is this the start of something new?

Blowies set to flight off the walls of the foyer in my wake. Dark patches formed in my cotton dress where it met my armpits, my neck and the hollow of my back. Sweat lined my brow more as a blanket than as individual beads and a constant stream flowed down my temples. Dust and hair clung to my skin and turned to mud along the shores of the sweat.

I flung the fly-screen open and stepped out onto the porch. Sunlight slanted in through the gap between the veranda and the peak of the shed across the dun and dusty lawn. Sheets hung heavy and limp from the lines of the washing line, converted to cardboard by the stillness and heat. I held my hand up to shield my eyes towards the horizon, searching for the first hint of the storms that the radio was threatening. Wooly clumps of altocumulus had peeled overhead early in the morning, a portent of the change to come.

My sandals flicked dust up from their heels as I stepped out onto the barely living grass. Summer was supposed to be nearing its end. It had been particularly long and arduous. The wind howled across the deserts, picking up the red dust as it went and delivering it westward where it settled into a fine pinkish layer on top of everything. Only rarely, on days like today, did it relent, and sent everyone into a torpor wishing for it to start up again so that the wind, no mater how hot it was, could give at least some semblance of respite from the cloying and penetrating heat. Rain was but a memory lost to the ages.

The dust seared my skin where it landed, a familiar tingling sensation dampened by months of the same, as though my feet had developed some shell around them to protect against the earth. Even so, I glided quickly across the surface, minimising the amount of dust flung up by the backs of my sandals. I made it to the red-roofed shed and spent a moment cooling myself in the shade. I closed my eyes and sighed contentedly. I leaned forward and spread the mouth of a hessian sack open and peered into the darkness, to be greeted by the welcoming smells of cool dirt. I plunged my hand into its belly and felt around for the firmest specimens. I pulled five large potatoes from the cool darkness. Small knobs protruded from the dust on their wrinkled surfaces; signs of life within the tortures of summer. They were a bit soft, but still short of rotting. I made a pouch out of the front of my dress and placed the roots inside before scurrying back across the yard, up the porch and into the ‘cool’ of the house. Despite the heat of the day outside, a fire still raged in the kitchen, heating beyond what was bearable for any extended period of time. A tray of chops sat melting on the bench beside the stove, and the kettle screeched as it boiled its contents down off to one side of the hotplates. A lone length of wood sat fearfully on the mat in front of the stove.

My mother stood with her hands in the sink, staring vacantly out the window. I placed the spuds on the steel beside her, disrupting her train of thought and bringing her back to the present. She looked at me and softly smiled what may have been a grimace. A long curl of black had escaped from its bun and stuck to her temple, framing her face and hinting at the beauty that must have once shone through.

Vows

As most of you would be aware, on Saturday a small group of family and friends descended the stairs into the basement of DonkeyWheel House to bear witness to my marriage to the one and true love of my life- Tash. It was one of those perfect nights, when the stars and planets align and perfect love is ignited in all involved.

We both wrote our own vows encapsulating our truest feelings. Posted below are my vows.

The Stages of Love

On a couch on a porch on Smith St,

testosterone and estrogen collided to quicken our hearts.

I burned with the excitement of the new

as we chased each other through coffee shops and bedrooms

with a lust for the things that we may never know.

After that deluge I stood within a cloud

in which all that I could see and all that I could hear was you.

Dopamine and serotonin conspired

to create an addiction- an obsession and a compulsion-

that I never want to quit.

I fed you butter, cheese, and bread.

You fed me theatre, art, and wine-

things finer, more abstract, than the science I was used to

as we exchanged the lives that we now share.

Our years are reinforced by Oxytocin and Vasopressin.

The roots of our love continue to entangle and fuse,

and this act of marriage is just one part of that process.

We will continue to grow together.

I will continue to feed and love and cherish you through the good times and bad

for the rest of my life and yours.

My thoughts and emotions all focus on a single point

You. 

A Climber of Things

Even from before he could remember, he was a known climber of things. It didn’t matter what it was- a tree, a wall, a house-, if there was a position elevated above the plane of the ordinary he had to get there. And if he had a couple of drinks in him, then all the better. His mother recalls the story of how he had disappeared from the house one afternoon when he was four. She had left him on the swirling carpet of the lounge room with a ten liter bucket of Lego’s while she tended to the dishes and getting a start on dinner, but when she stuck her head around the corner, the floor was strewn with coloured blocks and a half-finished house, but there was no Tommy to be seen. The empty bucket stood on its mouth in front of the open back door. She rushed outside hoping to see him playing in the garden stood, and nearly fainted when a tiny voice called to her from above. A toddler’s face smiled down on her from over the rim of the guttering, and laughed at the meeting of her eyes with his. She blinked at the shock, as if this action would resolve her vision into something more comprehensible.

“What are you doing up there?” She didn’t yell, or even infantilize her voice, but stated it as if she would to any other adult. The laugh resounded; she snapped back to her senses. She gasped, covered her mouth and took a couple of quick steps backwards. “Oh my god. Stay right there! Move away from the edge, honey.”

She couldn’t figure out how exactly he had gotten up there, only that he had succeeded in his goal. And from that moment forward the doors of the house were locked whenever she was too busy to keep her eyes fixed upon him. Even so, she would come into the room to find him on top of the piano, amongst the silver on top of the cabinet, on top of the wardrobe, halfway up the inside of the chimney covered in soot, and a couple of times even up in the roof, the manhole cover tossed aside pointedly as if it were responsible for his transgressions. It seemed that his compunction to climb was driven more than just a simple desire to be above everyone else, but by the illicitness of the act itself.

