~ did mr bunny get some?

Robert's rat – known variously as Mr Bunny, Zebedee or Nipper – has led an indulgent yet cloistered life, feeding hugely from the trough of his owner's kindness, puncturing the hands of strangers who seek to pet him in his nest, set high on a bookshelf in Robert's densely furnished apartment.

When Robert is out and about, Mr Bunny lives in his leather jacket, often peering curiously from a sleeve at supermarket checkouts and bank queues. The pellets he leaves are compact and easily shaken out, but when Mr Bunny needs to urinate he dutifully alerts his doting human companion. If Robert is riding his bike – for example on busy Queen's Rd at peak hour - the rat will crawl onto his shoulder as a signal for him to pull over.

Recently, Robert described a scene I found reminiscent La Grand Bouffe. From the toilet – on which he was perched - he had a clear view of the rat's nest. Presently, Mr Bunny's seeking nose emerged from the skein of rag and newspaper. The rat seemed to peer into the distance. He edged forward a little more, expressionless, apparently mesmerised. Perhaps he was concentrating on some uncomfortable internal process, or perhaps his cognition was stuttering due an overdose of lipids and sugars in his bloodstream...

Time passed and a sudden thought came to Robert's head. Was Mr Bunny having a stroke? Would he fall? Robert leapt up, but too late. The pale unwieldy rodent plummeted eight shelves into the chaos of gas bottles, engineering books and electronic components below.

Thankfully, the fall did no harm and seemed to reboot Mr Bunny's system.

Though only 18 months, Mr Bunny is old in rat years and contented in his simple ways. He is not desexed and two large lightly furred globes swing at the root of his dextrous tail. Robert has mentioned to me that - for Mr Bunny's birthday - he would like to arrange a sexual liaison, as his pet remains a virgin. It seemed a pipe dream until, just recently, I was pleased to inform him that I had met Ellie, a nubile young female rat whose owner was prepared to keep some of the resulting pinkies if Robert returned the favour.

This weekend we travelled to the home of Ellie in the remote town of Barry's Reef. Robert fretted, fearing that Mr Bunny might engage in cannibalism or violent rape - but nothing of the kind ensued. Certainly, his rat proved to be two to three times the size of Ellie and was, by comparison, as lively as a slug - yet Mr Bunny was not entirely disinterested. Ellie spent much of their tryst sleeping on his head, but perhaps, in the dead of night, in the opaque plastic milk bottle that was their private place, magic may have happened.

As the rats engaged in their inscrutable negotiations, I took a walk in the nearby forest, where I sought wisdom from The Green Man.

Shortly afterwards, and perhaps not by accident, I uncovered a vein of fossilised moon jelly.

And afterwards, I saw these three things...

~ 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?

~ 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 revenant dolphin

First off thanks to Ross. Matthew, Sue & Katherine for donating. Thanks with all my heart. Love on ya.

Second, another instalment in the ongoing miracle of nature that is Robert (the scientist in our carport).

I don’t know about you, but I have always found can-opener technology to be a frustration. Every so often, I buy a new one that promises longevity, superior ease of use and seamless efficiency, but I am always disappointed.

Even the innovative design which appeared a decade or so back, dancing in a multi-coloured chorus line on television; the kind which takes off the whole top of the can rather than just the disc within the rim – even these prove wanting, and all too rapidly find their way into the bin

Inevitably, I find myself with my hand in the back of the drawer, extracting a can-opener I can rely on – the elderly opener of classic design with the single blade and no rotating serrated wheel; the one which requires a strong arm and which chews through the metal leaving a ring of razor sharp points.

Some months back, on a whim, I bought a new translucent green opener for a little more than I would ordinarily spend on such an appliance. It was called The Dolphin, because it vaguely resembled a dolphin, and it promised all those things which the makers of can-openers customarily promise.

A month later, it was inoperable, and sitting on the side of the kitchen bench awaiting disposal.

And this is where Robert steps in.

When he is at our place, he consumes a serving of baked beans on toast approximately every two hours, and keeps a store of cans in the cupboard. I am surprised he even recognised The Dolphin as a can-opener, but he did, and upon realising it was broken, his strange, ingenious mind set to work.

The Dolphin disappeared into the carport and emerged an hour later transformed and in full working order, with fresh innards and large Soviet-style actuating device connected to the side

Though he has plainly not allowed himself to be constrained by the aesthetic of the original design, he has - with his arcane skills, his tool mill, his industrial lathe, and his propensity for massive over-engineering - retrofitted The Dolphin into the smoothest, most-reliable can-opener I have ever had the pleasure to operate.

