't at least make a decent attempt at turning into fact. I eventually came out of that garage with the knowledge that not every idea works, a series of crazy attempts at weird instruments, a detective agency, a solid sense where I fail creatively and the ability to fall steadfastly into an idea.
This is where I'm going to try and make a point, I think I might have one. I feel like PJ Harvey came out of that garage in a way that I didn't and it has filled me with awe. Sitting under the gilt vaults and arches in the theatre tonight I struggled to comprehend something, it seems just beyond my reach, a sense of power and wonder unlike anything people call religious. Ideas turned tangible.
She was tiny, wrapped in that big black dress, trailing feathers down the back of her hair. Tiny but solid as definite as a tree. I believed, without struggle, every word she sang, wailed and uttered. Followed her without question down the thick path of mourning for a country I've never seen.
My friend N, whose ticket I had arranged to collect and hold for her, arrived two minutes before the show started so we barrelled in and took our seats as fast we could. Once the light died and we spied shadowy figures making their way onto the stage I sat in silence. Uttered not one word, shared not one thought, glance or movement. You have given me the indulgence of solitude. The unfettered joy of witnessing without the burden of being obliged to hack off part of my experience and give it away. I've collected each moment and pressed them into private unvarnished memory.
I don't need to talk about the music, you already know what I mean.
Last night you called the Sydney Festival "art served on white bread", which is just about perfect for everything, except this. So thank you for the ticket, in case it wasn't clear from this letter, I'm saying thank you for the ticket.
I'm glad you've travelled round the world and back again. You're a pal and a confidante.
With actual sincerity for once,
DS
About some useless information
My parents have provided me with a large amount of excellent advice over the years, such as instituting a rotating system of shoes and not blowing off the tops of my thumbs with explosives in the garage but I think there was something crucial they forgot to impart about courage.
Every day there is an opportunity to be brave and a chance to shrink back into lesser deeds and slide sheepishly into the herd. Every day I require courage to forge a path forwards. There is no such thing as rising in the morning and finding a ready-made life. This is something crucial my parents forgot to impart about living, courage is a verb.
Every day there is an opportunity to be brave and a chance to shrink back into lesser deeds and slide sheepishly into the herd. Every day I require courage to forge a path forwards. There is no such thing as rising in the morning and finding a ready-made life. This is something crucial my parents forgot to impart about living, courage is a verb.
Send her victorious, happy and glorious or an earnest and boring first draft, publicly thinking about why I love the Queen
I love the Queen. I love her hats with matching bag, shoes and gloves. I love her gin-soaked downtime and the way she handles a horse. I keep a picture of her cantering across a field with a cigarette in one hand and a hip flask sticking out of her jacket pocket. It's how I spent the best years of my adolescence, wild and galloping anywhere I could.
Her life is public and she has been steadfast and dignified. For sixty years she has been the Queen, almost twice my lifetime so far, and not once has she failed to perform her duty. This morning I failed to dress and eat breakfast before midday because I was too interested in reading a novel, though I had many duties to perform.
I love the solid mumsiness of her. The kindly wave and stern gaze. The way she is so very clearly The Captain in every public conversation she has. Not once has she been accidentally offensive, uninformed or inappropriate. The woman deserves a medal for an endurance performance in public politeness lasting longer than anyone thought possible. Her private thoughts must be immense. They are a genuine mystery.
Her life is public and she has been steadfast and dignified. For sixty years she has been the Queen, almost twice my lifetime so far, and not once has she failed to perform her duty. This morning I failed to dress and eat breakfast before midday because I was too interested in reading a novel, though I had many duties to perform.
I love the solid mumsiness of her. The kindly wave and stern gaze. The way she is so very clearly The Captain in every public conversation she has. Not once has she been accidentally offensive, uninformed or inappropriate. The woman deserves a medal for an endurance performance in public politeness lasting longer than anyone thought possible. Her private thoughts must be immense. They are a genuine mystery.
Yes
The more I think about it the more monumental it seems. With one simple act my brother has physically redefined my sense of family. I never thought anything of marriage or weddings. Never pondered what the significance of what one in my immediate family might be, until last night. My brother telephoned to tell me he asked his girlfriend to marry him. I shouted a long stream of joyful words for some minutes before uttering the hushed question, "She said yes, didn't she?"
Wenceslas
I felt like Mrs Dalloway, or Clarissa Vaughn echoing fictionally around on her way to a dying poet with fistfuls of flowers. I went to steal them from gardens but street after street bore nothing but concrete and the bare bulb-ended green things that play flowers in the hot parts of the year. I think its OK to pay for flowers when the poet isn't dying faster than anyone else so I counted out ten gold coins while the cashier held out half an impatient hand.
Five days ago my father bellowed out words like, strident, abusive, arrogant and smirked while my aged aunt thrust both arms back into memory for the right word. 'Bohemian', she said. They called me bohemian, all those relatives in formal dress. I told Spencer and we scoffed over coffee. I'm the least bohemian person I know, here, in the new town, where I have burrowed out a cave room and set a fire in the corner. There are proper curtains and thread counts and cupboard complete with cups.
