~ the star-dogged sails

My 50th post slipped by without my noticing. 50 posts! And to think I was worried about The Sails being a flash in the pan. I do have a tendency to bounce from minor obsession to minor obsession, but the act of blogging seems to encompass all my curiosities.

Sails of Oblivion has wormed its way steadily into my heart and mind, to a point where it's become major part of my creative effort. I’ve been writing all my life, in one form or another, but never as regularly as this. Certainly, I’ve kept journals, but not for publication – and with Sails I feel like I’m producing real work on an [almost] daily basis. Consequently, I’m keeping my skills properly honed – and that’s a source of satisfaction for me. Writing, like anything, is easier if you do it regularly and often.

I never saw the potential of blogging until I tried my hand at it. It was Steve [Kilbey] who opened my eyes. To quote – If Yeats or Auden were alive today, they’d be blogging. I was doubtful of that at first, but now I’m certain of it, and I really have to thank Steve for giving me that initial impetus, and for giving his readers a heads up in his blog.

He observed that I’d chosen the white on black template he uses for The Time Being. I explained that, unless I became an html wizard, it was the only one available which looked cool enough and I wasn't being a sniveling plagiarist. He informed me, also, that it’s more energy-efficient than black on white. Apparently, I later heard, if the whole internet was formatted thus, it would lead to a surprisingly large reduction in global carbon emissions.

There’s also the community aspect. It’s satisfying knowing your work’s being read. It’s satisfying having a dialogue with those readers. It’s extra satisfying when they come back. My readership’s still small. Sometimes it surges. Sometimes it falls away, [usually when I’m slack with my posts]. But it is slowly, steadily growing.

I must also thank Alison Croggin of Theatre Notes for advice and for sending readers my way. And Chris Boyd of The Morning After.

And there are definitely a few readers I’d like to thank profusely for helping me keep going - and for making their presence known by commenting. [I love comments. I love comments most of all.] Thank you Amanda, I don’t think you’ve missed a post and I really appreciate it. Also Sue/Lily Was Here, Eek, Matt, Dangerous Meredith and Ann O’Dyne/Bwca. Hugh Marchant too, if you’re out there. And all the silent ones …

I’ve got all sorts of plans for the future of Sails. Aside from the regular posts, I’m going to keep the Eighties diary going and the space adventures of The Orn [next post]. Also, I’ll continue with the exploits of George. You might recall the story of the chairs? Well, there’s plenty of bizarre, recondite material still to be dredged up.

Over a period of five years during the Nineties, I wrote an SF novel called Autopsy Turvy in collaboration with a friend, Adam A Browne. We’re estranged now, which is sad as I dearly loved him, but we spent such an inordinate length of time together at the screen that when we finished with the book we finished with each other. [Though I was slightly peeved that he didn’t invite me to his marriage… Adam?] We started on a Macintosh Classic, then used an LCII, then an LC475 and finally, I think, a G3.

The novel was a monstrous thing. Huge, surreal and lush with weirdness. No one in their right mind would have published such a deranged artefact. However, it was shortlisted for the George Turner Award [for unpublished Australian SF/fantasy novels] but of course someone like Sara Douglas took the prize and all we received was the honour of a brief interaction with Terry Pratchett.

What I plan to do is publish it on the web as a side-blog to Sails of Oblivion. I’ll do it as soon as I've done with Christmas. I’m currently up to my neck in ebay book-selling and have barely even the time to write this.

Anyway, whoever you are, thanks for clicking on me - and now's the time to give me advice, if you have any...

~ my poppy seed habit

Tonight, I’m giving a speech at the VIVAIDS Annual General Meeting. VIVAIDS are a [drug] user advocacy group whose purpose - as far as I can tell – is to stand up for the rights of junkies.

It’ll be a casual affair, held in a Fitzroy hotel, so I’ve written a short introduction recapping the standout drug-related story of the year [Bindeez, of course] and thanking the heavenly powers for the demise of the Howards and their prehistoric drug policies. After that, I’ll read an old story of mine called Seed Habit which describes the misadventures of a mad young man with a desperate poppy seed habit.

