~ arm in python

I heard a story the other day about a girl who, being thoroughly wasted, passed out on the couch in an unfamiliar house - to wake with her arm swallowed to the shoulder by an overly ambitious pet python.

When people intersect with drugs, when the safe day-time world is penetrated by heavy-lidded Morlocks on Kronic or Crack, on Krank or Can-D, bizarre complications often ensue – a phenomenon I'm quite certain is news to no reader of this blog. At present, I'm trolling the far oceans of abnormality for the best and most unlikely pharmacological tales as I'm editing a few issues of Whack Magazine - 'Whack' being the official (and mischievously named) 'organ' of Harm Reduction Victoria, the drug-users' advocacy group.

If you have one of these stories (or any interesting drug-related writing - fiction or not) I'd love to see it. Email it to sam.sejavka@gmail.com. If you dare. I'm also seeking imagery on the same theme. Payment is on publication (etc) and almost - but not quite - at normal commercial rates.

On Friday next week, Polly and her friend Ocean are performing in Snatches at RMIT's Kaleide Theatre . It's just a small piece - but an important (perhaps even critical) continuation of The Goitre Bird Cycle - in which the girls, while innocently fishing beneath a sewage outlet, encounter the baffling Starched Penultipope, and proceed to divest him of a fabulous treasure ...

As for me, life writhes and slithers ... like a tunneling snake of quantum uncertainty. For every tragedy, there is a boon, and though I still have plenty of good reasons to crumple myself like a piece of used tinfoil, other more mysterious, more beautiful and bountiful influences have eased the general havoc of my life.

Take, for example, Henry, the estimable and very musky billy-goat pictured below (with myself and Heronymous Posh, photographed by Suzi Q P Dhol). The pupils of his eyes are disturbing to behold: uncanny, ur-satanic, horizontal rectangles, the like of which I'd never before encountered. What's more, in rutting season, the hairy rump of of every nanny-goat in the paddock is reliably worn to bare hide by this proud, insatiable beast.

nb: the art at the top of the post is by Jenny Gameson.

~ wry

I’ve had a good week. My grant proposal for Ambergris (the play I’ve been battling with for a few years now) was accepted by the Victorian Arts Ministry. It’s been a long time since I’ve attempted one of these and, towards the end of the tram-ride to Brunswick for the announcements, I’d more or less convinced myself there was no way I was going to get it. As a result, when I found my name on the list (coupled with the descriptor 'Mt Waverley') I practically fainted. I couldn’t have been more excited if I’d won a Nobel Prize.

Speaking of prizes, if you’re in need of some comprehensive entertainment, watch Steve Kilbey’s acceptance speech for The Church’s induction into the Aria Hall of Fame. Quel raconteur! (I could only find it on facebook, but it must exist elsewhere)

Speaking of Mt Waverley, it’s the time of bleating baby magpies. A family of these birds has staked a place in the peppermint gum outside my study window, and their child is incorrigible. Three times I had to go out there today with a broomstick. There is also a nest of brown thornbills, smaller than sparrows, whose trills and tweets are completely charming.

I had what amounted to a panic attack in a crowded Vic Roads office today. I think I was experiencing flashbacks of jail. The guy behind the counter looked like a screw - thick-set and crewcut - and he had me utterly flustered trying to explain the identity of the person from whom I was trying to transfer ownership of my new car... It was horrible. But Polly wants to marry a mango-tree when she grows up, and I suppose that’s positive. Also, there is at least one kid at her school who is allergic to band-aids. Go figure. Additionally, on the radio, I believe I heard an advertisement for a model of car called an Autobiography. If I wasn’t dreaming, that’s got to be strong indicator of the social climate.

On Saturday night, accompanied by my exotic Japanese friend M, I went to The Old Bar to see Harry Howard and The Near Death Experience. It was raining torrentially and the atmosphere in the place was a little wanting, but they were far from. They were kind of... curious, intriguing, definitively offbeat. I couldn’t possibly think of anything with which to compare them. They were far more rhythm than melody, with a kind of weird, elusive 60’s pop influence, or something ... and though their songs were concerned with death, sickness, hate and so forth, the prevailing mood was, well, wry. But then, I guess, any band containing Harry Howard could not fail to be wry. It was also good to watch Claire Moore’s drumming. I haven’t seen her do that for an aeon.

By the way, here's the cover art for the forthcoming CD from The Ears. And yes, after a strictly commercial decision, it's called Dogs in Space.

~ how to get distracted

I was spending every available second on my play, desperately working to ply some shape into tens of thousands of words of dialogue, when, without too much warning, I am in some toilet, daubed in body paint, presenting as a Na’vi tribesperson. Again, the vicissitudes ...

With others of my species, I spent time outside Rio Tinto’s Lair of Evil in Collins Street, generally protesting the cruel, ethic-poor behaviour displayed by the company in their ravening quest to wring unobtainium from the flesh of the Earth - and, in particular, their outrageous, but unsurprising, action in locking five hundred workers out of a vast, open-cut borax mine in California and bussing in masked scabs.

To paraphrase Jenny: they make the most successful film in history. It’s seen by a vast number of people. It comes down very hard on the side of the environment, scolds corporate greed, compares the barking violence of the machines to the encompassing beauty of nature ... and what changes? They walk out of the cinema and nothing changes ...

Well, at least by planting ourselves, thus attired, outside the offices of one of our more conspicuous Resource Development Administrations we might go a little way towards helping people recognise a link between reality and what they see on screen.



And .... something I photographed in the tea-room of the Melbourne Museum Moreland annexe.

~ ambergris in the raw

With the kind patience and assistance of the staff at the Moreland annexe of the Melbourne Museum (particularly my dear friend Nurin) I was at last able to have my first certified look feel and smell of ambergris, the waste product of the sperm whale which holds a rarefied place in the perfume industry - and which is central to my current work.

I was expecting something like the warehouse at the end of Raiders of The Lost Ark, and I wasn’t so far off the mark. It’s a large unmarked rectilinear building on an unprepossessing corner in an unexceptional suburb, yet within there are wonders.


So let me tell you about their marvellous sample of ambergris. For a start, unsurprisingly, those tasked with locating it were unimpressed by the appearance and the odour - without question, it had the ‘humid’, ‘earthy’, ‘marine’, ‘animalic’ fragrance I’ve so often read described. It was a huge crumbling bolus, covered with patches of concreted sand and what may have been the roots of long dead seaweed. It was indexed as an amalgam of ambergris and non-descript matter, possibly faeces - but upon inspection the tell-tale squid-beaks were evident throughout - and the hot-needle test I was allowed to perform on a tiny smidgeon came up a strong positive.





I love this kind of thing. It drives me on through life. Polly, who I took along, was a touch bemused by the whole process ... but at least she knows what ambergris is now, and she was more than a little interested in some of the other exhibits we passed along the way.



