something the cat dragged in

on the landing

2012-02-05T17:50:00.000+11:00

guy: i'll see you down the bottom.
girl: that's not the first time i've heard you say that today.
guy: yeah but i swear that was a total accident.

white trash

2012-01-25T15:11:00.000+11:00

old friends, Salamanca

2012-01-24T20:50:00.000+11:00

going places

2012-01-14T16:54:00.000+11:00

fast mover

2012-01-12T19:11:00.000+11:00

November 2011

January 2012

enter sandman

2012-01-11T19:30:00.000+11:00

'I can’t turn my head in trikonasana,' I tell Lee before yoga. My old karaoke injury is playing up. The one from headbanging to Enter Sandman. I woke it up again wrangling with a trampoline.

In downface dog my little finger misbehaves. It’s off at right angles.

‘What’s this?’ asks Lee as he walks past. I remember: This is from grade six netball, flush-faced and buried by the coach in wing defence where I can only damage myself. My fingers strapped every second week from catching the ball wrong.

In tadasana, there's a familiar click as my right rib pops back into place. That’s not normal. That’s from getting drunk on brown spirits at Nicole’s place in year eight and falling down a flight of stairs to vomit a waterfall while the guy I like punches cones from a coke can out the back. I still carry the click with me, this and a sour face when I think of brown spirits.

My hammy frays as I tighten the kneecaps in prasarita padottanasana.

Iyengar does it the right way.

Nobody should pull a hammy doing yoga but I did, years ago, in McBikram while shaking off a year of vanuatu pastries. This is my reminder of what happens when you stare in a mirror and exercise in 40 degree heat.

Our eyes are closed, muscles exhaling before we slip into corpse pose. The room is still and quiet, Lee shows us ways to breathe. I think of old injuries – finger, rib, thigh, neck – and how they connect me to forgotten moments, when he’s beside me. ‘You can breathe better than that,’ he says.

I might be distracted, but that faulty diaphragm, it’s also asthma. I feel panic, a baby’s gasp for breath, the trashbag who can’t find a ventolin with any juice left. A body shaped by years of shallow breath. I don't run, not even for public transport, because i might die, I decided years ago. Something else to be unthunk.

Jess once wrote that the world’s conflicts are marked on our society by waves of migration, like the rings on a tree. I want to twist this phrase so it refers to my body and how its idiosyncrasies record where I’ve been. But her idea is too beautiful to tamper with.

hard rubbish

2012-01-09T13:41:00.000+11:00

Photo: Pete Haydon

your mama

2011-12-18T18:37:00.003+11:00

nine of ten

2011-12-04T09:44:00.001+11:00

‘Yeah I said grace after grace once at Christmas. Thought of this great line, waited til the right time, then: “May god keep the wolves from the door and the women in our beds”.’

He holds his cardigan arms out and recounts waiting for warm laughter from his family. ‘Great, right? Didn’t go down so well – I got clobbered by all my sisters.’

‘How many kids in your family?’

‘I’m nine of ten,’ he says, disappearing out the front to deliver a beer to someone before taking the stage. One minute he’s a toddler in a 1980s lounge room, learning from a shoal of siblings how to hold court. The next, he’s that soft, dishevelled post-hipster again, singing break-up songs while his maybe-new girlfriend beams at him from behind a glass of red.

stacks on

2011-11-23T13:58:00.001+11:00

seven lemons

2011-11-04T23:35:00.003+11:00

p: everyone's got their price. what's yours?
k: seven lemons.
p: seven lemons? what do i get for seven lemons?
k: you get to give me seven lemons. a day. no, a week. make that eight lemons because one always goes mouldy. and they have to be organic.
p: it's not my problem if one of them goes mouldy. and you don't just get seven lemons, it's a price. you have to give something in exchange.
k: how about a reasonable chance of regular loving?
p: i want more than that. i want your car. and i want another car to pick up the lemons in, because i don't want to pick up the lemons in your car. and two boxes to put the lemons in. and $50,000.
k: how about we get a lemon tree in a pot somewhere north facing until we find some ground to put it in. and you can wee in it whenever you like. i'll wee in it too. and while we're waiting for the lemons to grow you can buy them and sometimes i'll buy them too.
p: and the reasonable chance of regular loving?
k: as long as it's organic, you get that too. but if we want lemon meringue we'll need more lemons. seven lemons is the bedrock.
p: you're a bedrock.

no frills spirals

2011-10-27T21:31:00.000+11:00

going nowhere

2011-10-27T18:59:00.002+11:00

me: i'm reading short stories by Maile Malloy, all these little moments and people trapped in time. there's no storylines, no big what happens nexts. i love stories that don't go anywhere.

nan: well ... i wonder what that says? i think i'd like the new house & garden.

four items

2011-10-22T11:15:00.001+11:00

mate, it's only four items. before you leave the joint, you check you've got your phone, your keys, your wallet and your smokes. it's all you need.

yeah i'll do that from now on. so can i have one of your smokes?

licking the envelope

2011-10-20T21:36:00.000+11:00

oh, i can kick shit with the best of them, but can i just say that licking envelopes is gross. i hate doing that shit.

great fitzroy soy spill

2011-10-18T18:10:00.000+11:00

pleasure state

2011-10-08T18:16:00.002+11:00

There’s a 360-degree view of trees and sea, but pete stares at me while I read jonathan franzen on the couch. Then I catch myself in the kitchen watching him read the paper in the afternoon light – I half expect him to offer a running commentary on the world as he soaks up the news, but he doesn’t.

