It's a flag

"You'll never succeed in idealising hard work. Before you can dig mother earth you've got to take off your ideal jacket. The harder a man works, at brute labour, the thinner becomes his idealism, the darker his mind."
-D.H. Lawrence

Bye bye Blogsy, it's been a blast,
j

Why Don't You Dance? By Raymond Carver

This is a great story. Click Here

I.N.R.I

Sunday afternoon at church,
A practice rare and trite.
Young Felix sits between his folks,
His collar starched and tight.

His hair is gelled with Schwarzkopf,
Shoes gleaming black by Dubbin.
God died in nineteen sixty-one,
But, alas, His priests are stubborn.

Outside, a surly Russian waits,
He's come two hours late.
He shows his window cleaner's badge,
The deacon pulls the gate.

“You should have been here at midday,”
Says the deacon to the cleaner.
“No complain to me,” he says,
“Take up with boss, Ms Gina.”

He turns the tap behind the church,
Fills his bucket to its brim,
Hears the songs of lambs and fields,
Of blood and wine and sin.

A bored young Felix cracks his spine,
Against the wooden pew.
His mother frowns and clips his ear.
His father kicks his shoe.

Now the Russian dips his sponge
Inside the rusty pail.
He climbs his ladder to its peak,
And prays it doesn't fail.

He sponges down the old stained glass,
Dead center of the gable,
Clears the dust from Christ's bare legs
And bird shit from his navel.

Felix sees the man at work,
Sees the window getting clearer,
And when the job is good and done,
The world outside seems nearer.

Ex-parrot

I remember that hot afternoon when it happened. I was thirteen, staying the week at my friend's farm. It was all sleeping bags, marshmallows and card games until that hot afternoon when, out in the paddock, under an old gum tree, my friend's father handed me the .22 and showed me how to load it; showed me how to hold it, firm against my right shoulder. “Feet further apart,” he said, “That's it.” The parrot was perched on a branch, about a meter out from the trunk and I remember how perfectly I could see it through the scope. I remember holding my breath, trying to make the cross-hair settle on its quivering, technicoloured chest. Every now and then, a bit of branch end would swing across in front of the bird and I would see it as a blurry wisp inside the circle of the scope. My friend's father was instructing me to squeeze the trigger: “Don't pull it,” he kept saying, “Squeeeeeeze it.” My friend was standing behind me: “C'mon, shoot, quick, before it gets away.” I squeezed the trigger and the gun jolted against my shoulder and the bird dropped to the dirt, like a rock. I can't remember the sound of the shot, whether it had made my ears ring or whether it had echoed off the nearby Stirling Range. I can't even remember if I had gone over to look at the dead bird afterwards. The only thing remaining in my memory of that hot afternoon is my friend looking at me hungrily, motioning for the gun with both hands, and his father saying, “Well done, James. You're a natural.”

Franzen #1

"A few months ago, I gave away my television set. It was a massive old Sony Trinitron, the gift of a friend whose girlfriend couldn’t stand the penetrating whistle the picture tube emitted. Its wood-look veneer recalled an era when TV sets were trying, however feebly, to pass as furniture—an era when their designers could still imagine them in a state of not being turned on. I kept it in inaccessible places, like the floor of a closet, and I could get a good picture only by sitting cross-legged directly in front of it and touching the antenna. It’s hard to make TV viewing more unpleasant than I did. Still, I felt the Trinitron had to go, because as long as it was in the house, reachable by some combination of extension cords, I wasn’t reading books."

-Opening paragraph of The Reader in Exile, an essay from Jonathan Franzen's How to be Alone

"All of a sudden it seemed as if the friends of mine who used to read no longer even apologized for having stopped. A young acquaintance who had been an English major, when I asked her what she was reading, replied: "You mean linear reading? Like when you read a book from start to finish?"

-Excerpt from Franzen's Why Bother? (The Harper Essay)

The Homely Underpinning for It All

"You know how much I used to love Plato. Now I realize he lied. The things of this world are not a reflection of the ideal, but the product of human blood and hard labor. It is we who built the pyramids, hewed the marble for the temples and statues, we who pulled the oars in the galleys and dragged wooden ploughs for their food, while they wrote dialogues and dramas…. we were filthy and died early deaths. They were aesthetic and carried on subtle debates and made art."

