This way comes
It is possible that I am panicking but I am not sure what I am panicking about. I was at a venue tonight watching some people do their thing and for no reason at all started panicking. Since then I have done about twelve stupid things, some regrettable and some forgettable like washing my hair and deciding to go to bed with the towel wrapped around my head instead doing something about drying my hair.
While I think about my hair wrapped in a towel I am beginning to narrow down the source of the panic to four separate moments in my day. They were small things, a handful or two of words, the opening of an envelope and something ill defined like false memories or faded photographs of strangers.
Its been a while since I have had to swallow against rising panic. It is unwelcome. I am saying to myself I will sleep well and wake in the morning with no trace of this unwelcome thing. I will do what I need to do and it will be grand like pianos or glass. I'm thinking about cigarettes and small flat orange cardboard boxes, stiff and lined with black paper.
Superman asked me today what kind of shop I would have if I had a shop and I answered the same old predictable answer and told him of my well imagined shop. I could have handed him a worn smooth memory of floor plans, stock lists and the smell of it but now I want to change my answer. My shop will be a memory shop, the kind where you can take all of your small moments from shelves and examine them one at a time. You can sit on the floor and reconstruct yourself or reconfigure things until they are right all the for the low price of nothing.
While I think about my hair wrapped in a towel I am beginning to narrow down the source of the panic to four separate moments in my day. They were small things, a handful or two of words, the opening of an envelope and something ill defined like false memories or faded photographs of strangers.
Its been a while since I have had to swallow against rising panic. It is unwelcome. I am saying to myself I will sleep well and wake in the morning with no trace of this unwelcome thing. I will do what I need to do and it will be grand like pianos or glass. I'm thinking about cigarettes and small flat orange cardboard boxes, stiff and lined with black paper.
Superman asked me today what kind of shop I would have if I had a shop and I answered the same old predictable answer and told him of my well imagined shop. I could have handed him a worn smooth memory of floor plans, stock lists and the smell of it but now I want to change my answer. My shop will be a memory shop, the kind where you can take all of your small moments from shelves and examine them one at a time. You can sit on the floor and reconstruct yourself or reconfigure things until they are right all the for the low price of nothing.
Strange days indeed
My mother's Great Dane Horatio will be marching in a rhododendron festival parade wearing a special outfit, that was not quite the information I was expecting to hear when I phoned my mother this morning.
I don't think the idea of an extremely large dog marching in a flower parade directly lead to the chicken nuggets but I am quite sure its a contributing factor. I left the house in search of food but I turned right at the front gate instead of left and found myself completely surrounded by schoolboys outside the shops. An older boy was stationed at the zebra crossing, he saw me approaching and put out his arm to stop a gaggle of younger boys to let me pass. The younger boys stopped in their tracks without a second thought and waited for me to round the corner and cross the road.
I had forgotten about schools and schoolboys wearing ties carrying identical school bags. They frolicked like polite kittens on either side of the road except for the older boys who were gangly and lovely like lopsided homemade cakes. I stopped to think of them all arriving in houses, throwing down their bags and running up hallways to find kitchens and parents and cold drinks on a hot afternoon. I longed momentarily for a clockwork house run by clockwork parents, a dinner time and designated places at the table. A place where everybody helps set the table and clean up afterwards, while the clockwork parents sit down with cups of tea and watch the news. I wanted a house where the salt and pepper comes out of a cupboard before dinner and goes away again afterwards. A house with a special container for used tealeaves that are wrapped in newspaper and put in the compost at the end of every day and a kitchen where the lights go off at the same time every night but I don't this explains the chicken nuggets either.
I walked laps around the shop with a red basket hanging on my left elbow searching for food I might like to eat. I stopped in front of the freezers because they were cold and inadvertently spied a box of frozen chicken nuggets. I do not remember ever buying such things before. I opened the freezer and put the box in my basket and walked to the front of the shop to pay for them, they were six dollars and forty nine cents.
I ate the chicken nuggets in front of the television whilst watching Ice Road Truckers. I was not aware of a show called Ice Road Truckers until today. The basic premise seems to be that men in terrible hats drive big trucks across ice. During the ad break I added tomato sauce to the chicken nuggets. The nuggets were greasy, crunchy on the outside and rubbery on the inside and tasted of bread crumbs, cardboard and oven. I'm not sure what came over me, like I said I can't entirely blame the idea of a large dog marching in a flower parade or a gaggle of coltish skittering school boys but I am quite sure they must have had something to do with it.
I don't think the idea of an extremely large dog marching in a flower parade directly lead to the chicken nuggets but I am quite sure its a contributing factor. I left the house in search of food but I turned right at the front gate instead of left and found myself completely surrounded by schoolboys outside the shops. An older boy was stationed at the zebra crossing, he saw me approaching and put out his arm to stop a gaggle of younger boys to let me pass. The younger boys stopped in their tracks without a second thought and waited for me to round the corner and cross the road.