Some of the others here still drink whiskey out of jars and play the same crackling old records Joe Lynch might have listened to, if he had the money. Now of course there are crates of them on corners every Saturday morning.
I didn't come here to study them, to take down hasty notes in dark corners while they rollick across perfectly stationary floors. I came here unwillingly, rudder locked eastward, anchor gone screaming into the night. I came here in cardboard boxes and settled heavily into daily clockwork risings, for money, only for the money. The notes started small and scrawling, mystifying untranslated rubbings across self-erected tombs of the wildly living. But they have grown.
Walking across a whole morning with the single purpose of flowers information came to me. Neighbours appeared at my gate on the telephone to Marianne Faithfull, lay down chapters of books for my magazine, the radio spoke with the voice of real friends, in song and story. Two people left for Spain with guitars and tour dates, Spencer and I spoke about which shirt he should wear in Paris. I said purple, he said he'd wear whatever he liked but the point was he's leaving for another overseas tour. The point is I'm sitting in my window looking out where the snow would fall if the world ever flipped and we had a chance at crisp and even.
Five days ago my father bellowed out words like, strident, abusive, arrogant and smirked while my aged aunt thrust both arms back into memory for the right word. 'Bohemian', she said. They called me bohemian, all those relatives in formal dress. I told Spencer and we scoffed over coffee. I'm the least bohemian person I know, here, in the new town, where I have burrowed out a cave room and set a fire in the corner. There are proper curtains and thread counts and cupboard complete with cups.
Some of the others here still drink whiskey out of jars and play the same crackling old records Joe Lynch might have listened to, if he had the money. Now of course there are crates of them on corners every Saturday morning.
I didn't come here to study them, to take down hasty notes in dark corners while they rollick across perfectly stationary floors. I came here unwillingly, rudder locked eastward, anchor gone screaming into the night. I came here in cardboard boxes and settled heavily into daily clockwork risings, for money, only for the money. The notes started small and scrawling, mystifying untranslated rubbings across self-erected tombs of the wildly living. But they have grown.
Walking across a whole morning with the single purpose of flowers information came to me. Neighbours appeared at my gate on the telephone to Marianne Faithfull, lay down chapters of books for my magazine, the radio spoke with the voice of real friends, in song and story. Two people left for Spain with guitars and tour dates, Spencer and I spoke about which shirt he should wear in Paris. I said purple, he said he'd wear whatever he liked but the point was he's leaving for another overseas tour. The point is I'm sitting in my window looking out where the snow would fall if the world ever flipped and we had a chance at crisp and even.
A Slamma family wedding weekend
Raw data in non-chronological point form:
- Percentage of relatives I despise yet remain polite to - 2%
- Cousins who explained to me the reason for all the wog food at the after party at his house was because his family were all wogs, before blinking drunkenly and saying, 'Oh, you're my cousin' - 1
- Cheeses eaten that cost more, per cheese, than my weekly rent - 9
- Belly aches due to eating too much cheese - 3
- Languages spoken at various after parties and dinners - 6
- Languages I understand - 1.75
- Big W catalogues read aloud to me in a mixture of Creole and French at the dinner table - 3
- Divorced parents who arrived simultaneously at my brother's house, where I was staying - 2
- Relatives who sang Johnny Cash songs - 8
- Instruments my dad played at the after party - 2
- Relatives who suggested my cowboy boots were an inappropriate choice and did not at all go with my formal dress - 1
- Number of people who approached me in the DJ booth and asked me to change the song - 17
- Number of times I complied with song-change requests - 0
- Aged Aunts who cried mightily whilst filming proceedings - 1
- Radiantly happy cousins who floated back down the aisle with their new husband - 1
- Balloons popped in anger by delinquent cousins - 1
- Amusing witty asides made by my father - 35972
- Hours spent in the company of relatives - 20
- Bushranger shows filmed in my hometown watched on my return to The Peach - 1
- Overall success as rated by the bride - 100% and I suppose that's the one point of raw data that actually matters.
A letter to F. in Western Australia
Dearest F.,
I've been slaving in an office for a few weeks, editing video titles and adding the appropriate rating. G. PG. M. MA. Tedious just about covers it. As usual I am dubiously and sporadically employed by real organisations. The rest of my time is spent more wisely on editing PAN magazine, making notes and drafting things for my manuscript and generally running about looking at things and wishing I didn't notice every tiny detail about everything. The footpath just three houses down the street has begun to exaggerate its folded crease as the tree roots underneath swell with time.
Last weekend I travelled to Canberra with my brother and his girlfriend to visit Dad and the other wonders of our nation's capital. I found them to be much the same as last time I saw them, which is good in the case of my father. My brother and I planned to take advantage of Canberra's lax stance on smoking pot and get high in a hedge maze by the lake. When we got there the hedge maze was missing. The miniature train driver said the government had the hedges removed. I was wondering if maybe too many people had the same idea and there was a meeting in parliament about whether or not the government ought to provide a large hedge maze in which stoned people frequently ran about in and got lost. It was a great shame about the hedge maze. I was hoping to able to sell my brother to someone dressed as David Bowie.
