~ distressed plasticene hood ornament

~ 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.

~ peripatetic insile

Last night, after catching the final train home from a dreamy night at Cherry watching Steve Kilbey and Ricky Maymi's enigmatic tribute to the mysterious David Neal (in addition to a beautiful set from some unnamed Triffid remnants and a session of ab-zen counseling over liqueur coffee) my sleep was profound and my spirit rose through the upper airs into the realms of the firmament. Here, to my deepest consternation, I witnessed the consumption of a pleasant green world by a Peripatetic Insile (a species of ravenous space-faring gastropod).


The next morning Polly removed a tennis ball from our new pond (a sunken claw-foot bath) turned it over and discovered this peculiar long-tailed slug-like larvum.

~ why the coming generations may find hallucinogens passé

~ my intimate blood-borne saboteur.

For better or for worse, I’ve enrolled myself in the trial of a new drug which may be a potent HCV inhibitor. It’s a triple therapy: as well as the study drug, I’m on the standard-of-care - peg-interferon and ribavirin: a toxic cocktail which tends to cause anaemia, flu-like symptoms and a genocide of the neutrophils, those fundamental elements of the innate immune system which are seen most often as a constituent of pus.

I’m desperate to shrug off the virus. It’s not killing me yet. For a fifty year old my liver’s in pretty good shape - according to the painful biopsy I had a few weeks ago. And my level of ALT (an indicator of inflammation) is within the normal range. However I’ve had the accursed invaders for upwards of a quarter of a century and there are rather a lot of them: at last count nine million viroids per millilitre of blood. The moment age begins to weary me, to weaken me, I fear they will grasp the opportunity to scour me from the surface of the planet - like a fastidious girlfriend with a box of tissues, scrupulously seeing to a clumsy boyfriend’s spilled red wine

Weird simile, I know. I’ll trust my subconscious and leave it there. Oh, and I was stung by a bee the other day. The hottest of those recent days. In Bruce Butler’s pool. A bee, of all things. There I was, lounging peaceably in one of Bruce’s vast and colourful collection of floatation devices when, lo, the underside of my upper-arm descended upon a bee. When did this last happen? Was I six? Younger perhaps? Of course, even a painful incident like this will not undermine my love and admiration for bees. The creature was acting purely out of instinct. I know that. Though I admit to taking a soupçon of pleasure in what must have been a painful, extended demise.

Polly, however, was out of the pool in a flash, pale as a sheet, trembling in the corner furthest from the water, demanding that we leave immediately. She is terrified of bees. And wasps. Snakes too, I think. (About a fortnight ago, I was walking with her and her friend Megan by Scotchman’s Creek when I spied what I believe to be a tiger snake side-winding across the path. I was a child when I last saw a snake down there.)

Just to finish up on the subject of bees ... Robert - as I have explained previously - cannot stop himself feeding the surly, obese, ill-humoured local population of brush-tailed possums. He built a beautiful possum box for them to inhabit - put it atop the shed in the hope they would cease forcing up the tiles and sleeping in the roof. Robert knows the ways of these possums. Intimately. He can tell them apart as they come for their nightly serving of putrid bananas. They seem to trust him too; he alone is allowed to stroke the fur of the matriarch’s offspring peeking from her pouch ...

Unfortunately, before the possums even noticed Robert’s labour of love, a swarm of honey-bees appeared and automatically made it their home. They became a fixture in the yard. During the Winter, for a time, the hive disappeared and shortly after we found pieces of depleted honeycomb amongst the dried leaves and the dust beneath the box. With Spring the bees returned, and they remain there now ...

I would love to steal a little of their honey... but I dare not risk it.

But back to the point ... this is my fourth attempt to flush the (stubborn genotype 1a) virus from my system. The first was a a monotherapy: interferon-alpha on its own (I responded, but barely). The second was trial of something called Rebif: interferon-beta, typically used for MS patients (The injections hurt like hell, I felt like shit and it did nothing). Then came the double-therapy - still in use - interferon-a and ribavirin (my viral load dropped from 10,000,000 to 1200, but then, like the Borg, the virus adapted and resumed its deadly replication).

Each of these attempts have excised more than six months from my life. It’s simply impossible for me to operate as usual while on these drugs. I’m not myself. I’m reduced, functioning at a minimum.

