~ then fevers came, seemingly at random

Slowly, with certainty, day by day, I’m emerging from the woes of the past 27 months. I still have plenty to agonise over as I flail in my bed at night, but it’s of a far different order than what has gone before.

All that remains of the legal fiasco is a three-weekly visit to an unpleasant office in Oakleigh, where doors snap shut with the finality of jail cells. But after the many trials and tribulations of the recent past, I can take that n my stride.

Some time before the final hearing, with the help of toxic pharmaceuticals, I began a fresh assault on my liver complaint. (see ~my intimate blood borne saboteur.) The first few months were, as expected, nasty and debilitating. Anaemia. Neutropenia. Dysphoria. Then, around week twelve, they began to slacken off, almost to a level that was bearable. I was off-colour but I could manage the odd life activity. About this time that I even went to the Rainbow Serpent festival.

But, with the inevitability of death, a seed took root in my lungs. I began to cough, and to produce a lurid green sputum. Fevers came, seemingly at random and I took to my bed. For five weeks I was scarcely able to drag myself to the kitchen - although, every few days, I shambled around the block in a dark bulky overcoat, usually at night, to forestall any pooling of phlegm in my lungs. As my immune system was suppressed by the HCV drugs, I had little defence against the infection. Despite the heavy duty antibiotics I had been prescribed, the condition grew worse. I was getting just a little scared. I’d never been quite so sick.

Then my viral load results were unblinded. (I was on a clinical trial for a drug by Bristol Myers Squibb) From a starting point of 13 million evil bits per ml, it was reduced to 275. But, frustratingly, two weeks later, it was 500 plus. At this point, I ceased medications. Once again, on my fourth attempt, I faced failure, And this time I had been just a little concerned that they might kill me.

I decided to wait for some of the new remedies come on line - what doctors like to refer to as the ‘small molecule’ drugs. Telaprevir and Boceprevir are examples. There are nearly a hundred being researched (see hcvdrugs.com) and one day, in the not so distant future, I pray there’ll be regimens without such crippling side-effects.

So I lay back down, played video games and waited to get better.

Now it’s three or four weeks later and I’m waking up into the world. I’m exercising again. I’m brushing the dust off affairs that have not been touched in two and a half years. My garden is tugging at me, and I dream as I pluck the hated oxalis from the flower beds. I’m thinking about my house, how I might rid it of the teetering towers of books. Within the next few weeks I’ll be gnawing happily on my various, long neglected writing projects.

And the deadly spores ... even with binoculars I cannot see their dark, roiling, semi-sentient clouds on the horizon. I am even toying with the notion of breaking my long and bitter relationship with spasmo-nemigron.

~ the cupboard moth

It’s taken a few weeks for my black internal weather to disperse - but disperse it appears to be doing. The long long ordeal by law is petering out via an endless series of interviews with agents of Correctional Services Victoria, and no longer do I prepare myself mentally, late at night, for jail.

The other trial, the drug trial, continues ... and, at week twelve, I should know soon if it’s had any significant effect on my viral load; but until then I remain nauseous, gasping for breath and generally deenergised. Heaven knows how I’ll cope tomorrow night. Singing demands a lot of that exact kind of energy I’m lacking at the moment, but we’ll see.

I can think of nothing better than an Ears shows to celebrate the termination of my primary difficulty. Perhaps we’ll do something a bit more significant soon, but for now, tomorrow night at the Lyrebird Lounge, probably at 10.00pm, will have to do. The Ovals are playing at 9ish, if you’re interested, after Josh Lord’s exhibition opening down the street at The Bower.

What’s more, we’ll be playing a new song: The Cupboard Moth ...

I bred a cupboard moth
At some excessive cost
Because it fills my nightly chalice ...

A few doors down the street, there’s an elderly gentleman who breeds native trees. I’ve acquired a great many from him over the years, but have had no luck getting them to survive. Lately, however, fortunes in the garden have changed - even to the point of our new indigenous vegetation luring strange new life forms to the property ...

~ pressure release

I realised the other day - perhaps belatedly - why I’m seeing so many old-fashioned cigarette cases, particularly in the hands of women. It’s the images of diseased flesh, of course, which the arbiters of social control place with good intent on the commercial packaging, Evidently, some have begun to weary of carrying about with them, on open display, these increasingly nasty, glutinous, decomposing visions of a possible future.

On a lighter note, my legal situation continues to look brighter. It’s strange that every single person I’ve told about my conundrums has said ‘you won’t lose your house, not for that’ - while the lawyers and the law itself said - if I was found guilty it would mandatorily be seized No discretion. Well my friends were right. The house appears safe. I can garden again. I can make it nice. I can get Robert to fix things without the horrible possibility looming that it would be torn from my hands.

Yesterday, in the County Court, I pled guilty to cultivation and possession, in exchange for a nullification of the trafficking and commercial supply charges. Now my friends are telling me I won’t go to jail. I hope they’re right. There’s still a fight to be had.

I’ve been obsessing over the re-lease of old material of late, and over music generally. The old Beargarden album ‘All That Fall’ is available, for better or worse, on Bandcamp.com and will spread to the other digital outlets. I was interviewed by some eighties aficionados the other day in my lounge room and they were terribly excited. Typically, the little black cat captured and tortured and consumed a skink in the background while we were talking. For those interested in Beargarden, there’s a bits and bobs album - The Word That Refers To The Word That Refers to Walt Disney - becoming available in the same place this week. It’s better than the other one, I think.

With the help of the redoubtable Simon Polinski, and his tremendous hospitality, we’ve been collecting up and mastering the Ears record (Dogs in Space). It looks like 16 tracks now and it also will also appear on Bandcamp within days.

