Wild Sovereign Development Site

Category: taking care of the place

  • bible full of prostitutes

    Prostitution: my wife doesn’t understand me (by providing herself as a slave to my sexual needs)

    Terrorism: the world doesn’t provide me with slaves to my sexual needs. All the pretty girls in high school never looked at me. I will martyr myself and be attended to by virgins.

    Hollywood: a girl catches my eye. She is an element of the undifferentiated landscape which God (also a Lone Male Hero) has provided for my glorification and use. She resists me. I overcome her resistance via manly perseverance, knowing what she wants better than she knows herself, and stalking.

    Bible > US Constitution: I have the right to own slaves, including willing women slaves, and to stalk the landscape stroking my gun. I will use enslaved peoples to bring the natural world into submission and use my much-stroked gun to force the rebellious world to heel.

    World economy: see US Constitution.

  • staying at home in the Spring


    It’s wonderful to be cheerful and I will be cheerful. We are alive and are blessed with refrigerator and bath tub, bookshelves and beloveds, hot and cold running comfort in which to be trapped.

    Also, the sky today was wild blue outside. Our little drawing group normally meets. I longed for the bicycle ride across town, the hours of shared and quiet concentration, the chat. The trees are filling out slowly with leaves. It’s occurred to me that Australian friends have no idea what it feels like to have to stay inside for days on end and potentially months… right at the tail end of the winter when we have blue skies literally for the first time in months. My mother is staying home more in Brisbane, a dense and singing garden quarantines her house. Most Berliners and urban Europeans don’t have even a balcony. There are a few open spaces large enough to be safe but they are hard to reach. We can open the window and take sips of still cold air. The pinkening buds will be bursting soon and we’ve been trapped indoors since October.

  • German Corona: fascism vs panic

    In Berlin this early in the quarantine it’s ok, the sun is out and I would love to be out in it, I imagine people here might be finding it daunting at the end of a long low skied winter to have to stay indoors for longer. Seems to be one of those instances (unlike, say, individual freedoms) where German collectivism shines. Everybody is leaving plenty of toilet rolls for everybody else. We’ve been home four days apart from raids on the food store and I feel fortunate to have so much reading and writing I want to do. My partner’s college and all colleges have shut down, buses are running but their front doors are closed and the drivers don’t have to sell tickets. From Wednesday all clubs and bars shut down, restaurants not; because they’re purveying a service.

    Ludicrous given the scale of things right now but one of my preoccupations is making sure I come online in little sips, like a refresher or palate cleanser a hundred times in a day, and not just slump there like a barfly for hours. I’m guessing most people are dealing with that – the ultimate outworking of our collective and so recent addiction.

    I have learned how deeply Germans are conditioned to incline to potential fascism – that is, hyper conformity – but not really to panic. It’s impressive. When we all need to act in the common interest Germans shine, even if the sun does not.

    Meanwhile the macho flab of narcissist ‘leaders’ putting everyone so chronically at risk can do so that much more acutely right now. They’re really showing their sociopathy as well as their slackness. Johnson. Morrison in Australia. Tr*mp. Everyday people outshine them in every way, our common generosity and kindness is so moving. My heroes this week are people singing from their balconies in Italy. People offering shopping trips to their elderly neighbours. Nurses and doctors working at risk and through the night. We can be this. Thank god and hurrah.

  • the surprise

    Things my African boyfriend wants to know: Why do white people need to take coffee or tea every morning? Why don’t you eat the head? It’s the best part. Can I have the bag? Let me carry that for you, let me help you with that.

    He has left Africa for the first time, left Ghana. When I want to visit my friend, he wonders – why don’t I just drop round? When we are watching a movie together and I get tired, too tired to walk home – why don’t my friend and I just climb into bed together and fall asleep?

    If you even have two or three friends watching, you may all climb in. Or perhaps the host sleeps on the floor. He is the host.

    Everybody sleeps.

    He says things to me like just relax, Cathoel; enjoy yourself. He asks, why are we rushing? And yet he is incredibly hard working. He scours the bath house then calls me to inspect it. He washes everything by hand. When I say, idly, late at night, oh there is a hole in that cushion, we have to stitch it up before we leave for Ghana, he fetches needle and thread and fixes it.

    When I show him the laundromat he wants to know, does the machine also squeeze it? That is, will the washing machine wring the water out of our clean clothes?

    Or do we do that ourselves, after carrying the heavier load home on our bicycles.

