Need New Socks

Coughing up my creativity tonight, I feel pulled between places where my heart lies. Drawn to my music into a world of UTAS, paperwork in the pillions piles in my brain, always the nagging feeling that I’ve forgotten something, some sheet I didn’t sign, some unit code written incorrectly. Caught up in the confusion of conclusive cadences and not understanding why anyone but musical archaeologists would want to know about figured bass, I now and then forget the feeling rising up like the gorge in my throat to overwhelm me, that painfully good feeling that the music gives me, soles of my feet telling the earth, guts rising out through my voice. Coming close to sinking, swamped in someone else’s supposedly definitive music theories, my brain swings wildly the other way. Suddenly reckless I follow my pyrate friend to the pub and laugh and drink and steal his hat, but the music’s not grabbing me. I should be studying. Boy clicks his proverbial tongue but is happy to drink with me. I love him – sometimes it feels stable.

They say the first week is hectic but I’ve been here four weeks now and am in no less of a mess. Seems my enrolment changes every three days, Scummylink are hassling me, new job, new songs, moving in two weeks, and of course I am falling behind. What a time to have made a billion new friends who want to take me out drinking. What a time to have songs pushing at me from noisy potholes in my mind. What bad timing to discover deadly beautiful new bands who want to take me out dancing. I close my eyes and my brain doesn’t know where to look – wait, have I forgotten something again? Where are my keys? I thought I had more money this morning!

Late nights always felt so good; early mornings not so much. Gotta drag myself out of bed. Bad time to be falling in love. As I said, bad time to be loving new music. More hours in the day, kplzthx! The internet is confusing, how to make it my tool but not fall into the traps. Popular opinion on MySpace changes from day to day, sometimes it’s cool and sometimes not. I find it rather like a badly put-together Lego structure. I leave and follow my nose, my eyes get me distracted though and in trouble as bookshops are dangerous places. Painful reminder, photography, bitingly beautiful books. One passion put on hold to follow another dream. So many ideas, so little iMinutes. Finally the opportunities and the intelligence are mine, but I know what I wanna do, what I wanna pay ridiculous fees to be Educated Highly on. I Do know what I wanna do. I DO know what I wanna do. I do? Married to my music, god yes I’m in love, but the last girl was less high-maintenance… Photography bites its lip and goes to sit on the shelf. I buy something that makes me feel cold, a novel on the sale table. Ten bucks for the pleasure of owning someone’s words on paper with a pretty picture on the front. Dangerous places, bookshops. Three days later I get a chance to procrastinate a little by poking into the preliminary pages, and poetry taps me on the shoulder. Fuck. It’s like telling one lover you can’t go to their kick-arse show because someone you like better wants you to pay stupid cash for learning the most boring bits about them. Writing sits next to photography, shouting obscene, inspiring things at me from the corner. More distracting than the hole in my goddamnit I need new socks.

The beauty of inappropriate semicolons.

The evening sun falls gold between the shadows of the trees.  Their elegant fingers across the grass.  If I had the arms and legs of a frog; I would cartwheel between them, dipping my hands in light, fingers tipped with shadow.  Delight… if I were a hundred metres taller; I would reach up and twirl the cotton clouds between my fingers, fingerpaint my body in cool blue.  If I were light as oil I would lay upon the surface of the seas, ripple as they rippled… I would let her touch my skin, one finger from across the world, joined by another, no words needed.  Smudge my paint.  Smear the sky across me.  Teach me how to feel the wind, and don’t ever let me forget.  I’ll teach you how to sing and how to live within your own company, until we are both messy and the colour of the sky.

Smudge my paint.

Church

Night; we trickle in from varied paths, out of the dark into the hall. Murmurs. Laughter. We are here with a purpose; we are here to make music.

It is casual, but not without a tension, an energy. A hidden eagerness to begin. To put out our everything. I am new. I stand at the edge, determined to do my best. This is to be my initiation.

We gather around he, our heart. Our beat. He gifts us with courage. We lift each other up, away from our weariness, to that somehow-energy that comes strongest for the very tired.

