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 don't like this

I think its hiding in disgust. What a disguise or is it shame or the same dread weight. Standing in the shower I thought I'm diminishing. I feel diminished but unafraid. I want to do all the knee jerk punch drunk western suburbs king hits. I want to send intoxicating emails lined with spurs sure to set everybody running in the right direction. A headlong opposite driven by the apposite.

I need a good horse and a steady horizon. I need strength in sinews and an impenetrable everything. I need clearance for takeoff, twelve canisters of low viscosity oil and a hot exhaust manifold. I'm going to write this across my own sky. Fuck off.

Etiquette, equity, equality

I feel as though I have been unfaithful, to myself, and unfair to the man who shared my bed. Earlier in the day, yesterday, I told Gemma that I was just going to have to get used to the idea that I will never have sex ever again. I did not utter false words, I was sincere and in a place of acceptance so imagine my surprise when I found myself pinned like a butterfly and stroked like a fractious horse at the close of the very same day.

He is older than any man I've ever slept with before, I can not deny that this was something I was thinking about this morning when I made a break for couch. Other factors in the couch move included feeling dire, very dire and like something was going to explode out of my stomach and then my head and also possibly my bowel.

The man, I should call him something. I shall call him Zissou. Zissou was astonishing. Everything was slow and monumental like an ancient calling. Zissou worshiped me like I was a temple. His hands, strong calm hands reminded my skin that it is skin. It was a slow revealing of nerve endings and the connectedness of all my parts. I could not help but think of a dressage master working a temperamental horse in hand. I know this will not make sense to anyone who has not calmed a horse with long slow strokes using their whole being to transfer safety through velvet skin.

I was selfish and he was willing me to be selfish. I regret now running to the couch for solitude but I felt at the time that what had happened was something so astonishing I needed to inflate a bubble of self to hold to me just a little bit longer.

Of course I would not be myself without moments of spaz, it was not all golden light with nerves on fire. At one point I started to ask if he had read any Sartre because I am reading "What is literature" and am keen to hear people's opinions on the book. I am fairly sure that the question was inappropriately asked, needless to say it went unanswered.

The right thing

Sometimes doing the right thing is a just another way to make yourself feel better about yourself. A friend of mine is planning on meeting up with a man she went on a date with to inform him, over lunch, that its not going to work for her. She's going to give him the let's be friends speech. Whilst I admire her for being straight forward and shooing away any anxiety or expectations I have some issues with her methods.

The man is most likely under the impression that this is another date. The man was very keen to meet her for lunch and told her this. Imagine yourself sitting in a public place right across from the person you have been hoping would invite you somewhere, one on one. You might have picked out a special outfit and checked the train timetable twice to make sure you'd arrive on time. You might be letting loose wild imaginings over garlic bread, this is only going to make things worse when you have to pack your heart away with the tea spoon over coffee.

I should have said this to my friend when I had the chance. When you go to somebody and you have something to say make sure that they are going to be comfortable. Don't do it in a public place, sometimes it is kinder to do it over the phone so they can run from the bedroom to the kitchen and leak tears into teacups. Make sure you consider it from their point of view as well as your own. When you move to your moral high ground take care where you cast your shadow.

Words fatherfucker words

So here's a word. Are you ready? Woot! You have to say it with a really long ooo sound but its not a slow word so you need to practice it until you can do a long ooo sound very quickly. Its important to go up a bit at the end but not too much, just enough. The 't' should be a soft sound and there is always an exclamation point, always.

This word was first brought to my attention by Lerf the housemate that lived in The Peach before Grizelda arrived. Lerf is super fabulous, beyond lovely and I miss her. She buggered off back to WA to go to uni which I think was a terrible mistake. TERRIBLE MISTAKE. She should have stayed here in mindless jobs just to keep me company.

Woot! to the Lerf.

We interrupt this nothing for an important NEWS FLASH!

