Dispatch from the deep

Something is happening here but I don't really know what. I'm submerged in it and can't see far enough to make out its shape. Maybe it stretches all the way from here to the end, maybe it only goes as far as next year. Nobody knows, not really. The doctors are eyeing it off, one of them even pats me reassuringly. The first time he did it I was hospital and the big flock of doctors that had been flapping around finished their work and vanished from view, he walked up beside me and said. "you're stable now", and kind of smiled. That would have been great, except that it was also the first big clue that maybe I wasn't as ok as I thought I was to begin with. 

But that was one of the more dramatic days, there was a distinct inability to breathe, some lights and sirens and scenes familiar from any hospital show. I had a chest x-ray, a cardio echo and a trip inside one of those big tube machines all within ten minutes. In hindsight it should have felt more exciting.

Most days I'm just here at home wondering if it's worth it to stand up and go get something from the other room or if that will be the straw that turns the day from pretty tolerable if I just sit still into the strange new land where I'm so tired it hurts just to exist. The fun part is it's really hard to predict what the outcome of any action will be, like the first read through of a Choose Your Own Adventure book.

I don't know when I'll know what to expect, apart from more of the same, but at least I'm here to expect something. I guess it's one of those classic silver linings.

Blogs Never Truly Die or Who Even is Lloyd Cole

I was reading a book about a woman with a blog when the message arrived.

Please restart your blog. Lloyd Cole. Housemartins. 

The message was not sent by Lloyd Cole of the Houesmartins. It remains unclear to me why Lloyd Cole was mentioned but I'm assuming it has something to do with drinking.

The message could have been mystical, except that it was incorrect. Blogs never truly die. 

I admit writing on my blog is not something I ordinarily do, but it does still exist. See - here it is. I can't restart what never stopped. It slowed, sure, slowed to the pace of a pre-global-warming glacier, but it exists. It atrophied, and much like my person became ridiculous with age, but it didn't stop.

Blogging is not a thing I will admit in public to have ever done, despite the many perks, friends, and "career" opportunities it has made possible across the years. Blogging, like American court-sanctioned misogyny, is something one ought to be heartily ashamed of and stop doing at the earliest opportunity, which for America was today. For me, well that was probably fifteen years ago. 

After trying, and failing, to get my head into the manuscript I'm allegedly finishing next month, I made my way down to Petty Cash Cafe where both the food and the patrons are blessed by Kenny, Suspected Local Deity and Unofficial Mayor of Marrickville.

Two hours ago I sat back down with the manuscript and wrote - Victor after drowning rose up in a panic misted out into the corners of the hospital room. Rectangle and room-shaped he surrounded his parents, his sister, the wires and machines, his own empty body tucked under a blanket on the bed. 

And now I have to figure out what comes next, and how the actual fuck that relates to anything else already existing in or pegged for inclusion in the manuscript. Is Victor even a good name for a boy who may or may not have permanently drowned? Should he permanently drown or should he be revived? What else happens to Victor? Is Victor important to include or yet another weird distraction?

What would Kenny do (WWKYD)? I think he wouldn't care, about the why and how. I think he would just keep on writing and see what happens next man. Such is the gentle way of a Suspected Local Deity.

SIDEBAR A- The New Cat floated up onto the desk holding a tiny fish-shaped packet of soy sauce in her mouth. She batted the plastic sauce fish around the desk a little before piercing it with her teeth and leaking soy sauce all over the desk, my notebooks, and my second favourite pen. I scrambled for tissues and wiped the sauce up as best I could without resorting to a trip to the kitchen for cleaning supplies. The New Cat is now systematically licking the entire surface of the desk. 

SIDEBAR B - A common house martin is a migratory passerine bird. Passerine is of or relating to the largest order of birds and mostly consists of altricial songbirds of perching habits. Honestly, I'm surprised. I thought Housemartins might be referring to one of the furred and fanged martens who hang out in the forests of Europe and sometimes make appearances in Irish Murder Novels. I have no opinion about the band or Lloyd Cole.