~ stag beetle: like it!

Without wanting to hex myself, things have been better than usual around here. Perhaps it’s the celebratory atmosphere that descends around hard rubbish time: with the purging of rotting, water-logged junk and the acquisition of fresh, interesting, new junk. I’ve found a working espresso machine, and a brand new trenching tool, and an abswing - which is actually a fairly useful bit of exercise equipment.


Also this fine piece of abandoned art. The lips are meaty with a fine gloss. Their texture seems almost porridge-like.


The larger of our two cats, Tweety Bird, has been bringing a new kind of trophy into the house. It is a particularly hideous grub or caterpillar, black, shiny and fat, which bursts with a spray of atramental ordure if stepped upon.



No one knows their origins, but I would like to think the garden [or wherever] is better off without them. Polly has suggested that the itinerant Tweety Bird travels at night to the Moon, where she captures these terrible grubs as souvenirs.

Robert’s possum friends – who visit him in the carport by night - have been breeding. The mother actually let him feel the bump in her pouch. Here is the bump a week or two later, on its mother’s back.


I’ve had my hair cut, by Lynne, who is back from Europe with Mitch. A group of us attended Robert Harvey’s valedictory home game at Docklands on Sunday. I’ve been taking long walks and doing laps … I’ve been swallowing garlic, fish oil and milk thistle. If life remains at this current pitch, it will only get better … One advantage: I don’t have to look far for the greatest threat to my fragile equilibrium – for I am the past master of self-destruction and insidious auto-sabotage!

Last thing. What we believe to be the final element of the Yan-Yan puzzle has fallen into place.

~ slow and stuttering

It’s been a slow, stuttering week. Some grinding progress made. Some good things coming forth.

The results of my blood tests came through. The state of my liver is better than I had expected. [Although my viral load remains significant, my ALT is within normal range.] I’ve taken steps with regard to my little problem with the insurance company. I’ve located a financial councillor whom I hope will be able to mediate for me, eliminating the possibility of my ever having to speak directly with a debt collecting cyborg. I have been swimming assiduously, walking Polly to school. Doing the little things that may help lengthen my stay upon the Earth.

On Tuesday, Polly and I went to the opening of an exhibition [Beyond The Window] at Bus at 117 Little Lonsdale Street. Erin Ender, whom I recently saw married, collaborated in a neat little installation viewed through antique stereoscopic viewers. Commanding colours. Fascinating depth. Winsome aeroplane. Martina Mrongovius, a tall red haired woman with a translucent complexion whom I met at Erin and Henrik’s wedding, presented a series of complex holograms. There were eight, I think, all with that elusive quality which hologram technology imparts. There was a time when creating such things would have been prohibitive financially – now it appears the art form is within reach. I didn’t have time to inspect them closely, as the room was rapidly filling with chattering shadows with wineglasses. Martina informed me that the crepuscular lighting was her preferred luminal environment. I, too, once favoured the twilight world, but as my vision grows dim I find myself increasingly drawn to the brightness. Martina’s holograms were gleaming, intriguing and green. The backgrounds shifted through long arcs, exposing more and more detail as one changed one's point of view. Vague haunted-looking figures in the foreground performed puzzling tasks …


Sam Bond was there with little Scarlett coddled at her vast maternal breast. Motherhood seems to be doing nothing but good for Sam. Lynne was present too and suggested that Polly and I ought serve with her as a test audience for Richard Higgins’ tour of Melbourne, [a comedy festival event]. The three of us followed Richard around the city – or rather his persona, Richard Richards, a safari-suited trainee tour-guide with the ability to strike dynamic poses and an unnerving giraffe-character perched atop his staff of power. This was just a dry run, but I think the end result will be funny. I’d never noticed how utterly monged out were the pack-camels of Burke and Wills…

At one point we were noticed by a Koori gentlemen. Having observed our inspection of the Aztec nipple fields of Federation Square, he offered his own contribution to the tour. He acted out the dreamtime story of a white emu who had come to banks of the Yarra – at that time closer to Flinders Street - for water, but looked up in the direction of South Melbourne to see the eruption of a mighty volcano. The white emu ran for his life, escaping by the skin of his teeth - but was daubed by the raining ash that was to colour his feathers for ever more.

I wonder how far back the oral history of the Aborigines takes us? I have heard that the Mornington Peninsula [which more or less starts in the direction he was pointing] is a lava plain – but that happened a very very long time ago.