Of course he did from time to time fall. One cannot climb for so long without the odd failure, or learning experience. However not once in all his years of climbing did he break a bone (teeth don’t count); he always seemed to bounce. His body had an almost supernatural talent in healing itself, or disguising its injuries to the outside world. By the time he was 12 he had already been winded that many times that he would calmly and patiently wait for the moment to come, which it inevitably did, when he could breath once more. No panic, no fight, no force. He simply waited it out.

As a teen his parents paid for rock-climbing and abseiling classes at the local gym, and as an adult he worked in construction for a while, then tree-lopping, then as a high-rise window washer, but he tired of each task quickly, as though the harnesses and safety equipment nullified the thrill of the climb. Gymnasiums and climbing centers wouldn’t let him climb without the safety of ropes and helmets, so he turned to free-climbing. He joined a club, and together with three or four other guys they would head out every other weekend to the mountains or one of the old abandoned quarries that littered the bush near town. There they would put their skills and cunning and daring to the test.

And yet, and yet, and yet.

Whenever he went out on the town, or to a friend’s barbeque he would invariably find himself up some tree or scaffold or flagpole. He would be called upon to climb up and in through a storey window whenever one of his friends managed to lock themselves out of their apartment. Neighborhood kids would call on him to help retrieve lost balls from their roofs, or else injure themselves trying to emulate his feats.

Some people cook, others write, and still others smoke. Climbing was his vice, his drug of choice. It was his thing, his compulsion. It was setting himself a goal that seemed impossible to others, and going ahead and actually doing it.

He’d seen men dressed in Lycra climbing the matrices of windows and steel on the news- the tallest and most famous buildings in the world being climbed without ropes or wires or helmets. He would sit agape at the sight of these dazzling men on the television screen, with their slender limbs spread out and clinging to the walls like a daddy-long-legs, chalk bag swinging like dog’s bollocks, and imagine him in their stead. Sure there was the fleeting fame and adulation, but the thing that drove them was the sheer thrill of it, the racing heart, the muscles contracted to snapping, the burning fear threatening to overcome and the overwhelming sense of relief and accomplishment upon getting to the top alive.

He knew that one day he would join them. It was his reason. He started training- shedding weight, conditioning his muscles, increasing his flexibility. He started out on friend’s apartment blocks. He avoided the easy structures like drainpipes and antenna leads and concentrated on the sheer surfaces like brickwork, windows and the frames in which they sat.

Fixie

A swirl of dust and pollen swept across the tarmac. Gathering friends from the gutter it swelled into a vortex that rose angrily from the road. The cyclist closed his eyes and sucked in his nostrils and waited for the inevitable stinging slap across the face. He countered his balance as the gust nudged him towards the path of the passing van. He clicked the palate at the back of his throat in a futile attempt to clear the accumulated pollen blown in from out of town from his sinuses. Mucus draining through his nostrils dried into a crust that scratched the membranes as he puckered his nose. A sneeze threatened, withdrew.

He slowed towards the lights and squeezed between the two lanes of idling cars. The lights incanted their spell and he ground to a near stop before the curse was lifted. He stomped heavily on the pedals to regain momentum, leaning around the corner and into the shrieking gale funneling down the road. Specks of dust pricked his skin and water sluiced from his eyes. He stood up on his cleats, fighting the wind to regain his cadence. It was in moments like these that he questioned his decision to ride a fixie.

He spat what felt like a thick wad of mud out onto the curb. A gritty texture lingered. He turned onto a side street and yawed his bike up the hill and over the speed bumps to the main street. After chaining his steed to a street sign he clacked along the concrete and into the pharmacy. Before him stood a cardboard display that the staff, so finely attuned to the sensitivities of its clients, had erected just inside the doorway. He sniffed aggressively at the mucus threatening to drip from his nose and picked up a pack of antihistamines. The sales assistant gave him a knowing smile as he presented the box across the counter.

That’ll be fourteen dollars ninety eight.

He mumbled something unintelligible as he unzipped his wallet and withdrew a twenty. They exchanged notes and nodded and grimaced curtly. The urge to ram his fingers up his nostrils and scratch the itch from his sinuses was overwhelming. He caught a glimpse of his face in the window, his eyes bulged red.

He pulled the helmet back on top of his quiff and tugged at its strap as he caught the hairs of his beard in the clasp. Punk music swelled and subsided as a battered old EH Commodore crept slowly past. He watched it advance and retreat, then swung his leg over the bar and clipped his foot back in as he vibrated over the tram tracks and into the gap between the right hand lane and the cars parked in the left. A car ahead stopped and shifted into reverse to pull into a space. He threw a cursory glance over his shoulder and jumped the bike across the tracks into the very middle of the road to skirt around the protruding nose of the car. The lights of an oncoming car flashed him a warning and the driver shouted something derogatory into the glass of his window as he passed.

The lights on Johnston changed to yellow, red, and he slowed to a stop once more. He tried to remain cleated through a balance of rocking forwards and backwards and turning the handlebars, but gravity won. He snatched his foot from out of its bind and caught the fall with his leg. He looked down as if pondering the very ground beneath him, avoiding the eyes of the people waiting at the tram stop.