Poppy seed habit, you say? Well, the individual on whom I based the story was drinking between one and two kilos worth of poppy seed tea per day and - judging by his pinprick pupils - it was getting him thoroughly wasted. It used to amuse me; there was something desperate and ludicrous and strangely enterprising about the whole thing. He would obtain the thirty kilo seed sacks he required by posing as an independent baker with a small business in the heavily forested Bairnsdale hills.

In my wildest dreams, I never suspected that I would come to suffer the same fate. Early this year I made an attempt to wean myself off buprenorphine and completely clear my system of pharmaceuticals. I went down to Rosebud on the Mornington Peninsula, where a friend rented a big old house with a bungalow.

The first few days were fine. I dosed myself up with doloxene and tramadol. I found myself experiencing very little in the way of withdrawal symptoms. And things were looking positive – until I had the bright idea of driving down to the supermarket to buy a few small packets of poppy seeds ... just to ease the tension a little…

I soaked 300g in a plastic water bottle for half an hour, drank the resulting solution, and was shocked to find myself comfortably stoned.

Well, I thought, these are merely poppy seeds. They won’t get in the way of my recovery. So I bought some more the next day, and the next, making certain they were always the Australian kind - as Australian poppy seeds are known to be the most potent of all. It is said they wash them at the factory and maybe they do - but I can vouch that plenty of alkaloids are being left behind.

A few years ago in the US, an employee tested positive to opiates and lost her job. She appealed on the basis that she had eaten a bagel smothered in poppy seeds the morning of the test. The fact that they were proven to be Australian poppy seeds lent much weight to her case, though I can’t recall if she was successful.

By the time, I arrived home, I required a big daily dose of seed tea in order to function as a human being. I found myself in pretty much the same bind as the subject of my story. I trawled shopping centres for spice shops, delis… tested different brands… and eventually found an Asian supermarket which could service my needs, selling kilogram bags of the most potent seeds.

Jenny, to her annoyance, would find them scattered throughout the house. Though I did my best to confine my tea-making to the laundry, the tiny seeds have a tendency to get into everything. In the garden, wherever I tossed the wet used-up seeds, a thick grass of seedlings emerged. [They are quite fertile, despite what you may have heard. To my understanding irradiation is used - but in their breeding programme to force mutation.]

Unfortunately the supply was limited. Over the weeks it became increasingly difficult to find seeds that worked. After a little research on the internet, I learned that the Tasmanian poppy companies were successfully breeding for high thebaine levels, [rather than morphine]. Thebaine is used as base for the new generation of opiates that includes buprenorphine, and is more valuable to the pharmaceutical industry than morphine. Thebaine it isn’t much fun to ingest. The only noticeable effect is a mild headache.

I think that’s what happened to my seed supply. Too much thebaine. Not enough traditional opium. After a last few desperate shopping trips to unfamiliar suburbs and obscure ethnic enclaves, I at last relented and once more, sadly, became a hollow-eyed slave to buprenorphine, [this time with a naloxone chaser in the form of Suboxone].

In the yard, a few of the poppies have survived into the summer. They are a joy to behold - with their beautiful purplish flowers and their nodding grey-green pepper pots ...

*

Useful technical notes:

For someone with no opiate tolerance, 300-500g of the good Tasmanian poppy seeds is sufficient. If these are unavailable it might just be worth tracking down the New Zealand kind, which I once had; they are weaker - but I guess you could double the dose.

Make a funnel out a sheet of paper and use it to pour the seeds into a plastic drink bottle [a litre is about the minimum size for this]. The seeds are very fiddly, so the funnel is a good idea.

Then add cold water to well above the level of seeds, close and shake. Let it rest for half an hour, shaking occasionally if you wish. Then use a rubber band to fix a square of chux over the opening, pour and squeeze.

If it's good it will taste heavy and bitter. With the rise of the thebaine mutants, though, bitterness cannot be used as a guarantee that it will work. If it's not bitter, then your seeds have been washed and you won't feel much.

Generally, you'll feel the effect between twenty minutes and half an hour after drinking the tea.