SIDEBAR C - Now that I think about it, blogging is delightfully pointless and liberating. 

SIDEBAR D - Maybe the message was mystical?

Geopinging

 I'm not entirely sure where I am.

Not yet.

Covid Days Begun

I miss the hustle of days. The clomping asynchronous tramp of the stairs at Central Station, the stream and dam ebb of the pedestrian crossing on the corner of Elizabeth and Foveaux. The warm push of the people in front and behind. The encircling muscle of a crowd full of ear-plugs, music and beer.

I am beginning with grief.

I regret the departure of incandescent light bulbs

Having always preferred interiors it seems stupid to me now to have pushed one hand outside, palm up and asking.

Prudent pruning or Damo Suzuki came out of Can, not a can but the Can

A sample of things I did not write in my review of Damo Suzuki with The Holy Soul at The Hopetoun:

Damo Suzuki came out of Can, not a can but the Can.

My friend used to live with Jim Conway from the Backsliders! I didn't know that's who his housemate was at the time. At Woodford I was sitting in the crowd listening to him play thinking this guy is awesome, I wonder who he is. I am a doofus, a big doofus.

I got licked by Belle Phoenix. She walked up to me, smiled and then licked my arm like a puppy.

The floorboard I was standing on was less springy than other floorboards at The Hopetoun, I was disappointed and shuffled sideways in the crowd until I was standing on a springier one.

Damo dances like a one-sided Axl Rose, he only ever goes right, or stage left, or maybe it is stage right, never mind, it was only one side and not the other.

The band constructed two joints. A real one for Damo and a fake one for the band. I was informed of this some time before the smoking took place so that I had ample time to ponder on the hilarity of such a scheme. When I witnessed the smoking of the stunt joint it was all I could do not to fall over laughing.

Mick Turner, atmospheric but unengaging, also I do not like his trousers.

Damo Suzuki told me he was scared of sharks and could not swim but thanked me none the less for the invitation to go for a swim right now, after midnight, in the ocean, where there is much water and many sharks.

There were seven of us standing on a cliff top after swimming in the ocean as an antidote to standing in The Hopetoun. We stood there in silence for a moment until someone declared that we were arrayed as though we were cast members from a tv show about share houses, confusion and being young but not too young. We then had a lively discussion as to whether or not there would be doctors and lawyers in the tv show or not. I declared that I did not want to be a lawyer in the show but would rather be a bricklayer.

Pass me my hatchet

Last night Spencer was telling me about the lyrics to How do you sleep? * by John Lennon, we agreed that sometimes John Lennon was a small man while we drank tea and ate cup cakes fresh from the oven. Last night there was nothing above us save bats, stars and darkness but today I discovered how easy it is to be small, how anger writes my emails for me while my head thinks calmly of washing dishes. I'm listening to McCartney's Fireman album Electric Arguments online as punishment.

I prefer the false intimacy of madness to those plodding people, backyards planted thick with Sunday afternoons, this as always has been my downfall.

I had a terrible time when I went to Queensland with Superman. Early on in the trip Superman ceased all the usual modes of expressing friendship, such as acknowledging my presence or consenting to conversation and abandoned me almost entirely to his beige ** and ever present relatives who eyed me suspiciously and talked quietly about the way Superman was not talking to me. The house itself had some potential but was decorated so hideously and situated so firmly in that particular kind of Queensland suburban isolation that the building itself bred oppression. The people were not unkind but I drifted through days bored, ignored, isolated and trapped. Having lost my wallet and broken my phone I was unable to plan any kind of independent escape. I watched the heavy hours pass, unwilling or unable to talk to Superman and risk his unreasonable anger in response.

When I returned to The Peach, after twelve stretched days of extreme politeness and a constant biting of my tongue, I determined to irrevocably terminate my friendship with Superman. My friends dissuaded me, counseled me with caution, begged me to take some time to think it over, the lovely Rita being a watchful guardian against impulsive action. So I did and I was until Superman messaged me out of the blue about Bill Callahan tickets and I replied in my sleep. If I had been fully conscious I would not have gone. I sat on the train opposite Superman thinking well I might as well see what kind of a time I have, and in the end it was not bad so I invited him to my birthday dinner, eventually, as instructed by friends.

