~ the legs of the mighty

Days pass. Little changes. I clutch at my routines as if they are all that prevents my fall into the abyss.

Since I’ve been attempting to correct my financial situation by selling on ebay, I’ve had to actively search for stock. Books. My wife is incredulous about my need to keep buying, when the house is littered with ziggurats of piled books. She doesn’t understand. Those great mounds are composed of incomplete trilogies or series, which I am waiting to complete. You get a better result that way. There are also an awful lot of books on which I’m undecided. They look like they might sell… but I need to do a little research… and rarely do I have time… What I really need is have a market stall to clear everything out…

Then there are the books I want to keep. Every time I’ve abandoned or sold my library down the years, I’ve bitterly regretted it. I feel peace in a house full of books. A library has an aura, it emanates a gentle bookish radiance. It is a great seam of potential, there for the realisation. I love scanning shelves, head tilted sideways, waiting for a title or author’s name to leap out at me. I love it most when the books are mine, and I know that every one of them was chosen for a reason. I love having so many books that I can’t keep track of them. I love being surprised by what I’ve forgotten.

But, of course, it’s also a burden. A great weight of material for which I am responsible and which I must keep in order. At present there’s anarchy. I have nowhere near the amount of shelving I need. My ebay stock bleeds through my personal collection. The kitten knocks over the teetering columns, and time turns my neat arrangements into kipple.

I didn’t mean to talk so much about books.

Currently, my wife has a debilitating virus. Of course, I’m suspicious, but my instincts are telling me it’s not the kind of ‘virus’ one gets from consuming too much [or too little] of the soporific honeycomb.

Indeed, she’s been reasonably controlled of late. I believe I have managed to expunge the Romanian’s phone number from her phonebook – though in the past he has shown a nasty tendency to ring out of the blue, just because ‘he’s in the area’. Thankfully, without his number, her ability to ‘just pop out for a second’ is massively reduced.

Strangely, with the easing of my own enslavement to drugs, I find it increasingly difficult to ascertain my wife’s state. I have hacked my way clear, I think, to another plane, where priorities and potentials are very different. Perhaps that’s why my first knowledge of any flare up on my wife’s part comes only when the problem has gotten out of hand. Mind you, she is now on a mind-numbing dose of Spasmo-Dromoran - meaning she needs a hell of a blast of high-grade honeycomb to become visibly stoned. She openly admits feeling little or nothing when she does it - so why does she do it? Such are the mysteries of addiction – though needle fixation and simple habituation I’m sure play a part.

But trust is a problem. Since I can no longer rely on my senses, I find myself automatically assuming the worst, assuming that any explanation is a lie, that any trip to the supermarket is a scoring expedition …

*

Depending on luck, Camberwell market can be a good place to find the kind of books I sell. I’ve taught myself to ignore the things I might be at risk of purchasing for myself, [ie stuffed animals, general grotesquerie], and concentrate on my task. It’s frustrating how prices vary. One or two dollars is the normal market price for a paperback, but there are stallholders who charge over ten…

Yesterday was the first time in ages I’d been at the market. I encountered two faces from Erin and Hendrik’s wedding – Kerry and Linda – working a small conceptual jewellery stall. Seated comfortably in the shade with drills, snippers and glue they do all their work on site, creating freaked-out accessories from materials sourced only at the market itself.

They were kind enough to present me with a necklace recombobulated from the legs of plastic superheroes.

~ tinselled excruciations, baubled spores

Weariness and worry – keywords of the holiday season.

Polly’s crèche held its Christmas do on Friday afternoon and we were obliged to attend – not least because Santa was arriving on a fire-engine. Polly has seen a lot of Santas lately and there has been much private churning in that growing head. For now, she has decided that all Santas but for the crèche Santa are false, particularly if they charge money for photographs.

We collapsed on some dry yellowing grass and swatted flies as we waited for our child to get satisfaction, which in time she did. Then we were away, by train, with Polly’s sweet little friend Mia, to the ‘Gala’ performance of Roald Dahl’s The Witches at Kaleide [RMIT]. This is Lynne Ellis’s kid’s show for 2007/08 and as usual it was hilarious, but I wasn’t quite in the mood. Neither was Mia; unlike Polly she hasn’t had much exposure to theatre and within seconds she was bawling with fear. A half hour of gentle cajoling resulted in her sitting up front with the other kids and loving it.

There was a celebration afterwards, but I didn’t enjoy it. I’m too worried about my partner. She’s too worried about money, and Christmas. I’m worried about money too – I think I’m the most penurious I’ve been in recent times and for some stupid reason it shames me. And – big surprise – the Spores are out, bedecked in Christmas regalia, revelling in the dark reaches of the soul, and sucking the will from my other half.