It’s a gamble: surrender these swathes of time in the hope that, later in life, I will avoid cirrhosis, or liver cancer - or else take a chance and let the virus do its evil work. Always a hard choice. And Polly must be considered. I don’t want to be sickly and weak when the time comes to wield an axe - or machete, or shotgun - when suitors come a-calling ...

I have benefited from the treatments. The most recent, though technically a failure, has caused my liver to show signs of improvement - despite my viral load careering back up to nine million.

This time round, at three weeks in (I’ve just had my fourth weekly injection of interferon-a) the side effects have been milder than I recall. The initial fortnight was bad - I might have had a poisonous creeping ague caught from some queasy, debilitated swine - but since then I’ve been normalising. There is the anaemia of course. It gets in the way of the exercise I rely on to bind my body and soul. But if this is the worst of it - this and the fatigue and the fogginess and the low-mood - then I will plough through the twenty-one weeks remaining with ease.

Perhaps the virus is already gone? The new drug - BMS 790052, which directly attacks a protein necessary for HCV replication (NS5A) - is supposed to work very rapidly. Perhaps I’m feeling better because I’ve cast it out at last. My dark passenger, as Dexter might put it. My intimate blood-borne saboteur.

Or perhaps I’m one of the unlucky ten percent who, instead of the new drug, are receiving a placebo?

~ dead chick

This is a sad and compelling something, encountered by Polly on our driveway.

"I don't know what it is," she said. "But if I look at it again, I'll vomit."

In a night or two I will have finished reading her Enid Blyton's Faraway Tree trilogy. Next will be Arabel's Raven.

~ 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.

~ 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)

~ dominion

After many failed attempts, Robert has at last identified and plugged the hole through which our possums were gaining ingress to the roof. Around dawn, the noises of frustration began and continued for hours. Perhaps the creatures have at last accepted that the well-appointed possum-box - carpentered for them lovingly by Robert - is a more sensible choice of lair. Perhaps not. Yet for a while at least, there will be no scratching and squalling in the walls around sunset, and Polly - whom the noises freak out - will sleep easier.

I can remember the things that used to terrify me at night. I remember tensing for the touch of the skeleton approaching me in the dark. Or the vampire. The nagging fear that something deadly, perhaps a tiger, was lurking beneath the bed. The indistinct forms of dinosaurs in the foliage outside the window ... I guess that’s what Polly’s going through at the moment, but the intensity of her fears is beginning to worry me. The sight of a spider on the couch is enough to elicit screams of primal terror. Thunder and lightning drive her into wild panic ... if she picks up a storm warning on a television forecast, she will be nervous and wary throughout the following day.

*

Sometimes I find myself ignoring the dreadful things that are happening to our world. Sometimes I need to take a break from the unremitting gloom. Likely it’s a self-defensive action, as to focus without pause on such things is a recipe for depression.

But lately, wherever I look I’ve been faced with outrageous scenarios in which humans are carelessly and criminally exploiting the Earth and its less fortunate inhabitants. After reading into Coke-a-Cola’s behaviour in Plachimada, India, I have - in an admittedly futile gesture - eschewed my morning Diet Coke for Pepsi. The actions of Coke, who set up a plant in an impoverished region of India and proceeded to suck free water out of the ground until the locals’ wells went dry, is not only inexcusable but depressingly predictable. Thank goodness the victims seem to have achieved some success on the legal front.

Then there is the noxious, criminally evil notion of Human Achievement Hour. I was scarcely able to believe my eyes when reading about this alternative to Earth Hour in The Age during the week. Inspired by climate-change denying Australian senator Cory Bernardi and championed by extreme right wing think tank Competitive Enterprise Institute, this wildly irresponsible concept formed icicles in my heart. There are people who truly believe that climate change is a left wing conspiracy. There are people who pay venal scientists to uncover hiccups in the data and inflame them into ClimateGates. There are people who believe it is a political issue not a scientific one. There are people who truly do not care about future generations. There are people who truly believe that man sits above nature and that he has, by right, Dominion over the earth.

Then I watched Mike Moore’s Capitalism - A Love Story and, although all his characteristic biases were in evidence, if even half of what he presented was accurate then we live in a miserable world indeed. The leaked Citibank plutonomy documents were near beyond belief. There is a 1% elite, at least in the US, who, in controlling 95% of the wealth, believe Dominion is theirs and bemoan their command of only 1% of the vote. Not a word about climate change. Collapsing fisheries. Animal extinctions.

