out across the great desert, the donkey's even footsteps cutting across rolling dust and infinite sky. dragging sandals through scorching sand, joseph leads his reluctant beast of burden onward by a rope that slowly cuts into his palm. upon the mule's back streaked black and sticky with sweat, sits the pregnant virgin, wrapped in fabrics, soft skin shielded from the sun's constant punishment.
the moon rises, and joseph lies with his untouched wife at his side. the chilling night closes in, and she draws herself into him, all tender skin and warmth. and joseph lies tormented. is it such a sin to desire her so? by holy law they are married, and yet as joseph allows his wanting to flourish and his courage to act, nothing feels right. her skin shivers at his touch as if it were... unfamiliar. and her swollen stomach, whose child resides there?
by day they trudge onward, and joseph searches desperately for a look of love in his wife's eyes. but she is distracted and sick. her gaze swims with higher purpose and unflinching faith. the way she holds the fabric to her skin and savours the occasional breeze on her face, it is as if the whole world were her lover's embrace. joseph leads the donkey onward.
mary is beautiful, joseph decides for the hundredth time, her sleeping face beatific in the pale moon's light. his love grows and grows, but mary remains impassive, chest rising and falling in the rhythm of dreaming. joseph stares at her pregnant belly and her round, young hips. joseph watches her eyelids flutter, and he wonders if she's with Him right now. joseph's love grows and grows, but mary remains impassive. he rolls over, and outside the animal lies exhausted in the cold.
in the crowds of bethlehem the dirt and manure stains his robes as joseph hunts down accommodation desperately. mary clutches her stomach as the first birth pangs sink in their hungry claws, and the pain comes like the beginnings of an earthquake.
in a stable, the air hangs stale and dismal with old urine and animal sweat. mary lies wailing on a bed of hay.
joseph stands with the mule while mary cradles the newborn christ, and says nothing as the child is named.
hope you had a merry christmas.
the train is the kaleidoscope innards of a rattling serpent that grinds and drives its way across the city through tunnels and corridors of glassy towers. all the people on board are fascinating. they come in different colors and shapes, they are long and skinny or short and broad. pinks and reds, blues and greens, some have dark eyes, others' are bright and wide, some have eyes that are hidden completely. their lips glisten or peel, pout, sneer and smile. some look back at her, others look away. some smile and wave. she studies them all, absorbs their detail and their movement. such interesting things. her attentions wavers and drifts and focuses again as the people shuffle and change and the train strides noisily onward.
cradled safely in the arms of her mother, enveloped by her scent, the baby plays absentmindedly. big blues eyes and small mouth with wet, red corners, she holds her mother's fingers in each tiny hand, pulling them this way and that, stands like a puppet on unsteady legs and bounces up and down experimentally. the train rocks her backwards and forwards, and she slides back down again.
she takes her mother's thumb and studies it closely, before trying to pull the nail off to find out what is underneath. a sharp cry and the hand is jerked out of reach all at once. and the baby jumps, eyes wide with horror, staring up into the angry glance the looms over her. not knowing exactly what she's done, somehow knowing it was wrong, tasting guilt for the first time.
the hand is returned, and the baby slowly takes it up, and stares at it with newfound grief and wonder. she cradles the thumb, and gently kisses it, terrified. eyes still wide, holding this new and beautiful thing, the baby is filled with tenderness and uncertainty, and this confused compassion is the seed of love.
yeah man... true story. i saw it with my own eyes.
music attracts them like moths to a candle, they stand in front of the speakers and let the ugly chaos blast them. their interactions are brief and meaningless, they cannot hear themselves speak. you take me by the hand and drag me through it all, you are furtive and excited. past the crush of shouting people with grinding hips, you pull something from your pocket and plug it in. a simple switch, and for a moment there is silence. you turn around, eyes soft and shining, and the music comes on slowly, then builds in delicacy and rhythm. it washes over you, and as the mob that swamps us turns ugly with frustration and confusion, you appear utterly at peace. your body turns fluid, and you ripple and sway to the music, your eyes gently shut and your lips gently smiling.