Letter from Auschwitz (a young poet to two poet friends) in Tadeusz Borowski "This way for the gas, Ladies and Gentleman"

Slow Point

We got out of the car and shut our doors in quick succession. The wind blew hard against the side of Matt’s afro. My hair was in my eyes. George dropped his towel in the wind, cursed, and went to collect it.

‘Come on, cunts.’ Said George, securing his towel around his shoulders.

Matt was pissing onto a patch of Spinifex. His piss was stretched out by the wind and broken into sparkling beads of an unhealthy shade of yellow.

We walked down the footpath and climbed the fence that stopped people entering the cliffs. We took off our shoes and walked along the jagged rocks of the cliff. There was the ocean all big and heaving bellow us. We used our shoes to protect our hands against sharp boulders and rock face. Our t-shirts clung to us in the wind. Matt stubbed his toe on a rock and yelped. Every now and then, sand would kick up in our faces and Matt’s afro would blow so far back it almost looked straight. George looked disgruntled, his face was scrunched up against the persistent wind.

‘These rocks are so shit,’ said George.

Matt and I nodded in agreement.

I made it to a patch of sand beneath a cave.

‘Fucking Slow Point!’ I shouted.

Matt and George made it over to the patch of sand. Matt shook his fists above his head awkwardly, like a champion swimmer; though, not sure if he’d actually won. George said nothing.

People had been in the cave before us; there was an old bong made out of a Gatorade bottle. There was a gutted mattress and a few half-buried beer bottles. We took off our t-shirts and stripped down to our underpants. George set his towel under a rock in the shade of the cave. We moved on our hands and feet to the water’s edge. Far out, the sea was choppy and there were white caps on the tops of the waves. We crept slowly; goose bumps had formed on all of us. A seagull flew by and looked at Matt and his hair and his underpants halfway down his arse. The seagull stopped flapping it’s wings and was instantly blown up and away by the wind. The water directly bellow us was shallow above the reef; the surface of the water was furry and wild and the waves smashed up against the rocks.

George lowered himself into the water, his shoulders up by his ears. Matt sat down on the rock and dangled his feet in the water. I stayed where I was.

‘Do your interpretive dance,’ I urged George.

‘I forgot how to do it.’

Matt laughed. Then George started moving around in the water like a retarded peacock on speed. He rolled his fists around each other and angled his Adam’s apple towards the sky. Matt’s laughter intensified. I joined in.

We were all in the water, moving out towards the horizon. The surface of the reef was soft and furry in parts. The water was cool. I kept stepping into holes and losing my balance. I ended up doggy-paddling instead. The others doggy-paddled too, towards the horizon. The water splashed up against our chins and wet the ends of our hair. We kept on paddling; it was our only option.

Gravy

By Raymond Carver (1938-1988)

No other word will do. For that's what it was.Gravy.
Gravy, these past ten years.
Alive, sober, working, loving, and
being loved by a good woman. Eleven years
ago he was told he had six months to live
at the rate he was going. And he was going
nowhere but down. So he changed his ways
somehow. He quit drinking! And the rest?
After that it was all gravy, every minute
of it, up to and including when he was told about,
well, some things that were breaking down and
building up inside his head. "Don't weep for me,"
he said to his friends. "I'm a lucky man.
I've had ten years longer than I or anyone
expected. Pure Gravy. And don't forget it."

To Your Son

Picture him good and clear in your mind’s eye. He stands in the doorway of a barbershop. His hair is freshly cut and shaped, and his face is smooth shaven - still red. He’s fresh out of the chair and there is moisture on the back of his neck. Yes, that’s right; picture him - with his neck still wet from the barber’s wet scissors and the wetness mixed in with the talcum powder from the barber’s brush. See how he lifts the collar on his coat to guard his neck from the breeze. Look at how he stands while he waits at the doorway – leaning slightly forward – checking the streets, left and right. Can you see how he draws his head in from the rain? How his broad shoulders tense up when a drop falls on his polished leather shoe? Watch him straighten his tie up to his neck, wipe his forehead with a clean white sleave and rock back and forth on his feet - checking the streets. And is that sleave sprayed with Old Spice? Sure it is, you can smell it through the rain.

