~ the scattering of the dead

Because the seasons are changing, so do the habits of the birds. With Spring, they are more obvious about the place, flirting, fluttering, dive-bombing... and, doubtless, it is this flurry that leads so many to their doom.

For a few years now, there has been a pair of crested pigeons living a few doors down from me on the edge of a park. They are always together when I see them. When I pass, they boost themselves skywards with an unmistakeable alarm call - a rapid mechanical whooping that originates, not from their throats, but from the passage of air through an adapted feather. They are funny birds, even comical. They strut about in search of seeds with expanded chests, bold orange eyes, and what look like circa WW1 German army helmets on their tiny heads (according to Robert).

Polly found one of them in the gutter the other day. It's hard to describe the aching sadness one feels at these widowings in the natural world. I feel for the surviving pigeon especially, I can't help it, I feel its grief, its dumb animal longing and the horror of Nature's indifference...

And then a dead brown thornbill appeared on the driveway. A tiny bird, always busy in the high branches, smaller than a sparrow and dull of plumage, but possessed of a wonderful vocabulary of trills, whirrs, cheeps, chirps and chitters that is an absolute delectation to the ear.

And there were others... among them the creature below:

This luckless red-browed finch met its doom in the grille of a Mercedes owned by my friend Querulous.

*

I was expecting Saturday's reading of Ambergris to leave me worried and despondent, but instead I'm feeling pleasurably neutral. It wasn't hideously long, as I'd feared. My experiment in the complex entwining of multiple plots left no one bemused. And it really seemed to work pretty much as I'd imagined it would. That's good. That means I'm keeping a functional link open to the minds of other people. I would have liked to have watched it rather than been in it, but there's a recording I can access (thanks Bruce) and, besides, thankfully, I don't think there's a hell of a lot I have to do except embark upon the next stage.

Thank you Lynne and La Mama and all who read, particularly Anthea, who was given the hardest job and proved herself an absolute trooper.

~ the skinkatary

Let me speculate upon this image.

Both our cats, like cats the world over, are intensely interested in small running things. Tweety Bird catches and eats them. Little Kitty, who doesn’t know that they are food, just plays with them.

Garden skinks (ampropholis guichenoti) are a favourite and their local population is under constant pressure. We find so many tailless, dried up bodies that Polly and I decided to found a skinkatary. Thus far, there has been only the one burial, but doubtless there will be many more.

I have deduced that the ill-fated skink in the image at page top, while fleeing one of our cats, somehow found its way into the hollow beneath what I believe is an aquarium ornament in the shape of ... a rook perhaps? A donjon? A letterbox?

Somehow the lizard’s route of egress was closed, leaving only a tiny window at the top. (There are, by the way, similar small windows in old castles called ‘dream-holes’ which were built so that dreams could reach the bed chamber from the universe outside.) (It may also be possible that skinks are unable to travel in reverse.)

(In the movie Black Dream Hole Sailor Moon strives to prevent the evil queen, Badiyanu, and her loyal fairies using the "Black Dream Hole" to swallow the earth.)

Anyway, it seems the skink had the choice of dying within the musty confines of the ornament or making a bid for freedom. It appears to have chosen the latter.

And almost succeeded. Almost. But died, writhing twisting thrashing, its efforts waning as the last of its energy was spent. A ghastly death. A cave death. Pinned, stuck fast, doomed. The only consolation being that its small reptile brain may not have had the wherewithal to appreciate the claustrophobic horror of its circumstances.

Without doubt, it had dropped its tail. Skinks around here do that at the very first hint of an approaching cat. But the rear section of its body - what we would think of as the hips - was simply too wide to pull through, particularly given that there was not much to use for leverage.

There is a particular horror for me in this creature’s nasty end. It disinters a childhood experience which, though trivial, is cemented in my memory along with a very uncomfortable feeling.

We had returned from a three or four week summer holiday and opened up the house - this house, the one I live in - which had been very diligently sealed. I saw my mother looking at something on the kitchen windowsill.

“A bird got in,” she said, pointing to a cream bottle on the sill. Cream bottles in those days were of glass, roughly the shape of an old-style milk bottle and approximately half the size. They were sealed with a foil cap, which, I recall, was usually silver but sometimes golden, and were delivered by the milkman with his dray.