i cry a lot when i think about it, and it always makes me feel selfish because it's got nothing to do with me. when i cry you always hold my head and smile sadly at me, and say "you can be sad once it happens, can't you just be happy now?" i wipe at my face with one hand and do my best.
we try to go out a lot, see friends. the way conversation sweeps you up, it's easy to forget what's coming. where expectation is a raw wind that deadens everything, times such as these are like diving in some tropical ocean. warmth swallows you whole and sound is dulled and rounded. wherever we go, you're always holding my hand underneath the table. at first, we would cling to each other as a kind of protection, but now it feels desperate and sad, that which we cling to is soon to slip away.
your parents are uneasy around me whenever i visit, they sense the odd kind of dread that is gaining impetus inside of me. i ask you if you've told them what we know and you shake your head. "they would never believe me... who would want to believe that about their own daughter?".
sometimes conversation dies down and silence soaks into everything. and it's like coming up for air, all the heat leaves us and the wind tears at our ears and we're scared. beneath the table your hand curls up in mine like a wounded animal and i can feel you trembling. i know how scared you get sometimes, and it's why i feel so bad whenever i have the audacity to cry, i guess. so i try to be happy for you, at least until it happens. i cradle your hurt little hand and feel the storm brewing in the distance, the clouds gathering above our heads. holding your hand feels less like protection now, and more like an apology. sorry i can't stop this from happening. sorry it can't be the same again.
the night before, we are lying down together. you roll over and look me in the eye, holding my hands to your chest. "i want it to be nice. just one last time. before it happens." i look at you, and i don't know what to say, so i just nod. we kiss for a while, hold each other close, but nothing really happens. in the end we just go to sleep without saying anything, my hand on yours.
we sleep in. we spend the day on the couch, just hugging, watching movies and listening to music. i play with your hair, rub your shoulders and your back, do all the things i think you like. the sun begins to set, and we grow quiet. you get up and say "do you feel like a coffee?". my heart quavers, but i say yes. we walk to the kitchen. the water boils, you open the fridge. i am studying your eyes, your hands, the curve of your neck. you bend down and scan the contents of each shelf, and my heart is beating faster. i am watching the way your hair spills over your shoulders, the gentle arch of your nose, the color of your lips. you straighten up and i think about your voice, your perfume, how warm you are in the morning. "we're out of milk." i'm mute. "i'll go get some." i nod.
you get a coat and walk to the door, i grab your arm and choke a little. you look at me with such sympathy and my heart cracks. i beg, "let me come with you? maybe i could stop it..." you only shake your head. "no matter what, it's going to happen, you know that? just stay home where it's safe, please?" i swallow, and say "i'm so sorry." we hold each other for a while, just standing at the door. then it's time for you to go. "walk under the streetlights, please? maybe..." i trail off, and your eyes are full of tears. you nod "i will." and then you're gone. between the pools of light that line the sidewalk, you are so small and alone. i sit at the kitchen table and watch an hour pass.
you come back with your face bruised and bleeding, your jacket is gone. you are crying. you lock yourself in the bathroom, you don't let me touch you. i sit against the door and listen to the shower running and your muffled sobs.
the next day, we go buy emergency contraception. we call the police. we organize a therapist. we lie in bed and you shake, but i can't hold you, it only makes you cry. i cry when you're not looking.
slowly, we start to see friends again, the way conversation sweeps you up, you can almost forget. but sometimes silence seeps in, and you notice how they can never quite meet your eyes. and then you grab my hand under the table, and i cradle it as gently as i can. but these days, it feels less like protection, and more like an apology.
sorry i couldn't stop this from happening. sorry it can never be the same again.
we sit at the kitchen table, and you are so far away these days.
