But then along came the type of people you’d like to mention. They came in as they would in a three-legged race, often times they wouldn’t seem to know the other was there and lived independently doing things in a merry way. People come and go but the types remain the same, when they pass by I offer them crisps and cheddar and a glass of scotch which is water anyway. The idea of deceiving them like that has never sat well with me but I carry on regardless. Their concerns are no concern of mine, and philanthropy knows no bounds; as long as I receive a copy of the receipt I’m a happy little pig. All these transactions and so little reward, and it’s been said that the reward is the deed but some of us can’t get going.
When I make my offers of crisps and such they’re often undecided and the discussions that go on; all this in the middle of their three-legged race; how I envy them; them and their functioning lower limbs.
“Pass the dice,” said Einstein to himself as he sat there in his sack with the other fella, who scratched his fair hair. I saw all this from my window but I couldn’t be of any help and they knew more than I did about it. “You don’t play dice,” returned the young fella. Einstein blinked knowingly at the other fella attached to his leg as he was there wasn’t a point arguing.
They both looked so familiar and they were they were part of a set. Finite: yes. But large: yes. No larger than any other set. So what set this set apart from the rest? All the other sets in their sacks revered this sack of three-legged competitors. Some sacks didn’t like this adulation and tried to upset their apple cart but mostly their attempts were fruitless.
The events of their lives were as dominoes set in place before birth and set in motion with birth. Anything else has no leg to stand on. A thought does not constitute a domino and I lay claim to a lot of these non-items. In this respect I own a lot of bones.
I find it hard to walk these days so withered and weak are my legs, even getting out of bed is a real chore and the lavatory: forget about it. The crutches really are of no assistance, although it’s fair to say I have used them or at least one of them. Getting the best use out a crutch is an art form I’ve down pat. The rubber on the bottom wears out, quite naturally, but to wear it out evenly is to use the crutch for different ailments at different times of the day. What those times are I’ve no idea. What those ailments are; where to start. It seems I’ve always been ailing. My conditions have been no help. I’ve been no help. They itch too. My legs. The feeling comes and goes but the itching never stops. I’ve told myself an itch is only in my head but they still itch. Scratching is action I’ve taken but as a rule I’m not a man of action. Far from it. Well it’s a bit hard with these withered sticks.
Taking action against mosquitoes, Id rather not. They aren’t the cause of my itching, as I’ve said, my mind is. The external stimulus of a bite is an itch I can overcome. I suppose you’d say my room is a dark and dingy place, the fan is always on as no draught is too cold for me. The light is sort of a yellow but there is never enough to tell. The lack of light in my room has caused my legs to wither. It’s a vitamin deficiency. Lack of use hasn’t helped. The doctors said I should keep them active when they diagnosed me but I said I should stay off them for a while. Heated words followed and I won the day but now who’s laughing? I think they were a bit rude to do that; but I’m not a doctor. Actually I saw the doctors on the television and they were talking of a case, no names were mentioned, but I knew, I always know. Then they started laughing, it wasn’t overt but you could tell or at least I could. They said they didn’t know what I meant when I saw them again they were driving an ice cream truck at full speed at midnight with X-rays of my legs on sale in place of ice cream. I was naturally furious, I hate being woken. Particularly at night. That was the last night I saw my crutches.
That was one of the worst nights on record, rainfall was high and the humidity was through the roof. The mildew was pungent and powerful; there wasn’t a lot I could do. One way or another the rain fell and buckets didn’t help the carpet rot. The gaps between the walls gushed water and the paint ran. I used my left crutch to stop the gushing and for a while I thought I was on to the solution but the problem was greater than my mental machinery. Then I thought Poe is Kubin; but who is Kubin ? Poe I say. None of these sorts of distractions lead anywhere like crutches in the wall. How would I know anyway? It’s only a guess that Poe is Kubin and I don’t have the formula to prove the equation. The rain on the roof went rat-at-tat and the gutters swelled with leaves, possum poo and water.
Then it happened, if only I could remember what it was. Was it that I found out my real identity? I mean I already knew my name and still do but who was I in the greater scheme of things; who out there was me; who was I out there? That’s not to say who did I aspire to be because who I aspire to be and who I am are two different things. As soon as I started to do something it should become clear but then I could move on to something else in a bid to rid myself of these comparisons and the realisation that I was less than I hoped; for there was a time when not I cared. And if that is so, which it is, then I must be less than I wished.
