Plaster Board – Object Writing – July 10

The boards are delivered in a flat bed truck. You have to organise a time where you and the delivery team will be in the same place at the same time. The doorbell croaks their arrival and heavy set men in iridescent green tops haul in the sheets. The boards are rectangular and long, not quite as heavy as a refrigerator but just enough for one person to manage. Documents are signed and the lorry ’s diesel motor gurgles in reverse down the one way street.

So here I am with 10 sheets of plaster board, lumps of four by two and a vague plan to build a soundproof room in this rented house without telling the landlord. The framing work had begun weeks before and now represented a significant spider web in the second bedroom. Attachment of the sheets would surely be a simple task, but from the moment I began moving the first one I realised it was like trying to move a mini minor with the motor off. The fire of my vision started to hiss as water was poured on it. Placing the first sheet against the frame I began banging in a nail – overly conscious of the noise I was making in my undercover operation. As the head of the nail reached the face of the board and I made my first divot with the hammer, I knew a plan ‘B’ was needed.  Where I had fractured the surface lay a crescent of pain,  a bruise on the snowy virgin surface, it leaked the blood of the board; a fine sifting of chalky powder. I flew back on clouds of memory to writing on a blackboard in primary school and walking away with chalk on my hands and then biting my finger nails. The taste was terrible, flat and neutral a ‘nothing’ taste. This is how I Imagined the residue I now held on my fingers to taste……..

Sunday School – Object Writing -July 9th

Tramping along muddy unmade roads with a thick coat on and gloves that prickle my skin. Towed along by older sisters down to the local Church of England. Walking through a gate that is higher than me, just a simple latch securing it and then a graveyard marked with mildewed headstones, decaying with ancient history and time, grey and mossy in places. The church building stamped on the sacred ground made of thick weight lifter blocks of hewn stone that I run my fingers over, worn smooth but still able to catch the pools in my pores.

An airy room, windows way way up high, tall as the Eiffel tower to a 7 year old kid. Heaters provide a choke of heat. Anoraks and parkas hang in a cupboard releasing a steamy closeness to the air. Books are handed out , cartoon illustrations of the Lord Jesus in  glowing colours. Being awarded gold stars to place beside key phrases learned by rote.  Licking stamps and posting them in  a booklet for  getting a whole chapter correct, that funny taste of the gum.  Holding pencils and pens and filling in empty figures making them come to life. The Lord’s prayer. Lofty walls  covered in posters and pictures and images of the cross. My sisters going off to C.S.S.M. camp – a Christian youth camp thing, coming back full of spirit and ideal and hope. Walking to the church alone, feeling threatened and insignificant and wanting to go home.

Drone – Object Writing – July 8th

Standing beneath high voltage electricity pylons, the  air is filled with a constant hum, a drone,  a frison. The air is slightly electrified it makes the  hairs  on your neck rise slightly and exerts a meniscus of pressure. It reminds me of a vacant room in a rented house due to be condemned, just a bed  a carpet that seemed to shred underfoot, a wall with holes in it and a naked light bulb that seemed to have it’s own hum and drone. Empty, vacant, like the way I try to make my mind by humming Buddhist chants of Ommmmmm, the drone that reverberates around inside my skull, moving through the frequency range until I find the resonant frequency of my head , the frequency that blocks all consciousness and the constant barrage of thought and image. For some moments these halt and I find the space between worlds. 

Walking into bar with a neon sign hanging over it it in ultra real colours it drives through the night in a colourful hum. The refrigerator at home clicks on and off like my attention. The thing with all these drones; the power stations, diesel generators at rock concerts, the high frequency hum of cathode ray TV’s, they’re all tasteless and boring, lifeless. Tastelss as Zuccinni [courgete],  tasteless as cabbage or cauliflower. these are the power drone vegetables that need to be dowsed or fried in interesting colours of  garlic or mushroom or cream or something to make them register on the culinary ladder. Other wise they’re just dull lifeless plasticine on your tongue, grey, formless – droning over your pallet….

Yogurt- Object Writing – July 7th

Previously I have discussed my anti-cheese stance – smelly, funny flat taste on my tongue and a desire to throw up. Yoghurt was at one time treated with the same disdain, but reading of finely crafted words and health journals convinced me it was in my best interest to indulge – for whatever reason.

High school classes in science I think- with Mr Hullin up the front and huge swathes of light cutting in through louvered windows. We learned that it was essentially milk that had gone off – infected with bacteria. Some part of the rear room of my mind filed this away and avoided it from that time until maybe mid twenty. A series of ‘exclusion diets’ had me eating brown rice and bananas for breakfast- super plain. I had read about these ‘lactobacilius’ and acidopholous doo hickies that were meant be good exercise for the gut, the problem I was tyring to fix… so I put aside the Bacterial fear and added it to the breakfast regimen.  By week two of the diet things were great when I woke up , but by the time I had walked to the station, energy zapping zombies had invaded from inner space sapping my soul.  I felt lifeless and dull, all grey on the inside…dead! How I wondered? 

