In yet another coincidence of light I was walking home straight into the setting sun while a Radiolab podcast told me the story of a man detained by a cup of tea and bathed in a hot white light. The light was followed by a roar that threw him into a field of potatoes and raked the skin off his body. The white light was filled with gamma rays. The gamma rays shot into the cells of his body, knocked electrons off his water molecules, and created free radicals determined to go after his DNA.
The man was in Hiroshima, I was following a chain link fence down by the railway tracks in a back street of Newtown but I was remembering all those hours I spent riding straight into a winter sunset on the back of an elderly horse named Lady. She was small but rangy with a choppy little stride that could shake your bones out of place. Those days I would ride my bike as fast as I could down the long hill of my street and out past the market gardens and the back gate of a navy base to the stables where I worked after school.
I was eleven years old and already worried it might be too late to be learning how to ride. I saw kids barrelling around the neighbourhood on ponies like they were born in the saddle while I diligently worked mucking out stables, mixing up buckets of feed, stacking bales of hay and wheeling endless barrows of muck up on to the top of the largest pile of shit I'd ever seen. Once or twice a week the stable manager would give the order to bring Lady up to the hitching rail and saddle her up for my lesson. More than anything I remember riding up the long side of the school* straight into the setting sun being terrified and humming "Yellow Submarine" under my breath because it was the best song for keeping time at a trot.
It's no secret that I no longer ride, living in inner city squalor like I do, but I don't suppose many people know that I dream of the horse almost every night of the week. It feels like a muscle mantra, every night in the very middle of oblivion every cell remembers not the thought but the sensation. Walking home this afternoon the big low sun and clear winter air tempted me into remembering but despite hundreds of hours spent riding straight into a winter sunset from the back of a horse it didn't quite work.
Two months ago I started taking what I call crazy pills, the doctor calls them something else, but its been a long time coming. I got so used to feeling suicidal that it was practically my normal state of being. I'm not sure exactly how the medicine works but it does, in more ways than one. I used to feel the stab of a memory or the hook of newly forming story like a physical barb. I would pull in towards me and turn it around and around until I knew just which word should come after the other to make it into a picture for somebody else to read and see. Not anymore.
Now I feel a small mental pulse and know there's a story or a sentence or half a line just waiting there for me but its foggy and unappealing and I'd rather just keep walking along watching the setting sun than follow any thought to see where it leads. I've been worrying about this because I have a December deadline for my manuscript and my progress has slowed to roughly a page a week. A page wrought only with great effort and difficulty and almost no joy. This is a new kind of problem.
Like free radicals coming after DNA I think I've been reconfigured by this medicine. I feel less, I feel better, but I miss those barbs and hooks and threads of thought. They used to lead me somewhere I was free to rearrange the alphabet into stories that made sense of everything but recently they just dangle and fade into nothing but a simple walk, like this afternoon's coincidence of light.
*fenced in rectangular arena used for training horses and riders
Suggested reading - James Bradley's "Never real and always true: on depression and creativity"
I don't want to wait
The above mentioned was just one thing in an unusual alignment of nostalgic activities such as finding an original Poppy matte lipstick in a drawer and watching Dawson's Creek. This got me thinking about high school and for once I had a good memory, a great memory, and set about tracking down my very own 'Dawson'.
Well not exactly a 'Dawson' but I did crawl in and out of his house all through high school with reckless abandon, largely ignoring the clockwork running of his busy family home. There were plenty of rules in that house, a sit down evening meal at the big dining table, clean bedrooms, completed homework and neatly made beds. The dog was walked twice a day with all four children taking turns in a roster system. It was quite something to see but still we managed some significant mischief.
At one point in high school we used to jam in 'Dawson's' clinically tidy garage, playing terrible covers and pretending we were awesome. We were both members of the horribly named 'Year 12 Rock Band' who only ever managed to learn and play about five songs which we played relentlessly at horrible gigs as far away as Nambucca Heads. We used to call one guitarist Space Chook, because we thought he looked like a chicken in orbit. Space Chook had a smell about him like a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. Once on the way to a gig, the whole band and all equipment rammed in to one car, we decided to all smoke cigarettes at the same time because the smell was preferable to what was emanating from Space Chook. Poor Space Chook, his dream was to become a professional ten pin bowler.