In the bottle was a black-bird. Head down. Beak agape. Eyes dead. Jammed like a feathered sardine behind the clear glass and smeared with dried yellow cream. I gaped at the bottle with dismay and utter incomprehension. It was my father who explained ...

Somehow, the bird had become trapped in the house. Over time, perhaps weeks, it had despaired for water. The only thing resembling water had been a tiny residue of cream at the bottom of the bottle and, in mortal desperation, the bird had tried to reach it, dooming itself in the process.

I found myself wondering how long it had taken for the blackbird to die: secured absolutely by the solid glass confines, upside down, unable to move ...

Unable to obey a single of its inborn instincts.

I've drawn a picture from memory ...




When I posted my picture to Photobucket, they offered to print it on a mug for USD15.00. They even produced an image of what it would look like.

Tempting, no?

~ decompositions of the season

THEYesterday a small car ploughed into the venerable magnolia tree on our nature strip. My wife arrived home from a free solarium treatment, (shared in its entirety with a fluttering moth) to find the car abandoned, two vacant child restraints and the neighbours milling about. Someone called the police, who were at a loss as to how a vehicle could have generated the necessary speed to destroy itself so thoroughly, coming up a steep hill on a perfectly straight, short and narrow suburban street ... A momentary suicidal urge, perhaps?


A lady from Somalia was found at her house around the corner, presumably in shock. The magnolia tree is noticeably canted and almost ring-barked. It’s been there as long as I have, the poor thing, I have seen it flower every year of my life, and to be struck like that ... out of the blue ...


Greyish Blackish seems to have caught her first mouse - though it may previously have been partially incapacitated by Tweety Bird, the Jack Ketch of the household. GB is a very sweet natured cat and appeared unaware that the object of the exercise was to kill.

The mouse in the image below is accompanied by a item of biological refuse discovered by my wife in the shower. Tweety Bird seems to have have chewed off the outer coating of something’s head and left the remains as her customary matutinal gift.


(Just now, as I was writing, my wife called me to see this morning’s offering: another bio-hazard on the shower floor, this one resembling a grub-shaped grey-green kidney. Can’t find the camera ...)

Recent rains have eroded the banks of the Grey Creek, revealing an item of archaeological curiosity. This shopping trolley was surely buried long ago, possibly during earthworks associated with the laying down of the abutting Monash freeway. It might have sedately decomposed down the aeons, but no, the elements have thrust its ghastly corroded form back into the light, to further pollute the habitat of Immaculata, that pure white duck.



I’ll let you know how the supermarket responds, when I report the trolley for collection.

And by the way: the best wishes of this dread season to you all. Thanks for reading, [and commenting upon,] my meandering, probably perplexing diary. I hope you all get as focused and happy and prolific in this next year as I am determined to be. Sorry, as usual, for the unpredictable timing of my posts.Usually, it's concomitant with my state of mind. [William Burroughs despised the word concomitant.) When the the posts dry up, I am either in a slough of despond or so obsessively busy with my life that I can’t pause to reflect ... Anyway ...

I hope you get something really good for Christmas. May the wind fill your sails.

~ the reluctant herbalist

Although I think of myself as a staunch rationalist, some of the things I do don’t quite fit the picture. For starters, I’ve always been addicted to the emotional thrill one gets from certain moments in sport, film, music and politics...

Yesterday morning I was walking around carrying dream-like expectations in my heart. Could America again be something other than a villain? With Obama in the van, it seems possible. But on what am I judging that? Probably some propaganda spillage. Media bullets aimed at wavering voters in marginal American states which hit me instead. Yet I was certainly not the only one ... And this morning the US seems like a wholly different land.

Sometimes I just take it on trust and hope and faith. Because it’s so important that I mollycoddle my liver, my ears are open to tall tales of herbs that can protect or nourish it. Or even ‘aid in the secretion of bile’.

Western medicine recognises these substances, but rarely recommends them. You are left relying on the wisdom of the naturopathy industry which is veined with homeopathy, witchcraft, Ayurvedic, Chinese and Thelemic medicines, and a whole lot of other things which, though interesting, aren’t strictly evidence based science, and which provide green fields for mountebanks and quacksalvers.