I had forgotten about schools and schoolboys wearing ties carrying identical school bags. They frolicked like polite kittens on either side of the road except for the older boys who were gangly and lovely like lopsided homemade cakes. I stopped to think of them all arriving in houses, throwing down their bags and running up hallways to find kitchens and parents and cold drinks on a hot afternoon. I longed momentarily for a clockwork house run by clockwork parents, a dinner time and designated places at the table. A place where everybody helps set the table and clean up afterwards, while the clockwork parents sit down with cups of tea and watch the news. I wanted a house where the salt and pepper comes out of a cupboard before dinner and goes away again afterwards. A house with a special container for used tealeaves that are wrapped in newspaper and put in the compost at the end of every day and a kitchen where the lights go off at the same time every night but I don't this explains the chicken nuggets either.
I walked laps around the shop with a red basket hanging on my left elbow searching for food I might like to eat. I stopped in front of the freezers because they were cold and inadvertently spied a box of frozen chicken nuggets. I do not remember ever buying such things before. I opened the freezer and put the box in my basket and walked to the front of the shop to pay for them, they were six dollars and forty nine cents.
I ate the chicken nuggets in front of the television whilst watching Ice Road Truckers. I was not aware of a show called Ice Road Truckers until today. The basic premise seems to be that men in terrible hats drive big trucks across ice. During the ad break I added tomato sauce to the chicken nuggets. The nuggets were greasy, crunchy on the outside and rubbery on the inside and tasted of bread crumbs, cardboard and oven. I'm not sure what came over me, like I said I can't entirely blame the idea of a large dog marching in a flower parade or a gaggle of coltish skittering school boys but I am quite sure they must have had something to do with it.
Mildly interesting
If the world could vote in the American election then it wouldn't be an American election and would in fact be the world election that some people already think it is. None the less it is mildly interesting to see how the world would vote if it could. Click here to cast your vote.
Tinned beach tomato law fortress
Somewhere quite near to the Fortress of SolitudeIn a fit of spontaneous similtude I told myself I'm bouncing it off the wall like a tennis ball. I saw my friend Sebastian last night. He drove me in his new car to dinner and we talked about his shining life. I sat next to him on the first day in the first class at law school and then most days until graduation. There are photos of us side by side in matching hats and gowns, he wore his like a triumph but I spent the day running down hallways pretending I was Harry Potter, this might be a clue as to why he is a successful lawyer and I sit in a room with a teapot, a typewriter and a cat.
I wound up in Spencer's Beach Shack some time after midnight, sitting in the one good chair staring at his walls of records and wonder. Spencer has one shelf of tinned tomatoes. The Beach Shack is the opposite of being a lawyer. I couldn't help comparing it to The Peach where there are no tinned tomatoes but many good chairs. I felt like I was in the middle of something, halfway between Sebastian and Spencer.
Two days ago there was dust in my socks, lungs, hair and car. I drove for hours across the harbour, on freeways and dirt roads through the bush to get to the Fortress of Solitude. Superman was standing in the middle of a great hall winding electrical wires into shapes when I found him. I was hot and cross but couldn't help smiling. We packed Superman's things into the Zammercarship and I drove for hours on dirt roads, across bridges and on freeways until we got to Emu and Superman was home.
There's no point to these stories. I'm just yawning and bouncing failures off my walls and wondering at the scope of things with its tomatoes, records, fortresses and my old enemy the law. I don't belong in any of those places, with my left hand I'm shaping mud into bricks. Maybe one day I can build somewhere of my own.
Ahoy there
This is your Captain speaking. Tomorrow morning I chart a course for the Fortress of Solitude where Superman, his bags and guitar will be brought aboard the Zammercarship. It is important to note that I am not at all terrified about driving over bridges such as The Sydney Harbour Bridge, The Anzac Bridge and other fine bridges with multiple lanes of traffic going in mad directions all at once with cars in them, many cars that may at any point endanger the Zamemrcarhip and all who sail in her. The cat has abandoned ship and elected to stay ashore in The Peach for this particular journey.
Superman has supplied me with excellent instructions. Today Grizelda drove me across the Anzac Bridge and the Harbour Bridge to demonstrate to me the sturdiness of both bridges and how to successfully navigate on to and then across them. I am almost certain that I know what am I doing.
After seeing a film by myself in the afternoon I stopped for a coffee on the way home
Not even the arrogant children of Newtown gathering in my sanctuary can shatter this dream. A woman draws at my usual table. It is the kind of tragedy that my brother would cling to, the great house wrapped for war and all the haunted grandeur. There is something of cell memory in such schemes and India or Shanghai, just this once, could be substituted for Morocco.