This pig, we learned, had come from the Austin hospital. It had been genetically modified as part of an effort to make porcine organs compatible with humans needing transplants. (xenotransplantation). From the fact it was preserved in such a way, I can only assume it held - or perhaps still holds - great significance.

(please excuse the unfamiliar formatting - something strange seems to have happened with the Blogger interface)

~ the goa stone, byssus and the pyxis

If there’s one thing that's guaranteed to stall the progress of my work, it’s research. If I cast aside my figurative pen and submerge myself in the vast reference tool that is the internet, then the hours slip by without friction and I emerge with a head full of fascinating arcana, little of which is relevant to the job at hand. To wit: the play I'm working on called Ambergris.

In the last week, I've learned more about ambergris the substance than I could ever hope to employ, but I've also been lured down snaking tributaries ... overhung with rare crystalline fruit ... ripe to the point of bursting ... which I could not help but pluck ...

I learnt of shilajeet, an uncommon tar that seeps from hidden cracks among the Himalayan mountains during the summer thaw. Even the apes of this region know of its restorative properties for - together with humans - they sup from these mysterious wells and are known to age at half the rate of their fellows.

I discovered the noble pen shell, a massive Mediterranean mussel which secretes extremely fine golden threads with which it affixes itself to rocks. In antiquity, these threads were collected and woven into an exceptionally sheer fabric named byssus or sea-silk, which - owing to its utter luxuriance and its tremendous price - was favoured by Pharaohs, Satraps, Caesars, Padishahs and any potentate worth his salt in the ancient world. Only one human still practices the art of weaving byssus. The noble pen shell is on the brink of extinction.

I made a note of lacryma cervorum - the stag’s tear - a viscous substance found in the corner-pit of the animal’s eye and possessed of magical properties similar to those of the bezoar.

But let me reveal some secrets of the ambergris ... that ‘marine sulphur, found at the sea-shore’ ..., which has broken from the ‘fountains and caverns of the sea’ ... Which ‘is grey, sweet and smooth' ... and which, when ‘pricked with a needle sweats out fatness, softens in the heat, and when moist appears black’.

If it is true, as tradition dictates, that ambergris is most likely to be found in the hindgut of the sickest whales, then it is no shock that the following individual, taken by whalers, contained the precious substance ...

There was ‘an unusual combination of lesions and ... behavioural abnormalities’ in a bull whale ‘taken... off Iceland’. There was ‘heavy combative scarring of the head, grossly roughened and thickened skin on the lower left flank, cutaneous maculae, genital papillomatosis, partial duodenal obstruction by plastic debris, colo-rectal obstruction by ambergris, cystic degeneration of the right kidney, and a deeply ulcerative gastric nematodiasis. Sealskin was found in the stomach. Gross and histopathologic observations suggested that the disease complex in this animal may have been related both to habitat degradation and health risks naturally associated with its ecology and age.’

Ignorance of its origins have in the past spawned some curious tales ...

‘Ambergris is not the scum or excrement of a whale, but issues out of the root of a tree ... which shoots forth its roots towards the sea, seeking the warmth of it, thereby to deliver the fattest gum that comes out of it, ... otherwise by its copious fatness [the tree] might be burnt and destroyed ... [the] fat gum it is so tough that it is not easily broken from the root, unless [by] its own weight and the working of the warm sea. . . . If you plant the trees where the stream sets to the shore, then the stream will cast it up to great advantage.'

“In [a] ridiculous and wholly fictional account of a ... sea journey in search of the lost Capt. Jacob Cole, Clifford describes using a diving suit to find ambergris on the bottom of the sea and digging it out of the sediments with a pick axe.’

At one time it was ‘assumed that the sperm whale was a hunter rather than a manufacturer of ambergris, and that he swam ... about the broad ocean, gobbling up the treasure wherever he could locate it.” “In vain it was to rake for ambergriese in the paunch of this leviathan’ ... as ‘they sometimes swallow great lumps thereof in the sea’ before vomiting it out.

‘Marco Polo was the first Western chronicler to [correctly connect ambergris with sperm whales, but he ] also thought [the whales] vomited it up after having eaten it in the depths of the sea.’ Current wisdom has it - as far as I can tell from my readings - that the ‘morbid concretion’ exits not from the mouth but the anus [or its cetacean equivalent].

‘Ambergris was an article of imperial trade in Audoghast in northwest Africa before 1,000AD. In the 10th century Ibn Haukal, an Arab trader, classed it in value with gold and black slaves and referred to its reputed aphrodisiac properties.”

‘Avicenna ascribed its formation to the belchings of undersea volcanos. Kublio thought it was bird guano. Nero's wife Poppaea Sabina is reputed to have had oil of ambergris poured in her bath in 54AD.”

‘The Crusaders, "who will not be suspected of effeminacy," were largely responsible for its introduction to Europe from their contact with the Arabs.” Louis XV is said to have used ambergris to flavour his favourite dishes. The favourite dish of France's King Charles II was eggs and ambergris.

‘Ambergris is used in the manufacture of cassolettes, little perforated ivory boxes made to contain powdered odoriferous substances to carry in the pocket or reticule. It was also used in the production of peau d'Espagne, or Spanish Skin, used for perfuming writing paper and envelopes. Queen Elizabeth I is said to have worn a cape made of peau d'Espagne.’

The ‘pasty pathological growth’ also had pharmacological uses ...

It was ‘sealed up in a vessel hermetically, and digested for forty days. The ripened blend, we are informed, perfumes forever what it touches, eases the headache, takes away defluxions from the eyes, comforts cold and aged people, prevents apoplexy and epilepsy, strengthens all parts of the body, and causes fruitfulness’.

And as I've quoted in an older post ...

“It is ... an excellent Corroborative; it is discutient, resolutive, alexipharmic, and analeptic; it strengthens the heart and brain, revives and recreates the spirits natural, vital, and animal. Its sweet Sulphur is ... a good preservative against the Plague". From The Art of Healing and Praxis of Chymistry.

Then there is the curious Goa Stone ... It was ‘a universal remedy introduced in seventeenth century England, originating ‘from Goa and ... found in the form of oval balls weighing up to one pound ... [they were] generally encased in decorated gold or silver spheres. The formulation consisted of a number of powdered ingredients which included precious stones, bezoar, musk, ambergris and gold leaf, levigated into a fine, impalpable powder and formed into oval balls with mucilage’.

And the Pyxis, ‘an ivory box fashioned from the natural cylindrical shape of a tusk, probably used to hold gifts of ambergris, musk and camphor’. One example ‘is carved with a host of elaborate scenes, including one showing two horsemen, accompanied by cheetahs and birds, picking dates off a tree’.

In 1912 the discovery of a 450 kg. lump of ambergris saved a Norwegian whaling company from liquidation.

