Dale Slamma

First song

noreply@blogger.com (DS) — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 02:52:00 +0000

The melody came like a wave. The sound heightens and melds all experienced incidents from the shock and slap of a forward moving foot taking the full weight of a man to the lurch and swing of a shoulder joint as an arm travels forwards, loose fingers wanting always to be the first extremities to move into a new space. Breath and lung-bottoms contrive to engineer the whole chest to receive and reject and receive and reject nothing tangible to the naked eye. The sky wheels up and pulls down above everything like a hood and there is the wind. The unnamed wind of London St, Enmore New South Wales, rilling up and down the false dawn hill for reasons not one of the residents properly understands, except him.

False dawn was transformed for two minutes. All parts of him moved together in symphony, fingers, heels, heart, thought, breath and he crested the hill before the song wound down. He turned the corner into shadows under shop-awnings and gained momentum as his body understood he was no longer climbing but walking on flat ground.

The song concluded in one golden burst of resolution and he found his parts disconnecting their psychic union and resuming ordinary operations of holding coins for the bus, manufacturing saliva and planning out the first work tasks of the morning. He more clearly remembers coming back into himself, the dissolving and dissolution of a golden two minute experience than the walking moment itself.

What kind of magic spell to use?

noreply@blogger.com (DS) — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 02:26:00 +0000

One that completes all work in automated fast motion, similar to the dancing mops but with a successful outcome. Now, if you will excuse me I shall begin.

Lessons in architecture

noreply@blogger.com (DS) — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 23:06:00 +0000

I have made here another fort of pillows and sea-green bedsheets and that hand stitched quilt from my mother. Volumes of poetry scattered like driftwood. Outside all is ocean and my newspaper on the doorstep pulped in the deluge. I have forgone tea for hot chocolate and the low echo of Maria Callas on the record player. The kitchen floor is a vast and saltless ocean so desperate is the rain to be warm in here with me it has found ways to begin. The dining room ceiling, the bathroom window, underneath doors and windows cold wet fingers clamour for the bare soles of my feet but I am here in my fortress warm and dry.

Soon I will forage for eggs and toast. First I will imagine room by room by the empty house with its echoing arias and the cat perched in the library windowsill noting the rising water and the pale weak sun. Room by room my mind will wander in silence in front of my feet. All the hung curtains breathe and flare making that one long day up ladders worthwhile. This house instructs me in ways of being.

Taking care of

noreply@blogger.com (DS) — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 10:49:00 +0000

Clattering out of the exit of a fifty floor office tower after 7pm I found myself on the receiving end of a few sympathetic smiles. I was weighed down with folders and documents*, just like the besuited sympathetic smilers. I felt a small burst of collegiate warmth and kinship as I struggled to the nearest bus stop.

I stared up at the endless rows of office towers and listened to the small concrete echo of traffic and hard-soled shoes. I wondered if I could do this every day. So powerful was the feeling of kinship and collaborative human struggle I got carried away in a fantasy of owning a wardrobe full of business dresses, of rising early every day to brush my hair and travel clean and groomed right into the heart of the city. Then I realised I was at the wrong bus stop and my red shoes were old and scuffed and my anchor broach was ridiculously out of place and my office was not in one of those towers but in an almost condemned building in the back corner of a university.

I achieved a new limbo in that moment. I felt simultaneously part of the churning machinations of the city but also free. It was probably just a case of geography.

*Almost all of them were legitimate work documents and books, only two of the books were poetry and only read one of them during the meeting.

Today there was only song

noreply@blogger.com (DS) — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 11:02:00 +0000

Safari or What kind of cheese can you hide a small horse in?

noreply@blogger.com (DS) — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 03:54:00 +0000

Spencer waited with me on the corner for Mr X to come and collect me in his car. We stood in the rain, after all those years of drought I still think of the rain as rare. It rains here every day now and there are floods and the dam has overflowed but after living so long with dry bones the rain will remain, in my heart, a rare and beautiful spectacle to be embraced. We drove away leaving Spencer on a back street in Newtown. I never worry about driving away from Spencer every third person in town is someone who wants to sit down and spend time with him.