I had no choice but to do what I did and in spite of my sheer frustration at my inability to run or hop but when I looked out the window and saw the people tied to one another I realised what had happened. Everyone had been assigned a life-partner who would stay at your side till death do you part. Was it possible I was the only one without such encumbrance or had I not noticed that there was someone on the other side of me? Well, actually I knew that I was no different and I did have someone but it’s a bit hard when you don’t know your own identity.
This incident that I seem to think is so pivotal has to do with decision and the nature therein of that factor, which sounds like maths…oh how I deride that field of human endeavour and then it dawns on me – inner thoughts, I should keep to myself. Committing to anything is an intent that puzzles many of us, me included. So I commit to this: pick up that which takes my fancy. I fancy scotch and the hour is nearly round so I prepare for the search. Oh what frenzied preparations are undertaken in anticipation of the desperate furnishing upturning of the hourly bottle search.
All manner of things have revealed themselves at these times, and things have been broken - my only timepiece included, making hour identification a time consuming enterprise, the tripleness of all fields showed itself but nobody must know. I keep time by boiling eggs; nine hard-boiled eggs equals one hour and my diet a rather monotonous staple of kedgeree. Water boils hotter with salt so I’ve heard and in action this learning is in practice with typical results. Fortunately for me I’m less than half way through my fall of dominoes hopefully and I’ve always thought of myself as ten years younger than my age which has made for an interesting autobiographical inner dialogue.
Helping myself out of bed and scraping myself up with all purpose spatula I make my way to the window, tripping and falling over board games scattered on the floor I make some water which by the powers vested in me I turn into scotch I start the eggs a cooking. Brains function as part of the body and when we die the brain ceases to be and that it is to be dead. I like to start the day on a high note; it sets the tone for productivity and positivity. The daytime is my time because I’m powered by bike it’s my only time of lightenment; if you follow – no legs no peddling. Hand peddling is one thing but debasing my self with being in the wheelbarrow situation is a debauchery I can’t permit by almighty god I swear it to be so. What if my steel capped jock strap became loose then all hell would be let loose and that’s a crime against the society I wish to uphold as a model for all nations to prosper behind such philosophies I will not tolerate.
So Pablo said to Leo, in the guise of Richard 111, “Wifey, wifey” to which Leo said, “I’m not on your team” knowing full well where they were in the race. It was a race of laps, around the block I’d say, and the finish line was not known. The rules were simple and god only knew. “Why did he put me here?” I was heard to say in cholic tones. I can’t race with any legs a functioning and god knows I’ve tried to but I can’t find a partner. “Maybe I’m deaf and Blind and cant see my other,” I shouted. What must my very real partner think of me?
The Old Dutch chair would sneer at me with that all knowing furniture look that was born of the endless suffering that accompanies being sat on. Beneath the appearance of the act lies the truth that all acts are essentially similar. That’s one good thing about having withered branches for legs: wash or change my trousers – I think not! My legs can’t send the filthy messages of dirt and such up the spine to the centralised government of the brain. ”Impeach!” my lower extremities might say if they could. While I’m on the subject I must remember to make it a rule and programme my brain to tell my hands to keep out of the underwear drawers before noon. My scabby legs, thou festering wound of scabs and flea bitten bipedal defining objects like so much refuse.
Crotchety old crutches they have become my crutch. Brain activity of lesser mortals like me. Needing some fresh air the window I opened and caught a glimpse of someone who I thought looked like me. I thought this could be me I may have found a fellow traveller. Naturally enough this individual was rather fetching and talented and hard working. All these qualities I had in abundance and looking at my trading card, and my attributes the memory of this fleeting image of this individual corresponded. I studied that memory again and again. If I did wish to pursue this I’d have to leave the place where I am housed.
There was a knock at he door and a loud noise of breathing emanating from the other side. I put it down to nerves, imagination because I fancied these aspects of life. Books too and I had many decorating the shelves of my room. Art, Literature and music were my favourite human pursuits and I classified all human activities into these categories. Funnily enough the contestants in the race complied with my world-view; very kind of my three-legged sack racing egg carrying type friends.
My world-view and me was there no end to the hours whittled away sorting through the contestants in this game show like race. It seems that to be active I’d have to be outside the game and so it became a disability to develop. My feet howled with pain when it became clear that I would use them no longer. It would be that a job as a fortune-teller would be my true calling; the painting would just have to be abandoned.