Never mind, I’ve decided to trust Microgenics. I’m fairly certain what they sell is actually Milk Thistle. And they’re one of the few companies that supply the high dosages used in clinical trials. The medical establishment does take the active ingredient, silibinin, seriously. After all, House even mentioned it once, (albeit at a moment of desperation). And a company in Belgium has created an injectable form, (primarily to treat poisoning by Death Cap toadstools).

Turmeric with its active ingredient curcumin is something no one’s going to make a lot of money on – somewhat like aspirin - so perhaps that makes it a good safe bet, as unpleasant as it is to ingest. Currently, I’m mixing 2 measured grams with a teaspoon of marmalade to form a semi-edible bolus. Curcumin is said to dissolve amyloid protein deposits in the brain. This, apparently, is why Indians have far less Alzheimer’s. It’s also supposed to be good for the liver, but at least one naturopath has told me this is ‘because of the colour’. I’ll have it just for the brain thing, thanks.

Shisandra, the five-flavoured-fruit, is the latest addition to my regimen. It’s an ancient Chinese herb with a good safety record. It’s easy to find as part of a liver tonic, but not in a discrete form. I’m getting mine from a Chinese herbalist in Springvale. Wikipedia speaks of studies done in China which suggest benefits for sufferers of chronic hepatitis. Should one trust studies done in China, after the hair-sauce thing? I don’t know, but this herb is really delicious as a tea. Something like rosehip.

After watching a recent episode of Sixty Minutes, I’ve started buying a trans-resveratrol formulation. Now this is a very good money maker, as it’s showing marked life prolonging properties in laboratory mice. Only problem is the dosage. T-resveratrol is made from red grape skin. My current daily dose is equivalent to 6 bottles of red wine. The dose that helped the mice was a massive fifteen hundred bottles of red wine.

I also consume dandelion, goji berries, artichoke tea and probably others I can’t recall just now. I spend a fair amount of time on what is ultimately an act of faith. You swallow this pill or drink the tea and then what? It all melts and joins the complex digestive soup in your stomach. Certain molecules shear off and work their certain magic in a biomechanical operation of mind-boggling intricacy. Without vast scientific expertise, how can you really know what's going on?

I’ve no idea whether I’m feeling better as a result. I am feeling good, but that could be the exercise, or the almost-vegetarianism, or the near-total exclusion of alcohol. I’d hate to think I was being taken for a ride. Especially someone as rational as I. But then a sense of looming mortality can lead you in directions you might otherwise not take.

~ the hanging tree

I’m stricken with a particularly bad chest cold – the sort of thing that inevitably happens after a few weeks of healthy living. Despite the fever, the headache, the burning throat and the hacking cough, I managed to queue up for the all important tickets to the Geelong vs. St Kilda final, and to retrieve my beautiful reincarnated Renault 12 stationcar from dear Don Shaw, the greatest mechanic in the world.

The whole of my yesterday was consumed with an attempt to save a tree. There are some units being built on a block behind us and a particularly wonderful tree is at threat. Usually I miss the opportunity to say my piece on these occasions, but this time I was determined not to let it slide by.

Here’s my submission. I was in a hurry, so some of it is a bit inelegant and repetitive – but I think I get the point across without sounding insane and/or obsessive.

Attention: Senior Statutory Planner, Nick Sakolevas
Re: TPA/36426
Property: 14 Russell Crescent, Mt Waverley, 3140

On behalf of myself, my wife and daughter, I am asking that plans for the proposed development at 14 Russell Crescent be amended to include the majestic pre-existing tree at the rear of the property.

Though not terribly obvious from Russell Crescent, the tree dominates my property at 3 French St, where I have lived for forty-eight years. It is a source of great pleasure and atmosphere for both myself and my family. Looking out from the rear of the house, it covers about a quarter of the sky and is one of the few visible trees remaining which are not in our own backyard.

Though plainly not a native, I contend that it adds enormous environmental and aesthetic value to the surrounding properties. It’s presence allows us to visualise ourselves in a forest [or at least a leafy suburb]. It flavours the ambience of warm Summer afternoons. It draws bird-life from the nearby parklands. Watching the wind buffet its leaves in the breeze is a tonic for the soul. It is healthy, mature and beautiful and should be preserved – even if it was only for these reasons alone.