i have this friend, and his name is craig. craig's got some stuff going on in his life. it's nothing horrible, like a terminal illness or a hostage situation, just, everyday stuff. his parents give him a bit of guff, about school work and the like. he's got confusing feelings about girls, like the majority of teenage boys. just typical things. craig gets stressed out, sometimes. he'll swear, he'll hit you on the chest, he'll call you a cunt. it's just his way.
but every now and then, craig is in a spectacular mood. he'll wander into class with his face cut in half by a toothy grin. he'll take a few minutes to answer the door, and when he does his eyes will be sleepy and glassed over. he'll flop down on a chair with a sigh, hands smelling freshly washed and soapy.
and you can spot it from miles away. you need not ask. but if you don't, he'll tell you anyway. so you do. you look over and you say "why are you so happy?". and he'll turn those big happy eyes on you and tell it like it is.
"i just had a really good wank."
and it's as simple as that. a good wank, and he's high as a kite. all his insecurity and uncertainty, scrunched up in an abandoned tissue. the weight of the world and all its worries thrown out on its arse with a few flicks of the wrist. all thanks to a good wank.
and it's not even a sexual thing, really. it's not like he's thinking about tits or blow jobs or panties or anything overly crude and adolescent like that. no, a wank to craig is simply a pleasant experience, like enjoying a well made sofa or a good glass of wine.
he comes away from a wank with the same kind of peaceful happiness that one might get from spending a few hours in the park watching swans or maybe going to an art gallery on a sunday afternoon. just very simple.
just seeing how happy he is after a really good one is enough to make me wonder at how the world could ever go wrong. his stoned and lazy smile makes all the junkies picking away at ruined veins with syringes look like utter schmucks. here's the gift that keeps on giving, and it doesn't cost a cent.
here is sanctuary, relaxation, comfort and pleasure all within arm's reach.
all the monks in the temples and the addicts in the streets, the artists and the authors, the depressed, the oppressed, the lonely, they're all looking for something.
maybe all they need is a really good wank.
(in loving memory of craig)
we walk, sending up clouds of bone dry dust with every weary impact. the heat ravages us, the flies tear at our mouths and the corners of our eyes, they fill our nostrils and scream in our ears. we beat them off with cracked and bleeding hands. at night, we make a fire and let the mosquitoes have their way with us, we watch melbourne and sydney burn in the distance. at night, we fuck out in the dark. it was jack who'd had the idea. with so many dead, we had to rebuild the population. we all stared hungrily at the three girls we had between us. when it was time to vote, they watched us raise our hands.
the sun rises to our right and we always walk north. we trek across sands still hot from the days before. our feet are leathery and black, our skin is peeling and blistered. we wander on and off roads, through the burnt out shell of a town. the buildings are lined up like skulls, faces hover behind fly screen doors, dogs die in the gutters. we pass a pharmacy where we are promised morphine for our sunburn, for a price. we exchange glances, and we give them mary for an hour. she comes out dazed and quiet, tears collecting at the corners of her eyes. we leave with a dose of morphine each, cooked down from a forgotten warehouse full of painkillers. the walking is not so bad after that. the radiation seeps through our pores, the mushroom clouds are still settling on the horizon. we vomit whenever we eat. our hair falls out in clumps.
up north, they say, there are valleys full of grass and trees. up north, it rains, warm torrential rain like standing under a shower. they say you can eat fruit there, find work, see a doctor. up north, you can find boats that will take you into indonesia. the sun sets on our left and we throw ourselves down in front of our fire.
soon, mary stops bleeding and is pregnant, she sits at the fire with the boys and listens with clenched fists while the other two girls yelp and cry in the shadows. the sex hurts, wherever skin touches, it sticks. we ooze and bleed fresh scabs and coagulants. we keep fucking because it helps us sleep, otherwise we lie awake and stare at the night sky. we drink from old coke bottles filled with murky water procured at every rare opportunity. the sun fills the sky, it reigns over the desolation like a proud and savage deity. trees whither and crumble beneath it, and night time is the only shade.