During the writing of my last play Mysterium I deliberately indulged myself. The work ‘sweats’ with strange archaic language and is bursting with fascinating anecdotes and obscure details. It was an unusual play with an unusual style, and its richness and density was generally well received - but with Ambergris I am planning for the narrative, the characterisation, and all those other elements which traditionally make a play a play, to be paramount.

The play is progressing wonderfully, but it is stretching into infinity. I am at page one hundred and ten with miles to go before I sleep. Fortunately, I now have Sails of Oblivion - the perfect repository for all the fascinating little gewgaws I encounter along the way.

[Please excuse me for not attributing the quotes and sources in this post. It was simply a matter of time.]

~ crystallised magpie

I ought not leave gloomy posts to sitting on my front page for long periods; I’ve had concerned friends ringing to find out if everything’s alright - which it is, now, by the way. Relatively speaking. And it’s heartening to be reminded how caring people can be. Thank you.

I’m buried deep in the meat of Ambergris, working each day, religiously, with the intention of completing this draft by the end of the month, if not by my birthday on April 2. I’ve reached that place where the world of the play - and it’s a complex one - is hovering always in my thoughts, like a shadow of the real world. That’s the main reason you haven’t heard from me: I’m living on a devastated island off the Queenland coast with a community of strange fictional characters. It’s only in this state that I can hold the whole play in my mind - and, in this state, I find that new ideas flow from the real world ... from the personal habits of friends, from weather events, from the contents of rubbish bins, from the attitude of cats ...

Yesterday I borrowed the idea of a crystallised magpie from a poem I was reading for an audiobook. For a couple of days each week, I’m working at Vision Australia, reciting the contents of The Best Australian Poems 2009 [edited by Robert Adamson]. It’s a really agreeable pastime. Though narrating Peter Temple’s crime novel was enjoyable and instructive, there’s something about reading poems I really like. The intrinsic theatre, perhaps. The density. And, of course, the focus on words.

Life at home is comfortable at present, and tranquil, but I’m holding my breath. I find it difficult to believe. Could all the troubles of years past have been solved? I’d be a fool to lower my defences on the basis of a week or so of domestic harmony - but I can always hope.

On the legal front, things trundle on. My matter has been elevated to the county court and will be heard on 24 Jan 2011. Problem is, the judge has asked that my financing be in place by August, so - even though the length, and therefore the cost, of the trial has been reduced (from five days to four) - I’m still under extreme financial pressure. On March 23 it will be a year since the police discovered the plants in my back yard - and what a year it’s been ...

Next weekend: the Global Atheist Convention. It’s been a while since I’ve looked forward to something so much. Richard Dawkins in the flesh ...

Also, it looks like we’re getting the Ears back in gear for a gig in April, I believe - more information forthcoming.

~ pink caligaric jug-eared

No point apologising for the wide intervals between my posts. No point promising to better my frequency, I’ll merely forswear myself. Life is too unpredictable and so am I. When things quieten, such as now, my mind turns to the Sails of Oblivion, but when I am harried by the innumerable demands of my mystifying existence ... it recedes.

I’ve finished my season performing for children as Roald Dahl’s BFG. Hundreds of litres of sweat passed through the fabric of my green giant’s costume. Many kilograms of snozzcumber popcorn spewed from my mouth onto a writhing, over-heated front row. I gave a thousand high fives, and hundreds of photos were taken of children in the presence of my pink, caligaric, jug-eared head. I damaged myself innumerable times attempting to match the energy of a cast which was, on average, less than half my age. Indeed, I went to school with the father of the actress Sophie Perillo, manipulator of an eponymous puppet which accompanied me through much of the show.

Actually, I think I’ve done something permanent to my knees. There’s a painful twinge now when I stand. In both of them. Have my seven weeks of delightful gamboling precipitated arthritis? [Not long ago, I espied an advertisement seeking applicants for a study on arthritis; the only prerequisite was a sore joint on the big toe of the right foot. I have that sore joint. I’ve had it for years. What does it forebode?] I still have a pain in my shoulder from Titus Andronicus. Perhaps I should be taking it easier. After all, I am approaching fifty. But then who cares?

My aim for the coming year is to raise fourteen thousand dollars, simple as that. The amount is a conservative estimate of what my lawyers will ask for representing me before a County Court judge and jury probably in early 2011. In some ways my life is on hold until then. I could be jailed and our house could be confiscated. Or I could come out clean. More likely the result will be something between these two poles.

In the face of this and other no less serious [but far more personal] difficulties, I’ve had to enact some complex mental and spiritual contortions to keep myself from sinking into a debilitating depression. In fact, strangely, I seem to be experiencing a kind of rebound. The year ahead is looking more positive than I would ever have predicted. The fright and horror of my legal problems appear to have splintered my inertia, and instead of running about in panic I seem to be taking what for me are calculated careful steps towards some sort of solution.

I’m coming to the end of Truth by Peter Temple, the crime novel I am narrating for Vision Australia. An invaluable experience. I think I would like to do more of it. I’m sure If I minimise my daily dose of spasmo-nemigron the gravel in my throat will recede to more acceptable levels. Through February, I am planning to at last complete a solid first draft of Ambergris, a play I’ve mentioned before in this blog. I have high hopes for it, which I believe are grounded in reason. I also have a slew of short fiction - speculative, mainstream and weird - which I’m going to polish up and spruik.

If you’re interested, I’ll be performing something at La Mama Poetica on February 8. [My name's not listed, but I'll definitely be there. There's also a Facebook group]]

In a book by the SF writer Charles Stross, I encountered the phrase ‘The troops entered wearing cream and beige office camouflage...’.

~ the passing of immaculata

I’ve spent much of the last three weeks writing an article on naltrexone implants. Too long for a simple article. I get buried in the research, and in polishing the text, and lastly in reducing the text by half because I inevitably write twice as much as what’s needed. I should be quicker by now, but I’m not.

Naltrexone is a drug that blocks the effects of opiates. Usually, it’s taken in tablet form by recovered junkies to prevent relapse, but there’s also a slow-release delivery module that is inserted under the skin and which can last months. It’s unproven and unsafe, but many desperate users are turning to it as a last resort. A lot of politics are wound up in this story, a lot of overdoses too, and a lot of infected incisions.

If you’re interested, the article will hopefully be in the next issue of Whack!, the magazine of Harm Reduction Victoria. Perhaps along with another article I’ve written on the shamanic drug ibogaine.

On the ornithological front, it is my sad duty to report the disappearance of the white duck Immaculata. She has been missing from the Grey Creek for at least a month now, and I fear the worst. The last few times I saw her, she seemed uninterested in food and I think she was already fading as winter descended.

Lat week, there was a huge flock of sulphur crested cockatoos feasting on the spiky balls that fall from the liquid amber trees at this time of year.

