Is There Another Way To Look At It?

Is there another way to look at it? I bet there is. I bet there is. Know what I mean?  Nudge, nudge wink! Say no more!

 It depends on what ‘it’ is. But, usually, there is more than one way to examine an ‘it’.

You might be able to look at it: up-close, from a distance, upside down, askew, awry, while eating an apple pie, logically, emotionally, emphatically, sympathetically, with reverence, in jest, while wearing a vest, in the nude, while hungry, After a feast, after the passage of time, analytically, scientifically, philosophically, from above, below, under, over, while sucking on a lime or rolling in clover. You can look at it with one eye closed or with both eyes closed, and your mind’s eye opened. You can look at it formally, informally, ceremoniously, piously, from the left, the right, the centre or the center, in black or white, while you fly a kite, or ride your bike, after much study and research or from the depths your gut, in wonder, in ignorance, or in awe, in denial ,auspiciously, from a position of power, helplessness, deception, with the help of divine intervention, with insight and perception, under the influence, soberly, somberly, seriously, wisely, justly, charitably, mercifully.

At Canley Vale Station

I love it when I'm pleasantly surprised. Yesterday evening, as the train I was on stopped at Canley Vale. I saw a young bloke (teenager) sitting on a bench playing a guitar. It was my stop. I wasn't expecting too much in terms of this guy's guitar playing. But it turned out he was some sort of virtuoso. He was one of the best guitarists I've heard in a long time. He was playing funky, jazzy, bluesy riffs. He was incredible. And he wasn't busking. He was playing his guitar to an empty (aside from me and him) train station platform as he waited for the next train. I wished I could have stopped and talked to him. But, unfortunately, I couldn't.

The Boy and The Mermaid

Alone in his consulting room, Dr Mark Jones PhD MBBS DPM FRANZCP,sits in his leather swivel chair,and reads over the rough, preliminary notes for his latest case:

Client is a physically healthy, intelligent, likeable 13 year old boy. He was referred to me by his family GP, Dr Bruce O’Connor who suspects that Thomas suffers from PTSD. After spending some time with Thomas and his parents (father and stepmother), I tend to agree with Dr O’Connor’s diagnosis.

One of Thomas’ more meaningful symptoms is that he has been displaying developmentally regressive behaviours - case in point, he has recently formed a friendship with a mermaid. According to his father, Thomas was six years old when he last had an imaginary friend.

It was when Thomas was six years old that the trauma in question occurred. During a seaside vacation he saw his mother being fatally attacked by a shark.

It is my ‘feeling’ that the family’s return to a beachside suburb and the introduction of his step-mother (i.e. a new mother figure) has triggered Thomas’ memory of this tragedy in the anxiety- reducing converterd form of the mermaid.

At present, and until further sessions, it is my opinion that a course of Zoloft (100 mg  daily for 10 weeks) accompanied with CB and play therapy should  be Thomas' initial treatment.

He looks at his old, worn carpet  and thinks, I really need to get new carpet

 Sometime later, at the beach, Thomas sits on the rocks that face the water. Simone the Mermaid swims about .
“So how did the session go”? Simone asks Thomas.

“We talked mainly”

“About what”

“About how you’re not real”.

“Oh yeah? The f*ck I’m not real. If I’m not f*ckin’  real then how come I can do this? she says as she splashes Thomas.

“Hey for a mermaid you’re not very nice.

“Who the f*ck said that Mermaid had to be f*ckin’ nice”?

They’re nice in all the stories, all the books and movies.

“That’s f*ckin’ fiction!  And fiction is Bullsh*t. I know some mermaids who are real bitches. I’m very nice compared to them”

.

“So what else do you talk about at those sessions”?

 “About my mother and how she died”

“How did she die?
“She was eaten by a shark”.

