§ moth body

In these dark,
Ever more uncertain times,
As the great and proud are reduced to gibbering madness;
As the mighty cringe in cellars,
Nursing frail hopes,
That the global conflagration will somehow pass them by;
As we clench for the final penetration,
As primal fears diffuse amongst us,
Like a deadly gas,
In this time of shadowy terrors
In this epoch of bowel-loosening panic …
In this climate of exhaustion,
In this aeon of wet corruption,
In this season of dread ...

I offer my Moth Body,
To the women of our world.

Men! Do not be envious.
For you too will benefit.
We all will benefit.
Because happy women make for a happy world,
Happy, satisfied women.

Women! Do not fear.
My offer is unconditional.
Every woman is eligible.
Every woman is compatible,
Spiritually, emotionally, physically.

This is the magic and the miracle
Of my Moth Body
It naturally encompasses the body of any woman.
Whether nubile or arthritic
radiant or moribund
statuesque or squat
gorgeous or grotesque
resplendent or repulsive
demure or deformed
My Moth Body will take your measure,
then give you pleasure

I have offered my Moth Body
To women of every physical configuration
To women of varying levels of sentience
To women of extreme temperaments
To women of doubtful authenticity
To women of terrible beauty
And to women who were little more than rudimentary stumps
I have offered my Moth Body
To women with prehensile tails,
To women with dewlaps and humps
And let me state
In the most categorical manner
That not one of these women
Came away unfulfilled.
All were re-energised and fully prepared
To face the gruelling demands
Of a doomed and terrified world.

On other planets,
I have shared my Moth Body with luminous women,
Aluminium women, coagulated blue women
And oscillating ghost women.
I have offered it
to women of variable reality
to cylindrical bone women
to darting skink women
to prismatic mole women
Yes, and to rustling whelk women -
And never has my ravening moth-like virility fallen short.

In recent times, I have isolated my moth body,
Exposing it only to occasional, carefully prepared women.
I had come to believe
That I had been too lavish with my gifts,
Learning that the touch of the Moth Body
Is a dangerously complex experience,
with unknown spiritual and emotional repercussions

Some women experience tumultuous after-effects,
And, in their innocent confusion,
declare undying love for the moth body.
These poor bewildered women have demanded exclusivity,
forgetting that the moth body is a resource
to be shared by all women.

In truth, there is a risk.
Some of you will come to love my Moth Body more than most,
You will consume too freely of its bounty -
Whether the bristling mouth parts or the olfactory bulb -
And enter a warm netherworld
In which the only truth is the truth of the Moth Body.
And its overwhelming sexual charisma.
To be honest, most of you will enter this state,
And some, will never leave

Yet is that so bad a thing?
To spend the balance of your lives
In a misty stupor of desire,
governed by a mindless slug-like hunger for my Moth Body,
Coming to me, each day,
for smooth immersive satisfaction.
You! Members of my expanding global voluptuary!
My universal harem!
You will exist only to partake of my moth body.
To swoon in the pungent tornado of my pheromones!
To drool freely
On the softly furred bulb of my abdomen!

After great deliberation,
I have come to believe,
That nothing should stand in the way
Of my universal gift.
Now, as I renew the offering of my Moth Body,
I also offer a course of preparatory counselling.

Naturally,
As the host of such a body
I have a duty of care.
I am to maintain the moth body
At an elite level of arousal.
I am to preen and plump the recursive spiral penis.
I am to flush the cloaca with sweet oils.
And perform daily parasite inspections
I am to keep my Moth Body magnificent
For the women of this world.
And it is here, now,
Before you, ready -
Like a weird gelatinous coconut -
Freshened and fully aroused.

Women,
Women of the world,
Do not pause for reflection!
Do not heed the stale, fusty words of your creaking calcified elders.
The time is now!
The Moth Body is ripe!
A glistening pearl is poised at its tip!
Women!
In your heart the decision is already made.
Come to me!
Shed your facades of probity!
Fall upon me like decorticated zombies!
Together, you and I -
Your Body and my Moth Body -
Let us light a coruscating furnace of desire,
An erogenous meteor
that will thrill every genital on Earth,
A fertilising force
powerful enough to arouse every species in the world
To recharge populations of krill and coral
To fire the panda and the orange bellied parrot
to bouts of sympathetic carnality,
So board my Moth Body!
Impale yourselves!
Skewer yourselves
upon the mystery that is my Moth Body!
Consume and be consumed by my Moth Body!
Taste of its many secretions
Cleave unto the moth body!
Render unto the moth body what is the Moth Body’s!
For a miracle has occurred!
The word is made flesh!
A prophecy is come to pass!
A phenomenon!
A marvel among marvels !
A wonder! A glory!
A Moth Body.