Greyish Blackish, the kitten, is settling in well, leaping about the lounge room like a thing possessed - from couch to coffee table to dinner table to floor, and back again ad infinitum. Tweety Bird [our other cat] liked to be held, but Greyish Blackish does not. Tweety used to freak out at her image in the mirror, taking it for another cat. Greyish Blackish reacts quite differently, seeming to understand that the reflection is imitating her movements and turning it into a game. Fascinating how personalities – both human and animal – manifest themselves from the very beginning.

I’ve been a little less opinionated this week. Whether that’s good or bad, I don’t know, but it’s probably the reason behind my infrequent posting.

If you’re wondering about the images, they’re photos of some of my stuff. Excluding the brushtails, of course. Robert has been feeding them out in the carport as he toils by night, feeding them fruit that is too decayed even for him… I’m surprised they can stomach it… The big one is the mother, the small one her baby, which until recently was riding on her back.

~ sleep is a mouse

Each night, when I was very small, my parents and I would kneel and say prayers by my bed, heads bowed, hands clasped together in reverence. On the wall was a painting of the biblical Samuel in a similar attitude, giving homage to what appeared to be a supernova. I had selected that image from a wide selection at the church shop, because the holy man depicted bore my name.

Most nights, my father would sing me a lullaby in Latvian, his native language: aijã zuzu lãca berni. It was a story of a mother and father bear bringing honey and berries to their cubs – though I never knew the meaning of the words. The lullaby has stayed with me. It’s the sweetest memory I have of my father. And it’s the only piece of real Latvian culture he left me.

It saddens me, but I don’t blame him. I know what he went through, and how frightened he was. He kept as far from the local Latvian community as he could for fear of communist spies. And spies there were. It was not just paranoia.

When I travelled to Latvia, early this century, I made sure to get a recording of the song. I learnt that it was generally known as ‘The Latvian Lullaby’ and was based on a melody by one of the great composers.

From the liner notes …

‘The Latvian mind imagined that sleep is provided by a dear, sweet little mouse. The mouse is seen as a tiny quiet creature, the colour of the evening dusk, who is able to simultaneously guard boundaries and cross them.’

’As the magical moment of sleep arrives for the children in our arms, we rock them with an age old movement and we sing to them. What else could one do at suck a moment? Sometimes you can’t even call it singing – it’s crooning, humming, lulling – something heartfelt and primordial.’

After my return, Polly was born, but by that time – of course – I’d misplaced the CD. Throughout her short life I’ve been singing her the pigeon-Latvian version I remember from my childhood. My dear friend Ieva - a magnificent woman of honour and intellect, who guided me compassionately through the reunion with my estranged aunt – promised to post me another copy and each day since Polly has been checking the letterbox without result. The months passed and it seemed that the CD had been lost in the mail.

But today, on the eve of Polly’s first day of school, the disc arrived - and from this point on I can invest her with this little silvery flake of her heritage.

[It's a rather beautiful album, by the way.]

*

I have removed the post ‘Lemon and Orange’. Much to my surprise it was discovered by the subjects of the article and, though no names were used, there was predictable outrage. It is my tendency to colour reality as brilliantly as possible and in this case I succeeded in making an already seedy series of events appear shockingly squalid. I can only speak for what I witnessed; what I learned second hand seems to have been the product of emotional heat.

All up, it was the result of my naïveté as a personal blogger. I have much to learn about what I should and shouldn’t say – though the urge to tell it warts and all is almost irresistible. [I wonder if James Packer will go for me next?]

I must admit, I have been warned – by Pink Light and by Donald – but I thought the use of pseudonyms would be sufficient.

*

As a footnote to my previous post, Robert’s boarding house is not – as I suggested – at peace. The management and the police are doing very little to restrain the troublemakers, not all of whom have been imprisoned. More threats have been issued and another resident has been assaulted. Robert is working towards a restraining order.

~ the discombobulated genius

We have all heard stories about the genius guitarist, who lives out his days muddling away in a bedroom, unknown to the world at large, subsisting at some shit job when he could be benefiting the universe with his talent.

Robert is a whole lot like that. Robert, the scientist who inhabits my carport together with his antique industrial machinery. Who also happens to be an historian of aviation and shipping, a metalworker, a carpenter, a chemist, a sailor… the list is long, but very specific. As Lynne suggests, tunnelvision is one of the symptoms that makes unique minds so brilliant. They’re crap at most things, but startlingly talented at others.

Take movies for example. Robert has real trouble dealing with logical inaccuracy, anachronism and discontinuous narrative. If things don’t happen according to a natural timeline, he gets bewildered. Any sort of clever artistic affectation confuses him. Myth Busters is one his bugbears. It was good in the beginning, he says, but its sold out. They’re addressing myths that everyone knows are bunkum. He has zero tolerance for scientific inaccuracy and he invariably sniffs it out, even if something is set thousands of years in the future.