God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth".

~ 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?

~ ghastly and heart-rending

I’m pretty sure the majority of parents yeilded their bubbling hyper-active children to the first day of the primary school year with a light heart, a gentle smile and an excusable measure of relief. At Pinewood, there was palpable excitement in the air. It warmed my heart to see Polly hugging and nattering with the friends from who she had been separated for what, in her terms, must have seemed an eternity. I can remember just how endless the summer holidays used to feel, and how the prospect of the looming school year seemed so thrilling.

I greeted the other parents - some of who I know quite well, others just by sight. I wondered how their Sunday nights had gone. Getting the kids to bed at a reasonable hour because of school. Perhaps a civilised dinner, at the table or in front of the TV. Perhaps they worked through those comforting, familiar routines on which children are said to thrive, that instil life with a reliability and an aura of security that give them room to develop into balanced, functional adults.

I wonder if any were woken around midnight by a sun-bright flashlight in the face? If any sat upright and stared, immobilised, like a rabbit under headlights, uncertain of whether to trust the unfamiliar voice behind the beam that was instructing them not to panic. “Everything’s alright. I’m a policeman. Could you get some clothes on.”

Some families would have had difficult, even traumatic nights. I know of at least one who must cope with an autistic child who has reached the age where he is difficult to restrain. But I wonder where my night falls on the sine curve that tracks from sweet and memorable to nightmarish?

I wonder how many rode a taxi to a booze bus in the afternoon to pick up a bewildered little daughter who was soon to be in grade two? Did anyone have a burly, tired, worried-looking cop guide them up their own hallway in the dark to confront a scenario which, though ghastly and heart-rending, was becoming all too familiar?

Were any of them unexpectedly required to describe the salient details of their family life to strangers in the middle of the night? Were any asked to contemplate a hypodermic injection of nail polish remover? Were any left wondering what such an act might do to a person?

Who cleaned a mysterious bloodstain from their floorboards after returning from school assembly?

My plans for a month of diligent work are already under threat. I can, largely, close off my emotions and continue to be functional, to address my responsibilities - but grains of stray madness still slip through the cracks and, despite my best efforts, the last few days have been more than a little bumpy.

~ drawing nigh

For Polly the end of the school year is drawing nigh. Her report has come home and she appears to be doing rather well, particularly in English and art. Her spelling is atrocious, mind you, but I'm reasonably sure it's at least average for a seven year old. Polly's 'interpersonal skills', in the language of today's educators, were singled out for particular praise.

To tell the truth, it's a relief - the tumultuous nature of our 2009 led to a slump in parental participation when it came to homework and assignments and all that slumbers beneath the silky rubric of Extra Curricular Activity.

You see, when it comes to ECA, some parents do. Some parents don't.

With a commitment bordering on the religious, do-bees paint fairy faces, attend Monday morning assemblies and trudge the suburb selling raffle tickets. They sweat through every working-bee. They man the sausage sizzles and the op-shops. And I doubt the school could operate without them.

In the Season of the Yo-Yo, it is they who appease their pleading children - young minds still reeling from a brutal detonation of colour, sound and spectacular skill enacted by some fly-by-night Yo-Yo Demonstration Team. I wonder ... since I still live in the same area ... could it be the same team - many generations of yo-yo prodigies removed - that visited my school when I was six?

Could there be a manager, nearing retirement age, who has eked out a living cynically reigniting the Ancient Greek fad across the primary schools of the city? Has he - like some very lightweight, commercially-minded Ahasuerus - been working without respite for millennia? Is he indeed something akin to the Wandering Jew? Or might he be part of a guild which meets each century to negotiate operational borders and corporate sponsorship?

The yo-yos are brighter these days - ours had a white rim and bore a simple red Coke-a-Cola logo. The new ones are fatter and the plastic is different. Lighter. Ours were of a denser material, an archaic polymer now rarely seen - in my time, if one strayed into a robust attempt at Round The World then injury would certainly result.

Once the yo-yos were made in Japan, now they hail from China. Possibly, the string is all that remains the same. And possibly that devious, calculating, long-suffering YYDT manager is a deserving subject for a short story...

And I have strayed too far from my subject ...