Each time I leave the room, a past love flashes into my mind with little reminders of the first moments of that first falling. Like writing my 1999 Christmas to-do list on M's chest in our first week together, then staying in bed for days, blurred, indelible. Or waking in the night to study his face while he slept.

For once, these rememberies aren’t crowding out new love. Like moving house dislodges thoughts of all the shifting seasons that have come before, I am connecting gently with the last time I really felt this.

We’re putting on boots to walk through the forest. Razorbacks call out like mutant villains from either side of the path and I’m waiting for them to charge out of the bush and eat our internal organs, but pete says they’re only marking their territory and I choose to believe him.

I watch our shadows touch on the great ocean road and remember M and me on the beach after swimming in phosphorescence, the moment I said, ‘I reckon we’ve got legs’.

This is the state of falling in love.

battery samoyeds

2011-10-01T12:30:00.002+10:00

i'm standing next to a three-time 1980s AFL grand final player. i've sunk three glasses of prosecco and all i've had to eat is a couple of bites of paté on toast so i'm a little graspy as we try to find some common ground other than pete.

'marvellous dimensions, this room. imagine when there were people living in it,' he says.

'there's tunnels all under fitzroy, a chef up the road told me. they run beneath smith street between all the old warehouses ands shops,' i say. i can hear myself barrelling into a high maintenance anecdote but the only alternative is silence.

'i'd say they all have cellars at the very least, that's how they kept things cool.' he smiles at me from beneath his handlebar moustache. there's still some goodwill there. i'm trying to contain the inner tripper but she's clearly keen to get a guernsey.

'we were eating dumplings at a place just up the road when the owner took a delivery of all this dog meat. big bags of the stuff they had to carry in on their shoulders. which was fine, but then he came over and felt he had to explain himself. "samoyeds," he said. "we're breeding samoyeds in the cellar, that's why we need so much dog meat." then he told us about all the tunnels underneath smith street. now i can't go past that place without thinking about all the battery samoyeds in the cellar.'

*silence*

'that sounds stranger out loud than it does in my head. i'd better check it actually happened.'

i spoke with him earlier

2011-09-24T12:19:00.000+10:00

It doesn't look like the anchor has had a long day until he throws to the pre-record.

an earlier version of him, more freshly caffeinated, maybe. the skin tighter under his eyes, his forehead softer. He's pinker at cheek, jowls firmer against his jaw.

Grilling complete, they cut back to the studio.

It's a barely perceptible shift, this passing of hours in seconds, but i can tell. at least one pigment cell in one strand of hair in that Lego haircut has died in the scrolling back and forth.

we get to jump around in time.

planning day

2011-09-23T07:36:00.002+10:00

we should be multitasked across the validity of our function.

weinmeisterstrasse

2011-09-05T15:04:00.000+10:00

broken hearted soliloquy

2011-08-04T22:22:00.000+10:00

hot winter night, 1.50am

mike? can you hear me? i know you can hear me. i can't go without seeing you. i missed your messages today and i tried to call you back but you didn't answer. come on. you were at my house today and you're always allowed in. mike let me in for two minutes that's all.

i know you think i'm insane. i'm probably a bit insane. i just need to look at you. i put a note under your door. just read the note. i can't leave. i'll just walk round and round the block. you could make this whole thing stop in five seconds. two minutes. if you're thinking i'm a nutcase and i'll tire myself out soon you're wrong. i'm just going to sit here until you let me up. just for a minute. two minutes.

mike i'm going to throw myself off the balcony. i just need to see you before you go. i don't even know where you're going. that box of stuff you left for me. god it's heartbreaking.

have i fucked you up so much? do you not think i've felt any pain over the past few years? i'm here. i'm insane and a whore i know, but i'm not going anywhere until i've seen you. i just really need to see you.

if i had anything higher than this i'd throw myself off it. this is bullshit. come on. i can't eat. i can't sleep. i can't do anything. just five minutes. two minutes. i don't want your neighbour to yell at me again but i don't care now. ok i care a little bit but i don't care.

mike i'm not out of it. you think i'm insane, i'm not insane, ok maybe a bit insane.

repeat for one hour, then footsteps on the stairs and a muffled conversation. quiet.

mike i don't know if you can hear me but i'm sorry and you'll never hear from me again. i'm done. i'm completely done.

Keep away from naked flame

2011-07-16T15:50:00.007+10:00

They're selling Burlesque Hour undies after the show. You going to get some? asks A, smiling.

Nah, I don’t reckon they’re 100% cotton.

Frilly undies are ruined for me forever by those labels in cheap kids' pyjamas:

FLAMMABLE
Keep away
from naked flame.

A terrifying warning for a six year old, who now has to face the horror of her own mortality every night. Especially after she’s seen what happens to the hem when she curls too close to the heater. The smell of burning plastic. Static fabric crinkling into hard waves.

I’m naked beneath my pyjamas. Am I going to die one night while I’m sleeping, or watching the Muppets?

In the morning, Dad makes a stack of thin pancakes, which we’ll roll into leaky tubes and eat with our hands. It’s a bright Jindalee morning. At the frying pan, Dad sings: ‘why do all my girlfriends spontaneously combust?’