Politicians can’t get a word in edge way. He doesn’t believe a word they say. He despises police too. I put it down to his early days in the Young Socialists – unfortunately it’s impossible to convince him to move on. I've tried to bribe him to register as a voter but, because he claims to remain an anarchist, he refuses.

Moving out of Park Towers in South Melbourne, where he lived with long time female accomplice Lorraine, he found a place in a nearby rooming house. Robert can be difficult to house owing to his packrat-like habits. With no car, he’ll arrive home on his bike with lengths of scaffolding, pumps torn from washing machines, damaged solar panels, sheets of galvanised iron, worn out machine tools, random appliances, all on his back or in his long suffering bag.

Every few months he falls off. It’s obvious why. On sultry summer nights he rides all the way home from Mt Waverley, just because he enjoys it.

We keep finding new bags for him, but they don’t last long, given the industrial-grade use they endure. Shoes too, and clothes, but he’ll never look neat. Lorraine looks after his long hair, trimming and plaiting it. He buys cheap over-ripe fruit from South Melbourne market, if he can’t find anything bin-diving. He’s a vegetarian; we’re always reminding him to watch his protein intake, since he’s so very active, but he still has that vegan-style pallor.

Funny thing. I was at Science Works with Polly one time, watching a time lapse movie of some decomposing bananas. We played a game, guessing at what point Robert would turn up his nose. A vegetable can travel a long way down the track before Robert will judge it putrescent.

Anyway, wherever he settles, there also settles a huge pile of junk which, of course, according to him, is nothing of the sort. Lately, since his latest obsession is metal-work, the salvage has been largely metallic. Obviously, Lorraine reached a point where she was forced to move him on. He’s far worse an accumulator than me. I see it in his eyes as we pass nature strips strewn with hard rubbish.

The rooming house is good for Robert. They won’t let him pile things in the grounds, which is a restriction he requires. He spends little of his pension on rent, little on food, so that every few months he can afford to buy a new piece of heavy machinery to dote over and restore in the carport. His tiny room is jam packed with tools, chains, bearings, cowlings, housings, chucks, finials, meat hooks, beakers, aging computer peripherals and antique machine manuals. There is just room enough left for his futon.

Once, needing to score, Robert pawned his oscillator. Has anyone ever in the universe pawned an oscillator before? I don’t think so. Once Robert spent half a day turning a solid steel flush button on his lathe, because the plastic one in the communal toilet had failed.

Every so often, given the nature of the rooming house, trouble brews. The place is home to old alcoholics, divorced migrant husbands and crinkled thin-lipped junkies. Everyone there has some sort of issue, whether it be mental, physical or circumstantial. Lately it’s been calm, but recently the management - part-timers with nice cars pulling down a full time wage - thoughtlessly sent three red-hot junkie crims along to fill some vacant rooms.

The result was turmoil. They treated the place like a jail. They tried to establish jail-like hierarchies of power with threat and intimidation. They stood over people for money, cigarettes. Robert described them as submorons, who would get pissed and roam noisily downstairs, breaking anything they could find while the house was trying to sleep.

But worst was their treatment of the old blokes. They stole and made threats to kill. Consequently, these poor shattered wrecks began to live in fear. A pall descended on the building.

There were communal meetings and a myriad of complaints were made to the people who, without thinking twice, had cast these spitting vipers into a peacefully functioning home - and then gone on holidays.

Finally, very late one night, a couple of these dickheads were stomping about in the TV room, complaining noisily of having no money, cigarettes or booze; [having blown their cheques on ice]. They’d already knocked on everyone’s door demanding money. When the answer was no, they’d insist the person tell them why. Why don’t you have any money? What have you done with it? The more courageous ones asked what business it was of theirs.

Then they started talking loudly about killing Peter, an old man with only a few months to live; so loudly that Peter would be sure to hear. That was when Robert lost his patience. He stepped out of his room and told them to go out, find some butts on the footpath and roll them up. [I’ve done it, Have you?] But the behaviour downstairs did not abate. Robert emerged again, angrier this time – if you want money go out on the fucking street and sell your arse, then shut the fuck up.

- What did you fucking say, mate?

Robert repeated himself. One of them, Alan, a quintessential crim with feeble mind and tracksuit pants, leapt up the stairs and challenged him. Robert made the mistake of turning his back to re-enter his room. Alan sucker punched him in the head. [A week later the bruises are still bright and crimson] And Robert retaliated.