F*ck me dead, no! that’s how my mother died. f*ckin’ sharks! I f*ckin  hate those motherf*ckin’, mother eating, codsucking c*nts!   I miss my mum so much. I got this tattoo for her. She presents her left (“closer to the heart”) shoulder to Thomas; there is a big red heart tattoo on it with a scroll saying ‘Mother” beneath it.  The top half, the human half, of Simone’s body is a smorgasbord of tattoos. On the back of her neck, there is a line from Wallace Stevens: “She sings beyond the genius of the sea”. Poseidon, rising up from a stormy, foamy sea and holding up his trident covers her back. There’s a Sheela na Gig on Simone's belly with a quote from a Mermaid poet above it.  Aphrodite is on her right shoulder.

“But f*ck, I’m f*ckin swearing too much aren’t I?  I mean it not right to swear so much in front of a kid like you, is it?  F*ck .

For a moment or two there is silence

“You’ll be ok, honey, we’re all f*cked  up in our own ways. I mean f*ck, I’m tripolar myself”

“Tripolar?”

Yeah, it’s sort of like being bipolar but we mere-people have an extra dimension of emotions that you humans don’t have and we can’t explain it to you because unlike us you guys don’t taste colours or smell sounds, and you can’t communicate telepathically,so you only get ‘depressed’ or ‘maniac’ but never ‘xrgutynk’.

Thomas the boy and Simone the mermaid continue on chatting, until they hear Thomas’ step-mother calling him. As Thomas heads home, Simone shouts out to him:

“If you have to, you can tell your parents and the shrink that I’m not real, I don’t mind”

Thomas turns around and smiles and says “thanks”.

10 weeks later,

“So how have you been feel lately, Thomas?”

“Good, I’ve been feeling good, Dr Jones”

Thomas looks down and notices that Dr Jones’ room has new carpet. The carpet is blue and Thomas feels funny. He can't explain it  and then he realizes that he is tasting the colour blue.

Fatigue.

I swim like a fat whale that has swallowed 
a sea’s worth of custard.
I must remember to not wash my teeth with spinach
because it isn’t toothpaste. Sometimes,
I cavort with rattlesnakes
and bring forth mud until the laughing goats fall over.
I am feeling under the weather.
Blue is the sky that greens my blues.
Tie a yellow ribbon around the old oak tee.
I need to write,
to eat,
and then to sleep,
perchance to dream.
This is the way of the world,
my world.

I Remember Fairfield Past

I remember "The Bronx" of Fairfield -the flats along Harris streets. They were filled with a boisterous melting pot of ethnic and Anglo families, broken windows, and laundry flapping from balconies.

I remember “The Dead Side of Fairfield - other side of Fairfield Station. It was a bit like "Life on Mars" -you always felt as if you had gone back in time a few decades whenever you went there.

I remember: Granny May’s cake shop at the end of Harris Street. The hamburger shop at Vine Street, near Linbar's Smash repair, and Fairfield creek with its skanky waters, water rats the size of cats, and a giant mulberry bush.

The Marvellous Mysterious Mind:

How it intrigues me in its manifest guises of unconscious, preconscious, and conscious, and especially as
revealed within the dream realm. On occasion, I may dream about a person whom I had forgotten all about. A person I went to school or  uni with, or with whom I worked years, perhaps even decades ago. A person who was neither friend or foe -a person who was the merest of acquaintances, someone who I may have said "hello" or had the briefest of small talks with on the rarest of occasions -and yet after many years they pop up in my dreams. Why? Or like last night. I dreamt I was at some sort of street carnival (I don't know where) with two women. I don't know who they were. Were they created by my imagination or did I see them peripherally in my waking hours but did not register them consciously and then my unconscious made a note to my preconscious to dream them up? Why? There's a school of thought that says everybody in your dream  Where these women two opposing Jungian archetypes or Freudian defense mechanisms? Or were they just meaningless firings of my brain’s neurons and synapses?

Old Joe

Old Joe,

Ninety years old,

dreams of the days

when he was young Joe,

nine years old,

running across green pastures

with his friends,

flying kites through blue skies

that went on forever.

