Ease the squeeze

By Madam Squeeze (Busker Laureate of Slammatown)


At 6:15pm precisely I stumble down the front steps, totter for 50 metres, then hang a hard left and begin my purposeful stomp down King street. The stomping is a bi-product of the Boots of Doom – tall patent leather lace-ups with heels that add intimidating height, yet are sturdy enough to make me feel grounded. With my backpack I feel precariously top-heavy, a gothic ninja turtle, an Atlas on stilts. I must plant my steps firmly in the ground. The stomping is also mental preparation, the rhythm is meditative, calming. I am not suited to conventional work. A day in the office leaves me feeling frazzled, drained and inadequate. By the time I set off to busk I am often in a foul mood. Stomping helps.

I stop outside the Seven Eleven to drop a coin into little Lucas's guitar case, then weave through slow drifting herds of pedestrians to My Spot. I never start busking with an empty case. One must plant the seeds first – one gold, two silver, then strap the beast on and get down to business. Many smiles, positive comments and dancing children ensue. The weather is hot, the street is beginning to fill, and so is my accordion case. Photo Anne and her partner stop for a chat about Dusty Springfield records and I burst into a few bars of 'You Don't Have to Say You Love Me' in their honour. They leave laughing, heading home for a night in with a good bottle of wine. Friendly goth #1 drops by to lament his imminent dental work. We agree that wisdom teeth are a bad idea. I launch into a Neapolitan tarantella before friendly goth #2 stops for a noisy accordion hug. What has he done to his hair? A member of the Holy Soul strides along the opposite side of the road. I wave spasmodically, but he is all beard and business, glued to his cell phone.

My mood has lifted now. My fingers move of their own accord and I drift in and out of the melodies, watching Sal the gelato man scurrying about his shop like an ant before a thunderstorm. I grin and throw myself into the music. For a few moments I am no longer a nobody. I am a weaver of magic. Newtown is an unfolding film and my soundtrack dictates the course of its plot. I am Easing the Squeeze: bringing smiles to the faces of tired office workers and impoverished students, allowing ordinary folk, if only for a moment, to forget their troubles, to be transported somewhere beautiful. An older Eastern European lady stops and beams. She has no change to give and doesn't speak English, but she nods a thank you and the look on her face is payment enough.

Time expands and contracts. The tide of passers-by ebbs and flows. Tanned, bare-legged girls with short skirts and impossibly perfect hair; track-suited bogans packing long-necks of VB in brown paper bags; pink-haired, corseted cyberpunks of indeterminate gender. I catch sight of a heavy-set spike haired figure in my peripheral vision and for a moment my veins fill with ice. The stranger pauses outside the solarium, then walks on. My heart beats again. I've ceased berating myself for this irrational fear of an irrelevant person, but my hands are shaking with adrenaline and I'm shocked out of my trance and back to my own insecurities and inadequacies. I am no magician. Just an obsessive, anxiety-prone spaz.

Right on cue, Captain Fucktard approaches from the right. He stands close enough that I can smell the beer on his breathe and he inquires loudly if he can touch my tits. I tell him no, but he's welcome to go fuck himself. He seems genuinely offended when I physically shove him away, and skulks off muttering into his dirty top hat. I'm shaking with anger now, the fury of an animal backed into a corner and ready to lash out. My fingers are slick with sweat. I'm flustered and overheated. Time for a break.

I squat on the dirty pavers and scull a bottle of water, reminding myself that 99% of people I come into contact with are amazingly generous, considerate, and compassionate humans. I think about my friends and the many kind words of strangers, and I feel a surge of positive energy, a strange sense of belonging. I stand and squeeze out a searing rendition of my theme song, the Cancer Waltz. The accordion sounds like a carnival, and by the time the last coin lands, Spencer is ready and waiting with open arms, an understanding ear, and a thirst for milkshake.

Black & white photo by Lyndal Irons

The incredible egg: Part I

I am ridiculous enough to require reminding that all kinds of relationship between people are complex, nuanced and wedged into context. Everybody knows all the stories have already been told but that's different from living inside them. There's space for limbo inside your plot points, room for a chair, a bed, a bookcase and a bucket. I've been walking inside one all day pacing from wall to wall pressing my face against the glass. I am beginning to blame Tex Perkins.

The first time I arranged with Superman to meet somewhere I honestly did not care whether he showed up, canceled or simply failed to materialise and I wish, some of the time, to return to that point of independence because Superman has gone away.

In his leaving Superman has impressed twelve separate impressions at once like a multi-faced cookie cutter madly rotating through Christmas shapes, gingerbread men and animals. We went to see Black Francis at The Metro which is tolerable so long as you don't go outside and stand like an island in the flow of people that illustrate your difference and isolation.

Superman was unexpectedly and abominably rude to a man both of us are acquainted with but do not know. The man did not appear to feel the barbs. It was the worst kind of rude, the veiled, coded, intellectual equivalent of dropping poison into a goblet. My level of discomfort was such that I was ashamed of him and wish that I had walked away instead of attempting to summon trapdoors, loud interruptions or the clarity of thought whilst drunk to do something to stop it. I am equally ashamed of myself for not discussing this with Superman the next morning when I was weary and worse for wear but sober.