Because Robert does so much bike riding and heavy lifting - among a thousand other arduous activities - he has a lot of whole-body strength. Alan was shocked to find himself in a headlock, getting his skull pummelled. Robert then braced himself, forced Alan’s body against a wall, and used his feet to compress his chest. Alan was immobilised and gasping for dear life. That was when his mate, Ian, the dominant of the two, crept up and kicked Robert in the head.

The fight must have broken up then, but Robert had a 5 mm tear to his cornea which took three days to heal. Alan was in far worse shape.

Sordid stuff isn’t it? But the upshot was good. The eruption got things moving. One guy was taken off by the cops. The other, due to enter jail in a couple of weeks, went on the lam. The third and most sensible one was given another chance. And management pulled their head out of the sand.

So goes life in the underbelly of South Melbourne. I wonder if the yuppies see much of it? The house of one neighbour is plastered with fascistic signs about trespassing and a number of those false security cameras.

The boarding house has calmed and Robert is functioning again, which is good because basically we couldn’t get by without him. He’s the king of handymen; he can fix just about anything. Show him a random piece of machined metal or plastic and he’ll tell you its precise provenance. It’s unbelievable. We’re blessed to have him. Often, I tell him he should start a business, but he’s too busy restoring his Deckel tool mill.

Living where he does, and having the weaknesses he does, he has encountered vampires. Mindless arseholes who’ve effectively tried to imprison him, believing he can turn pills into heroin, [it wouldn’t surprise me if he could]. Once, I chopped down an invasive camphor laurel tree and he explained to me exactly how to process it into ecstasy. His lifelong dream is to make a single batch of fentanyl [among the very strongest of the synthetic opiates] to last him the remainder of his life.

Because he can’t say no, he’s always fixing people’s TVs and microwaves, and blenders. Though most people don’t pay him, he continues to do it. He’s genuinely sweet, thoughtful, kind. I saw him crying during the long death of Lorraine’s cancerous pet rat.

Robert is utterly unique. Viva Robert! Why does he have to put up with what he does, when he should be raised high upon a golden pedestal?

'the swarf that penetrates' - an introduction to the Weird of Robert

~ dream diary

I travel in a Brobdingnagian ark of Theatre from an ancient time; housing a enormous troupe of the Comedia dell’arte – or something of a similar period. Huge chambers, decrepit, creaking, filled with slaving technicians and hunched actors. A script appears, very thick, filled with images and useful background material. It is a work by Shakespeare. It has been prepared by Lynne Ellis, who is the director of this vast concern. A huge drawbridge is lowered, opening the cavernous hold of the ark to a dim, windy climate. Workers begin to spew forth.

I overhear a discussion. Talk of Three Judges, who preside over the troupe’s product. I hear Lynne. Things are going to change, she says. From now on, it is the Director who has final say. No ‘Judges’ are going to stand in the way of her artistic verdicts …

*

Neville, a neighbour from my childhood, is living in a farmhouse near a cool river stained with tannin, the edges choked with tangled blackberries. I am living nearby. I never see Neville, though I know he is there, in a weatherboard house built upon the side of the river valley. He is isolated and bad-tempered.

At night I wander the edges of his property, following lines of stones in the grass. I see a light in the window, which each night seems dimmer. I worry for him. He is fading. I travel nearer the house, but he does not notice. The layout of the grounds is similar to that of my first school in Mt Waverley, Holy Family.

Then, at last, there is no light. I sense that Neville’s spirit has ebbed to near nothing. I call Robert, who, it seems, is Neville’s brother. Robert comes to the river. We speak of gunpowder and dynamite. He tells me that the walls of Neville’s house – which are now of brick – were pumped full of black powder at the time of construction…

I shudder, remembering that I had swum down the river with a stick of dynamite between my teeth, fetching it like a dog from where it had been thrown among the blackberries. I imagine it detonating in my mouth …

There seems to be a chance that Neville’s house will detonate too. We run. We come to a railway station in the open fields – slabs of white concrete bordering the rails, nothing more. It is my favourite railway station in the world.