I crack the sugar crust on half a grapefruit. Dad, what does spontaneously combust mean?

techno

2011-07-10T23:22:00.000+10:00

I don't mind if it goes all night,
I just like it to go somewhere.

second date country

2011-06-14T21:21:00.004+10:00

i walk through fields of fun and get through sticky wickets without so much as a hand in the small of my back. shop for veggies for one and freeze the leftovers, turn up to gigs and find my lovelies already at the roundest table with a chair for me. watch my favourite couples reach for each other on the beach, and feel happy.

it's in second date country that i feel the lonely. even with the wine and cheese and the dancing and the romancing and the sea just there. i see a protective film slide over his eyelids and my heart hardens in reply. the room is full of ex-girlfriends. i want to disappear into the guardian and find soft things there but it's all boredom and disaster, so reading the science of my own heart i get in the family wagon and drive home with Local and/or General for company.

it's a wonder that the people they find each other at all.

appropriating radiolab

2011-06-06T17:02:00.000+10:00

oh, your dog went missing? that's terrible. but maybe in the last few minutes of its tiny life it heard a pack of wild coyotes howling and went out to greet them and felt wild again, before the cubs all tore him to pieces and ate him.

[silence]

oh sorry, i didn't mean it like that. it's just this thing it happened on long island to this chick who's a reporter for radiolab, you know radiolab right? well she had this dog and they got a holiday house and the dog always stayed on the porch and the coyotes moved in at the same time and they'd hear them howling at night and they were wild right, started to bite little kids and eat ducks and stuff, and one night they got home and their dog was gone from the porch but they heard him wimper in the ti trees behind their house ok maybe not ti trees but bush or forest or whatever they have on long island. anyway they heard howling coyotes and the dog wimpering then silence. no trace. but after all these years she got to thinking maybe at the end he really got to be a wild thing you know? cos we keep them like small things but maybe the wild can come back. i dunno.

so yeah. i'll send you the link. anyway sorry about your dog. have you put up posters?

punch drunk

2011-05-28T08:49:00.002+10:00

'i've got a new rating system for first dates. it's based on how many times you want to punch the guy in the head. a five is pretty bad. last night, three times i wanted to punch the guy in the head. i mean really, who says: "when you point the finger at someone, there are still three fingers pointing back at yourself"?'

a dandy morning

2011-05-26T07:14:00.000+10:00

my beautiful laundrette

2011-05-14T17:14:00.000+10:00

toxic

2011-05-10T20:35:00.000+10:00

she's staring at her phone with a hand over her mouth. life feels messy while i wait for the photocopier.

'it was my birthday a fortnight a go. no, last week,' she says. she looks top right when remembering facts. 'i got a bunch of flowers but i was trashed and forgot them. another friend took them home, but the next day her cat ate them and got sick. we made jokes about it and everything. but she just posted on facebook that the cat's liver failed and they have to put her down.'

colour printing, A3. why would a cat eat flowers? what kind of flowers kill a cat?

'lilies, man. they're toxic. but can she stop posting on facebook? i feel bad enough already and i want to comment but i can't or anything because it's my fault i mean it's not my fault but it's my fault, you know?'

helmet

2011-05-10T20:12:00.000+10:00

'the helmet law is dumb, they should get rid of it. every time i've fallen off my bike drunk, it's not a helmet i need. a face guard, maybe. cricket pads even.'

human resources

2011-05-07T10:16:00.001+10:00

'we like the employees to consider ...'

how being human will affect their work outputs.

cat's bum

2011-04-22T14:56:00.003+10:00

'show me your cat's bum,' says kapa. he's tousling my hair, scrunching in new layers, prowling round the cut with scissors. catches sight of the other hairdressers in a network of reflections. a twinkle between them.

i realise i'm stony faced in the mirror, bags under the bags under my eyes under the fluourescent lights. resisting the desire to fuss and be fussed over.

'everyone does it, when you're styling them. they can't help it,' he says. it's a trade secret. i summon a pout like i'm six years old and my little brother has tippy-toed into the lounge room wearing my leotard. kapa smiles, triumphant.

'go on then, kapa, show us yours?' says the hairdresser at left angles to me. kapa puts his chin up, tilts his head to the side and goes all marilyn monroe for a millisecond. i see it bounce off the mirrors, but mostly i get the view up his nose. then he's all shy tattoos and product again.

shoppo

2011-04-17T11:39:00.000+10:00

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

- TS Eliot via Jess Beats & Ivan E Coyote

batmania

2011-04-17T11:05:00.000+10:00

inactive profile

2011-04-16T18:31:00.001+10:00

I told a bad lie Ms Fitzy. I ain't 41. I'm 48. Sorry, writes the botoxed catholic who built his own beach shack. i wake to this email. it's almost as bad as killing a native cockroach first thing in the morning.

so many holey lives, captured on swinging bridges or waterskis. in helmets and coffee shops. i look past the doorway, past the glass of red and diamond knit jumper into the bare room behind. follow a smile to the woman cropped out of the picture. scroll past the guy who likes blizzards, the one who promises to take me skiing. settle for a sec on the middle-aged ambo, his face a colour that discloses how often he really drinks. the sadness in the potbelly. soft Donna from dromana hand-feeding a big cat.