~ again with the moth body

There is a most convivial atmosphere at the Last Tuesday Society. My Moth Body exegesis was given an extremely groovy reception, though perhaps the dire message behind the words was masked by the vortex of absurdity. We allowed Polly to stay up late on a school night in order to get a true picture of her progenitor’s mind in action.

Lynne, who – owing to the restraints of my costume - was acting as a human pulpit, suffered an attack of the shakes and veered in a wholly unexpected direction, suddenly demonstrating the likely behaviour of a fille de joie from the Moth Body’s ‘global voluptuary’. It was more than edifying to glance down and see a nude-suited woman in situ at my feet, although, sadly, my ‘gland’ did not function to specifications. It was my neck, rather than the audience which ‘tasted of’ the Moth Body’s ‘many secretions’


(try this facebook link for some better images by Sean Whelan)

I’d like to thank Jodie, who agreed to inquire - from the audience - if ‘intercourse with the Moth Body accords with the tenets of the Christian faith’. And my wife too, for asking ‘if sex with the Moth Body would give her a disease’. And also Justin Heazlewood [if that is indeed his name] for his very subtle and quietly strange performance on the night. His site: The Bedroom Philosopher

I love doing these strange one-offs. They’re quick and dirty and wholly different from the huge, life-encompassing projects to which I so often commit myself.

You may be interested in knowing that Tweety-Bird is no longer leaving curl grubs with indelible black ink-sacs on the shower floor. Her source, wherever that may be, at last seems to have run dry ... it’s difficult to imagine where she could have found so many of them, (I calculate in excess of fifty) - and why. Could she really be spending the night digging through garden beds in search of these horrible creatures?

Interestingly, my wife claims to have seen her trying to clean her lips of the unpleasant taste. I think it is a matter of pride for Tweety Bird that she delivers at least one item of prey to the household each day, regardless of its edibility.


About a week ago we found a large dying dragonfly on the laundry floor. Each day since, we have found a dead tailless skink. From this point on, I am going to do my best to be legal and keep her inside at night.

~ come to my moth body

A very late note regarding a performance I’m attempting tonight at the Last Tuesday Club. Unluckily, I’ve fallen foul of some kind of physical ailment and will be struggling to get the piece finished – I’ll spend the day in bed with my [gorgeous] new laptop and hopefully something unique will emerge. Lynne Ellis is helping me with the performance and has, thankfully, provided a moth-body costume.

Sorry about the late notice. If you need more info click the Last Tuesday link somewhere on the right. It's at the Old Bar on Johnson St Fitzroy, Starts at 8pm.

~ m night shyamalan

I have a such a thing for M Night Shyamalan. It flies in the face of the critics – and there seem to be a whole lot of them – who have canned every movie he’s done since The Sixth Sense. I can see where they’re coming from – or, rather, It doesn’t surprise me that people miss the point, or fail to react to the magic at the heart of his films.

I’ve just finished watching The Happening on video. I saw it in the cinemas and loved it - but with reservations, as it had that slightly flawed feel that a lot of his films do. On second viewing, I was surprised that I enjoyed it nearly as much. I managed to suppress my annoyance that – in the face of a microscopic airborne threat – too few people were masking their faces. I think, if you stumble on details like that, you will never enjoy his films. I don’t think Shyamalan is unaware of these things; I suspect he deliberately lets them fly loose, as a reminder that we are expected to suspend our disbelief, that we are to look elsewhere for the meaning of the work ...

Sure, it’s a kind of artistic vanity; the same as his inevitable Hitchcock-style cameos, but I find it very easy to forgive him, as, along with Guillermo del Toro, he sits very high among the leading exponents of the horror/fantasy film genre. Even at his most indulgent – and I guess Lady in The Water stands accused – what he creates is both fascinating and moving. Lady in The Water – the story of a fantastical water nymph who appears in the swimming pool of a routine apartment block – is one of my favourite films. It’s one of those works which explore the meaning of narrative and are sometimes called post-modern. Think of Italo Calvino’s If On A Winter’s Night A Traveller. Lady in The Water is unique, beautiful, sweet, inspiring and, inevitably, flawed. It puts on display Shyamalan’s flair for showing what it might really be like for something incontestably magical to blossom in the everyday banality of our lives. It’s pure Magic Realism.

I think this talent, more than anything else, is the reason his films work so well. Sure, he’s a past master of the long con; his twists are very good, (though The Happening was lacking in this respect), but in the end these are plot devices; they’re in with the nuts and bolts he uses to construct his films.

Then why, as the ring bounced in The Sixth Sense, and the film slowed - allowing time for the viewer to process what he was seeing - did I, like so many others, feel not only a shiver but an emotional charge. What made it more than just an ‘uh-huh-moment’?