A girl waiting to cross smirked and turned her head away. Her bag hung heavily from her shoulder. A gust wind tussled her hair and billowed the black dress that draped over her slim frame from the bones of her shoulders like the sail of a tall ship, flashing a tattoo of a cartoon sailor to the wind. She wiped a strand of hair that had come loose from her bun from the corner of her mouth back behind her ear with her ringed finger.

The light pole clicked into life and the little green man heralded the girl across the road. The cyclist stood back on his pedals and teetered while he waited for her to pass in front before he turned the corner and pumped on down the hill into Fitzroy.

Her sandals slapped the pavement as she walked. Her mouth held a faint smile as though they held an important secret. Teenage boys swinging plastic adidas bags quietened and watched purposefully as she passed, then nudged and winked at each other as they followed her silhouette down the street with their hot eyes. She rolled her eyes as she passed, but continued unabashed, poised and confident. She veered into a side street away from the outlets and the hordes of colour-coded and name-tagged shoppers bused in from interstate and the outer suburbs. The noise of the street dissipated to be replaced by the rustle of leaves and laughter through the window of an apartment in the warehouse above.

The hand of a familiar smiling face waved as it sailed by on its bike, the rusting chain squeaked against its cogs like a clamor of parrots. She returned the wave too late, but yelled out a greeting over her shoulder. A hand raised its receipt.

She turned again, into a street shaded by chestnuts, and dropped her bag to the pavement as she perched herself on the edge of a padded milk crate and leant her forearms on the slatted wood of the table. A pair of half-dreaming eyes placed an old gin bottle filled with water, and an empty jam jar in front of her.

Coffee?

She ordered a long macchiato without lifting her eyes, and leant to draw a paperback from the front pocket of her bag. She opened it to the dog-eared page and held it in her right hand while her head leant and dreamed on her left. An empty coke can clattered as it rolled down the footpath in spun into the gutter under the nose of a car. A speck of dust landed in the corner of her eye and she blinked and contorted her face to loosen it before wiping it out with her finger.

An awaited friend roosted on a crate across the table. She glanced up and smiled, finished the paragraph and dog-eared the page. She smoothed the cover down reverentially and leant her hands on its cover as she smiled across at her friend, lipstick firing.

Ugh. That wind’s destroyed my hair.

Same. How are you?

Eh, you know? Sick of looking for a new place to live.

The pirate crossed the road to their right, resplendent as always draped in black leather and silver studs, hat feathered and beard pinched into a point. He threw a wave in their direction and continued on his smiling way, brown paper bag swinging in his hand.

A woman approached, bright blue duffel bag slung over her shoulder. The pirate paused and opened his arms to her. She grinned and returned the embrace.

Take care.

She waved the pirate goodbye and sauntered down the street, wiping a graying wisp of hair that had loosened from her ponytail back over her head.  She pinched her ear and rubbed the vacant hole in her lobe, lost in a track of whimsical thought. She wiped the side of her face where the fronds of an exploded flower loosened by the wind sprinkled into it. She breathed in the essence of cafe as she drifted past the doorway of the café. Half-heard snippets of conversation wormed into her ear. She readjusted the lie of her bag across her shoulder and carried on, lost in the gentle swishing of the rumpled fabric against the cotton of her shirt.

A gust of wind dragged a broken gum branch through the grass of the park. On the other side a child threw a ball for a terrier while his parents sat on the bench staring at their phones. She put her head down into the wind and emerged on the street. She walked up the stairs and into the lobby, swiped her member’s card on the scanner and pushed through the turnstile with her thighs.

She dumped her bag on the bench in the change room and stripped down to her swimsuit. She folded her clothes into her bag neatly and placed it in a locker and fastened it with her padlock. Her thongs clacked on the concrete around the edge of the pool. She watched the languid strokes of her fellow swimmers, taking account of who else was there, before stowing her towel behind the block marked ‘Medium’. She crouched and sat on the edge with her feet and shins adapting to the sharp coldness of the rippling water. She slipped into the pool slowly and silently, as though observing some spiritual ritual.

She settled into her laps, arms rotating in their sockets in their own slow rhythm as if moving beyond the will of their owner. Her mind drifts with her wake.

sometimes things just don't make sense

At times the heat from the piles of scrub was so intense that no one could get within ten yards of the fires without having to cover their heads with their shirt.

The crops were content for the time being to; not fussy for any attention, merely content to pass the time wading through the mud until they became waterlogged and difficult. Months earlier, the refreshing autumn rain had plopped onto the exposed earth and had sat in insolent pools atop the surface refusing to penetrate the soil. However the irresistible inertia of consistent showers had forced the earth to yield its unseen forces, and allow the soaking into its lower layers. The raw dust and sand turned into loam and released its musty smell to the wind. As soon as this happened, the crops were sown and the men retreated to the hills.

The jubilant cheers of the men would slalom between the trees towards us. They were changing and shaping the earth to satisfy their means, and were overjoyed by the strides they were making.

If she sprung him raiding the biscuits, he figured that he could come up with something clever on the spot to put her off the trail. We didn’t dare think about the likelihood of her intercepting me instead. As the youngest, I would be the easiest to get to crack. If need be, I figured that I would just go along with the same lie that I was going to tell Mum- that I had a tummy ache.