Several weeks ago I was invited to read a short story at Penguin Plays Rough. I decided definitely not to do it due to high internal levels of fear. I was however forced to do it by the inimitable Pip Smith who runs the show. In the end I did not vomit, faint or run away and the thing was got through tolerably well. After the reading Spencer and I drank an enormous volume of beer, Pip folded a sum of money into the palm of my hand and it turned out to be the highest paid ten minutes I have spent in my life. Unless you count inheritances, of which there have not been many, but it doesn't take more than a minute for someone to die. On second thoughts that's not really earning is it? Now if I murdered someone and inherited money from that act then it might be considered earning I suppose, so no earning at all in this case.
Yesterday my mother telephoned to yell at me. Fortunately I was not the topic of her yelling, she needed to express some violent anger on a topic and decided I would do. After the yelling ceased she instructed me to get myself down to the harbour and report on the water. In an amazing coincidence that had been my intention all along. I rode the train down through the tunnels under the city until it emerged suddenly, without seeming to climb, at Circular Quay. The day looked a grey one but I was unsure as to the real colour of things as I was wearing unfamiliar sunglasses. The sunglasses belong to a friend of mine. He gave me a lift home in his car and in order to avoid sitting on the things I stuck them in my pocket. My only failure was I did not take them back out of my pocket again until I was inside The Peach. I have confessed my accidental crime to him so I do not feel as guilty as I otherwise might.
My only purpose for going down to the harbour was to visit the Satyr statue by Francis (Guy) Lynch. It was placed in the botanical gardens, just near the Opera House gate sometime in the 1970's, I believe it was originally sculpted in the 1920's. The face of the statue is reportedly based on Guy's brother Joe Lynch. Joe is the subject of Slessor's brilliant lament Five Bells. Five Bells is of course wildly popular, one of those Australian poems repeatedly set in the school's English curriculum forever and a day but I don't think you should hold that against it. The first time I properly read the poem I was at university and definitely uninterested in all things poetic. At the time I wanted violent contemporary fiction and wildly intellectual essays and nothing else at all would do. I read the thing because I had to, but made no internal note of it.
It wasn't until I was hanging over the railing of a ferry searching for jelly fish and ghosts that I remembered this line, "Deep and dissolving verticals of light". I hung perilously over the ship's railing reciting, "Deep and dissolving verticals of light", and watching the light split the "waves with diamond quills and combs of light" and plunge single-fingered through water, fish and ghosts and time waving weed that I remembered the poem at all. Bloody hell a lit match head just flung itself off the end of the match and scorched a permanent mark between the 'v' and the 'b' on my laptop. I suppose I should give up on matches and move across into lighters but I do love the sound of match being struck, nothing quite like it.
All the notes and drafts for my manuscript cross and recross the harbour. The idea of Joe Lynch seems submerged not just in our national poetic consciousness and the harbour itself but in all of my recent thought. It is possible that I have fallen in love with the man, this "Joe, long dead, who lives between between the five bells."
I was distressed to hear of the recent loss of one of your friends. I hope that you can find some solace in your impending adventure overseas. Write to me dear F. for I always miss you. Here now is a photograph I took of myself with Old Joe.
I've been slaving in an office for a few weeks, editing video titles and adding the appropriate rating. G. PG. M. MA. Tedious just about covers it. As usual I am dubiously and sporadically employed by real organisations. The rest of my time is spent more wisely on editing PAN magazine, making notes and drafting things for my manuscript and generally running about looking at things and wishing I didn't notice every tiny detail about everything. The footpath just three houses down the street has begun to exaggerate its folded crease as the tree roots underneath swell with time.
Last weekend I travelled to Canberra with my brother and his girlfriend to visit Dad and the other wonders of our nation's capital. I found them to be much the same as last time I saw them, which is good in the case of my father. My brother and I planned to take advantage of Canberra's lax stance on smoking pot and get high in a hedge maze by the lake. When we got there the hedge maze was missing. The miniature train driver said the government had the hedges removed. I was wondering if maybe too many people had the same idea and there was a meeting in parliament about whether or not the government ought to provide a large hedge maze in which stoned people frequently ran about in and got lost. It was a great shame about the hedge maze. I was hoping to able to sell my brother to someone dressed as David Bowie.
Several weeks ago I was invited to read a short story at Penguin Plays Rough. I decided definitely not to do it due to high internal levels of fear. I was however forced to do it by the inimitable Pip Smith who runs the show. In the end I did not vomit, faint or run away and the thing was got through tolerably well. After the reading Spencer and I drank an enormous volume of beer, Pip folded a sum of money into the palm of my hand and it turned out to be the highest paid ten minutes I have spent in my life. Unless you count inheritances, of which there have not been many, but it doesn't take more than a minute for someone to die. On second thoughts that's not really earning is it? Now if I murdered someone and inherited money from that act then it might be considered earning I suppose, so no earning at all in this case.