'Dawson' was an everyday friend, not as in ordinary but as in all the time like a ritual or the rising sun and I did not know how much I missed him until the collision of oddly nostalgic events lead me to remember our awful band playing live on stage. He was the drummer and I played bass, every now and then I'd turn around and he'd crack a stupid grin over his cymbals and I'd forget that I was playing badly for a bunch of high school kids and feel like I was part of something awesome, just for a moment.
When my family began its epic descent into mayhem and tragedy 'Dawson' was the one I remember as being there. Specifically one day when I turned up sobbing on his front lawn and he broke the unspoken 'no physical contact not ever (unless fake punching)' rule and hugged me right there on the front lawn while his mother peered out through lace curtains with a bemused look on her face.
We lost touch when I entered my lost years and he started touring but two days ago I tracked down his phone number and made contact. We're catching up next week. I don't want to wait.
Reversing the polarities or Sleeping with weapons
I didn't want to reverse the polarities, or start sleeping with weapons but a strange series of events left me with no choice.
A state of tense unrest has been declared in The Peach. After more than ten years the cat has decided to yell at the front door in the middle of the night, every night, for as long as physically possible.
I tried ignoring her so as not to reinforce bad behaviour, that didn't work. I tried saying 'no', then saying 'no' followed by stumbling out of bed to shoo her away, then saying 'no' followed by stumbling out of bed to shoot her with a water pistol*. None of this worked because the cat adopted a hopeful and positive look about her every time she managed to get me to stumble out of bed.
Sleeplessness and repeated midnight visits to the hallway in sub-zero temperatures began to fray my nerves. A sleep-deprived Grizelda began to declare that she was going to murder the cat. This is unusual for her, so I knew it was time for drastic action. It was time to reverse the polarities.
Instructions for reversing personal polarities to optimise in-bed midnight weapon use
*Disciplinary measure recommended by the RSPCA.
A state of tense unrest has been declared in The Peach. After more than ten years the cat has decided to yell at the front door in the middle of the night, every night, for as long as physically possible.
I tried ignoring her so as not to reinforce bad behaviour, that didn't work. I tried saying 'no', then saying 'no' followed by stumbling out of bed to shoo her away, then saying 'no' followed by stumbling out of bed to shoot her with a water pistol*. None of this worked because the cat adopted a hopeful and positive look about her every time she managed to get me to stumble out of bed.
Sleeplessness and repeated midnight visits to the hallway in sub-zero temperatures began to fray my nerves. A sleep-deprived Grizelda began to declare that she was going to murder the cat. This is unusual for her, so I knew it was time for drastic action. It was time to reverse the polarities.
Instructions for reversing personal polarities to optimise in-bed midnight weapon use
- Drag bed close to bedroom door.
- Make bed up so sleeping position allows view out of door and into hallway.
- Prop bedroom door open with ugg boot.
- Prime water pistol with water.
- Place water pistol in bed close to hands.
- Sleep lightly and listen for cat.
- At first sign of cat yelling at front door squirt water pistol wildly and violently in direction of cat until cat retreats.
- Repeat until cat gives away hobby of midnight yelling.
The result of reversing the polarities should be the cat returning to usual habit of curling up on end of bed and sleeping peacefully curled into a ball with her little bat ears sticking out, until it is time for breakfast.
Cover me, I'm going in.
*Disciplinary measure recommended by the RSPCA.
Points to remember
Carrots - pigeons of the vegetable world.
Pigeons - rats of the sky.
Capers - olives of the sea.
Pigeons - rats of the sky.
Capers - olives of the sea.