At the time neither Albert nor I understood the significance of this curious act, a precursor to terror. It would be revealed to us in our own time and in our own special ways. The men had come through at an earlier time and ringbarked these trees as a way of killing them off, drying out the wood and making it easier for them to come through at a later date and chop them down when the time came. Even now, if one looked hard enough, one could see the browning of the leaves at the tips of branches; evidence of the devastating but necessary effect of the ringbarking. Branches weakened by the lack of water reaching their heights lay strewn across the floor like the abstract lines of a Pollack piece.

Besides which, we knew there was every chance they would be agitated by our presence.

We couldn’t retreat to the relative safety of home, but by now Mum, or at least Margie, would have realised we were gone. We would cop it if we went home, making the shame of not achieving what we had set out to achieve all the more difficult to swallow.. If we emerged from our hidey-hole and into the clearing we were likely to be roundly flogged for our disobedience and escorted home, but at least we would have the satisfaction of completing our mission. The only other option would have been to run away into the bush, but neither of us had the stomach for that.

I wanted to take the memory of my father, the memory of my being a man, with me.

He figured that if he stayed quiet Alby would be distracted by the activity of the others and leave him and Donna to themselves.

True to form, Alby was eventually sidetracked by the action going on around him. Pilar sidled up to him and with a tilt of her hip drew Alby into his bedroom. Zach could breathe again and Donna returned to bed.

Laughs were wild and uninhibited and enlightenment was within reach. Still, nobody broached the topic that was foremost in all their minds, the source of irrevocable and catastrophic tension. Alby directed the car through back streets to Vincent, then settled into his groove towards the scent of the ocean.

He wasn’t used to being in such a situation, amongst people so completely uninhibited in their actions, not caring whether they looked or sounded foolish. But he was genuinely excited to be involved.

And the moment was lost.

And right at that moment the inevitable course of action and consequences were placed in motion. There would be resolution.

He knelt in the sand in front of her so that her face was above his. He kissed her mouth again, and began his descent down the elegant slope of her neck, undoing the top two buttons on the way. His lips touched upon her clavicle and into her cleavage. They stopped kissing and focused their attention on their touch. They watched the flinching of his stomach as she lightly touched him with her fingertips and she giggled when he grabbed at her wrist. He placed her arms back around him but she went in search of more. Her fingers coyly traced the shape of his belt buckle. Marshall raised a hand to her face and pulled hers towards his, this time with assured intent. They kissed long and hard, forgetting everything beyond.

He wanted nothing more than to ignore the rest of the world and engage in some serious heavy petting and grinding of flesh against flesh. And from the glimmer in her eye he gathered that she did too. But that would have to wait. They had friends to entertain and a sunrise to watch.

Marshall wasn’t yet aware of this ritual, that Hazel too would be forced to spill the beans on their night; that secrets would be divulged and judgements would be made. Foreknowledge may have made him more wary, but may also have made him more aroused.

Committing to anything more would be to confront all sorts of risks- not least of which their friendship. Zach, Donna and Hazel couldn’t have counted the hours they had spent with their respective allies trying to get the two of them together. She felt manipulated and oppressed. It was completely irrational to feel this way, but the stress of it all got to her and forced her to clam up.

He was used to others playing by his rules. He didn’t know how to deal with such forthrightness from another. He wasn’t awkward around women until he found himself in a position such as this. It wasn’t until then that his hands would become clammy and his voice would break. He was a giant ball of jangled nerves; a confused cocktail of apprehension and eagerness.

their voyeuristic tendencies omnipresent, and wondering ‘what if’ into the corners of the others eyes. casting furtive glimpses over their shoulders under the pretence of keeping an eye on their belongings.

Do you know how long it takes for the tap-root of a Karri to descend 5-and-a-half feet? I’m fairly certain that I have a better idea than most.

I felt like a slowly leaking bag of grain- my contents leaching out of me. Ah, the sweet, sweet sun.

You should know that we plants are the worst gossips of any of the kingdoms of earth. We clutch on to any piece of information we can and spread word of it far and wide.

Being rooted to a single spot for year after infernal year lends itself to a certain restlessness and an unquenchable thirst for information, no matter how obscure or insignificant. We are horrendous gossips. Titbits are conflated and ascribed purpose and importance far beyond their measure. We have to amuse ourselves somehow and the mythologies of the ages can only stretch so far.

Avoiding their own thoughts and faggy matters of philosophy.

She felt that I should be kept abreast of what transpired. She felt that just because my form had been lost didn’t mean that my spirit didn’t linger in the mists. In moments of stillness and solitude she could feel my presence. And in part I guess she, like so many others, felt responsible for my death. Her words were her tribute, her dedication. And she bequeathed them to me. I didn’t know the wherewithal of the events that transpired immediately after my death until many years later when Margie, in her last act before leaving our valley, buried her collection of unaddressed letters and stories of our history amongst my tangled roots. Most of what she had written I already knew from my years of observance, albeit from a slightly different and more focussed perspective. I had witnessed it all from my passive position on the hill. But what really captured my attention were the certain fragments dealing with my death: what had happened; the aftermath; how I returned to being.

Only Mr Craig has had the heart to talk me through what happened. I think the others are still finding it hard to cope with what happened and prefer to pretend it never happened.

Despite their tender ages they could appreciate the solemnity of the occasion.

They reached my grave without a word being uttered.

No one cried. No tears were shed. They had all been paid forth at the funeral.

There wasn’t much to take in but they would take their time doing it.

