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.