And what type of man is he? Can you see? Is he timid, precarious? Or wild and arrogant? Is he a phoney? A sleaze? An aggressor? Surely not. No, no, he can’t be. Even his broad shoulders look harmless, the way he holds them. Why yes, he is clearly a foreign man. Can you see this in his face? This foreignness? Like there's no ground at his feet. Like he is adrift. Can you see it in his stance that he lives alone in a rented flat and drinks coffee and looks out the kitchen window and thinks to himself, Today is a good day for a haircut. Or, otherwise, Today I shall walk young Sooty, to the park. Or the beach or along the terrace and over to the markets, where they sell fresh vegetables and newly cut flowers. It’s all in his stance and gaze. Watch him. The foreigner. See how he blends in.

Look at him. He must be good with his dog, Sooty. Those gentle hands, lightly cupped bellow the cuff. You can see how he must crouch down to the dog’s level and scratch behind her ears - how he'd cup both hands beneath a running tap and let the young bitch lap at the miniature pool of cool water in his hands. Sooty and he are good together. You can picture it.

But notice, now, that he is waiting for someone. Another dog owner? Perhaps; but, surely, a woman. A lady. A new love. A girl who gets the blood pumping; who is worth getting a haircut for; who is worth waiting for in the doorway of a barber shop, in the cold - just out of reach of the rain. Can you see him, with his collar up? Waiting. Look closer. I urge you

Look into his thoughts. Are they of Sooty and the operation after the anti-freeze incident? Such an expensive operation. Are they of his empty apartment? The piles of unwashed dishes in the kitchen? Of the bills on the table by the front door? No, they cannot be. Not on this day. Not by a long shot. Today his thoughts remain fastened to one thing: The Girl, her white stockings with those funny floral patterns - her little grey shoes. Will she be wearing those same shoes today? They are old fashioned and look like those a nurse would wear in a hospital. But she pulls it off, he thinks. Boy does she pull it off. Look now. See how his eyebrows move as he thinks of this young lady, in her small grey shoes and funny white stockings. See the look of wanting admiration in his eyes. She’s a pin-up, he thinks to himself, that bouncy, curled hair and pastel skirt and freckles and that wonderful smile. Those lips, those full red lips. And that smile!

Here she comes now.

Snap

"Trying what?" cried Maury fiercely. "Trying to pierce the darkness of political idealism with some wild, despairing urge toward truth? Sitting day after day supine in a rigid chair and infinitely removed from life staring at the tip of a steeple through the trees, trying to separate, definitely and for all time, the knowable from the unknowable? Trying to take a piece of actuality and give it glamor from your own soul to make for that inexpressible quality it possessed in life and lost in transit to paper or canvas? ..."
-F. Scott. Fitzgerald.
The Beautiful and Damned, p. 256

The Playground Scene

George wiped away the mound of snow and sat down on the swing.
Push me, honey, he said, push me as hard as you can and then get the hell out of here.
She did as she was told. She even gave him a second push for good measure. Then she bolted. Through the gate and straight past the approaching men, who didn’t even look at her. George kicked his legs out and leaned back into a full-bodied glide. He tucked in his legs as he swung backwards and the cold air threw his hair forward around his face. The chains were hard and icy in his hands and his knuckles were numb. He swung high. The chains slackened when he reached his peak, then jerked tight as he came back down. He could feel it in his wrists. He swung higher and higher as the men approached from all around. They hopped over the gate. One of them pulled a knife from behind his back and pointed it towards George. George swung on, gaining speed. He closed his eyes. They’re hungry, he said to himself, but let the fuckers wait.

Animal Haikus

Thoroughbred ponies
Sneeze in the morning sunlight
By the old tin shed

A plump ginger cat
Dribbles on the carpet stairs
In an empty house

A baby Minke Whale
Swims behind its mothers pull
Through the calm Atlantic

A little red fox
Shakes dew from its soft red coat
By the tall Jack Pines

A weary brown mouse
Sleeps beneath fallen tree leaves
In a rain gutter

A tattered young wren
Is chased by a soaring crow
Over Claremont Lakes

A drunk teenage girl
Is fucked by a football star
In his new Ford Ute

These words are meant sympathetically.