I have come here to gather myself while the dream slips to my feet. I wear it like a mantle. I don't recall how it occurs. I do not slip my arms into its sleeves. There is no stranger holding it aloft with strings. It is a universal cloak. I stand beneath it drawing it down as warmth or something more essential than footsteps.
It rages outside, sun scudding as a cloud through aeronautical space. You could be forgiven for imagining this bitter October Newtown wind imagined. I would forgive you your wild colonial view of a continent without seasons.
I have fallen into a painting. McCubbin had every idea when he painted me as lost. His mistake was ignoring that I am standing in the cradle of the sea. Seaweed grows as reeds parting gently in front and behind so that you can place me precisely as unbelonging with this wilderness. Now here NWJR will say that he does not understand me and I shall first reply that I have never seen America. I am caught here. The tides turned inward when the world sought refuge. The switch lies forgotten somewhere in the machinations of war. A great tide that never turned though there is here an identity of unbelonging.
The English make an art of unbelonging holding up houses as glass orbs that we pay peer into or travel through. Only the imagining will possess us. The last time he saw her he said "I hope your heart breaks" and I knew at once this could never be my point in th story though others may cling to it. The urge here is to repeat. It is the kind of tragedy my brother would cling to, the great house wrapped for war and all the haunted grandeur.
Spencer will come here to meet me but before he arrives I will be unfaithful to my novel and begin another not yet unwrapped from its shop-branded paper bag. I begin to despise youth. The vulgar to my left and the questing talking ones behind with their part-time jobs and their talk of the merits of various teachers.
A woman arrives in a red cardigan adorned with a mirrored glass opera house broach that remind me of an every morning urge to recapture oblivion. I have missed my chance to be drunk over this. Instead I sleep and rise and dress as though I had purpose. I call this infernal searching purpose but I must not refer to that neither with scratchings nor boldness nor cloaked devices.
I am sure that the waiter read my words as he cleared away my cups and one plate with leave from a strawberry. There is always the worry of things but I leave them open on the table as I visit the toilet as a sign of faith though I do not believe.
It is a kind of madness, imagining words poring from my cheap stolen pen to be worth something other than paper with ink. I was supposed to write a novel but I've no regard for story. Being constructed of words and constructing with words are not connected. Here now the dream has fallen and I will lay down this pen and pick up my novel.
I have come here to gather myself while the dream slips to my feet. I wear it like a mantle. I don't recall how it occurs. I do not slip my arms into its sleeves. There is no stranger holding it aloft with strings. It is a universal cloak. I stand beneath it drawing it down as warmth or something more essential than footsteps.
It rages outside, sun scudding as a cloud through aeronautical space. You could be forgiven for imagining this bitter October Newtown wind imagined. I would forgive you your wild colonial view of a continent without seasons.
I have fallen into a painting. McCubbin had every idea when he painted me as lost. His mistake was ignoring that I am standing in the cradle of the sea. Seaweed grows as reeds parting gently in front and behind so that you can place me precisely as unbelonging with this wilderness. Now here NWJR will say that he does not understand me and I shall first reply that I have never seen America. I am caught here. The tides turned inward when the world sought refuge. The switch lies forgotten somewhere in the machinations of war. A great tide that never turned though there is here an identity of unbelonging.
The English make an art of unbelonging holding up houses as glass orbs that we pay peer into or travel through. Only the imagining will possess us. The last time he saw her he said "I hope your heart breaks" and I knew at once this could never be my point in th story though others may cling to it. The urge here is to repeat. It is the kind of tragedy my brother would cling to, the great house wrapped for war and all the haunted grandeur.
Spencer will come here to meet me but before he arrives I will be unfaithful to my novel and begin another not yet unwrapped from its shop-branded paper bag. I begin to despise youth. The vulgar to my left and the questing talking ones behind with their part-time jobs and their talk of the merits of various teachers.
A woman arrives in a red cardigan adorned with a mirrored glass opera house broach that remind me of an every morning urge to recapture oblivion. I have missed my chance to be drunk over this. Instead I sleep and rise and dress as though I had purpose. I call this infernal searching purpose but I must not refer to that neither with scratchings nor boldness nor cloaked devices.
I am sure that the waiter read my words as he cleared away my cups and one plate with leave from a strawberry. There is always the worry of things but I leave them open on the table as I visit the toilet as a sign of faith though I do not believe.
It is a kind of madness, imagining words poring from my cheap stolen pen to be worth something other than paper with ink. I was supposed to write a novel but I've no regard for story. Being constructed of words and constructing with words are not connected. Here now the dream has fallen and I will lay down this pen and pick up my novel.
I sail
It rains. The chimney catches air like a phantasm or a ship. I have this idea of weighing anchor and steaming south through wind and rain. I will drop anchor in the vacant block of land next door to The Hive. I am sure they have built something terrible on it by now but when I last walked out of Gemma's front door and crossed the road in search of cake there was nothing but a hole in the ground, three workers sitting on eskys and poorly erected cyclone fencing.