I don't know how Mr X steered so straight and steady, the rain came in diagonal drifts and all I could though the slanting darkness was freeway markers and pale lights from other cars. We arrived at the venue and I was piled up with stands and bags of leads and one heavy guitar. Mr X went about the business of setting up, plugging things in, turning things on up on stage with the rest of the band. I am used to these kinds of procedures and know the very best thing I can is stay out of the way so I wandered about a little and took in the vast electric rooms.

The venue was a club. The kind with acres of poker machines and an all you can eat buffet. Rooms opened onto other rooms onto more rooms. It was vast and lit with a combination of fluorescent lights and small dim stars meant to add atmosphere. The carpet was a uniform deep dull red but the walls varied from charcoal to beige. I found a cafe in one of the rooms and ordered myself a coffee and a sandwich, busied myself having dinner and making notes from a small table near the stage.

The band played and I intermittently wandered around having little chats with the locals. The gulf between me and the residents of Western Sydney has never seemed greater. I don't understand how this has happened. I grew up in Western Sydney, went to public schools, all my friends lived in the same area, I even went to the University of Western Sydney but there a difference so deep that I am sure it is forensically detectible at every level even beginning with DNA.

I participated in a conversation with two other women. One was dressed head-to-toe in turquoise and aqua tones she insisted on calling aquamarine. She said her eyes were the greatest eyes anyone would ever see, she told they were aquamarine the same as her birthstone and pointed at the cheap looking studs piercing her ears. The stones were aquamarine, like her eyes, but neither were beautiful. The other woman looked to me like an off-duty stripper. Bleached hair rolling over her enlarged brestas, down past her the tail of her painfully thing abdomen, huge black false eyelashes fanning like spiders across a heavily made-up face.

The two women speaking to each other. Instantly, before exchanging names, they entered a competition I have never witnessed before. It was like a prolonged and violent exchange of volleys at a championship tennis match. Each sentence a fired and condensed repor to the very worst moments of their lives.
"My husband died."
"My son is in jail."
"My husband abused me."
"I nearly died in a car crash."
"I've had two major back surgeries because I nearly died in a car crash."
"I've had two car crashes."

I asked if they knew each other because it seemed to me that something more than an introductory conversation was happening but they simultaneously denied it with, "No. Why?".

They continued firing facts at each other like bullets, sizing each other up. It was hard and impenetrable and I was well out of my depth. I have no idea how to interact in that kind of conversation. The talk came to an abrupt halt when the turquoise woman declare she was going to vomit, spilt her glass of lemonade on the floor, she told me she never ever drinks, and took off like a shot through the acres of poker machines.

A man walked up to me as I sat puzzling over what had just happened. He walked right up to me, shoe to shoe, and threw a stick of gum in my handbag. He winked at me and told it was for later. By this time the band had finished their first set and I took refuge backstage with them. I stood leaning against the wall nursing a beer Mr X provided, thinking it all over. The band began remarking on the club and it's patrons and I laughed with them at the strangeness of it all but I have to admit I was a little shaken.

What causes two women to lead a social interaction with the very worst moments of their life? Why are they so hard that they converse like battalions of soldiers charging at each other with bayonets? Why was the atmosphere so tense it made sense to me that the very next step would be violence?

On the way back to the Inner West Mr X and I pondered the nature of the town we were just in and each declared it would be impossible to live there, impossible to survive living anywhere at all like that. I panicked a little as though that is exactly what would happen, as though I was being forcefully transferred there and would have to survive as best I could. Mr X snorted when I told him, he said living there, or anywhere like that, was entirely out of the question and to my relief I believed him.

Mascarpone.

Two kinds of shiver and the bare table left adrift in the centre of the library

noreply@blogger.com (DS) — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 03:09:00 +0000

The shadows are strange in here today. Slow and deliberate but diffused as though less sure of themselves than they claim to be. There is sky of medium blue but I have disregarded it. In here the air feels rainsoaked and the smells are green and shaded, not pine nor eucalyptus in tone, neither so deep a green nor so olive. There is a sensation of being adrift in a haven while outside all things are moss.