I invited him to my birthday dinner but received no reply, not even Grizelda who was in charge of booking the table received a reply to her kind text message. I received no reply until almost the night itself, I did not expect him to attend but attend he did. He attended without so much as a scrawled message of happy birthday on the back of an envelope but with a battery of narkiness, a determination not to enter into conversation with me or anybody except a baffled Grizelda and then he left, straight after dinner, leaving me shrugging my shoulders on a street corner.

I thought I might try and talk to Superman about this business and to ask him to return some albums he had borrowed, but he would not take my calls, I sent an email asking if it was me he was avoiding or just people in general, thinking I would approach the issue with an enquiry instead of an assumption. Most often I have avoided writing anything of consequence about Superman, to avoid having one of his great and petulant misunderstandings, but right about now I don't really give a damn, I am quite certain that no matter what I do or say he will alter every meaning of every syllable until it sounds like the ringing in his head and he ticks off another box on his list of always being right.

A week passed before I received any reply but such a reply I most certainly did not expect to receive. I am shocked at his arrogance, petulance, selfishness and general ability to shove his head so far up his own arse whilst still uttering audible insults. I am shocked despite my knowledge of his character and temperament, I am shocked despite all of my past tongue bitings during his interminable lectures on How Superman Sees The World And Why He Is Correct And Also Why You Would Be Stupid If You Disagreed (or dared to believe in love). I once again find myself more angry than you can imagine, or at least I was until I felt embarrassed and humiliated for allowing myself to imagine that Superman and I were friends. I feel embarrassed and humiliated for all my bendings to his will, for my silences when I disagreed, for my defence of his character to all and sundry, for holding off the official Superman Is A Prick ceremony that some others attempted to invoke some time ago and for batting away my idle wonderings that such a good man has so paltry a circle of friends, that he hardly ever has any contact with.

Hold the phone I just received an email reply, the single word "fine". So fine it is, here ends the brief but eventful friendship of Dale Slamma and Superman, during which Dale Slamma lost her job, her car, her wallet, her phone, her confidence and for a short time, her backbone. Pass me my hatchet I've some work to do.


* How do you sleep?
by John Lennon - about Paul McCartney

So Sgt. Pepper took you by surprise
You better see right through that mother's eyes
Those freaks was right when they said you was dead
The one mistake you made was in your head
Ah, how do you sleep?
Ah, how do you sleep at night?

You live with straights who tell you you was king
Jump when your momma tell you anything
The only thing you done was yesterday
And since you're gone you're just another day
Ah, how do you sleep?
Ah, how do you sleep at night?

Ah, how do you sleep?
Ah, how do you sleep at night?

A pretty face may last a year or two
But pretty soon they'll see what you can do
The sound you make is muzak to my ears
You must have learned something in all those years
Ah, how do you sleep?
Ah, how do you sleep at night?

** Superman's sister Ol' Mon Mon is not a beige person, she is an ideal person.

My new red bicycle and the landlord of doom

Flying, pain, transportation.

The constantly deflating tyre.

My new red bicycle and the landlord of doom

Slammatown

Is here now www.daleslamma.com

Squares

There's something visceral about square one. A knocked out tooth wetly sitting in the palm of my hand. So I'm standing on my little square out in the open, careful not to lean too far out to the left or the right, cradling my little bloody tooth like it's the last good thing I'll ever hold. I've been here too many times, I'm familiar with the landmarks, abyss over there, blank void above and everywhere just a backlit blur with things going on behind the haze but there's something new too. The other square, the one in the middle of that lush lawn over there with the sunlight streaming down on it. The square with paths leading this way and that connected to other busy squares with their own landscapes going on.

This time I didn't parachute myself down on this square, didn't scuba up from the depths to crawl onto it I was just kind of zapped here without warning. Seriously I was skipping along all happy on a path connected to the sunlit square and kablammy here I am with a knocked out tooth and a brand new view. I suppose it's one of those vicissitudes everyone is always talking about.