Foto was there and I quickly tired of the dynamics between him and Superman. They have the kind of friendship that seems to require them to adopt the roles of commanding and fearless private philosophers, each questioning the other's every thought, action and deed from a safe and lofty perch marked benevolence.

I did not enjoy the concert but it wasn't because of the music. Foto moved out into the foyer and was later joined by Superman. I was left standing down on the floor looking over my shoulder wondering where everybody had gone. Superman was, he assured me, about to come and find me. Foto declared that he would not go back in and I thought then that Foto must consume art like it was television but immediately blamed this on a mid-week dinner because I was remembering Foto's disparaging remarks about a woman. She had her wrists tattooed, I stared down at my plate while Foto expressed his disgust that she had had to wear bandages on her wrists for two weeks, "like a person that had slashed their wrists". I stared down at my plate and held my hands in my lap to hide the very old and faded but undeniably visible scars.

We drank more and more until we were in some fluorescent burger shop then a taxi and my eyes were closed and motion strange and exaggerated. Foto declared that we should take the taxi to the station and walk our separate ways. It rained as we walked and it was not unpleasant but for the ridiculous and as yet unfounded thought that this was the last time I would see Superman.

I stared at the back of Superman's head first thing the next morning and thought of nothing but rolling over and regaining the grace of sleep until I remembered that he was leaving and I became furious at myself for allowing the sight of Superman and the cat curled in sleep to become as Saturday as newspapers.

To be continued.

Feeling painty?

Graffiti walls open for artists upon completion of construction on site on 7th February 2009.

For info please email northbank@fareast.net.au

Sometimes

I once wrote a song called "Sometimes" that was largely about farting and blowing pants apart, in my defence I was a child at the time. The chorus went "Sometimes when I fart I blow my pants apart, I split them at the seams and Mum can't get them clean, cause sometimes when I fart I follow through". At the time it was hilarious but tonight my song nearly came true.

I'd been wandering around Newtown with Spencer and Madam Squeeze. We had sorbet sitting on the steps of a church then moved to a cafe for milkshakes (mine with soy milk so I guess it was a soy shake). Just before we left I began to feel terrible so I took the faster back way home along the railway tracks. I was in some dark back street when it hit. My stomach started tying itself in knots, I was hot and cold and white as a ghost. I didn't know what was going to come out of which end and that's when I took a look around and realised there was nowhere to go. If it was going to happen it was going to have to happen in my pants. I thought that if I was discovered in the act I would simply say "I'm terribly sorry but I'm not feeling very well".

I looked for dark enough places, I looked for abandoned buckets, I looked for holes in the walls of old factory units but there was nowhere and nothing but a steady flow of fellow pedestrians to potentially witness my demise so I put one foot in front of the other and pretended I was a marathon runner, they have a tendency to go in their pants or so I've been told.

I made it all the way home with clean pants, a modicum of decorum and plans to invent a portable fold up toilet, complete with privacy screens, small enough to carry in my pocket, just in case.

Think in shapes

Think of me as your noble savage ranging perimeters in place of remembering.

Painting fish

Like a cartoon coyote I put my back against it and pushed with all my might until I had a square of silence.

Insensible

Superman was walking up and down the hallway with a raw egg in a small white bowl first thing this morning. He said "I've got this egg. Do you sometimes wish your surname was Wow?", I do so I nodded and turned left into the bathroom, Superman continued on his way down the hall, this is unrelated to my party.

At one point late on Saturday night I feared for the lives of everybody. Superman and Spencer had linked arms and were dancing in circles at an alarming velocity, jumping over furniture and narrowly missing Robert and his snare drum. Robert, Madam Squeeze and Boli were cranking out some kind of Freylekh on drum, accordion and clarinet. The Peach Deck was in danger of crashing to the ground killing everybody at once or at least horribly maiming people with large splintery bits of wood that poking right through their middles, that would teach them not to stamp their feet enthusiastically to Gypsy music whilst seated drunkenly on The Peach Deck. The stamping was repeated, the music ranged from the bizarre to the sublime but the deck and I survived.

I have never thrown a party by myself before, there has always been someone, a brother, a housemate or a partner. I anticipated that nobody would come, not just for me. I had planned in my mind how I would walk slowly from one end of The Peach Deck to the other packing away chairs and taking lanterns down from the trees. I would put away the clean glasses and plates and lock the front door. I would shower and turn on my electric blanket. I would wake in the morning diminished. I did not anticipate that every single person would turn up with a bottle under their arm and a smile on their face. I did not anticipate that sitting on a cushion on a milk crate under the curved branch of a mulberry tree I could look in any direction and see someone that I loved.

A party is a wondrous thing where it is appropriate to laugh or sing or dance or jump around for no reason and instead of staring at you weirdly people join in. I drew sharks and aeroplanes on the fridge with Ronita, I danced like pirate with Madam Squeeze, I offered round warm things that were thoughtfully provided by Rita, I showed everyone my library, my bedside table and my brand new chair, I talked and laughed and ran around waving my arms with glee.

I wanted to draw bricks in the gaps between the shoulders of my friends until I was fortress. I wanted to spin slowly in the centre of the deck until everyone I love blurred into lines of colour and it was all I could see. I didn't manage any spinning but I'm not sure that I needed to.

Rapid Improvulation

Provided that my friends show up and do not leave me sitting with alone with the cat there will be a gathering on The Peach Deck.