The furniture remains rearranged from Saturday night's dinner party, here and there I find a wine-stained glass and dishes are strewn in a beautiful mess. Some of them washed some streaked with the final course of the night. The last guest departed, reluctantly at false dawn, as I shivered in my skin. There is a chill that comes and will not be denied when I have been awake three hours too many.

The dinner was successful, the guests full of chatter and goodwill, the wine never running out. We took turns at blindfolding each other and staggering around with a paper donkey's tail held out in one hand, the other hand stretched blindly into empty space. We decorated with linen napkins, flowers in empty jars, lit candles and borrowed plates. Mr X was the only person to successfully pin the tail on the donkey, his prize was to perform an interpretive dance to a song of his choice. Spencer eyed him suspiciously while he danced, almost always it is Spencer who is watched while we do the watching.

Now I have here some notes I made on Friday night when I was dragged, willingly, to Mr X's strange gig out West in one of those giant clubs with acres of poker machines and an all you can eat buffet featuring both Chinese dishes and pizza. I was horrified by the people I met, the forcefulness of their presence, the blunt and alarming manner they conducted themselves like alarmed and enlisted echnidas forced upright and forwards despite the spines and spikes pointing out in all directions and the hand grenade clutched in the palm of their right hand.

I am supposed to be at work but I found, after dressing there was a chill in the air and the strong urge to wrap knitted layers across my shoulders combined with a sensation that if I laced up my shoes and walked down the front path I would turn to glass and shatter before I reached the corner. I am probably coming down with a cold, it always feels first as though I have been indelibly altered and then a day later I realise it the usual case of a mild fever and the manufacturing of snot. There is the hope that one day I won't notice and I'll just walk around like everybody else clutching a tissue and making a cup of tea.

Not cheating by missing day

noreply@blogger.com (DS) — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 12:36:00 +0000

Am on safari, full report when I return.

Every day an adventure of one sort or another

noreply@blogger.com (DS) — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 12:41:00 +0000

Boring bit upfront: I'm joining in on the 'blog every day in March' thing because I thought I might as well as not. Apparently lots of people are doing it, because of this guy, also there is a hashtag, #b03.

Another more different slightly less boring bit. I am beginning to love American public radio shows, like WNYC's Radiolab and NPR's Fresh Air and even This American Life. These shows seem to explore topics in a wandering way with genuine curiosity, I suspect this is how I prefer to think. Studying law I found I could never concentrate strictly on the topic at hand, the case in question would lead to thinking about the story of the people which lead to the topic of the story of the people which would lead to other people and their stories and then a new topic would arise and the process would start all over again. This kind of thinking is not ideal when attempting to think like a lawyer.

Happily I no longer need to attempt to think like a lawyer, not ever again, and so I have given myself a challenge. Does this style of thinking work for writing things down? Even if it's just writing for this stupid blog? I'll find out by experimenting. For the duration of this every day in March thing I will allow the wandering to have its way and see where I end up. End official boring bit, the next bit might also be boring too but it is not official.

The harbour slides into view in the most surprising way when you catch the train from Newtown into the City Circle. It's all tunnels and communication blackout and suddenly there the fuck it is, bridge and building and shining sea all in the small box of a glass train window and you've no choice but to centre yourself geographically, floating above the quay and the unreasonable view screaming Sydney, Sydney on repeat until the train slides away and noses back underground into darkness.

I walked from St James station to the NSW Gallery with one of the Bruce Green boys, the non-Artboy one, because he was going to work at the gallery. Seems to me like he works at every gallery and museum in the city. It's a stupid walk from the station to the gallery, underground tunnels, road crossings and then a walk along a park that feels unnecessary more than pleasant as though they dropped the gallery in wrong spot by accident.

Picasso is the reason I left the kitchen table on my day off, Picasso and a strong desire to be unromantic. Recently I have been accused of being a romantic by three separate men* on three separate occasions. I despise romanticism so I left the light to slide across the floor without me, left the teapot on the shelf and marched out into the world determined to be as unromantic as possible.

