A letter to Spencer in Leipzig, Germany

Dear Spencer,


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

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

Diesel not truckers and a long-winded unrelated introduction to the promised Safe As Houses post

Times, they are a blurrin'. A weekend soaked through to the bone with exhaustion and mix'n'match pile of friends. The whole thing finished with a kebab eaten sitting on a plastic chair on Parramatta Rd with Mr X while he told me about his father and the war and the traffic tucked away for the night.

Before the kebab and the talk of war I made an adventure to the casino. Walking down the long guts of the place with Miles Davis on my mp3 player and those old brown lace-up shoes on my feet I looked around the lit calamity of the joint and the frocked up, clean-shirted crowd and wondered just what it in the fuck I was doing. Theoretically I went to write about the absurd 'Rock Lily' venue. Mr X's band has a residency there and the idea intrigued me. He took to the stage and I sat at a long empty table.

Diesel and his bass player asked if they could join me, but I didn't know who they were until they got up later to play. I'm not in the habit of recognising people I know let alone strangers. I made notes, got drunk on free beer handed to me again and again by Mr X and his band's rider. I rambled down a set of back stairs out into the night after an hour of non-stop Diesel. I was trying to shake off the impression that there's something very wrong with the world.

Back in the Inner West under roadside electric lights I gratefully devoured a kebab and conversation. They shut off the lights after a while so I carried home two borrowed books to read and a whole new set of memories.

Better memories than the ones I'm talking about in my houses project over here.

Combination lady death-farmer tea party

I wore a slip today. All day, for the first time. One of those white nylon slippery things with lace trim and darty bits around the bra area. When I remembered I was wearing it under my dress I felt vaguely like a lady, a proper grown-up lady who is organised and dabbles in witty inappropriateness. But that was only when I remembered.

When I arrived home at The Peach I was tired beyond reason. Tired beyond the ability to make even a stab at pretending to be polite, like a potato digger returned from twelve hours hard labour in the field. That's when one of The Peachettes declared she would not pay one third of the electricity bill but some other mad proportion that she would calculate based on fuck-knows-what and then email to me.

I wanted, no, I desired with all my being, to magic a pitchfork out of the air so I could stab her like a sack of grain and toss her to her bloody death off the edge of The Peach Deck. It occurred to me at that point that I was not so much of a proper lady. More like a combination death-farmer lady bringing bloody physical destruction and organising tea party settings for witty appropriateness followed by gin drinking at my desk in nothing more than a slip and some pearls. I'm fairly happy with that combination.

Nor breath nor motion

I can't remember how it all goes.

We stuck, nor breath nor motion;

As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.

But I don't suppose it matters. The venue for yesterday's horrifically frightening job interview had those words painted across the office walls and I keep wondering why. Was it just because it mentioned ships? They have something of a maritime streak running through their core business. It was one of those frightening interviews, a full panel, them loaded with tea cups and reference papers, me on an armchair feeling marooned and a little at sea. It was neither bad nor good. I could have been better but there is always in everything room for improvement. My hours of preparation seemed to leave me unprepared, I had not correctly guessed at what they might ask, nor why. There was the one obligatory 'what attracted you to apply for this role' question which I was prepared for but at the last moment discarded my rehearsed answer and went in a peculiar direction. It felt like neither a bad nor good idea. It is notoriously difficult to judge the outcome of these kinds of things. They informed me it will be several weeks before they have a final answer and I discover whether or not I shall be obliged to pass under Coleridge's haunting words each morning. 

I walked hunched and freezing from the interview, down by the waterside to the long and ancient wharf where Grizelda works. I was dodging hale like bullets, throwing up a wake of water with my heels. I was aiming like an arrow towards a place where I was already known, where I didn't have to attempt to explain and re-explain my whole being in three sentences or less at four minute intervals. I sat on the curiously placed lounges in Grizelda's workplace and whiled away half an hour talking amongst her colleagues. Nothing of any importance was said but it was almost enough to reset me back into being, just sitting in a place where people know my name.

Today I have neither breath nor motion. I made my tea with knots of rope, dropped sails down the mast to fashion into dresses. It is difficult to determine if I am sleeping or awake. But is not unpleasant. I am here inside The Peach warm and dry in drastic contrast to yesterday's encounter with the elements. When I arrived home I hauled off my boots and tipped out genuine puddles of water, I peeled off three layers of saturated clothes and spent ten minutes under the hot jet of the shower before I began to feel any kind of warm at all. I'm beginning to wonder if these elemental trials of woman versus nature are an ordinary part of the job seeking process.