May your banana stay with you

Yes, may your banana stay with you.

Medicininal Gatorade and Spencer loses his outtakes

I have nothing of interest. Anything interesting was forcibly removed from my body at high speed by all manner of crampings and convulsions. I am almost shiny with absence of interest. Raw, meek and frightened after my ordeal. Any moment now a team of previously invisible holy persons will walk through my walls, wrap me in robes and say I am ready for what lies ahead, this will not be true as I am slightly unsteady on my feet still but I don't suppose they know that. I will of course be surprised at being the chosen one but not a little miffed at being made to vomit and shit all over the place. I see this as an archaic and unnecessary part of the mystical process of which I now belong, historically, as the chosen one.

Spencer popped in this afternoon for a cup of tea which was exceptionally brave of him. I could have been hanging from the rafters ready to vomit and shit all over him the minute he walked in the door considering the last information he had on me was that it was coming out both ends at once. Brave Spencer walked right in through my front door holding aloft a cd and this time it was the rough mix of his new album, not someone who rhymes with Mex Perkins or a band that rhymes with the Trones but Spencer's very own brand new album. It was of course excellent but in my restless listless state I was very disappointed when we got to the end and Spencer promised me outtakes but then could not find them. I am the chosen one and I demand outtakes (and also some assistance with spelling- surely 'outtakes' is incorrect'?).

I am still waiting for the previously invisible holy persons. Sometimes if a person feels raw, meek, frightened and shiny with disinterest the best thing to do is wear silk pyjamas and sit in front of the fire, like Humphrey Bogart.

Table strangers

I've been holed up in here stinking of shit and vomit. It hasn't been a choice. I've been shitting and vomiting, at the same time. The first time it took me by surprise and I had no choice but to vomit on the floor between my feet. The next time I was ready and brought along a bucket, so it continued through the night and into the next day. Each time I was left shaking, drenched with sweat and stinking worse than I had before until eventually I could sleep in fitful bursts of an hour or so.

I've been waiting on kindness but ended up with strangers. The Peachettes are both on holiday in Queensland and nobody else is anywhere that I can see. I telephoned a few key people just to let the world know that I was having a problem here, they were kind but the hallway is dark here tonight and nobody has phoned to see if I'm still alive.

Before all of this vomiting began I put an ad up on gumtree for a table I want to sell, this evening I've been replying to people who've emailed to enquire about the table telling them I'll get back to them in a few days because I have food poisoning. The emails sent in reply were instantaneous and plentiful so I'm sitting here consoling myself with table strangers, its much worse than nobody at all.

Ahh horrible!

I have just vomited nine times. The salad I made for dinner came back out undigested but transformed into a foul tasting salad soup. I can not convey the depth of my horror, this feels like the worst thing that has ever happened. I was utterly helpless bent over the toilet bowl spraying high volume high speed disgusting vomit into the refulgent toilet bowl. My whole body fell victim to the convulsions.

It is a thorough action, vomiting, everything from my feet to my scalp unwillingly unified in performing the action. Rita, with her morning sickness, is my newest world hero. I am curled in my chair shaking, white and in fear that it will happen again. I feel terrible (dreadful, causing fear and alarm - just in case you needed reminding of the definition).

Shapes for sound

I want to be almost but not quite struck by lightning. I long for the blue of electricity or to be suspended over the deep water. It is the opposite of unimaginable, infinite depth reversing gravity with swelling upward thrusts. There are limitations in action and this was made abundantly clear when they all stared and saw only a small row of rubber-coated paper clips.

I'm not sure what I saw, it was the paper clips, that was the beginning. I saw a blue gradient remarkable yet flat and bent like wire on a cheap desk. It can echo anything, a blue gradient, a row of useful invention or that old arc we all know. I sat bent over the paper clips, arranging and rearranging them until the blue gradient was perfect. I would like to thrust my hands into jars of blue pigment but all I had was the evidence that pigment exists mixed through rubber, attached to wire and bent into the useful shapes of invention.

I wanted my discovery of a blue gradient good as any sky scattered on a cheap office desk to resonate like song butI have no sounds, only the shapes for them
a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z.
You can rearrange them if you like.

Sometimes when a person dresses like a pirate it is only a costume

I'm sitting in Ikea reclining on a sofa placed on a raised platform watching my very own personal parade. They've all shown up, samples from everywhere, every nation, every suburb, every brand of deodorant.

Grizelda and I came here looking for a chair named Jeff to place on the Peach Deck but I am so pleased by my very own personal people parade that I am sat here nodding mildly at the masses. This might be my ideal office. I can imagine myself sat here typing happily, I might periodically relocate to an office desk or a dining table and if I become tired I might nap in the pretend flat.

I like these nowhere spaces, where there are no obligations now. There is room here to think about the weekend and what has transpired. On Friday I was accused of being a lesbian when I told a man named Scrubber that no, I did not want him to exercise his "civic duty to make all women feel loved by making them feel sexy". I was standing in the same rehearsal space that I'd sat in watching Tex Perkins and The Cruel Sea rehearse before going on tour but everything was different. Some people were dressed like pirates but underneath you could smell their suburban skins, their organised kitchens and the spaces where ideas should be. Last time I was staring at Tex Perkins while he howled into the microphone, this time I was telling a man named Scrubber, who was wearing deck shoes, that no, I did not want to feel sexy.

