Waiting on the breeze.

I have given in to the heat. It’s been enveloping me all day, as it tends to at this time of the year, when it falls down upon this city for days at a time. I have succumbed to its bidding and ceased to try and do anything productive today. Instead I’m trying to keep exceptionally still, to concentrate on being immobile, and searching inside my mental world for an icy cold oasis, sweet like an icy pole, cool like the very opposite of the space within these four walls. I’ve sat at my desk, rested on the floor against my bed, positioned myself upside down and sideways on my couch, and from all angles it has become painfully apparent that the most productive thing my ceiling fan can do is make the shadows and the light flash spectacularly on my grey white ceiling. The pictures on my wall have risen, curled at the edges like the thoughts in my head. The numbing tones of Leonard Cohen are helping me keep still, still like a mouse, a dead mouse rotting in the putrid heat. Even the dog has been let inside, to rest on the tiles near the tired old air conditioner, which whirs away at the end of the house, so loud you can hear it trying, humming in its brackets from across the street. If you were stupid enough to go outside that is, and you’d have to be stupid, stupid like mad dogs and Englishmen.

Yep, you gotta love summertime.

Got to love those summer afternoons when you take one step outside the door and you’re bathed in sweat, when you venture outside to hang just one t-shirt on the line and your pale Anglo complexion is already rosy red and the shirt is not only covered in fly shit but dried crusty and faded from brown to yellow. When you roll down the street on your bicycle and you’ve got sweat coming out your ears, your thongs have melted into your feet and the tip of your nose, let alone the road, is hot enough to fry an egg on.

Summertime in Perth, a time not of love, but of rising tensions when it is as if, as I once heard someone say, God were trying to burn this city from the surface of his earth. Or at the very least, this is where his missus does the baking.

Right now while I try so hard to not exist I only sweat more, the wind outside is hotter than the air itself. I’m waiting for the wind to change and the breeze to arrive for the afternoon. For it to swing away from the steaming hills and race across the ocean, up the hill, through the park and in my front door where I will wait for it, like a long lost friend, with my nose pressed to the flywire, wait for the breeze to blow the mist from the sprinklers in against my skin...and when this oppressive heat is gone, perhaps to these stifling thoughts.

[This blog goes out to anyone freezing their arse off in the Northern Hemisphere, trust me if I could, I’d spam this heat to you.]

Being studious in the abscence of a highlighter.

I’m studying very hard right now. I’m studying my little head off in fact. You can probably see the beads of perspiration running down my forehead from where you are. I have pages and pages of notes before me and a steadily growing pile of books that have been freshly squeezed of all there obscure information and will soon be returned to whence they came to resume rotting away on dusty shelves. No time is being wasted here, none at all. Nope, no siree... what would a humble student like me have to gain from wasting time after all?

Okay.

Okay.

So shoot me.

But it’s all right really, I am not in fact wasting time at all. In fact, I’ve actually stopped time just to bring this 2.50pm breaking news update to you. Yes that’s right, I have engineered a way to actually stop the clock, hold pages in mid air and pause my dog mid-snore on his couch. Right now wherever you are, dear reader, you’ve been stopped mid ball-scratch, been left hovering halfway out of your car, because I have stopped time, stopped the press, stopped everything, except of course for me and the tippitytappity of my keyboard.

But the question here that is of such fundamental and pressing nature that I should stoop to stop time and turn away from my excessively interesting studies, is this: Why is it impossible to buy just one green highlighter? This is the real reason you see, why I had to deviate from my studies, cycle very slowly to the shops furthest away from me, in search of a very important green highlighter. Perhaps, given the evident difficulty in locating just one, lonesome and preferably cheap green highlighter, I shouldn’t be so colour specific. Perhaps I should have just got Dora the Explorer Crayons and been contented. But I wasn’t you see, it was a green highlighter I required, and only one. Instead I had the option of purchasing a pack of four different coloured highlighters, 3 of which I don’t need or a pack of 6 highlighters, 5 of which I don’t need. In the end, after storming up and down the highlighter-aisle, I had to purchase a pack of two, which means I came home with a yellow highlighter I neither wanted nor needed, just because of the unavailability of a single, green highlighter. I was forced into buying more than I need, forced into submission by big-chain-stores and Faber-fucking-Castell. I left the store peeved, irritated and returned home with a superabundance of unwanted yellow highlighters.