A solo expedition around an exhibition is not romantic but today it was moving, in places. A sketch near the beginning of the exhibition trapped me. Slammed me into reverie and there I stayed until an elderly woman in a red hat shoved me on purpose. I think it was a self-portrait, it was called something like "The artist drawing, with hand studies". One clear bold sketch of the artist, bare-chested and youthful with disembodied hands floating around the edges of the page in more ghostly lines, some of them hesitant and pale.

The rawness of Picasso's sketch appealed to me. More than anything I love the beginnings, the sketches, the demo tapes, the first draft, when there is nothing but raw art at work. A direct line from mind to page or sound or canvas. In this stage of work you cannot lie, you can not hide behind the reworkings and the polish that inevitably comes with experience. I don't dislike finished works but the raw beginnings excite me.

My love of raw beginnings has lead me to some odd places, tiny galleries in back alleys, bands playing under buildings and in warehouses or lounge rooms, people singing in the park at midnight and then of course there is PAN magazine. The editorial team is learning, very quickly, how to have a magazine but many of our contributors for each issue have no experience and I love this. This is one way of transferring raw beginnings from garages and kitchen tables into the hands of readers. Another way of examining the unedited beginnings has been, and still is, this blog. In the beginning of this blog I was new to the city, new to being alone, I was shot from my old life without warning and I was on the edge. Of course it transformed and I let it because here I remain unedited, without expectation or rules which exactly how I find my best friendships are, with Spencer and with others, like Robert.

I don't write much about Robert, he is intensely private, much more so than any person I have ever known but that doesn't mean he isn't around, sometimes in person and often in my thoughts or in my telephone, like today. Robert called from his hometown in another state and asked for a favour. I was inside a bookshelf when he called. I was building one of these flat-pack bookshelves in the hallway and found it necessary to lie the half-built thing down flat and slide in between the long pieces to tighten some screws. I didn't hesitate to say yes, it seems a great privilege to be asked by someone to be of help in their life. The favour involved climbing out from inside the bookshelf, out the window, the front door was blocked by the bookshelf and straight into a taxi to Kings Cross to make a cash deal with a real estate agent.

Robert, having flown out this morning for a month, received a call informing him he had indeed been approved for the flat he applied for but the real estate agent needed the deposit by close of business today. This is where my and my taxi catching come into play. After crossing the city again, this time in the comfort of a motor vehicle, I found myself face to face with an astonishing man. I suppose he might not be so astonishing on meeting him a second time but that first time had my ovaries in a knot.

Here's what I know about the real estate man, he wears suits, an expensive watch and has very shiny shoes and the astonishing effect of sitting down next to him is the sudden and urgent need to breed, with him, immediately if not sooner. I don't know if he's handsome, I suppose he might be but not obviously so. His accent is thick and possibly Turkish. The hallmarks of Turkish language are vowel harmony and agglutination but I don't know what that means, he sounded deep and musical and unfamiliar. He doesn't hold himself in any particular way, his office is small and messy, he was not especially friendly nor was he too cold or overly professional. There is no logical reason for the unexpected feelings. It was raw and immediate and entirely unedited and I'll make sure it stays that way.

Sometimes the beginnings of making an acquaintance is the most profound part, before I find out that they wear novelty socks or dislike their mother or have a dull and heavy mind. Sometimes walking past someone and observing how they occupy the world in that moment is enough.

* Lex Wick is one of my accusers, the others don't have blogs.

Old man look at my life

noreply@blogger.com (DS) — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 12:19:00 +0000

If I dissected him I'd find nothing but chalk and wish bones. Great piles of wish bones and crumbling white chalk, dry and crackable as twigs. Aching forward steps. His pace might have been languid, if it wasn't for the chalk, if it wasn't for the wish bones. I pushed him over and now I'm going to pry him apart and try snapping his innards for luck.