A storytelling, a teaching. We learn, we repeat, we memorise, we polish. His fingers pound for us on timeless keys the chords, the remembrance and the forgettance. The music deepens; we have found the groove. The dance swells below our voices. It rises, it covers us, we project it, we have found that place as the song raises to a climax.

We lay ourselves bare. We speak with angels.

“This, long ago, is what was called Church. They found it in the fields. They found it in the street. They sung it out from the deepest part of themselves. We are a reincarnation of their joy, and empathy for their suffering. Hold Church wherever you sing, whatever you believe.”

Silence as the song ends. Inaudible heartbeats become tangible feeling. They ring through the room.

Am I the same person leaving through these doors as when I entered them? There is something new inside me. Something awakened. I have been restless for too long; now home has come to me.

I have found Church.

Night; we trickle in from varied paths, out of the dark into the hall. Murmurs. Laughter. We are here with a purpose; we are here for a feeling. We are here for our Tribe. You are my kin; you, and you. We are sin; we find ourselves clean tonight.

March ‘07

Animal in the road

Animal stand in the middle of the road.  Animal growl.  Animal sense.  Animal smell.  Hardroad.  Hard to get out.
Animal feel eyes on him; them, they.  They in cars, either side, both directions, all looking at he.  He, animal, trapped here, no way out.  Hackles rise.  Teeth show.  Claws extend, but nowhere to go.
They look and gawk; he stare.  Sees the sky.  Feels the pull.  Wildcall – from one who knows his name.  
Still rushingwhooshing they go.  Past him.  Looking but not seeing.  Them in machines.  Machine – he knows machine.  Feels to be one.  Some days.
Again heat, again pull, again sky.  Whichway?  He asks.  Wherego?  Either side, same danger.  But freedom.  Possibility of freedom.
Mustchoose.  Muscles gather.  Hair prickles.  Choice made.  Leap into nomore.  Gone – but taking them with me.
Animal end.

February ‘07

Under The Rain

She stood in the garden, her eyes blazing as she stared at me.  I couldn’t see what she was so empassioned about.  It was hidden in that proud, tossing head.  She was eating plums – ripe, red plums, imperfect, blemished, but full of giddying juices.

She was giddying.

Barefoot.  Oversized green satin nightshirt.  Wild green eyes and long, random hair.  Standing under the rain, pouring itself onto her head, dripping off her nose, painting her makeshift dress darker, where it was not already stained with ink and plum.  I’d never seen weather so silver and gold.  The rain sang off every leaf and branch and stone, trickled in streams from the edges of the roof, the sun spilling its answer of liquid gold across the paths, dancing through the foliage, melting over the pine bark on the ground.  We stood in the garden and I watched her live among it all.  Watched with love the way she shone.  She sucked at the plum between her teeth with her tongue and stepped her way towards the house.  She walked a dance.  She spoke in songs.  Not singing now; only acknowledging my existence by her generosity in not disappearing into the shining air in a shower of droplets, as I knew she wanted to, and most probably could.

I was grateful to see.

February ‘07

Utah and Ani – Part One

“Laws.  The good people don’t need em and the bad people don’t follow em, so what are they good for?”

There’s a certain feeling downtown today, like something’s going to change.  Everyone’s trying to act normal, trying to talk at a normal pace, but failing miserably, or rather, failing excitably.  Their voices either come across as slightly hushed under all that pressure, or overly loud, sort of enthusiastically calm.  This is a small town, with a big pot boiling in the back room.  A really fucking big pot.

“swingin’ their scrotums through the underbrushes”

…the pressure is nearly too much, as they walk side by side through the supermarket.  The air-conditioned environment is slightly chilled, but between them the air sparks with heat, electricity, the almost tangible feelings of desire.  It’s nearly too much – but not quite.  They both know it – he’s almost afraid the people around them can smell it in the air.  They stand in the line.  She rubs her breasts lightly against his arm as she turns around, and smiles a small smile.

“You love this country.  You know you love this country.”

