a reunion

she goes with me to a blossom world
- the beach boys, 'good vibrations'

SOME DAYS AGO i found a message on my phone from the police.

'we've found your car,' they said. 'call us,' they said and so i did.

they told me where she was. it sounded like a half-hour bike ride away. i had a shower. i wanted to smell nice. i looked up the address and realised it was only a few blocks away, on a little side street i have no good reason to ride down usually.

i hopped on my bike and rode along in the evening air. my feelings were mixed: since my car left me i'd spent a lot of time with my bike. i'd gotten to know my bike a lot better and we'd had some good times. we'd gotten pretty close and i may even have told my bike i loved her. now my ex-form-of-transport had gotten back in touch and so all these old feelings were being stirred up.

would i feel the same? could i keep things going with my bike? would i get seduced by the comfort of the familiar? why had i had a shower? what was that all about?

reader: one thing was for sure and that was that i'd find out soon enough because it wasn't far away. my bike nestled loyally between my thighs. i felt a little bit guilty. i'd promised my bike a new coat of paint and some oil and now here i was going to see my car. the sky was darkly orange around the edges with the just-set sun.

i found the street and my car was there, beneath a tree. she'd gone native, as colonists used to say, and was becoming tree, was thickly spread with leaves and blossoms. the earth was gradually reclaiming her, invoking the car cycle which is like the water cycle but involves cars instead of water: metal is mined and smelted and turned into cars which are driven around and then abandoned and return to the earth slowly as new ores and are maybe one day mined again and turned back into cars. ah, she looked so different and yet underneath it all i could see the old car i used to know.

i opened the boot and put my bike inside.

i walked over to the driver's side door and opened it and climbed in myself. she cradled me in velour. i tried to start her but it didn't quite work. there was a spark of something there, but it wasn't quite enough. i tried again and then again but each time she responded more weakly.

i guessed she needed something more from me. she was out of petrol, after all. the thieves had taken her and drained her and left her here and now here i was trying to start things up again as though nothing had happened: fool! i would have to do something.

the thieves had been thoughtful enough to abandon her just round the corner from a 24-hour petrol station. there was a jerry-can in the back and i grabbed it. i walked to the petrol station, which took maybe 25 seconds. i couldn't help thinking that abandoning an out-of-fuel car with a jerry-can in the back just 25 seconds from a 24-hour petrol station showed a DISTINCT LACK OF INITIATIVE on the part of the thieves. nonetheless: they'd made it easy for me: nice of them.

people kept looking at me funny. was this because i was unshaven and wearing a t-shirt with a snake crawling through a skull's eyesockets? i guess we'll never know. i got petrol and walked back and poured it in the tank and climbed in again and tried to start my car again. it didn't work. i tried and tried and then gave up and decided to try a roll start. i was on a faint incline.

i pushed and pushed and pushed and got a little momentum and then jumped in and tried to start and wrrrrrrrrrr the car shuddered to a stop.

i pushed and pushed again and got a little momentum again and then jumped in again and wrrrrrrrrrrrrrr exactly the same thing happened.

i was worried now because i was near the bottom of the hill. would i hafta abandon my car again? now that we'd been through so much?

i pushed and pushed and pushed and pushed and jumped in but we were going too slowly for it to work. fuck it: i tried anyway and she shuddered and shuddered and spat and hacked and sucked in air and came to life again and i drove her home. we haven't talked too much since then. there'll be time for that later. she's resting in the driveway now.

xxxx
mike

butter-knife love

it's a funny car to steal, that's all i can say. the registration expired last month, there was hardly any petrol in it and it's hard to put in gear. the resale value is close to negative: it costs more to repair a 25-year-old european car than anyone wants to spend. the thieves, i guess, are not too bright. on the other hand, you can start it with a butter-knife so i guess it was easy to steal if not necessarily a great investment.

in any case: it's definitely not there. i can see right across to the other side of the street now. the car i owned for a while no longer blocks the view. the thieves left the persimmon tree though and this is nice of them cos while i've been distracted leaves have been crawling quietly out of it and into the sky. they are a delicious colour somewhere between yellow and green and the blue of the sky sets them off to fine effect. good old persimmon tree! you won't abandon me, surely! no, the car is definitely not there.