I have competing teams batting for me - one says everyone lies about their age on here and the other says that if you tell a lie about something like that, people will think you'll lie about anything. Argh. Anyway, if you can forgive me I'd love to stay in contact. If not, I understand.

rsvp aint a confession booth, christo. you're best to go to God for your penance.

babushka

2011-04-04T10:06:00.005+10:00

'i know because you came from me,' says mum. we're in the car outside a bakery in healesville about ten years ago. finely tuned to the key of manipulation, i'm about to strike out, tell her that i'm my own person, that she can't know what happens in my head.

but then ... i've been with her since the beginning. part of me, nestled inside mum inside nan. babushka.

i was with her on her first day of school, unenrolled because nan couldn't spell her name. i was there when mystery illness put her in bed for weeks. when she won that catholic beauty pageant and spent summer with the nuns in PNG, her ankles swelling as she hit the tarmac. when the head prefect opened the passenger door on his luminous green renault.

and nan, before she set about broiling meat in the kitchen, she carried my mum through her own cold tasmanian childhood. as her kin killed blackfellas and she lost two fingers in the butcher's shop and my grandfather came courting in the picture theatre where she sold tickets every night.

all the women, tag teaming. reaching back as far back as women go.

ok ok, you know because i came from you. well then you should also know it's time for vanilla slice.

freedom road

2011-04-02T10:05:00.000+11:00

'i'm really glad it's opening night, it means i'm that much closer to closing night.'

on alphas

2011-03-21T08:14:00.000+11:00

'you need leaders, yeah? otherwise it's just community community community, pfaffy pfaf pfaf.'
- lolli

old (f)arts

2011-03-17T22:47:00.000+11:00

'I'm not a tape recorder for other people's stories. the trick is to strip it back and make what they're saying sound like talking. that's the art of it.'
– Helen Garner on writing

psyched for the fete

2011-03-17T22:43:00.000+11:00

'i did snow cones last year, but i didn't really know anyone. this year i'm with the drunk dutch pancake girls, should be fun. someone else can squirt the batter and do the icing sugar though, i'll handle the money.'

thinking big and that

2011-03-15T18:55:00.000+11:00

after the baptism

2011-03-07T13:24:00.002+11:00

'there might be some surprises waiting for you on the other side,' the priest tells my grandfather and excuses himself, leaving pa and his zimmer frame directly under a suspended sculpture of jesus, bleeding in bronze all over himself from that crown of thorns.

mum walks past. is trapped. pa starts shaking his finger at her almost immediately. His eyes narrow, leaning in close. accusing her of something.

nearby nan notices aloud that the priest seemed to escape a serve. but now it's my mum who's copping it and something snaps: she's got enough going on today, least of all this violent church. and we've suffered this mean old man for too long.

he might be 80, but he won't win an argument with me. i'm chunder the third and i've done more work on myself.

don't stop me now

2011-02-27T17:16:00.000+11:00

cleaning lady

2011-02-20T09:31:00.001+11:00

'the doctor told me i'll never vac again.'

'nan, that's awesome.'

'it's terrible!' she says. her eyes are filling with water. 'i should be able to dust and that, but nothing, you know ... up high or down low. nothing heavy. the first time the cleaner came in, oh i cried! but she's getting better. it's a new house to her and that.'

before she put her shoulder out, nan would get up at 4am and do the ironing. wipe the skirting boards, dust the mantle piece. make the corners uncomfortable for spiders. put the washing on. bleach the bathroom. run the vac over spotless floors. when the sun came up she'd walk to ivanhoe and clean for other people, back in the day.

no wonder she makes short work of a box of liptons.

'so how you keeping busy if you can't clean, nan?' it's noisy at the venuto club. she's waiting for her kingfish fillet, me for the rib eye. she doesn't hear me, or just doesn't answer.

first floor (kitchen)

2011-02-10T07:37:00.000+11:00

'there's warm scones over there!'

'i'll cancel the muffin.'

reading lolita in the heat

2011-01-31T09:37:00.000+11:00

"Exceptional virility often reflects in the subject's displayable features a sullen and congested something that pertains to what he has to conceal."
- vladamir nabakov, lolita.

had a lover like that once. a couple of them.

beach house

2011-01-27T09:59:00.008+11:00

the audience heaves with awkward as beach house takes the stage. the band heaves with awkward too: bies thinks they're wearing wigs, that the set has come straight from Countdown circa 1982. i'd think they were miming except for the reverb.

they fill the room with metallic. she sounds like blood and slides between worlds, gets paid to do it while i'm tangled in late 1990s day-glo decor at the hi fi that's long been packed down.

i'll take care of you / if you ask me to / in a year or two.

the guy in front of me reaches out for his girl, involuntarily. dopamine and oxytocin surge through them. it's my favourite chemical moment in this whole venue.

where's ya wheelie bin

2011-01-23T10:24:00.000+11:00

they've turned a recycling bin on its side and sit talking in the dark as i get home. i've been wanting to judge new love all evening, and feel glad that sound rises so i can eavesdrop from the balcony.

'i want to take you with me, but get your shit together.' he's wasted. there's silence. 'just get some fucking qualifications, veronica.'

she sobs.

'why are you crying? what's sad is that it had to come to this for me to tell you.'

'i'm crying because it's true.' she can hardly get the words out. he doesn't have to be such an arse about it. i feel like statler and waldorf, stage left in the muppets: gotta go to bed before i start heckling.

lone hippy at ceres

2011-01-22T15:55:00.000+11:00

'it's dead out here, mate. I got here real early and only sold 13 bucks worth. the stall cost me ten so I've made three dollars. I feel like killing myself.'

'mate, there's 12,000 punters at rainbow serpent this weekend, that's where the money is.'

public sculptures

2011-01-19T22:14:00.000+11:00

we're on the road to geelong, going past a public sculpture. 'ah ha, gynies!'

'they're supposed to be decomposing leaves, not gynies.'

'gynies!' there's quiet while we listen to my new mix tape, playing slow like when the batteries run down in your walkman.

'i guess most public sculptures do look like boobs or erections,' says mr bies, on reflection. 'or anuses.'

'what about the yellow peril? the vault. which one's that?