And that my friends, is how the little people are fucked over, every single day.
And um, yes well... that was it really so...I shall resume my invigorating studies. Not that I ever stopped mind you.

P.S. [If you should like to invest in one of these “Stopper of Time” devices you can pick up one for only a quarter of your yearly salary at fuckoffitsmine.com.au]

The Arrival

2010 begun with an old man. Unshowered and unshaven, he strode into my work laden with bags and wearing clothes of patches. Just inside the entrance way he put down both bags, stood upright, straightened his shirt out, looked me directly in the eye and said “Happy New Year.” Then he picked up both bags and strode from the store with the same speed in which he had arrived.

“You too......” I responded to his disappearing figure.

The year had of course officially begun before his arrival, but I’d like to abuse the splendour of posterity and say it begun right then and there. That the smelly and sudden arrival of the stranger marked the beginning of something, the final tock of 2009 had long been ticked and then at last he, the old man of time, came bearing 2010.

Presented with, or more to the point, suddenly aware of its existence I begun to ponder what on earth I was going to do with it. First I decided wholeheartedly I would neither make any of the stupid mistakes I made in 2009 again nor allow myself to spend another year waiting and whining. (Don’t-ask-me-what-for-its-not-like-i-know) That being settled, I considered the page before me.

Maybe a good year, like any good day in my world, begins with a to-do list. I admit I shy away from plans with a capital P, plans that are set in 5 year, 10 year blocks that demand to be validated, that sit in the corner of your mind’s eye and threaten you with their dissolution, with your failure. I do have a vague idea though, in fact many exceptionally vague notions of what on earth to do with my new acquaintance, Mr 2010.

2010 is half coloured in. In the beginning there will be books, and cycling back and forth, and more books and a torrent of words that with any luck will be inspired, well-crafted and not dead fucking boring. I hope to achieve something, though I am once again too scared to officially demand success of myself. Look at me, I won’t even tell you what it is I’m actually doing, I’ll lead you to believe it’s something marvellous, something fantastical, and not just a measly honours dissertation that I’m going to work my arse off on so I hopefully do well.

Shush! Don’t say that out loud...

Either way, the rest of the year remains and it is all a little blank, a bit like large parts of New Years Eve in fact. Except it’s not blank in a way that curdles in your stomach and claws its way up your throat early on a Friday morning, its blank in a way that is beautiful, and that is terrifying. Some things are certain, I will first have to find the end of the rainbow and a pot of gold, and then I’ll half fill a bag and wander far away for a time. In other words it will be necessary that I get fully employed and then piss the fuck off to god knows where to like.. you know... see shit...n' shit.

And while I’m at it, or before, or maybe just sometime in the future thereafter, you know, just while we are talking about plans and all that lies before us... I dare myself to build something that can’t be erased by the backspace button. To grow something other than vast collections of dust and post it notes. And to do those things that scare me most. Except of course to learn to live without coffee, that’s simply far too terrifying.

So, excuse me, my life awaits. May yours treat you kindly also.