Sweat makes its way over lines, dirt and stubble as he leans into the sunlight.  It’s hard, it’s hot, but this way is the only way.  He won’t walk any other way.  He curses the flies, flicking at them with a hand that’s seen more rocks than washbasins, but even they make up the integrated story that is this journey, his life, his whole dirty, sweat-stained past.  If words were actions he’d have blasted and fucked just about everything in the landscape, but that’s how much he loves it.  Despite the swearing.  Or because of.

“anarchy”

This kid spends his time scraping his nails gently over his palms.  This kid watches the glint of the other boys’ marbles as they crash off each other and send dirt into the air.  This kid is thinking something over, thinking hard.  This kid wants to know, not who to tell, but how?  And why?  This kid feels that both inaction and action would be the wrong choice.  This kid may not understand as much as your average grown-ups, but he knows a bit more.  Just a little bit more.

“drummin’ ”

Hips sway to the bass beats, green skirt jumps and twirls around bare legs.  She’s got this smile, eyes closed, like her and the music share this joke that no one else can know.  Like she’s got a promise made to her that can never be broken, a promise of whatever it is she’s wanted most all her sweet little life.  Towards her come grins and compliments, offers of beer and pot and hands to dance with.  She denies two for fear of danger, accepts the most dangerous anyway.  Today she wishes she had the promise of forgetting.  

“You know that name?”

They look at each other with surprise and then back to the toothless grin occupying the face of the man on the corner, offering his philosophies from an oddly clean hand that spends its time carrying around plastic bags.  She opens her mouth hesitantly to try and force some politeness through the surprise, but her husband’s feet are still moving and hers follow, always taught by example to just move on, avert whatever eyes you might be fortunate enough to have.  The old man has none of her surprise.  On the occasion that a pure-minded teenager listened, offered a fleeting friendship, the old man spat and swore and shouted, seeing the sympathy he so hated instead of the open heart he unknowingly sealed up with shock.  He forgot that day and believes himself friendly, and will do so until the next time someone dares to give a shit.

“You know what I’m talkin’ about?”

They call it living a lie, sometimes; but this one is a living lie.  Following music he doesn’t understand, living in a house he thinks he built with his own hands, but he bought it off the builders barely two years ago.  He even has the blueprints.  The music echoes up the clean-ish stairs to the empty bed.  He sits downstairs in the leather couch with a glass of red, reading a book.  He realises somehow over a slow period of four seconds that he’s only looking at the reflection of the lamp on the shiny page.  He blinks and looks up – Elvis is standing there in blue jeans and a plain black shirt.  “I’m not dead,” he says.  “You need to stop pretending now.”  Then he’s gone.

“No matter how New Age you get, old age gonna kick your ass!”

January ‘07
Written based on the quotes - from “The Past Didn’t Go Anywhere” by Ani DiFranco and Utah Phillips

Eavesdropping

Eavesdropping on the tinny music from next-door’s radio, I lie under the open window and read haiku as I wait for him.  The thought of his face slips into my mind and I fidget for a moment before being forced to sit up and look out by the gently urgent feeling he is approaching.