we see a house on the horizon, and keeping the sunrise to our right, make our way towards it. days pass and we are about to make it, thinking about spending time under a roof, maybe sleeping in a bed. but the stench of death reaches us before we get to the gate. the door hangs slightly off its hinges, light streams through broken windows and reveals the corpses of a man and two boys, hacked almost apart and strewn across the floor, limp and destroyed like broken dolls. the walls are smeared with blood. there are two beds, one is merely a mess of burnt foam with blackened springs like intestines. on the other lies a woman, supple and young, with her long hazel hair arranged around her angelic face, she lies still. her throat is cut, her legs are still spread. maggots writhe. we stumble away, wretched with grief.
they say that after everything collapsed, the natives decided the land was theirs again. they poured out of the nature reserves and the housing commissions, they rekindled their traditions, fashioned weapons and began to hunt. they brought their culture back from the brink of utter extinction, and in its revival, it was imbued with the kind of hatred and violence it remembered from the settlers. they call them the tribes, because nobody knows the names of all the different tribes they formed, and nobody can tell them apart anyway. they say it hardly matters, they'll all kill you just the same.
we walk on, and then mary begins to give birth. water trickles down her leg and she cries out. she knows it's too soon, and her eyes are big and scared. it starts to hurt her, and she moans softly while we lie her down and position her legs like we remember from television. her chest starts heaving, and she cries. the other girls are excited, they fidget and tug at their hair, shifting on the spot. jealous of the respite pregnancy granted her, they are eager to see it over, to know she will suffer with them every night. we gather around and watch. jack, as always, fancies himself as a leader and an expert of sorts, and he leans in and begins to probe between mary's legs. she yells and he stops immediately, turning pale. the tips of his fingers come away sticky with blood. suddenly we are all so young again, and mary begins to wail. we hold her hands, and we wash her forehead, and she just screams and writhes. she looks at us and begs us to make it stop, we can do nothing to help her. the morphine is gone. we keep the flies off her as she labors in agony. our shadows shift and stretch and she is echoing across the empty land, the old house sits in the distance, a testimony to suffering and blood. and then it's done. mary's head falls back against the dirt and she smiles weakly. what she's given birth to is twisted and dead. a spinal cord and a soft skull, translucent skin and the beginnings of organs, cells multiplying at random, deeply corrupted. the fruit of her loins, a mass of cancers and fragility. it is as if she has given birth to her own soul.
she wants to see it. we keep it from her, and she is yelling at us, filled with a fresh mother's defensive madness. we shake our heads and we shake all over, and jack wraps the thing up in his shirt and takes it away. mary tries to sit up, but her insides are too destroyed by her creation. instead, she starts bleeding, and does not stop. we stay with her, listening to her mumble and sob, and then she is gone. jack returns without the bundle. we leave mary to soak into the sand.
during the day, we walk north, with the sunrise at our right and the sunsets at our left. at night, we make a fire, and we fuck out in the shadows.
that sucked. go play in the sun for a bit, then smell a flower.
okay, so, a number of sleepless hours later caffeine is the new alcohol as far as my blood stream is concerned. found a couple of rants typertyperwritten on bits of scrap paper all tucked away in my wallet.
here comes the first one.
iron and wine, a crowded bus. devendra banhart and a train somewhere in the wastes of rural china. drinks and drugs, an italian wedding and a poor translation. being lost and being found. gradients of perfection, behind the scenes discussion. the sun, the moon and her stars twinkling over soft grass. perfume, tired eyes, confusion. all of these, gifts. all of these, lessons. love has so little to do with people. love is an intoxication, love is a beautiful reaction, a tapestry of the senses. love is not a relationship, love is a culmination, a memory of all that has passed, of all that lived for only a moment, for all the things that linger in the mind like a family of sad, forgotten ghosts. love is an eternal instance that is painted on the face of a brief and versatile subject. beautiful faces make a canvas for the most intimate creations, imaginations painted in the ink of whims. temporary, colored in with forever.
