Progressive Greyness

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Psychotherapeutic amoeba (on night shift)

'phernalia flog

Greetings from the Pacific island nation of Unaustralia. We at the Department of Citizenship have a flag we don't want anymore (it's been over-loved). Please make a bid for it on ebay.

Also for sale are:

1. A light on the hill (replica, papier mache)

2. Baggy green caps (times 12, beer-stained)

3. Lingiari sand (one grain, bleached)

4. Barbecue stoppers (set of four, inlaid)

5. Bee Gees @ Anzac Cove DVD

6. Big Kev's heart (plastinated)

8. Sting ray barb acupuncture kit

9. Barcaldine tree fertilizer (30 litres, chemical composition unknown)

10. Seditious Donald Horne quote: "What should we call someone who believes the government is above the law, that opinion should be standardised, that majorities are born to rule, that minorities endanger social cohesion?"

Scenes I ought to have drawn #1

A man is lying semi-conscious in a hospital bed. He is hooked up to a big machine that has many flashing lights and many brightly coloured levers and buttons.

A large woman in a floral nighty is leaning over him.

Her neck is in a brace.

A document marked "Will" is poking out from her handbag.

With one hand she is firmly gripping the thickest wire connecting the man to the machine. With the other she is cupping her mouth.

She is shouting: "Three nods for 'YES', four nods for 'NO'".

A second man, in pyjamas and wearing a grey fedora marked "Witness", is standing in the corner.

No relation to Jimmy Hendrix

I spent $1.83 per minute last night checking out a staged version of Samuel Beckett's very brief Eh Joe (originally written in 1965 for television). And it was worth every cent.

While the sole physically-realised character, Joe, sat motionless (and speechless) on the side of his bed centre stage, he was talked to by a disembodied female voice located somewhere in the microphone-mediated ether. An image of his face -- projected onto a scrim in front of the playing area and filling almost the entire height of the proscenium -- captured every wincing, flinching, squeezing, swimmy-eyed moment of his respone to her monologue.

She reminded him of -- and at times seemed to reproach or even condemn him for -- the transgressions and breaches of faith that marred his life. Also of the fact that his end was nigh and that his religious convictions would soon be put to the test. She was once his lover ("Yes, great love God knows why") but in the end "found better".

The play ended with a tormenting description of the sea-side suicide of another of his conquests:

Gets the tablets and back down the garden and under the viaduct .... Takes a few on the way .... Unconscionable hour by now .... Moon going off the shore behind the hill .... Stands a bit looking at the beaten silver .... Then starts along the edge to a place further down near the Rock .... Imagine what in her mind to make her do that .... Imagine .... Trailing her feet in the water like a child .... Takes a few more on the way .... Will I go on, Joe? ... Eh Joe? ... Lies down in the end with her face a few feet from the tide .... Clawing at the shingle now .... Has it all worked out this time .... Finishes the tube .... There's love for you .... Eh Joe? .... Scoops a little cup for her face in the stones .... The green one .... The narrow one .... Always pale .... The pale eyes .... The look they shed before .... The way they opened after .... Spirit made light .... Wasn't that your description, Joe? ... All right .... You've had the best .... Now imagine .... Before she goes .... Face in the cup .... Lips on a stone .... Taking Joe with her .... Light gone .... 'Joe Joe' .... No sound .... To the stones ....

I still made a purchase

I was in JB Hi-Fi's city store yesterday morning looking for a T-Bone Walker cd and I figured that while I was there I'd see if Goran Bregovic had anything new. So I'm floating around the World Music section, not really knowing if I'm in the right place, when I spot a guy kneeling on the floor racking cds. He was the long-ponytail-and-goatee-sprouting-white-sports-socks-with-
black-dunlop-volleys type of dude. I said "excuse me, do you know where I might find Goran Bregovic's music". He looked up, blank-faced. "Gypsy music", I added. Then he stood and eyeballed me. "We don't listen to much 'gypsy music' here in Sydney, Australia". Forgetting to thank him for the geography lesson, I said, "oh, well you should". He tilted his chin and moved a little closer. "Yeah, why's that?" And this is where I really could have nailed him. I said, "because it's good".

I was wearing a broad-brimmed straw hat.

