Deja Vu- Object Writing- Nov 20

There’s a knowing, a sense that reality is shimmering like you’re watching it through the vale of a crystal clear waterfall, looking on slightly disembodied, weightless, floating above the action while being in the action. “I’ve done this before”,or “I know what’s going to happen next”. Perhaps it did, perhaps it has. It’s more about the time than about something someone said. Maybe it’s about things that are similar to other times – like driving for example, once while cresting a hill I encountered a setting sun – it seemed to be an exact replay from a previous time- but how could it be as I’d never crested that hill at that time before – Small intake of breath, ants running in my veins.  It would be real nice to have Dejau Vu about the lotto numbers, or any situation really – would we act to make it difficult – or is it already set in place though? I guess the unpredictability of it would not make it a dependable thing – it’s as if the supreme being rolls a dice and you’re craps table and it delivers snake eyes for a nano second, but that’s enough for you to know this scenario, to taste it like a familiar meal or desert. It lasts all of an eye blink- but in that eye blink you ‘know’ so much, which is so soon forgotten.

Thundercloud- Object Writing Nov 19

Overweight clouds gather together toward the end of the day – all the accumulated humidity seems to be getting compressed and crunched and punched into a row of them. These big muscly clouds look as if they have been sorely bruised and are pretty angry and ready to shout. They do. A roar, an explosion, a thousand backfiring cars all at once whipcrack across the sky. So angry, so vehement that windows rattle, the ground seems to shake a little.

The clash of  a cold front and a warm front had  become a Titan battle in the skies, clouds wrestling one another for supremacy, but the dark heavy one was always going to win. It spits lightning down into the bay as I watch, the sky becoming a momentary camera flash and a few seconds later another round of thunder resonates inside me. After a day of ironing board heat the rain is welcome relief. Beautiful thick drops that pluck away at the strings of footpaths and roads all over town, making the tar sizzle and steam and release that smell of long trapped dirt and grime. The sun begins to set as the storm continues and these clouds continue to menace and  merge into the spreading black.

Solicitor – Object Writing- Nov 18

She sits on a wall  on a corner near a block of flats, dress cut way above the knee, short sleeve shirt two sizes too small showing her assets. The punters drive by sizing her and all the other prospects up, but how many would think that she is a he? Or used to be. She’s got a smorgasboard of prices for any body who might pull up to see what’s on offer, this time it’s a gent, late fourties early fifties perhaps. An electric window grinds down on the passenger side and he gets a close up view and is interested. Between anxious snapping jaw drops on grape flavoured chewing gum she gives him the deal, at the end he goes for his wallet and shines a silver badge in her face.  Her  playful sunny mood drops to a sub arctic chill as she is ordered into the back of the car.

The drive to the police station seems to drag as if anchors have been thrown out the back of the car and in a brightly lit interview room she’s asked if she wants a solicitior – of course she does – hasn’t got a clue about this legal stuff.  After a few hours in an echoing cell a handle creaks and the door opens and she’s led back to the interview room where she’s met by a pudgy good Samaritan lawyer with a pasty grip. He can’t help notice the oversized hands as they shake and files the info away in the back of his mind. She  starts peeling out a schpeel about how it’s so hard to make ends meet, how she’s got a habit to feed. She starts to get the shakes and wonders where the next hit’s gonna come from to make all this go away. Composure slips down a plug hole. The world becomes all floppy and un-centered. Yes she knows she shouldn’t have been there, but where else do you go?

Website- Object Writing- Nov 17

Does a single day go by without at least one look up on the megalith of Google?  This magnet for questions of the web world remains stable, with occasional banner changes to pique our interest, but 99.9% of the time you’re just there for that little rectangle that will provide you with the answers-NOW – or choices about the answers. Once you search has been entered – for example WW2 Spitfire aces, a compendium of abbreviated descriptions and lines in internet blue appear- some bolded some bordered, all trying to catch the attention of your eye.