anyway: fuck the car: have i told you lately that i love you, dear reader? thinking on it, i guess i have: these little stories are love-letters to whomever is willing to read them: my love made legible and poured out into the world.

xxxx

rules for trees and grass, my people, the moon out of focus, the possibility of a vast network of tunnels beneath the earth.

hello
- lionel richie

why hello, lionel. how's the kids?

this is a funny little story. i'm not sure about it but i get the feeling it's time to let it go and find its fortune, out there in the kingdoms and prince-bishoprics and so on. it can cross streams and talk to magical beasts like for example unicorns and cicatrices and griffins and the enigmatic sphinx, the sphinx who knows all but speaketh in riddles &c &c. i'm not sure about it cos i sewed it up from the corpses of other things. dr frankenstein did this and look where it got him: running for his life across the icy tundras and floes of the arctic circle and if nothing else enters into the matter we should at least consider that the arctic circle isn't quite what it used to be back then.

nonetheless: i hafta let it go cos it's distracting me from the story i really want to write (which is about invisibility and has a spell in it and everything). hopefully it'll be ok out there in the world, the world all bright and radiant, radiant with the light from various motherfucking celestial bodies, bodies all burning far from the earth we wander and people will be nice to it. one thing in its favour is it's made of fragments, just like everything else in the world.

you: f-fragments?
me: yes! fragments!

(pause)

you: w-what about trees?
me: yeah! trees too! which reminds me:


1. rules for trees and grass
i've been looking at trees recently, at the way they extend through space and feed on what passes through that space. it's neat: they apply the same rules over and over, trees do: go this far (where 'this far' is a proportion of the distance between where you are now and your total height, like say 2/5ths of it or maybe 3/7ths) and then split into this many pieces (give or take 2) at around about this angle and then keep doing it again until you turn into leaves.

what ends up happening is that trees control a field, roughly barbell-shaped, around a central vertical axis. they leave a gap in the middle for the horizon to pass through.

grass, on the other hand, is all about occupying a plane. if grass has a rule it's 'go about this far and tie yourself in a little knot through the horizon. repeat until you run out of planar space.'

what ends up happening here is that grass has no trunk to cut: it's got no central point to attack: howabout that.

you: ok, but w-what about people?
me: wait, i thought we were talking about trees?
you: we were! but now i want to know about people!
me: well... howabout this:


2. my people

it is the right of every traveller to vent their frustration at every minor inconvenience by writing of it to their friends. expect long descriptions of everything.
- jonathan strange, in jonathan strange & mr norrell, susanna clarke.

i went to the writers' festival the other day. i got there just in time. i was going to hear a talk about the creative commons. it was in a theatre. i walked in and sat down.

something felt funny and then i realised what it was and it was this: i had, gentle reader, the distinct sensation that i'd suddenly come home, somehow, that i'd found my people. i was.. uncomfortable. i wasn't sure i wanted to be having that sensation at exactly that time, surrounded by exactly those people. everyone was, well, bookish.. a little uncool perhaps. and surely, surely waaay less cool than me. surely. i was a little disturbed so i took a water bottle out of my bag to have a drink and then noticed everyone around me already had their water bottles out. my people carry their own water, apparently. i drank anyway. i wasn't going to be put off. i sat there for a bit. the speakers weren't there yet so i took a book out of my bag so as to pass the time and then realised of course everyone around me already had their books out. damn. however, women were wearing shawls and sensible jeans. i wasn't wearing a shawl. that was one point of distinction i could hold onto. i was dreaming when i wrote this. what?