But more exciting by far was my sighting of about a dozen black cockatoos by the grey creek. Identifying them has been hard.. There are five types of black cockatoo. Glossy black cockatoos don’t live here. They weren’t gang gangs. Red and yellow tailed black cockatoos do live in Victoria but I didn’t see enough colour to tell … It must have been one of these two.

The Sails of Oblivion Gig surges on. Dolores, the promoter is a force to be reckoned with. We’ll have facebook and myspace pages set up within the next few days.

~ the people of the shoe

At night the elliptical cement pathway glimmered dully under the constant glare of security lights. It slowly released its heat into the air, but was otherwise inert, desolate, a sign of human presence in the past, but not the present. There were a few small indications of nearby habitation, the everpresent cigarette butts, a frayed shoelace, a lolly-wrapper. On the smaller scale, spit, phlegm and human skin flakes nourished the barren russet earth, feeding the low shining weeds.

By day the path was populated by a clade of organisms I will refer to as the people of the shoe, for it is by their shoes – or sneakers, or runners, or trainers - that you will know them.

They walk anti-clockwise, always anti-clockwise, crunching millipedes under foot, collecting a fine film of the everpresent red dust in summer, or a layer of glutinous mud in winter. Their heads are bare, their hair generally short and cut with little care or skill. Their facial features are unmoving, they do not smile. Often, as they walk, they stare at the ground. Rarely do they greet each other if they pass.

Their clothes are purposefully unexceptional. They are shapeless and the colours are dull. In the heat, singlets and t-shirts predominate. In the cold, plain jumpers, hoodies or track-suit tops are added. Track suit pants and jeans are the only form of trousers used. Not only do these men have forced limitations on the extent of their wardrobe, but they fear that any form of ostentation, any sign of variation from the norm might single them out. Put them in danger. This is a place where everything can depend on not being conspicuous.

The forces that drive fashion trends in the outer world are compelled to work in reverse here. Evolution selects for dreariness and tedium.

Yet there is a window - no larger than the tiny hole through which one spies the beauty within a kaleidoscope – in which these men may express their character. While all else about them is harsh and devoid of variety, if one is to look down at their footwear, the world turns on its head. It is in their footwear, in their athletic footwear, that extravagance and individuality may at last be found.

The shoes are composed of the most modern of materials: rubbers and plastics of multiple densities, substances from the high laboratories of Nike and Adidas, licenced to NASA for use in spacesuits, or to Northrop Grumman for use in the next generation of stealth bombers. Leathers grown in nutrient vats from the genetics of rare animals.

The shoes have the streamlined design of sports cars or hot rods, and it would be no surprise to learn that they had been tested in wind tunnels. The patterning over their exterior surface may be a modernist adaptation of the art nouveau aesthetic, or it may comprise a distant homage to the works of Klimt, Kandinsky or Picasso. The colours may scream or whisper; sometimes clashing angrily, sometimes crawling in imitation of spider-webs, sometimes balanced perfectly. Some shoes bear what appears to be armour plating.


Thought has been turned to every aspect of the shoe, however small. The eyelets, glossy and black like the mouth-parts of a funnel web spider; the insole textured with tessellations from the imagination of leading podiatrists; the tread moulded to resemble Penrose tiles or the dorsal spines of iguanas.

Some appear to have nodules erupting along their edges, power-tumours that will add to the flexibility, durability, traction or comfort of the shoe. Some have tiers of fluorescent polyps with integrated LEDs that flash in time to the wearer's heart. Other swellings and outgrowths are seen, their purposes either unknown or too esoteric to be expressed.

The shoes are laden with high technology. Odometers and pedometers with USB ports are built into eerily pulsing soles. The mound of an internal brain-case protrudes from the rearfoot. Reservoirs of luminous green gel eddy and churn as if alive, slaving to correct pronation. Sheaths of carbon nano-tubes provide moisture-wicking. Cooling is achieved with a micropore system inspired by the mounds of termites. Antimicrobial actions are performed by an embedded immune system.

Through the day, these men, these people of the shoe, proudly wear these shoes from the outer world. They walk the ellipse, the cement pathway that will take them nowhere. Cockroaches travelling the outer rim of a plate.

~ a fragile beauty in the compost bin

It’s been one of those weeks when things work nicely to plan.

I’ve finished a short play – The Goitre Birds – which will be performed (by myself and the estimable Francis McMahon [He Died With A Falafel in His Hand, The Rage in Placid Lake]) as part of Snatches on Friday May 15 in RMIT’s Kaleide Theatre in Swanston St.

Snatches is the brainchild of my beloved colleague Lynne Ellis, who is Director-in-Residence at RMIT. It’s a gallimaufry of short works stapled together with Lynne’s customary wit and charm. The quality of the performances and the writing range from prime to abysmal, but it’s almost always interesting to behold – and if something’s boring, that’s okay, whatever it is will not last more than ten minutes.

I’ve also completed - at last, just this minute - my liner notes for the Beargarden CD release. We had our meeting – Bruce Butler, Andrew Till and I – and we plotted out what remains to be done. The cover/booklet design is pretty much it. We’re spending the next fortnight trawling for photos, posters etc. Also, we’re going to set up the obligatory My Space page and post all the videos we can find to You Tube. (If you happen to possess anything along these lines, we’d be very grateful to hear from you.)

With my wife away, Polly and I have been thoroughly in each other’s hair. Over the weekend, I was chafing at the bit in the role of daddy, particularly on Saturday afternoon when we played host to one of Polly’s school friends. The house, which I’ve worked so hard to keep tidy, was magically reduced to squalor in what seemed an instant. This week, however, has been a father’s dream. We’re loving each other’s company. There’s been little sign of whinging. Scarcely any procrastination at bedtime. If only family life was always so ideal.

There have been all manner of lesser duties and commitments to be confronted – some of them onerous and connected to the troubles I’ve alluded to in previous posts. Stressful, confusing, but they’re behind me now.

And today a gift was bestowed me from the mysterious unknown.

After noticing a putrid smell in the laundry, I recalled that the compost been building up for at least a fortnight. Every day I mean to move it, but the cold puts me off, or I’m not wearing shoes, or … whatever. This morning, at last, I lugged the heavy bucket of decomposing scraps out back to the compost bin, lifted the lid and was presented with a vision of splendour.



Of all the curious moulds and fungi I’ve encountered, this has to be one of the most sublime. Like hoar-frost crystallising on the decaying vegetable matter, pristine white, almost luminous in the gloom of the green plastic bin, like something from a fairy dell, or from a child’s dream of Christmas.

~ the cult of the millipede

It was a large ellipse of dark red soil almost the size of a football oval and delimited by a plain concrete walkway. The soil had been imported a decade previously, dozed from the surface of a dry exhausted region somewhere in the interior and poured over the contents of a landfill which had served the waste management needs of the capital city for three decades. The area was then graded flat and left to detoxify; over a period of fourteen years, its poisons and noxious gases leached steadily away, until the land could officially be designated fit for human use.