In the bottom of my handbag I have the NYWF anthology, I bought it last night at the launch party, Benito Di Fonzo wrote "At least wait until I'm dead before you call me a cunt (again)" in the front of it and signed his name. Artboy appeared wearing a t-shirt and benito stooped forwards to read the small text on the front of the shirt while I thought this isn't right, this moment is as bad as exploding kittens with the power of thought. . I leant back against a brick wall, as far as I could, until I bruised my shoulder blades, and sipped from my bottle of water.

So I'm sitting in the in between space of Ikea on a mustard yellow chaise longue watching my own personal people parade with a book in the bottom of my handbag, two bruised shoulder blades and twelve kinds of memory. I think I kind of like it here, I might stay.

Bah!

Yeah, you heard me. You are flat, stupid planet, have been all along.

Station Lady, Jacket Man and Freddie Mercury Guy

Freddie Mercury Guy is an everywhere man. I'm not sure if its his striking resemblance to Freddie Mercury, the way he suddenly appeared and was everywhere all at once or if its something else entirely. I see him all the time, no matter where I am. He's practically omnipotent. He induces in me such a state of excitement that I have inadvertently invented a "I can see Freddie Mercury Guy dance". Spencer and Superman have developed almost identical responses to my dance, they stand perfectly still and say the word "spaz" slowly and clearly, Spencer, unlike Superman, will sometimes have his hands in his pockets.

Most people I know are well acquainted with Freddie Mercury Guy so I have taken to doing my dance, saying "Its Freddie Mercury Guy" then running away to avoid having to attempt to speak in a rational manner. I suspect that this may eventually prove trying for people other than me.

Dragsails and rock anchors

You may fire when ready.

Reliquary

I'm not eating dead saints but I'm walking through like everything is holy. I'm too earnest, we all know that, so I can take a skitter or an occasional low slung arrow but when he simply turned his back and walked away holding his wine glass out like a flare I thought this time Benito Di Fonzo you've gone too far.

I was sipping coffee with Spencer in the back part of the cafe having forgotten that Benito had sent out invitations to some kind of thing happening in the front part of the cafe tonight. I remembered quite suddenly when I ran right into Benito in the narrow hall connecting the back of the cafe to the front. I said hello then kept moving to the counter but on the way back out Benito and I had what would pass for conversation until we were talking about Jon Wah. I suspect that Benito believed I did not care for Jon Wah because I once referred to him as a reprehensible cunt but I don't recall seeing Benito at Jon Wah's funeral where I stood silent in the freezing rain wondering how in the hell a light like that could extinguish itself so completely.

I paused and dropped my head at the thought of Jon Wah and all that his death has done, this is when Benito turned his back and walked away holding out his glass of red wine like a flare. I burst onto the street in a fury matching Spencer's long stride. Spencer turned to me and said "He rates himself" then fell silent again.

I'm not eating dead saints but walking through like everything is holy so please, if you don't mind, just take a little care.

Retardedly exhausted

I'm sketching in hours with cigarettes and phone calls thinking about Gemma on her birthday and wishing I could pop in for a cup of tea with a surprise cake in a white box but Melbourne is nowhere near Sydney, I think this might be a design flaw.

I'm waiting for words or the space that words arrive in. Daily is difficult when you need to make room for words. I was glad this weekend for Superman's company with his easy way of letting me be unfiltered, tired and badly dressed. I was glad last night when Spencer and Madam Squeeze came to visit. We stuffed ourselves with Turkish food and I demonstrated my newly perfected Pirate Chicken Dance and my ability to play a G major scale slowly but just the way Superman taught me to on guitar.

Spencer sometimes talks about the geography of sound but now I'm thinking about the geography of self. We all sat in The Peach stuffing ourselves with Turkish food and listening to records like they were just invented. Superman put on God Gave Rock'n'Roll To You and it was ridiculous but we all knew the words. I sat on the floor with pide half way to my face singing God gave rock'n'roll to you, put it in the soul of everyone. We were all singing and it was good and ridiculous and if scribes were taking notes they would have called it cartography.

I'm retardedly exhausted and happy in a flopsy kind of way. I had a good weekend, those are small words, the answer to a Monday question. They should be bigger or interstellar or revealed in ancient bones because its a way of making maps when you have a good weekend.

Inappropriate finger thoughts!

Headlines! for purposes of remembering.

The Bogatron
Inappropriate finger thoughts
Hank Williams
A small tower of bitterness
Insensible drinking
Pirate chicken dance
A case of weird man pride?
G major scale
Chuck Berry is a knob
God gave rock'n'roll some Turkish food

Spontaneous Polo

Science, as usual, has got it all wrong. There is no need for tunnels or for Switzerland. The key to unlocking god particles is track one rif through all time. I have determined part of the sequence and was close to unlocking the first parallel universe, in which I have a giant bed and a giant bath - with fireplaces, when I was interrupted by a bout of spontaneous polo.

My colleagues held aloft mighty mallets and threw small white balls at police horses, they started running after the police horses but their legs gave out, this is part of the problem, spontaneous polo does not happen as quickly as you might imagine.

Some doctors (scientists by another name) might sometimes inform you that if your poo looks like coffee grounds that you need immediate medical attention, this is of course a lie. The problem is coffee grounds. Coffee grounds create spontaneous polio which quickly leads to bouts of spontaneous polo, this will of course lead to the destruction of the universe.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

I am growing maniac fingers, but with more hair.