There is room there for The Peach, her deck, a garden and all who sail in her. Spencer will carry his things in boxes and sail onboard The Peach wearing his hat and a guitar. He will then establish himself in a flat in The Hive. My brother will lash ropes round his townhouse and be towed as Ron & Rita row down from the mountains. The Cowboy has attached twin diesel engines to his flat. Robert's house shimmers and slips coordinates with grace at warp speed. Superman will know where to come, he sees all from the Fortress of Solitude.
We are all here. A great fleet pushing south through haunted rain. I am standing on the bow of The Peach, eyes closed against the fierce salt spray.
There is room there for The Peach, her deck, a garden and all who sail in her. Spencer will carry his things in boxes and sail onboard The Peach wearing his hat and a guitar. He will then establish himself in a flat in The Hive. My brother will lash ropes round his townhouse and be towed as Ron & Rita row down from the mountains. The Cowboy has attached twin diesel engines to his flat. Robert's house shimmers and slips coordinates with grace at warp speed. Superman will know where to come, he sees all from the Fortress of Solitude.
We are all here. A great fleet pushing south through haunted rain. I am standing on the bow of The Peach, eyes closed against the fierce salt spray.
The horizon is not always visible
This is a kind of freedom. Its one am on Monday morning and I am still dressed, awake and typing. I am tired in a lilting wither but aware none the less that this is a kind of freedom. I have been trapped by the fear of exhaustion, hearing my parts tick like an orange clockwork mouse slowing near the centre of your most expensive rug but tomorrow I need not rise before nine as it is a holiday in Slammatown.
I do not excel at the part I need to do next but I have installed my panicking self in the back room with a nice cup of tea and biscuit. I have wrapped her in shawls and placed the cat in her lap and there she will stay with a novel and her cigarettes and her mad strings of opals trailing in the dust. One other self, the one that surprised my mother time after time by sitting still and calm with an open mouth in the orthodontist's chair, the one that stood hour after hour behind the bar in university moot courts with a sheaf of notes and a clear voice will sit tomorrow and begin the task at hand.
For now I sit in my electric daylight with my lilting wither and type because this is a kind of freedom.
I do not excel at the part I need to do next but I have installed my panicking self in the back room with a nice cup of tea and biscuit. I have wrapped her in shawls and placed the cat in her lap and there she will stay with a novel and her cigarettes and her mad strings of opals trailing in the dust. One other self, the one that surprised my mother time after time by sitting still and calm with an open mouth in the orthodontist's chair, the one that stood hour after hour behind the bar in university moot courts with a sheaf of notes and a clear voice will sit tomorrow and begin the task at hand.
For now I sit in my electric daylight with my lilting wither and type because this is a kind of freedom.
I stole this from someone else who stole it from Kafka
The tremendous world I have inside my head. But how free myself and free it without being torn to pieces. And a thousand times rather be torn to pieces than retain it in me or bury it. That, indeed, is why I am here, that is quite clear to me.
Embargoed
If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you then please come to The Peach and sticky tape my head back on. I am suffering from a case of delusional positivity and a severe lack of sheer panic. It is true that I feel slightly nauseous and have rolling bouts of low to mid level anxiety but given the situation I should be going through underpants at a rate of knots.
Most of the day I undertook constructive and relevant activities in a calm fashion. I have been wishing that I could talk to Superman but The Fortress of Solitude does not have a telephone. I have been wishing to talk to Superman but am quite pleased that I do not find it necessary, I might be developing some kind of fortitude. I did send him an email but I think that is allowed under the rules of um, some kind of imaginary rules of Slammatown?
Sometimes if you are in the middle of a song and you forget the words it is best to just yell "Fuck it! Chorus" and launch into a familiar refrain, Spencer taught me this. That was a distracting thought to distract myself from being frustrated at not saying what it is I want to say. I am not used to not saying what I want to say. Further distracting thoughts are not occurring to me except for hats, pirate hats and unemployed unicorn popcorn vendors in unitards with assault rifles.
Most of the day I undertook constructive and relevant activities in a calm fashion. I have been wishing that I could talk to Superman but The Fortress of Solitude does not have a telephone. I have been wishing to talk to Superman but am quite pleased that I do not find it necessary, I might be developing some kind of fortitude. I did send him an email but I think that is allowed under the rules of um, some kind of imaginary rules of Slammatown?
Sometimes if you are in the middle of a song and you forget the words it is best to just yell "Fuck it! Chorus" and launch into a familiar refrain, Spencer taught me this. That was a distracting thought to distract myself from being frustrated at not saying what it is I want to say. I am not used to not saying what I want to say. Further distracting thoughts are not occurring to me except for hats, pirate hats and unemployed unicorn popcorn vendors in unitards with assault rifles.
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