As fortune-tellers do little legwork; it’s mostly sitting, this occupation was ideal. Under the fig tree was where I would practice: my little fig tree. It became apparent that I would have to leave the house and leave the house I did. Not literally of course but I had heard about space travel and astral travel and bearing in mind there is much scepticism about the validity of these forms of travel I would take the latter. I would be an astralnaut.
“I would have to lead my life again,” I remarked remarking on the overall pattern of humanity which we all are part of. Whatever my place whatever my standing; I am valid; I am necessary. Necessary in so far as I function as an individual in society. This may only be my perspective bearing in mind the mind of a serial killer. The hard boiled nature of the egg struck twelve and my hard earned self-realisation had yielded nothing but gut-wrenching vacuum of self.
It had taken me years to clean myself up and realise that I was as hollow as the immigration minister’s words. Artists reverence for Rembrandt is as a politicians is for Hitler. This kind of thinking occupies my days as the light is clear and the coffee is particle free.
The room I occupy is small and cramped, unfinished board games litter the floor and the walls are caked in yellow from the exhaled smoke of so many pipes. The smell of burning pipe tobacco is a smell that registers in my brain and brings memories of my childhood. A childhood spent down pit. It was I who spent it there.
“So a retired painter of self-repute wishes to undertake the development in pioneering work in astralnautics.” Were the words of the centrelinky lady as she typed on her little keyboarded electonica. I scoffed and signed a few times and knowing I was somebody fairly special I expected to be renumerated for my endeavours in the field of welfare recipience. Oh my feats in this field were legendary but I wanted to race my own race. That race I’m always on about.
Still this sense of vacuum and it had been quite an exertion to make my welfare appointment what with the scabs festering, the crotch itching, the bum chaffing and no mention of the lower limb difficulties which humility forces me to omit. I had no crutch a disposition not to itch and no cream in the cabinet. She was rather kind to offer me assistance and I feel a little embarrassed at my prideful outburst on this occasion.
On returning to my room, that yellow dingy arena for gladiatorial dosing and fits of apathy, the walls closed in and the books started their chattering and the things they said, it made the spine shiver and the table dance with wooden joy the cups clapped and the curtains which were sheets nodded confidently as the devil hid his scrolls.
The devil how did he get in here. Anyway this is what was seen: the devil chatting with the lord in various guises and the messiah inventing his own language, what fun. All this from my window and yet more disappointment on the identification of the external self with an other external self as my abundance of christianess proves costly. Nothing to do with my nationality that is not a disadvantage but a sore on the main scab of the major scab zone on the left fibula.
Not only do I wish to vacate these cramped premises but perhaps this planet and onto a new millennia and a new type of civilization. Three new forms of representation must be found, fostered and picked at like so much chicken and chips.
When I did get out and about in metropolis public transport was my preferred mode and trains particularly tickled my imagination. Screams of consciousness echoed through the heads of the drug-induced stupored train passengers.” They can hear my thoughts…hear my thoughts...thoughts... oughts,” shouted ones inner voice.” Keep it to yourself “ came over the loud speaker in the mind of one, to which another gave nods of disapproval which resounded and bounced like a ball on a trampoline resulting in a Mexican wave of a nervous twitches across the face of one. “Lock it up, keep it to yourself, keep it down, control.” Was the communal mantra taken by one in the campfire setting of the mind “ We are now approaching...” ”Hell” interrupted the thoughts drowning the inner senses with terror. Of course the suited man saw things differently: he’d say to himself “Annual income, such and such, art, literature and music burn in hell” this is how it was read by the affected types. A blink here a fidget there a magisterial cross of the legs and a turn of the broadsheet sent the message loud and clear: this train: this train; this train is my train. In every corner of the earth, wherever a social group is, no matter how small, over what period of time, the eternal and unrelenting external pattern prevails. Take one such group out and examine by itself and hold it up against another and it’ll be a perfect fit through the correct lens, of course. A social group can stretch millennia or decades, across the earth or in a small puddle of humanity. All of this on a billboard as the outside rushed past the train window. Something far greater was at work than this miserable speck of human kind.
Yes there I go again, when I say god I really mean that great pattern you’ll often hear me prattle on about. Our pattern who art mysterious and the great originator of the great and wretched race that I see everywhere I go and I go nowhere. If I took my vitamins, exercised and took a little sun a cripple I surely would not be but this is only my mentality that could be shared.
