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

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

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.

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