huh. don't know exactly where i was going with that one. rant number two commences thus...
beautiful from a distance. so unrelentingly romantic, a forever loving collection of intricate and unpredictable beauties. so simplistic in their desires, so complex in their execution, their advances heart wrenchingly innocent and naive. strip them to their hearts, undress their whimsical lies, without mercy, reveal their nature. find biological imperatives, foul self interest, unconditional desire. they are instruments of simple gravitation, their demise a matter of time. find beneath blushing skin, chemical algorithms, god, super dense cores of pure survivalism, an unthinking impulse of indescribable longing. empty space at the heart of all thought. strip them down to their motivation and they are thoughtless. strip their layers away and reveal the well oiled machinery, cold, practical cogs and gears, dripping with hormones, chain reactions with unthinking catalysts. strip them away, and they are alone. we are alone.
i had a third one, but it was quite personal. accordingly, i left it in a shoe. it was about waiting.
in other news, that whole party was not actually a horrifically depressing death spiral or anything like that. coming from the lighter side of things, my good friend may well be putting up various comic bits of material from the gathering.
then again, he might not. and if he doesn't, it's perfectly okay.
today i spent some time in an oxfam shop. it was stunning. there was the produce of people in dire need of the most fundamental components of human life. food, shelter, health and safety. here were men, women and children in danger of being shot, raped or forced into psychotic combat, hiv, starvation and thirst running rampant, wheels in the eternal machine of suffering that powers their existence. and to eek out a living, to make just enough to live just a little bit longer, here they were, producing the elements of our most frivolous desires. here were rugs, incense, bracelets and wallets. our comforts in exchange for their meager survival. free trade is capitalism at its finest.
i am drunk. i am sad. i am alone in this room.
i will soon have a scanner, so i can post things i did on my typewriter. there is hope for the future yet.
(29/10 - sober note: i am a wimp.)
in the beginning, there was god. and god was all. and then there was a change, and a great celestial knife split god into two. and then there was god the tangible, and god the intangible. and with god the tangible there was space, and with god the intangible there was time. and as time began its inexorable expansion, space grew to delight in its own mutilation, and the celestial knife turned upon it with a violent fervor. soon there was matter, and matter was hacked apart into atoms, and sliced into particles, and then again into smaller components. and then the knife grew weary, the tiny pieces of its handiwork now scattered as dust across the icy black of infinity. as space was imbued with time, so too did god the intangible imbue god the tangible with all manner of energies and waves. soon particles hummed and gravitated, shining like beacons or radiating in the abyss. and then, a new pattern emerged. somewhere in the scattered mind of god, spread between the tangible and the intangible, and then the atoms and the waves and the beams and the wavelengths, a desire to be one again tacked itself together. and thus, with infant steps, the components of god began to rearrange themselves, and bond. and then there were elements. positive and negative charges gathered up protons and electrons and molecules began to grow. and gravity began to fester at the hearts of these molecules and smaller molecules would gather like flies or birds for carrion. rocks grew, planets, whole stars, stunning furnaces where tangible and intangible churned, bled into one another. gradually, the mind was distracted from its singular goal, and the eternal obsession, first trained on infinite division, then to ultimate unity, turned its eye to complexity. the number of elements in existence increased, as infinite combinations were trialled in the glorious heat of fresh stars' hearts. eventually, the eternity grew silent, paused for thought as the stars shrunk to embers, and the floating rocks began to cool. and it was then that god decided to create in his own image. the tangible concentrated all its thought, molecules were forged and bonded in the warm, primordial soups boiling on the superheated rocks, and in all their infinite complexity, life was born. and the intangible took this fledgling creation, and going deep into it, wrote upon its building blocks the very thoughts of god. in the beginning, there was one. and then, a great celestial knife came and parted them. and then there were two. and as the blade swung again, there were four. delighted in this manifestation of will, the universe nurtured this creation in places all across the infinite. and god's thoughts grew in complexity as life bonded and changed with itself. but deep at the heart of the seemingly eternal stars and out in the frozen wastes there wander sucking wounds in the fabric of time and space, and beyond them lie the god's all encompassing aim. hanging over the heads of division and complexity there is always the original and the strongest of the eternal obsessions. gnawing at the cavernous consciousness of everything, there is singularity.