Guy Mann Dude

I'm trapped in a submarine with a guitarist named Guy Mann Dude, twelve boxes of stale pretzels and five casks of traditional lime cordial. Things could be worse.

Well alright so maybe that's not strictly accurate but there really is a man named Guy Mann Dude.

Man Flowers and the Great Bubble Population

The Peachettes were watching telly in The Peach when a man on telly won a prize and was awarded a bunch of flowers and a trophy. The Peachettes declared that men should not receive flowers because they are men.

They told me about a man they know who received a dozen long stem red roses from his new girlfriend. The man did not like to receive flowers. The man complained about the flowers and said that she would have better spent the money on tickets to the footy. The Peachettes nodded at the rightness of the man's thinking and wondered aloud about just what the woman was thinking of by sending flowers to a man.

I do not share their views, just in case you were wondering.

I would like to live in Sweden where the snow is crisp and even or I subscribed to a t-shirt

I was walking down the street wondering why I thought it was a good idea to have a shandy in two separate glasses, one for beer and one for lemonade, when it occurred to me that I had subscribed to the wrong t-shirt company. I had intended on having a Swedish t-shirt subscription but ended up with an Australian one. I'll alert the embassy at once.

Pahkow

I am beginning to suspect that my doctor is making blood sausages and selling them on the black market. I am beginning to suspect that she is making the sausages using my blood. I'm going to ask for a cut of the profits and also a jelly bean. Doctors are supposed to hand over a jelly bean every time they come anywhere near me with a needle. I made a solemn vow, when I was four, that I would sit still and be jabbed in exchange for a jelly bean. I don't remember breaking my end of the deal. I want my jelly bean.

Wilga Bob's twangled bone heart

I said "I hate Voss, I didn't make it to the end." He said "It twangled on my bone heart" as he pulled a page from Voss out of his wallet. He unfolded the page carefully, read me two lines then showed me a photo of his wife in fancy dress. His wife raised a glass and I noticed their matching wedding rings, modest, flat and gold.

I had no intentions of meeting anybody new or saying anything with meaning. Spencer and I were casually aimless in Newtown giving ourselves caffeine shakes and writing a list of pirate songs for my pirate mixtape. We stopped by a party The Spatula was at, the house was magnificent, the cat average but the people just not our own. We were walking down a laneway when we ran into them, Spencer knows them from round the traps, they asked us in and sat us down. They lit candles on their wooden kitchen table, served food on mismatched plates and somehow conjured Hank Williams sounds from a room nearby. I wasn't planning on meeting anybody new, I was wearing orange shoes.

Spencer crossed his legs and I noticed we were wearing the same socks. Her hair was like an old movie and he buttoned up his cardigan. He told me about cowboys leaning on a fence reciting Wilga Bob to each other but I wonder if he meant Mulga Bill. He said there was nothing but dust and stars and the obviousness of oxygen. They asked him for a poem so he began "The story of man makes me sick, inside, outside, I don't know" while the cowboys lifted elbows in quiet synchronised movements tipping VB cans inside VB holders until he finished. The cowboys said "I don't like that" turned their backs and walked away. He said there was nothing but dust, stars and the obviousness of oxygen. I thought it was something about belonging and the deliberateness of footsteps. I lay awake thinking about their wooden kitchen table, flat gold and Hank Williams.

The next day Spencer was wearing the same socks. Superman and I ran into Spencer and Madam after the movie, after we snuck pies into a movie. Superman managed his with sauce and didn't spill a drop. We crossed the road and walked into a church to look at the ceiling but it wasn't worth the effort. We retreated to the pub where I explained that if I was a man I would wee everywhere, with great accuracy and I tried, very hard, to think of the two kinds of camel.

Superman's going away for a while and now I'm wondering why I'm friends with him in the first place. Superman is a woven thing, he is threaded and cross-threaded. There are tangles, dropped stitches and a great miraculous unfolding. Held to the light his patterns are intricate and stretch clear to the horizon impossibly large yet definite in shape. I think that's why. I remember thinking when I met him that I had no intention of meeting anybody new or saying anything with meaning. I was wearing red shoes.

Spanish vs Mexican tunnels

I have socks. This has been a public service announcement. My new aim is to be the tallest man in the world, I start training on Monday. I am quite certain that I can achieve my new goal.

I was sitting on my bed smoking cigarettes, idly clicking through photographs of Mr X when it occurred to me that I must, with great haste, become someone else.

Do what thou wilt

I got fired by Bukowski today so I started a hellfire club but confused it with a glee and ended up short singing in a doorway. Distended harmony ended. He told me to step away from the words and the pens then he folded up my typewriter and put it in his wallet. I told him I have several plastic combs but he walked away and I was immensely relieved.

All I'm doing is giving meaning to time. Constructing a trailing alphabet self so that I'm sure, so that I'm sure. Its only maps of myself, I could give them to you but I need them for my swords and orange juice.

Like a hammer

When apathy knocks its best to answer. Sitting here two square and haunted. I hate you right now and its not cause you caught me in a real bad mood honey, that's not it at all. All personnel are required to leave the premises.