The red plain was vast and desolate, as devoid of ecology as the wastelands from which the soil had been procured, yet beneath, among the strata of refuse, materials were reacting with each other, merging, catalysing, gumming, fusing. The near infinite variety of society’s discards were co-mingling and beginning to seethe.

~ the tunnel

The clear blue sky is an affront. The sweet warm air and the gentle breeze are a plague upon my senses. I walk quickly, shunning the flowering bushland and the birdlife, concentrating on the vast concrete wall ahead and the black patch of shadow at the angle of wall and ground, which is the opening of the tunnel.

Upon entering there is an instant change in temperature. I feel the sensuous cool of the crypt. Gone is the murdering light of the sun that impales the material world with writhing spears of poisonous energy. Now just the flat sullen glow of neon panels, set in the ceiling at intervals wide enough to maintain the analgesic gloom. Immediately, I feel the dampening effect on my soul and I am thankful.

I tread through the near dark at an even pace. A pace I could maintain indefinitely. The walls are roughly poured concrete, still bearing the fossil imprint of hessian. The roof too, which I could reach out and touch, like the lid of a coffin, and the floor, where a thin layer of grey sand has collected, and which bears the many footprints of moving bodies such as I.

Everything relaxes in these tunnels. Electrons find their resting states. Systems idles. The eyes have only soft dull shapes to process. The skin feels only cool. The smell, which I have come to love, is that of damp concrete.

As the square of light that is the entrance diminishes to a point, so the silence strengthens, broken only by my breathing and the soft impact of my footfalls. I am coming to a place. I am leaving it. No one sees me. No one expects me. No one remembers me. I walk towards a goal which I need never comprehend, nor which I will ever reach. I am compared to nothing. I am the last man and the first. In the healing null-space, I am unrecognised. I need not be provided for. I am on pause. Effectively, I am nothing.

The tunnels fork, form tributaries, recombine like a vast neutral river system. From time to time, I sense other men flowing through the shadows, but never is a greeting exchanged. It is enough to hear the footfalls in the lifeless sand, to know that there are others, many others, who have developed a taste for this singular resource.

The tunnel system is extensive, that is clear, but just how vast, I do not know. Nor do I know how many walk its dark floors, at peace, neither before nor after, neither alive nor dead.

§ 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.

~ 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.

~ extraordinary things

Life used to be flush with excitement. Awesome things used to happen all the time.

But these days, not only is my existence monotonous, predictable and unexceptional, but I would fight tooth and claw to keep it that way. Sure, those ever advancing years are at least partly to blame. And yes, my life is probably a little more interesting than I make it out to be – but reasonable certainty that tomorrow will be pretty much like today is a large part of what keeps me together, helps me stave off depression, be a consistent father, obey the orders of my beautiful wife - and work.

If you’re writing a novel, you need to work pretty much every day, and for hours – in my case at least four. The days go by. The words get written. And I find I’m spending a good part of my mental life in the chaotic fantasy world of Nonesuch.

That’s how I’ve replaced the madness of my youth. That’s how I get my jollies these days. In the mind. The mind.

In Nonesuch. In Alastair Reynolds' space opera House of Suns. In David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas. In my library, where thousands of books, accumulated over decades, emanate an aura of profound comfort and potential … I can go anywhere … what's more, in the next room, the internet, and you ...

Did you read the article about cognition and exercise last week? An experimental study strongly suggests that regular daily exercise leads to improved mental function. It makes sense to me, gives me even more impetus for my exercise regime. What's more, a few days ago I discovered Dr Norman Doidge and the concept of neuroplasticity. The act of thinking actually involves synaptic growth and can even turn genes on and off. Believe me, I’m back doing my crosswords. I'm an immediate convert. No doubt, cerebral exercise is at least as important as physical. Particularly – as I repeat myself like a weary, warped, worn-out record – if the years are accumulating behind you.

They say your mind goes as you die from liver cancer. What a harrowing thought. I’ll have to put something in my will about that. I want to be turned off before my wits go. Just pump me to the eyeballs with morphine and let the sisters of mercy call down the birds ….

Lately, you see, I've had this thing with birds … And I feel I’m about to have a thing with fungus … It’s my way of going deeper, finding the Breugelian phantasmagoria beneath every rock, brick and decaying log … Imagine how much there is to learn about those strange growths … imagine knowing the name of even the humblest toadstool ... Who cares if they’re a hundred feet from the Monash freeway … My god, I’m shivering with excitement!

There’s a whole boring old suburb out there, full of boring old people; there are mundane parks and common species … but when you get into the detail, well, it can transform into a wonderland… That’s what I started out trying to say. I’ve learned to take delight in the little things. I'm learning to find community in the place I live, rather than where I go mental.

Howard Arkley, the artist who lived and died not far from here, was unearthing something similar in his work. Lounge suites, common as muck, burning with neon intensity. But when drugs intervened, then his sense of wonder was whisked away - and he was left with shabby old furniture and a rafter from which to hang himself.

Here are the lyrics to a song I wrote in the nineties. It was for Lynne, the woman who taught me that ordinary could be astonishing.

*

extraordinary thing

she likes terrifying things.
she likes death-defying things
beware her paperclip and her useless piece of string.
beware the texture of her skin.

he loves convoluting things
he loves interwoven things
M.C. Escher folds his hands under his chin
enthralled by the deployment of her limbs

that girl who lies beside you -
has got the strangest idols

she likes ordinary things,
but she’s no ordinary thing.

she likes mortifying things.
she likes nauseating things.
beware her laser beams and her paralysing sting.
beware her vanities and sins.

she likes aggravating things
she likes modifying things
she wants a murky world where logic is a sin
and where confusion reigns, she’s king.

that girl who lies beside you -
has got the strangest idols

she likes ordinary things,
but she’s no ordinary thing.

extraordinary thing
extraordinary thing

(From Sweet Secretions by Fact. Available in your local remainder bin or op-shop.)

*

A final note. I've added an important update to the post titled Blue Streaks of Paranoia

~ the wad

It came to me at the bottom of a cold dark well. I would write a fantasy novel. In fact three, a trilogy, something as surreal and rabelaisian as China Mieville, but which would sell like Terry Pratchett.

A month later and I haven’t yet got bored of the idea. In fact it’s going rather well. Slow, but well. I can’t imagine how I will ever complete it, but I’m not letting that get in the way. I’m going to send some finished chapters around the place and get some reaction, then I’ll either bite the bullet and write the whole thing, or do something else.

The novel is set in two interconnected worlds: Nonesuch, dominated by a planet-girdling forest called (at this stage) The Weald, and Telesium, the spirit world, accessible by Séance, by the herb sleither, and by rites of the shrouded Velleity. So far, I’ve spent most of the time building the universe, naming the plants and animals, the seasons, the rules of Nature, the history of human civilisation … making a map, the all-important map. Though, as is my way, I still waste time with intricate, richly textured details that may never see the light of print, I have been uncharacteristically strict with myself. I have a believable world, three or four chapters in draft and one polished off.

