Foresight

GET OUT OF bed hollow eyes, turn your corners up not down. Please don’t be sad, the day is nice. We could go out to the park, around the lake or into town …no …you just don’t feel up to it today?

Uh-oh. I see the mania in your eyes. You’re excited, gushing, telling those weird pointless little lies. There’s chocolate topping to put on our dessert, you say, following a dinner dished in empty pots and pans.

Today your eyes are hard, on a mission. A focus of steel, like the kitchen knife in your hand running down the hallway like a mad woman, chasing, screaming, afraid I’ve fallen into enemy hands.

Now your eyes are institutionalised. Quiet. Pleading in some lilted, half-slung watery way: let me come home; tell them that I seem okay. I peer around at the other eyes lurking in this place to comfort myself that yours are not as bad as theirs.

Both our eyes say tentative today. We are happy to be home, reuniting on the doorstep after our separate “holidays”. Let’s hurry up and get back to the way things were before, and before next time and the time after that.

Down on the farm

SOAPED UP HORSE sweat running races around the puffing blue roan gelding, sides exhausting, head hanging low. Sticky leather traces with rugged brass buckles, prior sheen now dull. A field ploughed manually, aggressively, on another parched typical Hawke’s Bay day.

Age-veined vinyl upholstery in the nearby car is much like the driver of both vehicle and hoe: red, hard, crackled, weathered. The same Austin 1100 my wonderful big bro boasts of getting to 80 miles per hour in a straight line. The back seat is itchy and clammy, like me, as I’m laid down, under garments quickly removed. What’s happening? What is he doing? To me? What should I do? Where should I put myself? Where on earth... can I be?

“I’m a baby”, I finally hear myself blurt out in a weird sing-song voice. “Goo-goo, gah-gah.” Even though we both know I’m nearly six-and-a-half. But why else would he be fiddling. Down there? All fingers and tongue. The licking especially… shhrriiink and cringe. Dum-dee-dum. Nothing to see here, goo-goo, gah-gah. I suck my most familiar friend, Thumb.

“Don’t tell your mum. This is our special secret. She wouldn’t understand”. Words her boyfriend would whisper numerous times in different apparently opportune moments and locations from this point in.

Cuckoo's nest

I wake from another poor excuse wrestling with the padded white, and by now entirely sodden, restraints of once starched hospital-grade sheets.

Hello, yes, that acrid invasion is indeed wafting from me. A staunch and sweaty stench to sucker-punch Chuck Norris and then some. How the hell anyone can slumber fitfully in this place saturated in craziness is beyond me. Yes, it’s clean as a shiny new whistle, the warden insists on that, and I appreciate it. It’s materially comfortable and the food’s pretty good, but am I really to wholly recover stuck here in this loony bin? The revival odds, I fear, I'm losing faith in. I'm living a lie someone else told, or so my self-appointed publicist says. So sometimes I pretend, mostly to myself, that I'm just another troubled rock star doing mandatory rehab.

—- Lord, give me some sanity, please!

I'm forever hopeful.

Amy’s delirious screams from the next room are heightening in decibel as I lie here, demolishing any loaded silence that could ever exist. I’ll go and comfort her in a second, just as soon as my head clears enough to stand up and function. Clear head... that’s a silly bloody notion, I really can’t remember—-you know what? Sometimes I wonder if good old shock treatment wouldn’t be better. Short, sharp and to the point. Maybe then I could forget all that it pains to recall. Life would be simpler after that.

Right now I pitifully exist in this manic routined haze, the same basic experience over and over, week after week. All the while daydreaming uselessly about something else. These rituals are designed to make me feel secure in a mad mad world, but it’s... predictable drudge with the odd difficult drama thrown in (mental note, haha, don't loiter round the ablutions block or eventually someone will fuck you).

My pal Tom, he’ll be wandering around here anytime soon, looking for a manly chat. About stuff that doesn't really matter, because the important stuff, hell no, we don't talk about that. He has nothing much else to do either, but yearn for his next drink or his next life or whatever. He’s one that's into killing himself slowly I reckon, because he don’t have the courage to do it any quicker. Poor sod. 