new house
waiting for you
to fill the space

January ‘07

Story

Had he been able to distinguish a normal person from a nutcase, and a nutcase from a REAL nutcase, he would’ve run a mile when he saw me.
     But he didn’t.  He sat himself down beside me and offered me a cigarette, from a new packet out of the pocket of a not-so-new long leather jacket.  I accepted silently, gratefully, and allowed him to light it with a small orange lighter from a different pocket.
     “It’s bad for you, you know,” he mentioned as I inhaled deeply and the pack and lighter disappeared back within the jacket.  I raised my eyebrows at the street in general.  The street continued to grind on its grey way, and he merely leaned back in the seat and crossed his legs.
     “Don’t you smoke?” I queried after a moment.  There was no interest in the question, but when you have no life you talk and smoke, that’s the way it goes.  And I’d done neither yet that day.
     He shook his head, almost as if to shake his long hair out of his eyes.  “Not what you’re smoking.”
      “Then why the pack?”
     “Old family heirloom?”
     I barked out a short, dead laugh.  The street shuddered.
      “Why are you angry?”
There was no basis for the question.  I almost didn’t understand him, like he was speaking a different language.  When I gave him a question-mark look, he nodded and rose to his feet.
     “Will you help me buy matches?” he requested, holding out a hand.  He was beginning to seem a little odd, but I told myself I was too far gone to care, and let myself be pulled up and along the repetitive street.
     “So where are we going?” I asked between smoky breaths, after we’d crossed two streets.  He smiled at me, a sweet sort of smile, stirring in me the feeling of dark rooms and guitars.  “To buy matches.”  He stopped to press a traffic-light button, and we crossed.  “I smoke cigars, and I always light them with matches.”
     “Why?”  My hand was still in his as we came to a slow halt in front of a white brick building.  Presumably it was a shop, because he left me, and returned with matches.  In a matchbox.  Funnily enough.  
     He continued the conversation as though he’d never gone anywhere.  “Lighters are cold flame.  Dead.  Mechanical.  Once you get past the first part of a match, it’s real fire.  Burning wood.  Do you dance?”
     I jumped.  “Me?  No. No, never.”  As I stared at him, nonchalantly lighting up a cigar, I thought to myself that he was a bit of a pretentious wanker, with all this “cold flame” shit.  What am I doing with this guy? I stared down the street, trying to look through the blankness in my mind to some excuse for going home.

Unfinished.  Begun November ‘06

Porcelain Animals

I’d named my porcelain animals.  Tree names.  Mangrove, Willow, Oak, Cherryblossom, Eucalypt, Birch.  Horse, cat, owl, rabbit, giraffe, robin.  I love the names of trees… they’re like poetry.  Or a song, even.  Yes, definitely a song.  How can I show you?

I would sing to my porcelain animals as I skipped to school in my red stockings, imagining they were skipping with me.  “Mangrove, Willow, Oak, Cherryblossom, Eucalypt, Oak…” over and over with the colours dancing in my head, the tastes and textures each word conjured.  My magic words, my tree animals.

It is difficult to remember a childhood you never had, which is why some lying is difficult.  It is also sometimes difficult to remember a childhood you did have.  I don’t know whether it’s harder to recall something you subconsciously don’t want to, or at the time didn’t want the future you to remember.  In any case, I never can recall much of classes, nor of piano lessons, nor of my parents at home.  My father had kind hands, but cold eyes.  I remember how his beard felt, but not what colour it was.  My mother was sweet and smiling, smelt of flour, flowers, and biscuits.  She wore her hair in a bun.  He wore black gumboots.  They were not cruel to me, nor did they fight.  But I remember them better when we weren’t at home… the business-voice my father used when speaking to his peers, the twinkling in mama’s eye when she watched me playing with other children in the play-park near the school.  The hard, bitter lollies he bought me at the store.  The apricots she and I picked as we walked, their fine fur and sweetness inside.

But it was my Nana that gave me the porcelain animals.

I hardly remember Nana at all, but that’s only because she was magic.  She believed memory was wasteful.  Why think when we can feel? So she magicked away my memories of her, and died young enough to not become decrepit, which she told me should be a joyful occasion.  I smiled sweetly at her funeral, and disturbed the priest.  He gave me a small stone crucifix to have as my own, but when no one was looking, I left it on Nana’s grave.  I knew she’d like it; it was such a nice stone, cool, grey, smooth.

Corrections are made and redone as we grow older but they never erased my tree animals, my porcelain magic.  Mangrove, Willow, Oak, Cherryblossom, Eucalypt, Birch.

April ‘06

fishing

I adjust my hat, foiling the wind, and stare against the glint of the sun on the water.  I can’t see any fish – but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any.  Seagulls call; my nose is filled with salt, air and bait.  Clouds gambol and rocket across the sheet of blue in slow motion.  My father handles the hooks, then hands me my baited line, swinging half-threateningly from the bright red reel.  I drop the line with a satisfying plunk, shattering the sun-pattern on the surface of the sea.  Hypnotised, I watch the sinker twiddle and twirl as it disappears into the deep green, dancing to the depths.  Dad begins to sing a loud and familiar sea shanty.  Eyes fixed on nothing in particular, I grin and hum along.  The world sparkles in tune.

long day
of dad, daughter and fish
salt and sun

February ‘06