My Fspazbook friend, oh and person I actually know in the real world has declared herself to be The Vegan Cupcake Master. This is incredibly exciting news. I had no idea that she was a cupcake master let alone a vegan cupcake master.

Oh wait, the excitement is fading into jealousy. I wish to be a cupcake master and a drummer. She is both of these things, she is the new drummer in Spencer's band among other bands. Hang on the excitement is coming back. Woo hoo! There it is.

On her first birthday I slipped back in time

For the smallest person I know, on your first birthday I slipped back in time, back to a year ago when I walked differently, back to when I was the most important person in someone's life, back to a place where love was tangible and I wandered through the aquarium arm in arm.

In thinking of all the things I could possibly write to you they all meant essentially the same thing. Welcome to this world, we are all so very pleased that you arrived safely, nothing new, nothing new. Fond as I have always been of your parents something unexpected happened to push this into perspective. I'll explain in a slow way the small thing that happened.

Yesterday was a long warm day and by the time I caught the train at Redfern station I was exhausted. At first a sense of friendship and duty propelled me towards Penrith instead of Windsor and home. Artboy met me at Blacktown station where I had been waiting for twenty minutes stamping my feet, spilling my coffee and silently cursing as all the commuters streamed down the stairs and past me into waiting cars and buses.

By the time I was in the car and headed up the M4 I'd smoked way too many cigarettes, spilled half a soy latte down my jacket and generally smelled so bad that I felt worried. This was the first indication that something different was at hand. You see I regularly rock up to anywhere stinking like an ashtray with hair on end and half a muesli bar in my pocket. At the hospital I paid five dollars to park the car.

I walked into the room and positioned like sentries were Ron, my brother and Rhett. Artboy walked over to meet them and there you were in a plastic crate like nuts or taps at a hardware shop, you could have been wheeled in from anywhere.

Rita sat calmly and talked me through the birth. Spinal blocks, septic shock, a violent slashing through of muscles right into the core. How brave, how radiant and strong your beautiful mother. Ron held you easy as a tennis ball like heartache never existed. He said it was frightening when he came upstairs with just you, Rita pinned down by doctors and septic shock. He said frightening in a small flat voice with wide eyes, a half second where even the echo of his fear was unbearable to witness.

My brother sat ensconced in the corner, he is almost incapable of uttering an appropriate emotional response, it was his presence, his very presence, he came straight from work and stayed til visiting hours were over.

Ray came in, sandy-haired boy of a man. All of these men have sat in my house and let off firecrackers and drunk and smoked until dawn. Girlfriends come and hearts break even their friendships have hung by a thread but here they all are. We gather tonight like a pride. You have opened in us all the tribal urge to circle and protect. We stand in the spaces between ritual, searching each other, longing for the collective memory of arms and legs and hearts singing in age old celebration but we have none so we sit and stand and talk about anything but the beating of your heart.

I sit in the corner nearest the door slowing down my breathing, sitting in silent wonder at the fierceness welling in me. Ron passed you gently to Rita and a ripple went round the room, every muscle in every body flexed, all eyes on you, no thought but to ensure your safety in this one small movement. This is when we were more human, passionate, articulate, united than we have ever been. One moment, one movement, one gap between breaths. That was the small thing that happened.

From the Styx

I will let my friend speak for himself despite my general dislike for music made by hippies.



I am the forest activist who was chained to the ground through a car in the Styx Rd.

At 8:30am three police officers arrived in two police cars. I jumped into the car and locked myself into the pipe. Within moments my police liaison team were arrested without warning and put to the back of a paddy wagon by two young police officers. I was left alone with the senior officer who asked if there was anybody in the car. I said yes and asked for him to talk to my liaisons. The same police officer then attempted to smash the windows of the car with his elbow and on failing this smashed through the back driver's side window with a large stone. He opened the drivers side door jumped on top of me stating "I'm sick of you greenie c*nts". He then proceeded to hit my face repeatedly, stuck fingers up my nose, gouged at my right eye, pushed my head into the steering wheel with his knee, twisted my neck and verbally abused me. I was yelling, "This is not right, you are being filmed", to which he replied, "That's why I didn't break the other windows."

