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

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?

Cancer code

What a miracle is Stevie Ray Vaughan's version of Chitlins Con Carne! Makes corrupted intentions pass through the scanner with ease. (And desire, but that was an afterthought.)

Zedong's big mug

On the weekend I read about a group of Mao portraitists who every year re-touch a giant mural of the chairman in Tiananmen Square. More blush for the cheeks, more sheen for the chin wart, more sparkle for the ear fluff, etc. Their job is secret, their toil unrecognised (at least publicly). According to ex-Mao-muggist Wang Guodong, however, this does not mean the finer details of their artistry go unscrutinised. He was "shipped off to work as a carpenter in a framing factory" for "painting Mao at a slight tilt from the viewer that showed only one ear. The Red Guards said it implied the chairman listened to a select few rather than the masses". (My sympathies are with Mr Wang, obviously, but I have to say that shifting Mao's head around is going well beyond the "refreshment" JD, surely?)

And in news closer to home ...

I look forward, after next year's federal election, to standing awestruck before a mammoth portrait of chairman Ausmao or A Typical Aussie Battler On $200kpa hanging permanently on an inward-facing side of Westfield shopping centre's multi-story carpark. I also look forward to monitoring the subtle changes to Ausmao's visage as it is re-touched by wave after wave of graffiti banditti who couldn't give a fuck about mythology (or iconography) but know what they feel and feel like they're missing out.

Us and them or just us

I don't usually read Richard Glover's column in the weekend Sydney Morning Herald*, but this one was dead set mickey mouse.

That is to say, it had a simple message about the foolishness (and dangerousness) of dishonouring, mocking and bullying Muslim Australians. Here's a snippet (that refers to the importance of cultural cooperation in the battle against violent extremism).

It's a radical proposal, I know, but let me say it out loud: maybe we should stop putting so much effort into marginalising people whose goodwill we so keenly need.

*I gave up once it's scope became clear: fluffy stereotype reinforcement featuring young well-adjusted mums and dads and their hilariously juxtaposed attitudes to white goods, sheds, sports days and who makes the salad / who sets up the tent on family holidays.

Laurence Binyon - global warming seer

They will come again, the leaf and the flower, to arise
From squalor of rottenness into the old splendour,
And magical scents to a wondering memory bring;
The same glory, to shine upon different eyes.
Earth cares for her own ruins, naught for ours.
Nothing is certain, only the certain spring.

(A verse from The Burning of the Leaves (1942))

What are the earth's ruins that aren't also ours, I wonder? One of my vaguely spiritual fantasies -- the kind that percolates through my id when I'm watching question time in the Senate -- is that the earth will be bumped by a wayward comet into a new orbit much closer to the sun. To the extent that pontiffs*, plutocrats, peasants and property developers alike will cook in the same cauldron that is oblivion, this will amount to an apocalypse. But also a renewal, because it just may be that, over time, new primitive organisations emerge and begin to arrange themselves in one of those self-perpetuating music festivals that many scientists believe presage life (I'm thinking crystals).

So a different kind of viability will arise and thrive in a splendidly uncluttered and scorched new world. It will be much less prone to skin cancer and much less inclined to mythologise fire as evil or fish as salvation. And this will open the way to a completely untravelled path for the alien breed of bike boys, dais dancers, mountain mutterers and other victims of theism that will inevitably materialise.

Through this fantasy I can imagine the earth caring for her ruins, even if to care means to be absolutely, timelessly indifferent.

* Yes, there is only one ... at the moment. I predict, however, that as a result of a calamitously well-intentioned push for a more directly representative leadership, Roman Catholisism will soon see its headquarters teeming with hundreds of the little buggers.

Propellers

Keerihste, a translation

(English to German to English ... see original poem below)

I, a person, is making excitements to the armpit
I, a person, is asthmatic
I, a person, is doing terror for the smoothness

I, a person, is dog-pedals and fathoms
In your spreadsheet
(Incorrigibly)

I, a person, is making prouds to the failure
Which does prudentials -- up to the arm -- for
Many directions

I, a person, tells the emphasis: asthmatic

I, a person, beggars affections from the platypus
I, a person, wants lasting cognitions
With promiscuities to the chart
Whimpered inner boxes
Punched membranes
And piss

And animal husbandry -- for
Many directions

Now, prouds to the failure
Fails
I, a person, does the finger repair
I, a person, does the funny mouth-wash

Keerihste, I, a person, undertaking throat pythons
Brooming off for
Sexual mindfulness

However, what of the possible
branch hoistenings?

I, a person, derelicts my juvenile for French poet transformations

Keerihste

I am hyperlinked to your armpit
I am not breathing well
I am panicked by an unnatural
Hairlessness

I am struggling to stay afloat
In your data stream
(truthfully)

I am waving my losing ticket,
Which didn't cost me much --
Just my other arm -- but
Anyway

I am really not breathing well

I am craving your webbed attention
I am thinking of survival
Of allowing my best-laid plans
To suffer confinement
Dimpled skin
And urea

And species transmutation -- but
Anyway

And now I am losing my
Losing ticket
I am calling for digital recovery
I am gagging on my own saliva

Keerihste, I am asphyxiating and
Thrashing away the
Arousal.

But that said, can you lift your
Arm just a touch?

I am too young for romance

The story of the off-centred handle Part V

"You can protect yourselves", they were advised. But all who stood and looked up at the barbed volley, some wearing only underpants and saftey glasses, would drop into the foetal position, knead the sand with their hands and cry out invocations to their mothers (or god).

Don't get caught talking to the wrong man

(Click to enlarge ...)

Riffin' the heart stings

(Click to enlarge ...)

Dumbfaitho Cogito Ergo ... ?

Steve Salerno, author of SHAM: How the Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless, has a bone to pick with empowerment gurus. Whether they be crusading about self-esteem based education, evangelising about "taking charge of one's health-care destiny" (and, as a bonus, eschewing traditional medicine), or sermonising to corporate success junkies about skills, productivity and "the future", their message is always the same: "a positive mental attitude will carry the day".

Salerno demurs:

You cannot have a life plan predicated on the belief that everything is equally achievable to you, especially if that same message has been sold indiscriminantly to all-comers. In the grand scheme of things, knowing one's limitations may be even more important than knowing one's talents.

The old fashioned way

(Click to enlarge ...)

Atom skerrick

I love a long draught of atmospheric music. Also of atmospheric words. Atmospheric animals (e.g. birds and some species of lhama). That sort of thing. Atmospheric food? ... maybe not. Too close to vomit. But now I'm wondering if there's such a thing as atmospheric being. Due to a series of drunken teenage rejections at the clenched hands of Tok H bouncers, I have a fear of St Peter. Well, an abstract fear actually, cos I don't believe he or his boss exist.* So if there is such a thing, notwithstanding wormy wind, it definitely isn't a soul.

Atmospheric being.

Atmospheric been?

Atmospheric bean?

Atmospheric bee?

That's it! Beans and bees! Pods and proboscises. Vines and hexagons. Perfectly atmospheric. And all natural.

* Mike Willesee recently confirmed this for me on Enough Rope -- waxing sentimental about the kiddies he spent time with in Sudan while proudly advertising the fact that a good shank of his $50m fortune will be ploughed into Sudanese-kiddie-saving projects such as the demystification of stigmata and the forensic testing of blood-stained blankets.

The next George