Sometimes I wonder if it’s ever going to get better, what's my long-term prognosis? Will I ever be released from this berserk hole? I don't belong here, I deserve better than this, don't I?! I'm not like the others... or is this my lot for the next 20, 30, 40 years? Someone tell me, tell me please, that there’s a good behaviour bond for adhering to... well fuck, I dunno... to doing what’s expected I guess.

-— Yes, Amy darlin’, I’m coming.

She gives me the will to get out of bed. Far better than dwelling here darkly on my back feeling lost.

-— Stanley! Your daughter is screaming. Are you intending to go to her anytime soon?

The warden. I love my wife, I really do. But when the clouds do part on occasion, just momentarily, I can glimpse her confused understanding between the two; of motivation and manipulation. And not just her — I don’t blame her, cripes, it’s everywhere. She maneuvers and I deceive, the game we've learned to play together. Everybody seems desperate to gain control... of our own and others' minds... of all sorts of things. As if it will make us feel better. But it's the best we know for now.

-— Amy, sweetheart. Good morning!
-— Hey, honey. Good morning.

Kisses all round for both my girls. And the rich smell of fresh coffee to awaken a man for the start of another working day. I'll make my fame and fortune yet.

-— And good morning Tom! How’s the head? Glad you didn’t drive home last night, you were somewhat wrecked.

Yes, the more I think about it, the more I see. This world is a massive mental institution. And that acrid smell — I’m realising, it ‘aint coming just from me. I’m surrounded by it. And it's got me to wondering, maybe... could it be... what fear smells like?

(Inspired by something Don Miguel Ruiz said)

Jane Austen becomes seduced

Romeo has been entering by way of the window at all hours, and dare I confess to having been so encouraging of it. One should never deem to entertain thoughts of opening arms to such a creature, don't I beseech it. The obvious Lothario that he is, indeed, a professional an artiste of seduction as you could ever meet. To share or compete for an object of the male species is pure madness, it is without demonstrable self-respect, as all eventualities will be what the ego and wisdom (or lack thereof) justly deserves. This being so, I am in deep quandary.

I cannot but declare to being an utter fool. Knowing for a fact as I do that he frequents not merely at Number Two, but half or more of the ladies of the street in its entirety, and who knows whom else beyond, in lobbying for their sweetest caresses. So incredulous is he, such that he does not possess the decorum of mind to even attempt in hiding his true Casanovarian nature. Nay, instead he slinks and winds himself about me as we stroll of an afternoon, it can but be said, with the vivacity of a common gigolo.

And I duly swoon. Putting up defences no more than a warmly inviting smile, beckoning coo and becoming embrace. He winks languidly at me, purring in my arms all the while with manly pride during our brief snatched moments of intimacy, before I, with a heavy heart, doth relinquish him to another. For although I have not personally sighted her, I know they reside together in apparent, yet clearly false, propriety at Number Five. I beg, if her ladyship had any good sense at all, alongside the engraved address on his feline collar, she’d place also a warning bell for birds.

Mechanical fear factor (and the road to recovery)

I faced one of my greatest fears this week. I took my vehicle for its Warrant of Fitness. That’s when they test to see whether you’re fit to be out in public, or something like that.

It is, I admit, a ridiculous fear. I mean you either pass or you fail. You are deemed to be fit or you are not. As far as tests go, it’s no big deal. It’s not like you actually have to do anything (at least initially) and it’s a cut-and-dried experience – you know at all times exactly where you are at.

There’s no “Madam, I’m informing you that you are simply average” and they don’t even scowl or tut-tut-tut you particularly if you fail. Instead, you get a decisive list of the competencies you still need to fulfil and the chance to try again inexhaustively until you do.

Nonetheless, it’s right up there on the fear factor scale for me. It harks back, I think, to growing up dirt poor with nothing but hand me downs to wear and watery cabbage soup to sustain oneself upon (that last part’s not actually true, but it’s a fairly accurate portrayal of my mother’s cooking).

The problem is, I’ve never had a flash car so whenever someone uses the phrase “vehicle repairs”, my head immediately fills with big red dollar signs and my gut with the ocean panic of a vomiting oil slick.