He was usually meek and conscientious, but here he was taking control.

They both wanted to fuck- hard and fast.

He rued the lot of a scientist- decidedly unsexy, eternally awkward in society.

adagio, vivace, staccato, legato.

On the flats on either side of the creek it wasn’t that tough. The soil was pretty sandy, the scraggly tee-tree roots of which could be comfortably prized from its clutches with a modest straining of the back. And the Karri gullies over the back had some decent quality clay loam if you could just pull the enormous roots from the suckling soil. But at least there weren’t those damned ironstones of the ridge. Sometimes it was felt to be better to cut their losses, remove what they could now and wait for the advent of the plough to finish off the job.

Stumps were hauled away one by one by teams of lashed horses. The clutching arms of the roots clung firmly before jarring free with a jolt sending both horses and men slipping over the orange ball bearings under foot. The perpendicular roots raised their arms to the heavens in horror at their new surroundings as they were dragged away from their homes into great windrows, to be dried out over summer in preparation for bonfire season when the rains returned.

They couldn’t walk across the scorching dirt without blistering their soles and having to endure the torture of sizzling dust entering their clothing to hiss against skin.

Nothing was wasted however, industry being the mother of invention and all. In that climate nothing could be surplus to requirements. Potato and onion scraps became cuttings for future seedlings; tomato seeds were planted and lovingly tended to by the men’s morning piss. It was amazing just how far supplies can be stretched when situations turn dire.

And as the watertable rose in response to the loss of its greatest client, the shallow rooted and rapid growing bracken now grew as the ascendant species up the Karri-loam ridges. It competed with the natural grasses and foreign crops and came out on top every single time. which also found the native bracken to be impossible to digest.

As they became comfortable with each other’s words their body language became more languid and subtle. reasoning that on a first date they probably wanted to be left alone without a judging eye cast over their shoulders. Unless you already knew their ways there was no way you could be fully prepared for the onslaught of questions, innuendo and downright filthiness.

I cannot help but fear them, that I hold some degree of responsibility for their common plight. But this has not halted them from displaying their almighty empathy, schooling me in their culture and the history of their land.

Obviously, I have had to teach myself to record these stories for posterity. When I died I knew the alphabet, how to write my name and a few basic words. I knew nothing of spelling, grammar or sentence construction, so you will have to forgive the occasional lapse. But wherever I’m unsure, phonetics can often help me translate what I hear into words. Luckily I’ve had time to learn and work on these from those around me living and departed.

From my station to their left looking down into the valley my tentacles spread. I was growing into a sturdy young tree, a good hug in girth and branches starting 10 feet off the ground and canopy reaching a further 30 above that. By any estimation, a strong sapling. As my neighbours were removed I laid claim to a broad selection, and made use of the annual winter rains by spreading my roots shallow in a 30 foot radius to compliment my thickening taproot burying into an underground river 30 feet down. My domain was claimed. My finer roots extended as far as my siblings dugout even as they started digging. They winced from the pain of being pierced, and withdrew at first, but finally reached out to them, to be close, to touch their skin and convince myself that I was still a vital part of their world.

You will have to forgive me should my prose become too flowery. It is against this backdrop of emotion and angst that I learned the conventions of language.

Much of what I have learned has been through simple observation- watching and listening. My world- this valley- has changed incredibly over the years. At the start there was nothing here but bush covering these two hills and the valley at its base. Now there is a lake where the creek used to run and gentle slopes covered with crops that have rotated from season to season according to the whims of the market, and from paddock to paddock to ensure the continual sustainability of the soil. Where once kangaroos and lizards crawled across the ironstone ridges, now cattle and sheep graze contentedly on lush grasses gown in fertilized loams. It is almost as if the world we entered has been transformed into a new world. Whether it is better I will not be so mendacious as to imply.

Before I had even re-awakened, Most of the slopes had been cleared and where now covered with a poisonous carpet of green and brown bracken ferns that needed to be slashed down and burned every year to allow crops to be sown and stock to be run.

The only reason I could survive was on account of my deep, penetrating roots. Well, that and the space I had been given in which to grow. It was lonely, but I was alive.

When they reached a part of the wall non-descript enough to be certain that no one would ever notice, they would dig their nails into the compact earth and fashion a small hole. The loosened dirt fell to the floor at their knees. Slipping the folded note into the hole they would build a wall across the opening, protecting the paper from the external world. I would like to think they recognised my spirit there with them in their hidden place, but I fear they were too caught up in their own emotions to notice anything else.

I ran these symbols against my rudimentary memory of words. I learned how to use punctuation and spell all kinds of words such as ‘yearn’, and ‘ache’, and ‘pain’. Through these letters and poems to love just out of reach I learned of the tribulations of adolescence. Words written but never uttered to those that would be target.

As my siblings wrote those notes under the cloak of complete anonymity and under the auspices that no other pair of eyes would ever run across the pages, I will not recount them verbatim here. But I have committed every word to memory. And it is now part of the collective memory of the bush, for nothing is secret here. But I will not betray their confidences to anybody still living.

With my preoccupation with restoring myself to some form of halting conciousness, I missed several years of the life and goings on amongst the community. However

A summer storm had passed over one evening and ruined a couple of concrete bases that had not yet been set, so they had to rip it all up with crowbars and picks before starting again.