3. the moon out of focus

i was dreaming when i wrote this
- prince

the other night i kept walking out of the house to look at the moon. there was a lunar eclipse and i wanted to see it. the first time i went out it was cloudy and so the moon was hazy. eventually the cloud cleared but the moon still looked hazy. it was weird. it reminded me of the actor who was always out of focus, a character in woody allen's deconstructing harry. one web site summarised the plot of deconstructing harry like this:

"..revolves around the problems of a new york writer's creative and erotic life."

gee, i thought. now that narrows it down a lot. doesn't it? hacks down the allen canon a tad, wouldn't you say? excludes one or two films, hm? or maybe not? perhaps? maybe i have my sarcastic voice on, hmm? maybe it's actually a pretty fucking succinct precis of the old man's entire motherfucking corpus, hmm?

but i am being unfair! it excludes all the films by woody allen which aren't about woody allen! which by a shocking coincidence are probably also my favourite of his films, like sweet and lowdown, or purple rose of cairo.

by the way: these emails are best viewed in html, if you have the option. if you wonder why i keep fucking up my formatting with <str> and </em> and shit like that, it's cos you're looking at them in plain text.

and you know what i hate? not much, actually: i ain't a playa hater. still, i hate comedians who feel the need to link all their gags somehow: "and another thing about squirrels..", say. steven wright is the perfect example of a comedian who doesn't do this and is very funny. why do the others bother? maybe they are distracted by the possibility of a vast network of tunnels beneath the earth.


4. tunnels
what was i talking about? i can't remember but it's possible there is a vast network of tunnels beneath the earth. underground cities and everything.

i wrote the other day about a hole baterz and some other people dug. i got some of the details wrong and benjow wrote to correct me. his story contains these words:

the smoke got thicker and thicker. they started to freak out and called the firemen (or maybe they arrived on their own accord), but anyway they turned up with some police, to help look for the fire. and they were all wandering around our house in their gear going 'wow you guys are really BUMS'. at the time we were all vaguely moving out and most of the rooms were full of piles of rubbish...it must have been a bit like one of those tenants from hell ACA exposes. anyway, eventually they kicked down the door to baterz's old room (or maybe they just unlocked it, who knows) and discovered the source of the smoke--the hole, which was now billowing blissfully.

..among others. it's very funny: go and read it .

xxxx

there seemed to be only one of me and

i got up. it was cold. i was vibrating with the cold.

i walked to the post office. it was still cold. the sky was clear. it was blue, because there were no clouds overhead. the only clouds in the sky were contrails from my jet mouth.

in the post office a man with a hook for a hand served a man with only one arm. i know the one-armed man. his name is joe. he runs the organic shop down the road. he has a sign on the wall:

DON'T BLAME JOE
HE SAYS WHAT HE DOES
BECAUSE HE LOVES YOU

'you don't want to lick the stamps,' joe was saying. 'they're full of toxins'. joe's eyes shine with the radiant loving light of someone who either (a) eats a lot of organic food or (b) is crazy.

outside the shadows were clean. they had clear, calm edges because there were no clouds between me and the sun. i walked on some of them. i walked on the shadows of some poles and some wires. the grass stood up straight.

i saw a tree. it had no leaves but it still had a lot of seed-pods dangling from the branches. i felt kind of embarrassed. it looked like the tree had let itself go some(naked)how and i felt bad for it. still: i couldn't look away.

i had contracted to a single point because it was cold. it was interesting. it made my identity easier to manage. there seemed to be only one of me and my body seemed to occupy a well-defined area, quite small.


xxxx

riding shotgun with jesus

i am large.  i contain multitudes.
- walt whitman

and did i say i was a time bomb?
- public enemy
 

1. byron bay
I USED TO live in lismore in northern new south wales.  towns in that part of the world are odd.  why?  i'm glad you asked. 

towns there are odd because there's an odd emulsion of cultures there, holding one another in suspension but never quite mixing.  why?  i'm glad you asked!

because:

about thirty-five years ago there was a big hippy festival in nimbin called the aquarius festival.  before the festival, nimbin was dairy and banana country.  anyway: a bunch of the hippies stayed.  some of them pooled money and bought up land, big chunks of it sometimes, along the creeked valleys around there which are, frankly, fucking gorgeous: all densely twisted hills like the hills in my imagination of scotland.  and everything grows on everything cos it's subtropical.  odd.

but why is that odd?  i'm.. well, i'm still glad you asked.  gladdish, anyways.  but don't push your fucking luck, mmkay?