Geographical facts in numbered list form but not in chronological order

noreply@blogger.com (DS) — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 10:07:00 +0000

The IGA on Enmore Rd smells like dill and offers cold comfort from the hot thick air.
Enmore Rd is swarming with beautiful boys sporting traditional 80's metal hair, bandanas and leather pants. Quite a lot of them are wearing Skid Row singlets, the kind with wide open arm holes exposing skin drawn tight across ribs.
The best example of the swarming men was one young one in read snakeskin pants.
One hour ago I was drinking coffee on King St with two people, one of them was more eccentric than I am, and also slightly creepy at times. At one point he mimed throwing a sheet, thousand count Egyptian cotton, over my head and then pressed a finger to my lips saying 'shhh, shhh'.
Nine hours ago I paid twice for my morning coffee on the way to work, once for today and once for yesterday when I forgot my wallet and they made me coffee anyway. This is the benefit of putting up with inane small talk from cafe owners every day.
Six hours ago, in my office, I was listening to Mr X's new album when a wasp flew into my dress. I performed the most remarkable dance.
Robert has performed his last day as a not-for-profit slave worker in Ultimo and will from this night forward be a Writer, he insisted on the capital W. I do not doubt his success.
Walking home the humidity was so high I feared I might at any moment sweat myself into non-existence. Vanish right into thick air.

Some call it the Emerald City

noreply@blogger.com (DS) — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 15:00:00 +0000

My brother sat perched on a bar stool peering out the window at people scurrying around in Surry Hills. He kept exclaiming, "Look at all the people! All those people going places! Look at that guy, and that guy, look at them over there!" like he couldn't believe the volume and variety of humanity of going about its business.

I used to exclaim like that when I first moved to the city, even sit for hours making notes. I couldn't believe my eyes. It felt so strange to see so many people moving about all around me after decades of knowing three streets away from wherever I was there was nothing but distance, mountains and sky. You could walk out the front door of my old house and walk for hours without arriving anywhere at all.

The city feels like a dreamscape sometimes and I still want to exclaim but I'm more likely to close my eyes and see if I can feel it, as well as see it. I'm still waiting to wake up back in the old town and realise I've had the most amazing dream.

A.H. Cayley's Confession Booth and Rhys Muldoon's fake santorum

noreply@blogger.com (DS) — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 13:47:00 +0000

I seem to have accidentally joined a hypothetical band with Adam Lewis* and Matt Banham. When I say joined what I mean is bullied into saying "Maria" when pointed at by Banham while Lewis croons a long 'ooooo'. I think we will be very popular.

I've never met Matt Banham before but people, like P. Street tell me that I should have. The first thing Banham ever said to me, and other people in the room, was a long drunken tale about shitting his pants twenty minutes from home. Yes it was crass but not quite as crude, when listened to first-hand, as the story Rhys Muldoon told about concocting fake santorum in his kitchen to fool Ben Mendelsohn with. I do not know why this occurred, or when.

I knew it was going to be a strange night when Mr X cancelled last minute, citing exhaustion. It's a good thing he is not a celebrity, we all know what 'exhaustion' means when someone is a celebrity. In the case of Mr X I suspect it was a case of being very tired indeed. The strangeness began when I immediately rang and booked a taxi for myself without pausing or making a clear strategy for using in case of emergencies, which is what I usually do when I have to get picked up in a taxi by myself. This time I calmly thought oh well Mr X is tired, sucks to be him, and then went about my solo-taxi business. The taxi cost five million and twelve dollars and fiftybillion cents, due to traffic. Strange event number two, I cared only mildly.

Many odd things occurred but none so odd as my catching the train without bothering to look at where the train was going, after I had already decided to catch a taxi home. I wound up on a fast train to Bankstown, for those who don't know where that is don't worry I don't either. Judging from the other passengers on the train it is a sub-level of hell. I had some time to think, on the trains, about the oddness of the evening. It is a great shame that I am now too exhausted to write about it, a great shame indeed.

It is good though that no one has changed any of the signs at Central Station so that they read Entrail. This would be possible by the simple removal of the letter C and the small addition of an I.

* Listen to Adam Lewis's radio show, it's quite good.

Oh and the reason I left the house with box of PAN magazines was to attend A.H. Cayley's Confession Booth. A.H. is the Chief Sub-Editor of PAN magazine and once pulled all the legs off a spider, I believe she was an infant when the leg-pulling incident occurred.

You are boring

noreply@blogger.com (DS) — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 12:58:00 +0000

Work - challenging (in an odd but not bad way)
Home - peaceful (and mildly clean)
Friends - all fine (unless they are pretending)
Family - no problems (and presumably still alive)
Manuscript - going (yes)
PAN - in progress (a way to go but in progress)

BORING.