In general it’s the first ten results that get all the traffic, unless you’re a determined digger and you believe there is gold  lying in them there hills. Yes trawl through a  few lesser pages and you’ll find a webmaster with less skills but juicier content – trust me I know I’ve been doing it for a while. Lying behind each of those titles and tags are hours of carefuly measured sweat and blood to get it in front of you – the viewer- because it isn’t so much about reading now as it’s about ‘entertainment’ and inserted media apps and clips. Fully produced YouTube clips with advertorials slung across them. It really is the new way of filling in our time- instead of sitting like cattle in front of network TV , now it’s search for whatever it might be that interests you and sure enough someone else in the world has put it on video or written about it or heard someone saying something and you can read about it on your mobile phone on their facebook or myspace or wordpress blog and engage in a communication… except those stupid spammers ruin it all. I don’t get it, these ridiculous messages they leave for me from: xzfdsgd skdkj – talking about  —– akjasjdaksj anbd dkdhf;ldu bfsmsl???? Huh???

 - straight to the delete bin with those ones- I wonder if  that’s where the lost socks go too? Where does stuff go when  you delete it? Does it still have the spark of inherent molecular memory somewhere inside the Computer or the ram or the memory – until the day the hard drive is reformatted and the slate is wiped clean- wouldn’t that be nice- to wipe the slate clean just by pressing erase- but that’s for another day.

Lamb- Object Writing- Nov 16

The oven door yawns open and a pale yellow light reveals a tray – sizzling and spitting away. The heat from the oven wells up like a 42 degree Melbourne summer scorcher-that dry sort of heat from the North – no humidity. My hands are draped in thick oven mittens that insulate my delicate skin from the sizzling surface. I pluck out the tray and rest it on the bench. Roast potatoes and the smell of rosemary suffuse the air as the lump of well browned meat is stabbed with the carving fork and transferred to the carving block. I open the top draw, the cutlery clatters together as I search for the sharpening tool. It’s handle is cloudy and yellowed from age and sits easy in my hand, my fingers protected by the butterflied ends, safe from being sliced off.  I withdraw the carving knife from its scabbard and slide it along the sharpening tool toward me . It’s metal grinding on metal in a thin silver sound. I flip and push it away, flip and pull it back again, the blade gets caught in the barbs of the sharpening tool’s grooves as it goes against the grain.

Now sharpened to perfection I run the blade beneath the tap, the water pings hollow against stainless steel and echoes through the kitchen. The knife is rested on a crunchy bit of seared flesh and then glides through the roast lamb leg – easier than a surgeons scalpel delivering lean slices of meat slightly pink in the middle. They build up on the outer edge of the carving block. Steam rises up infused with the tang of lamb and rosemary. I taste a morsel and a gamey explosion of juices shatter the tranquility of my dormant tongue. My mouth begins to water, anticipating the cloudy insides of  the roast potatoes, currently trapped in a their brittle scorched shells.

Wastepaper Bin – Object Writing- Nov 15

A repository of discarded thoughts and ideas. An inverted volcano wanting to spew forth a lava of rejection. Paper fish swimming in a tank of air. Classic scenes of the frustrated writer, the pen scribbling on the pad, ripped from the bindings, paper cutting into his palm as he compresses and fragments and rejects another idea. Balloons of imagination again start to fill with the helium of great ideas, they’re tied off and floated and then he takes the shotgun and shoots them down and they become more tightly compressed balls that are shot into the bin. He imagines a basketball crowd cheering on his relentless desire for perfection and  uniqueness, he’s almost up to one hundred points now – even thrown a few three pointers from outside the ring, but why won’t this concept come and play ball? Maybe the idea is already there, lying sobbing in the bin, it’s ego was not big enough to say – hey! Notice me! Has he just been gliding over the surface skimming for  something immediate instead of taking the time to take one thing and dig it and fertilise it and grow it until it becomes THE idea?

Morse Code- Object Writing Nov 14

Tuning in on the old Rambler radio, the big dial surfs across waves of static, occasional bursts of foreign language caught in short wave swirl that licks the sound as if it were a lollipop, the sound  going all curly whirly. The scanner comes across a series of dots and dashes caught in a wah wah pedal wash of high and low frequencies, but the message is constant. Automated noise filling more of the worlds unseen micro waves. 

