~ awash with meaninglessness

I’m really sorry I haven’t been able to post as often as usual.

Ebay is the culprit. In desperate times, as you may already know, Ebay is where I turn to breathe life back into the cadaver that is our household budget. It’s an activity of last resort, and I don’t know what I’d do if it didn’t exist.

But my god, the drudgery it demands…

At first it’s not so bad. Listing the books can even be fun. I like to provide all the pertinent information a potential buyer may need. I paste reviews from Amazon into my item descriptions. I take care to paint a good verbal picture of the book’s condition …

But then the auctions end. The money starts trickling in. I must keep a log of this money. I must list again. I must check my messages … ‘Just letting you know I’ve transferred the money for Zen & The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance’…. Cheers. I knew that already. I could have addressed your parcel in the time it took me to read your blasted email….

The addressing … the bubble-wrapping … the weighing … the swabbing … the double-checking … the constant search for non-putrid packing materials in bins and skips … the gluing of fifty cent stamps … all the many and various stages in the process …

By the time I’m fully Ebay-engaged, they pile upon each other inexorably. When I have sick days, which I invariably do, they pile even higher. There is no pity for the faceless seller. And there is always at least one irritable buyer who wants emails replied to within the hour.

And there’s no way to streamline it. I’ve tried. People are just too variable… [Though I admit I’ve successfully integrated Polly into sections of the production line.]

[If you’re wondering about the fifty cent stamps, don’t. I buy them in bulk from my next door neighbour, who is in the local stamp club. I believe they come from ‘stamp collections’. Problem is, when the postage is, say, thirteen dollars, you have to patiently glue twenty-six stamps to the package.]

Is my life reduced to this?

No. I can still write in the mornings and visit the pool and discharge my fatherly responsibilities. But my blogging suffers and I guess this post is by way of an excuse, and an apology.

Otherwise, life lollops on. On Saturday I’m recording a voice track for White Noise Carousel. The piece is named ‘The Organ of Oertel’. It tells the story of a secret society, the members of which were born with an anomalous, whiskered organ resembling a sea cucumber in the region of the lower intestine. This ‘Organ of Oertel’ imparts wild talents - and drives its possessor to madness and excess as if it has a will and a sentience of its own.

*

Yesterday my wife withdrew all her money from an ATM [$600] then forgot to remove it from the slot. She was around the corner at the supermarket when she realised, freaked out, raced back and found it gone. She landed home in tears, despising herself, deciding she was useless and a fool, a rotten mother and a burden on her family. I tried to convince her otherwise, tried to comfort her, directed her to ring the cops, the bank etc …

And wound up in such a flurry myself that stupidly, while pasting a fifty cent stamp, I bit on the nozzle of the glue bottle and broke a veneer off one of my front teeth.

The next day, praise the heavens, we learnt that the ATM had sucked the money back in before it was pilfered. Meanwhile it cost two hundred and thirty dollars to fix my tooth.

But there is light on the horizon, and soon you will hear a lot more of me, I swear.

§ the ovist

This is my egg.
It gleams with a light that is nacreous and cool.
This my egg,
My beloved egg.
Couched in the palm of my hand,
Boiling with potential,
Rife with theopneustic emanations,
And potencies unknown in nature.

Who cannot sense its fierce primeval presence,
That permeates to the core of our world,
That diffuses to the limits of our galaxy,
On a wave of sparkling orgones?

This is my egg, eldritch and hallowed,
And I must guard it covetously,
For if any mind, born of this Earth or beyond.
Were to learn its secret destiny,
then it would succumb in the passing of an instant,
And take desperate flight,
For the sanctuary of gibbering madness.

My egg is fundamental and sacrosanct,
Relevant to all things, yet related to none.
It is Holy to all things Holy.
And Blasphemous to all,
That is Blasphemous.

My egg is blind to the march of aeons,
Yet is a banner for change in a seething universe.
It is an egg that folds,
Smoothly, solidly,
Into the continuum of space, time and love.

In a certain light it smoulders with a queer luminescence.
And it casts a devouring shadow.

This is my egg,
And it is faultless.
No instrument of human manufacture,
No material of sublunary provenance,
Will pierce the esoteric tension of its shell -
Composed in equal parts,
Of diabolic pandemonium,
And the arcanum of Hierophantic Flux.

There are those who immerse themselves,
In the study of the mysterious unknown;
Who lose themselves,
In the Hyrcynian Woods of Conspiracy.
These are single-minded men,
Who concentrate their wisdom,
On The Vegetable Lamb, the Voynich Manuscript,
Or the enigmatic Disc of Phaistos.
These men …
Know nothing of my egg.