'none of 'em. that's why it got rejected.'

about today

2011-01-11T22:54:00.017+11:00

'everyone in this place has a beard except us,' says Is. we’re in the back row. one guy has both arms above his head, index fingers poking holes in the air. his silhouette against the stage lights makes me want to cry. i check my body. not drunk, not wired, not sedated. not stressed or anxious. it’s something else, this feeling, unfamiliar.

hey, are you awake / yeah i'm right here / well can i ask you about today / how close am i to losing you / how close am i to losing.

i feel the past year surge, wordless. panic, check my assets: i’m with people i love. i’ve got a home to go to and i can pay the rent. best of all, i’m listening to matt berninger recount what it feels like to be just this side of total breakdown, and come out singing.

leave your home / change your name / live alone / eat your cake … hangin' from chandeliers / same small world / at your heels

it’s happiness i’m feeling. i know clearly that the sky will not fall down. even if it starts pouring with rain inside the palais right now, we’ve nailed this moment, The National and me.

all the very best of us / string ourselves up for love

bureaucrats in stairwell

2011-01-11T21:17:00.000+11:00

'you know Hugo, right?'

'with the white hair? looks like the incredible hulk?'

'yeah. up on the eighth floor.'

pink bits

2011-01-09T19:35:00.000+11:00

black dog rocks

2011-01-02T23:37:00.002+11:00

the black dog grins as it runs, lead in its mouth. close behind is a young guy on rollerblades, topless, and on his right, like the trunk of an old tree in motion, a woman in a wheelchair. then, a dude riding goofy on a skateboard with one hand on the wheelchair, his black mullet streaming as he brings up the rear.

i file this information so deep in my brain that it vanishes while i'm spooning tea leaves into the pot, waiting for the kettle. later, in the back of the Bies' wagon on the way to black rock, we see another dog carrying its own lead and i remember the view from my kitchen window this morning.

'well that sounds like a family, right there,' says Mrs Bies. i get another vision: in ten years from now i'll still be doing this, tagging along on their family outings, by then sharing the back seat with their little ones, amid mouldy fruit and half-chewed rusks.

another summer at half-moon bay.

darwin museum

2010-12-31T18:03:00.002+11:00

the lesser labiaboxsaurus croc dines strictly on the ladies.

grace darling

2010-12-29T22:01:00.000+11:00

the body knows

2010-12-28T10:22:00.000+11:00

"some say the soul informs the body. but what if we were to imagine for a moment that the body informs the soul, helps it adapt to mundane life: parses, translates, gives the blank page, the ink and the pen with which the soul can write upon our lives?

"suppose the body is a god in its own right, a teacher, a mentor, a certified guide? then what?

"is it wise to spend a lifetime chastising this teacher who has so much to give and teach? do we wish to spend a lifetime allowing others to detract from our bodies, judge them, find them wanting? are we strong enough to refute the party line and listen deep, listen true to the body as a powerful and holy being?

"... in the wild psyche, body is understood as a being in its own right, one who loves us, depends on us, one to whom we are sometimes mother, and who sometimes is mother to us."

i started to tell mum about this passage in women who run with the wolves and she cut me off. oh, i never read that at the time. it seemed too fashionable. but if it's any good maybe i'll read it after you.

if i'd read this in 1992, it might have saved me a lot of fuss.

town bikes

2010-12-27T12:11:00.000+11:00

tram stop

2010-12-25T01:29:00.002+11:00

What i want ... more than anything ... is for you ... to fuck off.

ok fair enough, bleeding man lying on the footpath in the foetal position with your head rigid as though there's a pillow underneath. i did plough in thinking some dudes were kicking you round. they left, i tried to nudge you upright. white hair, torn forehead and knee.

those eyes, i know them. you were young and hot and funny or spiritual or something other magnetic. now a bit old and still drunk and watching to see what i'll do next. night.

also it's christmas and people are a bit nuts. yelling into phones while crossing the road. generally, with or without family, equally nuts.

i hope you get home. maybe prop yourself up against a wall.

town bikes

2010-12-24T14:42:00.000+11:00

blue light limbo

2010-12-18T11:15:00.005+11:00

i brush past her at the dessert table as she mentions the womyn's collective. must be one of R's friends from uni - post feral, shaved head. cute. trying to stay positive about this whole man-wife wedding caper.

later, in the line for limbo, she leans back to me. i can do this. i've been to enough blue light discos, yeah? she says. it hardly matters cos lolli will kick all our arses – i've seen her limbo under a coffee table before – but i like that she's taken her shoes off.

growing up lesbian in the goddamn suburbs. bummer, but she got there. here.

my spine hurts.

litchfield in the wet

2010-12-15T09:30:00.000+11:00

Wangi Falls is really hammering over that rockface, the rockpool full to overflowing. there's a big sign, says WANGI CLOSED. shitballs, thwarted mission. but it's still an awesome sight. the creek is flooded and the salties have moved in.

we picnic on the grass in 90% humidity, smashing a couple of gluten-free wraps and promising to write to Freedom Foods to ask why they call them wraps if they won't. watch backpackers pile off a tourist truck after their guide. he's a tough nut who wants a durry and a chance with one of the European girls in short shorts, but they're all bothered by the heat, busy with their SLRs and water bladders.

we get going before the salties catch wind of toddler flesh. motivated also by the idea of a frosty fruit or calypo or even – if it's all they've got – a plain lemon icypole.