Does the school community have an opinion on the parents who don't engage in ECA? Is a subtle ostracism employed? Is there a suspension of that nod of recognition at eight-thirty each morning? Not to my knowledge... But I know little of such things ...

Both my partner and I help out when we can. But is it enough ...? Let me swear now, on my Honour, that the fruit 'shazliks' I prepare for Polly's end-of-year class party tomorrow will be sufficient. And edible. Even for children.

On Friday mornings this year, when circumstances permitted, I would go into the school and do reading with the kids. It's a thing the parents are encouraged to do, and I think I might have been the only volunteer for Polly's class. It's a useful way of keeping an eye on her reading, and it's interesting too; children are always interesting. Polly brought home a couple of cards from her fellow pupils thanking me for my efforts. It was nice. It was no big thing, but it made me feel appreciated for a few moments there ...

She also brought home a stack of artwork - to which, I'm afraid, you will now be subjected. (The final image is, I believe, a kangaroo.)

~ with chicken head and tutu

We’ve performed the BFG more than ten times now before hundreds and hundreds of screaming children. It’s beginning to become second nature: thwacking myself on the head with an inflatable hammer to the beat of John Farnham’s ‘The Voice’, feeding snozzcumbers to an entity called Bloodbottler, interpreting a military operation in dance with chicken head and tutu …

If one wasn’t in the right state of mind, it could be a hellish thing to face every day, but I’m honestly enjoying it. Judging from the state of my costume once it’s over, I must be sweating out litres of fluid per show. Though it probably doesn’t matter to the audience, I’m polishing my act with every performance and keeping thoughts of the Grublets from Blades of Glory far to the back of my head, (along with other black black clouds which I am better off not dwelling on).

Polly is proud that her dad is the BFG, which is a nice ancillary benefit. Yesterday, we traveled out to Ringwood to see her end of year dance concert. What a massive production… There must have been nearly a hundred performers from the steppes of middle suburbia… And what costumes! The sequins, the tulle and the tiffany! The non-stop rippling, flouncing procession of wild colours, demi-pliés and flourishing nubility. It was impossible not to be entertained. There were men who were indistinguishable from women. And vice versa. There was even a titillating wardrobe malfunction. A nipple, which through the course of one particularly energetic number, crept in and out of its cup as its gangly smiling blonde owner jetted obliviously about the stage.

It was a vaudevillian banquet: dance that ranged from the seemingly accomplished to the pitifully incompetent … and, inevitably, to wandering toddlers, smiling broadly in their profound bewilderment or picking their noses and wiping them on their gorgeous Arabian Nights outfits.

There were three two-hour performances to a huge auditorium, packed each time with adoring friends and relatives. As for myself, I had tried to ignore the preparations for this event, but tyrannical organisers continued to demand my concentration with their complex and exacting procedures. The costumes situation became a yawning gyre of confusion and uncertainty. For my own sanity, I had to palm off the task to other members of Polly’s support cabal.

Polly doesn’t want to do dance next year, thank goodness. Something simple and straightforward like Guides or swimming lessons will do nicely.

~ here I am

Life has been a tremendous challenge lately. All manner of threats and obstacles have been presenting themselves and I have had little choice but to face them, grim-faced and dour. I’ve been unable to update the Sails of Oblivion – or to do much writing at all for that matter. For this I’m really sorry. This blog has, somehow, become central to my work and my life and I’m a fool to neglect it.

My last month has been consumed by rehearsals and performances of Lynne Ellis’s adaptation of Roald Dahl’s The BFG in which I’m playing the title role. We opened late last week after the fastest, most intensive rehearsal period I’ve ever experienced. I lost at least a stone in the process, but it was worth it. The show is very funny, even for adults I think, and I recommend it robustly.

There’s a ‘gala-night’ on Tuesday December 15 which you can inquire about at RMIT Union Arts. Otherwise the public season runs from Jan 5 to 22. (Book at M-TIX 9685 5111]

On top of my theatre commitments, I’ve been enduring the usual swathe of life-related challenges. I’m looking after Polly by myself just at the moment and my confused, absent-minded habits when blended with a child’s natural anarchy make for a very messy house and a very messy head. What’s more, Polly’s ballet concert is looming and involves an unlikely amount of concentration, organisation and driving. Thankfully, I’ve been able to palm off the sequin-sowing to Polly’s female antecedents.