All work and no play makes Dale a dull girl.

I'm not seducing disaster, merely making an observation, pass me the champagne.

If I could turn back time

noreply@blogger.com (DS) — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 10:46:00 +0000

I would swap Paul McCartney for John Lennon. There is a reason Paul was never asked to join The Traveling Wilburys.

Portraits & lemon wheels distract island resident

noreply@blogger.com (DS) — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 16:12:00 +0000

I took this dodgy photo of Lyndal

Grizelda has gone away for the entire weekend, left Friday morning and won't be back until Sunday night. I consider this to be incredibly excellent, good fortune on my part because I have been in need of uninterrupted time to work on my manuscript. All week I've been excited about having all this time, so excited I have named this weekend My Island.

I planned to spend every waking moment from Friday after work until Sunday night in a deliberately blissful state of writing reverie but as it so happened one or two things popped up. The first thing was work, stupid fucking work, I ended up working until almost eight at night, until Spencer came in the office door with a Rolling Stones poster and the pronouncement that he was bored and sick of waiting for me to finish. We had planned, earlier in the day, to travel together to official distraction number one.

Official distraction number one was having our portraits taken by the excellent photographer Lyndal Irons, who happens to be a friend of ours. The portraits were Lyndal's idea, not mine. When we got to her house the lounge room was transformed, huge light panel thingos and boxes that look like amps but aren't, they were giant light-controlling box things. We all sat in the back yard drinking beer and yammering in our way until Lyndal called us in one at a time to take her shots. I don't like having my photo taken, I'm not at all photogenic, I'm all surface, no shadow, unlike Spencer who has more angles than a geometry lesson, but when Lyndal asks me I'll do it.

It was odd just sitting there, occasionally being directed to turn a little this way or another. Lyndal looked busy, changing settings on everything from her camera to the giant light-controlling boxes, moving big things on stands around. I have no idea at all about anything to do with photography, except this, when she works there is a beautiful intensity about her. She becomes transformed and it's mesmerising.

Official distraction number two came the next night. I had two to choose from, one party where Spencer was the dj and I'd know about a billion people. The kind of party that I might easily find myself still at as the sun rises or a party at Mr X's house where I would know almost no one and would most likely stay well within the limits of tame. I chose the wrong party if my purpose was partying. I went to Mr X's house to help his lovely housemate celebrate her thirtieth birthday. It was a mild party, the housemate's friends were over-groomed and simultaneously over-confident and embarrassed. The embarrassment became evident when the housemate declared it was time for an air guitar competition. There were grown men hiding behind the lounge to avoid being called up to compete. If I had declared such a competition at my birthday party a few weeks ago I'm fairly confident that at least three pieces of furniture would have been destroyed in the resulting mayhem. As it was Spencer, Madam Squeeze and AHC performed a five minute interpretive dance piece, with moonwalking, P Street and E from next door waltzed mightily into the refrigerator, Abdullah did something entirely unexpected and I injured myself jumping around with a bucket on my head, and at least three highly shocking yet hilarious events occurred before midnight.

At Mr X's tonight three sets of people competed in an abashed manner and then rejoined the herd as quickly as possible. The poor birthday girl tried getting everybody to do it at once, and then tried to do just general dancing but nothing would work. They all stood there hoping not to be noticed. I felt sorry for the poor girl who is obviously quite a bit more fabulous than her general network of friends.

Around midnight a serious case of the yawns set in, just as Mr X reappeared from the kitchen with a mug of gin and tonic that included a whole wheel of lemon. I suppose I might have stayed and talked merrily with Mr X and the small band of people I have come to know but the yawns got hold of me mightily and skulked back through the back streets to The Peach. I wrote for a few more hours but now I'm giving up for the day. It's three in the morning and I've run out of steam.

I'm hoping tomorrow, with no scheduled official distractions, I can get back to island living.