Monsoon cafe and caravan park (no cats)

Something calls from the tall trees, lush green itself maybe. on the verandah, a backpacker with his back to me, eating. he puts his elbow on the table and turns to study me. judges me to be of no interest. returns to his baked beans.

sliding door. i find the frosty fruits, try to pay the concierge, get ushered to another counter, next to the bain marie, in front of the door through to the deep fryers. everything festooned with christmas decorations.

"Have you come from Wangi?" asks the cashier, hot and German.

"Yep."

"Was it busy there?"

"Ah, it's closed, so ..."

"Ya, we know, but was it busy?"

"Kind of. There were a few of those ... tourist things ..." I say, trailing off, counting out coins.

"Cars?" he asks.

"Ah, yep." embarassed that Mr Dictionary has abandoned me again. "Ok, see ya."

"Ya."

We take the dirt road back to darwin past Berri Springs, 4WDing thru a rushing river listening to The Wiggles.

eldorado

2010-12-06T14:36:00.000+11:00

my toenails are full of festival mud, my head holds the peace that comes from waking up in the bush and brushing my teeth while staring up at trees and sky. a weekend of finding my forest feet, floating down the river, heckling hippies from the chai tent.

i pull into the carpark to find a ute in my spot, but i can't find my post-it notes anywhere in the family wagon. probably best. i take a deep breath and summon an affirmation:

i'm not the crazy lady with many cats, bathing in a wheelbarrow out the back and striking young whippersnappers with her umbrella. not yet. i can handle this without infringing anyone's human rights. surely.

the ute has a mobile number on the back. i dial it, only a bit surly.

me: mr anglesea landscaping design co, i just got home from camping to find your ute in my spot etc.

father: oh that's my son. I'll call him now and get him out.

son: action. car moved.

being nice kinda helped. sometimes it's easier to go with the rapids instead of fighting the flow.

darebin council ute

2010-12-06T14:14:00.000+11:00

la nina

2010-11-25T11:05:00.000+11:00

this summer will be an advertisement for some kind of coffee liqueur. sultry women barely wearing their singlets, beads of sweat, the fondling of melting ice cubes. and then the warm rain. the laughing and the dancing.

his father's son

2010-11-23T07:27:00.000+11:00

the four-year-old hammers a nail into a piece of wood. his grandfather comes over.

what are you doing, mate?

fucked things for fucked people, replies the four-year-old. keeps hammering.

after eltham

2010-11-22T09:18:00.000+11:00

my leftovers

2010-11-13T10:59:00.000+11:00

"The leftover sausages in the fridge are mine," she says out the driver's side window, and repeats herself as he comes around from behind the car. He nods, now hungry, and waits in his office-crushed suit for the traffic to pass.

She says it without malice, but studies him with narrowed eyes under that shiny black bob as he crosses the top end of Brunswick Street. Might as well add: "so keep your hands off, fat boy".

It's a Volvo he just got out of, with the numberplate WTF. She's off somewhere and he's going home to eat around the leftover sausages.

alexander technique

2010-11-12T09:57:00.000+11:00

How your body holds itself is its own aching history.
- Andy Jackson, The Dead, in Going Down Swinging Issue 30.

plutonia on cromwell

2010-11-09T17:06:00.003+11:00

i am nude and about to get dressed. she is dressed and about to be nude, but it's her strong voice i recognise first. it echoes round the change room and wrinkles the decades: she clarifies the steps for taking a japanese bath; calls to order the rattiest girls in her classroom (me amongthem); summons her kids and their friends (me included) to the backyard for tea.

i catch glimpses of her as i dress and dry my hair. she looks the same. my hair is long again as though theintervening years never happened – neither the dreads nor the shorn advertisement to lesbians. in the ladyhawke moment before shegets into the bath and i go upstairs, we hug and say hello. get told off for talking too loud.

all the way through my massage i think about her son … how weran riot in playgrounds at dusk. how cool i thought he was as Fagin in year eight. how hekept me sane in doncaster, knocked on my window til i answered. stood beside me when i most wanted to vanish. how we fell apart. about platonic male friends and how close I still hold them. howfar away.

i come downstairs and there he is, waiting for his mum,sitting cross-legged with his own son (older now than when his father and i first met). i kneel awkwardly until his son offers me a headrest. i could do with a headrest - my head is too full of information and fuzzyfrom this cold - but I don’t know what to do with it. they both look beautiful andkind.

i take flight.

coming back from the island

2010-11-07T21:26:00.003+11:00

figuring out old-new friendships over seven kinds of cheese, wine and seafood, sandstone and sea views.

we walk to pyramid rock, over pigface and fox bait. down the cliff to rock pools where we find lady-garden anemones and starfish mid-feast. dead baby seals on the rocks and gulls beak down in the sand. dad jokes wash up at high-tide alongside half a surfboard and a computer: somebody crashed surfing the internets.

i haven't been a passenger since May. not in a driving way, at least. maybe on weekends away.

driving home alone tonight, slightly wired by sleeping platonic, late lunch lasagne, RRR and iced tea, i come home you, tradie vehicle, in my spot. my voice cracking while i leave a message on the landline signwritten on your truck. hi mate. you've parked in my spot. stop it. it's fkn annoying.

old punk

2010-10-28T07:58:00.001+11:00

On growing up in Canberra:

"Sure, I had some great experiences, but I'd trade them in for some good parenting and support any day."

world map tetris

2010-10-27T07:54:00.003+11:00

the cartographer hears a confession over crepes: i make tetris games of world maps. brazil fits into africa, see. madagascar belongs with mozambique. papua tucks into the gulf, new zealand hugs the eastern seaboard.

so how do we fit together? what does that mean for us?

the cartographer mops up chocolate and strawberries and cream, and follows my eye to the map on the wall. "I know something of how that all works," he says, wistful, and disappears into his own world.