Yesterday my mother telephoned to yell at me. Fortunately I was not the topic of her yelling, she needed to express some violent anger on a topic and decided I would do. After the yelling ceased she instructed me to get myself down to the harbour and report on the water. In an amazing coincidence that had been my intention all along. I rode the train down through the tunnels under the city until it emerged suddenly, without seeming to climb, at Circular Quay. The day looked a grey one but I was unsure as to the real colour of things as I was wearing unfamiliar sunglasses. The sunglasses belong to a friend of mine. He gave me a lift home in his car and in order to avoid sitting on the things I stuck them in my pocket. My only failure was I did not take them back out of my pocket again until I was inside The Peach. I have confessed my accidental crime to him so I do not feel as guilty as I otherwise might.
My only purpose for going down to the harbour was to visit the Satyr statue by Francis (Guy) Lynch. It was placed in the botanical gardens, just near the Opera House gate sometime in the 1970's, I believe it was originally sculpted in the 1920's. The face of the statue is reportedly based on Guy's brother Joe Lynch. Joe is the subject of Slessor's brilliant lament Five Bells. Five Bells is of course wildly popular, one of those Australian poems repeatedly set in the school's English curriculum forever and a day but I don't think you should hold that against it. The first time I properly read the poem I was at university and definitely uninterested in all things poetic. At the time I wanted violent contemporary fiction and wildly intellectual essays and nothing else at all would do. I read the thing because I had to, but made no internal note of it.
It wasn't until I was hanging over the railing of a ferry searching for jelly fish and ghosts that I remembered this line, "Deep and dissolving verticals of light". I hung perilously over the ship's railing reciting, "Deep and dissolving verticals of light", and watching the light split the "waves with diamond quills and combs of light" and plunge single-fingered through water, fish and ghosts and time waving weed that I remembered the poem at all. Bloody hell a lit match head just flung itself off the end of the match and scorched a permanent mark between the 'v' and the 'b' on my laptop. I suppose I should give up on matches and move across into lighters but I do love the sound of match being struck, nothing quite like it.
All the notes and drafts for my manuscript cross and recross the harbour. The idea of Joe Lynch seems submerged not just in our national poetic consciousness and the harbour itself but in all of my recent thought. It is possible that I have fallen in love with the man, this "Joe, long dead, who lives between between the five bells."
I was distressed to hear of the recent loss of one of your friends. I hope that you can find some solace in your impending adventure overseas. Write to me dear F. for I always miss you. Here now is a photograph I took of myself with Old Joe.
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.
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.
Extended Slammas drink magnums of red wine
He ran around the table, behind the seated guests, spoon feeding everyone creme brulee at high speed, whether they wanted it or not. Periodically he'd yell at the giant flatscreen television showing silent football in the corner or shout, 'Vegas!' for no apparent reason at all. The guests, slumped a little drunkenly in their chairs, turned the conversation inwards and talked in insular circles that made no sense to me at all. They accepted the mouthfuls of dessert blindly, like birds.
He strutted more than walked in the way men in their 40's do. His face lined but not yet beginning to crumble. More physically strong than at any other point in his life. His wife sporting a bleached-blonde beehive converted into a ponytail over a spray-tanned body jittering inside a short dress and high boots. The angle of his chin gave you no doubt that if you stepped outside his invisible and unclear lines of behaviour he'd take your fucking head off then laugh about it while he clapped you on the back.
The house itself was some kind of poor 70's brick contraption renovated and extended beyond recognition. The outside 'smoking room' was cedar-lined, marble-floored and had a touch screen for music and a television bigger than the ocean. He said, 'I can watch television from any angle in the house. I have screens everywhere, those doors there, those ones, they cost twelve thousand dollars, see that tennis ball it cost eight thousand. Vegas!'.
He told me he wakes at 2:30am, 'just fucking pumped! Ready to go to work!'. But he restrains himself and only rises at 5, works til after sunset, is in bed by 8. Except for when he 'parties' which he does in a style I'm unaccustomed to.
Close to the marble 'smoking room' is a bar, a fully-stocked bar, all the bottles magnums, with two fridges of beer, a dishwasher, television, plumbed-in coffee machine and overhead racks of glasses. The wine glasses were bigger than boats. Magnums of red wine appeared at the table with astonishing regularity. Before dinner was served my face went numb and the world a little swirly.
He and his wife are happy. They are handsome, their children are handsome, they are rich. They have everything they want. They walk through the world like it's a football tour invented for their pleasure. They scream out non-sensical utterances at random intervals for the sheer joy at being alive. I'm not certain but I suspect I had a terrible time.
My brother and I walked through the ludicrously large front door and out into a suburban cul-de-sac. The yard we were standing in was watered, trimmed and groomed a uniform deep green but across the road, dead lawns, family cars, red bricks and ordinary street lights. The house we walked out of had all the trimmings of a 7 star hotel in Dubai but five metres away South-Western Sydney lay undisturbed.
