Over There

Stone Sea I

One of these things

Scenes I ought to have drawn #2

A man wearing tight bicycle shorts is stooping over a copy of Duchamp's wheel at an American art gallery. His lips are turned slightly upward and he is squinting. Behind the man is a woman, also in tight bicycle shorts, who is waving her arms above her head and shouting, "don't panic, he's a black belt".

Gum nut

True Stories

I've just finished reading Inga Clendinnen's Boyer Lectures (1999) -- collected in a book titled True Stories. The lectures are about the role history plays in shaping a national story. About how 'bad history' is the product of false or sanitised narratives designed to serve specific political or cultural purposes. Clendinnen cites the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, set up in post-apartheid South Africa, as an agency through which 'good history' was learnt and recorded. She explains that the commission's chairman, Archbishop Desmond Tutu,

wanted the new state to begin not with no history, not with false history, but with a true history forged out of its divided but shared past. And it worked. Vengeance, reparation, even justice, turned out to be less important than knowledge. From now on, no one in South Africa can deny the past or falsify it. South Africans, black and white, have their true stories. Some will still cry for justice, but the worst of the agony has been assuaged and rendered unavailable for disreputable use by that extraordinary collective enterprise in good history.

Reading about -- being reminded of -- the atrocities and injustices enacted upon Australian Aborigines by white frontiermen, missionaries and politicians has strengthened my belief that it's time we, for the sake of our national healing and so that we can all move forward, set down, in the style of the TRC, a deep store of good public history related to the contact-zone (in particular) and the "colonial question" (more generally).

Let's have it out so that none of this Black Armband cynicism can continue to eat away at our shared past and future.

They're Behind You III

(With apologies to Will Oldham.)

They're Behind You II

They're Behind You I

Miro Rip Off

(Though I didn't know it at the time ...)

A poem by Philip Larkin

Days

What are days for?
Days are where we live.
They come, they wake us
Time and time over.
They are to be happy in:
Where can we live but days?

Ah, solving that question
Brings the priest and the doctor
In their long coats
Running over the fields.

Sky Pebbles

Mary Time

Starry Corner

Progressive Greyness

RGB: (0,0,0)+(255,255,255)+(50n,50n,50n)


n=1

n=1,2

n=1,2,3

n=1,2,3,4

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

Penguins and Sharks

(Click to enlarge ...)

The Dream by Harmony Dashut

This image was given an honourable mention in The Everyman Photo Contest (2006).


(Click to enlarge ...)

I hope this man was swimming between the flags, else Harmony's vision would almost certainly be a nightmare.

Thumb-stained smile

when

one
thumb-stained smile

stilled

two
ink-filled eyes

three
o'clock mornings

were lost

and when

four
empty fridge trays

and

five
tv stations

left

six
fur-mouthed soup cans

for toast

seven
arm-chair movements

seven
anguished moments

seven
mobile phone calls

were cost

My submission to the Switkowski Review

... and the form letter of acknowledgement ...

Creekside

I spied an old woman this morning sweeping and slicing her way through a Tai Chi routine. I smiled when I noticed a little Jack Russell terrier perched in front of her, carefully following the smooth and controlled movements of her arms. It would have made my day if, as I passed, the dog had traced a sympathetic paw through the air and nodded in my direction. We would have connected. All three of us.

Verse 3 of John Kinsella's Full Fathom Five

There he is. Hook it quick.

Full fathom five
dredged deep
the glory
of drowning
in a river
or taking to sea
and being dragged
back to shore.
The hook as sharp
as sight honed
by shamans,
the corpse a prismatic
reflection
of the living body.

Chaotic fish
dissect currents,
dislocate reefs,
and scatter sandbanks.
They will not be recruited
as pallbearers.

Now on tap in Pictland

My first reading of this ballad by Robert Louis Stevenson impressed me not because of its weighty themes of racial annihilation, sacrifice and secrecy but because of the absurd and counterproductive impulsiveness of the king in roughhousing his two little Pict brewster captives. If he truly wanted the formula for heather ale then he ought to have been much more cunning. He ought to have invited the stumpy couple back to his castle for dancing and feasting and tankard-clanging licentiousness. (After all that time cowering under a rock, I reckon they would have jumped at the offer of a knees-up.) Then, later in the night, when father and son were sufficiently liquefied, the king could have acted to extract the formula - by saying something tricky like "so, men, let us conclude this wild and vomitous evening with a quiet heather ale! What say? But wait! Oh dread and deary me, I must be snuffing too much toad, for we have no such lip-licking brew in this kingdom nor any knowledge of the manner of its brewing. Only you -- prone and cataleptic imps -- possess such lovely-lovely goodness. And so I ask (at the threat of sending everyone straight to bed): INSTRUCTIOWWWNAYS PLEASE".