Don't go changing

noreply@blogger.com (DS) — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 12:24:00 +0000

Years ago I read both of Lauren Bacall's autobiographies. I remember little about them, in the first volume she married Bogey, it was difficult to convince him to buy a house and then he died and she kept his silk shirts to wear as her own. In the second volume Ms Bacall set about ridding herself of most of her earthly possessions because she was ageing and didn't want to die with a big house full of furniture.

I might have reached the second volume stage of my life. I used to want options, for everything. Options about pens, ballpoint, cartridge, fountain, quill, expensive, very cheap indeed, glow-in-the-dark, blue, black, orange, green, purple. This one example of pens may give you some idea as to what is going on inside my cupboards, drawers, shelves and wardrobes. I want it gone, everything except the silk shirts.

Just listen

noreply@blogger.com (DS) — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 04:08:00 +0000

Josephine Rowe, one of my favourite writers, has introduced me to The Moth and now I can't do anything except listen.

Read about Josephine's vist to The Moth HQ in NYC over at Dumbo Feather (and then get the Stitcher podcast). Yeah that's a lot of links, shut up about it and just listen.

Damp towel brings joy to undisturbed woman who sits contemplating doing a crime

noreply@blogger.com (DS) — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 10:28:00 +0000

Everyone is talking about love, who loves them, or doesn't, or should, did or could or who they love or don't, or want to, will do or could. I'm not listening to them because as usual I am thinking about myself. I used to love and it was terrible.

Sometimes it was fine or good or mildly excellent but most of the time it was terrible. In theory it was good, someone to share the bills and the worries and the joys and the chores and the adventure but most of the men I have loved, even platonic love, were impractical creatures and more trouble than use in most matters. Almost all of them were deliberately selfish, except Artboy who was basically Kirsten Dunst in Melancholia but without the expensive wedding dress.

When I reflect on the compromises I used to make, the effort I used to go to, the time and energy and worry I gave away, I feel a little ill. Like a mild dose of flu of experienced at high speed but then it is gone and I am here again. When I say here I mean in The Peach, in the present, in my reading glasses and a damp towel with nothing on my mind or my to do list except what I want.

This is ideal. What I love is this, being able to sit around in my reading glasses and damp towel and know that I will remain undisturbed. Well at least until Grizelda shouts down the hallway about cupcakes. She is insisting on making red cupcakes with heart-shaped pink icing thingos to give to the people at her work tomorrow, because she is thinking about love.

I am thinking about stealing one of the cupcakes and how fortunate I am to own more than one towel. I plan on leaving both towel and cupcake wrapper on the floor overnight.

I don't know

noreply@blogger.com (DS) — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 08:06:00 +0000

A man I didn't really know died recently, I'd met him once or twice at events hosted by one of those not-for-profits that invade every aspect of everything ever thought of. The not-for-profit decided to sell memorabilia at one of their events and the man, the now-dead man, trembled his way over to the table to inspect the goods.

He took a while moving between his seat and the merch table at the back of the hall, you could see his navigation systems were having some trouble and his legs, though willing, bowed and angled like they were bearing the weight of an eight-tonne truck and not the birdlike body of an elderly man. He fingered some of the merchandise, letting it slide between his fingers before putting it down again. He opened his wallet but came up a little short, I offered, because I was working the merch table, to let him pay the balance later, but he declined. Angling his head and taking a last look he went to walk away but his wife spotted him and came over. He politely enquired as to whether she might have some money about her person and pointed shyly to the merch.

The wife, elderly and impeccably groomed, gushed, "Of course you must have one my darling" and immediately produced a large amount of cash, in hundreds, from thin air. She might have been pompous if it wasn't for the tender glance she shot in her husband's direction. He fingered the merch once more before reverently choosing one and carefully stashing it in his battered old briefcase. Earlier in the proceedings he had introduced himself to me and proudly stated that he was back in action and ready to be of service once again. I had eyed him warily wondering if he wasn't a crackpot who'd wandered in from the street but was soon sure of his status in the group when The Captain of the not-for-profit made a show of shaking his hand.

At the time of the showy handshake I felt a shiver of disgust, not for the man but for the closed in world of not-for-profits. I found myself in a state of involuntary reverie about community marching bands and pony clubs. Those places seemed haunted by elderly people who did nothing but yell at children like me to sit up straighter on my pony or hold my clarinet at different angle. Back then I wondered why these elderly yelling people were tolerated when all they did was wear the club tie and yell and complain about things. I know better these days but at the moment of the showy handshake I felt a childlike urge to gallop off or deliberately play in the wrong key.