As regards my ongoing legal problems, my effort to have the charges reduced to something more in keeping with the wrongdoing have been flushed down into the grease-trap of cruel mechanistic legality. I will be facing another year of fear and uncertainty, but I will continue to fight. I just wish I was the only one who was suffering. To say that my partner does not cope well with tension and anxiety would be an extreme understatement and Polly, of course, though she does not know what’s happening, is already affected by the changes in our circumstances.

I would really like to thank Jenny, Lynne, Dolores, Andrew, Robert. Sara and Di for their support the other day in court. I love you all.

You’ll hear from me soon.

~ falls the shadow

It’s a demanding old life, is it not?

Things have been riotous, strange and extreme. I’ve been challenged with calamity, yet somehow, from the chaos, with the help of friends and family, using resources I didn’t know I possessed, I’ve been able to confront the encroaching darkness - just by living my life.

In fact, it’s turning out to be a wildly interesting year. The Ears reunion. Who could have predicted that? I’m spending more time with old friends than I could possibly have forseen, and no friend is better than an old friend. Richard is re-releasing Dogs in Space, a mere two weeks prior to the show, together with We’re Living on Dog Food, a 'doco that explores the making of the film and the scene in early Eighties Melbourne which inspired it. Providence walks before me, seeding my trail with stardust. I’ve even scored a ticket to the opening night of the film festival.

And the granite-bodied men of St Kilda Football Club have won fourteen games without a loss and look set to challenge for the premiership.

And the light of my life, my daughter, is happy and growing. We’ve just returned from three days in Bairnsdale with Tosie and her son Kyowa, who is just a little older than Polly. I really needed the time; I was getting a little frayed at the ends, and Polly loves Kyowa, and vice versa.



We saw fat koalas lodged in the forks of trees, regarding us with the inscrutable expressions of the profoundly stoned. We rode a ‘fairy’ to Raymond Island. We explored a secret place - a mossy rainforest gully of tumbled granite boulders in the deep shadows of water gums. We had dinner at the property of an old bushie called Mick, where the smell of burning bracken was as evocative as Proust’s biscuit, where we turned a giant fallen stringybark into an adventure playground, and where I explained that Betelgeuse, in the constellation of Orion, has recently reduced in size by fifteen percent and may be about to explode, turning our nights into day for the first time in a millennium. Elsewhere, we fed crimson rosellas and king parrots. I saw a bronzewing pigeon, the kind which leaps into flight with a characteristic flapping sound caused by the particular shape of its wings. I saw a male satin bowerbird, the kind that collects blue things for its prospective lovers.



But, almost inevitably, I received a call from Melbourne. My wife, who was not too well to begin with, was in hospital, having taken a decided turn for the worse. As with my legal problems, I can’t be too straightforward here. Suffice to say another heavy weight of responsibility and potential stress has been hefted upon my shoulders.

But never mind. No fear.

Many don’t make it through times like this. Often, it's simply the pressure that defeats them. Tosie’s brother recently died of a heart attack. He was in his early forties .He was brought low by the stress of a bitter struggle with the evil mother of his young daughter. Me, I will work towards tranquility. I know there is only so much I can do. There is no profit in savaging myself over things I can’t control. And in the end ...?

With the beautiful people on my side, I know it will turn out well.

related posts:
~ red in tooth and claw, ~ aerobones, ~the den of nargun

~ market day paranoia

Most of yesterday afternoon, I spent gathering books from the four corners of this house in preparation for market day at Pinewood Primary. I priced about twelve boxes and left it at that – with all the surplus books in my possession I could open a store if I wanted, but I had to draw a line somewhere. Besides, I also had Polly cast-offs and a bag of brand new knitted baby clothes from god knows where for our stall as well.


Suburban innocence, you may think. The banal activities of an average family going about its ordinary daily business. If only things were that simple and clear cut…

Well, not really. Of course I don’t aspire to mediocrity, but sometimes, in my weaker moments, I do wish I was a little less strange. Then, perhaps, I wouldn’t get into the sort of troubles I’m experiencing at the moment.

Living in Mt Waverley, having a child, I brush up against the mainstream of Australian civilisation far more than I ever have previously. I’ve mentioned at times how odd it sometimes feels. As if I’m a kind of spy or traitor in their midst. Can’t they tell I’m an alien lifeform with two spines, a grey dewlap and a polyhedral skull? What’s wrong with them? Don’t they see the trail of stinking protoplasm I leave behind me, like a Third Stage Space Guild Navigator with influenza? They don’t seem to treat me as an outsider. I seem to be considered as just another parent, albeit somewhat eccentric.