I run and run. Faster and for longer than I have ever run before. I worry that my body will not hold. I am following Robert down the single rail track, among the gentle hills and greenish yellow farmlands …

Soon, we are following the sandy bed of a dried out creek. The banks are sheer and ten feet high, edged by thick tangles of blackberries. Robert slows. He has encountered a large, disarticulated kangaroo. He looks up. there are two expectant faces peering over the bank. A man and his son. Robert inspects the dismembered animal and scowls. Parts are badly decayed, yet somehow it lives. He warns it in a gentle voice, as he begins to rip the section with the forearms from the section with the head …

I am appalled. I retreat some metres back down the creek bed, looking for another break in the wall of blackberries. Having found one, I use my surprising physical prowess to leap sufficiently high to scale it. I see the open fields. I follow the creek towards the man and his boy. They are farmers. They are deeply interested in sheep. They wish to be indistinguishable from sheep. The man is leaning over the bank, speaking with Robert. He is bedecked with sheep fur … and sheep parts … now the kangaroo in the creek bed is also a sheep. The pair are eager for it and Robert is making a deal … The boy is intensely suspicious of me; he regards me with an evil stare. I am fascinated by his ears. They are elven and edged with ribbons of sheep skin. Elsewhere on his body he wears the hooves and ears and genitalia of sheep …

*

I had these dreams last night. Strange how a particular night will be filled with fantastic visions, when most are barren. Perhaps it because the house is at peace. Jenny is happier than she has been in a long while and, of course, Polly is following suit …

I’m sure my anti-depressives play a part too. Prozac and Zoloft, I have found, tend to be generators of wild dreams.

Curiously, within my dreams I sometimes recall other dreams which I had forgotten. Landscapes and atmospheres recur. In those paramnesic moments between wakefulness and sleep, while I struggle to remember what I have seen, sometimes a completely different dream will come to mind, one that had left my mind completely …

Railton, the tiny town in Tasmania where my mother grew up, transferred into the wilderness and stifling heat of mainland Australia. The region, once fertile is utterly bereft of life. A thick carpet of soft dust has settled on everything. I feel a deep existential horror of this dust; it is choking and poisonous. It is the dust of long ages and utter neglect. I have seen it in vacuum cleaner bags and in derelict houses that have been closed for decades. It hides sharp objects that if stepped upon can penetrate the toughest of soles… If you push down into it, your fingers may pass through ripe decaying flesh …

It is not the light, fertile dust of nature; it is an unnatural dust, a product of humanity, the remains of our works eroded by time. It has settled upon Railton, where a few hunched grey individuals still live, for want of choice.

I come to the fence of a horse paddock where a girl is standing. She is excited to see someone from the outside world. I explain that I have comer with my mother to revisit her birth place … The girl indicates a kind of barrow or roadside shop … It is disused and covered with dust; there is nothing for sale, nor has there been in living memory. it speaks of a time when there was still life in this place. I find in it an almost infinite melancholy …

This nightmare dust recurs in other dreams too. In a dream Melbourne, which has a wholly different layout to reality. A layout which remains similar, but is built on by each successive dream. There is a suburb of derelict workers’ cottages close to a rail line, bordering the central city. Here I sometimes explore, in abandoned rooms suffocated by the slow rain of dust…

Ω dead time in crepus-space

Subjective time in Crepus-Space will rarely be in agreement with a conventional clock. In extreme cases, a hiccup may seem to last an aeon, while getting a four year old human to sleep may take an instant. There are also some unnerving emotional effects: one may suddenly feel murderous rage towards the edge of a blanket, or perhaps fall profoundly in love with a smudge of earwax. Gravity too can be elusive and strange. Heavy ear syndrome is not uncommon. Also lip-flop. One’s left arm may feel like lead, the other like bubblewrap.

But the minor inconveniences of Crepus-Space are more than made up for by the astonishing speed at which it lets one travel.

As we near Elixesse, I will take the opportunity to describe the two who travel with me aboard the Ørn.

Jelonet, a near-human of Heptuna Prime, spends the vast majority of her time closeted in her suite. If she was of Earth, she would be immediately diagnosed with OCD, but Jelonet assures us that her behaviour is species-specific and entirely normal.

In the patterns of her bedding, Jelonet finds an infinite fascination. Into the walls of her living quarters, with a pin, she carves marvellously intricate, microscopically-detailed designs. She has borrowed my Crowley Tarot deck and reads her fortune as many as twenty times a day. She decorates her suite with femto-objects [or femtobjects] she has netted from space, and which neither I nor Robert, nor The Ørn itself, can see.

Jelonet appears human - but her skin is a little too white, her eyes a little too violet, and her physical presence just a little too unearthly. The Ørn is as mystified as I how two species could have independently evolved so similarly at a distance of many light years. We wonder if this is a case for panspermia.

Heptuna Prime does not have a space-faring civilisation, yet Jelonet designed and constructed her own vessel, escaped the planet’s atmosphere and promptly foundered in low orbit. The Ørn sucked her ship into its voluminous hold minutes prior to her inevitable demise.