It could have been my radioactive moment

Unlucky enough to walk underneath an egg sac at the precise moment the sac burst into scurrying life, tiny spiders repelling down their own tender lines right onto my head. Thousands of them.

I shook. How I shook. My hair, my clothes, my fear. Panic passed faster than it should have but I was relieved to find myself walking down the street, shedding tiny spiders on wires like artificial stars, only mildly closer than usual to nonplussed.

I didn't feel any bite or sting but wondered mildly if this was my radioactive moment as I dipped a tiny spider with my ticket on the bus. All through the supermarket the tiny spiders repelled from limbs and extremities to meet either cardboard cereal packets or instant death. The spiders jumped without thought appearing and appearing as though I was sweating or dreaming them into being.

People started noticing when I lifted up my arm for cat biscuits that the webs were beginning to form wings. I thought about honing my technique, shooting tiny spiders as visible lines of resentment, disappointment or anger depending on what was happening. Maybe I could store dead flies in my pocket and train them to come back again. Maybe they would behind me in the exact shape of my shadow, second to second, turning only into whatever kind of spiders they are when I make the secret signal and they swarm.

One tiny spider span a tender little line from my hair to the collar of my shirt and began to run down my arm. I pointed at an annoying person in the supermarket, willing the spider to jump in his general direction instead it turned and began to make for the slotted opening between buttons on my shirt.

I pushed down on the spider with tip of my finger. Its whole body crushed into less volume than a single drop of water, I wiped my finger on a nearby box of muesli bars. My shirt remained unstained. It was that moment I made for the pesticide section and gave myself a bit of a spray.

Three Swords and a Bag of Oranges or Scary Neighbour Becomes Unexpectedly Naked

Self explanatory really.

I intend to become an adventure jeweller

I'm going to start by studying the only two existing adventure jewellers I can find.

Waris Ahluwalia

and Patrick Mavros...

I'm not sure how I am going to achieve a career in adventure jewellery but I am keen to start trying.

Smug vs happy

I might feel smug but I'm not sure.

Is it similar to happiness but with more self-assurance?

At any rate I'm sitting at my desk in the lounge room typing up an official article. By official I mean a pitch-accepted-will-pay-me-money article for a biggish publisher.

The sun is shining through my window while I write for money. The cat is asleep. I have a nice cup of tea. This is everything I ever wanted in just this one moment.

Maybe I feel happy?

My Very Own Bathroom and The Death of The Dream

Oh good lord I've lost the knack of blogging. Laziness I suppose. Or being busy. Buying a house. And killing dreams.

I don't think I killed the dream on purpose its just that my One Day I Will Have Very Own House is now the house of my daily existence. Reality has been rubbing against the dream and causing blisters. The first and most unexpected blister is Mr X, who I will  now call Withnail if only because when I think of  myself I say "I".

Monday morning was my first official getting out of bed early to write before work morning since I moved in (no name for flat yet). Everything began well. I woke up. I put a jumper over my pyjamas. made coffee and sat down at my newly assembled old desk. I was just about to think of a complete sentence when Withnail, banging and clamouring all the way, emerged into the living area to make his lunch for week and lace up his shoes.  I don't know if this is his normal habit but he began to read his mail out loud, interjecting the text with exclamations of "Cunt!" every fifth or six word. The letter was from the strata company but welcoming us to the building and listing emergency contacts.

The dream died in other ways.  It is not the incredible design den sure to strike envy into the hearts of every mortal human, the way I always assumed my very own home would be. Withnail has a tendency to leave little messes about the place, piles of receipts from his wallet, a yoghurt cup inexplicably full of water on the side of the sink, shoes under the coffee table, neatly coiled guitar leads and electrical things piled carefully on the corner of the rug. I don't understand his messes, not yet. And the furniture. Oh dear the furniture. There are more books than bookcases, the long-promised dining table has yet to make an appearance and then there is the coffee table.  I can barely bring myself to describe it.