At present I’m worried about the name of the male protagonist, Lamarc. It’s not bad, but it’s not of the rank of, say, Alsace, his father, or Teasel, his mother, or Tetany, the evil queen. If you’ve got any suggestions? The victim of the recent light plane crash in Moorabbin had a beautiful name: Akash Ananth. Either would be better than Lamarc, I think. But I’m not sure. Perhaps too sub-continental …

Anyway, here’s a snippet ... Unknowingly drawn by the mysterious discorporate entity Almathea, the child Lamarc is venturing perilously into the phantasmagoric Weald …

*

Deeper in the wildness, in close musty pockets where the sun scarcely penetrated, he had observed a very curious and poorly understood creature - or perhaps part of creature, or perhaps plant - known as the wad. It was a cube roughly the size of a human head, composed of a moist translucent meat-like substance, veined with something blackish that could be seen to flow and packed with pebble-sized organelles in pale shades of red, blue and grey. Behaviourally, the wad was elementary. It fell; unexpectedly and from on high - from no visible resting place or eyrie, seeming to materialize in mid-air. It would slap into the earth, scattering leaves and mulch, then proceed to decay in natural order, offering its stored minerals and energy to the Weald. No doubt the wad could kill, if one was caught beneath it, but to Lamarc’s knowledge no one had yet had such tremendous bad luck.

The wad was a very strange thing, but it was a useful reminder that everything to do with the Weald was fundamentally strange. If Lamarc was ever in danger of acclimatising to the outlandishness of life in the forest, the wad was always there to pull him up. A queer thing in its essence. No apparent rhyme or reason. Brute strangeness.

In these congested areas, he could feel the Weald in everything. It transfused from soil to air, from leaf to root to thallus, from rain to tongue; everything swollen and heated with the workings of the ecome.

*

Some other news … The re-release of the Beargarden album All That Fall is looming. The delay has been my fault. I’ve insisted on writing liner notes that contain a potted history of the band, and since I’ve been hiding under a rock until recently, nothing has got done. Now I’m working again and the biography is almost ready. It’s long and full of dirt.

We’ve been spurred to action by word of movement regarding the long awaited Dogs in Space DVD release. We want to release an Ears album around the same time, but, according to our schedule, we can’t do that until the Beargarden is done and dusted.

Apparently, commentary tracks are being prepared for the DVD, so Mick Lewis (Ears guitarist) and I have decided to our services to R. Lowenstein. We’re so excited about it, we may do it whether it’s included or not.

~ awash with meaninglessness

I’m really sorry I haven’t been able to post as often as usual.

Ebay is the culprit. In desperate times, as you may already know, Ebay is where I turn to breathe life back into the cadaver that is our household budget. It’s an activity of last resort, and I don’t know what I’d do if it didn’t exist.

But my god, the drudgery it demands…

At first it’s not so bad. Listing the books can even be fun. I like to provide all the pertinent information a potential buyer may need. I paste reviews from Amazon into my item descriptions. I take care to paint a good verbal picture of the book’s condition …

But then the auctions end. The money starts trickling in. I must keep a log of this money. I must list again. I must check my messages … ‘Just letting you know I’ve transferred the money for Zen & The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance’…. Cheers. I knew that already. I could have addressed your parcel in the time it took me to read your blasted email….

The addressing … the bubble-wrapping … the weighing … the swabbing … the double-checking … the constant search for non-putrid packing materials in bins and skips … the gluing of fifty cent stamps … all the many and various stages in the process …

By the time I’m fully Ebay-engaged, they pile upon each other inexorably. When I have sick days, which I invariably do, they pile even higher. There is no pity for the faceless seller. And there is always at least one irritable buyer who wants emails replied to within the hour.

And there’s no way to streamline it. I’ve tried. People are just too variable… [Though I admit I’ve successfully integrated Polly into sections of the production line.]

[If you’re wondering about the fifty cent stamps, don’t. I buy them in bulk from my next door neighbour, who is in the local stamp club. I believe they come from ‘stamp collections’. Problem is, when the postage is, say, thirteen dollars, you have to patiently glue twenty-six stamps to the package.]

Is my life reduced to this?

No. I can still write in the mornings and visit the pool and discharge my fatherly responsibilities. But my blogging suffers and I guess this post is by way of an excuse, and an apology.

Otherwise, life lollops on. On Saturday I’m recording a voice track for White Noise Carousel. The piece is named ‘The Organ of Oertel’. It tells the story of a secret society, the members of which were born with an anomalous, whiskered organ resembling a sea cucumber in the region of the lower intestine. This ‘Organ of Oertel’ imparts wild talents - and drives its possessor to madness and excess as if it has a will and a sentience of its own.

*

Yesterday my wife withdrew all her money from an ATM [$600] then forgot to remove it from the slot. She was around the corner at the supermarket when she realised, freaked out, raced back and found it gone. She landed home in tears, despising herself, deciding she was useless and a fool, a rotten mother and a burden on her family. I tried to convince her otherwise, tried to comfort her, directed her to ring the cops, the bank etc …

And wound up in such a flurry myself that stupidly, while pasting a fifty cent stamp, I bit on the nozzle of the glue bottle and broke a veneer off one of my front teeth.

The next day, praise the heavens, we learnt that the ATM had sucked the money back in before it was pilfered. Meanwhile it cost two hundred and thirty dollars to fix my tooth.

But there is light on the horizon, and soon you will hear a lot more of me, I swear.

~ a fine kettle of fish

I guess you could still call me a relatively new blogger. I’ve been uploading lunacy since the dying days of September 2007, and more or less keeping to a self-imposed regimen of four to five posts a week.

But lately it’s been getting hard. Not because I’m losing interest – I want to make that very clear, as I believe the weblog is an important new medium. It’s more because of my recalcitrant brain. I have reams of ideas, it’s not writer’s block - but I’m prone, as regular readers may have gathered, to periods of despair during which writing is a trial.

Why am I subject to these lapses? I must be bi-polar - at least to some extent. My mind has probably been set askew by drugs. Or slowly fogged by the murky vapours of hepatitis. The intermittent stress of living with a beautiful sylph who has an even more hellish inner life than me - that must play a part too. Then there’s the accursed Spasmo-Nemigron and the way it drains the spirit. And the chaos I have naturally generated about myself as long as I have walked this Earth. And the fear, love and stress of serving as progenitor to the precious Polly. And the nagging witch of penury. And the slow ripping talons of age. And the lofty expectations I set myself – while blithely ignoring the existence of all the above.

