Tuesday 20 February 2024

Chosen

My father came to me and whispered, “I was your father to show you what men can do, and so you could make your way through it.  I was not your father so you could chose me again.”


We serve roast chicken with paper frills on the ends of their legs. Decoration that covers dismemberment.  We serve roast pigs with apples in their mouths as we heap apple sauce onto their carved up flesh. 


The hateful treatment for what we love, and how we forget what the decorations mean.  


The men who treat their women like whores.  

Thursday 18 January 2024

Road Trip North

 It was a wild drive up with the rain flooding down, and pressed between the wind and my window in a stream down the side of my car.  


I hadn’t slept well because my last vaccination was reading me it’s symptomatic rights.  


At 110 km per hour, I was passing a road train. There had been twenty meters visibility for the last few kilometres.  It was pretty quiet out here, but I should have been wiser than to push the limit.  


I always give truckies enough visibility before I take over.   I have respect for people who know the roads and have clocked up more kilometres than most.  And they know how to negotiate a big rig.  


And he did.  He could see that the water on the side of the road was more than it seemed.   


I keep right in the lane when I overtake, and I was two wheels in the water.  


My car is a beauty.  She never lets me down.  But then orange lights were flashing on my dash that I’ve never seen before. The cruise tried to hold me but it cut, and I was ten then twenty kilometres short of what I had been making.  The truckie knew it, and I pulled back.  I waited for a stretch with less water and tried it again.  Again, I lost traction and I worked with the car to hold steady.  I was between the road train and the safety wires.  The truckie pulled left.  His weight was keeping him safe.  Third time lucky.  


Eight hours and 700km later I pulled in, more tired than I expected.  




This morning is a different day.  My immunisation symptoms were literally sickening last night, so I’m playing it safe.  My stomach this morning raged between ravenous and reluctant. 


Who would have thought, in this tiny town, there would be a cafe with the ethics I admire.  I sat down a table across from three locals.  Listening to them talk about the land, cooking, their families and connections.  They are softly spoken, with a deep knowledge that connects theory with practice.  The subtleties that show thoughtfulness, care and that combination of colloquialism and good vocabulary.  Personal comments that explain facts, rather than protect ego.  


“You haven’t had a dog, have you?”  

“I had a dingo.”


I think that’s what I miss.  That authenticity that goes beyond bombast; the lack of augmented thrill. 


Today, the forecast is clear.  I can hear the truck’s air brakes on the highway twenty kilometres from here.  


When you reach that time when people don’t call you as often, so you set your own distance.  Sometimes there is nothing that is as great as your own terms.  Although almost everything conditions us otherwise. 

Tomorrow

 You were great companions, but you had to leave.  So then, did she.  


You called her and you sang her song, and you walked long to find her.  Sometimes, when things get lost, they are farther than we could know.

The Gambler

Those beautiful beasts run away with your money.

You keep putting your bet through the machine without watching them race.  


You don’t see their form.  You pick them based on a name, or something it meant. That is disconnected from what you are really doing, what everyone is doing in this race.  


The syndicate who takes your money does not give it to the horse, nor its owner.  None of them know you or who you are. 


They do not see your form.  They know you as a name attached to a donor. 


You turn aspirations into cash, with the conviction that the transaction makes them valid or real. 


You think you’re living your dream.  


But you’re not. 


Some things you cannot pay for.  


Some things you cannot buy.  


The thrill is your own pound of flesh. 

Sunday 15 October 2023

From My IG Message with A.

(About finding swimming in the ocean affirming in difficult times.)

To find something to give you a personal balance, especially in these times when emotions and problems run deeply and threaten to pull you under, is important.   It also reflects the strategies you’ve learned and applied to pull you through challenging features in your lifetime.  I wonder about coincidence, and love metaphor.  That in the metaphoric depth and undertow you swim and stay afloat - that metaphor and where we find balance and solace - where we intertwine our life and our art.


(About changes to my life and career next year.)


It is a long story about my dedication to my work and my choice for next year.  It again proves that life is not a fairy tale.  But maybe that tells us that we have to write our own story, where we are our own morals.  Sometimes standing alone in that reminds us of that adage, of so many, about strength in solitude, about how we have to care for ourselves outside the normative parameters that serve to moderate, but not always to meet or heal or give us what we need to be fulfilled.  


I read, just yesterday, that the greatest loss that we can suffer is to not give ourselves the opportunity to reach the potential of who we are.  We give that and want that for our children, but we can forget that for ourselves as busy adults trying to turn up for social expectations.  


Next year I’m going to try to find out what my next steps will be to be fulfilled.

Sunday 24 September 2023

Road Trip

 I’m taking two days because I needed to see my good sister and my old friend needed someone to talk to.  


One of the benefits of travelling alone is you choose your own adventure.  So to speak.  Part of that is soundtracked.  The hum of the wheels, the changing tarmac under the tyres, visually in the sky and country, all those thoughts you don’t have time for back at home.  All of this needs a driver - something to pull it out and unravel it.  That’s when music becomes your co-pilot. 


Some of those tracks have been in my stacker for six years straight.  This flickering fickle culture of valorised newness forgets rather than begets old friends.  Even those artists who write it have said that it is something they made in the past, that they don’t want to know it anymore.  Is that what they say to old friends? 