Withnail has an aunt with an eye for bulky furniture on the brink of turning back to its natural woodland state of rotting wood and falling generally into the ground. Assembled together in her large and beautiful home its quite an appealing aesthetic but as a singular coffee table in the middle of The Dream its quite another matter altogether. I find some consolation in not having to bother with coasters. I suppose.

If there is one corner of The Dream that survived its split evenly between my bedroom that I painted, wall-to-wall in a colour called Dark Harbour, and my bathroom. My very own bathroom. There is another bathroom that I assume Withnail is in raptures about calling his very own bathroom. Long have I dreamt of a shower where there are only the necessary things of one person, not a household full of shampoos and soaps and conditioners and three different brands of toothpaste and tampons, as is the way with rented share houses. Three days before settlement Grizelda patiently waited while I chose matching everything from the supermarket. The shampoo is the same brand as the handsoap as the moisturiser as the shower gel. One matching set of everything with acres of room in the shower for the pointing of elbows and bending over to wash feet. If you'd ever seen the bathroom in The Peach you'd understand...

I suppose I could be more specific about being for the first time ever at the mercy of no one but myself and my team mate Withnail, who despite being awfully snappish and tall is quite trustworthy. For the first time ever I can lock my door and know that not one person can force my locks and return me to the streets because if you've ever been homeless, like me, you'll know that the fear of having nowhere, not one place in the world, is something that once begun does not lightly leave. Not until now when reality caused blisters on The Dream.

Everyone has an analyst, don't they?

I was hoping I'd feel more like Annie Hall, or at least Woody Allen, but all I feel like is me with a new pile of psycho homework and not at all like I live in New York.

Last week I had to practice not caring about things. This week I am supposed to 'try and sit in the grey area between decisions'. Unresolved.

Suddenly auctions are starting to seem sensible

Oh good lord how many times can a person get gazumped before they spontaneously combust?

Maybe I'll find out.

SPAT

This morning the whole situation is starting to remind me of that episode of Dr Who where the Doctor convinces Ace she is half wolf or cat or something in order for them to get back from Crazy Planet 4 Million but the Doctor knows the whole time that Ace will suffer from this action.

On second thoughts it might be less like that and more like he's just letting me do this part of the deal because he thinks I'm better at it, or less afraid or something, than him. And I'm just not handling the stress well. Last night I smoked a cigarette in the shower. News flash - I quit smoking last year, so about five months ago now.  Oh yeah, the deal.

So here's a super quick and confusing catch- up. Grizelda and I moved out to Summer Hill when Mr Oddweird, the landlord of The Peach, defaulted on the mortgage. We have a part-time housemate here in Summer Hill at Eggers, the new house, and I don't like it. The house is pretty but part-time housemates confuse my vibe. Cut jump. Grizelda has a boyfriend. She wants to move in with him when our arrangement with part-time housemate ends this October. Cut jump. I ring my mum and complain, violently and with great passion, about being swayed by the winds of housemates. Cut jump Mother offers me some assistance to buy a place of my own. Cut jump. Mr X wants in on the deal so we set about buying a place together. As friends.

Single People Alone Together.

Its so crazy it just might work.

Skip forward again to the present moment. As in this very exact moment in right now time. Grizelda's cat Oscar is asleep on the end of my bed, a bus pings and rumbles its way past my window. My mobile telephone lays flat and dormant by my pajama-clad legs. This is fucked. How many times does a person -in-the-middle-of-negotiations-to-buy-a-property have to phone the real estate agent to actually get through to them? HOW MANY?

One more post and then its closing time

I returned from the wedding triumphant. That had a lot to do with Spencer, Grizelda, my family and a few more friends like Ron and Robert and Mr X, and the usual list of suspects.

You see, about a year ago my brother decided to get married. Some time after that he decided to get married in a park, the same park where I was attacked by a man some years ago. The park is located in the town where I used to live with Artboy.

I haven't really been back there, not since I came crawling into The Peach.