My brother drove me home. We sat in stunned silence for most of the journey unable to process what we had just experienced. I said, 'I'm not sure I understand why they are so blindly, wildly happy'. My brother said, 'You are too much of a suicidal Russian novellist to truly understand how ignorance and money can equal bliss'.
He strutted more than walked in the way men in their 40's do. His face lined but not yet beginning to crumble. More physically strong than at any other point in his life. His wife sporting a bleached-blonde beehive converted into a ponytail over a spray-tanned body jittering inside a short dress and high boots. The angle of his chin gave you no doubt that if you stepped outside his invisible and unclear lines of behaviour he'd take your fucking head off then laugh about it while he clapped you on the back.
The house itself was some kind of poor 70's brick contraption renovated and extended beyond recognition. The outside 'smoking room' was cedar-lined, marble-floored and had a touch screen for music and a television bigger than the ocean. He said, 'I can watch television from any angle in the house. I have screens everywhere, those doors there, those ones, they cost twelve thousand dollars, see that tennis ball it cost eight thousand. Vegas!'.
He told me he wakes at 2:30am, 'just fucking pumped! Ready to go to work!'. But he restrains himself and only rises at 5, works til after sunset, is in bed by 8. Except for when he 'parties' which he does in a style I'm unaccustomed to.
Close to the marble 'smoking room' is a bar, a fully-stocked bar, all the bottles magnums, with two fridges of beer, a dishwasher, television, plumbed-in coffee machine and overhead racks of glasses. The wine glasses were bigger than boats. Magnums of red wine appeared at the table with astonishing regularity. Before dinner was served my face went numb and the world a little swirly.
He and his wife are happy. They are handsome, their children are handsome, they are rich. They have everything they want. They walk through the world like it's a football tour invented for their pleasure. They scream out non-sensical utterances at random intervals for the sheer joy at being alive. I'm not certain but I suspect I had a terrible time.
My brother and I walked through the ludicrously large front door and out into a suburban cul-de-sac. The yard we were standing in was watered, trimmed and groomed a uniform deep green but across the road, dead lawns, family cars, red bricks and ordinary street lights. The house we walked out of had all the trimmings of a 7 star hotel in Dubai but five metres away South-Western Sydney lay undisturbed.
My brother drove me home. We sat in stunned silence for most of the journey unable to process what we had just experienced. I said, 'I'm not sure I understand why they are so blindly, wildly happy'. My brother said, 'You are too much of a suicidal Russian novellist to truly understand how ignorance and money can equal bliss'.
Translucent and a saturated yellow
I found a yellow plastic toothbrush in the depths of my least favourite armchair. My brother telephoned this morning to ask if he had left his keys at The Peach last night. He bade me look for them and I obliged unwillingly. Removing the seat cushion from the armchair and plunging my hand into three decades of crumbs, coins, dead things and anonymous detritus was not one of the things I had thought to do today, before I was halfway through my first cup of coffee.
The Thursday before Easter I was somewhere in Spencer’s house when I thought ‘this is the closest thing you can experience to plunging your hand into a sack of grain, when you live in the city’. Spencer was not in the room at the time. I do not recall which room, which level of the house, whether inside or out. Since that night I have been trying to remember what that ‘thing you can do’ is. It is not plunging your hand into the depths of a least favourite armchair that is in every way identical to the other armchair, except in rank of favour. Spencer’s house contains no large jars of buttons, no small sacks of slipping particles cool and willing to part for the casual plunging of flesh. It has become my second most recent mystery.
The yellow plastic toothbrush is problematic. I have never seen it before, I can not attach its ownership to any known face. It is impossible that is owned by the cat, who also favours the other chair. The handle of the toothbrush is translucent. The bristles a usual kind of white. The yellow is heavy, saturated, unpleasantly reminiscent of the first passing of water after a night spent drinking gin. The ability to pass water was one of my first and earliest mysteries, since solved by the clockwork power of science.
I left the toothbrush in the chair, not back in the depths but underneath the seat cushion. It seems important that it not be entirely removed from its chosen home but left almost where it was, where I can lift the cushion and observe its journey through time.
Farewell to the floral stink source, I want to see my mother, we welcome you mighty Peach Deck the Second or The Arizona branch of the Taliban may be plotting to capture or kill my family
The IGA supermarket on Enmore Rd is microscopic. One person traveling at half the normal shopping speed will still be traveling too quickly to negotiate the towering and over-crowded aisles, all five of them. I was talking to my mother on the telephone when I entered the IGA. Ordinarily I might wind a conversation up so that I could devote my much-needed attention to navigating around, under, over and through shelves, baskets and people but today I kept on talking.
I want to see my mother, I don't know why but I do. It's not a feeling of obligation, more like a biological urge. I'm not sure why this need has developed but I can isolate its first appearance to precisely the moment The Peachettes and I slid the stinky floral sofa that used to be in the library down the front steps and onto the street. It is unfortunate that I won't have an opportunity to see her before she travels to the USA where she will be capture or killed by The Taliban because the central heating in her house broke and they charge a flat fee of $250 to come out and have a look, not including parts or labour.
