By the way, the best thing to do with old text messages that you want to delete so you can receive more ("del to rec", as Vanessa and I have called it since she once said, sighed, resigned, "gotta delete to receive") is to copy them down in small neat script, in long lines, into the back of your notebook or journal. It is a mindless and satisfying activity that is good for public transport trips, doctor's waiting rooms, lulls in the day, etc. I took this idea from Vanessa; previously I'd written them down as they were on the screen because of some vague idea that the integrity of the form should be preseverved (mistake: an instant preservation?). But that way takes up too much space and doesn't look good. Text messages are more like declarations scratched into playground equipment or pressed leaves, or tiny scrolls in cylinders tied to pigeon's necks than they're like other digital media, and so really they should be preserved in long lines, in small neat script, in the back of your notebook or journal.
Friday was Ella's night picnic. The moon sprung up above the city like a Jack in the box and we stomped on the hollow ground, imagining the tunnels that ran beneath it to the city. All the best in Madrid Ella, and hopefully I'll see you over that way this year.
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Mindless and Satisfying Activities 1
Why is this Happening?
Old man: I don't feel very good.
Passenger opposite: You'll be right when you get home. Old man, later: Where are we now? I'm trying to copy out old text messages from my phone into my notebook so I can delete them and receive new ones. It's almost one am and the bus is lurching down King Street, down, down, down. Don't. You. Smirk at Me. It's another old man, a different one to the one who isn't feeling good. The voice is quavering, righteous, pissed. It's the drunken pensioner express - hurrah, just what I need! I keep my head down and try to ignore everything. Move, goddammed bus! I'll punch you. Ignore it. After five minutes of crawling the bus breaks free of North Newtown and cruises for a while down City Road. Then I hear something that makes me look up. I can't remember what it is - just something that makes me realise this isn't just a couple of pissed old men having an argument, as I'd hoped. A red bald head with a few greasy strands combed over, long ears pressed into his head: your standard red-faced RSL alcoholic, seasoned on Reschs and pokies. Around him the faces of three people, maybe Indonesian, two guys and a girl around my age, looking ahead impassively. At this point I look up and don't look away. Caught up in his racist miasma, the old man leans forward to one of the men opposite him. If you hate Australia so much . . . he starts. No, he can't be going to say that. Why is this happening? and how is this happening, and I'm never catching public transport on Saturday night again. He says it. He holds his hand above his head and flicks his hand into a stop gesture, as if to indicate he has just clinched the argument, which he does not realise is going on only in his head. I stand up and walk towards them, not knowing what to do, but just wanting to not be passively observing this. At the same time as me, another guy stands up. He is maybe in his mid 20s, and by the way his lips are trembling and his head swivels loosely on his shoulders, at least as pissed as the old man. We both sit down across the aisle from them. Are you guys okay? this other guy asks, making a bla bla bla gesture and pointing towards the old man, who, I notice now, is quite shockingly fat. Things happen quickly. The three people he was attacking get up and move to the seats behind. The old man looks around, miffed, confused. I say thanks to the guy. He says sorry - a bit dramatically as he didn't do anything worth apologising for - and I say back, playing along, No someone had to say something. Now the old man turns his attention to us. What are you looking at? he says. He has a high, tight voice. The other guy gets up and sways towards him, doing battle with the movement of the bus and his own drunkenness. Perhaps he was apologising for what he was about to do. Slow and pissed, he says, You. Just have a heartattack why don't you old man. Look at you. You pile of shit. Just look at you. When you die no one's going to care. He crosses his arms in semaphore and opens them out. No one gives a shit about you. He walks off the bus, timed to the end of his speech. Nothing much else happens. The bus driver does nothing, the other people on the bus might have not even noticed what happened, or might have pretended it wasn't happening, like I did. I'm standing up, wanting to turn to the people and say something like, sorry. Something like, people like that make me feel ashamed, but I don't. It's like everyone wants to pretend that it was all just a bad hallucination and well maybe that's not the worst way to consider it.
Draped in an Australian Flag
I only just heard that Chas Licciardello - one of the disarmingly handsome fellows from Chaser's War on Eveything was found not guilty. Yay! I was depressed for days when he was arrested, taking it as the signal of worse things to come. I thought the case should have got way more attention than it did, but apparently no one seems to care too much about lack of free speech in Australia. Thankfully one surf law expert does.
Kickin' Shit
Five years ago when I was half-heartedly looking for work, I used buy the Sydney Morning Herald regularly to read the job listings. Walking down to get the paper and open the jobs section, full of hope that I would find some imaginary Perfect Part-Time Job That is Not Too Demeaning and Leaves me Enough Time for Writing, closing it again an hour later, dispirited, agitated, became a routine. Usually I'd circle a few cleaning jobs, but then distract myself with something before I got a chance to ring them. After a while I decided that because of my unparalleled knowledge of the jobs section, the only appropriate and right job for me would be as its editor.
The first thing I would do upon appointment would be to change the name from the hopeful My Career to the more colloquial, friendlier, and all round more realistic, Kickin' Shit. After that I would ban all euphemisms, and the descriptors 'bubbly', 'energetic' and 'fun' from any classified. Jobs would have to be described clearly in their full monotonous detail, and a sombre, Marxist prose style would prevail, reflecting the true nature of selling one's labour, time, and creative energy just to pay the fucking rent. In the years since the weekend Herald, has, by degrees, gone down in quality. Spectrum, which as I remember used to actually have a good article here and there (though perhaps even then syndicated from The Guardian) has swelled into a grotesque copy of Who Weekly for the comfortable classes. It seemed to begin with the design - the banners and titles got bigger and puffier, the articles got shorter and puffier. The Good Weekend, well, I don't know if it was ever good, but I do remember that I used to read it sometimes; now I only do if it's the only thing on the kitchen table while I'm eating breakfast. So today Vanessa was leafing through Domain, the real estate section, on my behalf (I'm looking for a new place) and we started thinking up alternative titles for all the other sections of the weekend newspaper. Domain became Barely Affordable; the car section Drive became Cage-Liner; the Good Weekend, nice and simple, Shit Weekend; Sport - Action and Attitude was Photos of People Grunting; and Spectrum, Zero! I don't really have anything against the main news section of the Herald and its Monday to Friday editions, and do at least try to read it online. Because I'm from Perth which must be one of the most monocultural print media environments in the world, I think I am still excited that Sydney actually has TWO whole daily papers with differing takes on things to boot. And that’s why seeing the weekend Herald becoming more vapid - a medium more for full page photos of inviolate automobiles than interesting journalism - is sad.
You and Me Inside Vending Machines
- You could be inside a vending machine. People would feed in a title and you'd have to write the story. You'd have a computer - tap tap tap
- I'd love that. - They'd have to go away and come back, it'd take a little while. - And when I'd finished, the story would print out like a reciept. - And you would go through not a skerrick of the existential angst that I would go through if I was inside a vending machine. You'd have finished yours while I was scraping at the glass and tearing my hair out, horrified at the blank screen - Someone would drop in "A Day at the Park" and you'd be looking up the etymology of 'park' in the Oxford English Dictionary - Meanwhile you'd have dispatched yours and be sitting back, legs crossed, sipping a tetra pack of sugar cane juice.
breath print
breath print
on the palm unsticking from mats & lavender toes bloom dusk shouts disattached from mouths a room thinking thought unthought
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