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….

Emblem- Object Writing – Nov 10th

Symbols and signs burn into the back of my brain like TV suffering afterburn. Adverts bombard from every orifice of the world, oversized rectangular billboards as we’re driving, incessant chatter and adverts that seem to leap out of the radio like angry tigers, TV mini series in thirty second slices to pique the apetite of our interest before the sucker punchline and the hard sell.

Corporate logos have bastardized the world of the emblem – where once they were worn proud as badges of military honour, or  membership of a secret society now the whole world of corporate image cleverly embroiders things on our psyche guiding us unconsciously toward product X or Y at the supermarket mega barn where rows and rows of competing Emblems shout from the shelves.

I need to approach things with a list and try as much as possible to stick to it, otherwise that glass and a half of milk in every bar on special might just pop up in my minds eye, and that symbol will speak to me. It’s funny as I push the complaining trolley with the squeaky wheels around the lanes how I hear the adverts sing in my head, in between the in house entertainments  – designed to persuade a person of a certain age to feel ‘comfortable’ and ‘at home’. So many of these psychological tricks being played and we don’t realise. In multi-story air conditioned offices they look out over empty suburbs and try to find more ways to fill our minds with the awareness of their presence, new jingles, new themes- new logos- make sure you don’t pinch someone else’s though.

Peacock- Object Writing – Nov 9th

Eyes peaking out from a flaming blue curtain, how many? Larger than life, designed to scare I guess. Moving about in restless jerks. The king of the gardens. We’re sat down on a ground blanket, quaffing wine and and taking in crackers and Patte’. The temperature is warm enough  to press into your skin and the patte’ is on the verge of turning to mush. I scoop another slice on the edge of the biscuit and anticipate another crunchy sensation as if my tongue is walking on river rocks, popping and exploding. Chicken Liver Patte’ – the thought of liver is appalling, but the taste is fabulous, smoky and dark. I swig a mouthful of Pinot Gris and its relative sweetness is a vacuum cleaner in my mouth waiting for the next round.

I look across to the fanned tail of the majestic one. Signs say not to feed them, surely the corner of just one cracker can’t hurt. A beady eye  fixes on mine as my hand reaches down to the opulent platter… just one corner. I flip it out like a poker chip, gambling on the well being of the bird. Will it come closer?. It always shits me how stupid these animals are – all that wariness. I’d love to pat this one, let my fingers float over those velvety feathers, but no. This one arrogantly refuses my offer,- mental note do not go to casino tonight – What impresses me more than the peacocks are the chipmunks in the shed, tiny things the size of your middle finger- I always thought they were  the size of beavers or prairie dogs…. wrong!

Turmoil – Object Writing – Nov 8th

He didn’t quite know what was happening , struck inside a shiny metal cylinder looking up to see the sky above close out and to be left in utter darkness. When he heard and felt water come trickling down from the dark heavens, his level of panic and fear rose by a factor of a hundred, his heartbeat became eratic and irregular as he felt mildly warm tendrils of water wrap around his ankles and calves – swimming was not a favoured pastime -His confidence and belief were choking and by the time it got to his head he was swimming in a sea of panic, still, the water continued to pour, now he couldn’t touch the bottom and then the cylinder started to move from side to side in a regular motion.

He seemed to be surrounded by a hundred other bodies, all struggling and fighting to get to the top, battling for air, but the agitation got stronger and stronger and he was plunged to the bottom of the cylinder by a heavy current. He held his breath until his lungs were on fire before making a dart back to the surface, it was pandemonium. Nobody had told him back at the sock factory that this would occur. Was this the dark arts of sock manufacture nobody wanted to speak of? Before he could finish that thought he was sucked down into the rough and tumble of the bottom of the washing machine again, flashes of the faces of other panicked merchants floated by him, but, some were singing and dancing like angels- they’d done this before, knew the drill, was it something you could get used to he wondered before almost having his toe sucked off and then it stopped………. and he felt the cylinder start to turn to the right faster and faster…..

Thermometer- Object Writing- Nov 7th

A prisoner of the bed , thousand pound sheets and blankets, suffocating , sweating,  fever sending red hot pokers into my skin. The doctor visits, his little black bag opens its mouth and speaks the language of stethoscope and thermometer, he flickers the thin glass a couple of times in a jellied hand and then the cool glass sits under my tongue. I feel like a Gelf, impotent, unable to speak or act or anything. For what seems like a day it sits there, the red liquid making a steady gradient along the numbers. Withdrawn he looks at it against the light coming in from the square window above the bed and makes a hmmmmming sound. He suggests that a salve of Vicks Vapour rub and more sleep would be useful.

A cough shatters my rib cage- I am really really sick, this is no put-on to get out of school, this is torture. The sheets have become a swamp so they need changing. I sit wrapped in a blanket as they are relayed, sunken eyes taking it all in between earthquake shivers and volcanic coughing eruptions. She says she’ll make me some chicken soup, I sure couldn’t keep much else down I reckon.  Eyelids are as heavy as the lids on a cart away Rubbish skip – when is that truck gonna come and take me away? I  am aroused from my hypnotic deluge by the arrival of the chicken soup, I try to sit up, the pillow slipping against the wall while a lax hand grips the spoon and I taste that cloudy cocktail and mix it with a crunchy mixture of toast and butter… ah a bit of life at last….

Mediterranean – Object Writing – Nov 6th

After steaming across choppy seas it began to grow in the distance…. Santorini. Soon we were anchored beneath a series of switchback roads that seemed to be chiselled in the cliff, and amazingly  busses were going to carry us all the way to the top. From the boat, the houses at the top stood out like shining beacons in pristine white some with domed bright blue roofs or shutters. Part of keeping the heat out I supposed.

The busses laboured up the switchbacks and deposited us at  an outpost where the locals bid for our custom in the accommodation stakes… the first night was a smallish room with adequate facilities, but it was just too far from the action at least a twenty minute walk – we checked out and donned back packs next morning, they weighed us down as if we were carrying sacks of wet washing in the stinging sun on that twenty minute trip, but we found somewhere to stay near to the edge of the action. 

With deposits paid and keys collected and bags dumped we embroiled ourselves in the bustle of Santorini,  from the edge of the cliffs we looked out to the dark shell of Fira – a volcanic hulk which led the eye to the horizon which was an enormity of grey restless sea merging into the deep blue sky in the distance.  The town smelled of motor bike exhausts and uncollected rubbish and we attended a few internet cafes trying to plan ahead a bit for the next island. I don’t know why this was where I had wanted to come, but after the first week of traveling I came to the conclusion that despite its inefficiencies Greek Island time was  a good way to run a life. None of our hurried pressured ant like day to day existence, all things done in their own time here on the islands, Siesta mandatory, eating at Ten P.M. normal……..ah the Mediterranean lifestyle……