We’re on the bill at Lucasaid. Thursday the 2nd December - one week from today

~ something eldritch

My lovely, though sometimes worryingly anaemic psychologist is arranging for me to have a 'neuro-assessment'. It’s a legal thing, but it might be interesting. I do like to count things. For instance, and for your edification, I eat 12 strawberries, 5 dates and 5 prunes daily, together with many other things in precise amounts. When I exercise - which I must do to avoid shrivelling - I presently do 18 laps of freestyle, 4 of breaststroke and smaller numbers of kickboard etc. Whenever I address a task, I try to control it with numbers.

But if you look at my office, or my bedroom, it’s a study in entropy. Whatever I’m concentrating on is usually nice and ordered, but everything on the periphery reliably degrades to merde. I also once put my shoes in the fridge while contemplating something else. And both of my most recent long-term ex-girlfriends tell me I have some symptoms of asperbergers.

Admittedly, all things considered, I must sit somewhere on the scale between eccentricity and outright madness. Outside of the obligatory depression and anxiety, I’ve never really considered myself mentally ill, but I suppose it makes sense to have a professionally-produced document to give the judge some sort of clue as to what he’s dealing with.

If I disappear suddenly, though, it may mean they’ve put me away. But don’t worry, I won’t be so stupid as to wear a pink shirt at any point in the near future.

Now, in answer to a query from a friend of mine:

Do sperms die if they’re not used? Or do they build up, increasing their numbers without limit? And, if so, where is this expanding reservoir of reproductive material stored? Do the testicles grow larger and larger as they are forced to harbour increasingly large amounts of flagellating microbes?

Well, the answer is elusive. People generally seem more concerned at how long sperm live outside the male body than within: including on hands, in washing machines and on toilet seats. Thankfully, sperm do have a limited lifespan within the male body. One source says 74 days. Another source says they take 65-74 days to develop. Another says that once they are ready they only last a few weeks, so lets say about 80 days from start to finish. But there are cells, stem cells I would guess, which are constantly shedding off new infant sperm - these cells, I gather, live as long as their host and if they die he becomes sterile.

So, here's a picture of something eldritch which was generated by the mind of a young boy whose mother, Susan, is a friend of mine.

Till next time.

~ the pittance

I’ve been finding it difficult getting back into a routine with these blog posts. I think, perhaps, it’s because I’ve been so focused on work lately, trying to make every hour of every day count before I have to immerse myself in my legal defence.

With regards legal matters, there’s been some good, perhaps very good news. The DPP has thankfully dropped the most severe of the charges: the one that forced the matter of The Crown vs Sam Sejavka up into the County Court, necessitated a 3-4 day trial with a jury and made the seizure of my house a distinct possibility. I don’t quite know what’s going to happen now; it’s still serious, but not quite so doom-laden. I'll find out in mid-November what the new schedule will be. [as for details of my transgressions, I think the ‘REGARDING DONATIONS’ link gives the details]

I managed, finally, pay most of my five figure legal fees (It’s a pre-paid system) though now I’m saddled with outrageous debt and am having to teach myself to survive on a pittance. Not that I haven’t been in this situation before...

Another individual in dire financial circumstances is Steve Lucas (of X) who has some kind of agonising back problem which can’t be solved without an influx of cash. On Thursday, December 2 at the Gershwin Room there a benefit. There are eight bands including The Ears so make certain to put it in your diaries.

~ 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...’.

~ justice

Australia is commonly thought of as a reasonably fair and equitable place to live, at least compared to the rest of the world. It’s considered a place where government is unlikely to commit atrocities or human rights outrages, where miscarriages of justice are inevitably righted in the face of our abiding sense of decency.

But I wonder if such attitudes are complacent, if not wildly erroneous. There has been the case of Andrew Moore, who, though apparently a rather dubious character, was separated from his family and deported to an unfamiliar land where he promptly died. Then there was Farah Jama, an immigrant, presumably from Somalia, who spent fifteen months in jail wrongly convicted of rape due to a contaminated DNA sample. And, of course, the outrageous behaviour of our state government in directing the police to make protestors’ personal files available to the company responsible for the construction of Victoria’s new desalinisation plant … and these three examples, with others, all appeared in one edition of the daily newspaper.

And of course there are the stories we never hear about.

I can imagine the plights of these victims, inured in the cold concrete labyrinth of officialdom and jurisprudence … evaluated by clerks and functionaries and faceless enablers performing their ordained duties regardless of the human cost, holding to temporal laws, guidelines and directives as if they were the underpinnings of the universe, unwilling to deviate from the code that permits them to go home at night to their secure and comfortable loungerooms to watch Packed to the Rafters in the company of their well-groomed children and their clean, functional wives and husbands … while those they have judged are marched through the cold night to meet their fates…

I guess I’m dwelling on this subject because of my own current entanglement with our legal system. In case you didn’t know, I have dropped myself into a pretty sticky situation due to a combination of ignorance and stupidity. And unfortunately the charges with which I am faced seem designed for wealthy Mafiosi from Griffith, rather than a poor sod from the suburbs who needed something in the evenings to help keep body and soul together.

I never dreamt I would find myself in jail as a result of my wrongdoings. I didn’t think anyone would be particularly fussed. But that’s where I found myself. For sixteen days. With the potential for more on the horizon. Not only that, but my family home – home to Polly for all of her seven years, home to my partner Jenny, home to my dear departed parents for most of their married lives – is at risk. Our justice apparatus, horribly, may be regarding it as equivalent to the cigarette boat of a Floridian cocaine importer …

I just hope that we don’t become one of those sad, terribly unfair stories you read in the paper and then, with time, forget.