Polite cyclist

2010-10-25T09:25:00.000+11:00

To that guy I see around over the years, mostly with your dark hair under a helmet, framing that square jaw and well-adjusted smile.

We cross paths on the bike highway and find ourselves in the queue together at the bottle shop while it pelts down outside, or on the back deck at a party. I am glad of your sensible conversation at two am. I passed you yesterday on the footpath on St Georges Road, and at CERES a while back I set eyes on your partner and the small children you summon in every conversation.

You seem like a kind man. But please don't brandish my name like a weapon, showing me how sharp your memory is. I like you. Put your memory away, or prompt mine. Talk about yourself in the third person or something.

Colosseum on Collins

2010-10-20T21:59:00.000+11:00

"So he looked up and his nose was just ... gone," a businessman tells his Blackberry, his face a matrix of broken capillaries. "Blood spurting ten foot in the air. Blood just everywhere. Ah, it was terrible. The worst thing I've seen in sport for a long time. No nose. Just terrible."

He hangs up and disappears into Centre Way, a flash of navy pinstripes fighting to the front of the queue for his lunchtime baguette.

next time you get towed too

2010-10-18T10:28:00.001+11:00

good old collingwood forever

2010-09-22T11:10:00.000+10:00

crossing gertrude

2010-09-07T09:09:00.000+10:00

She's got her hand on the horn behind me. She wants to turn left but i'm going straight, and there's a stream of traffic. she just has to wait.

I've pulled back my mitten top and formed a middle finger before i've even turned around. Just wait.

Hand still hard on the horn.

She looks like a Collingwood supporter. maybe i should put my middle finger down and concede defeat, but she's riding that horn and i'm more stubborn this morning than i've felt in a long time, and let's face it, i barrack for the pies too, at heart.

the passenger door opens. wow. they really are Collingwood supporters. missing tooth. sunken cheeks, dark eye sockets. tracksuit. i really shouldn't be fucking with them on the corner of the flats like this.

"I wouldn't fuck ya with my dog's dick, ya ugly cunt."

There's a break in the traffic, and i'm off.

epworth eastern

2010-09-05T19:19:00.000+10:00

"Your hair looks good, Nance," says Nan, not quite sure. Nance's hair is cut short. a tube spools out from under her nightie, draining light-red liquid from her lung into a machine gurgling at her feet. She's lost so much weight she looks ten years old. like a tomboy.

"You think? Jim hates it. I went down the Mall before I came to hospital, and I said no more perms. i can't be bothered," says Nance. she's tugging at her admission bracelet. Jim shifts uncomfortably in his seat, hand on walking stick. He does hate it, you can tell, but finally Nance won't hear it. I wanna punch the air say yeah.

I can feel Nan, my mum's mum, getting self conscious, needing to justify a commitment to her own fragile inch-thick fro. my grandmothers have both gone to the hairdresser at the Mall in West Heide for half a century.

"I have to perm mine," says Nan finally. "I've got a big bald spot at the back." she giggles. shy. I've heard it before: it's one of those statements that lock the Arnold women into their routines. like when a waitress puts a big plate of food in front of my mum. i can't eat all that she always says, shifting her gaze from me to the waitress to the food like she's unsure who needs to hear it most.

it makes me eat all mine, and then some. just to test my genetics.

next time you get towed

2010-08-30T21:32:00.000+10:00

do you mind if i park in your garage in
doncaster while you inconvenience me?

concrete blocks

2010-08-27T23:36:00.000+10:00

sometimes after a downpour, it rains for hours inside the half-built Artist apartments.

there's a fancy new block of flats a bit further along, past the union club hotel. windows like lit fishbowls at night. a guy in one of the windows tonight: largely nude, from what i can see. holding a paint brush, staring at an easel with his head to one side. not hot, not not hot.

just a dude painting nude at 6.30pm on a cold friday night.

smelly shop

2010-08-27T23:04:00.000+10:00

"Where's my poor woman," says the shopper, swinging around with a moisturiser in each hand, her eyes falling on a saleswoman up the back, misting organic hair sprays with another customer. The attendant at the counter shrugs and smiles softly, then goes back to wrapping a scented candle. "My poor woman, I abandoned her because I was undecided and now that I need her, she's abandoned me..." says the woman, her handbag sagging.

stripping in reverse

2010-08-15T15:48:00.000+10:00

"It's the fixies people are stripping right now. No wonder - some of them are riding round on $1600 cranks. It takes about seven minutes to strip that."

"Hate fixies." [silent agreement]

"How long would it take to put gears on a fixie, if it's locked to a post?"

"We should do that."

saturday in the car park

2010-08-10T20:16:00.000+10:00

saturday in the car park behind my block of flats. me and the camry come back from the market, string bag full of white fruit and veg, and stopped short of practicing parking by an interloping black commodore in my space.

the notes i write for windscreens are terser every weekend. at first, 'hi! i think you've parked in my spot! please call me when you go so i can move my car' has given way to: 'next time you get towed [gddm fkr].'

swearing like tourettes itself. where the fk am i going to park, fkn brunswick st etaggers gdm your brunching ... gated communities now i get it ... fk fk fk every fkn saturday a new fkn commodore. that type of thing.

i look up at the flats. a wall of windows catches the full winter sun. a girl on the first floor sits in the window, long brown hair gleaming toppling down. a bare leg drawn up. if she's painting her nails in the sun, i think, she's a gdm parody of herself. but she isn't. she's squeezing her ingrown hairs.

at least something is right with the world.

people having fun downstairs

2010-07-22T14:53:00.000+10:00

or is it upstairs, i can't tell through the earplugs.

they fall over each other laughing as they come home, voices echoing up the crazy-paved stairwell - what i reckon, yeah i reckon ...

belting out the words to their favourite songs, one after the other until somehow sleep takes them. i can't remember the last time i did that.

train river, car river, river river

2010-07-19T22:13:00.000+10:00

i nearly clip a pedestrian as i come out into Kerr Street tucking fingers into mitten-tops and thinking: did I take my asthma spray? Am I masking early-onset alzheimers if I find a trick to remind me of this twice a day?