I like that concrete smack of head on floor, four legs are great, two legs are better. I'll take my tea Orwellian with ashes. I was going to carve things on your forehead with my knife but everybody's been sick. Two mulberries are blushed with pink and I have the first piece of advice for an imaginary child. Run.

Come on then

I anxiously await my rejection letter to confirm that I have not been double rejected. I now know of two people that have received their rejections and I want mine. Surely my piece of writing was not so bad that I have been rejected from receiving a rejection letter, that would indeed be disheartening.

Oh W, X, Y, Z, its just entered my head

Eight days now the world has been gently rocking beneath my feet. That first moment when you stand, two feet on land, and wonder if the ocean has followed you ashore. This afternoon it lifted, for a few hours, and I navigated happily around hearth and home with incautious steps. It descended this evening with regulation fatigue but I am hopeful now that it shall soon be gone.

It was a novelty run of invisible waters and I made myself Captain but minute by minute it became disconcerting until I wondered if I'd fallen out of rhythm. It would have been eminently sensible to consult a doctor at an earlier time but I was so sure each that the sensation would vanish. Superman, in his stern sensible way, convinced me to see a doctor. It was difficult to arrange, no doctors anywhere were available and I was stuck fast in my new rhythm of measuring steps between sturdy walls, the easy existence of rising in time for work then returning to bed before 8pm. It seems ridiculous now, the exhaustion tinged with blind optimism.

One small box of tablets, two days later and I'm beginning to feel myself again. I quite like the modern miracle of medicines.

Painkillers

Long stretch of blue denim, brown cardigan knitted by my mother and a clean t-shirt that says "Adelaide". I've been measuring my legs again and they are the same length they were last week and the week before last. I've tied a small rectangular tag to my left big toe. I will clean my room as though I was dying.

I am the one steady thing today, the world rocks like a boat or perhaps its seismic, continental drift. I'm feeling tectonic again and a little like building a small house for chickens. I want straw and feathers, clucking, eggs and a reason for gumboots. I lay flat on my bed with my toe tag and my imaginary chickens. My mother phoned and asked if I was dead yet. I told her no but that she should keep hens, five hens.

I once knew a chicken called Mrs Hitler, she was mean and would peck at my small fingers. I cannot recall the names of the other chickens, Arthur was the rooster. We ate Henry the younger rooster. I watched as he was held down flat on a tree stump near the back of the garden near the tangelo tree, his head lopped off easily enough then he ran around the garden a little. I don't remember being frightened.

I once named a doll Mrs Gorbachev, inspired by Mrs Hitler the chicken. This memory is closely associated with ballpoint pens. My Grandmother was able, the year I acquired Mrs Gorbachev, to return to Estonia for the first time since arriving in Australia. She told me they did not have ballpoint pens, elastic knickers or stockings in Estonia. She would say "Ete foot, goot sildrens", eat food good children. I told her I didn't have a ballpoint pen or stockings either, my mother gave me a look then barked suddenly "Mama! No vodka for the children".

I am dizzy or rather I am still but the world rocks around me. I am traveling through time and wishing for eggs in the palms of my hands. I have seven ballpoint pens, twelve pairs of knickers with elastic, three pairs of stockings and one electric blanket. This inventory is incomplete.

Somnambulist

I found the Beaumont children somewhere between blinks staring at my computer screen. My eyes have been screaming and I'm reeling almost enough to clutch at hand rails. I've got a hunch that somebody's punched my emergency exit and I'm escaping into the blue one slow molecule at a time.

Marcus Westbury is not Bob Dylan

But I admire him none the less. He's gone and got another idea into his head and we all know what happens when Marcus Westbury has an idea.

Stranger dreams

Last night I had stranger dreams. I pulled myself off the floor and into sleep by 8:30pm. I had all the blankets and the electric blanket turned up high yet I shivered and slept and shivered. I woke between nations as I travelled in my sleep. I was fixing the world one city at a time by heating things with my electric blanket.

My bed swept across sands and through cities, some shining like a national guitar and some crumbling under my fingers like paper pasted glue. The heat was necessary. I was fixing the world one city at time with my electric blanket until I woke at 8:30am with The Spatula at my bedroom door giving me a wake up call.

There was something elemental in the need for heat. Burning out fevers and riding storms. I'm thinking I'm going to need a white nightgown with a high lace collar.

I'm ready for my close-up or today was the day I was recorded for an album or holy calamity the new Holy Soul record is going to be amazing

It wasn't your normal mission though I was wearing my ordinary clothes. Superman was late, I filled my time by staring out the window intently, with the cat. I can see why cats do this, it is a calm place to be, still while the world rolls by.

In the end we were the first to arrive, they were still recording the horns so we snuck back out and looked for coffee. I had parked my terrible car opposite a cafe where I had spied a man. I declared "I want to be that man". He was old with a beret and an all white coffee cup. He blew blue smoke rings and sat like he meant it. We walked back to the cafe and Superman let me sit in the seat where the man had sat so I could pretend to be him, he's alright that Superman.

One or two people came and joined us as we waited for the horns to finish. I started to worry that I wouldn't be able to do it correctly and floated the possibility of miming. I practiced miming clapping under the table, I don't think anybody saw me.

We did the hand claps first, Jon Hunter conducting like a possessed Tex Perkins wearing enormous headphones and performing large, precise claps for us to follow. We had a few practice runs but it still took a few takes to get it right. Superman later declared that he clapped until his hands were red and then he clapped some more. There were about fifteen of us, including the band, circled around the microphone concentrating intently on matching our claps precisely to Jon's.