[fiction]

Do you believe that we are reincarnated when we die? That I could come back as a caterpillar that would metamorphosis into a butterfly and you a baby lamb to be lead to the slaughter? Do you believe in the fiery eternalness of hell and the heavenly highs of God’s good grace? Do you believe in Karma or an oasis where seven virgins wait? Do you believe when they put you into the earth you stay there, trapped, while the earth slowly tries to reclaim what humanity has stupidly locked in a wooden box, chaining it to an in between world? Or do you believe when your ashes are thrown into the sea, you’ll become part of the fish and coral, hidden in sharks and shells? Do you believe that your soul ceases to exist but your energy flows into other living things? Do you believe in ghosts, in unfinished business and haunted buildings? Will you stay here and haunt this hayshed where we have spent so many hours, your spirit the essence of myths and urban legend? Do you think perhaps that when you stand before God, he’ll see the pure heart that no one else did and he’ll make you an angel with sweet golden wings and soft knowing eyes?

What is the beyond?

Where is it?

Is it up there behind that cloud, do those towers of vapour conceal the gateway? Or have we been eternally damned, left to cohort with the rotten and evil of this world in a prison of immortal souls? Are we sinners because I held your hand and you held mine and it meant all the world to us? Do you think perhaps the Pope is there, right next to God and Jesus and Mohammed, and Gautama is there too, with Krishna and the Rainbow Serpent and all the many creators? When you arrived did they great you with a grin that made it clear, they are in this together, they are the many faces of one great thing, so wonderfully large we cannot fathom it. Or were we, two bodies intertwined, cloud gazing together just a collection of atoms and molecules? Did bits of matter collide one day before time begun, before good and evil had even be conceived, did they build together slowly, growing as shrubs and trees and birds until we arrived at that moment in time, with the soft young grass and the racing cloud-ships? Did we even exist or is this too a virtual world? Are we just someones pawns or charcters in an obscene storybook? Do you think some power far, far bigger than us brought us together, that everything happens for a reason? Do you know how our story sits in my memory, how it possesses me and smoulders in my mind? Can you really believe that someone could so cruelly script this plot? Do you think we are we really the champions of our own destinies, the makers of our own fates? Are we really so wonderfully, so terribly alone here?

Do you see that cloud shaped like a wave from where you are? It’s a great big grey wave of despair that is about to wash over me, to drown me where I lie. I have never hated God so much. I have never doubted him more. I have never wanted, so hard and so urgently, to believe he exists.

There are many ways for a person to die, this is just one. I will lie here until I disappear. I will wait like Buddha under the Bodhi tree or Christ in his cave awaiting reincarnation, until the grass grows over me or the gates above me open. I will lie here until I disappear, until three heavenly angels lift me gently away, or the devil himself grows weary of waiting and comes up and carries me home, until I am consumed by the earth, retuned to stone and soil.

I will lie here until I disappear, or until you come back to me.

In other worlds, in other ways I live my life, side by side with this one and yet somewhere else entirely.. this is a world of fiction, these are the tales of other lives, these are my characters, they come and they go and sometimes, in fact often, they are far more interesting than me.

Sonja felt as though she was the breeze. A happiness rose from somewhere deep inside her, it seemed to scratch at her navel and tingle behind her knees until it burst out across her face and raced down the hill away from her. On the swings the smell of the metal chain and sunscreen mingled under her nose, sending her back, way back into the vaults of her memories. Sometimes she could recall so clearly it was as if she had spent her childhood gathering tiny splinter memories in a wicker basket. The air whirred in her ears on the downward arc, her feet stretched out before her. It was strange, she thought, how her legs seemed to know to bend and tuck up underneath her on the upwards swing, an instinct that she had to actively resist just to test the theory. She wanted to let go of the chains and hold out her arms until she floated away, such was the rush of happiness inside of her, so much stronger than it had been in a long time. She didn’t understand why the park was so empty while the road screeched and growled away behind her. But she rejoiced in having the whole green expanse to herself, she was alone with the rush of the leaves in the tree’s and for that moment in time it didn’t matter at all that she was alone. She swung her legs back and forth, building the arch of her swings higher and higher each time. There was something she wanted to do, something she hadn’t done in a long time. She let go of the chain and tucked her elbows into her side and then, arms spread out wide she jumped from the swing . She was flying but, for a short time at least, it didn’t feel like falling.