During the week, I had a meeting with a Romanian. I gave him some ‘quarantined’ money and explained that some of his business methods were destroying my family and would he cool off just a little. He said, sure, and then let me know that he’d found god. And that I should clean up my garage. Right. Sadly, some one has let him know where we live, against some very explicit instructions …

It just goes on and on. Horror without end. I wonder if I might obtain results by assuming the role of father, not only to my daughter, but to my wife? There are real trust issues in play here. There are lies being told. Things being stolen. Lines crossed which have not been crossed before… But before I can take any moral high ground, I must curtail are my own occasional lapses… I have to become without fault, and walk like a Jesus upon this Earth … if only …

Yesterday, Polly and I watched a choir recital. Her grandmother Di is one of the singers and it was pleasant to close my eyes and listen to those sweet voices. It had been my plan to join this choir next year, but now I am in two minds. The leader made the audience wait almost twenty minutes for her family to arrive. There’s something strange about that, isn’t there? Something a little, well … selfish? You see, I thought it was a community choir type thing, but the leader kept referring to it as her ‘job’ and later I learned that the members pay $15 a week to participate … If it’s her ‘work’ and everyone’s paying, isn’t it just a little much to hold a [paying] audience that long because her husband was waiting for their two year old to wake up?

See the mood I’m in? To make matters worse, when Di introduced me to this choir leader as a possible future member, she – crime of all crimes – briskly nodded, didn’t even turn to look at me and resumed a conversation with someone else. But if not this choir, then another. I really need to start singing again – I think I’ll be better for it, all round. Music is the universal panacea.

Tonight, I’m going with Lynne to see The Church and The Divinyls. I may be in a better mood by then

~ abnormal petting zoo

She has a dream in which she is half-fish half-slug half-horse. She is swimming around and around in an enclosed body of water, unable to escape.

The Spores are in abeyance, but the humdrum is coming into its own - and the humdrum has secret alliances with ancient demons. Now is a dangerous time, and - knowing she carries a neural implant that can steamroll her resolution at any time - I observe all things with great care.

I offer to look after her bank card, as she's getting paid the next morning. She complains that she feels like a child when other people look after her money. I stick to my guns. She suggests that we not pay off the Romanian tomorrow, but leave it a little while. I suggest that makes no sense. An argument ensues, and grows sufficiently intense to justify her spending the night at her mother's. I am left alone watching Blades of Glory, confused, miserable and unable to stop myself laughing. When she arrives home the next day, she reveals that she has her period. She admits that she was worried by her behaviour, thought she was actually going mad - but realised, thankfully, that it was only PMT, a condition that can affect her strongly.

- It's amazing what hormones can do, she says.

Later, I will find out if this entire scenario was a carefully drafted plan to facilitate a monstrous licking of the deadly honeycomb. Would she engineer an argument like that? Endanger the relationship? Just to seek traffic with the Spores? Am I paranoid? She is still asleep at 10.30 - a worrying sign. We shall see. ...

With Polly, I rode the train into town to participate in Children's Week festivities. The only thing of merit was an above average petting zoo. A penned in area lined with astroturf, teeming with highly exited children and resigned, almost soporific animals. I picked up a baby chicken for Polly when another set of little hands expertly divested me, briefly manipulated the chick, then threw it into the plastic yellow wading pool that was home to a turtle - a turtle whose head remained extended throughout the ordeal. What turtle would not take advantage of its natural abilities in such a perilous environment? A drugged turtle? A diseased turtle? Whatever. I plucked the chicken from the water.

Later, as I closed my briefcase, an official checked to see if I was stealing a bird or animal. I explained that a goat had been eating my papers. Polly really loved the rabbits. I liked the turkeys. I was kicked by a small cow.

Thinking about it, there was something off-beat about that petting zoo. There in the wildly post modern Federation Square Atrium - enslaved beasts; brought to the heart of Man's empire to be fondled by his young. Regard these creatures, any of you who doubt that we are the dominant species. We are superior to these guinea pigs in so very many ways. This turtle has developed none of the magnificent technologies we have. Our social structures are vastly more complex than anything these gobbling turkeys have in place.

Later, Polly told me that she had never seen a clown. Would that this state of purity shall last.

Spasmo-Nemigron

Each morning, I go out to collect my daily dose of Spasmo-Nemigron. This is my primary medication and a defense against the Spores. Sometimes, at the pharmacy, I meet other users of Spasmo-Nemigron, easily identifiable by their thin down-turned lips, haunted eyes and furrowed skin; by their arbitrary grooming and their often threadbare garments.

One of these ghouls, Lemon, I have known for a couple of years and treated as a friend - until recently she did me great harm.

This complex war has bred monsters, individuals who have surrendered wholly to the Spores and who make a living in their service. Amy encountered one such man - a Romanian - who offered her fleeting luxuries in exchange for the betrayal of her friends. The first victim was my beautiful wife, Jenny.

At this point, I should pause to say something of the Deadly Spores' physical nature. Their principal means of enslavement is a glistening compound - excreted in an unknown manner and generally referred to as Honeycomb. It is a foodstuff so enticing, so delicious that few can resist it. But once it is consumed, some fraction of one's humanity is lost forever and replaced by spore-complient non-flesh. Men such as the Romanian trade in Honeycomb and, having identified her as vulnerable, he plied Jenny with this pernicious material, forcing her into despair and unmanageable debt.

All this happened fast and outside my knowledge while she was away and explains her unpleasant manner on the phone and in person. Thankfully, she has struck back, freed herself [at least to some extent], and - because she is returning to the fold tomorrow - I am allowing myself a little optimism. As for Lemon, ought I devise some way to punish her?