We compared red hands in the courtyard while something technical occurred then regrouped for the first vocal part. The singing was quite lovely, if I do say so myself. The next vocal part was more challenging. Spencer conducted with a chopstick, encouraging dynamic changes with large enthusiastic actions. We were quite terrible and took approximately seven thousand goes to get it right. I was worried that I did not sound enough like a pirate. Someone declared that we were not drunk enough, beer appeared in a neat pile beneath the microphone and drinking mightily encourage so drink I did. Superman later declared, with an enormous grin, that if anyone ever had any doubt about our pirateness that we now had conclusive recorded evidence to set them straight.

We listened back to what we had done and were amazed. The parts we recorded were the finishing parts to songs. We stood in a line in the hall while the music played. Its understood that I could be biased but I think this album is going to be spectacular. Madam Squeeze turned slightly pink as she picked out not only her accordion part but her voice in a song.

I'm trying to think calmly about the day but I'm grinning from ear to ear. I thought it might have something to do with being lucky enough to be a small part of something spectacular or that I'll have my name on the back of an album but I'm pretty sure its something else. It was a small room in Chippendale, there were bottles of beer on the floor and drums shoved into every corner but I was one voice among many. I found myself lost in simple rhythmic synchronized sound, I'm fairly certain there's no better place to be.

Double the fist

Double The Fist is about as good as my imaginary show "Shit What Will Burn but it has the distinct advantage of actually being on television. I'll continue to watch it for as long as it may live, a team of psychologists is working round the clock to work out why. I suspect it may have something to do with The Riff (now with correct link). Recently the one good shop from The Riff moved to Newtown, not even shops are immune to that eastern tidal pull.

Last summer every time Grizelda and I walked up the street Grizelda would yell at a car. It was a small shitbox matt black with house paint, ill formed flames decorating the back end. She'd yell "Its so ugly!" but I kind of liked it. Its the sort of thing I might like, something ugly on purpose but it turns out the car is the Double The Fist car so now I am famous.

Sky hook

Today I will mostly be wanting a pony and wearing gloves.

Hard parts and jelly babies

I have the photos, I have the interview notes, I have eaten all the jelly babies. The jelly babies were Superman's idea and I think they helped at least a little. Everybody, except the cat, likes jelly babies.

Bent

I'm bent on remembering. I'm trying to catch something. I think I'm chasing the shape of myself. I trace it across clothes, beds and maps. My earliest memory is imagined. Cradled unsteadily on wheels, bound in blankets looking incorrectly at the hemispheric sky. A proper and tended garden, kind underfoot with loose dark soil. Fruit, flowers, chickens.

Things what will burn

First imagine a cheesy bossa nova casio keyboard style beat, now add acoustic guitar. Got it? Good now pause and say "Shit what will burn!". That's the theme tune to my imaginary television show called "Shit What Will Burn". Spencer, Madam Squeeze and I had our first imaginary taping of the show last night. We sat in front of the fire, I held up an object, Spencer played the theme tune then Madam and I said "things what will burn". I then placed said object into fire.

So far things what will burn include newspaper and the cardboard wrapper from a block of chilli chocolate. Good progress in imaginary television land with all the necessary typewriter isolation.

I work hard for it honey

Superman prevented me from marrying Steve Cannane, my photographer was late and they kept putting lemon instead of lime into my vodka. My shoes stuck permanently to the floor on no less than seven occasions, I had to remove my feet and a grow a new pair each time. I was plagued my hippies, can't abide hippies, and art kids that do not wash their hair or their armpits. I was teased about my plastic combs and the inexplicable excitement I experience each time the Freddie Mercury guy came into my line of sight (Freddie mercury guy is a young man, possibly twelve years old, who looks remarkably like Freddie Mercury) but overall a good time was had by all.

The first band I saw were good 73% of the time, that's not too bad. The Kill Devil Hills were adequate but The Holy Soul were outstanding. I'm headed over to my photographer's house, just as soon as I change out of my Eyeore pyjamas, to review the shots, based on what I saw on the tiny camera screen there's some great ones. All that remains is to arrange a time to meet Trent Marden from The Holy Soul to complete my interview. Well I think I also have to wee, I'll need to organise that too. A person simply can not wee wherever they are when the mood strikes them.

Coffee & cigarettes

One main point of conversation was what might happen if a person, by accident, happened to wee on their electric blanket in the middle of the night. Grizelda was sure that my mother might know but I said I would not ask her. Grizelda will now ask her mother this important question, Spencer and Madam Squeeze eagerly await the answer.

I've become a woman of luxury with my electric blanket and my plastic combs, the cat approves of both blanket and combs. Some people might not think that a cat and a woman should share a plastic comb but I don't mind, the cat seems cleaner than me most days. If it came to it I could wash the cat or the comb in the bathroom sink using soap and water.

I'll send myself to sleep thinking of postage stamps and the various hats worn by the Queen of England. I'll imagine my own currency with square coins stamped with pictures of the cat, a comb and an electric blanket. I'll dream about wheat and floating boats and sand dune horizons. I'll imagine the rhythm of the sea and microwaves and showers. I'll dream about jars of honey on a windowsill and you.