I don't how to describe my mother. It is not that she is awful, or especially kind, she is the usual amount of annoying and tender, for a parent, I think. I can say my mother is never dull. Not for one second in all the years of her life has she ever been dull. Like all people she is contradictory and puzzling but unlike most people she will express all of these contradictions articulately. Though perhaps sometimes, like today, she is more puzzling than articulate.
A conversation between Dale and her mother on the telephone in the IGA on Enmore Rd - an excerpt:
DS: I'm just not sure I want to go to the second interview for this job.
M: You should earn more money. Money gives you choices:
DS: But it also takes them away. I don't want to wake up every morning with the urge to stab myself through the heart.
M: You should use a calculator to see if it would be more money.
DS: You are just like John Howard, always putting money first. What about my happiness?
M: I have all this money now because I worked very hard to earn it. You have time now but your choices are limited because you can't afford anything. What will happen when you retire?
DS: You worked very hard but were you happy?
M: Not for the last five years that I worked but before that I don't know. It is the mindset everybody had, work hard, be an example, provide for your family. What size of jeans do you want from America?
DS: I don't know. I 'll have to look up a size conversion chart. Did you enjoy your work?
M: I did like what I was doing. I've left you the River House in my will but I sold it.
DS: What? Why are you telling me this now?
M: My will is with my solicitor.
DS: I thought he was dead.
M: Not quite yet but soon. I also left you my super. Is it Navajo jewellery you prefer?
DS: I quite liked that necklace you got me the time before last. When are you planning on dying?
M: I'm going to visit B. in America on Monday.
DS: Are you going to drop dead in America?
M: I'm more worried about The Taliban.
DS: In Arizona?
M: Well the central heating broke this week, you never know what might happen. They charge a flat $250 for a call out fee. I have another house in the mountains you can have instead of the River House. You should rent it out to someone who has a job.
DS: I might but you have to die first. I'm no longer going to plunge to my death because Mr Oddweird repaired the Peach Deck.
M: What do you want duty free?
DS: I'm not sure, let me think.
M: Your brother sucked all my spending money into a trombone.
DS: I suppose that's not unusual. Should I buy the recycled toilet paper? I can give you money for some duty free perfume.
M: No you can't, you're too poor. The Money Fairy doesn't approve. My brother once bought the most dyed toilet paper because he doesn't like fish.
DS: Maybe the Birthday Fairy could buy the perfume, unless she has also been sucked into a trombone.
M: It is important to note that I do not plan on dropping dead in America but there is a possibility I might.
DS: Consider it noted. You should note that unlike my uncle I like fish.
M: Noted.
I want to see my mother, I don't know why but I do. It's not a feeling of obligation, more like a biological urge. I'm not sure why this need has developed but I can isolate its first appearance to precisely the moment The Peachettes and I slid the stinky floral sofa that used to be in the library down the front steps and onto the street. It is unfortunate that I won't have an opportunity to see her before she travels to the USA where she will be capture or killed by The Taliban because the central heating in her house broke and they charge a flat fee of $250 to come out and have a look, not including parts or labour.
I don't how to describe my mother. It is not that she is awful, or especially kind, she is the usual amount of annoying and tender, for a parent, I think. I can say my mother is never dull. Not for one second in all the years of her life has she ever been dull. Like all people she is contradictory and puzzling but unlike most people she will express all of these contradictions articulately. Though perhaps sometimes, like today, she is more puzzling than articulate.
A conversation between Dale and her mother on the telephone in the IGA on Enmore Rd - an excerpt:
DS: I'm just not sure I want to go to the second interview for this job.
M: You should earn more money. Money gives you choices:
DS: But it also takes them away. I don't want to wake up every morning with the urge to stab myself through the heart.
M: You should use a calculator to see if it would be more money.
DS: You are just like John Howard, always putting money first. What about my happiness?
M: I have all this money now because I worked very hard to earn it. You have time now but your choices are limited because you can't afford anything. What will happen when you retire?
DS: You worked very hard but were you happy?
M: Not for the last five years that I worked but before that I don't know. It is the mindset everybody had, work hard, be an example, provide for your family. What size of jeans do you want from America?
DS: I don't know. I 'll have to look up a size conversion chart. Did you enjoy your work?
M: I did like what I was doing. I've left you the River House in my will but I sold it.
DS: What? Why are you telling me this now?
M: My will is with my solicitor.
DS: I thought he was dead.
M: Not quite yet but soon. I also left you my super. Is it Navajo jewellery you prefer?
DS: I quite liked that necklace you got me the time before last. When are you planning on dying?
M: I'm going to visit B. in America on Monday.
DS: Are you going to drop dead in America?
M: I'm more worried about The Taliban.
DS: In Arizona?