Once

Once I was a daffodillo (part daffodill, part armadillo) – but not any more.
I was once a honey whale. However, I am now no longer so.
Once I was a marshmallow bat but not any more.
I was once a strawberry key. However, I am now no longer so.
Once I was an invisible sailing ship but not any more.
I was once a ticking cotton bomb However, I am now no longer so.
Once I was a candle that dripped blood but not any more.
I was once a cradle of love but not any more.
Once I was a turtle pillow but not any more.
I was once a penguin diary. However, I am now no longer so.
Once I was a map to happiness but not any more.
I was once the paragon of tasty stew. However, I am now no longer so.
Once I was a tearful carousel but not any more.
I was once a term deposit on an igloo. However, I am now no longer so.
Once I was a piescraper (part pie, part skyscraper) but not any more.
Now I am a collection of the things that I once was but now am not.

The ABC Of Thin Walls

INT. NIGHT 

Apartment A
Man: C'mere, F*ckin' C'mere, I'll give you something to cry about!!!!!
SFX: General commotion, things breaking, woman screaming and
crying

Apartment B
Voices in unison: We call upon thee Satan...

Apartment C
SFX: Strange musical thudding noise

Night Apartment D
Wife: What is that guy in Apartment C doing?
Husband: I'm not sure but it sounds like he is jumping from
his lounge onto the floor while stricking the E chord on his
Bass Guitar.
Wife. What a f*ckwit. 

Apartment E:
SFX: A CHILD SCREAMING.

Apartment F:
SFX: Woman having an orgasm and the distinctive sounds of a
squeaky rubber duck.

Apartment G:
Boyfriend: Hey, listen, Duck-girl's at it again.
Girlfriend: Man, she really works that ducky.

Apartment H:
SILENCE

Apartment I:
SFX: Burglar alarm

Apartment J:
Girl: I AM THE QUEEN OF THE LILY PADS!!!!
Boy1: How much did she take?
Boy2: Dunno
SFX: Gunshots.

Apartment K:
SFX: SNORING.

Apartment L:
SFX: LOUD MUSIC; (House,Rap, etc) Drunk people talking loudly, stoned people laughing and giggling and making inane remarks.

Apartment M:
Man: HEY YOU C*NTS IN APARTMENT L BETTER F*CKIN CUT OUT ALL
THAT NOISE YER MAKIN', BECOZ IF YOU F*CKIN DON'T STOP
WITH ALL THAT BOOM, BOOM, BOOM CRAP THAT YOU CALL MUSIC I'M F*CKIN COMIN' UP AND GOING BOOM, BOOM,BOOM, WITH MY F*CKIN
GUN!!!!!!!

Apartment N:
Man: SHUT THE F*CK UP ALL OF YOU, I GOTTA GO TO WORK TOMMOROW.

Apartment 0
SFX: Sounds of woman being raped.

Apartment P:
Man: Oh,yes! Mummy,yes! spank my bottom, I've been a bad boy!

Apartment Q:
Woman: Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thine name...

Apartment S:
Man: That's it, bitch ,swallow it, that's what I'm paying you for!

Apartment T:
SFX: Barking Pit Bulls

APARTMENT U:
Little Girl: Daddy, why does Mummy wash her hands SO many
times?


Apartment V:
SFX: AC/DC's 'High Voltage' album being played with drunken boys singing along.

Apartment W
Silence.

Apartment Y
SFX: Water running and the Joy Division's: Love Will Tear
Us Apart Again.
Woman: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! MY BABY GIRL!!!!!!!!
Man: Go call 000, and Ill get her out of the bath,and try and stop the bleeding...f*cken stupid teenagers.... Hurry!

Apartment Z:
Woman: I love you
Man: I love you too

Is This Delicious?

I was doing my grocery shopping at Woolies the other evening. I didn’t feel like cooking that night; so I decided to buy a pizza. As I got to the frozen food cabinet, a young Japanese woman thrust a frozen lasagna meal box in my face and asked (in a curt, demanding,no nonsense manner)

“Is this delicious”?

“I don’t know, sorry”, I answer.

“Not delicious”? She asked. She looked like child who has just gotten bad news about her puppy. She turned to her friend who also looked saddened. I felt as if I were in a scene from Haruki Murakami novel.