As a last resort a radio operator in a tiny metal coffin lets his fingers tap tap tap away in measured moments dots and dashes, short long long  short long long short dot dot dot dash dash dash dot dot dot, S.O.S..  this bird is in trouble, the Titanic filling up with the freezing waters of the North Atlantic, lights disappearing underwater souls trapped for nearly ever. dot dot dot……

A telegram in mum and dads photo album. Missing you ++STOP++ home soon ++STOP++ love Pete ++STOP++. In the days before international telephones he communicated from whatever part of the globe the navy had deposited him in.  The notification in faded creamy paper with red borders, the message in solid black.

Dolphin- Object Writing – Nov 13

Flipper on the TV, black and white from memory – or in memory. Rising out of the water on his tail and dancing – Flipper talk – ee-ow ee-ow ee ee ee ee ee…. was that really what he was saying, or was it dubbed in later on? How did a dolphin in a pool manage to solve so many problems – or did they let him out? Obviously I have too many questions in relation to Dolphins. I see it now, the skin glistening wet, the water repelled as he powers through the undercurrents, a fin protruding from the surface cutting through with ease. Beneath the water a tail working furious, like when we do a gym workout, but is he holding his breath?

Aquariums and synchronised displays of jumping  and going through burning hoops, quite amazing really while bums get bored to death on cool plastic seats and we indulge in  ice creams and drinks bought for outrageous prices at the kiosk. Seals barge in and annoy trying to catch the limelight- are they as intelligent as Dolphins?

Walking round the aquarium at Manly, seeing the face of a giant eel hanging almost frozen in space.  The only movement its jaw opening and closing – very very very slowly – slow motion freeze frame eel.  Waterworld – Manta rays fly over us as we walk through a plexiglass corridor somehow holding back tonnes of water, sharks, and parrot fish and multicoloured gropers,  all in the same tank- no dolphins here- some people enter in wet suits and scuba gear- they’re going to feed the sharks- dangerous……maybe they’re all fed up before hand anyway. This world is a cosmos away from the hyperactive world of the dolphin.

Mirage – Object writing Nov 12

Driving along miles of boring highway in the middle of nowhere, the heat slamming down outside. The air conditioner pumps out waves of cool air that tickles my legs and arms and face.  Ahead the black line of road narrows to infinity and hovering in the sky is the rest of the world. It shimmers and pulses almost as if an island of land exists over a clear stretch of water – but it’s an illusion, a mirage.

The reality is more miles of tar, the continuing drone of the tires and the hum of the CD player. Pot holes send occasional shivers of reality though the car. The only variation to the visual landscape is the mirage and road kill. Lumpy deformed carcasses of culled kangaroos approach and disappear, now they’re somewhere up in the great dreamy afterlife. Or is that too a mirage that we make up to get us through the mundacity of the journey, the great justification, the release – paradise- what could it be like – maybe I could become look forward to ten wives or a palace with many mansions for all the good works I’ve done, but maybe it’s all an illusion and all there is is this road and this day and this hour. Still it’s good to dream, good to imagine. Also good to define what is and what is not illusion or mirage. Certainly as the good book says, “where there is no vision people perish “- so it’s probably better to believe in a future you cannot see and have hope than to be stuck in the ditch of cynicism and disbelief and going nowhere.

Birdseed – Object Writing – Nov 11

I can’t remember its name but it was budgerigar blue – I think you get it, that sort of light blue whispy colour with a  touch of iridescence to it. He didn’t have much to do or say, would just sit with his fingers wrapped around a thin pole that served as a perch and would chatter away to himself and occasionally flutter his wings. Sometimes, rarely we’d him out in a room with the doors locked, a merrry old time was had with him flittering back and forth in the dining room. An excellent opportunity to change the lining of his cage.

After a week he’d munched his way through handfuls of birdseed and had distributed the husks over the floor of his cage, they were lightweight ghosts of themselves almost like dust, some congealed together with a dollop of bird shit. The previous week’s sun newspaper was exchanged for this weeks and the seed container was topped up with a mountain of  small pellets poured from a cardboard box. This was clipped on the side of the cage along with a new dose of water. The next challenge was catching the bugger again – yeah sure letting him out was easy, but did he want to go back – no way.  Between the frenzied beating of wings and that high pitched budgery talk we got him back in our hands – Tiny frightened eyes would look up and the breathing would be laboured through those two small holes at either side of the top of his beak, before he slumped in resignation on the perch again and started his mad chatter….