I eliminated the white slimey wet stuff and one week later things were on an ‘even’ if not better than even keel. At this point I concluded that I was lactose intolerant and that yoghurt – a super concentrated form of the species – was my number one enemy. At Indian restaurants I now learn to ask if there’s yoghurt in the dishes I want to order – they don’t usually tell you but 1/2 an hour after having a korma or a tandoor  I might  all face first into the desert- it’s a killer.  Thirty olypmic weight lifters seem to drop by and crush me in a swell of lethargy and weakness. I must also admit I’ve never been a fan of the taste – reminds me of that cheese stuff, slightly pukey, slightly artificial or something.

Retiree- Object Writing – July 6th

A red motorised scooter scurries along the footpath an orange pennant flips in the breeze as it whirs past. A muted thank you – I moved off to the side in anticipation. Just beside the Freemasons homes. Is he on his way back there I wonder or has escaped from that other place MCCW. There’s a big smoke stack at the back of the hospital. No matter what the weather it always sends out  cloud of white gas, especially in winter- you can almost reach up and scoop it up. I used to wonder if they were burning bodies – but apparently not my friend from the hospital informs me.

I imagine the life of a retiree – or my life as a retiree. The taste of freedom at last, not bound by any responsibility to a higher authority, but maybe there are other types to consider. Grandchildren and the community – becoming a child minding service, changing smelly nappies – gladly I imagine. Plenty of time to stroke the winds of time and touch old memories and wonder about what ifs and what might nave beens. Brushing over momentos from tours of duty and holidays in Spain and France  and the Sudan. Unwrapping the mothball pages of photographs from a life preserved. I guess these are all the things that you have to look forward to as time seems to do its inevitable process of speeding up and you feel more and more robbed each day because each moment becomes so precious and they become more and more slippery unless you lock them down before hand, know exactly what you’re doing. You see the world through the lens of experience and wisdom and know how to get things done. You listen to that voice of making things happen and drive on towards a retirement home – sometime – where you’ll sing songs from a bygone era while they feed you drugs in numbered plastic draws each with a day and a time – retirement worth looking forward to – or is it?

Drumstick- Object Writing – July 5th

The previews flicker away at the front as I unwrap the cone. Cellophane crackles like breaking glass. I’m embarrassed – I try to do it quietly but at this point it’s not the main movie. Thoughts swing back to taking out Bronnie all those years ago- what is it now? .. ten years! Down at Southland, buying ice creams buying tickets thinking something was going to happen, but it never did. Dressed in my finest, equipped with one liners but nothing happened always in stasis a hovering spacecraft hoping to land but repelled by a force field to a safe distance, AREA 61 unvisited.

So, now I’m unwrapping this cone, which for all purposes is the same as a Peters Drumstick. The choc-top  coating has that rich creamy smell mixed with cocoa, it’s chilled down the core. I imagine that little plug of chocolate right at the end I’ll soon be there , burrowing down through the layers of ice and cream, crunching through the waffle sending drum beats around the cave of my mouth. Explosive snare drum hits inside my head, one of those shooting lightning bolt pains as I have to much cold too quickly and have to back off to a light country beat with my percussion cap teeth. The cone is rough and angular, sort of a sandpaper rough feel to it, put it anywhere near wood and it would disintegrate into sharp shards, like when you knock over a wine glass on the kitchen bench and there’s a hundred pieces, some seen some unseen on the floor, and you do your best with brush and pan and discarded papers, but some of those little splinters are still there, waiting for when you come down, in bare feet and you feel a prick and think it’s an ant or something…..

Eye Shadow – Object Writing – July 4th

It seems as though storm clouds are gathering just below her forehead, thick grey ones that hint at a serious downpour ahead. The sort of cloud you might pull over to the side of the road for if you’re driving along a freeway .The sort of cloudburst you really want to avoid, where you slow down from 100 to 60. It might start melting the windscreen if you drive too fast. Her icing sugar eyes were dusted just well enough with a hint of tears to come. I knew I’d only have to ask and the first drips of overflow would start gushing through the lower sluice gates of her eyes.

What would it do to the heavily rouged cheeks I wondered? I saw crimson rivers and lava flows extending down her neck past the glossy Marylin lips. So I brushed her with the inevitable question- “what’s going on then?” Long false lashes momentarily butterflied before that first roll of tears arrived.  A thin boney hand reached into a purse as she dabbed the spring dry. I tried to be a well spring of compassion as she told me of the attack, how he’d dumped her here on Carlisle Street and how all the other Trannies had shunned her because she was simply too over the top for them.  I donned my salvos cap and lifted her by the arm and helped her to the utility.  Back at base a cup of hot soup and a clean up was going to help this young lady get back on the road to recovery – whether walking the street again was the right road was another question at least until the next customer discovers she’s not all she seems.