In recent years, many large, mature trees have been removed in our near vicinity, reducing the natural amenity of the area. There has been a loss of cooling arboreal transpiration and summer shade. The line of great pines that followed the rear of houses on the Foster’s Rd side of Howell Drive, and which loomed magnificently over my property has been removed tree by tree over the years. A large scenic tree opposite me at 4 French St was removed in the last few years and next door, at 5 French St, a number of large mature trees have recently been felled. Plans for 7 French St allow for the extraction of more large native trees.

What was once a very leafy environment is fast becoming dominated by artificial structures, and I ask that this particular tree, so important to the amenity of our house, and all those backing onto the Russell St property, be preserved. Though deciduous and currently leafless, it is a spectacular, inspiring sight in the Spring/Summer months and, hopefully without sounding too overblown, we would deeply mourn its passing.

Monash Council prides itself on its environmental values. Here is one instance where it can act to help preserve the environmental integrity of an area in which the greenery is fast being depleted by development. The block bordered by Foster’s, Stephenson’s and Waverley Rd is undergoing a level of new construction unprecedented in my memory and few trees appear to be being saved - in what until recently has been a very green zone.

Secondary to the case I have stated above, the tree has importance of another nature. Some years ago, the son of the previous owner, Paul Love, committed suicide, under tragic circumstances, hanging himself from the tree at issue. Paul Love was a childhood friend of mine, who lived a short troubled life in a troubled family, and the tree has a degree of memorial value, at least for me. Watching it being felled - by workers entirely ignorant of its history - would be a very sad experience.

To conclude, I have no objection to the construction of units on the site, but I feel very strongly that the tree in question ought to be preserved, not only for my own and my family’s sake, but for all the residents, and future residents who live in its abiding presence, for the general atmosphere and health of the suburb, and by extension the world.

* 4 May 1981 6.00am

Tonight, I went with George to the graveyard. We climbed the fence and, after a good deal of searching, found Christine’s grave. As we stood in contemplation, a dense fog floated in from all directions. I am resolved to invest my talents wisely…

It was an unhappy gig at Melbourne University tonight. Cathy’s amp broke down. I think the others want to chuck her out. Me? Do I care? Don’t I care?

Martini’s was okay. Two hundred people. Posters up. Singles sold. I jerked my mike stand up between Cathy’s legs at one point in the performance. It made her feel degraded and angry. I sang to the wall, climbed and scratched the wall. I was very drunk, as I had been at a party all that afternoon. I cried for a while after the gig was over.

The Jump Club on Friday was fine. I went home with Cathy D---, passed out as soon as I reached the bed. She behaves as if she more than just likes me. Do I care? Don’t I care?

Troy’s friend M--- is having an abortion tomorrow.

*

That incident with Cathy and the mike stand still makes me cringe today. I remember it as if it was yesterday and still feel stupid and nasty for doing it. My only excuse was my inebriation, and the wave of grief which consumed me that night, which sparked off my reckless and aberrant behaviour.

Regards being in the graveyard with George, this must have been an incident separate from the one I described in this earlier post.

And Troy’s friend? I have no memory of this, though I did bump into her at his memorial. I wonder why I mentioned it, if I was not involved? If so, it was one of countless potential lives truncated so that Polly could be born.

Speaking of Polly, yesterday, out of the blue, she asked me which cave my parents were buried in.

Diary of 1981 - index

* 13 April 1981 Monday 11.30pm

My spirit feels very uneasy and it is weak. My talent, for what it’s worth in these depraved days, can offer me nothing; nothing will come. I search for song titles in the writings of others.

I feel livelier now, stronger. I’ve been drinking though – as always.

I must find some new companions. The friends I keep now crept into my life during the days of Christine, and some of them may have avoided the security check.

Over the taxi-driver’s radio: … Wellington Street. Like a hot knife. She can stab me through a fly speck on the wall. Through a newspaper crushed in the gutter

The Ears at the Exford Hotel [?] circa 1980

*

Christine’s flat was in Wellington St, that was the significance.