A poem by Judith Beveridge

This is a tender, soulful and perversely uplifting poem. I read it first in the trashy-sounding-but-really-good book 80 Great Poems From Chaucer to Now and was delighted by the simplicity of character it conveyed, the playful, colourfully-present humanity it captured and, well, just its sheer elegance and vividness. A little boy not thinking of dislocation or injustice or of how to improve or correct his life, just enjoying a stolen moment each day with his kite: "equivalent now only to himself, a last spoke within the denominations of light". Wow.

Bahadour

The sun stamps shadows against the wall
and he's left one wheel of his bicycle
spinning. It is dusk, there are a few minutes

before he will be pedalling his wares
through the streets again. But now, nothing
is more important than this kite working

its way into the wobbly winter sky.
For the time he can live at the summit
of his head without a ticket, he is following

the kite through pastures of snow where
his father calls into the mountains for him,
where his mother weeps his farewell into

the carriages of a five-day train. You can
see so many boys out on the rooftops this
time of day, surrendering diamonds to the

thin blue air, putting their arms up, neither
in answer nor apprehension, but because
the day tenders them these coupons of release.

He does not think about the failing light,
nor of how his legs must mint so many steel
suns from a bicycle's wheels each day,

nor of how his life must drop like a token
through its appropriate slot; not even
of erecting whatever angles would break

the deal that transacted away his childhood -
not even of taking some fairness back
to Nepal, but only of how he can find

purchase in whatever minutes of dusk are left
to raise a diamond, to claim some share of
hope, some acre of sky within a hard-fisted

budget; and of how happy he is, yielding;
his arms up, equivalent now only to himself,
a last spoke within the denominations of light.

Sharp-blade shoulder

Her hands widen over his back
Then stall, tighten.
Her neck, thinned with musk,
Pulls out,
Jolts, glides, then eases again
Into his sharp-blade shoulder.

The Mincing Amoeba

"Oh, so I'm not 'perfectly' round? Well EXCUUUUUUUUUSE me for, like, world war th-a-ree! I mean, what is this anyway, OBSESSIVE FREAK WEEK! HELLLLLLLLLO ... I'm, like, a primitive organism. I PRE-DATE roundness."

Sky Orchestra

Here's the preview in the Sydney Festival brochure:

Seven hot air balloons, each with speakers attached, take off at sunrise to fly across the West of the city creating a sky borne symphony. Each balloon plays a different element of the musical score to produce a massive audio performance that many hundreds of sleepy people experience subconsciously as the balloons fly over their homes.

I live in the West of Sydney and I can tell you, yes, yes, yes, inner peace in waves. That much is true ...

I was the sound artists' lab monkey, alone, fixed to a chair, bristling with wires, a big needle in my brain, holding a phone number but no phone due to budgetry limitations. (So minimal medical support.) I was nervous, trying to sleep, trying to drink camomile tea through a straw, trying not to get distracted and wreck the experiment by drifting into thoughts about the crossword and malt biscuits. But then ... could it be La Grange? Without the words, clearly, but oh the words, the words ... 'Well, I hear it's fine if you got the time / And the ten to get yourself in'.

Kirribilli Tragedy

Draft A

"I'm a flawed genius," said John, dabbing his eye with a hankie.

"Oh, I wouldn't go that far," said Janette, placing a hand on his shoulder. "I'd say you're just flawed".

Draft B

"I'm a flawed genius," said John, drying his eyes with an applique tea cosy.

"Oh, I wouldn't go that far," said Janette, tapping him smartly on the head three times before skipping through to the kitchen. "I'd say you're just flawed".

Draft C

"I'm a flawed genius," said John, plunging his face into a towel.

"Oh, I wouldn't go that far," said Janette, taking his banana puree from the microwave. "I'd say you're just flawed".

My little triangle

They have their place
To preen and talk

I have my little triangle
To feel the dark
And listen

Birds

The Drive Out

One of the houses has a
Terracotta roof

Another, then a cluster
Jagging the horizon
Like a saw

This is no temple I think
This is no holy ground

Yet my memory of the place
Is captive somehow
Somehow
Still-budding entanglements,
A brother, a son,
Hold out against concrete reminders
Of how things have changed

I straighten my gaze
And turn on the radio
I've lost the undulating patchwork
That used to brick and tile the drive out

But no harm for now
My bearings, or sadnesses,
Are reclaimed
I'm beetling north among the baked grass

My family's fringe