On arriving at my destination my point of departure I had a nap but awoke after a couple of eggs to a voice “Turn on the Television” the voice said as I scraped myself out of bed, the life of a TV cowboy is not easy I said to him, I made myself to the viewing facility. I turned on the television and settled into my seating facility well prepared as always for some stimulating electronic messages in a box. “You belong here” came the voice from inside my head. Jackaroo style holding bullwhip and stubby I flung my chaps across the bed; it was time to sleep was the directive from above.
Freedom must be an illusion because it implies infinity was the thinking behind my outlandish antics. I’d read further into it except that my concentration is of the flightless Galapagos bird variety. Thank god for advertisements on television were the words of my pastor. He was a TV evangelist. So I set about some more geometrical tasks, as assigned to me by the teacher and I thought commas create tone.
The spurs of my boots required a thorough cleaning and I didn’t care for this side of life, cleanliness that is. On the morrow I would trade with the shoe repairer to repair my spurs and ride my horse: I could again. That poor old horse, lets call her my world view, how I used her and misused her. In a way she saved me from total despair and this sense, all though not a true sense, of self-righteousness.
And the futility of the lifestyle of my ambition fighting and kickscreaming against the guns and hammers of the pattern that I became caught in as a wasp in a web never dawns on a boxcowboy. The best I ever knew was the worst that ever happened and the future will be the same pattern as planets in the suns orbit. Really this is it. Really to believe this is to see life as long but I ask this pickles on my burgers: I better believe it.
Outhouse in total disrepair and the well-beaten track to that door overgrown in weeds as the train of thought of healthy thinking and useful activity the outhouse and the weeds the weeds splitting selves as splitting cells in the air carrying liquid and self-denial.
Of all the strife and suffering mine is the greatest. My day will come; of that there is no doubt. These prickly sticks of bone and muscle wasted away by inactivity. My gifts the land for the colonial slagheap of I. Tennis elbow and no matches played with moments of insight and plenty of backhanders delivered.
A one-man operation at the right time at the right place without political assistance and a few secrets to be revealed. Key players in the crutch theft that is a great crime and an indignity in all proportion tell a story.
Those wacky, and I mean wacky for I whacked many, crutches intervened in many altercations that I instigated and promptly got my nose out of joint. This is why odours cannot reach the smell sensors in the nostril to send odourous messages that would say change your smelly pantaloons dear boy.
One minute the crutches were nestled in my armpit and the next they were off down the street after Id levered myself outside with the arrival of the ice cream truck. The doctors had lifted them as souvenirs to be sold alongside xrays, old swabs, blood samples and so on. This was medical industry of a new kind.
“I’ll have a urine sample with a cotton swab in a glass jar” said the first man attached to the biblical chappy, pulling up the hessian sack to their armpits. This was as I lay in a puddle of water after being spun around by the nurse who relieved me of my crutches.”chicken soup for all” I bubbled from my puddle.
After a few minutes had elapsed I dragged myself kicking and screaming up the stairs and back to the cold familiarity of my little abode. Keeping a close eye on proceedings I positioned my muzzled physicality at the window and draped myself over the windowsill. Sacks of folks, pair after pair made purchases from the ice cream truck and took a well-earned rest back to their daily lives.
My room was on the thirteenth floor and let me assure you getting up that flight of stairs to that floor was quite some epic struggle of Homeric proportions. Rice egg and fish (kedgeree) was the fuel needed for these struggles; fortunately my appetite was small and my struggles petty.
The black night and the white moon were my companions that night for no wooden stilts could hold me up any more. The broken television emitting a blue light and a stormy din and the previous nights rain still dripping onto the logged carpet. “At the end of the day who am I, the spokesperson for economic rationalism, to argue with a little exploitation.
On every wall of my room was a fire extinguisher as pipe ash causes fires in the home. Inside my head depression spot fires were put out with a little fire from the belly.
The window never opened for it was stuck because the weight was no longer attached to the rope behind the window frame and home repairs left me erudite in a bookish way. Cruising down the windowpane on a moony midnight two moths flapped ferociously for a few metric measurements. The light of the television attracted and confused them to be indoors but if only they knew the misery on my side of the window they would turn up their little mothmouths and giggle with glee.