“It’s probably eatable and possibly tasty but I doubt it would be delicious”

“Oh”.

Silence.

I looked for a pizza.

She tapped me on the shoulder. She had a determined look on her face as she made a grand sweeping game show hostess gesture towards the doors of the frozen food cabinet.

“There MUST BE SOMETHING DELICIOUS in HERE!” she declared.

And then, “What are you getting it?”
“A pizza”
“Is it delicious”?
“I hope so”
“We’ll get one too!”
And with that we went our separate ways.

The pizza wasn’t delicious. It was ok. It was better than the pizzas you can from the major big chain pizza places. But it wasn’t delicious.

Nerdbirds

One day I awoke and I was a nerdbird. And so I flew off to Nerdbidland where I hung out with all the other nerdbirds. We did nerdbird things. And we sang nerdbird songs. We had nerdbird fun under the nerdbird sun. And we made sweet nerdbird love under the bright nerdbird moon.When I slept I dreamt nerdbird dreams. And then one day, I was a nerdbird no more. I was an old man with the memories of Nerdbirdland in my heart.

A Six Word Story

Chihuahua barked all night. Owner dead.

I Lunched In Cabravale Park.

I lunched in Cabravale Park.I sat on a wall and observed the young, the old, the mad, the bold, the boorish, the snoring, the boring, the bored ,the runners, the basket-ballers, the dreamers, the schemers the homeless, the haters, the kiss-and cuddlers, the beauties, the beasts, the thinkers, the stinkers, the tai-chiers, the, the spirits, dragons, demons, angels, trees, grass, birds, ants, and worms.

The People You Meet In The Library

I'm at the library, there's a guy few PCs down, who looks like Bukowski (if Buke had lived to be in his late 70s/early 80's and if Buke had been a gamer) - this guy is playing Civilisation (I think -or something like it) and he's swearing louder and more fouler than a group of pre-teens playing at an internet cafe. He's abusing the game, he called over a librarian and is abusing the librarian because of a lack of upgrades,  and he's on his mobile abusing someone from a phone company - "You're all a bunch of f*cking idiots!" What a gruff, surly cantakerous cur ...I wonder if he writes any poetry.

Memories

I love reading memoirs and autobiographies and I’m always amused and a bit sceptical whenever I come across a passage that might go something like:

“I was six months old. I was sitting in my high-chair. Mother had prepared porridge for my breakfast. But I didn’t want to eat it. Mother became cranky. I learned that day that life is a continual battle of wills between Self and Other”

I think, is this bullshit, artistic license, or does this guy really remember what he had for breakfast when he was six months old, the events surrounding said breakfast, and the philosophical implications of it all. I can’t remember what I had for breakfast last week. (It was probably, nothing or the Breakfast of Champions: coffee and cigarettes.)

I am intrigued by people’s earliest memories. Jack Kerouac claimed that he could remember being born. A woman I used to work with once told me had absolutely no memories of her childhood. One image that I remember from an online discussion of ‘earliest childhood memories’ was that of a woman who remembered being 18 months old; finding herself standing on a fire-ant nest in her backyard, and her father lifting her up and rescuing her.

My earliest memory: I am three years old. I’m in Italy. It’s winter. Snow. I’m wandering about a farm. I come to a pig pen. The pigs are a lot bigger and meaner looking than the pigs I had seen in picture books. They are huge. They seem as big as hippos. I am fascinated and frightened,

A Conversation: At What Age Do You Want To Die?

Me: I don't know. About 90 I guess. But as long as I've got my mental and physical health -even if I've got a walking stick and a hearing aid -as long as I enjoy living and am not burden, I'll keep on going until I'm gone -90,100,110.
Friend1: 85 for me. I'm 43 now, I'd to think that I'm half way through my life. Yeah, another 42 years -that'll be enough for me. But I don't want to end up like my mum -in constant pain, in and out of hospitals, seeing doctors.
Me: Nobody wants that. May she rest in peace.

Friend2: Don't you guys have nothing better to talk about?

From Beyond?