Well, that’s more or less what I am, I suppose. Regardless of the soul-sucking nightmares that have come to life for me recently, I still had an idyllic, convivial, mildly profitable day at the market today, chatting with strangers about who knows what, getting to know the other parents a little better. I actually felt like I belonged – and it wasn’t that bad a feeling.

For Polly it was just a great big fiesta, scattering around the place in a flurry with her girlfriends. Every time she sold something, a book or a toy, she counted up her money and was off to buy another piece of worthless pink rubbish. One might almost describe it as a shopping jag. What’s more, while we were packing up, she received so many free gifts from other stallholders we returned home with more junk than we started out with.

Plus a neat, but modest fifty dollars for my survival fund.

~ 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.

~ milk

It was good to be a father yesterday.

For his short, milk-related film, Ben, who studies film at RMIT, found a very upscale kitchen in an extraordinary house built into the shell of an old brewery in Collingwood. The place was bursting with beautiful furniture, objets and what have you. There was an internal balcony looking down from a bedroom onto the living area you see beneath, two vast old brick chimneys beautifully integrated into still another sprawling living space, and a roof top deck with a view of all northern inner-city Melbourne. I don’t often get the chance to see inside places like this …

Maybe one day ... I can only dream.

Ben had a bigger crew than I expected and a load of equipment, including tracks. Into this complicated scenario walked the tiny six year old Polly in her school dress. I know she hates being in front of crowds and the concentrated attentions of an eight-strong film crew must have worried her, but she showed no sign of nerves. Ben took just the right tack. He was sweet, patient and gentle, but he’s that sort of guy anyway, so it wasn’t much of a stretch.

Polly discovered the meaning of the words action and cut. She saw her first clapper. She learned that sometimes shots need to be done again and again, even if the actor has done her job perfectly. As I mentioned in a previous post, all she had to do was get a bottle of milk from the fridge, take it to the kitchen bench, pour a glass and drink it. It sounds simple, I know, but it wasn't.

I was amazed – and proud – of how precisely she obeyed the director’s instructions, and how well she remembered all the little subtleties she was asked to add.

They’d chosen one of those big 3 litre plastic bottles, so it took all Polly’s strength to heft it, but the real killer was the milk itself. So many takes, so much drinking, and I don’t really think she was pacing herself. Then came a shot in which she accidentally poured a huge quantity into the glass and proceeded to swallow it down. The camera kept rolling and the room held its breath. Would Polly obey her directions and try to drink it all before looking up and smiling at the camera? Or would she work around the excess in some way? Trooper that she was, she attempted to do what she’d been told and continued taking gulp after gulp. Everyone there was feeling that milk go down. Ben and I were exchanging worried glances. I was concerned that she’d damage herself in some way, internally, or perhaps vomit …

In the end, thank god, the director broke in to say she didn’t have to drink it all. Such a determined little creature, focusing so hard on getting it exactly right

From that point on, she mimed as much of the milk-drinking as was possible, and, inevitably, began to complain of a sick stomach. After about two hours of hard concentration, she slipped, banged her tooth on the bench, and let go all the pressure with a long cry. Then a short break, one more shot, a wrap, and a round of applause for a fantastic effort.

It so happens that the camera they were using was the same one used in the filming of Brideshead Revisited. What about that? The work of Sir John Gielgud, Sir Laurence Olivier, Jeremy Irons, Anthony Andrews has passed through that device…

And now that of Polly Sejavka.

~ the commonplace

I derive such succour from the ordinary things, the commonplace events I can reply on to be commonplace, the cherished routines …

School started today at Pinewood. I watched Polly’s green gingham back as it disappeared through the doors amongst a chirruping flock of other six and seven year olds. I’ve been spending so much time with her lately, I felt a flush of sadness this time, on top of the customary relief.

Polly is going to be in a film tomorrow. A student film by the lovely Ben Andrews, in which she is going to walk to a refrigerator, open it and pour herself a glass of milk. I’m not sure she if she quite understands what’s going to be happening. She keeps calling it a ‘play’ - as plays are something she’s reasonably familiar with - but I’m confident she’ll adapt, and not freeze-up or anything like that. I’ve been astonished by her progress lately, her reading, writing, comprehension, all that stuff. And of course, her imagination.