I let my WOF slide for over 6 months last time. It took a Policeman pasting a bright green sticker on my forehead windscreen and a $600 fine to even get me to the warrant station to attempt the test. It turned out I needed only exceedingly minor mechanical attention. The time before that, a visiting male friend took it to the warrant station for me because he noticed it had expired when he borrowed it. It flew right through, no problems.

So this morning – just a month overdue – in one of my prettiest, most colourful dresses (Dutch courage) I swan into the crowded warrant station office with my $5 discount voucher grasped tightly in my hand. I announce to the elderly lady behind the counter as confidently as I can, “A warrant please. Oh and I’m a little behind in my diesel road user charges.”

Tap-tap-tap into her computer and, as I knew full well was going to happen, her little eyes grow to the size of hubcaps and she bites her lip a little bit.

WARRANT LADY: [nervously] “Errrr, well 20,000kms will get you up to your current odometer reading” and totters off a price in the range of a thousand bucks.

YOURS TRULY: [matter of fact] “No worries, I was expecting that. You better add another few thousand kms on, it will be a good feeling to be legal again.”

WARRANT LADY: [gushes] “Oh I know. Last week I went out in my car to the shops for half an hour without my licence in my purse. I felt so guilty all the while until I got home.”

YOURS TRULY: [most pleasant smile] “I know exactly what you mean.”

Proceeding to sit in the waiting room, I try not to terrorise myself about what the testing man with his little clipboard will have to say. And... it’s good news. Just a small earth wire adjustment required on one headlight. It will give me a good excuse to see my wonderful and extremely cost-effective mechanic who sometimes even gives me a flagon of his most delicious homebrew beer for my continued loyalty.

Feeling even more confident and happy than before, I turn the ignition on my vehicular, for once not even worrying that someone behind me might be dying from asphyxiation, and depart overjoyed midst my plumes of exhaust smoke.

Time travellers

SILK SCARF ENTWINES a young and graceful neck, floating softly in her wake. Delicate? Yes perhaps. Melded with an ambling self assurance, an energetic peace.

Busy city street, a thousand beating feet. Nameless thoughts bleat from blank mosaic faces. The silently deafening blah that's so unattachedly intriguing.

Scanning wallpaper as it passes, until… glue hits an image embossed unforgettably upon the brain. Too late, the nanosecond fleet of double-take is observed, noted.

Instant recognition, despite never having met. Silver now sheens his well-groomed hairs. Same unassuming exterior disguising the inwardly intense. Those drilling eyes.

Neither knows which has travelled back in time or who may have travelled forward. Magnetic strangers, numerous concurrent lifetimes. Neither uttering a word.

Bored secretary

His belly quaked and wobbled each time he paid credence to his own cleverness or made cutting remarks at the expense of those not present; evidence of too many decades' convivial conversation with fine claret and burgeoning cordon bleu.

Would the straining shirt buttons hold strong their jelly jail until the meeting's end she wondered, envisioning with horror and amusement alike the pickled flabby white flesh liberating itself all over the boardroom table. In which case, her strategy would be a quick exit stage left if there was to be any hope of holding back her lashing sarcasm, or laughter.

By many measures of society, he would be considered a huge success – wealth, status, power and those who hung on his every word in the hope that it would somehow rub off on them. Unfortunately, it often did. Her in-case-of-emergency escape plan would only work assuming she could first push past all the egos in the room.

Then once again invisible she would be. She didn’t mind a bit that most of them ignored her existence in public, oblivious as they were that she saw right through the hot air of their puffed up chests. You can tell a lot about how much respect someone has for themselves by the way they treat other people.

She wouldn’t be missed until she wasn’t there. That secretary, who sits quietly, diligently, recording the profoundness of their altogether remarkable words. Bit of a nerve she had at times though; something in her silent air. As if she knew anything. Someone really should bring her down a peg.

How the horseman lost his head

The moon shone bright and full upon this night as the heinous hag hunched over her violently frothing cauldron, muttering black thoughts and hissing unspeakable evils through her putrid rotting excuse for teeth. Chopped Liver, her manky fleabagged feline, bristled his bottlebrush coat as he gnawed ravenously on the remnants of a small child’s dismembered ankle bone cast aside at the trunk of a nearby sycamore tree.