If you're onto a good thing, it can be worth doing a second wash.

A pity good seeds are hard to find. If used sensibly, they can obviate the need for methadone, pharmacies, doctors and all the rest ...

Please feel encouraged to relate your experiences by making a comment

* 17 February 1981 2.15am

I don’t know if my Queensland holiday did me any good at all. The Slammerkin came down hard that Saturday night. I was delirious with glee and forever holding out my wineglass to the gaggle of drunken teenagers in Nikki’s backyard – who were only too happy to ply me with their poisonous Southern Comfort. I was well past the point of making sensible decisions and paid for it by spending the last week of my holiday in bed. My liver is not what it was and behaviour like this could literally kill me.

I’m back on line now, however. Back in the psycho-dome that is my house in Mt Waverley. No whiff of the Deadly Spores, thank goodness, but plenty of other unpleasant challenges to occupy my time. Jenny stormed out of the house Sunday after riling me up with a nastily phrased litany of my inadequacies. She called back today and told me she’d had her period. We compared notes and realised the exact same thing had happened exactly twenty-eight days previously.

So, to resume transcription of my ancient diaries …

*

This afternoon after practice, I purchased some heroin and took it back home to Christine. We locked ourselves in the flat and fucked ourselves sore … She is asleep now.

My love for her is frighteningly strong. She assures me this is also true for her. We assured each other, in fact, continuously, very self-indulgently all evening.

I’ve heard that Keith Glass said I was either stupid or a genius for writing the lyrics to Triple Treat. Well…?

Our new song should be called Green Food For a Queen. I have found a pseudo-religious poster to use on our drum skin... Put in a handbill to be printed… I have so very much to do.

Last night Christine and I fucked madly to the listening ears of her sister Anne. We are such ostentatious lovers. Christine’s father asked her if she was going to marry me. Hah! I am the first of her boyfriends he has seen and he is confused.

That’s all I feel is worth recounting on this excellent night

*

Green Food For a Queen turned out to be one of the best Ears songs …

green food for green queens tonight
and gruel for the black and the white

Triple Treat? Well there was a particularly tasty ice-cream available at the time with a slab of nice soft pink nougat-like material sandwiched in vanilla ice cream and coated in chocolate. I don't know if the song was related specifically to the ice-cream, but it went something like this ...

it was a triple treat, a triple treat
and triple tigers perish on the hour

Christine and Annes’ father, at this time, was the head of Victoria’s police union

Diary of 1981 - index

~ the game show host of hard knocks

We happened to acquire some free tickets for The Choir of Hard Knocks at the Vodaphone Arena. Jenny, Polly and I. Auntie Sarah and Lynne decided to take advantage. It was a warm Melbourne night. We travelled in on the train. Beneath a seat Jenny spied a pool of vomitus. 'That person has been eating dog food. Look," she said.

Now, it’s going to be hard putting the following into words without it sounding offensive - but I’d like to be critical about what I saw. A thing like The Choir of Hard Knocks, because it is – to quote Schindler’s List – an absolute good, is a slippery thing on which to pass judgement. But I’m not sure if that means it should not be criticised at all.

Having not seen the television series, I wasn’t certain what to expect, but I had positive expectations, as did we all. I gathered that the ABC had distilled something of genuine high quality from the ranks of the dispossessed and the ill-fated.

At the turnstiles there were clouds of flies, feasting on the sweat of patrons.

We were seated at a great distance from the stage, but there were giant video screens to compensate. On the screens there was what I took to be the choir’s logo; a heart with wings. We waited at least half an hour for the show to begin, and I spent some of this time in contemplation of the logo. I came to the decision that it was, well … facile.

Directly behind me sat an emaciated man with a heavy beard, whom I suspect had a form of Tourette’s Syndrome. Once the show began he would whoop loudly whenever the audience was called upon to applaud. The volume, the particular frequency and the unexpectedness of these whoops caused me to jump out of my skin each time they occurred. I could quite plainly feel the vibrations they caused in the bone around my ears. The guy apologised profusely each time; but I don’t think he was in command of himself.