it is easter, and the whole family is eating lunch in the dining room at my grandparent's house. conversation drifts up and down the table, topics mingle in the air, evolving and flowing into one another. as the meal wears on, the well of things to talk about dries up, and inevitably attention turns to me. my aunt, with her mouth zipped up like some exposed sphincter, turns her hard gaze on me and asks how i'm doing in school. by this time i'm in year eight, but her look always makes me feel so young. the pressure brings on a flood of nostalgia, i am in grade four again, and i am no longer top of the class. i am depressed. i have just come back from a holiday with my family, and while there, i had a long conversation with a child my age about what we wanted to do when we were adults. there was so much, too much. my friend looked off into space, and said to me "i wish i could live long enough to do everything, and then decide when i wanted to die". i had only nodded. that night it had hit me, all at once, that i was actually going to die. i had cried all night, knowing that i'd never get everything done, and had not slept well since, plagued by visions of dying in fear and regret at all the things i still had to do. since then school had ceased to interest me, and instead i spent my time wallowing in childish misery. my father jumped to my rescue, and answered for me. "well, his teachers tell us that he has great potential, but he just doesn't seem to put quite enough effort into his work". this last bit, added with a disapproving glance at me, is rewarded with a tut tut from my predatory aunt. she launches swiftly into a lecture on the importance of education and getting a good career in life, stresses that to achieve one's full potential is the corner stone of a contended life, and speaks at length from her own experience as a self satisfied and steadily employed librarian at a prominent university. i am staring past her, at the soft white curtains that billow so delicately in response to the gentle gusts that sweep silently through the open window, the world's perfumed breath. i remember as a little kid, before i'd had the misfortune to be conscripted into the breeding ground of anxiety and competition that was to become to focal point of my life for the next decade or so, i used to let myself get lost in those curtains. i was so enticed by their smell, soft and musty, it spoke to me of comfort.
... yeah that never really happened. well, some bits are true, others not. my aunt is actually pretty nice. i want to write a big one of these, but i can't make it work. until then...
eh.
walking home yesterday, i think it was, i passed a little side street where an ambulance was parked, back doors swung open. an elderly woman had collapsed by the side of the road, and was promptly being cradled onto a stretcher by two swift and business like paramedics, their dexterous gloved hands at her throat, wrists and face as they prodded, pressured and applied an oxygen mask to their dazed subject. i was alarmed by the scene, not for fear of this woman's well being, i could tell from the calm, measured movements of the ambulance workers that this was a stable, routine case, but because there was nobody else there to be alarmed. there was no crowd of concerned onlookers, no frantic family members, no right place right time good samaritan who'd made the call. just the woman being loaded onto a trolley to be slid into the back, and the two emotionless medics. there was something terrifying about the fear the scene lacked. i imagined what it would be like to have nobody there to be scared for me as i was examined and whisked away for treatment. my instinct told me to run there, regardless of how little i could do to help. my instinct told me to go and worry, to get in the way or cause some kind of drama, elicit a reaction. i imagined that woman dying quietly in the back of that ambulance, and her last memory being a lonely little side street and a gentle summer breeze. i kept walking. later on i thought a bit about hammocks. they're pretty interesting... in reality they're just big blankets, but you wouldn't realise that just by looking at them. pretty genius, the hammock.
