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

vows: poverty, chastity and irony

cunnilingus and psychiatry have brought us to this
- tony soprano

electric word, 'life' - it means forever
- prince

1. irony
OK, SO WE'VE been doing ironic distance for a while now. how's it working out for y'all? me, i'm bored with it. i'd like to propose an ironic engagement to replace ironic distance.

engagement? well, doing stuff intensely and wholeheartedly even though everything is ironic.

ironic? you know: what you believe is kind of arbitrary - it comes down to accidents of birth and history and it could have been otherwise. i like democracy, for example. if i'd been born long enough ago there'd be no democracy for me to like. i might have liked equity or fairness, and argued for those things in my little life, but there'd be no democracy.

richard rorty calls this irony: realising that your beliefs don't transcend history but instead come from history.. but he argues that they're no less important for being historical accidents, because everything is a historical accident.

anyway. i have an ironic relationship with astrology. or maybe a pragmatic one. that is: i can easily see how astrology could be meaningless. however, i happen to fit embarrassingly well the profile for someone born when i was: smack bang in the middle of pisces. and advice for pisceans often turns out to be pretty fucking appropriate for me.

WOOOOOOOOOOOOO HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!


2. horoscopes
EXCUSE ME. JUST hadta let off a lil steam. where was i?

anyway: i read my horoscope. i take the advice seriously, even though i know it was probably written by some witless mooncalf. i don't care. i like my little paragraph of advice.

the other day it said something like 'don't wait too long to organise some quiet time today!'
'ok!' i said. 'if it seems like i need some quiet time, which quite frankly i don't! but thanks for thinking of me, automated horoscope robot!'

may as well be polite to the robots, that's my feeling on the matter. one day they may rule the world.

anyway, later in the day i was exhausted and sitting on a step at uni holding a cup of coffee and feeling overwhelmed and a lil melancholy.
'fuck this!' i thought and then i thought 'hey! better follow the robot's advice! one day they may rule the world, after all!'

also, in movies you should always follow the advice of horoscopes and crazy people and gypsies and tarot cards which are always death. movies are highly superstitious. i got up to follow the advice, and wandered along to the university spiritual centre. spiritual centre?

spiritual centres have replaced chapels in public spaces, the way 7/11s have replaced mum-and-dad delicatessens. that is, they're pretty much exactly the same thing but with less personality cos they try to cater for a wider audience. in the hospitals i wander through on weekends they have them too: all non-denominational stained glass and things made of wood and chairs arranged to face an emptiness that once stood for god.

at RMIT, the university i go to, there's a hall with wooden floors and a pump organ. i went and played it one day for fun. mmm.

if you walk upstairs like i did, there's a little balcony with a little buddhist altar. i sat there for a while. it made me happy. i looked at the altar. it was festooned with paper daisies and burnt matchsticks and the husks of tealights. i didn't think that was so great. i went to go and talk to the chaplain.

actually i couldn't find a chaplain but i found a baby chaplain. she was kind of cute, actually. i ended up telling her this story:


3. a parable on poverty
ONE TIME I was up near mount warning in south queensland. i was hitchhiking: i stood by the road and waited for cars and when they came i stuck out my thumb and tried to look, y'know, inoffensive. it went like it usually does which is like this: there weren't any cars and then there were cars and then there weren't any cars and then there were cars and then there weren't any cars and then there was a car and it stopped and lo! there was a man inside, looking friendly.

he had a beard. my bearded-driver alarm bells started going off but what to do? no-one else was stopping and he had a nice smile. i got in.

we talked and it turned out he was a jesuit monk.

'pretty nice car you've got for a monk,' i said. if i'd been a detective i would have worn a suit while i said this. my partner would have worn a suit too and would have leafed through the monk's mail while the monk tried to look calm.

'how do you reckon he does it, dave?' i would have said to my partner. 'i mean, i make more than a monk, don't i dave?'

dave would nod without looking at me. he'd be looking at the return addresses on the envelopes instead of at me. i wouldn't be offended though being as how i'd know it was all part of an elaborate game of cat and mouse. so i wouldn't say 'dave! look at me when i'm talking to you!'

instead i'd say 'and how would you describe my car, dave?' i wouldn't look at dave while i said this. i'd look at the monk.

'it's a shitbox,' dave would say, and now he'd look at the monk too.

'a shitbox. so how does frere jacques here afford a nice car like this? maybe the brother can give me a few pointers on how i'm managing my fucking finances.'

but anyway what am i thinking! that would be soooo rude and the nice bearded man was giving me a lift and anyway he had the perfect comeback which was this:
'it's not mine. we take a vow of poverty but we get to use stuff like this if we need to.'

i thought on this for a while. it seemed kind of tricky, the way he could ostensibly own nothing and yet still get to drive around in a fancy car.

something was fishy.


4. chastity
anyway, i told that story to the baby chaplain but i didn't put in the bit about the detectives. i just made that bit up now.

she said 'yeah, the nuns where i study keep telling me i should sign up and be a nun. i say "fine, if i can do chastity the way you guys do poverty."'

'yeah, like: "there's plenty of men around, but i don't own any of them,"' i said.

'"i just get to use them if i need to,"' she said.

'i like the way your mind works!' i said and then i said 'okbye!' and walked outside.

outside there were vines thick as fists knotted into the wall. the sky made all the light indirect so everything seemed to glow from the inside.

love to all
mike
xxxx