Blogs Never Truly Die or Who Even is Lloyd Cole

I was reading a book about a woman with a blog when the message arrived.

Please restart your blog. Lloyd Cole. Housemartins. 

The message was not sent by Lloyd Cole of the Houesmartins. It remains unclear to me why Lloyd Cole was mentioned but I'm assuming it has something to do with drinking.

The message could have been mystical, except that it was incorrect. Blogs never truly die. 

I admit writing on my blog is not something I ordinarily do, but it does still exist. See - here it is. I can't restart what never stopped. It slowed, sure, slowed to the pace of a pre-global-warming glacier, but it exists. It atrophied, and much like my person became ridiculous with age, but it didn't stop.

Blogging is not a thing I will admit in public to have ever done, despite the many perks, friends, and "career" opportunities it has made possible across the years. Blogging, like American court-sanctioned misogyny, is something one ought to be heartily ashamed of and stop doing at the earliest opportunity, which for America was today. For me, well that was probably fifteen years ago. 

After trying, and failing, to get my head into the manuscript I'm allegedly finishing next month, I made my way down to Petty Cash Cafe where both the food and the patrons are blessed by Kenny, Suspected Local Deity and Unofficial Mayor of Marrickville.

Two hours ago I sat back down with the manuscript and wrote - Victor after drowning rose up in a panic misted out into the corners of the hospital room. Rectangle and room-shaped he surrounded his parents, his sister, the wires and machines, his own empty body tucked under a blanket on the bed. 

And now I have to figure out what comes next, and how the actual fuck that relates to anything else already existing in or pegged for inclusion in the manuscript. Is Victor even a good name for a boy who may or may not have permanently drowned? Should he permanently drown or should he be revived? What else happens to Victor? Is Victor important to include or yet another weird distraction?

What would Kenny do (WWKYD)? I think he wouldn't care, about the why and how. I think he would just keep on writing and see what happens next man. Such is the gentle way of a Suspected Local Deity.

SIDEBAR A- The New Cat floated up onto the desk holding a tiny fish-shaped packet of soy sauce in her mouth. She batted the plastic sauce fish around the desk a little before piercing it with her teeth and leaking soy sauce all over the desk, my notebooks, and my second favourite pen. I scrambled for tissues and wiped the sauce up as best I could without resorting to a trip to the kitchen for cleaning supplies. The New Cat is now systematically licking the entire surface of the desk. 

SIDEBAR B - A common house martin is a migratory passerine bird. Passerine is of or relating to the largest order of birds and mostly consists of altricial songbirds of perching habits. Honestly, I'm surprised. I thought Housemartins might be referring to one of the furred and fanged martens who hang out in the forests of Europe and sometimes make appearances in Irish Murder Novels. I have no opinion about the band or Lloyd Cole.

SIDEBAR C - Now that I think about it, blogging is delightfully pointless and liberating. 

SIDEBAR D - Maybe the message was mystical?

Dividing rages and a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours or both more tender and more violent

It's been about a week since I started answering the question 'how are you going?' with the blunt answer 'I feel like shit, the world tastes like sawdust', or an entire Hamlet soliloquy (III) communicating more elegantly the world-is-sawdust feeling. 

My friends now seem to have divided into three distinct categories:

1. The disbelievers 

(not the band) but people who see me and hear what I am saying and then dismiss it as flippant word-vomit and carry on talking about their shoes, dog, band, ex-girlfriend or housemate.

2. The ignorers 

They seem to listen to what I am saying and receive the information as truth but then decide it is irrelevant  and carry on as normal. Spencer is leading the charge in this group (I) with Mr X a close but different kind of second. Mr X may in fact not be an ignorer but just a close-card-holder, it can be difficult to tell with him but then at other times he is jumping around all floppy and winsome like a four-year-old child. He is an odd mixture of warm and aloof.(II)

3. The warm lights in a dark world: 

Two of my friends have been cheering me up and making me feel loved and welcome, for some reason this seems to make Spencer angry(I). These are the best kinds of friends, the ones who listen and then respond. I'm fortunate they have chosen a kind response but really any response is better than none.

Footnotes

(I) How do you solve a problem like Spencer? 

He's not a complicated man. He thinks a lot, acts inappropriately a lot, occasionally deigns to write a song, plays in a band, drinks too much, deliberately says the wrong things and stays up too late. He's just like everyone else in the Inner West  except that he is my friend and I might want to punch him in the face. Just once. Maybe.

You see last Friday night Spencer, R and I were sitting together at an after-party for a record launch. R was being deliberately kind to me but every time she said something Spencer would raise an eyebrow and suppress a smirk. I've known him too long to miss signals like that, to me it was the fair equivalent of a flashing neon sign. Ordinarily I might have just let it go, like the thousand other arch expressions, wry grins and outright sneers that Spencer produces in the course of any conversation, but not this time.

The combination of exhaustion and world-is-sawdust had me feeling vulnerable and raw enough to actually feel all of Spencer's slings and arrows. I am used to him being the first illustrate my shortcomings with an anecdote from his arsenal of my failings. He has a story about me for everything from bad dancing, interpersonal ineptitude, ignorance, bad taste in music, absence of fashion sense, being afraid of things, giving terrible speeches to general hard-hearted and fuckwittedness. I usually endure these stories with humour as most of the time they are not meant to sting.

This time Spencer's raised eyebrow seemed to indicate that R had no idea who she was talking about, that I was much more of a fuckwit than she suspected and that perhaps I wasn't worthy of being taken under her kind wing. This made me want to punch Spencer in the face for R's sake if not mine. R has seen me act appallingly often enough to have made an informed decision.