I wanted to attend the wedding I just didn't want to go back to that town or that park or that region. I didn't even want to think about it. Spencer and Grizelda both received invitations so we stuffed ourselves into Grizelda's tiny red car and drove and drove and drove.

I packed brandy for the journey. Brandy and painkillers for my broken foot. By the time we narrowed in our trajectory we were one sheet to the wind. Arriving at the park, grass by a lagoon really, the first thing I noticed was the exact spot I crawled away in the mud, undercover of darkness, when I made my  getaway all those years ago. The second thing I noticed was the white cat fur on my black dress left there surreptitiously by Oscar the kitten. I decided to focus on the dress.

I saw my brother arrive in a car full of men wearing tuxedos. A familiar sight thanks to his years of playing in big bands. And then my parents and then the ceremony and then nothing but acres of goodwill.

Spencer and I were drunk and chatty with relatives and friends alike. My parents kept ageing and beaming then tearing up and doing it all over again. I performed one good deed. There was the bridal waltz, and her parents walking up to join in, and my father with his wife and there over at a table sat my mother by herself. Her partner nowhere to be seen, I think she was photographing something. I stood a little uncertainly because of the wine and my broken foot but I made to over to her table and held out my hand. I lead my mother to the dance floor. She said "I'm not sure how to do this". "It doesn't matter", I replied. And so we waltzed on that roomy floor in between the tuxedo-clad big band and the hundreds of pair of eyes.

Afterwards my aunts and uncles came surreptitiously one by one to tell me what a good thing I had done asking my mother to dance. I did not disagree with them but I looked at them a little beadily. Its been some time since a relative thought highly of me. I thought for a moment of my dead grandfather and wondered.

After my brother took his new wife away in a car Spencer and I stole all the wine we could and started drinking while Grizelda worked at driving the car. The turn off to my old house came up ahead of us. I felt uneasy but shouted at the very last second 'turn here I want to see the house'.

Grizelda found the old house easily and brought her small car to a stop across the road from it. The new people had ripped out the old weeping cherry tree and chopped down the jacaranda. There was a white metal letterbox in place of the crazy old wooden one my father bought from a man who carved things with a chainsaw.

I remembered the last time I was there. Half mad and convinced I was being followed by a cube of sorrow. This time I was not alone. We got out of the car and crossed the road. Spencer and Grizelda held back but I walked on my broken foot, all dressed up and drunk. I walked right up the driveway smoking a cigarette and taking huge swigs from a stolen bottle of wine.

Memories that house seemed like a huge shadow falling over everything I do. I stared at the front door and waited for something to hit me until something did. I don't need this anymore. I ground out my cigarette on the red brick driveway, shrugged at the idea of Artboy and walked on back to the car.

Half way home Spencer said "You did good tonight". And I thought yeah, I did.

We sang and drank and laughed our way back towards the city. The street lights started growing on every corner and maybe a plane roared overhead or if it didn't it could have. People were walking everywhere on the streets and there was life more than darkness and the big solid feeling of coming home.

Thanks for listening.


That's a full lid.

Shutting down Slammatown

Yeah. I was going to wait until moving day and then change to a new blog for, you know... change etc.

Fresh start.

Whatever.

I fucking hate waiting.

I'm closing this chapter early. We've begun dismantling The Peach, stripping out cupboards, throwing out junk, deciding which furniture to take with us to the new house. The Peach is in a wreck and I love it. There is stuff everywhere. Mountainous terrain in the lounge room and hallway. Never has getting to the kitchen been such an adventure.

I was waiting to find the words to sum up my time in The Peach. I was waiting but I've given up. If I don't know by now then I'll never know. This is an old case of show don't tell, there are thousands of words already here. Read them if you can be bothered. I probably won't.

I'm going to let this chapter slide gracefully backwards into memory and highlight reels of bad and good and struggling to recall in just which rooms squares of sunlight slid across the floor. I feel all right about that.

You can follow me if you'd like to, the new joint is locked for now, while I look around and see what I might become. Try in October, you'll probably find the door unlocked.

Over and out.