The whooping was one reason we only stayed for the first half, another was the writhing Polly, another was … well, let me explain.

The show was hosted by the choir’s founder, Jonathon Welch, a man with no small resemblance to Johnny Young. Dressed in a cream jacket and black trousers, he assumed the manner of a game show host, patrolling the stage with his mike, giving quirky little aside glances to the audience …

Indeed, the format was quite reminiscent of a television special. Perhaps that was to be expected, given the origins of the concept, but all the talking and self-congratulation rather got in the way of the music, which – because it is music – might have been allowed to speak for itself.

As each soloist stepped forward, Welch would interview them, and, if they were not already there, would move them quickly to the subject of their problems with drugs, alcohol or disease. If it wasn’t for his game-show host persona and his obvious taste for the limelight this might have been moving, but instead it came across as faintly ghoulish. Particularly when placed within the over-arching Harry Seacombe slash Patti Newton vibe to the songlist

‘I’m so many days clean and clear today’, they would declare confidently to the audience. And all power to them. Most are doing better than me. But we weren’t at an NA meeting and I couldn’t help worrying for those guys, offering their misery to the world so that Mr Welch could prance the boards.

That was probably a little too harsh. The man has dedicated himself to something worthy and should not be judged too strictly because of his style.

Yet I need to voice my reservations. I could not escape the feeling that he was bearing the burden of the choir’s success squarely upon his shoulders. Could not a little more humility have been in order, rather than the talk of record sales and attendance numbers and the spruiking of merchandise? For me, personally, some of what was said bore the sour note of exploitation.

Could I be prejudiced by my tastes? Admittedly, I expected something, well … grittier, edgier, more confronting. Instead, the evening seemed aimed towards the staid and ordinary; there was nothing challenging about it.

When Welch breathlessly mentioned the imminent arrival of a Young Talent Team member, all those in my group expected it to be Debbie Byrne. It would have made sense. When Karen Knowles emerged and gave a big-voiced rendition of a song in praise of Jesus, it co-joined a Channel Nine style atmosphere with the evangelical and I began wondering if they were drifting ‘off message’.

Part of the choir’s raison d’etre is to give the talented but disadvantaged a chance to work with professionals, but unfortunately few of those chosen were professionals that I liked. May I suggest that the demi-monde of addiction and disadvantage might better be represented by genres other than what you might find in your grandmother’s vinyl collection? There do exist forms which express the horror, the agony, the victory and despair far more eloquently, and far more personally than worn out favourites like Imagine and Silent Night

The closest I saw the choir come to something dangerous was a woman’s shaky but moving rendition of Missy Higgin’s Special Me. Another highlight was the astonishing voice of muscular dystrophy victim Tim McCallum. Indeed, there were many talented professionals featured, some of them the victims of terrible diseases, some of them champions of the disadvantaged … but few of them straying far from the middle of the road …

And the recovering addicts? They had an edge, but they were left behind by the big voices.

I don’t know … Perhaps I just can’t shut my mouth and The Choir of Hard Knocks should be left well enough alone. Perhaps it was just the manner of the host. Perhaps I am suggesting another concept entirely.

I wish I could have enjoyed it, but I didn’t. It just wasn’t my thing.

~ poor slowly

Nikki, during her few spare moments, may often be seen with a cigarette and a coffee observing her chickens with a small beatific smile. In such a state, shortly after I arrived from Melbourne, she pointed out a large red hen – Caroline – and her fresh brood of chicks, born that morning.

Already, Nikki had decided which one to keep, ‘if it wasn’t a rooster’. It was the smallest and she called it Slowly because it was always a little behind the rest. Caroline – a very handsome chicken, I must say; like some sophisticated gallus from a classical Nineteenth Century painting – was always backtracking for Slowly. The straggler. The runt.

Days later, Nikki bemoaned the devastation in her garden. ‘They show off when they have chicks. They strut with self-importance. But it’s not just pride; they have to stress their essential chickeness so the babies will understand what they are. They scratch and dig twice as much - to dislodge sufficient food for all, and to teach.’ Some of Nikki’s garden plants have been near to completely uprooted.