M: Well the central heating broke this week, you never know what might happen. They charge a flat $250 for a call out fee. I have another house in the mountains you can have instead of the River House. You should rent it out to someone who has a job.
DS: I might but you have to die first. I'm no longer going to plunge to my death because Mr Oddweird repaired the Peach Deck.
M: What do you want duty free?
DS: I'm not sure, let me think.
M: Your brother sucked all my spending money into a trombone.
DS: I suppose that's not unusual. Should I buy the recycled toilet paper? I can give you money for some duty free perfume.
M: No you can't, you're too poor. The Money Fairy doesn't approve. My brother once bought the most dyed toilet paper because he doesn't like fish.
DS: Maybe the Birthday Fairy could buy the perfume, unless she has also been sucked into a trombone.
M: It is important to note that I do not plan on dropping dead in America but there is a possibility I might.
DS: Consider it noted. You should note that unlike my uncle I like fish.
M: Noted.
Introducing Project Polymath
I've had some ideas in my time, for example walking on custard, like Jesus but sweeter. More formally known as my Afterdinner Jesus Project: An experiment using non-Newtownian viscoelastic fluids for purposes of entertainment. It was a spectacular failure but as yet I've not been deterred from having ideas.
I first had the idea for Project Polymathic one month ago. I was sitting at my dad's dining table, chatting about art and life, when Dad suddenly said, 'He's a polymath, unlike the rest of us'. I thought, hang on a minute, I don't want to be 'the rest of us' and for a moment became quite bitter at the thought of being so ordinary. When I got back to The Peach I decided to make an origami donkey as a birthday present for Abdullah. After the fifth donkey attempt failed I started sticking bits of paper onto other bits of paper and instead made a collage titled 'Abdullah's Birthday Garden of Donkey Happiness'. People seemed to quite like the picture and this where the idea formed.
The most obvious thing to do after making one semi-successful birthday present is to become a polymath, like Leonardo da Vinci or Qutb al-Din al-Shirazi, by doing one of everything. By everything I mean artistic pursuits within the realms of 'stuff I like'.
For my first two acts of polymathic proportions I intend to perform as a sound artist with my hypothetical band The John Entwistle School of Standing Very Still and have my visual art exhibited in a gallery, neither of which I have done before.
I suspect this is going to take a very long time.
I first had the idea for Project Polymathic one month ago. I was sitting at my dad's dining table, chatting about art and life, when Dad suddenly said, 'He's a polymath, unlike the rest of us'. I thought, hang on a minute, I don't want to be 'the rest of us' and for a moment became quite bitter at the thought of being so ordinary. When I got back to The Peach I decided to make an origami donkey as a birthday present for Abdullah. After the fifth donkey attempt failed I started sticking bits of paper onto other bits of paper and instead made a collage titled 'Abdullah's Birthday Garden of Donkey Happiness'. People seemed to quite like the picture and this where the idea formed.
The most obvious thing to do after making one semi-successful birthday present is to become a polymath, like Leonardo da Vinci or Qutb al-Din al-Shirazi, by doing one of everything. By everything I mean artistic pursuits within the realms of 'stuff I like'.
For my first two acts of polymathic proportions I intend to perform as a sound artist with my hypothetical band The John Entwistle School of Standing Very Still and have my visual art exhibited in a gallery, neither of which I have done before.
I suspect this is going to take a very long time.
Spencer lodges complaint number 42367262868275083270 but this time he might have a point
Spencer once said to me 'never trust a writer, they know how to make things sound just how you want to hear them'. I paused my milkshake drinking just long enough to stick my tongue out at him but then on Sunday he lodged a complaint and this time I think he might have a point.
Sunday afternoon, walking down Enmore Rd on the way to the Changing Lanes Festival, I told Spencer all about my Saturday night. Later that afternoon I relayed the same story to Abdullah and some of the Psychonannies over coffee. Spencer protested at the telling of the story, saying 'it's all in the telling, you wouldn't sound so good if you gave them the same version you gave me'.
Saturday night as told to Spencer:
DS: I had to go to my brother's girlfriend's birthday party at her parents' house. I didn't want to go because I was dead tired but I went, cause I like her.
S: How was it?
DS: Brother had some of that lemon stuff my crazy old relative makes then I got a lift home from a friend of the girlfriend's brother, which was nice.
S: Told you would end up having a good time.
DS: I hate Western Sydney but food was nice. I was starving. Free food is good but I hate trains. They are stupid. Do you think my hair looks stupid? [pauses to look at hair in reflection of shop window]
S: Not more stupid than normal. [rolls eyes] I had a $2.50 stick thing on a roll.
DS: Those are good. How was your gig last night?
S: All right I spose. What's this festival going to be like.
DS: Dunno. Don't want to go but the editor is kind of making me.
Saturday night as told to Abdullah and some of the Psychonannies:
DS: Last night I traveled West to a convict settlement and drank moonshine Limoncello at a party where most people were speaking French and sometimes Cajun.
PN's: You're always doing stuff like that.
DS: The food was amazing and I got a ride home from a 6'2'' racing car driver.