For many months, the slightest thing – a word, a warm breeze, a song – could set off the pain. Bryan Ferry’s version of John Lennon’s ‘Jealous Guy’ – that was the worst. When I hear it today, it still fills me with melancholia

Mick Lewis and Sam Sejavka [The Ears]

*

Back in the present, I’ve had an atrocious day. On my way to pick up Robert from South Melbourne, I drove into the back of a black car. Of course my Third Party had lapsed, and of course my Renault is on the critical list. I really don’t know how I’m going to cope with this financially. Tomorrow, maybe, I’ll be able to think more clearly.

These things can hit you out of the blue, can’t they? It was my fault, but the shoddy driving of the contactee was largely responsible. They were truly contemptible, by the way - this man and his distastefully subservient wife. My phone was out of charge and he refused to let me make a call on his, even when I offered money; the wife wouldn't let me because she hadn't got the say so from him. The guy, who looked like he might have been related to Pol Pot, spent a long time watching me trying to push the Renault out of traffic before he deigned to assist.

My faith in humanity was restored to a degree by a girl, who stopped beside me as I walked to Robert’s. Having seen the accident, she inquired after my well-being with some genuine concern.

* 2 April 1981 Thursday 1.30am

The Sensual and the Dark rebel in vain
Slaves by their own compulsion. In mad game
they burst their manacles and wear the name
Of freedom, graven on a heavier chain!

Coleridge was writing about the French Revolution, but I prefer to think of the above passage as universal.

*

I am twenty-one today. I feel sour, yet glad to have something on which to anchor some kind of new life. The pain comes and goes.

The group has been booked into Armstrong’s in six weeks to a record a single. We’re doing the supports for the Snakefinger tour, and a Macy’s headline is coming up. Ian Meldrum congratulated me on Saturday night for what he said was a great performance.

Friday night was my funeral. I cried from start to finish. It was a release I needed.

Still colours cannot be properly colours. I feel alone, as what was closest is gone. The distance between me and other human beings seems much greater.

I spoke to Brian Harding on Monday night. He relieved me over legal matters. I’m free to grieve and suffer over myself.

*

Snakefinger was the guitarist with mightily eccentric US band the Residents. The outfit he brought to Australia, however, was a lot more comprehensible.

One night after a gig at Melbourne Uni [I hope I’m not presaging a later diary entry here] I had passed outside through some revolving doors. Hearing something, I looked back to see Snakefinger on the ground. He’d had a serious heart attack. He survived, but the tour was cancelled, and I believe he did actually die not too many years after of something similar.

I spoke of my meeting with Brian, Christine’s dad, in an earlier diary post. I was in my youth and had no idea how the dreadful incident would pan out legally. I had been worried that I might be charged with something, and was thankful that he cleared up that concern.

Some friends, I recall Anne Harding and Gus were among them, organised a casual celebration for my birthday downstairs at Inflation.

Diaries of 1981

~ the high echelons

It seems that Heath Ledger had his problems with drugs. Well, so what?

As the information leaked out about his sad demise, one could sense the efforts, on one side, to play down the sordid elements. Scattered pills found their way back into the bottle. A rolled up note was found to have no residue. From the other side – that of the ravenous and voyeuristic – we learned that he had just left rehab, was battling addictions to heroin, xanax and stilnox, that he was distressed and sleep-deprived.

Tasty. But why do drugs so often become the centrepiece?

Well, some of us like to watch the mighty descend into the abyss. It reassures us to learn that they are as weak and as freaked out as us. It makes us feeler closer to them. And, of course, we love scandal for its own sake. That’s simply in our nature.

We’re ghoulishly curious when it comes to the stars – those public assets in which we all have a stake. Every detail of Ledger’s death scene has been described in the media, interpreted, analysed and spin doctored by publicists. But with the mention of drugs our interest ramped to a whole other level. This betrays us, just as drugs betray the personal struggles of the famous.

During the Heath Ledger coverage, I read the comment that fame is a sort of mental illness. Perhaps the sensitive, troubled Ledger turned to drugs as a way of self medicating this illness. Perhaps that’s the reason so many celebrated people do take drugs.

“It’s like having Alzheimer’s Disease. You don’t know anyone, but they all know you,” said Tony Curtis. But that’s just part of the story. There’s pressure, stress, loss of freedom, alienation, loneliness, and a tendency for people to become friends with your fame, not with you.