Weaving around construction workers and a splattered takeaway coffee at the ICI roundabout, hard right onto napier past the soccer field in the shadow of the commission flats. The first stretch of green for the morning. Everything is singing after the rain.

Through the hospital sector, orderlies unloading cardboard boxes while the fitzroy gardens shine orderly on the right.

Leaving the injured behind. Overtaking the human racehorses training in full-body onesies at the G while baby grand pianos go out of tune in front windows, underneath chandeliers, behind hedges.

Up up on top of the train river, over the car river where once a fox followed me home in the dead of night. And then, the river river. A reporter with noosed scarf warms her hands while the camaraman sets up a shot of the city.

That’s definitely a peacock calling from the botanic gardens … scooby doo and his gang would be huddled on this hill in their mystery machine punching cones and summoning the guts to leap the fence if they could only find a goddamn park amid the champagne-coloured cars.

A wedge of fawkner park appears before the wedge heels, knee-high boots and soft ponytails of south yarra.

And then I’m at work. Flanked the whole time by green. Uphill to go home, but then it’s all downhill from there.

at tiamo, in our 30s

2010-07-18T18:20:00.000+10:00

'are you seeing anyone at the moment?'

'yeah, my counsellor. she's awesome.'

'cool. i found a new naturopath in northcote, she's amazing.'

meals on wheels

2010-07-11T12:57:00.001+10:00

sixty-nine years, we've been married. if he went, i'd be ok. i don't know what he'd do without me though. a couple of weeks ago i just thought ... i've cooked every single meal, every day, breakfast, lunch, dinner. for other people, for 69 years. well i'm sick of it. someone else can do it. meals on wheels or something.

beaming

2010-07-08T10:10:00.000+10:00

magpie, i love your scrambled digital signal.

kelpie on kerr

2010-06-26T08:53:00.000+10:00

i shook the snow dome but instead of glitter it was filled with rocks. in this new dome i'll keep an eye on the sparkly stuff and the nearby bluestones.

pocket money

2010-06-23T15:40:00.000+10:00

in the morning fog on gertrude street, a 40-something tradie paces the footpath in his fluoros. he's on the phone, holding it hard against his head. all the muscles in his body are tense, his eyes red.

'You never gave me pocket money!' he says, sucking back tears like a five year old.

the way there

2010-05-19T13:03:00.000+10:00

the way back

2010-05-19T12:59:00.001+10:00

anzac day, high street

2010-04-25T20:38:00.000+10:00

'what's this, a crime scene, is it?'

'yeah. i take photos of crime scenes with my mobile.'

joe's organics

2010-04-21T23:11:00.001+10:00

new car. well not new, but from 1993 and not 1983. i drive it home from camberwell with both hands clamped on the wheel, thinking about geography, the cover note on my insurance and how bright lights are when you look into them.

stop off to get some organic bubbles and veggies for dinner. joe asks me if there is some reason to celebrate. ordinarily, there's no special reason for bubbles. but tonight ... maybe my grin betrays me. the same grin as with Nessie, and she ended up parched, smoking, towed and scrapped after three weeks and 400,000kms.

so joe says, 'i wish someone had told me this when i first started to drive. you must look in the distance as well as in front of you.' He repeats it over and over in different ways.

i'm pawing the potatoes. thumbing the tomatoes. i repeat after him each time, the same way i nod when people give directions, hoping they'll stop talking soon so i can work it out myself. someone else taught me that. i pay. he donates a bunch of goddamn mouldy bananas that'll have to be baked before they liquify, and takes me out on the street. i have the box in arms, and he is pointing at the traffic lights about three blocks away. they're green.

'you see?' he says, making a sweeping gesture that forces me to take in the entire horizon. victoria street northcote and everything above and beyond it. 'look at what's close, but also at what's far away.'

i go home, cook up the tomatoes, watch the last of madmen series three and fight with my girlfriend.

greek easter

2010-04-05T12:53:00.000+10:00

made in reservoir

thornbury to croxton

2010-04-02T09:59:00.000+11:00

an analogue TV falls face down in the cooch,

near a chair with the wicker kicked out of it

sick of each other, the watcher and the watched

futons and inner springs commingle in a stack

cottage cheese spills from a plastic milk bottle

saying come back to bed, we fixed you a warm drink

flirting on mitchell

2010-03-28T10:36:00.000+11:00

An old man shuffles along the footpath, pressed beige pants hoisted high on his belly, tufts of chest hair peeping over a white singlet.

He's gently waving a giant net, like one for catching butterflies or something the BFG would find useful in the place where all dreams is beginning.

'Come on, come on,' he coos softly, just out of swishing distance. His half-hearted comb over swirls in the smoggy vapour. There are fires burning somewhere in the state.

A little bird, uneasy in the big wide Brunswick, permits the courtship.

seagull on wellington

2010-02-26T12:52:00.000+11:00