Around twenty contractors, obviously aggravated at the valley being blockaded, arrived soon after. The contractors began threatening me, intimidating me, throwing cold water on me and filming me. Had the police officer not been so volatile in his initial contact with me I would have considered unlocking myself at this point but felt safer being attacked by one police officer in side the car than locking off and being left alone with twenty angry contractors. I was inadvertently put in a position where it was both unsafe and unwise to unlock myself from the ground. SES and police rescue were called due to their experience in these situations, however, they could not come until the next day. Instead I had volunteer fire brigade and ambulance officers who were in no way equipped to handle the situation. I was given the option of staying locked on for another night or having some of the boys dig me out. I explained that I would happily wait. They chose to dig me out. The contractors started working towards my release, not with professional tools such as the Jaws of Life, oxy torches and grinders. They used an axe, screwdrivers, a shovel, a car jack and a rock to dig at the concrete. Unprofessional tools wielded by unprofessionals in a situation where my wellbeing was not their priority. The car was jacked up, stretching my arm to expose the concrete. I questioned my safety and in response was hit with the butt of the axe in the arm. This turned into somewhat of a sick game where I talk, I get hit and my 'rescuers' laugh. It was announced by one of the contractors that a reporter for the Mercury had arrived and I thought this would help my situation. However I was told to keep my mouth shut and the car door was closed so as not to see me. The door was opened around fifteen minutes later after she had gone. When the door was opened there were some wives of contractors present getting told, "Take a look at this ugly stinking ippy." A blunt object hit my arm once more and when I screamed and swore in agony I was told "Don’t swear in front of the ladies" and was hit again. The digging and hitting rescue lasted about three hours. I released my clip when it became blatantly obvious that my arm was in danger, once a contractor drove up in his machine to lift the car up. This would have meant my arm would be suspending four bags of concrete. I collected belongings, some of which were soaked by logger’s urine and was driven away uncuffed in the front of a police car with country and western playing through the external speakers of the car.

Throughout my ordeal my civil liberties and basic human rights were stripped of me. The police officer and others abused me both physically and mentally during my 'rescue' for standing up for my beliefs that old growth should not be logged and that Tasmanian forestry practices are poor and unsustainable.

Newtown, oh how I love you

Walking to Newtown station to meet Creamboy I ran into Mr X. He asked me where I was going. I told him to get some sorbet, he said just come to the pub and kerplunk. That was the final straw being pulled out and my marbles rolling around on Enmore Rd right outside the Starr-Bowkett Co-op. This weekend I have been inundated with invitations and offers of kindness and company, secret imaginings have been popping up real as the caterpillars on my lemon tree. Real as Mr X standing in front of me and smoking one of my cigarettes. I reluctantly left Mr X and headed for the station, I cranked the volume on my mp3 player and found a moment of rhythm inside The Who as I crossed the road. Creamboy was there and waiting. He wasn't wearing any music, he was wearing a tie.

We walked and it was not awkward, in his presence I felt firmly my own sense of self and didn't waver or wait for direction. He pauses at the edge of crowds, he waits while people go through doors, he keeps his hands still and his knees together but his mind is looping mine every second heartbeat. This is a man with a head full of everything.

There was no fig sorbet so I settled for blueberry, Creamboy offered a taste of his lychee and for the first time I liked it. He asks questions this Creamboy, people don't usually ask me questions. People usually lie back in wait for the all dancing Dale entertainment conversation that costs them nothing. They walk away laughing and satisfied while I slip down in my chair and wonder at their lack of sense and purpose. Creamboy was all curiousity and direct questions. He is a sit forward and pay attention conversationalist, he is the opposite of vacuous, he navigates thought like a reef pilot.