Free-range chickens roamed the space pecking and clucking all the while and excreting with evidence of pellets. The stench is intolerable yet I tolerate it. With enough chicken shit I could begin to assemble my alternative alternative energy source and see at night.
From my windowsill vantage point I could still make out shadowy masses of the human variety traversing the street. Humans are animals; they are subjected to the same forces of reproduction, birth, growth, decay and death as any animal yet we think we are so special. Where was god when the dinosaurs roamed the earth? Whatever the case I’m no atheist, rather I advocate a new “god” I call it the pattern or the design.
The designer organised the three-legged sack races and that’s a fact. Factitiousness was my most redeeming feature that is clearly evident in this endeavour. Now and again I’d fix myself a drink of diluted ceiling water and of course search the room for the alcohol; a legally prohibited substance for financial reasons. Every endeavour has a physical component and mine was propelled toward oblivion by a music box machine of mentality. The physical is part of the mentality and disability is no disability.
We gain a greater understanding of this planet, this place, by travelling outer space; so too by exploring the astral can we learn about consciousness. The ideal environment for such things is chickens clucking, pipe smoking and so on.
Towards the end of that long night when the sun started peeking over the row of houses opposite my window and the birds started singing, an Italian Jewish sack came hopping down the street, the envy was palpable but alack. So I forge on but not before “Houston we have a problem” I blabbered in the astral climbing the silver cord back to my body.
Somehow by constantly chastising those transgressors against my person my main transgressor became myself for I always berated others to myself whilst presenting affability to the world.
“Your face is a picture of angelic calm.” said the inspector from the street through the window stroking his pet bat. I smiled a crusty cheese smile and my face said, “Behind my face is muscles which are involuntarily puppeteered by a rusty tractor.”His face muscles screwed up into a bundle of barbed wire revealing a slot machine front tooth gap and pushing out the words “My angry face is a symphony of hells disquiet” scratched his belly with one hand and a bat.
Between us was a yawning chasm of the stench of good things gone bad; as with time the supple flesh of fruit turns to unpleasant stuff with the potential for fermentation, and resultant punch bowl of ethanolic liquids.
Confrontations of this sort were altogether too frequent, and my resolution method was to pull the blinds and chastise my transgressor with noxious consequences. “Behind your face is a stage coach pulled by wild horses manned by a monkey!” screamed someone, who I don’t know.
Noxious manifestations of extreme scab irritation on my two outer lower extremities and glutius chaffing in the waste expulsion region below the pelvic line were the minor physical conditions mentally to overcome. The major ones being the inability of said items to operate in any normal pedic manner. That is to say walking, skipping, kicking, hopping, jumping, somersaulting and star jumping were activities beyond me.
After intense bouts of flagellating of others between four walls to myself any purile distraction was a welcome relief. Skinning peas with a fish-scaling knife came like a cold pot on hot day or a hot pie on a cold day.
Nausea spells ensued from the severest bouts of internal chastisement of foreign bodies, and my being rejected all foreign bodies as all healthy constitutions do. No distraction could relieve the symptoms of such periods of inner flagellatory exercises.
Chickens laid eggs and I boiled them; that was the order of things around here. Rooster spurs were no match for my cowboy boot spurs and the television blurted on and on.
I’m letting the words come. They come all over my belly. A bloated belly. My finger nails – my how much skin is under them. Mostly mine. I fought off my attackers with the nails. I crucified them. It took a lot of spirit. I was so drunk. That’s the tendency of the modern beverage – intoxication. Drinking and drunkeness go hand in hand. I do. I do. You may kiss the rye ...and barley extracts. When the wheels turn the lucky ladies come running. And the finest mares in the district. Both. The faithful steed and the unruly female. A tale for the ages. Long and boring. We all know the sort. Read this it goes for a trillion pages ergo profound. Half latin.
I used to sit and watch television. Now I lie. Then the tears set in. From the set I learnt how to turn on the water. No laughing. No kidding. I used to cry. Cry in my beer. My beer. Mine. It was my beer. It made me cry. So wet. So bubbly. I cried. I cried This is my beer. It was my beer. I drank it. I turned around and it was gone. It went with the wind. Peanuts were the cause. I blew the top off a cold one. I turn my back on you. I turn my back on myself. I kick sand in the face of my castle. I live there now. The water is ebbing. Boy is my confidence low. The shores edge keeps pushing out until I can walk to Antarctica.
