grin

and what did you see, my blue-eyed son?
- bob dylan

1. power
I SAW DUCKS with tiny eyes, beer-bottle brown.  the water combed the reeds that sat beside it in simple friendship.

(on the way home i saw an avenue of trees.  the central boughs had been cut out so they wouldn't interfere with the power lines overhead.  they looked like an avenue of open hands passing the power along like life-savers do.)


2. grief
I SAW MODERNIST buildings streaked with grief, the grief of grieving weather.


3. thick
IN THE MORNING the mist was thick with light.  later on the train i saw ghost gums like plaintive hands reaching out of the earth.


4. four
FOUR NIGHTS LATER i stepped out of the caravan.  there was a cheshire moon just above the horizon: a tilted grin shrinking with the days until saturday.

xxx

atop and about mt issues

i say keep writing them but if they start getting like lonely planet descriptions of alphington then stop.
- jason flaherty

near where i live there's a park. park is too short a word for it, really. it's glorious. really what happens is there's a fissure in the city. the city goes along and then it stops and there's a river and almost wildness and then the city starts again.

there are two installations there. one's deliberate and i don't think the other one is. i'll treat them in order.


1. the deliberate installation.
WELL, MAYBE IT'S not actually an installation. really it's more like public art. what someone's done is make up a path through the park with little spots to stop and do things. it's called a spiritual healing path. it's great. you walk along and then you stop and there's a little metal plaque that tells you how to think about the place where you are and what you might want to do there.

for instance, there's a lovely little spot where you can sit by the stream. the plaque says 'let go of everything you can't control'. nice.

anyway, in the park there's a tiny mountain. you might think it's a hill but it's shaped like a mountain, just small. on top of the mountain is a plaque that says 'READY TO GO!  you're on top of the world and on top of your issues.'

so in my house we call this mountain mount issues.

i climbed mt issues the other day. it didn't take long because it's so small but even so: you can see for miles and miles and miles and miles and miles and miles and miles and miles and miiiiiiiiiiles, as the who say. then i walked around a little more.


2. early and bright
THIS MORNING I rode my bike there.  it was cold.  i'd been in the house too much lo these last few days.  it was good to be out in the colours of things again: the crisp colours of a cold morning.  each thing looked rained-on and clean and potentially bright.  they weren't bright yet, these things, because the sun was still low but they looked like they could be bright when the sun got a little higher and that was the main thing.


3. the unintentional installation
NEAR MOUNT ISSUES is a large pond. the water is green and streaked with tiny bubbles that won't burst.

in the middle of the pond is a pile of stones. on top of the pile is a little tower: a cage on legs, full of what look like spare parts for cars with engines made of metal flowers.

one of the legs of the tower has a pipe bolted to it. water flows up the pipe. it's filtered through the metal engine flowers and then it rains gently out the bottom and onto the stones.

the pile of stones is graduated: the top is dark dark brown, where all the water lands. further down it's lighter brown and then near the pond's surface it's grey.

i stared at it for a little while.


4. elegant
NEAR THAT WAS another pond.  ducks were floating on the sky's reflection.  they left wakes behind them, v-shaped like flying flocks.  maybe these wakes describe imaginary friends, the flocks who aren't here but who people our minds and hearts, migrating along with us, migrating through time: from the country of the past where we were born to the country of the future where we have to live from now on and where we don't quite speak the language.

i rode around.  my wheels wrote dark cursive on the pale paper of frosty grass.

the sun was coming up but still low.  my shadow was elegant and long on the ground.

xxxx

the possum christ

riding home last night i saw a dray of squirrels thronged about a tree and by the tree a man was feeding them to the sound of some classic hit from the late sixties. i listened and listened and the sound shifted as i rode past. what was that song? there were so many squirrels. wait! they weren't squirrels! this isn't thailand! speaking of which:

the word for today is hypnopompic. hypnopompic means to do with waking up. a hypnopompic experience therefore is one you have while waking. here's one:

waking up i looked up; looking up i saw a picture: the kiss, by klimt. there's a buffy episode where vampires are stalking on campus. when they've drunk their fill of undergrad blood they grab a trophy and come back to the nest. the trophies go on the wall, like trophies should. that's how you know they're trophies. for trophies the vampires grab posters from their victims' walls. they've got a whooole lot of klimt going on back there in the lair but behold! i digress! back to the story:

i'm staring at the picture, thinking this: 'wow, here in this malaysian backpacker joint they got the same klimt picture on the wall as georgia has on her wall in her loungeroom back in melbourne.' i stare at it a lil more. 'wow.. what are the chances?' i think.

pretty fucking slim, by my reckoning. pretty.. fucking.. slim. georgia by the way is my daughter's mother, for those of youse who don't know her. i've been staying at her house since me and my daughter alaska got back from overseas a couple weeks ago.

is there a punchline? yes: here: i wake up a bit more and realise that i'm in georgia's loungeroom, not in a malaysian backpacker joint. i'm in australia. therefore these are not squirrels but possums. the collective noun for possums, apparently, is passel: a passel of possums. me, i like posse better.

there's quite the posse of possums thronged about this tree. it's a park at night: there are floodlights. the light and the possums and the shadows they make together, possums and shadows thronged together in the night, thronged about the twin poles of the tree and the man, the possums with worshipful bodies and cagey eyes, the man throwing out food: all these things combine in a religious assemblage and the man is christ feeding a multitude and the tree is the tree of life or maybe the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. the possum christ has a beard and everything. fuck! this light throws everything into high contrast and the possums are eerie, eerie in the night looking back from their christ at me, me riding through the park at night, drunk on exhibition wine and this vision and the blood of the lamb who taketh away the sins of the possum world. it's christian but some kind of syncretic christianity, christianity mixed with something else. voodoo?

who so loved the possums that he gave his only begotten son that they might be saved? it's a very good question but i hightailed it out of there. i had beheld the other and it blew my gourd.

the next morning i walked by the river and lo! beheld a snag: a submerged branch rising from the water like a bird's foot. sitting on the snag was a grey duck. the duck had turned its head completely back so it could tuck its beak into its feathers and stay warm.

it was shaped like a giant gunmetal teardrop and was completely still.

mike