All evening there was a pervasive lightness. There being no need to simplify, justify or seduce freedom opened in unexpected places and I sat on a low round stool squashed into the corner of Madam Fling Flong's drinking a martini and merrily playing Connect 4. There were crowds and I fell into them childlike and happy in the bustle. We ate burritos in Guzman Y Gomez at the long communal table sharing a can of vile pineapple drink, we wandered down King St and perused the wares in a sex shop. We continued down King St talking of movies and nothing and everything. I stopped on the corner of King St and Brown to show him a poem inspired by that corner. He read it aloud without a hint of self consciousness. He showed me the book he is reading and I showed him mine. He described himself as charmless but I found him utterly charming. He has a clumsy grace and freewheeling confidence. He twirled twice in the Hopetoun saying 'I like The Jackson Five' while Spencer's band were bumping in.

Thank you Creamboy for travelling all the way in from The Riff to The Town. Thank you for your conversation and willingness to walk the streets of Newtown as I do. Thank you for your questions and answers, thank you for being both silly and earnest and letting me have a go at your stethoscope.

I think I might like to have another go at talking to Creamboy, I think its my turn to ask questions but of course Creamboy might have an entirely different opinion.

Morphologist

I am cultivating a new mini obsession based on nothing more than a whim. Gemma spotted the emergence of it before I did which is slightly disturbing but I think she's got it right. Ah, life is fun.

It didn't make the national news

Well done Tasmania. Good to see you are maintaining your excellent reputation which includes genocide, environmental disasters, general human torture and of course the brutal treatment of the excellent friends of Dale Slamma. No wonder they dug that big channel to keep Tasmania separate from the mainland.

Does noone know what a cordax is?

Good lord that was horrible! I am sitting in bed happily reading a children's novel and munching on pirate chocolate but unfortunately I spied some crumbs on my chest. I eagerly licked my finger and went about rounding them up and stuffing them in my mouth thinking they were chocolate crumbs but they turned out to be flakes of tobacco. Once again I am sitting in bed thinking Yucky.

I think I am ill. I have been wandering around the house this evening feeling distressed and in dire need of a hug but not knowing why. After lemon tea and reflection I think I feel ill. There is a sneaking ache in my bones and my head periodically throbs and I have been entirely incapable of doing anything constructive all day. Thankfully my new silicon purchase has kept me otherwise occupied though in need of regular showers and a big glass of cranberry juice.

Yesterday I spent several hours in the fine company of Gemma from the famed Gempires. I was prepared to meet her lively mind and charming sense of humour but I was not at all prepared for the sheer force of her presence. She is powerful and charming and elegant. If I didn't love her so much I'd hate her.

I was in the toilets at The Townie furtively undertaking some major bra readjustments and trying to lower the skyline of my hair when a woman came through the door, pointed at me and leapt on me. Fortunately it was Gemma, her hair smells nice. Gemma is the second person to hug me since I've been single, people don't usually hug me because I am a bit prickly and awkward so I was entirely in love with her from the first moment.

The whole time I tried as hard as I could to keep my sensible hat on. I desperately wanted to go and ask a man in a kilt and horrible vest why on earth he thought that vest went with his kilt but I erred on the side of sensible and instead opted for drawing a helpful diagram of my vibrator with labels and arrows pointing out the various features. I engaged in some fretful leg swinging from my high stool to help counteract the no smoking location, this did not help but trips out to the balcony did.

I wanted to keep talking to Gemma. I wanted to steal her and install her somewhere where we could converse until I ran out of words and ears. I still feel like Anne of Green Gables, I only wish Gemma lived close enough to develop a secret system of candle flashes at the window.

I like this blog

But I strongly suspect that Amy Saker is not who she says she is. The Rutherford Chronicles.

Well now. What do we have here?

Matt said... Too bad you weren't able to collect any data other than that dating sucks. Glad you're able to affirm yourself so easily.