Mr Monroe lumbered up the hill to join the waiting crowd in anticipation.

frame was made within the concrete and a plate of iron was slid into the slots to form the trapdoor barrier. A pulley mechanism was constructed above the trapdoor to enable it to be winched up and down as needed.

The men trudged wearily through the fine brown dust.

There were some calls for optimism though with the birth of a set of twin boys for one of the new families to the valley, and the promise of a railway siding being delivered into the bush downstream and the electricity that would accompany such a scheme. But the locals staunchly took the opinion of ‘we’ll believe it when we see it’, having been let down by the authorities numerous times before.

particularly when you considered that each such community only had maybe a half dozen students, and all over varying ages to boot.

stacked eight-high into rotating columns. Fresh air was piped through a central duct and through micron filters into each individual box; each a self-contained unit keeping the mice as sterile as feasibly possible.

Besides, if you use anaesthetics or gases you never know whether they’ll interfere with the signaling pathways.

True. And if they’ve got to die, it might as well be as quick as possible.”

It’s all about the animals, really.

She would return to visit every now and then to maintain her roots, but it was evident that her life was now elsewhere.

They revelled in the worlds of words and numbers and looked on school as a pleasure rather than a chore.

So Albert wasn’t a great loss to the ivory towers of academia, but he was talismanic to the farm and to Karabup.

And believe me I had all the time in the world to observe the goings-on in the valley and beyond either through my own perception or through reliable sources spread throughout the area.

All the while whispering behind his back about how he had changed from how he was before the war.

Their daughter Felicity stayed behind with her husband and brood at the Monroe’s.

They all worked hard, but it was as if Dad and Albert worked harder.

Together during the late winters, father and son would round up the herd and separate the mothers from their calves; inject and ear-tag the new additions and sterilise the young males.

As barbaric as it sounds- and the instinctual reaction of any rational man to the description is a wince of pain and a sickness at the base of the stomach- it is preferable than the other methods around like cutting out the bollocks and feeding them to the dogs, or rubber rings which take a week to do the job. At least with Burdizzo’s it is all over within a few minutes, and short of anaesthetising and performing surgery on each individual steer it is probably the most humane method of doing the job.

Anyway, you’re not hear to read my rantings about the ethic of animal husbandry, you’re here for the story.

The scene is a devastating palette of whites and greens. All is shrouded in an iridescent white.

And that are often confused as a soul by those who cannot bear to contemplate their own utter unimportance.

He was comforted and strangely elated in this knowledge.

scraps of grass from the bathroom

Lack of context means that most of the following will be unintelligible. Still, what's the point of a blog if you can't post unintelligible rants?

Alby’s band was the latest darling of the local music scene and once inside there was barely any room in which to move. The four scientists stood around a in the centre of the room clutching their beers to their chests as Eyes Quittin’ strode through the black velvet curtains and onto the stage.

It was frenetic and you had to concentrate on breathing or else you would just stop.

Once most had staggered out the doors were thrown open to those unfortunate souls outside (they could never understand what they missed) with the drugs or the sheer willpower to dance their way to sunrise.

We swiftly learned the benefits of sun protection. While the weather on the coast had been tempered by stiff southerlies, the conditions away from the shore resembled more of a furnace. The sun beat down and the air clung heavily around you. At first we laughed at our local guides who sported the peculiar summer fashions of full-sleeved shirts, long trousers and broad hats. Barely an inch of their skin was left directly exposed to the sun. The dense clothing must have resulted in unbearable heat and buckets of sweat, but they kept doggedly on in this vein. Instead of suffer the intensifying effects of extra layers of clothing we preferred to roll our sleeves and cuffs up above our elbows and knees. A couple of the teens even opened their shirts and lay on the wagons sunning their pasty white chests. The sun was out, but a constant breeze tempered the raw heat. It was ideal weather for a smile and a nap. The Aussies tried to warn us against this practise, but their advice fell on deaf ears.

We knew it would get worse before it got better, so we would just have to ride this one out with stiff upper lips.

The entire company slept soundly in their beds oblivious to the clamour and madness transpiring downstairs. After a fortnight on the road it was a welcome relief to again sleep in a proper bed rather than the thin, loosely slung cots we had to contend with throughout the migration.

And, they cynically figured, as we could already speak English we would only add to the pre-existing traditional white values of the region. In this way they could Anglicise Australia, ensuring the propagation of white culture to the detriment of all others.

The sun was able to scramble through the break in the canopy forged by the river and beat down upon our faces and Dad’s shivering body. From the angle of the rays we reckoned it to be about two o’clock. The guides announced that we weren’t too far from our destination and that we would arrive with enough time to unload and get everything under cover before nightfall. The leaders were to spend the night with us in the bush and help us settle, before heading back to town the next morning.

Each was approximately the same size, with similar vegetation and comparable soil and drainage.

They were forced onto the back foot from the outset. The best they could do was to plead ignorance and offer their sympathy, and to offer their own personal assistance. What more could they do? They assured us that they would complain to those in charge on our behalf, and campaign for a rapid improvement in conditions and service.

The ramshackle nature of the property would always seem to spark the most hedonistic of tendencies in the young artisans.

You had to immerse yourself completely in the moment.

They were a shambling rabble standing around disjointedly and without logic, like tealeaves in the bottom of a cup.

It is the commonly accepted rule of Perth that everyone you meet will know somebody you know.

Debauchery perfumed the air.