After her rescue, in those first days, we worked full time restoring her health and deciphering her language. She is a breathtakingly beautiful creature and, shortly after her recovery, she and I discovered that our bodies were sexually compatible. A relationship flared like a supernova, then steadied. Currently, we are close companions and colleagues who share each other’s bodies when circumstance allows.

Yes, I mentioned Robert. Yes, Robert. Who dwells in my real-world car-port. He is my third companion.

He more or less lives in the hold, emerging only when there’s some piloting or advanced cogitation to be done, or when his body requires gravity to prevent the weakening of his heart or the degradation of his bones and muscles.

In the hold, he has set up an austere zero-gee living area. The Ørn has offered to install some proper amenities, but Robert has politely refused - as is his way. He spends his time analysing and repairing the Ørn’s contingent of lesser vessels as well as what remains of Jelonet’s eccentric home-made ship. The Ørn has a special place in its heart for Robert and from time to time, just for him, it produces a wreck from the inscrutable ur-space where it seems to store half the galaxy’s ruined [and perhaps confiscated] space vessels. [I will speak of this incredible ur-space another time.]

The Ørn has received and analysed data from the swarm of micro-probes it launched ahead of us towards Elixesse Quaternary. The swarm numbered in the millions and scattered itself across the Elixesse system in the hope of garnering information on the plight of the Mineral Entity.

Only half a dozen struck paydirt, but that was sufficient. Through them, importantly, we learned the identity of the threat to the Entity. We acquired vocalisations - recorded by micro-probes embedded in the hull of vessels – and from these the Ørn deduced the invader’s language.

A single probe penetrated a data cable and transmitted a great deal of societal and strategic information – including visuals of a life-form so bizarre as to be barely credible...

An individual of the Urograffin consists of a clear elongated dome. About a metre in diameter, the dome is set upon something resembling a gnarled black tree stump with many highly motile roots extending from its base rather like tentacles. The flexible earthworm-like tips of these roots afford the creature an ungainly, yet effective means of locomotion.

The dome is of course not the plastic with which we are familiar, but a strong transparent substance chemically conjured from the limitless imagination of evolution. Within it floats 144 small spheres, in ceaseless motion, just a little smaller than ping-pong balls and with no two of precisely the same hue.

The balls are suspended by currents of air produced by a ring of moist grey anus-like mouths set in the flat top of the ‘trunk’. The Urograffin exhibits an astonishing degree of control over the placement and movement of these spheres and with them it effects communication – a language, but also a means of expressing subtle changes in emotion. To the outsider, the ball movement might seem entirely random, but on occasion extraordinary formations may be observed. Cuboids. Toruses. Ellipsoids – enhanced in beauty by gorgeous arrangements of colour.

As I reviewed the footage of a Urograffin pilot, I saw its balls display a perfect spectrum - from deep burgundy to violet. A writhing line moved to form a spring-like form or helix of remarkable beauty. As humans have poetry in their language, so the Urograffin artfully expresses himself with a subtle orchestration of his balls. Harmony of colour expresses harmonious emotion, a disharmonious combination expresses disharmonious emotion.

It is a pity that a civilisation of such unique organisms has such devious intent – for it seems, from the evidence of the micro-probes, that the Urograffin are indeed responsible for the plight of Elixesse Quaternary

A subtle alteration in the ambient lighting alerted us to a change in ship status. We had emerged from Crepus-Space and soon would be encountering the extraordinary Urograffin ‘face’ to face

1. the starman succumbs to my will
2. the starman is summoned to elixesse quaternary

~ The Swarf That Penetrates

In passing, I have mentioned the scientist in my car-port. Now I would like to introduce him properly.

Robert is a shambling forty year old with wire rimmed glasses and wheaten hair that falls to the small of his back, and which he usually wears in a single braid. For him, clothes are simply a means of protection from the elements - he displays no preference when, each decade, he reluctantly burrows through the sale bins outside of op-shops. Often, Jenny and I offer him habiliments in an attempt to upgrade his decidedly shabby image

Robert is more or less a member of our family. We love him dearly. To Polly he is a patient and extremely tractable slave-uncle.

I first met Robert through Lorraine, who at one time was helping me procure prohibited substances. Lorraine was once an escort, before working in a brothel and then on the streets. Ultimately, the Quinquagesima tool its toll on Lorraine and she retired to her flat high in a housing commission monolith. Robert was her boyfriend until they separated about three years back. Lorraine still drops by the boarding house where Robert lives to drink tea, inhale concentrated THC, read the newspaper, and sometimes sample a little of my heavenly nuVanilla. She has mellowed in her later years and is also a good friend to Polly, who calls her 'Rain'.