During the speeches, and the reading of the minutes and the chugging through of the agenda I watched the old man from my perch at the back of the room. I felt my own small tenderness for his dear old head as it bent over his shaky notes. I wondered what he was writing and why. The secretary was taking official minutes and the room was packed with emeritus academics who surely must have one or two memory cells between them. He persisted with his intense concentration and note-taking right through to the end of the proceedings.

When all the other academics and assorted official people were braying loudly over full cups of expensive wines and rocking back and forth on their heels in a mildly demented manner the old man was sitting lightly on a plastic chair in the corner. Every so often he would take a peek in his briefcase and stare fondly at his merchandise. I made a note to post him a receipt with a kind note, something simple about how the not-for-profit was terribly glad he was "back in action".

I never saw the man again, he died before I had a chance to make up for the insolence of my youth, all those times I rode off at pony club with my nose in the air, or declared at band practice that someone was 'not the boss of me'. There's probably something I should think of to tie this little anecdote up, finish it up with a concluding sentence but I just can't think what it is. Perhaps it is enough that I noticed him, that outside of his family and friends and the official mourning accompanying anyone who has achieved great things there is someone else who will remember him. Or maybe it isn't. I don't know, maybe I'm just feeling sentimental and in five minutes I will have forgotten all about everything.

Number nine

noreply@blogger.com (DS) — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 11:19:00 +0000

Recurring dream of giving speech of thanks at dinner party on The Peach Deck. During the speech it feels important to explain to all ten guests how I first met each one of them, as though joining dots in invisible puzzles. The dream repeats itself, sometimes two or three times a night, every night, without respite.

In the dream I am making a speech to friends, giving thanks for making known the possibility of joy, sketching lightly old histories of sorrow and how I arrived here in the city like a refugee clutching wildly at any shred of will to live and continue on into tomorrow. I remember I used to vomit on the way to work, every day, less than half way to the train station, I was so tightly wound and simultaneously undone I could barely breathe. And then there is now.

The speech is disturbing my sleep. I lay awake before dawn reciting it like an elongated mantra. At first I dismissed it as yet another folly of the unconscious mind but instead of forming a long-winded aphasia its meaning daily increases. Perhaps it is my ode to joy.

So this is thirty five

noreply@blogger.com (DS) — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 05:22:00 +0000

Too preoccupied to be bothered with pondering about significance of age. You see there are at least ten plates losing momentum rapidly and my motivation was at least partially depleted in that glorious moment when friends were drunk and shouting from The Peach Deck and I was dancing in the hallway with a bucket on my head. There's that letter to Mr Goldblum I'm still working on, a forty centimetre stack of submissions to PAN, the manuscript to be dealt with and nobody has realigned the coloured dots in the hall for at least a week. Bob was right about times. Changing so much it has become clear that joy is a very real possibility.

Seriously though

noreply@blogger.com (DS) — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 05:15:00 +0000

It really is hard to write that letter.

Difficulty upon difficulties

noreply@blogger.com (DS) — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 09:01:00 +0000

It is harder than one might imagine to draft a letter to Jeff Goldblum.

Why am I here?

noreply@blogger.com (DS) — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 03:32:00 +0000

What the hell is going on? Is what I should have demanded far more often than I did this weekend.

The above satellite photo shows the location of the chain restaurant where I had breakfast with family on Sunday. Note it is situated in the middle of a paddock and across the road from the vile Hawkesbury-Nepean River.

It is a strange location for a chain restaurant. I can't help but think I might have enjoyed it's oddness more if it was the ambitious project of some enterprising farmer who had always cherished a secret love of cooking instead one of those franchised chains. I'm quite sure the farmer would not have made me dry pancakes nor raised an eyebrow when I requested bacon instead of ice cream. He is probably also a painter, with oils, who sits speakers in the windows of his house so the horses can hear the music too. He uses only the best coffee beans and sometimes chops wood using an axe.