‘He doesn’t eat honey because he thinks it’s degrading for bees.’

'Really?'

'Yeah. And he won't walk on carpet that's been made by animals, or anything like that. And his shoes are made of compressed plant fibers.'

‘Sounds like an ego thing to me.’

‘He writes poems, stories and essays about it too.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah. All about veganism.’

‘Does he try to force it upon others?’

‘I don't know. I haven’t read them. I suppose he feels he needs to justify things.’

‘I like honey.’

‘Yeah, me too.’

Spinning ends and beginnings

As the boys walked, they kicked stones and honkey nuts along the footpath. The nuts, when kicked right, spun on their axis and whirled off to one side before collapsing under their own spin. The wind was strong; it throttled the surrounding trees. A puddle on the road dipped and rippled under the weight of the weather.

Five blocks down from where a nut collapsed, rotated once and lay still by the curb; five blocks down, a figure skater spun on the ice at a million revs per second. She became a blur of pink. Cameras flashed in the audience and spray and chips of ice sparkled from around her spinning skate. Suddenly, she lost her balance and broke off into an awkward face plant.

The skating partner, who had released her into the brilliant pirouette, rushed in to help. He lost his balance and collided into her fragile pink frame.

The specialists called it a 'hairline' fracture, and bandaged her leg. She was in crutches for three weeks. The padding on the crutches gave her a rash.

Some time later, the leg fully healed and the rash long gone, Mick, who had kicked the honkey nut on that windy day, lay in bed while the ice skater played piano. He watched her small bare feet work the pedals of the piano and he felt safe and at peace. He felt ready to take things further.

Excerpt from "America" by Allen Ginsberg

America I've given you all and now I'm nothing.
America two dollars and twentyseven cents January 17, 1956.
I can't stand my own mind.
America when will we end the human war?
Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb.
I don't feel good don't bother me.
I won't write my poem till I'm in my right mind.
America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?
America why are your libraries full of tears?
America when will you send your eggs to India?
I'm sick of your insane demands.
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks?

Fragments in Defence of the Latter Halves of Half-Truths - By Perth poet, Simon Cox

Because I haven’t been entirely honest with you so far.

Because polygraph machines have wet dreams
about men from Crete, and trace out crudely
Freudian line charts in their sleep

Because even on her days off the courtroom sketch artist sees
the faces of her friends in hasty pastel outlines, and even on her
days off they still look a little guilty.

Because deep in the forest one of the trees is a hologram,
and it flickers slightly when no one is around

Because – no really, hear me out:

Because the horizons are dangerously close
when you’re living on the moon.

Because in the beginning was the nervous cough
before the word

Because the pleading eyes of romantic fools are blind with love
(and sometimes pepper spray)

Because each new friend is an opportunity to reinvent yourself
(a little)

Because everyone is an extrovert
(on the inside)

Because God
(in a biblical sense of the word)

Because nothing means anything
until you say it out loud.

Across the River and into the River

Nick was slouched in the armchair, a book on his lap.
“What are you reading?” she asked.
“Hemingway,” Nick replied, “He’s great... here, read this.”
He handed her the book.
“From here?” She pointed to the top of the page.
“Yes, from there. Read it to me.”
“'There was a choice of three bridges. On one of them a woman sold roasted chestnuts. It was warm, standing in front of her charcoal fire, and the chestnuts were warm afterwards in your pocket. The hos….’”
“Marvellous,” he interrupted, “Don’t you think?”
“Yes, he’s good, I admit. But he can’t do dialogue so well.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, he’s always repeating what the characters say,” she said. “He struggles with dialogue. I stopped reading him because of it.”
“Does he struggle with dialogue?”
“Yes. He struggles with dialogue.”
“Maybe he didn’t talk much himself,” Nick suggested.“Yes, who knows. But he does struggle a bit with dialogue in his stories.”
“Does he?”
“Yes, it becomes quite tedious,” she replied.