Because Shyamalan knows that we have to care about characters if we are to really travel with them. The people in his films are nearly always sympathetic; we understand the way they behave and feel - so that when the queer shit starts, it’s as if we are there ourselves ... Mel Gibson’s priest in Signs ... Mark Wahlberg and the gorgeous Zooey Deschanel in the Happening ...

Indeed, the human element of his plots is almost strong enough to support the film in itself, magic or no. It is never secondary to the special effects, and often the mundane and the eldritch are inextricably entwined. Think of the extraneous drama in a porn flick – well, this is the diametric opposite. Shyamalan has a real knack in this regard. I think it’s the core of his talent. It’s what really raises his work above the quagmire of bad horror that lines the shelves of our video stores. That and the novelty of his scenarios.

That news flash in Signs: the home video of the children’s birthday party in which the world gets its first glimpse of the alien menace. The abyssal horror emerges in the most pleasant, comfortable surroundings we can imagine, where our precious children are happy and protected. I found it profoundly creepy. I went cold all over. Not like the fright I got from the hand in Carrie, nor the sickening fear of Alien. Something a lot closer to home.

The Happening is replete with similar incidents. In fact, it’s an orgy of them. Again and again, the unspeakable tears apart the contented illusion of day to day life - and to watch is horrifying. Repeatedly, characters seek to kill themselves as expeditiously as they can, as if the act is no more unusual than tying a shoelace ...

So, now that I’ve consumed a couple of valuable hours ruminating on this random topic, know this: the next time you read one of those negative reviews on a new M Night Shyamalan film, claiming that he reached his peak with the Sixth Sense, be warned. The critic probably didn’t get it.

~ The Den of Nargun

I know, another long hiatus, but this time the reasons are entirely different. For one, it’s been school holidays. I made another trip to Bairnsdale, this time just with Polly, and this time I remembered to bring my spasmo-nemigron …

We didn’t see a great deal of Tosie; she’s abandoned her work as a goat-wrangler and is picking broccoli in Lindenow. One of her close friends works at a vegetable packing facility in Bairnsdale proper, where salads are wreathed in plastic for the great supermarket chains. To my disappointment, I learned that produce grown near Perth arrives in Bairnsdale by truck, is packed and sent back out, by truck, to supermarkets in Perth. I shake my head. Even when it’s in their own financial interest, the combines can’t get it together to be efficient. At least, when emissions trading arrives they will have a of fat to trim.

They were a cool few days in the country … my fascination with birds is widening, intensifying, and there were many, many birds to enjoy. We spent a day wandering through a vast morass, where we saw sea eagles, swamp harriers, a giant nesting colony of straw-necked ibises, mallards, coots, shelducks, black ducks, swans. We smuggled out an impressive pelican skull, which Polly is taking to show-and-tell tomorrow. According to my beautiful new Encyclopaedia of Signs and Symbols, birds are symbols of the human soul, “representing goodness and joy, standing for wisdom, intelligence and the swift power of thought.” I am certain my latest obsession is entwined with this symbolism … dissolution into the upper air … severance of the bonds that hold me to the ground …

We detoured on the way home to Melbourne, visiting an aboriginal site called the Den of Nargun. It is a cave, hidden in a dark mossy valley just off the Mitchell River, where a ravening beast – equal parts stone and flesh – lies in wait to steal careless children.

Wednesday night is the opening night of Llareggub, an adaptation of Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood. It’s playing every night until Saturday at the Kaleide theatre at RMIT. It is directed by Lynne Ellis, who is the Director-in-Residence at the University.

There is a huge cast of characters. I am playing a Priest, an Undertaker, an Amorous Sailor and a Poisoner. I’ve been absolutely loving taking the trip into town and rehearsing, though, this late in the day, the stress is beginning to equal the enjoyment.

This may seem surprising, but I purchased my first ipod a couple of weeks ago. It’s a fabulous thing, a metallic blue nano, and I’ve been running it hot, reading to M83, walking to Duffy, riding to Beirut, falling asleep to William Burroughs reciting Junkie ... There’s an element of truth to what they say – it is like having a soundtrack to your life…

Since my last post, I’ve been on the most enduring health kick of my life. It started with Lee’s funeral, where I found my own mortality staring me in the face. And, as is my way, I’ve become obsessed. Not a drop of alcohol is passing my lips. I’ve been swimming, walking, drinking water, watching my diet with a gimlet eye … and I think it’s beginning to show. My wife says my moods are better, that I look better … well, I’m in a play with a couple of dozen spritely youth, I have to make an effort … but I’ve yet to find a balance, I don’t feel settled in my new self, I feel impermanent, and last night I had a dream in which I, and all my old friends, all with failing livers, were gathering together to make a final trip into a damp, cold concrete bunker half buried in the earth, and there to die. It was a horrible nightmare.

Things are a lot sweeter than that.