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

three theories of filth and the three filthy bastards who lived by them

no no no no no no NO NO NO!
- queen, bohemian rhapsody

prologue
I WAS SITTING on a train today reading a book about music. i read the word 'parliament' and then looked up and saw the word 'parliament' out the window because it just so happened the train was passing through parliament station. it was kind of a waste, because i don't really appreciate these kinds of coincidences as much as some. my friend gordon trenorden, for example, is a connoisseur of coincidences. he savours them like wines and will diligently assemble them into meanings. he has built up an impressive cellar over the years.

we used to live together there for a little bit. in the evening he would come home and tell me about the day's coincidences: things he'd heard on the radio at work in the morning and then t-shirts he'd seen people wearing in the afternoon and how it all fit together and what he suspected he had to do in consequence. what he mostly suspected was he that he was being toyed with. it kind of made sense. why else, after all, were all these coincidences lining up around him, flinging themselves at his feet?

i wasn't sure. the only thing that was clear to me was we had different amounts of meaning in our lives. i found GT's meaning-threshold a bit rich for my tastes but, y'know, it takes diff'rent strokes to rule the world.. or something..

actually this is all kind of irrelevant to today's story, except that gordon trenorden is one of the three characters in it. i'm your invisible narrator for today so i don't really count.


1. gordon trenorden
SO ANYWAY GORDON trenorden went to germany recently. he sent a story back. here's the start:

ON THE REMOVAL OF FOUL ODOURS
Today marks aroundabouts a week since I have arrived in Germany. I know this to be the case because despite having observed some timezone changes which have resulted in confusion as to which day it is, I brought approximately seven pairs of socks with me, one for each day of the week, and this morning I was faced with using my last pair of socks. It is about this time when one should consider washing one's clothes. I have developed a new thought on the problem of old-clothes-odour and it goes a little like this.

When we smell something, what is happening is that tiny molecules of odour are spreading from the object in question and dissipating through space and ending up in one's nostrils. As it emits, the number of emittable molecules decreases, and so there must come a point when it runs out of smell. So an alternative to clothes washing is to simply wait for one's clothes to run out
of odour.

nice.

what could we call this? a theory of filth, i guess. ah, it takes me back. i was blessed to spend my late teenage years hanging out with bohemians and every so often someone would develop a theory of filth that involved minimal effort on their part.

oooh mike can you tell us about a couple pleaaaaase? we sooo want to hear about the filthy friends of your bohemian adolescence and we ain't doing nothing that important right now, no sir nothing nohow, nothing that can't wait just a wee lil bit while you tell us a story or maybe in fact a couple stories i hear you say and me i say wow: it just so happens that i was fixing to do that very thing!

ZOMFG WE HAVE SOOOOOO MUCH IN COMMON! MAYBE WANNA GO OUT WITH ME? ON, LIKE, KIND OF A DATE? WHERE WE CAN TALK ABOUT HOW MUCH WE HAVE IN COMMON AND THEN MAYBE FIND SOME STARS TO KISS UNDER COS KISSING UNDER STARS IS SOOOOOO ROMANTIC? AND I CAN TELL BY THE WAY YOU'RE LOOKING AT ME JUST NOW THAT YOU THINK I'M BEING ALL TURN-OF-THE-CENTURY IRONIC AND ALL BUT REALLY I'M NOT REALLY I LOVE THE STARS?

ahem.. oops.. i got a lil swept away, then, in all the excitement.. wow.. let's move on:


2. matt the magic dog
I LIVED WITH matt the magic dog too, but he wasn't really a dog. he was a young man. we just called him matt the magic dog even though he wasn't a dog. i had a great bedroom in that house. it was the biggest bedroom i have ever seen, even now. we lived above a discount furniture place in the very centre of adelaide. the house was part of a larger building which had once been a home for wayward boys and kind of still was when i lived there. we were all pretty wayward in our way.

when i moved in i only brought a mattress and my drumkit and a bunch of ties and a few other clothes. for furniture we stole clothes racks from the driveway of a clothes shop across the road. i got my light from there too: i found a big spotlight there and dragged it over to my house and up the stairs. the room shone.

sadly, my parents turned up one day with the rest of my clutter and junk.

'we don't want this shit!' they said. neither did i but i'm not good at throwing things out so there it sat for a long time.

anyway: matt the magic dog: matt the magic dog had two tests he would apply in deciding which socks to wear next.

the first was the drop test. he would collect all his socks together and drop them one by one on the floor. the two socks which retained their shape the least upon impact were the two socks he'd put on.

the second was the flick test. he'd collect all his socks together and flick the sole of each with his fingernail. the two socks which made the least noise were the two he'd put on.

simple and kind of elegant, no?


3. baterz
OK I'VE TALKED about baterz a lil before. baterz was a genius. he was also haemophiliac. when he was about 15 he contracted HIV from a blood transfusion. he ended up living til he was in his thirties but when i met him he was eighteen and didn't expect to live more than another couple of years. back then no-one had, really.

i only mention it because it gave him, amongst other things, a cavalier approach to rental property. him and his mates lived in a big old house in west hindmarsh, the semi-industrial adelaide suburb where i grew up. one of the rooms was locked, and they weren't supposed to go in there.

naturally, like bluebeard's bride, they were curious, so they started digging a tunnel. the tunnel started in baterz's bedroom and went straight down into the earth's mantle a ways before turning in the direction of the forbidden room. it went on that way a few metres and then they all got too scared to keep digging. fair enough: a cave-in would be a bad way to die and an unnecessary one for a teenage bohemian which is what we all were, more or less. i kind of said that already, didn't i? the bohemian thing? oops.

next to the hole in his floor baterz had a pile of clothes. when he'd finished wearing something he'd put it atop the pile. when he wanted something fresh to put on, he'd take something from the bottom of the pile. his reasoning was that a pile of filthy clothes generates heat through a kind of composting process which would, given a little time, kill the germs and suchlike that were causing the smell. the clothes at the bottom were in the hottest part and had been undergoing the process for the longest so they were the cleanest by now and they were the ones he put on.

like i said: genius.

love to all
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