My initial reaction involves words that computer won't even let me type. Firstly dating is not what I was doing. I used the word dating but dating it wasn't. It was other. I mostly see dating as a very American construct anyway. Things seem to happen much more organically in my part of the universe.

The data I collected is that I like myself. I like myself and I think that one day I'm going to meet someone who likes me too. I'm going to meet someone that I find interesting, someone with spark and humanity, someone that isn't afraid to imagine.

And as for the easy self affirmation. That's easy. Get fucked. Its been seven months, fifteen days and one hour since Artboy lost his beautiful beautiful mind, and my entire sense of self with it. My existence cracked and shattered, in a heartbeat. So don't fucking tell me that I'm walking around singing about how easy it is to feel good about myself. Don't fucking tell me that when the man before Artboy suicided. Don't you dare fucking tell me anything at all.

Warning: post may appear angrier than it actually is.

What signifies a phone call?

What the hell people! I know its mostly my fault for chatting about it but really, I had no idea that people would bother with 'reactions' to my little conversation with Rupert. So just for the record:
No. I have not gone mental.
No. Rupert is not mental.
Yes. Rupert takes pictures of himself and writes posts about sex.
No. I am not going to take pictures of myself and I have already written posts about sex, just check the archives.
Yes. I will write posts about sex again, if I ever have any, this issue is pending until I meet a man that I can have sex with.
Yes. I might phone him again. Because. He is an interesting man and I like talking to interesting people.
============================
ENDS

Singing Bridges

Ah Jodi Rose, thank fuck for minds like yours.

No!

I think Elliot is trying to pick email fights with me from his new home in the rehab halfway house. I don't like this at all. I'm not sure what is going on but I suspect that both us are just feeling a little weird about this new relative freedom of communication. He seems combative and oversensitive, surely just a reaction to this first step back into the world as a sober man. I don't want to fight with him. I don't want to talk to him about anything important via email. After all this time and all this waiting it would be very easy to ruin everything with only a few typed words so I will put my sensible hat on. I will let him vent or rage or express in weird ways, for now. But if he continues in this way for long I will just say no. No. No you can't do this to me because I have been there for you, no matter what. I was there for you when my heart was shredded and I couldn't breathe. I was there for you when all you wanted to do was destroy yourself, and me. I won't let you take my happiness away Elliot, you're sober now and you know exactly what you're doing so just stop. Just stop because my life is better with you in it.

Official launch of the experiment

I am turning the decision making power of my dating life over to you starting now. It is time I widened my circle of existence. My life has begun shrinking, time to reverse that process. I have walked head first through the grief of a broken heart until I was ready to start thinking of someone new. That time is now. I would like to meet a man for coffee. It doesn't necessarily have to be romantic, its just time to start meeting new people so the first step is how in the hell do I that? I reckon it might be interesting to let you decide that, so if you've twenty seconds to spare please click on this link and answer one multiple choice question. Let The Experiment begin.

I met up with an old friend from uni today. It was brilliant. It reminded me of who I am what I am capable of so thanks Guy, for the talking with meaning and the human sharing of existence, it was exactly what I needed.

To a friend and her thesis

It is little known that a thesis is a wild beast that almost cannot be tamed. It is little known that a thesis can contain your soul. It is little known that if there is one person on this planet that can tame a thesis into being it is my friend. It is little known that my friend stands so solid on this planet that it is tempting to orbit around her. It is tempting to throw myself on the ground and grasp at her feet because I know that with each one of her steps will come a sense of purpose. She is not lost, she is not wounded. She pilots her own freedom with skill and I know that when she finishes her thesis it will shine with her clear intellect and bear the indelible stamp of her humanity.

So I offer this to my friend and her thesis, there is not even one doubt in any corner of my mind that you are brilliant. The words will come, the time will pass and it will be done before you realise it. Enjoy your break on the farm.

Jeremy! Whoever you are

I think I have answered your question.