But poor Slowly. Over the last few weeks, her siblings have doubled, tripled in size, but she is not much larger than when she was born. She trails further and further behind. And it appears now that something is wrong with her legs.

Often, she can’t reach the rim of the water dish, or nudge out her peers for food. On hot days she struggles to move at all through the dust and leaves. In such a state I worry that even the ants – which are currently in plague numbers - might overpower her. And if not the ants, then the ever lurking crows.

Though Caroline has five other healthy offspring, she has not given up on Slowly. She speeds in to defend her – an awesome spectacle, feathers ruffled, beak targeting – despite Slowly’s limited hopes of survival. Nikki too has not given up.

Yesterday afternoon, she found the little chick far from her mother, marooned in a pile of leaves, plainly in distress, and decided time was up. Now Slowly is in a box in the kitchen with her own water and feed supply.

I have learned that the healthy chicks are leaving today. I wonder if Slowly can then be returned to her mother? Or will she require ongoing intensive care? Nikki will know. If there’s one thing she knows about, it’s chickens.

*

Princess is in her dotage now; she is grizzled about the jowls and walks with the wide gait of a crocodile. Somehow she has made it this far despite her terrible greed; she’s blind and can at last be fed in the manner of a normal dog, in a dish, rather than having her pal scattered as widely as possible across the yard to prevent her raiding the dinners of other animals fed at the same time. Princess shows little discrimination between what we would think of as food and other materials. She will automatically steal nutriments from humans and cats. She will also eat birdseed, chicken feed, dirty green lumps of bread dug up by other dogs, limp lettuce leaves, sheets of paper and anything vaguely tasty which she has snuffled out of the dust. Recently, after a particularly eclectic binge, she wound up on a drip at a veterinary hospital on the mainland. As Nikki would put it, Princess does not have a full button.

When I first encountered this dog, her immediate reaction was to cower and take shelter behind her owners. At this time, she was a svelte black and white puppy only a couple of months old, who seemed to believe I was the devil incarnate. All through that first night, she circled the house barking in confusion and fear. The following night too, and the next. No one could sleep.

I remember how embarrassing it was for me. I was a guest, but I couldn’t offer to leave. I was too far from home. And my pride made me baulk at being evicted by a dog. And we all thought she would get used to me.

Eventually, she disappeared and did not return until my departure. This was some relief, but I was mortified by the whole affair. Would people suspect I was abusing her in secret somehow, either psychologically or in some clever physical manner that left no mark? Nikki said it was because I was tall; Princess had, she said, reacted similarly to Cheyenne.

Cheyenne was one of the more desperate and feckless of Nikki’s boyfriends. He was a reasonably nice guy, but far too doomed for my liking. He is gone now, of course. He broke into a vet’s premises in Rockhampton, withdrew with his spoils into the crawlspace beneath a scout hall and never emerged. His brother, Psycho Pig, succumbed in similar circumstances. His other brother, Lloyd, endures on the island and is a good father to Sidonie. The salient point here, I suppose, is that Princess has never in all her years reacted thus to any one but Cheyenne and I.

The dog’s attitude improved only marginally with my subsequent visits. Usually, she would greet me fairly normally, but as the days passed her attitude would change. A shiftiness entered her manner and she would back out of any room I occupied, banging into things along the way. If surprised, she would scuttle madly out the door as if death himself was on her tail. And – perhaps most disconcertingly of all – she would peer at me through gaps in curtains, through bushes, through cracks – her eyes fearful, yet somehow drawn to that thing that most terrified her.

With the passing years, it would take longer for her to regress into this paranoid state, but eventually, inevitably, the strangeness would come. What was in this animal’s mind? What danger did she see in me? Did she perceive an evil in my heart of which I have no knowledge? Or did something happen to her in those few weeks before Nikki and Sid acquired her as a puppy? These, of course, are questions to which the answers will never be known.

Over my current stay, she has behaved like a reasonably normal dog. With old age and the dulling of her senses she seems to have at last come to accept me …

Unless, of course, in the next few days, she turns …