It's a great ballad though.

Heather Ale: a Galloway Legend

From the bonny bells of heather
They brewed a drink long-syne,
Was sweeter far than honey,
Was stronger far than wine.
They brewed it and they drank it,
And lay in a blessed swound
For days and days together
In their dwellings underground.

There rose a king in Scotland,
A fell man to his foes,
He smote the Picts in battle,
He hunted them like roes.
Over miles of the red mountain
He hunted as they fled,
And strewed the dwarfish bodies
Of the dying and the dead.

Summer came in the country,
Red was the heather bell;
But the manner of the brewing
Was none alive to tell.
In graves that were like children’s
On many a mountain head,
The Brewsters of the Heather
Lay numbered with the dead.

The king in the red moorland
Rode on a summer’s day;
And the bees hummed, and the curlews
Cried beside the way.
The king rode, and was angry;
Black was his brow and pale,
To rule in a land of heather
And lack the Heather Ale.

It fortuned that his vassals,
Riding free on the heath,
Came on a stone that was fallen
And vermin hid beneath.
Rudely plucked from their hiding,
Never a word they spoke:
A son and his aged father—
Last of the dwarfish folk.

The king sat high on his charger,
He looked on the little men;
And the dwarfish and swarthy couple
Looked at the king again.
Down by the shore he had them;
And there on the giddy brink—
“I will give you life, ye vermin,
For the secret of the drink.”

There stood the son and father
And they looked high and low;
The heather was red around them,
The sea rumbled below.
And up and spoke the father,
Shrill was his voice to hear:
“I have a word in private,
A word for the royal ear.

“Life is dear to the aged,
And honor a little thing;
I would gladly sell the secret,”
Quoth the Pict to the King.
His voice was small as a sparrow’s,
And shrill and wonderful clear:
“I would gladly sell my secret,
Only my son I fear.

“For life is a little matter,
And death is nought to the young;
And I dare not sell my honor
Under the eye of my son.
Take him, O king, and bind him,
And cast him far in the deep;
And it ’s I will tell the secret
That I have sworn to keep.”

They took the son and bound him,
Neck and heels in a thong,
And a lad took him and swung him,
And flung him far and strong,
And the sea swallowed his body,
Like that of a child of ten;—
And there on the cliff stood the father,
Last of the dwarfish men.

“True was the word I told you:
Only my son I feared;
For I doubt the sapling courage
That goes without the beard.
But now in vain is the torture,
Fire shall never avail:
Here dies in my bosom
The secret of Heather Ale.”

Alabama Caboose ...

... but it could have been Texan.



A South politician preaches to the poor white man,
"You got more than the blacks, don't complain.
You're better than them, you been born with white skin," they explain.
And the Negro's name
Is used it is plain
For the politician's gain
As he rises to fame
And the poor white remains
On the caboose of the train
But it ain't him to blame
He's only a pawn in their game.


(From Bob Dylan's Only a Pawn in Their Game.)

Future First

D9-al

They're calling for you

A flatbed truck pulls away
With dust-swarmed wheels

No one moves

The funereal pall
Is spared interruption
Till it dissolves

But then
At the instant of ascension
And woven into sclerophyll
A flashing thread of cockatoos
Sounds a silent mustering of
Stoops and half-nods

People begin to move
Lighted by this day
Into another

A poem by Anthony Lawrence

The Queensland Lungfish

The Queensland lungfish I carried
like a sock full of mud
from the swamp is very sick.
It squelches and burps

like a sock full of mud.
Sometimes it smiles, sometimes
it squelches and burps.
I call it Fred.

Sometimes it smiles, sometimes
it stares straight ahead, even when
I call it Fred.
I think it's going to die.

It stares straight ahead, even when
I play my guitar loud.
I think it's going to die.
I offer it mosquitoes and maggots.

I play my guitar loud
for its entertainment.
I offer it mosquitoes and maggots
even though it doesn't like them.

For its entertainment
I make faces at the glass,
even though it doesn't like them.
I don't know what to do.

I make faces at the glass,
I say, Fred! Can you hear me?
I don't know what to do.
I should have left it in the swamp.

I say, Fred! Can you hear me?
But it doesn't move.
I should have left it in the swamp.
Are you going to die soon, Fred?