Google maps street view ruined my latent dreams of exploration

Superman has explained to me that I am a white person, he did this using a handy yet hilarious list, this has nothing to do with typewriters or maps.

I keep thinking about maps and all those mad explorers who perished because they followed valleys instead of ridges. Those mad explorers searching for an inland sea. The rivers must run for a reason but I 'm yet to figure it out, gravity doesn't hold much sway with me and the earth might after all be flat or hollow or floating madly in space like a moth at a light.

I've been exploring my explorations. I've got my maps pinned neatly to the wall, my religious green texta ritual highlighting and reducing my stepping thoughts. I'll photograph those maps one day and take out all the lines to see what shape I'm making on this earth but for now it closes my day and stains my fingers.

You can stare at the maps for hours and nothing will be revealed to you. There is no evidence of thought or dress or the rhythm of my footsteps, annotation is not my intention. Its the bare lines of being, things do not always end with revelations.

I am worried

That Google will try and ban cheese.

You bloody fatherfucking arsehole

Its no good. I've looked in the mirror and I'm not Bob Dylan. I've checked in the fridge and I'm not Neil Young. I've taken off my underpants and thrown them on the floor, this is not a revolution.

I have wanted to be myself. I have wanted to be my own Bob Dylan one step ahead three steps to the side but I keep calling myself Judas. That moment when he turns and steps to the mic and cries "I don't believe you", that moment when he turns to his band with the instruction to play it fucking loud, that moment is every third beat of my heart.

I feel built up like a bulldozed paddock. I feel wound through with tarmac and macadam and the remnants of cobble stones. I want broad shoulders and calloused fingers, I want music to be my first language. I want cherry pie and a dishwasher. I want a long desk under my window. I want my telephone to be red.

I will not pretend to be a single building. I'm walking streets and running my hands through other people's lavender and wishing it was mine. I need land and a mid century typewriter.

I feel like a city.

Twelve kinds of luxury

Free cigarettes from Bangkok, an electric blanket, some cushions, Chuck E Weiss, a brand new plastic comb and a glass of water. That's twelve kinds of luxury right there. I am against the colour orange, dirt orange, brown orange, earth orange, tree orange. I'm banning orange for the foreseeable future. Orange caught me with my gloves down, that was a boxing analogy.

Last night I saw Colonel Funtastico at The Empire Hotel. I wanted, very badly, to ask him to change his name from colonel to captain. There was a cowgirl with a particularly pink nipple, it might have been the stage lights but I'm not sure. I wasn't supposed to be able to see the nipple, it escaped without warning, let's be clear about what kind of cowgirl she was, it was the outer space kind and not the stripper kind, those being the two main types of cowgirl.

I am thinking about The Crossroads Pact, or was it a challenge? I am unsure. Last night after the hats, nipple, colonel and Benito Superman and I ate unsatisfactory cake at an unsatisfactory cafe. I was tempted, for a moment, in defiance of having had a marvellous time to draw to me all that glittering dark and sink somewhere below the ice but is difficult to be ridiculous with Superman. He has many anti-ridiculous qualities, this does not inhibit the spaz, let us also be clear about that.

Cushion my blow

In no particular order, things that are worse than an arm to use as a pillow:

shoe
spike
lake
volcano
fire
dead and decaying ordinary household rat
dead, decaying and collapsing carcass of a cow
mandarins
drill bit

Shall I cry hallelujah?

The differences between anything insurmountable and obvious, negligible. Cry Jolene cry hallelujah and the answers will come back the same. I'm feeling the fall of my human race but either one of those things will do. I came out of an absurdest den wearing a white spangled fur-trimmed cowboy hat staring at Superman in his gold opalescent cowboy hat. The hats were thrown as plates by outerspace cowboys under the direction of Benito Di Fonzo but it wasn't his fault. My five dollar dinner tasted like five dollars, I'm crunching governments in my teeth. This here is nothing but typing for the clatter of words.

I'm headed down the highway. I'm headed down the highway. That thought isn't going anywhere. This is the decision to type without reason without pausing for the bell that signals thought. This is the result of typewriters and the purposeful arranging of sound onto sound onto sound. You can build something that way but paper cuts landscape into fingers, so personal an invasion. I didn't invent the train, this does not prevent me from riding on them. Oh cows. Grass balm and how fat the river sits at Emu Plains molten glass green but without proper reason for being. I walked there once and wondered something about frogs or termites or the burrowed fighting for flesh.

I can't put my finger on it. Something shifts and Superman said he was like Bob Dylan with no answers and Newtown was empty and the coffee unfamiliar. There's sugar in blood and beheadings. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it, now I'm German and ancient cause Superman's reading Goethe and god it seeps across the room. Shall I cry hallelujah? I'm awake without fields or the awareness of the stopping of time. I'm shaking like coffee. So you think you can tell? Can you tell a green field? Ah I'm typing ether and airwaves and the unbalanced end of last year's mixtape. I'm making walk on parts in my war. Did I tell you that I'm fighting myself. Spider, spider.

Unzip. Unzip inhibitions with purpose. This is a Goethe commitment. I will commit to something happening. You don't know what it is do you Mr Jones? Shall I cry hallelujah? It isn't sordid but it happened none the less. I know baby just how you feel. Can you see me standing with my back against the record machine? Don't even try to describe it.