Yet, at some dark hour,
When the sky is congested with sinistrous intent,
A dire wind howling at the eaves,
Then utterable thoughts may be uttered.
And some, cowled, deep in their books,
Will pause at the phrasing of a footnote,
At a scratch in the margin of a battered incunabulum,
And – in a moment of insane conjecture -
May dare to propose,
That something - something like my egg,
Lies veiled upon this Earth.

Mathematicians from the elite academies,
Versed in esoteric calculus and the reckoning of fluxions,
Do whisper of tesseracts and corpuscles
And venture to their anxious colleagues,
That in order to complete the testimony of science,
An egg,
Such as mine,
(My egg).
Must surely have been enthroned from the beginning,
At the Cornerstone of Time.

My egg.
Oh, my egg.
My egg encompasses the futurity of Man.
It is a mirror of the eternal absolute.
It is an egg of the first water.

Need I remind you,
That it is greater than the Egg of Mercurius,
In its unspeakable splendour,
Which is said to have spawned
A prescient green homunculus?

Superior by far it is,
To the membranous Egg of Xenoperion,
Which begat in its possessor,
The abilities to read wisdom from the Comet,
To quicken and manipulate ectoplasm,
And to fire coloured gases from the mouth.

And yes, it is mightier still,
Than the Egg of the Master Scarabite,
Unearthed from the abominated ruins of ancient Ubar,
Which, installed upon a monstrous staff,
Of haunted reptile bone,
Drove an army of mindless scarabs,
To victory after victory in prehistoric Mesopotamia.

My egg …
Resting, apparently inert,
In my trembling hand.

A quiet, white thing.
An unassuming thing,
Of monstrous potential and infinite benevolence,
That is said to have driven the limpid hearts of virgins
To thoughts of self-pollution,
To acts of spectacular prurience,
To crimes of relentless, howling erotomania.

In moments of jocularity,
I laugh to think of my egg,
beleaguering the instruments of Nobel Laureates.
And I dream of it, sometimes,
Suspended in the firmament,
Heralded by angels,
Wreathed in sunbeams

My egg …
Oh, my egg …
What can I say about my egg,
In its harrowing perfection?
Its curves are the curves of nature,
In infinite reiteration.

The dragonfly wing,
The falcon’s beak,
The woman’s hip,
The desert dune,
In infinite reiteration.

The bead of sweat,
The nucleus,
The apricot and her cloven pip,
The amoeba,

The assassin and the sweep of her blade,
In infinite reiteration.

*

I've been a little quiet over the last few days, but by no means inactive. I've had my head to the grindstone writing an article on opiophobia [you guessed it - 'fear of opiates' - though I think I've pushed the meaning of the term a little] for the VIVAIDS magazine 'Whack'. I hoped it would be short and sweet but, as per usual, it turned into a monster of 3.5 thousand words. Look out for it, if you've ever wondered why the hell our society has such a bee in its bonnet over drugs. It's full of nice, meaty stuff.

What lies above, 'The Ovist', is a taste from the next White Noise Carousel album.

By the way, this is the one hundreth post on Sails of Oblivion. Thank you all, particularly the usual subjects, [you know who you are]. This blog is one of the most fruitful and rewarding things I've done in a long time.

Lastly, for parents of a Lovecraftian persuasion, here is an image entitled Where The Great Old Ones Are.

Thanks to Monster Brains for unearthing this. The original by tore natkinson [?] can be found at Deviant Art, and he'll put it on a tee-shirt for you, if you're so inclined.

~ elaborate feline accommodations

Yesterday, I was doing some recording with Nadav Rayman of White Noise Carousel. At one point, passing the bathroom, I noticed something unusual …

I wasn’t certain whether it was polite to inquire. When I directed an interested glance at Nadav’s partner, Liz, I could see at least some reluctance to discuss the matter. But, of course, there was no way I could resist.

I ought have guessed it would have something to do with cats. They have two: a dark brown Devon Rex whose fur is indistinguishable from astrakhan and a Tangerine Burmese. Since they are flat-dwellers the issue of the cats’ toilet habits is of some concern, therefore they have taken some innovative and, quite frankly, bizarre measures.

What I saw in their bathroom was a device for training cats to use a human toilet. Once the cats are acclimatised to using the pan of litter fitted over the toilet bowl, the central portion of the pan is removed, leaving a doughnut of litter. Later, a further section is removed, leaving a thin ring on the outside, then, finally, the entire device is removed. I would expect that the substance of the litter is steeped in catnip, or something similar.