I wanted to perform a fluid ninjaesque leap across the table and punch him in the face whilst emitting loud volumes of violent yelling but all I did was leave the party. Since then I've been trying to talk with Spencer so I can work out if I do want to punch him or if he was just having one of those moments. I want to explain to him that he must have missed something in all those years of talking with me because I feel both more tender and more violent than he seems to understand. But you know, he's busy...

(II) A beginner's guide to impersonating Mr X.

First make yourself very tall, make your hair very tall, wear black-rimmed glasses and a Rolling Stones t-shirt. 

1. Sit down quickly. Cross your long legs haughtily.

2. Ignore DS and stare at your telephone for at least three full minutes.

3.Turn suddenly and fully back to the conversation.

4.Smile disarmingly, reveal something personal, say something generous and kind.

5. Re-cross legs haughtily. Steal cigarette directly out of DS's hand without asking (smile disarmingly or act as though this is normal and everyone does it all the time).

6. Give cigarette back. Re-cross legs haughtily.

7. Ignore DS for at least three full minutes.

Repeat ad infinitum.

(III) An Entire Soliloquy from Hamlet

I will tell you why; so shall my anticipation preuent your discouery of your secricie to the King and Queene: moult no feather, I haue of late, but wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth, forgone all custome of exercise; and indeed, it goes so heauenly with my disposition; that this goodly frame the Earth, seemes to me a sterrill Promontory; this most excellent Canopy the Ayre, look you, this braue ore-hanging firmament, this Maiesticall Roofe, fretted with golden fire: why, it appeares no other thing to mee, then a foule and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is a man, How noble in Reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, In action how like an Angel! in apprehension how like a god, the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals. and yet to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me; no, nor Woman neither; though by your smiling you seeme to say so.

—The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (Act II, Scene ii, 285-300)

Additonal notes to be yelled out loud

A STERILE PROMONTORY!

RICHARD E. GRANT!

NO OTHER THING THAN A FOUL AND PESTILENT CONGREGATION OF VAPOURS!

I AM BOTH MORE VIOLENT AND MORE TENDER!

THIS EXCELLENT CANOPY THE AIR!

QUINTESSENCE OF DUST!

HUG ME YOU FUCKWITS! (because I can not shake of this feeling of doom and I have become afraid)

HUG ME YOU FUCKWITS!

Additional viewing to be watched and also listened to (because I said so)

Shelter

I haven't felt so sheltered in a long time. At first I sat in the driver's seat with my eyes closed while the wind rocked and buffeted the car. I moved to the back seat to search through my bag for money but the wind blew the door shut and once again I felt cocooned.

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.

It is interesting

It is interesting to go to a party and sit between three singer-songwriters and have them all break into song, at the same time. Very interesting indeed.

Pebble theory prevents imaginary umbrella suicide in supermarket without linear or interesting narrative

Walking around the supermarket in Marrickville Metro I thought of five efficient yet whimsical forms of shopping suicide when Spencer telephoned for no reason and said he was coming around. I put down the umbrella I was planning on opening inside my heart and started doing what I was supposed to be doing, helping Grizelda choose waffles.

In-supermarket whimsical suicide is not a unique phenomenon. I strongly suspect every second person picking out a package of pasta is secretly wondering whether they could stab themselves right through the eye and into the brain. Or perhaps if it is possible the stolen almond they are eating tastes not like almond because it is one but like cyanide because it is laced with it. That would be an accidental suicide I suppose, if you inadvertently ate a cyanide-almond in the fresh produce section of a supermarket.

Spencer appeared ten minutes after I did at The Peach. Grizelda made us deliciously repulsive hotdogs followed by an enormous communal plate of waffles with berries, ice cream and real chocolate melted into sauce. Spencer mentioned something about me needing to be a pebble, rubbed along in company, and not a solitary rock all jagged and alone. I guess that explains the supermarket umbrella-opening-in-heart idea.

Spencer and I did nothing much last night. We sat at the kitchen table and drew idly with coloured pencils, drank cider and schnapps and whiskey to use up the tiny bits left in bottles. We talked about nothing and everything and nothing again until three o'clock in the morning. I had chocolate smeared on my face the whole time. Spencer drank cider from tall bottles and preferred to use the lone lead pencil over all the other colours. I crosshatched colours into meaningless colour blobs surrounded by words like 'bonp', a word that sounds as well as any other.

If you thought there was a point to this post you would be right. It is in there, quite obviously floating around from the very first sentence but I'm not going to sum it up. I'm going back to just past the beginning, before the middle. Spencer came striding up the hallway in a long winter coat carrying two big bottles of cider and two identical copies of Kinky Friedman's autobiography. We've done that before, sat somewhere reading the same book at the same time. Everyone has a different way of being a pebble.

The real beginning was the day before. Friday night I sat at the kitchen table watching my housemates bake separate cakes simultaneously. I was drinking butterscotch schnapps out of a Moroccan tea glass, smoking cigarettes and uttering depressing asides to any baker who would listen. Leaning my elbows on a pile of Hemingway's borrowed from Marrickville library. The Hemingways were a result of an email from Abdullah.

You see narratives are interesting things. You can lay out first this, then that, then this is what I was thinking or what it might mean but all readers are just guessing really and I like it that way. I wouldn't want anyone to know just how much my friendship with Spencer or Abdullah or Grizelda really means. It would be like baking a cake using the pumping valves of my real heart then watching the knife slice through the iced and decorated thing. That would be a fine way to end the last story, no conclusion necessary.