***

This Christmas.

Christmas is hard work. As I’m writing this I’m full and bursting with food, my eyelids are threatening to close up shop for the evening and i can feel the snores coming on already. I should mention it’s only 4pm. We just arrived home from visiting the people you generally only see once a year at Christmas, ones you can’t decide if you only visit them at Christmas because they are so special or if there’s a reason you only see them once a year.

I know Christmas, the season of festive frivolity, can be a terrible time of year. I know that in some houses Christmases are remarkable for the absence of food and piles of wrapping paper. In so many ways we who stuff and overstuff ourselves are amazingly blessed, blessed with the opportunity to go back for seconds, to float in the pool and nap in the sunchair.

And this is not all that is bad about Christmas. Christmas sucks when you’re an adult. It’s magic gets checked out at the shop counter where you maxed out your credit card. No one can be bothered to put the tree up, tiny hands don’t tug on Dads pinkie begging to pull the decorations out anymore, the suspense has fizzled out of the month of December because you aren’t counting off the days till Santa visits. Somebody eventually puts the tree up anyway, like a priest who’s forgotten why he prays but remembers where to put his hands. Then suddenly the 23rd is upon you and so to the realisation that the tree doesn’t sparkle anymore, it’s all just plastic and that’s some terrible type of fake. You whinge about the terrible time of year, and everyone agrees, the stress, the total absence of car parks, the wait in the queue at the post office, which is the only queue longer than the one at the bank. Christmas is not only so far removed from the religious celebration of the holy myth, it’s a grand consumerist orgy. In this credit crunching cult people who already have so much have a Christmas splash out that’s more like a king tide, so devoid of meaning it feels we are adrift in a sea of plastic cups and broken toys.

And yet, and yet and yet, it’s still something so much more than this. On the beach watching my dog run here and there at a dizzying pace stealing everybody else’s ball, there are big dogs and small dogs, fat men and pretty women, children running and somebody kayaking, people are smiling and sharing drinks out of eskies, dogs are barking and prancing about with tinsel collars and the cool blue waters are a welcome respite. The narrow beach was full of people celebrating life and enjoying the very best of a summers day with family they might only see once a year, maybe because that’s about all they can handle.

Christmas is all these things at once and it only happens once a year, once a year to over indulge, once a year to put plastic tinsel on plastic trees and put up with long queues in supermarkets. Speeding along the road on the way home, past fire engines and the smoking cinders of someone’s Christmas lunch gone up in flames, I feel asleep in the car like a 5 year old, a very happy 5 year old on Christmas evening.

Summertime

It's summer on these streets. For long burning hours the sun beats down upon the path, fries the grass, tans the leaves, bleaches, drains and burns. Shoppers flock like birds to water, to air-conditioned worlds and jostle through the crowds carrying tinsel, beer and junk. In backyards kids splash in paddling pools and race under sprinklers, while Dads and uncles absentmindedly turn sausages in the tired afternoon sun. Working her way slowly up a sticky hill on a yellow bicycle in the middle of this clichéd suburban scene is a girl with a backpack full of books, with more bags of books hanging off the handle bars. It’s not particularly discernable at a first, second or even a third glance, but she is rather unhappy. Inside her mind is only a dark and dreary hole, despite, or perhaps because of the sun, the struggling breeze and the lemon-scented bush.

Welcome to the inaugural Summer edition of this bloggety-blog, summer has in fact been kicking along for at least a month now, but I think I just woke up and felt the sunburn on my nose. Inaccuracies aside, I’ve decided that this summer is not about losing weight, or eating healthy, drinking less coffee, saving the planet or any of the ho-har, but that it is absolutely necessary that I dance in my underpants more often. In so many ways I am the bane of my own existence. Henceforth, I intend to reverse this ridiculous state of affairs and go on a summer journey, a search if you will, for the good things, the positives and some deeper, hopefully not mythological, state of contentment. Hitch a ride if you like ;-)