They wandered back inside and Karl excused himself to join the line growing away from the toilet. Marshall retreated back to his spot slouched against the wall watching those left on the dancefloor. When Karl returned they back meandered out into the crisp autumnal night air. Yoshi lit another cigarette and distractedly offered the packet to Piers and Marshall, both of whom declined with lazy waves of their hands. Recognising a face Piers casually slipped an unremembered observation into the neighbouring group’s conversation and drew laughs of acceptance from those in its midst. Room was made for the four and they settled in to a long discussion of beer, music, theatre and popular culture, each making contributions when the timing was right, establishing their roles in the group dynamic and forming friendships to last through the euphoria of the night and into the haze of the morning.

Intermittent shouts and thumps resonated down the hall and into the night.

He philosophised about what motive one could have to motion to a perfect stranger, much less even when he was the stranger. And he would put his head down and shuffle through to the laundry room.

giving due reward for contributing to his own feeling of acceptance amongst such unfamiliar humour and hedonism.

Marshall too was guilty of this. Like the others he genuinely believed in changing the world through the pooling of responsibility and the general acceptance of all peoples and cultures, and the inherent goodness of human kind. But just like the others he knew that these ideals were merely a pipe dream, a nirvana dreamed of by like-minded idealists, but never actually achieved through any amount of discourse and debate.

He though all these things, but most of all his thoughts were directed towards what it would have been like to be dragged into the bathroom by the girls, and have his body coated by theirs

The Foremen decided that they would tag along to see what was happening rather than facing the prospect of packing up and heading back to town and their own mundane lives.

The bush wasn’t nearly as impenetrable as the Karri forest they had passed through to get there, but was still thick enough to cause them to duck and weave their way through and catch their clothing on the Banksia and zamia palms. Indeed the spiky leaves of the scrub had burrowed their way into their clothing, causing them to itch and scratch at their skin to the point of bleeding.

We all gathered in our hall over lunch to conduct our very first town meeting. No mayor or president or chairman was elected to direct the flow of verbal traffic.

As there were only 5 families at this stage, only the 5 properties at the downstream end of the selection closest to where the creek spat its contents into the river were placed into the ballot.

            Once the business was out of the way, one of the Foremen spoke up to advise that when it comes to building our houses it would be most advisable to build towards the back of the property, or at least not on the plain. His brother murmured his agreement, adding that while the ground may presently be hard packed and dusty, it was also the back half of the dry season. When the rains returned in a couple of months, he said the creek would swell from its current trickle, break its banks and spread out over the Paperbark flats and in the process transform the soil into slush.

Each of the families now possessed a house pad, with only the bachelor Matthew Elliott yet to have a completed site. He had decided to wait until last so that the families could have functioning houses first. The way he figured, he could stand to rough it out in the hall a while longer if it meant that those with wives and children could have a private space of their own. The other adults however told him he was talking nonsense, and with their heads filled with solidarity and community spirit delayed construction of their own castles until Mr Elliott’s property too was ready for a house to be built on. The Kelly’s also pitched in their strength and experience to speed up the campaign and get things moving on to the construction phase.

With the help of the Kelly’s, and with everyone else showing off their strength and work ethic, Mr Elliott’s block was finished by the middle of the afternoon.

What had occurred was now behind them, there was no point in, and avoiding the cult of ego transpiring not three meters away.  For these there was no ritual better in the world than the aural fellatio afforded to their comrades, to the disparagement of themselves, once a performance had concluded. The absurd aggrandising afforded others and the passive aggressive pleas for positive affirmation. ose particularly well versed in this dark art could successfully gain the praise of all others through a few carefully chosen insults directed towards their own performance. Alby and Zach purposefully avoided this ritual, choosing instead to

They were transported from being intimidated by the charisma of the artists to being the intimidator, a thing of wonder.

They were both in the midst of their postgraduate studies; two years into the ritual of failed experiments, crushed hypotheses, broken equipment and sub-poverty wages. It would be another 2 years or so before they would be formally unleashed onto an unsuspecting scientific community as Doctors.

Their work would be considered as Pure Basic Research- not looking directly at the clinical implications of how to cure something, but rather poking around to see how it works in the first place. It was their belief that a prerequisite to treating a disease was to first understand the ways it develops and exerts its effects. In other words, they wanted to know their enemy.

And so they had to explain their choice of vocation from the bigger picture, which for them was so often obscured by the tiny details.

His mischievous smile beckoned the girls over much as the sirens lured sailors to their doom. His magnetism drew people towards him, but unlike the sirens his intentions always remained pure.

In the course of speaking he had slipped his left arm down the back of the couch.

She was a dry wit, presenting this as a front to the world to protect the real Pilar.

I figure that if you can’t change your mind about what you want to do with your life when you’re in your teens or early twenties, when can you?

a few scraps

He pulled up the PCR run he’d set up that morning and set about fiddling with the settings until he was happy with the threshold and the R² of the standard curve registered above 0.99. Confident in the plots he exported the raw data to Excel and began separating the samples into their respective treatment groups. Half an hour later he had a graph and a couple of P-values of below 0.05. He sat back and smirked. “Fuuuuck.” The chains of the swing tightened around each other.

                           

                                                                        ***** 

That first day passed without further event, save for an hours break at a creek for lunch. I would be another fortnight before we could properly recuperate at the end of the voyage. In this time the entire convoy of families had no choice but to get to know each other. Floods, droughts, plagues, fires, and failed crops would have to be endured together. Marriages, funerals, birth and anniversaries would all come and go with an unspeakable amount of work between. They would establish a new community; a new society. The insuperable bond between man and the earth would emerge and flourish to the point where it would no longer be discernable one from the other, but a single, symbiotic entity.