But before I drive myself deeper ad profundis with self-pity, I will cease this catalogue of my trials. After all, you are probably quite familiar with most, if not all, of my afflictions. I suspect I’ve moaned and groaned enough for now.

I just want to beg your indulgence, apologise for not answering your comments in a timely way, for being generally uncommunicative. It happens from time to time, there’s not much I can do about it, and I pray you won’t damn me for it.

I’m thankful I have a forum where I can vent so openly. I'd like to think that other online diarists suffer what I am suffering now and live to write another day. Actually, I feel better already. You can put away the restraints. I’m feeling much much better now. Really. Nurse, I won’t be needing whatever’s in that needle …

Now a delightful reward for enduring my lamentations. For your certain pleasure, allow me to share a little tale I’ve been wanting to tell for a while. It’s the kind of story that only works because it’s true. And because it happened in Queensland.

I was determined to include it in my slowly evolving play, Ambergris, but it wouldn’t fit, it seemed made-up, and today I finally admitted this to myself.

As wise old editors say: once you’ve finished your final draft, go back, find your favourite line and delete it.

*

It was Nikki Lambert who posted me the article from the Courier Mail. I think this was around the turn of the century..

I had intended that it be retold like this …

beamish: The Midas was a long-line fishing vessel … They’d hit upon a concentration of tuna; the sea was boiling with them, and with frenzied sharks... The crew couldn’t haul fast enough; they’d been working like dogs for hours, not a second to scratch themselves, when Tony noticed that The Greek was missing….

This was a guy they'd hired at the last minute; big ugly bloke with a ventriloquist moustache, ears like starfish and a hairy black mole on his nose the size of a marble. They scoured the ship for him, but The Greek, he was well gone. Reluctantly, they abandoned their work and criss-crossed the area till night. It was dawn when the captain called it quits. There’d been so many wired up sharks that day; he didn’t hold an ounce of hope for the guy.

You see, this captain had a special respect for sharks; once, he’d almost been taken overboard by a grey nurse they’d brought up by mistake. The thing was rabid and smeared in blood and convulsing round the deck like something they might have fished out of hell. It bit down on the guy, nearly dragged him through the rail, and he still bore the scars…

Anyway, the crew of The Midas had a meeting that night. What to do? Sail home, make a report? They were way out in international waters, the hold only quarter full in the middle of a teeming sea. If they left then they’d take a beating money wise, if they stayed, they’d clean up. It didn’t take long to decide what The Greek would have wanted. They’d fill the hold first. After all, what difference would it make? So they spent another week out there. Good catches – tuna, pink snapper, cod, jewfish, even an massive grouper which the captain knew he could sell for a mint to this particular Vietnamese restaurant.

blueboy: Which restaurant?

elspeth: Fine Kettle of Fish!

beamish: Shut up. I’m telling it. So they get back home, report the incident, sell the catch - and the captain goes out of his way to personally present the grouper to this extremely delighted restaurateur, who serves it up whole that night to a party of his most valued customers. This thing was fat and more than a metre long and nearly a hundred pound - there on a huge plate garnished with lemon slices, coriander, whatever. The maitre de starts slicing it up in situ and they tuck in with a vengeance. But just as one of them picks this hairy meatball the size of a marble from his mouth and all eyes turn to the fish - a filthy big human head just rolls on out onto the tablecloth.

elspeth: GIGGLING: With starfish ears …

morgen: I wouldn’t have recovered from that.

beamish: It got in the papers.

elspeth: TO BLUEBOY: Up here anyway.

blueboy: Really?

beamish: Yeah.

blueboy: Where’d this happen?

beamish: Way way up north.

blueboy: And… It’s a true story?

beamish: I said so, yeah.


*

Now, the original article has long been inhumed within the turmoil of my room, but I assure you the meat of this story is real. For accuracy’s sake, I’ll give you the important discrepancies

The name Fine Kettle of Fish is on the money, but unfortunately further research seems to suggest that it was a seafood wholesaler not a Vietnamese restaurant. Sorry. I’m sure the level of shock would have been similar and the human head was definitely said to have ‘rolled out’. [And I guess, at the restaurant, the fish would have been gutted first.]

The fish was probably a 97 lb. 1.6 metre long Morgan Cod. This species, unlike groupers, are opportunistic bottom-feeders. ‘As cods do not attack humans it is believed that the crewman was ripped apart by sharks that habitually follow fishing boats to feed off fish scraps thrown overboard and that the giant cod, a bottom feeding fish, found and swallowed the head.’

Ω the sensor shell of the urograffin

The excruciating sound of stretching rubber told us that we were emerging from crepus-space.

I rose from my bed and rubbed sleep from my eyes. I did not know how long I had been asleep. I donned my ship suit and seated myself at the control console. The bluish light of Elixesse was still faint. We must have been in the very outer reaches of the system

The Ørn broke its silence.

- We’ve encountered an obstacle. A sensor shell.

- Transmitted from the fourth planet?

- It is almost certainly reporting to the Urograffin. And it is extremely sophisticated, extremely sensitive. There is no way a ship of my bulk can pass undetected.

- Even in crepus-space?

- It monitors normal space, crepus-space and the cryptic Urschleim.

- They have something to hide, clearly.

- If you were casually eviscerating a rare and truly beautiful lifeform - certainly the only one of its kind in the galaxy - you might also be sensitive about being observed.

- How far out are we? I asked.

- The sensory construct is ten AU in radius and we are anchored at its edge. We must decide now whether to penetrate openly and invite a hostile reaction – or find a quiet way through.

- The latter, I would say. Ultimately, it may allow us more options.

The Ørn readied a Penetrator which Robert had recently serviced in the hold and named Lorraine. It was abyssal black in colour. Its smooth organic lines resolved into an arrow-like form at the front and dissolved into a cluster of Urschleim flutes at the rear that, even now, were waving gently in the unseen winds of the universe’s underlying chaos. Every surface of the Lorraine was dotted with disc-like crepus organs. More than anything the vessel resembled a terrestrial squid. It was small, with no room for a flesh and blood pilot.

I eased on a virtuality balloon, clipping the breathing and feeding attachments into place. To the unknowing, it would have appeared that my head was enclosed by free floating sphere of grey dish water.

I entered the sensorium of the shuttle.


*

It took days to reach orbit with Elixesse Quaternary. Days of tedium broken by sudden, wrenching manoeuvres and moments of agonising tension.

After piercing the sensor shell - a delicate action that at times found the Lorraine simultaneously occupying the three known phases of space-time – I encountered potent layers of defence, one after the other.

Swarms of reticulate mines, resembling nets of delicate silver, undulating with an eerie life and drawn like leeches to any source of mass, light, heat or metal. Then a membrane of invisible submolecular femtomachinery, programmed to absorb baryonic matter at touch and excrete it as energy, Pinpointing this defensive shell were calculation engines, directing the esoteric machinery like a vast distributed limb. These controllers hulked in the dark; giant black hourglasses, thick with antennae, unreflective and pitted with micrometeorites. More often than not, I felt their lurking presence against the stars, long before I saw them.