In David Gritten’s book ‘Fame’ he claims that ‘celebrity behaviour is rooted in a type of personality disorder’. Histrionic Personality Disorder to be exact, defined as ‘a pervasive pattern of excessive emotionality and attention seeking’. Some of the symptoms are the ‘display of rapidly shifting and shallow expressions of emotions’, behaviour ‘being directed towards obtaining immediate satisfaction, with no tolerance for the frustration of delayed gratification,’ and ‘a style of speech that is excessively impressionistic and lacking in detail [e.g. when asked to describe mother, can be no more specific than “she was a beautiful person”’.

You have your Britney Spears, and her sordid public fall from innocence. She’s a red raw case of the fame disease. You have all those actors – Owen Wilson, Steve Coogan, Brad Renfro, River Phoenix, Robert Downey Junior etc., who have or have had relationships with heroin. Musicians in even greater numbers, writers too, models and sportsmen. And I’m not including cocaine.

It’s so rife, this affliction of our idols and role models, that ‘rehab’ has somehow evolved into a pretty cool concept. In the hip crowd, among the high echelons, and on the press release, well it’s getting kind of groovy, isn’t it?

It would be good to shrug off the prejudice and the stigma associated with drug use, but that’s not really what happening here.

On one side you have the prohibitionists and on the other you have people who admire drug use in their heroes because it’s a la mode. Both are in error. And of all the reasons for taking drugs, imitating the beloved famous is one of the most insidious. I have a particular dislike for it because that’s pretty much what started me off

Hearing that an artist has a drug history, automatically perks my interest. Even now. I can’t help it. And I’m not the only one.

[No matter how great a song it was, I really wish that Lou Reed had never written ‘Heroin’.]

I won’t get into details now, but the creative soul is far more likely to experiment with mind altering drugs. Sometimes, it’s just part and parcel of the thing: the quest for new vistas, for an undiscovered viewpoint, for mystery – and sometimes the result of a painful sensitivity to a crass and blaring world.

It’s true. Often the most interesting ones are the ones who engage with drugs. And when they get famous, we imitate their behaviour.

And when they are infected with fame – well, that can push them deeper. The artistic temperament can be overfed, the ego may rear like the Whore of Babylon. Money and freedom and reputation can increase creative freedom, but expectations, fear of failure and commercial pressures can close it down. Doubts can arise over ones integrity. I’m not sure if Hollywood-grade fame is ever good for an artist, unless he’s one of the few that it actually suits.

Give me Emily Dickinson any day.

The reputation of Heath Ledger will not suffer by his exposure as a drug addict. People will understand how sensitive an artistic soul he was, how troubled, how he missed his daughter, and was deeply disturbed after immersing himself in the role of The Joker. [a claim only a Hollywood actor could make, no?] Probably the only truly damaging revelation was that he was friends with Mary-Kate Olsen.

Lynne suggested that his lack of classical training may have been an influence. A lot of actors, these days, become so deeply immersed in a role that they cannot dissociate themselves. They engage in intense research, force massive weight changes, and wind up misplacing their sense of self. They don’t isolate a personal centre to keep themselves sane.

Anyway, what about the man on the street? Being exposed as drug addict is a entirely different thing for him, isn’t it? We don’t quite get the same level of compassionate understanding.

Our gods of Mt Olympus are not subject to the same laws as we. If they are revealed as drug addicts, we create a moving backstory with which to enrich their posthumous biographies [and the lurid pages of the gossip mags].

[And, by the way, how do they get these drugs? Do they see a doctor? Or is it all done by a PA? Do you think they get their hands dirty like the rest of us?]

There are also the prominent users who are never exposed in the tabloids; who need to keep it quiet and are rich enough to do so. But sometimes rumours filter down. James Packer and Laughlin Murdoch; tight friends who spent a good swathe of time on heroin. Kate Fischer got in on it too, it is said, and only when Packer divorced her and married ‘ex-escort’ Jodhi Meares did he clean up. [Scientology was a factor there too, it is said.] Then you have Elle McPherson, cleanest of the clean, who wouldn’t do a photo shoot unless the coke was laid on. It is said. And Sonia McMahon? Well it’s not relevant at all, but I’ve been told that before she became our first lady, she was an escort too. [I couldn’t resist putting that in.]