 

well, i was born in adelaide, in the south bit of mainland australia.  south australia is mostly desert but for a tiny strip of fertile land along the coast,  that's where everyone in south australia lives, pretty much.  even though it's wetter than the desert there it's still a bit of work getting things to grow, so it makes my brain go all funny when i'm somewhere where you hafta try and stop things growing on top of each other.  i don't just mean trees, either, cos there are fungi that want to grow on your armpits and they're trying to get into your pants, too.

 

anyway, there i was up in northern new south wales.  kids up there change their names for fun, like kids down here change their hair.  they have names like 'fraggle' or 'sprinkle' or 'orryelle' or 'crow' or 'red john'.  well, red john's not that odd a name i guess.  he wrote a funny song about the whole phenomenon.  it was to the tune of 'walk on the wild side'  it was all like: 

 'hey sunlight, didn't you used to be called.. sharon?
 hey bluetongue, didn't you used to be called.. darren?'

heh.

anyway: i'm distracted.

start again:

1. byron bay
ONE TIME I was in byron bay hitchhiking back to lismore where i lived.  byron bay has nice beaches but it's expensive.  lismore's cheaper but it's weird.  it floods there, because they built it on a floodplain and cut down all the trees.

this van pulled up.  it was like a mini-bus.  there were about five guys in there.  they had beards.

i hopped in.  i was in the back.  there was a man on either side of me.  one put his arm around my shoulder.

 'uh oh,' i thought.

 'so, what you guys been up to?' i said.  i was making a connection.  i figured maybe if i made a connection they wouldn't sodomise me and then cut me up and leave me in a shallow grave somewhere.

 'oh, we've just been in byron bay trying to convert people to christianity,' they said.

 'hahaha!' i said.

 'hahaha!' they said back.  actually, they didn't.  actually, i was the only one saying 'hahaha!'  actually, they were looking at me kindly and with a lil concern.  i believe they were noticing the god-shaped hole in the centre of my chest.  they got to work.

 'now,' said the one with his arm around my shoulders, 'life's pretty hard, wouldn't you say?"

 'aw, i don't know about that,' i said.  'i think it depends.'

they weren't expecting this response.  they shifted in their seats.

reader: we went back and forth for a little bit there.  finally i said. 'hey!  this is my turn-off!'  i wasn't being all playmate of the month (turn-offs: beards, conversion to christianity) but was instead pointing out that our paths were lo! about to diverge.  they were going one way and i was about to go another.  the fork, in short, had been reached.

our time together ended with them calling out the door, 'anyway, two thousand years ago a man called jesus christ talked about why life is so hard!  read the bible!'

'kthxbye!' i called back as they drove off bearded but disappointed into the rest of creation.  i had three things: a little bag, a stick, and a bedroll.  i stood by the turn-off and waited.


2. fifteen feet high
THIS OTHER TIME, years before that actually, i was hitchhiking with my sister.  sheesh we were young!  i would have been 19 probably.

this car pulled up.  the driver opened the door.  he had a beard.  seemed friendly enough so we jumped in.  it was a ute, and there was a bunch of stuff in the back.

 'where you headed?' i said.

 'oh, i'm going in to adelaide to give a talk about carnivorous plants,' he said.  i looked at him for a little while.

 'i grow carnivorous plants, see,' he said.  'that's what's in the back.  actually, i've just realised i left some stuff at my place.  do you mind if we detour?'

 'not at all,' i said.  'it is, after all, your car.'

so off we went, driving toward the home he shared with, gentle reader, an awful lot of carnivorous plants.  he didn't live too far from there, maybe a quarter of an hour away.  one thing about hitchhiking is you hafta be patient.  that was part of the appeal for me in those days, actually.  i liked it that i had no real control over how long it would take me to get somewhere, and that i was utterly dependent on the kindness of others to do so.  it stops you being arrogant and trash-talking about humanity like it's so easy to do.
 

you know: you think twice about saying what a stupid pack of cunts the australian people are when they've ferried you across the country.  that's what i liked about it.  plus it was just so obvious that getting all het up wouldn't speed the process any.  if anything, it slows you down.