Where did I go wrong? Everything has gone smoothly. It all went wrong. I wanted it that way. I wasn’t always a fuck up. So I fucked up. From the first I set up a chain of already falling dominoes. When the last falls I’ll say my goodbyes finish dying my shorts. It will not be pleasant. I’ll go out smiling. Waving. Flapping the extremities up to the pearly gates. Knock knock. Who’s there. Go away. Dad It’s me. Your one and only son. Daddy I have returned. Daddy let me in. It’s your son. I should go onto something else. Less revealing.
I’m not giving up hope. My brain is alive. I wanted it that way. I had no choice. Let me pontificate. I have taken to it. I like to. Let me reiterate: I pontificate. I get on my high horse. Screaming. Hoarse. Only to find it’s only wooden. Only! Think of the trees. They gave their lives for their pontif. They gave their lives for my position in life. That great and noble vacation: Scribbler. What miserable inklings I leave. But I digress. Think of the trees. Growing and shooting. Shooting their shoots. Growing their twig. Snapping and bearing. What joy for the trees to be felled. A tree. A log. Snap snap.
Time for my next project. A sad state of affairs. More joy to be had. I’m in no position to comment on others. All I can safely say is on myself. My life. My death I shall write of one day. When the land is green again. I don’t build. I’ve been building a lead balloon. I think it’s my best yet. It’s lead. It’s a balloon. It will fly. Fly balloon fly. The shape of the thing is grand. What joy. To be a builder. I build balloons. They fly. I have seen them. Not my own. Others.
I used to write for the fun of it. Now I merely labour. What joyous labour. The sheer joy of slaving over misery. The freedom is gone. I chained myself under the stairs. The stairs lead to my room. I stare at the wall. I’m inspired. I write to punish myself for writing. Community service. I choose death before deportation. I’m straining. I strain. Brocolli and rice. The rice is perfect. The green is not so. The green is brown. It’s dull and soft. No nutritional value. It’s value plumetted. It can’t be exchanged. I ate it. It did nothing. It had no taste. The taste was in the rice. It rose. So it was that I ate.
An ending and a beginning. The dream is gone. I’ve been looking for the exceptional when I should have been looking for the common. It’s little wonder I’ve had such trouble locating myself. I wrapped myself, hogtied and shoved in a sack, and dragged myself to the attic, which was a cellar at the time, just enough to eat, the classics mostly. How unexceptional. The process is one that takes years to achieve. Thankfully society is there to assist.
Full of purpose. I had such luxury. It was luxuriant. The luxury. The chair was soft. It was down. The seat was down. I went anyway. I always made sure. I went to study at the finest institutes in the land. I went as a patient. I came out as a doctor.
Skirting the walls were the boards. They hemmed in the house. The occupants even more so. It was their fault. Their flaw. They skirted and held up the ceiling. It was plastered. It was not plastered.
My facial paralysis is worsening. It’s been doing that for some time. Some time soon the whole network will shut down. My head will be one chunk of meat. Food stuffs will not be contained. The lips will falter. They’ve always faltered. The eyes will be bloodshot. There will be no loving looks from eligible females. The females will pass me by. Their eyes will be elsewhere. My eyes will be elsewhere. In a special case. They’ll find it hard not to stare. They will stare. The staring will engender love. All genders will be engendered so.
A new level of honesty. Lower. Less honest. The cow. The spoon. The cat. The moon. A new vision. Foggier. Less clear. I will live better. I will die worse. They’ll take me out kicking and screaming. I will not go quietly. I will go quietly. I will go around taking all sorts of kicks and griefs. They will be my own.
This is what the television told me: Insectarian violence has today resulted in the deaths of two blow flies. I weed on the cabbages. They didn’t seem to mind. It twisted into one. Then separated again. Cabbages belong to the same family as brussel sprouts. Wee belongs to the same family as poo.
I posess something they want and they are willing to kill for it. This rump of mine is very attractive to these primitives. I’ve been watching them. Studying them. The gist of their species seems to be that they are in control. You too shall die and in less dignified state than mine. I shall be hung up by one leg and have my head taken off. I shall see and hear this in my fellows before I go. We will be taken together in big trucks. Shoved in and packed in tight. Lead to the bloody place. The gallows. Off with their heads. Yours shall be worse. I am under no illusions as to my worth.