We have to be careful with the soft things, the subtle things. Because they’re not quantified, they’re not counted.  But they’re qualified.  They’re what knows you; what sees you.  Sometimes they’re the hardest to hold because they’re precious and vital, potent and visceral and without form.  They’re the light that falls on you.  


When you travel alone, no-one tells you what to do.  I played you over as many times as it pleased me to do.  Old friends.  In the song Of the Clay, every line has strong vocabulary; each stanza delivers clever imagery. Then beneath that you write the story. 


How could you ever doubt what you do?  Just as you should never forsake the gift of a friend. 


I don’t exist.  I’m persona non grata. But people know me.  Most people steal from me.  You said, “Theft is the only crime”.   You know, you’re right. 


I’ve left a tiny trail.  Parts of it are missing. I was going to give you my story, but you’re too far away.  Besides, you probably don’t need it. 


I’ve left a tiny trail.  There are some codes locked in a box.  The quietest person will find it after I go, but they may not want to open all the places with the keys. 


I’ve made a place without my name.  It has one of the other names.  I’ve put this there before I send it to you.   It’s a public place.  You only need to know these words. 


I didn’t know if I could trust you with everything.  



Friday 15 September 2023

Full Circle in the Runout Groove

 That time coming full circle. 

You don’t know what has been stolen

Until you find the time

To make it home. 


There’s no-one standing beside you. 

No-one to see what you’re missing

Or what you’re missed. 


The hold in the contract

And the contraction. 


You hold those precious things

But memory isn’t a record.  

It’s a runout groove.  


Skipping across lines that wear the needle. 

What you need you can’t replay.  


One thing I’ve learnt is the good thing you have right now isn’t going to stay.  


Making the most of time isn’t easy when it’s slipping out of your hands.  


Every precious moment

Is too difficult to recognise

Because you have to let it go. 


You’ll always lose what you love.

Friday 3 February 2023

Bull's Eye

Mat,
a door.


The place where you want to stay,

and from where you leave


Everything behind, 

and seek everything 

unknown

in that great scape.


Escape.


Red capes that catch the eye

Of the bull

Enticing
it with arrows.


Spear head.


That lure of spectre.


Diamond in the ring.


Bull’s eye.


What you catch.


What you leave behind.






Based on Mark Snarski’s post from today:

“I like to leave a place as if I never stayed.  In search of El Ojo de Buey.

Saturday 28 January 2023

Dusk on the Rooftop

We regulate ourselves in public, 

and often in our home.  

On the roof it’s both, but it’s also flooded with nature, 

and we are mothers now.  

As those birds circled 

And shared secrets held. 


Sometimes we find our peace. 

Message to M. (II)

Sometimes you’re so beautiful you either break or make up my heart.  

It’s the fault lines that are the most tender.  

Sunday 15 January 2023

Simulation and Simulacra (after Baudrillard)

I have my father’s criminal mind,

But I daren’t use it.  


That doesn’t mean 

That every opportunity I see,

I don’t imagine what I could do

Or turn it into. 


The heinous things he did

He did without 

A second thought,

A conscience of consciousness, or

Care. 


Nor malice. 


Just salacious violence.   


His legacy was so great

There isn’t any trace;

Nothing accounted or accountable. 


So great is my legacy. 


But every time 

I see it play out

Ice wraps me like a skin

Reminding me of him

Of what he did and did not do. 

What was seen and not seen;

Known and not known. 


The irony of those

Who entreat themselves as “renegade”,

As they puppeteer dalliances with darkness: 

Simulate the innate

Legacy they can only imagine. 


That I deny

That simulacra. 


Thursday 28 October 2021

Storm

Here it’s a gale again.  The wind takes hostages and lightening laughs like a devil’s crack across the sky, making a mockery out of the darkness.  My favourite kind of weather.  

Sunday 12 September 2021

The Reason Why

You know when someone writes a story that leaves into your imagination like you knew it.  When all those subtleties and little hooks evidence acute observations that interlace with unexpected grace in otherwise mundane scenarios.  If they weren’t noticed, that beauty would would be lost because it was never translated.  And then, they refine it with cadence and rhythm. 


Imagine having that like a picture that you can come back to, to remind you of what you believe in, in this contrary and compromised misfit world. 


When it tells you different stories with the same words. 



And you wonder why. 


I wonder how. 

 

Saturday 28 August 2021

Augury

I have a scar beneath by breast

Only lovers see it.  


Today I felt it like it was the first time. 

That pain that echoed through each nerve. 


It was opened first when I was too young to know. 

But I knew.  

I remember it, my first memory, 

Without the chords of protest 

Without knowing before it was too late


He called his brother. 


It still aches

My first scar 

On days when you are closest

Like an augury. 

Tuesday 10 August 2021

Greyhound to Memphis

 I don’t usually catch busses, but I caught the Greyhound from Nashville to Memphis. 

Mainly it was to do with convenience as much as the only way to travel across the heartland. 


We’d spent the Fourth of July in Nashville.  Noone was on the streets until the sun began to set. We’d spent two days shadow-jumping to beat the fierceness of the heat.


Somehow it rained. Wet streets and small packs of underaged girls in short denim shorts with candy and soda.  Backdropped under neon signs to bars and boot shops, they leaned into open windows where old time country music foreplayed the fire cracking across the night sky. 


On the bus to Memphis I got the call.  I should have known it then.  But I didn’t.  I’m autistic with hope.  It’s the only thing that sees me through. 


I told you this girl didn’t travel on busses.  


Everyone gets the story wrong.