Snack Bar- Object Writing – July 3rd

The smell of roasted meat fills the air, that same smell as back home when the chicken or the lump of beef or the strips of pork were sitting on the silver serving tray, the one with the spikes that  held the meat firmly in place as it was delivered. Here the meat is ready to be sliced off and plunged inside buttered rolls. It sits in a aluminium Bain-Marie, the glass slightly clouded like a bathroom mirror from the steam that is leaking out from the heated water troughs underneath. The Roast sits beside patient rows of toasted sandwiches wrapped in cling film and baguettes in grease-proof paper.

The air is thick with action; voices and questions, call and response as sandwiches are conjured out of thin air and the kaleidoscope of condiments. I request a roast beef roll and an electric knife scars the air, cutting through the flow of orders and desires. A cappucino machine to the left coughs it’s way into action a delivering a steaming cup of creamy coffee with a moustache of chocolate sprinkled on top. 

I take a window seat and watch the trams struggle up Collins Street, the modern ones that seem to yawn as they accelerate, whose electromagnetic radiance makes my FM radio turn to a Geieger counter, it’s grinding its way toward Brunswick or some far flung Northern destination, somewhere on the other side of the Yarra river that I have no knowledge of – it’s almost like going to the Congo up there -  A perception the natives are not friendly – of course they are- That trapdoor salesmen will fraudulently con you into signing unbelievable unachievable deals – but of course they won’t. I ponder all this as the juices from the roast beef trickle down my hands in a warm dribble of relief….

Road Block – Object Wriitng- July 2nd

It’s mile after mile of empty tinder dry blonde grass, occasional clouds of sheep seem to float on the horizon, fence posts flash by either side hypnotically. I wind down the window to let the breeze buffet me, to keep me awake the last 3/4 hours of the journey.  Not much happening at all just the horizon and the radio, the constant tone of the motor trapped in fifth, the rumble of the tyres along the reasonably kept highway. It’s coming up to the horror stretch from Cressy to Foxhow – single lane road. I hate having to go off the shoulder at one hundred. Imaginings of the car fish-tailing and skidding into an oncoming car or  tree bite at my consciousness. 

There’s a surprise after the place where the road dips down to a bridge and becomes a single lane -a road crew and signs slowing me down , 80 .60. 40 – SLOW.  The stretch ahead is laid out in wonderful two lane magnificence – but it’s so new it’s not yet sealed, the roller is pounding the stones two kilomteres ahead. A big red STOP lollipop confronts me and an orange jacket talks into the leach of his two way radio. I wait, a tinge of dust in the air and the distant sweet smell of bitumen. Waiting, I turn up the radio for amusement, after the last hundred and fifty clicks I’m glad for the break in concentration. I hate driving. The lollipop flips to a yellow SLOW, there’s an acknowledgement and a nod and I’m skating over loose stones at sixty, they click and bash at the underbody and make the sound of rain on a tin roof. I pass the roller breathing and pulsing like a dormant dragon……

Cheeseburger – Object Writing – July 1st

The problem with a cheeseburger  is that word that is hanging off the front of the word ‘burger’- Cheese. Already I have documented my displeasure with this  staple of the Western world, but just to recap – sour, dour, strange reaction, apoplexy, vomitous, churning sea stomach  the moment I taste it. If you can imagine typex being applied to your tongue that’s how it is for me with cheese, so the solution is just the plain old burger – the small ones – I won’t get brand specific for fear of litigation.

I sit in the window sometimes on my way home on the bike when in a hurry. I sit in the window and watch the dance of the traffic outside, the busy hurried lives of other souls who are on their way to better things now the working day is done. I watch them hop skip and jump across the pedestrian crossings on their way to a better something. I’m sitting here with my hands  clawing at a waxy wrapper unpeeling it from anemic thin ‘Australia’s next top model’ bun I raise it to my mouth like a shotgun and I’m about to pull the trigger and blow my brains out , but as I bite I decide the stomach will do for tonight. I wonder how much sugar is in the bun, it seems to dissolve like sherbet, and the pattie of meat has a uniform consistency and flavour – because this is the junior model, the meat is only a sliver thinner than my tongue- at least with a cheeseburger it’s a double dose, but even the thought of that cooked cheese that’s dripped all over the meat is enough to begin my gag reaction, to start my volcano stomach wanting to erupt…. I did mention I don’t like cheese didn’t I?