PN's: Racing car driver!
DS: She was awesome and kind of beautiful. She's about six foot two and has long red hair that hangs to her waist. I got home in record time.
PN's: Is she single?
DS: Doubt it.
PN's: Are you going to Changing Lanes?
DS: Sure am, just picked up my media pass.
Sunday afternoon, walking down Enmore Rd on the way to the Changing Lanes Festival, I told Spencer all about my Saturday night. Later that afternoon I relayed the same story to Abdullah and some of the Psychonannies over coffee. Spencer protested at the telling of the story, saying 'it's all in the telling, you wouldn't sound so good if you gave them the same version you gave me'.
Saturday night as told to Spencer:
DS: I had to go to my brother's girlfriend's birthday party at her parents' house. I didn't want to go because I was dead tired but I went, cause I like her.
S: How was it?
DS: Brother had some of that lemon stuff my crazy old relative makes then I got a lift home from a friend of the girlfriend's brother, which was nice.
S: Told you would end up having a good time.
DS: I hate Western Sydney but food was nice. I was starving. Free food is good but I hate trains. They are stupid. Do you think my hair looks stupid? [pauses to look at hair in reflection of shop window]
S: Not more stupid than normal. [rolls eyes] I had a $2.50 stick thing on a roll.
DS: Those are good. How was your gig last night?
S: All right I spose. What's this festival going to be like.
DS: Dunno. Don't want to go but the editor is kind of making me.
Saturday night as told to Abdullah and some of the Psychonannies:
DS: Last night I traveled West to a convict settlement and drank moonshine Limoncello at a party where most people were speaking French and sometimes Cajun.
PN's: You're always doing stuff like that.
DS: The food was amazing and I got a ride home from a 6'2'' racing car driver.
PN's: Racing car driver!
DS: She was awesome and kind of beautiful. She's about six foot two and has long red hair that hangs to her waist. I got home in record time.
PN's: Is she single?
DS: Doubt it.
PN's: Are you going to Changing Lanes?
DS: Sure am, just picked up my media pass.
This includes no Venn diagrams
I couldn't pin it down. I tried analysing the air, the temperature, the slant of the sun, my rate of footsteps per minute, none of this data helped. The problem was I was too happy, too happy by far. I was walking down a long hill in the afternoon sunlight crammed-full of contentedness. Everything seemed in order and I was almost enjoying myself when I noticed one big thing - the absence of all problems.
The air was full of bushfire smoke but this reminded me of my youth when a bushfire suspended all ordinary business, the adults all stayed inside (once they had finished plugging up the roof gutters and filling them with water) glued to the television and radio, at the same time. I would wander about the streets marvelling at the dense and luminous orange air.
I was slightly too warm but I was cheered by wearing an electric blue cardigan and knowing if I became any warmer I could take it off and be perfectly comfortable even at a brisk walking pace. I was carrying a bag but it was light and swung contentedly in a perfect arc. I was sure that a random wave of sorrow, anxiety or misfortune would hit at any moment and return the world to order, but it didn't.
Five minutes after arriving at The Peach I was installed on The Peach Deck with tea and toast on a tray, a cat on my lap and a book in my hand but I was still far too happy. I found my book kept lowering itself to allow me to stare dreamily at the sky in a contented way. This is when I became seriously alarmed.
It didn't seem possible for such a heady mix of cheer, goodwill and contentedness to descend on me without some serious repercussions. The extreme sense of wellbeing faded gently into ordinary after sunset but I'm still waiting to hear who died, or blew up or accidentally killed their lover whilst sleepwalking with machete. Come to think of it I had better telephone my mother and make sure she is still alive. Who knows who I could have harmed by holding a whole afternoon of happiness in my hands.
The air was full of bushfire smoke but this reminded me of my youth when a bushfire suspended all ordinary business, the adults all stayed inside (once they had finished plugging up the roof gutters and filling them with water) glued to the television and radio, at the same time. I would wander about the streets marvelling at the dense and luminous orange air.
I was slightly too warm but I was cheered by wearing an electric blue cardigan and knowing if I became any warmer I could take it off and be perfectly comfortable even at a brisk walking pace. I was carrying a bag but it was light and swung contentedly in a perfect arc. I was sure that a random wave of sorrow, anxiety or misfortune would hit at any moment and return the world to order, but it didn't.
Five minutes after arriving at The Peach I was installed on The Peach Deck with tea and toast on a tray, a cat on my lap and a book in my hand but I was still far too happy. I found my book kept lowering itself to allow me to stare dreamily at the sky in a contented way. This is when I became seriously alarmed.
It didn't seem possible for such a heady mix of cheer, goodwill and contentedness to descend on me without some serious repercussions. The extreme sense of wellbeing faded gently into ordinary after sunset but I'm still waiting to hear who died, or blew up or accidentally killed their lover whilst sleepwalking with machete. Come to think of it I had better telephone my mother and make sure she is still alive. Who knows who I could have harmed by holding a whole afternoon of happiness in my hands.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)