A mile away, a dark cloaked figure galloped madly through the uneven cobbled lanes of Chatterton hamlet, scythe in hand glinting in the moonlight. The flanks of his coal-black horse heaved with exhaustion, having already hastened 3 mile that night. But the steed required no whip or spur. She knew no one was safe yet.

As the hag withdrew a gnarled finger from her protruding beak, tossing discovered gremlins into the concocted mutation broiling away in the pot, a crow squawked with delight as it pecked tasty eyeballs from the decaying bodies dangling amidst the tree branches. A blood curdling screech formed in the base of the hag’s throat as she grew more and more excited and incensed.

The plight of man and horse became increasingly urgent as they closed in on the sycamore forest. The mare quivered with nervous tension, but never missed a beat as she rose, effortlessly gliding over the high stonewall of the forest perimeter with several feet to spare.

Lickety-split, the hag whirled around as the pair thundered upon her. The horseman was no match for this embittered wretch of a woman as she grabbed the glinting scythe from his mitt and raised it mercilessly. She fucken hated it when he was late for dinner.

Meet Dolores

I’ve been playing around with some characterisation lately. Meet Dolores…

The older Dolores got the more eccentric she became. Dressing madly, not unlike characters from pantomimes, story books and forgotten films from long ago. That’s what happens to spinsters, folk would whisper in their small town know-it-all way, when they don’t have a man around to keep them in check.

Once upon a time Dolores might have cared what people thought, but these days she didn’t see much point. She wasn’t particularly interested in the mundane. Besides, in her experience, affairs of the heart usually only led to disappointment. Men very rarely stood up to be counted when it really mattered she felt, albeit with perhaps a little too much self defiance to be totally convincing. But not often or easily was she successfully wooed - unless she wanted to be - she was only human after all.

Still, heads would turn when Dolores strode out purposely into the world. Her fiery hair dancing evocatively in her wake like a Survivor contestant’s torch never destined to be extinguished. That she possessed a certain intrinsic magnetism there was no doubt. But although widely admired, many also found Dolores just a mite scary, at least those who didn’t have the breadth of mind to look beyond the immediate surface. Deep down perhaps they were a little envious of her hell have no fury attitude to life, afraid they would never quite be capable of keeping pace.

Dolores lived life vigorously, vibrantly and with as much amusement as she could muster at any given time. With more acquaintances than you could shake a stick at, but only a handful of beloved friends, she dreamt of intimate and passionate associations with those who threw back at her as good as what she gave. She had few expectations and sometimes was even pleasantly surprised.

Hers was the big old white house on the hill, purposely kept a little dilapidated on the outside, as if to actively encourage judgement on her mental state. She’d rather be watched than be the voyeur she'd scoff with her typical wry smirk. On occasion, Dolores was even known to taunt the neighbourhood children just for sport; kids needed a little colour and toughness in their lives was her view on the matter.

In the evenings she would dress in especially outlandish garb and drink gin in a flamboyant fashion from her own still. Singing songs loudly, drunkenly and woefully out of tune, while dancing around her drawing room in ridiculously glamorous shoes. That was Dolores – she’d didn’t care for convention. She just took what she could find in life and laughed good naturedly at the rest.

My friend Dolores. I see her flaws but I like her a lot :)

The renovators

The renovators strike their pose on E Street, outside number twelve. Adorning ladders, showing steadfast grit through shrouds of sanding dust. Inside the gutted carcass, on the kitchen floor sits Freddy crosslegged, age nearly nine. Playing with his tin soldiers; an entirely different kind of reconstruction. He watches, waiting for them to notice his apparitious nature. But the renovators are too busy to believe in ghosts. He selects his favourites from the colour charts they leave lying. Yellow Submarine, Red Red Wine, Blue Moon. They hear the tunes in their heads alright, but don’t put two and two together. Too focused on four by four. What planks Freddy muses. But they are re-vamping his house. And he laughs at his own supernatural pun. He’s looking forward to having inhabitants again. They have a lot yet to learn about life on E Street. This will be fun.