At last, there was a sphere of more conventional military hardware: dormant micromissiles drifting in schools awaiting the command to seek and destroy, huge solar accumulators spiked with laser emplacements, sizzling with barely constrained energies, and massive rotating capacitors resembling luminous trumpets, primed to deliver disabling EMP pulses. All in synchrony with a sly governing intelligence.

But the subtle mind of the Lorraine, guided by the mentality of the distant Ørn, avoided every pitfall. Appearing as little more than a sliver of vacuum or a spray of alpha particles, it brought me safely through.

The Urograffin were defending something, that was obvious - but I had to wonder if their exploitation of Elixesse Quaternary was sufficient a transgression to warrant such extreme measures. If they were so painfully aware of their crime, then perhaps it was not merely greed that was driving them, but desperation? And who did they think would be bringing them to task? I felt sure, even at this early stage, that there was more to this scenario than was apparent.

~ my substance of choice

‘It is a marine Sulphur, found at the Sea-Shore … which breaks from Fountains and Caverns of the Sea. It is gray, sweet and smooth; pricked with a needle it sweats out fatness … it is … an excellent corroborative; it is discutient, resolutive, alexipharmic and analeptic … Its sweet Sulphur is an excellent perfume; it is a good preservative against the Plague, and preserves the Spirits from infection.’
from Art of Healing and Praxis of Chymistry [1691]


Ambergris is one of my favourite substances. I am compelled by its mysterious, exotic history, by its strange journey from whale gut to perfume, by the slim but real possibility that an observant beachcomber might become rich overnight, if he is fortunate enough to stumble across it.

It is also the title I have chosen for the play I’m [slowly] working on. Its sudden appearance on the shores of a particular island serves as a catalyst for the drama, and hopefully will cast a certain magical aura over things.

Ambergris is also a particularly luscious word, heavy with romantic associations. It is French for grey amber, and refers to a waxy substance secreted by the sperm whale, probably as an aid to digestion. Commonly, ambergris is found embedded with squid and cuttlefish beaks, and its purpose may be to encase these sharp, hard, indigestible things, allowing them to be conveniently either vomited up or excreted. Here the literature is hazy. It has been called 'dung of the whale', yet one reads of whales ‘regurgitating’ the substance - and of it being found in the whale’s lower intestines. Perhaps this issue has yet to be resolved.

Indeed, for much of history the true source of ambergris was unknown. Sinbad the Sailor, marooned on a treacherous shore, by a mountain ‘composed of rubies, crystals and other precious stones’ observes that ‘a kind of pitch or bitumen distils from the rocks into the sea, and the fishes which eat it return it in the form of ambergris, which the waves leave on the shore.’ The ancient Chinese said it was derived from the spittle of dragons. Others held that it was collected from the cloacal orifices of what may be a pelican.


Our ancestors had an interesting way of treating the unknown. If a mystery presented itself, often it was solved by the imagination - and these imaginings regularly entered the literature as fact. Consider the Vegetable Lamb of Tartary. Consider the gods that were created to make sense of existence. We tend to do things differently today, but today we live more safely, in a less perilous, less terrifying world.

Ambergris is valued primarily for its unique odour, which is described variously as musky, humid, marine, sweet and faecal. Often one reads of the scent being ‘elusive’ Once processed into a tincture It has an enduring, ‘involving’ quality. Perfumiers prize it as a base note with which to smooth out and add structure to the marriage of other scents. It is also said to add a lasting quality to a perfume. Its extraordinary value – comparable to that of gold – is due to its scarcity and its desirability in the perfume industry.

Outside western culture, its use extends beyond perfume. It is considered by some to aid in sexual health and fertility. It is [or has been] used as a straight-up aphrodisiac, as a flavouring in chocolate, tea and alcoholic beverages, and as a medium for jewellery. Ambergris was treasured by the ancient Arabs, who burnt it as an incense, and used it as a spice in food and drink and even smoked it. Ambergris is still treasured in the Middle East today.

In its raw state, torn from the intestines of the whale, ambergris is unpleasantly pungent and dark in colour, often black, [coloured, some suggest, by squid ink]. Only after long exposure to the elements does it ripen into the material of legend. The essential ingredients of ambergris are very durable; the substance may bob around in the ocean for decades without losing its scent. Mature ambergris is usually of a greyish or whitish hue, rather like pumice, though it comes in many shades. Wave motion may have worn the pieces into smooth forms. The material has a certain waxy, fatty quality.

the largest recorded single find of ambergris [netstrider]

Mature ambergris is the more valuable, but raw ambergris was harvested direct from the source for a tidy profit. Whalemen of yore, after processing the whale for meat, oil and precious spermaceti, would systematically poke through the intestines with cutting-spades, inspecting the blades after each jab for a pungent residue. It was rare to hit pay dirt. According to Herman Melville, [in an oft quoted passage from Moby Dick], old or sick whales that would have little value for oil were checked thoroughly for ambergris, as these were thought more likely to bear ‘the morbid secretion’. But, though it has been described as originating in ‘the often morbidly distended gut of sick sperm whales’, current thought has it that even healthy whales expel it from time to time.

The essential ingredient of ambergris, ambrien, is an uncommonly complex molecule. There have been many attempts to synthesise it for the perfume trade, [Ambrox is one example], but none match the real thing.

“As a test for ambergris the hot wire or needle test is the most simple since it requires no special apparatus. A wire or needle is heated in a gas or candle flame for 15 seconds and then pressed into the sample to a depth of one-eighth of an inch. If it is genuine ambergris, a dark brown to black opaque resinous liquid will form around the wire and appear to boil. Touch the material with the finger before it cools and if the sample is true ambergris it will leave tacky, pitch-like "strings" sticking to the skin. When the wire, which retains portions of the melted material, is again heated in the flame, true ambergris will give off a white fume having the same characteristic odour as the solid, and then burn with a luminous flame. The odour of the smoke when the flame is extinguished should be that of burning rubber. Another quick and simple test is to dissolve a little piece of the sample in a small quantity of hot wood alcohol (methyl alcohol), then allow it to cool. True ambergris will crystallize as the alcohol cools.”

Since the prohibition on whaling, dealing is ambergris is illegal in many countries, yet a brisk trade continues. Every few years one hears of fortuitous finds on remote beaches.

Though the sperm whale is the most plentiful of the great whales and its numbers are slowly recovering, ambergris remains rare, a strange and singular treasure of the oceans. In the taxonomy of my imagination, I place it among the bezoars, those mysterious stones found in animals, which were thought to be proof against poisons and highly efficacious in the working of magic.

this is not ambergris

further reading ...

netstrider – ambergris
laputan logic – ambergris
the romance of ambergris