I awoke with an urge to watch the sun rise. Why? I don't know. During the years I worked night shift in the city I would often take a break to see the sun rise. I saw many a strange, wonderous, and disturbing sight. Things that made me say "Wow!" "What was that?" "I wish I hadn't seen that".
One day I will write about them.


At this particular time, a few days ago, I made myself a cup of coffee. I went outside. It was still night, A still night. I lit up a cig. Took a drag. Had a sip of the cofffee. Something flew into the upper leafy branches of a neighbours tree. A fruit bat, I guessed. I was right. As the sun rose, it (the creature) flew out from the tree - a big beautiful beast - bastard or bitch, I knew not which- but it was twice, perhaps thrice, the size of a regular fruit bat. Not so long ago, two years at most, there were great clouds of fruit bats that flew around my area. Coming home from nightshift was akin to being in a Hammer House of Horror vampire movie. Now this beast flew alone.
It may have been lack of sleep, my imagination, madness or a mixture of the three. But I swear that this behemoth fruitt bat turned and looked at me. The meaningless gesture of a dumb animal or a profound message from a spiritual guide?

Lucinda's Letters

John is at his desk at work. He is reading Lucinda's latest handwritten letter.

Handwritten. Not email nor text message; not typed up nor printed out, but handwritten. 

John adores handwritten letters. They evoke in him pleasant images and memories: vinyl records, black and white television and movies, the rotary dial telephone, his mother's vanilla scented kitchen, beachside family vacations as a boy, Jennings and Derbyshire in trouble with old 'Wilkie' again and glorious old words such as 'hark', 'alas' and 'singular'. 

Handwritten letters, for John, they are as deliciously romantic as an Ella Fitzgerald 33rpm record. 

Handwritten. John even loves the sound of that compound word. 

John met Lucinda online. She is a widowed at 24,32 year old woman who works as a Women Studies lecturer at the University of Kentucky, and who is the mother of one daughter, two cockerspaniels, a ferret, and who hates being called 'Lucy'. 

She mentioned once that she liked handwritten letters. But, alas, nobody sends her any- just emails and text messages.

He fell in love with her as soon as he read that and wrote to her. 

'Dear Lucinda, you are most singular lass…" he had written in his 'drunken ants across the page' handwriting in his first letter to her which he had sent in a plain white envelope.


Lucinda's latest hand-written letter arrived in an outrageously ironical tongue-in-cheek girlie girl pink envelope that was sealed at the back with gold star. 

The pages inside are yellow and bordered with red roses. Her handwriting swoops and swirls across each page in a sensuous, sensual mad dash passionate dance of overused exclamation points, misused ellipses, and little circles that float above her i's and her j's. She sprays her letters to John with perfume and ends them with X's and O's for kisses and hugs, plus a kiss on the bottom right hand corner from her lip-sticked lips. 

She writes about how she painted her room, her daughter's measles, her mother's constant nagging, a student with whom she's having issues, and the latest book she's reading for fun. 

He tells her everything. Even about the gambling debt that keeps him working in a job that he hates and away from her. 

He keeps some of her letters at home, and some in the top drawer of his desk at work and when the arse-licking, backstabbing, two-faced politics of his bosses and colleagues get him down he rereads one of Lucinda's hand-written letter to make things more tolerable and remind himself that he needs his job to save up for that one-way airplane ticket. 


Jennings And Derbyshire: http://website.lineone.net/~danielwelch/jennings.htm 
Ella Fitzgerald: http://www.redsugar.com/ella.html 

On My Way To The Local Centrelink Office This Morning

I passed two boys -about 10 or 11 years old smoking cigarettes in their school uniforms. I thought. How on earth can school kids afford to smoke? The cheapest packs are like $15. It's one of the biggest reasons why I'm considering giving up. I've cut down to half a pack a day and it's still too expensive. I considered saying something to the boys. But I've done that in the past. It never ends well. I've learned my lesson.

At CL office.
Me: I have a an interview at 9.30
Officer: Have you been looking for work.
Me: Yes (true)
Officer: Any changes in your circumstances
Me. No, (true)
Officer. Ok that's all. You can go.
Me: Ok.