                                                                         ***** 

Karl had been vice-president of the student guild, forming a coalition with the slightly less left leaning campus Labor party that saw him, as leader of the smaller, distinctly leftist Greens, hoisted into a position of not little power (insofar as student politics has actual power).

Karl wanted to avoid these stereotypes. While he sympathised in part with the socialists, he was wise enough to realise that such ideology couldn’t work in the real world. His personal manifesto was in a state of perpetual flux. Even so, like-minded people seemed to gravitate towards him like moons to a planet. He certainly gave the impression of such at university open days, where he’d stand out like a modern day giant surrounded by little impressionable freshers wanting to join a cause an ideological shift away from the right-wing dogma of their middle-class parents. If he had the self-confidence to match his formidable intellect he would have been a danger to any impressionable fresher. As it was he was tearing himself up with Leigh.

Leigh had found herself in Karl’s orbit by dint of her half-hearted involvement in the campus Labor party. It had happened as something of an accident that she found herself elected to a general seat on the student guild council. It wasn’t through any machinations of her own, but through an unforeseen clerical error with the candidates list. The list of pre-selected candidates had been decided weeks in advance, but as so often happens on campus its submission had been put off until another time as the third slab of Emu Bitter was delivered up the stairs to the party room. As the time approached someone finally realised that the form hadn’t been submitted. Seeing as the original was stained with beer and melted chocolate and the electronic copy was on somebody else’s computer, it was hastily transcribed and run down to the guild office. It was during this transcription that Leigh’s name was inserted several places higher on the ballot, and seeing as the ordering had been correctly signed off on by 2 members of the party executive it couldn’t be amended. So Leigh found herself bored witless at weekly sittings of the guild council, debating the merits of condemning the actions of Japanese whalers and declaring the campus a safe harbour for refugees.

But for while their relationship was far from smooth, you couldn’t really blame Leigh. They were both as bad as each other. Which is probably why they found themselves in that situation. Happily for her she found a source of amusement. It was these jabs and ripostes that led her to anticipate the otherwise dreary meetings, and before long she found herself in his flat, naked, after several hours debating the merits or otherwise of the Northern Territory Intervention.

Now he was working part time in the anatomy and histology dungeons of the Science faculty as he trod water waiting for his friends to finish their PhDs. He hadn’t given up on his politics however, it was just that there weren’t too many full time jobs to be had working for Greens, being as they were a minor political party. He had however managed to snag a part-time job as a staffer for a local Greens politician, who was grooming him as her successor in State parliament.

At the other end Yoshi, Piers and Leigh discussed the use of statistics in research, apparently not noticing the other conversation. Seven empty jugs teetered in a stack the middle of the table. And that was with Yoshi not drinking due to a bet with Marshall that he couldn’t last a month without booze, with the loser having to fill all the empty tip boxes in the lab for the next month. It was a bet neither wanted to lose. It had been a fortnight so far.

They kept chatting and joking away, with Karl and Leigh doing their best to ignore, or at least be civil with each other for the sake of their companions. They were smart enough to realise that if they were outwardly hostile the others would be somewhat uncomfortable, and they would risk alienating themselves and being excluded from future plans. Instead they raised the white flags of truce and tried as best they could to ignore their own personal situation and contribute to making the evening fun and involving for everyone.

Yoshi was most definitely on the side of slowing down, being as he wanted the company to drag on as long as possible. He knew that if they chose to fast track their night he would be the one left standing, sober, with the prospect of a lonely night in front of the TV or computer. He tried to be persuasive, but in the face of this Marshall dug his own heels in with the expressed aim of making Yoshi’s night a living hell; trying to get him to get drunk via the age-old medium of peer pressure as a way of preventing himself from having to spend the night alone. Leigh for one was up for more incessant drinking. She was in the post-breakup mood of drinking to annihilation to forget about her problems. Just for the sake of pissing Leigh off further, Karl voted for slowing down and enjoying the night.

So the deciding vote came down to Piers, with both sides vociferously pleading their cases. But as much as he wanted Yoshi to suffer for causing past humiliations, he couldn’t bring himself to endorse the pursuit of hardcore drinking. He had given his brother, Alby, his word that he would go to his bands album launch that night in Northbridge, and he couldn’t in good conscience go against his word. His parents had always instilled in him a sense of honour. If he gave his word he couldn’t rightly go back on it.

            Piers’ decision was not at entirely adverse to the whims of his friends. Marshall had fond memories of him from days spent bumming around Piers’ house, while the others had met him once or twice at 2am in bars in the city. From what they could remember through beer goggles his people were exactly the type of people you would want to be associated with on a Friday night. He was something of a linchpin in the local arts and music scene; one of those people that can be counted on to know where the action is and to formulate plans as to how best to reach the potential of the night. And, Piers assured them, some of the women his brother hung around with were rather easy on the eye.

In the intervening time between the tavern and the gig it was decided to head into the city to hunt for food in what locally passed as some sort of Chinatown. Leigh wasn’t too keen either on slowing down her drinking or going to see live music. Plus she was of the opinion that ‘eating’s cheating’, so she decided to leave the boys to their own devices.

It was as though they were now presented with a second chance for making the night right.