your mama

nine of ten

‘Yeah I said grace 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

seven lemons

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

going nowhere

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

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

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

pleasure state

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

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

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

we should be multitasked across the validity of our function.

weinmeisterstrasse

broken hearted soliloquy

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

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

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

second date country

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

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

'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

my beautiful laundrette

toxic

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

'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

'we like the employees to consider ...'

how being human will affect their work outputs.

cat's bum

'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

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

inactive profile

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

'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

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

on alphas

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

old (f)arts

'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

'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

after the baptism

'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

cleaning lady

'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)

'there's warm scones over there!'

'i'll cancel the muffin.'

reading lolita in the heat

"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

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

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

'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

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

'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

'you know Hugo, right?'

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

'yeah. up on the eighth floor.'

pink bits

black dog rocks

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.