I feel like a coffee and a cigarette. When I give up smoking. I'll probably have to give up coffee as well.

Marvellous Martha’s Magical Marshmallow Mobile.

Marvellous Martha’s Magical Marshmallow Mobile.

Marvellous Martha gets about in a magical automobile
that is made of marshmallows.
She travels near and far in that car
which can traverse any terrain
It can fly across the sky
and sail the seven seas and the oceans blue.

People stop and smile when Martha passes by. 
She tosses out toffees and other sweet treats for the kids.
and coffees and cognacs for the grownups.
She also has magical liquorice lasso
that she uses to capture cads, scoundrels, and n’er-do-wells.

When her work is done,
She leaves with a honk of her marshmallow horn.
And she goes forth in search of forlorn
folk who are in need of good cheer and fun.

The Rhizome Phone

The Rhizome phone won't leave me alone. It rings and rings. I don't answer it. It wants to forgive me, give me, a gift, offer me hospitality. Ring, ring, ring.  Sting, sting, sting. It's no thing. It is the thing. 

The Rise And Fall Of Ernie The Chuck.

Ernie’s existence began in a laboratory, not a farm.
He was not borne in an egg until he was born,
but in a test tube that once contained 
the sperm of his father chicken
and the ovum of his mother duck.
Part chicken, part duck
Ernie was a chuck,
the only chuck on earth.

The scientists who created Ernie,
also genetically modified and enhanced him.
They prodded and poked him,
shoved chemicals and other things down his throat
and up his anus.
They dropped and sprayed all manner 
of substances into his eyes.
They kept him in darkness,
then in intense light.
Everyday they found a new way 
to torture and torment him.

Then, one day, it happened.
Don’t ask how; don’t ask why.
It could have been any number of factors.
Some say it was divine intervention;
others blame diabolical interference.
Whatever the reason
on that day,
Ernie the Chuck became
self –aware and meta-cognizant
He could talk (several human and animal languages in fact)
But he kept mute and waited.
Waited for the moment he might extract his revenge.

A year and two months later
that day came to pass.
Taken out his cramped cage,
to be paraded around for the benefit of visiting European scientists,
Ernie ceased the moment with the fury of Shiva.
He was a big burly bird who could fly like a duck.
He had the claws of a rooster
and a beak as big as a duck’s bill.

His revenge was swift and brutal,
A scenario of slaughter,
best not told nor shown. 

Ernie the chuck, now on the run,
planned to impregnate all forms of fowl: 
ducks, hens, ganders, and swans.
He would the preach his mission and manifesto to his offspring
and the offspring of his offspring and their offspring too.
He would preach that when the poultry
of this world seize the means of production
the tyranny of humanity would be at an end
and the Earth would become the Planet of the Poultry.

That was his plan.
Lucky for us humans,
He got hit by a van, filled with bogans
as he walked across a road.

French Onion Soup

Carla mixes a little sugar with some butter.
She heats this sugary butter
in  a large heavy-based saucepan
until it (the sugary butter) is melted.

She adds sliced onions,
cooks em over a low heat.
She stirs constantly,
until the onions are golden brown.
(The Strangler’s song comes to her mind)

Gradually,
she adds beef stock 
and continues to stir constantly
then brings it all to a boil.
She reduces the heat to low,
covers the saucepan
and allows the contents to simmer
for an hour.

She sits down on her sofa,
lights up a mentholated cigarette.
her harlot-red lipstick marks the cig’s butt.
She takes a swig of cognac
and begins the collected prose poetry of Charles Baudelaire.

After the hour is up,
she removes the soup from the stove.
Adds a splash of cognac 
and some salt and pepper,

As she is adding the pepper,
she hears
a gun
shot and
the sound
of glass
breaking.


You have to be always drunk. That's all there is to it--it's the
only way. So as not to feel the horrible burden of time that breaks
your back and bends you to the earth, you have to be continually
drunk. But on what? Wine, poetry or virtue, as you wish. But be
drunk" -Charles Baudelaire