I’ve set her up a desk in my study where she occupies herself while I work. Long gone are the days when work was a pipe dream if Polly was in my sole care.

My wife has retired from the scene for a few weeks, requiring some peace and quiet to mend the inner fabric of her soul. My recent precipitate departure took as much of a toll on her as it did on me.

I am able to breathe a little easier now, though there is a looming darkness on the horizon and it is difficult not to worry about. Strangely, having emerged from such horror and remorseless grinding stress, I feel freshly energised. Particularly with my work. I have a whole lot of projects on the go now, and I am appreciating all the sacred little things, which, for a period there, I thought I might have lost.

The honour of feeding the white duck Immaculata is by no means the least of these.


And, of course, nothing now stands in the way of my intention to photograph and identify the native fungi of Mt Waverley.

~ the party mill

my daughter's first attempt at a sick note

It may seem unbelievable, but in my prep class, there were fifty kids. In Polly’s there are about nineteen and ten of these are girls. When birthdays come up, the boys go to the boys’ parties and the girls to the girls’. There are no exclusions and little overlap.

By the time of Polly’s birthday in November, the ten girls of Prep P were experienced social operators. That is - they were familiar with each other in the celebratory context, (as well as the educational). They’d been to lots of parties and their behaviour was becoming formalised: with the screaming, the dancing, the eating ... Familiarity with the process also makes it easier on the parents; they know what the children expect and deliver it. Nice and simple. A party mill. Drop them off at one end. Let the apparatus do its sweet pink deafening business. Pick them up two hours later.

One can even have it done by a third party. Any Fairy Shop worth its salt will run a lucrative sideline in girls' parties. And, for children of the void, there is always the freakish hamburger clown, whose minions will happily provide a loud, reliable, desolate, fattening sub-celebration.

The birthday girl functions at an extreme level of excitement. Rationality evaporates in a welter of cake and chocolate crackles. Hard won conditioning is lost in a chaos of triumphal screaming. and the security of pack-behaviour. The most trivial of slights or misadventures brings a flood of tears and it is no wonder. The ductile young brain, (perhaps excluding the pre-frontal cortex,) runs red hot at one of these birthday parties. Like locusts the children descend upon table loads of treats, reducing them to a sticky ruin before proceeding to the next vortex of fun. There is something wildly orgiastic about a six year old’s birthday party.

This year, to my shame, I failed to manufacture a piñata. Instead I forked out a ridiculous sum for a prefab: a traditional pink quadruped which might have passed as a horned alpaca or llama, if it hadn't been advertised as a ‘mystical unicorn’...

And the shimmering mountain of gifts. Bratz dolls. Bratz bedding. Bratz stationary. A catadapt Brat. Two Polly Pocket equestrian sets, [horses and dolls with matching outfits and bridles indistinguishable from hats]. A revolving fish nightlight. A Veronicas outfit. Make-your-own-windchimes. Make-your-own-finger-puppets. Jigsaw puzzles. Skipping rope. Hair accessories. And Beados - the replacement for Bindeez. [These ones taste more poisonous than strychnine.]

With the removal of packaging, the gift mountain diminished by two-thirds, but it was still impressive. Too impressive. A monument to over-consumption.

I have a plan for next year and it involves making Polly’s party carbon-neutral. We’ll arrange for a few very nice presents, but beyond that ... guests will be invited to spend potential gift money on the salvation of the moonbears ... or on carbon offsets ...

(... or on the installation of a modish self-destruct switch assembly on the dash of their SUVs. Passing drivers will envy its design ethic and its subtle metallic sheen. They will not previously have seen the colours thream and plome employed in a commercial device, (though they may have heard media reports of their discovery by the deep space robot-probe orbiting Fomalhaut.) ...

- You know, he could just reach over and just ... flick it, observed Ahenobarbus with undisguised envy.

His wife looked up from the pages of her magazine.

Keep your eye on the road, Ahenobarbus.)

Polly’s friend Mia was the odd one out. She’s not at school yet and is just a little timid. She is also innately sensible. When asked why she wasn’t playing with the others, she replied, “I just don’t want to run around screaming, that’s all”.

a guy from one of my wife's life-drawing classes produced this pastel sketch