has it been fifteen minutes yet?  i guess not but this is story time, not lived time.  as long as i've made some time pass it can stand in for the longer time that actually passed in the journey i'm describing, the time it takes to drive a little ute over cloud-shadows and through cuts made in hills, hills where things fight each other for the chance to grow.  it's a kind of metaphor for real time, a bit like they use in cooking shows.

we pulled up at his place.  i got out to straighten my legs.  on the roof was painted 'JESUS SAVES': in capitals just like that and in letters fifteen feet high.

there were shadows on the letters from the same clouds that shadowed the road.  i guess these letters were a road leading somewhere.

dear fairfield i am sorry i had to shit on you sorry

dear fairfield

i'm sorry. i didn't set out planning to shit on you. please don't think that. it wasn't a hate crime. i'm not a hater.

you hafta understand that i'm back in australia after a few months away, staring at chains: chains of tasks. it's like untangling ropes: trace back and back and back and the end seems always to be in the middle of a snarl. to do A i need to have done B, for which i'll need C. where is C? somewhere in the shed. the shed is the snarl whereof i spoke.

ropes snarl when you chuck them all in the same place without regard for their ropy identities. they get maudlin and ferocious and curl around each other for comfort. the stuff of my life is like this just now because three months ago i was tired and heartsick and packing up my house and i packed it up good for awhile and then i was too too tired and grievous, listening to 'back in black' loud over and over and over, cleaning up angrily and then sadly and then happily and then angrily again. and at the end i just started throwing things in boxes, uncaring what they were.

now they are snarled together in a snarl. it snarls at me when i go close. 'nice snarl!' i say but it can smell my fear as i approach looking for a screwdriver or a birth certificate or an overdue library book.

it's like in the life of pi where piscine patel is fourteen or so and is sharing a lifeboat with a tiger. the lifeboat is the boat of my life and i am fourteen and the snarl is the tiger. poetic, no? very fucking poetic but the trouble is the snarl would like to eat me. i can hear the voice behind its eyes and i know what it's thinking: it's thinking 'you left us here all tangled together and now we are tangled and you went away for months! for months and we are hungry and why don't you come just a lil closer lil boy? because the screwdriver you seek is just here, come just a lil closer, that's it, cloooser, come to papa, come to papa, OH FOR FUCK'S SAKE HE'S PISSED OFF AGAIN!'

it sings to me when i go away. it sings a bit of that tim buckley song called song to the siren but it sings the bit when the siren sings back: sail to me, sail to me, let me enfold you. and the thing is, it knows that it has what i most want and need, tangled and snarled in its tiger heart and ropy arteries. screwdrivers. birth certificates. clean clothes. i plug my ears with wax therefore and i get the tiger to lash me like odysseus to the mast of the lifeboat.. wait.. something is very wrong.. the tiger and the snarl and the siren are all metaphors for each other! i've just commanded the snarl to tie me up! i can see it salivating like the alien in alien as all three sets of nested jaws open up and reach for my liver! fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck!

after a while of living with a tiger you get to wanting a lil fresh air, that's been my experence anyways. it took me a while to leave the house though because i had so much stuff i thought i should be doing but eventually i made it out.

fuck it was a nice day! everything had shape and colour, just like it should. there was air and sunlight and no-one had stolen my shoes: i was very happy. i saw what looked like a ring on the ground and i picked it up and it was a ring: howabout that. i laid it atop a pile of bricks and remembered being younger and walking through parklands and arranging stones in concentric circles for fun. thirty paces later i saw a single square of chocolate sitting in the middle of the footpath, sunning itself. it couldn't have been there for long because the day was warm and the chocolate hadn't melted. next to it was a tree. the tree had done something funny with its hair, a bit like when princess leia was jabba the hut's bitch for awhile and she did that funny bun/ringlet thing. the tree pretended it didn't know i was checking it out.

i'd been walking downhill. i figured if i walked downhill i'd get to water eventually. fortunately it only took about ten minutes and i found a river in a park. the park was dry because there are water restrictions in melbourne. melbourne after a couple of years of water restrictions looks remarkably like adelaide, the city of my birth, so that was nice. a kind of home away from home, kind of.