Apparently, it works. Liz has seen the cats use it, though describes their reaction at being observed as ‘embarrassed’. This I understand. One of the many little things about cats that makes them so appealing is their ability to experience embarrassment. You may accuse me of anthropomorphising, but I have often seen cats embarrassed – particularly the more rarefied breeds. Usually when they fall or do something awkward, something at odds with the dignity and fluency of their physical style. They will turn, look directly at you, and quickly, humourlessly, depart. There is no mistaking it for anything but embarrassment.

Another cat-related device which I recently acquired from a rubbish heap somewhere:


For some reason, this strikes me as fiendishly clever. It’s a cat toy and Tweety Bird loves it to death. There’s a rail around the circumference fitted with a false mouse which moves freely and at lifelike speeds. The mouse disappears in and out of the concealed portions of track, giving the cat an impression that the mouse is fleeing in and out of holes. The device even has a bit of scratchy carpet fixed to the top, but I think this is more of an afterthought. Tweety Bird has never used it.

I don’t know whether this toy – or the cat toilet - are a waste of the planet’s precious resources. They’re rather an elaborate way of enriching the lives of our companion animals, but they’re ingenious and strange and I like them.

To close, here is an wholly irrelevant photo of Polly which I secretly took half an hour ago. She is having a picnic dinner with her friends, including Sea Turtle, Baby Alive and Potting Mix.

Oh, and one more thing. Tweety Bird caught a mouse today. Polly managed to confiscate its lifeless body and decided to give it a final resting place with a brick and a 'blanket'.

§ (I am) a place for ointment

As I creep through the rolling dark, seeking sensation,
I am wary of the nebula,
The waters of anaesthesia
I am wary of finger-beetles drawing strength from the void,
Of what drools from the envenomed tips of steel needles

Gnashing on carpet,
I seek the intoxicating texture of velvet.
I find a tiny motorized Pegasus
Sparking with electricity,
A tiny tiny white Pegasus!
Oscillating not two inches from my forehead.
Estimating my skin.

My ducts are cauterised
I am a place for ointment

There was a time when my nerves were bare to the universe of sensation;
When they would whip and writhe at every contact,
When they would thrill to the miracle of flesh,
The miracles of linen and of cardboard,
The miracles of grease and of tinsel,
The miracle of pond-life ...

Once, I had a thousand names for the Apricot,
I had a thousand words for the following sea
A thousand textures in every word
A thousand possibilities in every footfall.
Once, I had a passing but pleasant interest in migratory birds

Now I clench for the baby fingers.
Here they come.
I am a place for ointment

I am thick with skin
A nerveless hide
bristling with dark hairs that reach blindly for the light,
Struggling to recall the scents of Spring.

What’s that feeble tapping,
Down the long corridor?
It is a corpse butler,
Bringing my plate of desiccated pleasure

She beckons from the margins,
like a lemon, like a feather
A nightmare descending like a steel cap.
Once she was bewitching.
Now she is siphoning my intellectual fluids
Into a pan.

In the oily folds, among the polyps,
There is a place for ointment.

Under the steady hand of an Austrian surgeon
I am elaborately transformed
I am proof against the elements
I am spaceworthy,
And perfectly spherical!
I glint in the starlight like a forbidden jewel!

And a final audit is prepared by The Giant Ear
Raised high upon a wooden scaffold by a team in red coveralls
Tuned to my personal emanations

The team leader nods to the unblinking sentinel at my orifice …
Here, he says, is a place for ointment

Here my wasted limb, there my withered sac,
Here, the tiara of cigarette butts,
I left behind
When once I lost my way.

The path back through my memory,
leads to a contaminated landscape
Of hardened orange peels,
And nausea.

You see it?
Scuttling?
The life form,
That readies a nest of torn fingernails,
for its degenerate young.

One step too far,
And I am wreathed in spangles,
Lodged in a world too vivid to explain.
These colours strike me dumb.
These songs that circle like crows.
When was there shame as sharp as this?
When were my regrets so sweet?

Flailing like a ribbon in the breeze,
I feel for the comforting banality of warm dishwater…
I find the finger-beetles,
Dull green and silver,
Pottering with my spine.
I find a tiny Pegasus,
fidgeting on my face.
A tiny tiny white Pegasus.
ruling my teeth.

The withered sac, the wrinkled membrane
I am a place for ointment

The stale grey sheets of my cocoon,
May shield me from these recollections.
Yet they may not.
My thought capsule,
Where the green oxygen candles burn in eternal misery
May sustain me -
With my puckered face,
And cratered skull,
I am the Moon of my own pain

Cranking through each day like a disarticulated lobster,
And bursting with putrefaction,
I am wary that my rattling does not attract the cold;
I pray that my shivering does not attract the cold …

My tongue is bogged.
I am a place for ointment.

*

The above is a lyric set from a forthcoming album by White Noise Carousel [with whom I work occasionally]. More can be learnt of them here and here.