All ‘rumours’ of course, but among certain of the high echelons hard drugs will always be de rigeur. The modern aristocracy is isolated from petty considerations that the ordinary populace has to face – like. say, waiting for hours in dark carparks, or doing without for lack of money. Occasionally, the vices of a luminary will be bared to a voracious public, but again you’ll have the backstory and once more our considerate understanding.

∆ george and the decrepitude of the cemetery manager

I was visiting George’s house one September night during the Eighties. I’m not quite certain of the year, but it was Father’s Day and my father had died not too many years before.

To be honest, we were bored – otherwise the idea of visiting my father’s grave would probably never have arisen. I felt vaguely guilty about not having paid my respects - but now that I actually felt like making the trip, it was pretty late at night..

It was an obstacle that wasn’t going to hinder us. George was up for pretty much anything – it was one of the worthy things about him - and he was amenable to my suggestion. We embarked from Burwood to the Springvale Crematorium, high in spirits, as sober as the day is long.

Finding it closed and locked up tight wasn’t too surprising. But was it really that unusual a thing to visit a graveyard at night? We weren’t certain. We didn’t feel like we were doing anything too bizarre by slipping under the fence and setting out by torchlight over those vast pastures, circumscribed by an infinity of flat dry suburbia, the grave markers all flat to the ground,

But the longer we roamed, the more inappropriate it began to feel. I had a fair idea where my dad was buried, but the landmarks were difficult to recognise by night, and the place was huge. Thinking back, it seems remarkable that we succeeded.

We rested. It had been an effort getting there. I lay flat on my back, and that was how the nervous police first saw me, a freakish looking individual supine on a grave in the dead of the night, looking sullen and thoughtful, his oddly mannered friend lurking nearby with a torch .…

The first thing we saw were lights, bobbing in the distance. We had no idea what they could be. It was a graveyard. The possibilities were legion. Then we heard voices and the whining of dogs. We lay still and quiet, hoping they would pass us by.

But we were the reason for their presence. Only when they were right on top of us did we realise it was the cops, and they were almost as scared as we were. Who knows what pictures their imaginations had drawn in their minds? They screamed at us to lie flat on our faces. I heard one young voice saying he didn’t think he could control the dogs. ‘Don’t look up! Don’t look up! Lay as fucking still as you can!’

I don’t know if I’ve ever been quite so scared. The dogs were growling, choking themselves on their leashes just beyond my vision. It seemed like there were at least four of them but it transpired that there had only been two. Or even one. I think the cops were actually less scared of us than of what the dogs might do if they broke loose. Was it an act? Perhaps. Perhaps not.

The police had no interest in anything we had to say. We were marched out of the graveyard, back under the cyclone wire fence, to waiting divisional vans. One for each of us. And two cruisers were parked there as well. Whatever the do-good suburbanite had told them when he rang to report us, it had certainly raised the ire of the local constabulary.

Of course, I took primary blame, explaining that George was just doing me a favour by being there. We spent a few miserable hours in a jail cell. My charge was trespass with illegal intent, which, my lawyer informed me, carried a minimum two year jail sentence. George received something lesser.

My trial date came up before his. I found it hard to believe they were taking it so seriously, but my lawyer advised me to be prepared. I donned my court suit and my court shoes and resolved myself to appearing as normal and as sympathetic as possible.

Though my memory is dim, I recall a few salient parts of the hearing: the prosecutor referring to precedents in Western Australian law, and then calling up an astonishingly decrepit old man with a cane to the witness stand. This cemetery administrator was asked one question. When was the cemetery open? His answer made no sense, but the gist of it was understood by the courtroom.

Then I found myself in the witness box, sworn in and speaking directly with the magistrate,

- Were you, in fact, lying upon a grave?

- Yes, sir. My father’s grave.

He looked to the prosecutor.

- Did you check this?”

- Yes, ah … Your Honour, the defendant’s er … father is buried at the ah … Springvale Crematorium …”

He looked back at me.

- But what were you doing there in the middle of the night?”

- I’d intended to visit the grave with my mother during the day, but didn’t make it. Since it was father’s day, I …

The magistrate turned back to the prosecutor.

- Is this true? Was it father’s day?”

- Umm… yes, Your Honour, but ….”

The magistrate rolled his eyes, banged his gavel, called for the next case

It was a triumphal feeling, getting clear of that one.