Both Robert and Lorraine are rat lovers and used to keep them as pets. One day, I encountered them facing each other with deeply sorrowful expressions. They were jointly cradling a deeply beloved rat. It had cancer and was dying. With tears streaking their cheeks, they saw it through its last hours. I could not help but be moved by the commitment of these two old junkies to the poor little creature. Love. Simplicity. Respect. Care

Recently, when The Black and White Cat was dying, Robert did not stint in his efforts to comfort it. Kylie was visiting at this time and, observing Robert's dedication to The Black and White, she immediately classified him as a saintly spirit. Kylie is not the only friend of mine who judges people by their treatment of animals. I too see it as an indicator of the soul

The Black and White Cat had been with me for eighteen years.Originally it was named Chagall, but I could never use this name without feeling pretentious. [Mind you, my childhood cat was called Raskolnikov [see Dostoevsky], and I still recall being mocked [and hurt] by distant neighbours when I hollered for him at night]. Old Black & White cried piteously night and day and, because she was deaf, she did it loudly enough for the whole street to hear. Once contentedly plump, she was now an incontinent bag of bones - and quite plainly ready to die. Jenny and others were demanding that I have her euthanised, yet I was reluctant. One year previously, The White Cat had died in my hands at the RSPCA - and a young female vet had had to cope with a tall, slightly weird middle-aged man's uncontrollable weeping. I dreaded the thought of going through that again. What's more Robert was against it. He was certain he could somehow nurse the Black and White back to life, find a way to fix her somehow ... But, in truth, it was the Quinquagesima at work and - to quote Burroughs - that is the mark you can never beat.

In Robert's attitude, we find a clue to his character. Everything, to his mind, can be fixed, [though not the The Black and White Cat, who keeled over shortly after I resolved to take her to the vet]. Robert, personally, seems able to fix almost anything: Jenny's shoes, microwave, playstation, ratchet from my socket set, washing machine, about fifty components from Jackie [my beloved Renault 12 stationcar, who is the same age as Jenny and whom I'll speak of another time]. He's rewired the entire house and is installing rainwater tanks [Eight 220 recycled olive barrels raised high upon a wooden structure]. Every Wednesday, we have a working bee to keep our home from falling down about our ears.

Many years back, in pre-Jenny times, when I used Spasmo-Dromoran [rather than the Spasmo-Nemigron], Robert lost his flat and moved in with me. I was a different person then and though Robert was the perfect boarder, I had trouble with the noise he made cutting carrots and encouraged him to leave. His yacht was in the front yard and he spent all his time working on it. Lynne was a little fascinated by this, [she was my lover at the time,] and was certain that the yacht was symbolic - that Robert was expressing his desire for freedom. She believed that he would never leave on his dreamed of journey up the east coast of Australia, but would work patiently on the boat until the day he died.


When Robert left, the boat stayed. As it dominated the front yard, I urged him to move it and, a year later, he did. The yacht traveled from property to property until a particular friend moved out without telling him. Robert never found this friend, nor his boat... I feel guilt over this. The mast still lays on the roof of the car port, and I curse myself whenever I see it.

But now Robert has a new obsession. He is in love with metal. He has set up a working space in the car port and, since he has retired from the Ulterior Wars, [with the interesting ability to manufacture synthetic honeycomb,] he lives in dirt cheap accommodation, gets most of his food from a skip behind South Melbourne market, and is able to save nearly every penny of his Veteran's Pension. First there came a smallish antique metal-working lathe. Then a giant industrial grade lathe. Then a big bulky compressor. Then his beloved Deckel Tool Mill.

A tool mill masses more than a ton and this one was delivered onto the drive way. Robert spent the next month producing metal rollers with his lathe, so that he could move the thing into shelter [He also manufactured a heavy duty steel button for the toilet at his boarding house]. Once it was in place, he proceeded to dissemble the machine and - with the help of the online machine tool community - he set about cleaning, polishing, repairing and painting every single component. It has taken more than a year, but he has now begun reassembly and with each day the machine comes nearer to completion. It's not my usual kettle of fish, but I must say his Deckel Tool Mill is an impressive thing. Robert should be lauded - even if it is only by the members of the Model Engineers Association.

Robert is the only genius I know and I could speak of him at great length - but I shall save that for another day. Suffice to say he is wonderful to have around, despite the tiny shards of metal [called swarf which are scattered everywhere and which cause the most painful and deeply penetrating splinters in the feet of Polly, Jenny and I.

[Read 'the discombobulated genius' - another post in celebration of the artful Robert]