i turned left and walked and there were some horses. cool. i kept walking and then the road ended and there were little paths like ropes leading into a snarl of bush. i walked in. it all reminded me of something.. what? this:

one time i went for a drive with alaska to an art gallery in the hills. she refused to get out of the car when we got there, so i didn't stay for long. bitch. on the way back we bought pasties with sauce and went to this nice park to eat them. we ate our pasties and then went for a walk. it was a cool park! there were little paths leading like ropes into a snarl of bush and they twisted and turned and met up in surprising places. a great place to walk. quite possibly a great place to get fucked up the arse, too: we kept running into people walking along the twisty paths and smiling and saying hello to them. none of them looked that pleased to see us and in fact some of them looked a lil shocked and dismayed.

after awhile i said to alaska 'there aren't a lot of women in this park, are there?'
'no' she said. 'none, in fact.'
'hmmm.' i said.
'it's a pretty gay park, dad' she said and i was forced to agree.

the path i was walking in now was remarkably similar and i wondered if i was going to arrive in the gay park. i didn't want anyone to fuck me up the arse though because i was starting to realise that i really needed to shit. i came to a sign which said 'don't come any further unless you're looking forward to a golf-ball-shaped indentation in your head. and by the way you're being watched on a security camera right now.'

'bullshit.' i said. 'there are no cameras here.' i couldn't see any, anyway, but just in case there were i kept walking for a little while just to annoy anyone who might be watching. it did look like a golf course though, so i turned and walked the other way.

now the thing about the parkland by the river in this bit of fairfield is that it's private land. you're allowed to walk through it as long as you're nice about it and you watch out for the tiger snakes and you don't expect too much, like say a public toilet every now and then. i kept walking, though. hope springs eternal in an arseful of shit, that's been my experience anyways. the problem was.. actually there were a few problems, viz:

1. needing to shit.
2. no toilets.
3. a distinct lack of cover for a stealth-shit.
4. a distinct lack of anything to wipe my arse with.

i kept walking. i figured it'd get better after a little while. strangely, it got worse instead. the landscape opened out and there was nothing to hide behind. i was hanging on by a thread. i knew there was no way i could make it home in time. i contemplated knocking on the door of one of the palatial houses by the river and asking if i could shit there. i contemplated myself. i was unshaven and wearing dark sunglasses and thongs with skulls on them and a t-shirt with a snake crawling through a skull's eyesockets. 'hmm.' i thought. 'maybe not.'

finally the landscape opened out completely. back from the river there were broad flat houses, modernist houses with lots of glass and horizontal planes. between the houses and the river were trees, mostly scattered and straggly but a few were arranged in lil copses. i looked at the copses. i looked at the path. there was no-one around. the problem was that the copses would shield me either from the houses or from the path, but not both. who was i less worried would be watching me shit? i tried to work it out. it was too hard.

there was another problem which is that if i lived in one of these houses and walked down to the river and stepped in a human shit on the way i might feel like there was something personal in it. it's just one of those things. shit is kind of charged, like infidelity is.. you know, even if you know it's not really anything to do with you, it can still encourage you to feel pretty crap. i didn't want anyone to feel bad. i left, walking sadly.. well, as sadly as you can while trying not to shit yourself. i looked longingly at the copses. maybe if i left a note next to my shit: 'dear fairfield i am sorry i shat in you on the ground. it's not personal. i was just caught short'. (could i say 'it just happened'? people say that for infidelity.. does it ever work? maybe it does, i dunno. i think it wouldn't work for shit though. another problem: i had nothing to write with, except shit.)

i started walking back the way i'd come. my reasoning was that if everything had gotten worse by walking south, it'd hafta get better if i walked north. then this guy started following me. fuck! how was i going to shit now?

eventually he turned off the path and i found a spot and shat. that's how it happened. so you see, fairfield, there was nothing personal in it.. it wasn't about you, it was just what i needed to do.. and i'm sorry if you got hurt and i hope we can still be friends.

sincerely yours,
mike
xxxx