At this stage, early as it is, and in no true sense a stage, it is clear, which is evident at this juncture, that the time is now ripe, not being at all new but rather mature, for the prosperity, made so by numerous changes, that will bring all happiness, a thing that is in no way comprised of stages. The most basic direction, from a like attention span, is required, there being no other purpose for it, for the task at hand, this being selected from an abundant source, on this occasion.
Fair fuckin dinkum, fair fuckin dinkum mate. Fair fuckin dinkum, fair fuckin dinkum. Fair dinkum. That’s what he said and I said: Fair fuckin dinkum mate, fair fuckin dinkum. That’s what I said to him. Fair dinkum. That’s what I said. I shit you not. Fair dinkum. That’s what I said. Fair fuckin dinkum mate, fair fuckin dinkum. That’s what I said. I just looked at him and I said: Fair fuckin dinkum, fair fuckin dinkum. Fair dinkum. That’s what I said. Fair fuckin dinkum mate, fair fuckin dinkum. Fair fuckin dinkum. Well you should have seen the look on his face. Fair dinkum. It was priceless – no price – no fuckin price. Fair dinkum. Anyway, he turned to me, stark raving fuckin mad and he goes: Fair fuckin dinkum, fair fuckin dinkum mate. That’s what he said. It’s what he said to me. Well, with that – shocked as I was, and I shit you not this is what I said: Fair dinkum. Fair fuckin dinkum. Fair fuckin dinkum mate. Naturally he was appalled. Well who wouldn’t be? Fair dinkum. It happened. I fuckin swear on me undies. So as I was leaving he turns to me and he just looks at me; just stares at me and he goes: Fair fuckin dinkum, fair fuckin dinkum mate. I was ropable. Awww I could have been roped. I nearly fuckin was. This is what I said and I quote: Fair fuckin dinkum mate, fair fuckin dinkum. Well his jaw hit the fuckin floor. From that position his lips managed something I don’t care to repeat but the gist of it was something like: Fair fuckin dinkum. That is what he said. Along those lines. I just lit up another smoke and said: Is that a fuckin fact mate? Like that – a rhetorical question of course. I knew it wasn’t a fact even though I didn’t know what he’d said. Fair dinkum it’s what I said. That’s a fact. You can quote me on that. You can say this is what he said and I quote. In reference to me. Go for you fuckin life. And I quote Is that fuckin right mate?. He couldn’t believe it. Fair dinkum. He gathered himself together and all hoity-toity he says to me he says: Fair fuckin dinkum. Fair fuckin dinkum mate. Not in so many words but you get the idea. Actually his lips never moved. The body’s moving. Anyway his body was moving. The arm was the most active. I forget how it started. At he elbow then the wrist then the extremities then the extremities then the elbow then the elbow. I bumped into him. Accidently fell over him sitting on his stool. He could have been giving birth to that thing. Delivering a stool. Congratulations Mister Cockhead it’s a stool! Anyway he jumps up all irate and he says: why don’t you watch where you’re fuckin going mate? Rhetorical. He knew it was because I was blind that I had trouble watching where I was going. All he had to do was take one look at me. If you have trouble with bad language you should look away now because I am going to repeat what I said to him. Look away now. I don’t know why I just done that mate – sorry. Welcome back. Fair dinkum. It’s in the transcript.
I was lost. Still am. It’s the mirror I carry. It’s not my fault I’m lost. The mirror keeps calling me to it. I heed the call. When I go to it I see an image that isn’t me. I tell myself “keep looking” but my true self never shows. This is why I am lost. If I could only deny the mirror. It’s not insistent in its call. Out of sheer habit I have formed the life of the lost. I was never on track. I started lost and that’s how I found myself. I developed other annoying habits. I had pretensions of greatness. Others could see through me. The mirror never said a word. I never said a word. I waited for others to say the word. The words on my greatness. This must have been annoying. Grating. For the others it must have been. Now I wait. I have my pretence in place. I wait for the reality to arrive to take the place of my act. Still I strive for the image. Tantalizingly out of reach I tread water. I apply myself all the same. I informally apply for a vacancy. An unadvertised vacancy. I don’t even know if it is vacant such is my ignorance. Laziness. If it is I’m the man for the job. I’ve said this before. Other vacancies already filled. This is part of my pretence.