Adult contemporary dentist
My dentist's yarmulke pleased me. It lent my appointment a sense of officialness and dignity as though I hadn't set seven separate alarms to make sure I would wake up in time or spent six minutes searching the house for a piece of chewing gum in case I needed to freshen my mouth in the half an hour it would take me to travel from The Peach to the city surgery. Any kind of official or religious hat has this effect on me.
This sense of adult officialness followed me through my medical morning as I produced my private health fund card to cover not only my dental expenses ($263) but new lenses in my old glasses ($120). I worked out that with this morning's appointments I had effectively reimbursed myself nine months worth of health fund payments. I left the combined dental/eye care surgery, makes sense to me, and walked out into the cool morning ahead of schedule.
Marching down Elizabeth St back towards Central I realised that despite my appointments I would be early for work. I was congratulating myself on my efficiency when the first urge to listen to adult contemporary music rolled through me. Confusingly a simultaneous urge to telephone to mother and report on the excellent and cavity-free state of my teeth took hold. I briefly wondered if I was too old for a reward for being good at the dentist.
My confused state of organised adult and childish wish for rewards travelled well. It arrived at my office and caused me to telephone my mother and listen to adult contemporary music and organise my NPR podcast subscriptions in alphabetical order. I'm still waiting to hear if I qualify for a reward.
This sense of adult officialness followed me through my medical morning as I produced my private health fund card to cover not only my dental expenses ($263) but new lenses in my old glasses ($120). I worked out that with this morning's appointments I had effectively reimbursed myself nine months worth of health fund payments. I left the combined dental/eye care surgery, makes sense to me, and walked out into the cool morning ahead of schedule.
Marching down Elizabeth St back towards Central I realised that despite my appointments I would be early for work. I was congratulating myself on my efficiency when the first urge to listen to adult contemporary music rolled through me. Confusingly a simultaneous urge to telephone to mother and report on the excellent and cavity-free state of my teeth took hold. I briefly wondered if I was too old for a reward for being good at the dentist.
My confused state of organised adult and childish wish for rewards travelled well. It arrived at my office and caused me to telephone my mother and listen to adult contemporary music and organise my NPR podcast subscriptions in alphabetical order. I'm still waiting to hear if I qualify for a reward.
Death by raindrop
One moment somewhere between determination and anger, with my elbows sticking in to my own waist and one foot slipping a little sideways on the wet path, I suddenly and completely surrendered to the rain and the water revealed itself as beautiful.
Knee deep in a cold puddle, witnessing sheets of water pouring down the ordinary front steps of a house, I fell deeper into the thought of submersion and surrender. First I thought about the obvious things, daily landscapes transformed offering a clean perspective, cleansing and redemption through deluge, fluvial geomorphology and rills, concrete, concreteness and the literal and figurative concrete nature of the paths I walk.
Submersion returned as an idea and my thoughts fell first to floating and the sensation of being held by an ocean then drowning and dying and there my thoughts locked. This must be like dying. The wild oscillations between anger, determination and despair, an entire life's landscape transformed and then the surrender and revelation of beauty.
Slamming through The Peach front door in a haze halfway to convinced that I had this dying process pegged Grizelda announced that she 'got heaps wet in the rain!'. And ordered me to stop dripping on the carpet and go and have a hot shower.
Knee deep in a cold puddle, witnessing sheets of water pouring down the ordinary front steps of a house, I fell deeper into the thought of submersion and surrender. First I thought about the obvious things, daily landscapes transformed offering a clean perspective, cleansing and redemption through deluge, fluvial geomorphology and rills, concrete, concreteness and the literal and figurative concrete nature of the paths I walk.
Submersion returned as an idea and my thoughts fell first to floating and the sensation of being held by an ocean then drowning and dying and there my thoughts locked. This must be like dying. The wild oscillations between anger, determination and despair, an entire life's landscape transformed and then the surrender and revelation of beauty.
Slamming through The Peach front door in a haze halfway to convinced that I had this dying process pegged Grizelda announced that she 'got heaps wet in the rain!'. And ordered me to stop dripping on the carpet and go and have a hot shower.
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