* 25 March 1981 Thurs 7.00am

Christine has died of a heroin overdose. One part of my life has also come to an end.

My mother, strangely enough, is singing in the bath.

I am ailing. Since the Friday night she died, my voracious appetite has ceded its place to a cruel inability to eat.

My heart is like a man tensing as the guillotine blade slips towards his neck. It has fallen a thousand times since Friday.

I and Peter Walsh also overdosed – but we woke up. Craig Elrick, who procured the drugs, has been put to blame by Christine’s family. Perhaps they are right, but I can blame no one.

Scraps of my sanity survive. This entire experience is a thousand times more sunken in terror, in horror than my father’s passing six months ago.

I do the crossword – Yearn: to long – Promise: to pledge – Stir: to try and wake that marvellous heart, so warm between her breasts.

The smell of sex from that Friday afternoon was still with me on the Saturday.

Nothing I look at, nothing I do is without her memory. I cannot really face that sliding blade. The hair in her brush, which I have kept …

Clearing out my flat … there was a nightmare of memory under every item of rubbish …

So ends the happiest, most content and oblivious time of my life. There was a funeral, a wake, even a rosary. I can’t believe she’s gone … wearing a black bow, as she slumped against the door … Good god, what shall I do …? My love is dead …

I am very quickly reorganising my life. Soon I will have my house and perhaps the flavour will return to my food.

I’m so scared of ghosts …

mt waverley

The Secrets of NuVanilla

After thirty grueling years, the war effort finds me drained spiritually and financially. Once, my writing - even my acting and singing - were decently lucrative concerns, (and may be again, some day,) but as the conflict has broadened, and with the addition of Polly to my life, I have been unable to work as once I did. I have scrabbled for cash, once even resorting to the delivery of printed advertisements to the inhabitants of my Zone. Over time, I have found that my fair knowledge of books and their value can provide an intermittent income - which the appearance of Ebay has enhanced, and which, combined with my veteran's pension, can allow my family and I to subsist.

I have told you of the awful troubles that befell Jenny over the weeks she spent unprotected in South Melbourne. By now you must understand that I simply cannot afford to take my eyes off the enemy in order to make money. Yet, sometimes fate does lend a hand and one day, some years ago now, while gloomily trudging the aisles of a local supermarket, I found myself the subject of inspiration.

Idly, I was scanning the shelves containing herbs and spices, when my attention was caught by a cellophane package containing a single pod of vanilla. The price - in the region of five or six AUD - surprised me. I had not known that vanilla was such an extravagance. And the essence, I wondered next? It transpired that the store stocked only the ersatz vanilla essence - the authentic product being, perhaps, beyond the means of my local demographic, or else too precious to thusly render down.




I sensed opportunity and researched the subject. I learned why fruit of the hermaphroditic vanilla planifolia, a tropical life-form native to Mexico, commands such prices in temperate Melbourne. Then, with the assistance of Robert - the scientist who works in our car-port - we stripped down its genome and shrewdly altered its phenotype - employing techniques I would be a fool to reveal here.

Consequently, I now can supply the needs of my community with a cheaper product that is not only superior in size and vanillin-content, but also a pleasurable CNS stimulant. Though it has some addictive properties, they are mild, on par with caffeine, and, of course, are a useful inducement to purchase. NuVanilla has proved popular with the consumers of my Zone, and allows me to conduct my war efforts in some semblance of comfort.

On another subject, the redemption of my wife goes well, and, though she has yet to return home, her mother, Diane, is now present to protect and nurse her. (Diane and I have formed many a united front over the years, and - though she can be slow to recognise infiltration and is sometimes overly credulous to the wiles of the Deadly Spores - all told, she is a better soldier than I.) The extent of Jenny's recent defeat is becoming more apparent as further bulletins arrive from the front. Doyle, I have heard, claims to have secretly observed her in the company of known collaborators: sly and abhorrent creatures, feared for their blind greed and careless cruelty. I shudder at the extent of her fall. If this was a less complex war, I could act precipitously, drive these vermin out with main force and drag my wife to safety. This I would dearly love - but the Black Spores are subtle, and often a head-on attack will rebound re-doubled upon the attacker. If I am to have victory, for my family, for my friends, I must too be subtle.