Anyway I dug up some bull ants. They were not impressed. I impressed upon them the importance of my actions. They failed to see the humour. They fail to see the humour. At first one came rushing out, all righteous and indignant. Preceding this one was countless others. They had come out to inspect the damage. To survey the damage. Big bastards they were. Black and shiny. Indestructible little units angered by my arbitrary destruction. It’s still not clear if they will seek revenge. Needless to say we are not friends. We will never be friends. I can’t really say they’ve never wronged me. One time I was sitting in my dad’s house all depressed and alone. A bull ant crawled on my arm and bit me. Well I don’t care to repeat what I said. Something along the lines of “you little fucker”. Naturally I tried to open a dialogue with the insect. Reasoning paid no dividends. I killed it. It wasn’t easy. First I tortured it. An extraordinary rendition of electrodes on the nuts and whippings followed by vinegar baths failed to produce the information I sought. It was tough. I’ll give it that. Then years passed until my recent actions.
I am some arsehole. The sum of my actions leads me to this conclusion: I am some arsehole. I strut and pose. I do.
So now I think I have returned. I never left. I never was. Plugging holes, plugging holes.
Between buckets of stale water and rusty tractors lay rotting maggotty meat. The stench had developed over days of excessive heat and humidity creating the still thick rotten air which penetrated the brick walls and flaky white paint. Blow flies circled, landed and squirted larva on the stinky stuff.
As stuck as I was in that place, stuck, floundering, stuck, I knew I had to escape, escape to a place, a better place, a better place far from here, far away, far, far away. Far and away the best place to escape to was here, here a place like there but not, so very not, so much different a place than there was here before here became a place like there. Over here when over there seemed so free, so free, very free, until there became here. Stuck as I was, immobilised, paralysed by not wanting to put a foot wrong, any wrong move, to make a move out of step with the other two triplets, the other two. The other two, was I really their brother, their triplet, me, was I? Not me - me. I wanted to be; me. The others, they were different, even to each other. To each other they seemed strange and I even stranger, maybe I seemed stranger because I wasn’t really theirs. I was someones triplet, that’s all I knew, I was a triplet, I was, someones, someone’s triplet. They: so successful, so patient, so prolific. Me: so lazy, so incompetent, so petulant. They could not have a sibling so weak, so dependant and unlike them. So they had a triplet, I knew that too, a triplet like them, them, those two and one, one missing, but they did not look for him, no, they waited for him, not to come to them, no, but to show himself, to reveal himself, to show and one day he would. But where? Here or there, it didn’t matter, he had to show in one place, in that paddock adjoining their paddocks, they lived in paddocks, adjoining a paddock, with a hill a vacant hill, empty,no tenant, yet. I wanted that paddock, the empty hill, to live there, next to those brothers over there. Others would inspect the paddock, his paddock, look to settle in, one of them may already have settled in, settled in out of view, out of public view, out of my view. I could pass it up, to those others, they were worthy enough, worthier than me – they worked. I thought and they worked, worked away, wheeled away, in society, settled in, snug and exposed, and me insulated, desperate, desperate for exposure and desperate to be hidden, hidden in a paddock, the vacant paddock – his paddock. It wasn’t really the paddock though, it was that place on the hill, in the paddock, the highest point in the paddock, for the paddock was quite large, quite populated, populated with paddock-dwellers and the hill was quite high and I coveted that hill, the south side of the hill on the other side of the north side, on that side was the man who waved his stick, not in a bad way, he did it in good humour, and very quietly, waving his stick, that was a family trait, the stick waving, that he lived on the hill that was all him, all his own doing. Except how did he get to live so high up on that side of the hill while others lived lower down, often scrounging around on his scraps, scrounging, around. Would I be happy in the paddock if i had to live down there, with those others, scrounging around? I had a candle, a candle, for the nights, I wanted to live by night, dominate proceedings when the stick-man wasn’t about, at night, with my candle. That was my family trait, I had that anyway, but the hill that’s what I really wanted. I wanted to be stuck as they were and they were – stuck, and others saw them as happy and free; well I knew no better - for I was stuck.
So this could be the final finale. The last hurrah. You might be tearing up by now. If not the eyes then certainly the pages. It’s frustrating to read a tale that goes nowhere. We all want to be taken somewhere. So pin your hopes on a book. It’ll take you to the toilet. To the toilet in a hurry. So the book was penned in the loo so too should it be digested there. Cyclical. The loo: that place, so seemingly sterile is teeming with life. Those lives nothing like our own. Anonymous and humble. They live very christian lives.
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