    We found him a bicycle, second hand, and a heavy coat and scarf, second hand. Two pairs of second hand gloves, which he wears one on top of the other then complains his hands are cold. He has never been below twenty five degrees before in all his life. When I was visiting during the rainy season several of his friends rang to assure me I should bring a jumper or a jacket, “It’s cold here.”

    He rides his bicycle like a Berliner, with both hands tucked smoothly under his armpits. My boyfriend doesn’t believe ladies should have to carry their own bicycles. Yet he thinks women make the best business owners, the best presidents. In Ghana women own the majority of businesses. He’s never watched porn and I can feel it in his touch. I can feel it in his gaze. At the store on the corner he says gravely, “Good morning.” He asks, “Why don’t you guys cherish each other?” When we reach the train station he carries both bicycles upstairs on his shoulders.

  • bike for Berlin

    I bought my bike second hand and we went all the way to Leipzig to get it. Leipzig is the new Berlin now that Berlin is the new Seattle. I took my new bike to the bicycle repairman on the corner. Oh no, he said: this bike has a rusted frame. You’d better throw it away entirely.

    Whut? I took my new second-hand bike to the swanky bike repair place on the park. Oh no, they said: this bike’s frame is rusted out. If you try to ride it, everything’s going to be fine until one day it collapses under you and you’ll end up with a broken back.

    Whut! I took my new second-hand bike with the rusted frame to the Dutch bicycle place near where they sell excellent ice cream. Their pistachio ice cream is so good and so green that the first time I tried it, I actually gasped. The man who makes and sells the ice cream is tall and dark with dreamy eyes. He feeds me little samples across the counter on a spoon. No, no, said the Dutch place: with a rusted frame there is no point in repairs. You can try to fix it, sure. Then one day it’s just going to crack in half like a wafer. And down you’ll go.

    Gosh. I wheeled my new second-hand rejected bike with its rusted frame home across the park. On a noticeboard outside the anarchist society library (“Shhhh! This is a library!”) someone had pinned a handwritten notice. Hej Berlin! Fahrradreparatur. Hey Berlin! Bicycle repairs. Call Maisie. (Let’s call her Maisie). I did.

    Sure, she said, komm einfach mal vorbei, just bring it round. Maisie lived in a large, organised squat. The bell was answered by two giant punks on their way to walk their dog in the park, by the looks. Oh no, they said. There’s no bike repair here. Maisie said, I began, and the smaller punk stepped back and opened the door. Oh, then – it’s right down the hall behind the girls’ toilets.

    Their squat had been a school. I went past the girl’s toilets and found Maisie in her well-oiled workshop. She was tiny and fearlessly tattooed. She welded a cross-brace to the frame and in three days I came back and paid her and rode my new second-hand rusted-out bicycle with its clever repair back to the Dutch bicycle shop. I bought it one of those festive Dutch bike baskets people thread with wreaths of flowers, which I had craved since I was a little girl riding a bike with green streamers. This was two years ago now and I have turned my whole life inside out. Better boyfriend, better apartment, better business, better income. I ride my bike everywhere and its sunny basket greets me when I come down out of the house in the morning, always ready for adventure. Every day we are building a Berlin life together, evading the potholes and skimming under all the trees, the one musketeer and her bicycle.

  • Portugold

    I am in Faro and the moon has been full for days. Everywhere we walk he carries my bag. It is heavy with notebooks and sketchpads and he carries it without complaint. The old town is shaped like an egg. Or a zero. What was the most important thing the Arabs brought to us? asks the jingoistic guide, who has been jousting with my companion about who has the better football players. ‘That’s right! The zero!’

    Well and that’s important, I say, deadpan: for the football results. He smiles into the stony ground. Our feet ache from days of walking. It is wonderful at night. We have found our way past the startlingly chic frameless glass cafes to smaller, darker, local places filled with families, trying bread porridge stuffed with shellfish and a raw egg stirred in at the table, fig and almond flatcake, pears in wine. ‘It is two pears,’ the friendly girl explains, with difficulty. ‘On his plate with sauce.’ I watch her ladling out the ruby syrup and she starts towards our papered table and then stops. She goes back to the big glass bowl in the cabinet with lavender octopi and anguished looking mackerels and carefully spoons out a third half of the fruit. Proudly she sets it before us. ‘Beers in wine!’

    We love the shabby side-street bar broadcasting either football or fado where the hosts spend the afternoon getting drunk and then the entire evening singing. We explore for days before it is time for the tour, a looping walk tour conducted by a tiny local man. He guides us round the blue hour as the steep treasure roofs grow first golden then dark, under the bougainvillea, under the arch. Christopher Columbus is also called Christopher Colon. Christopher Scent-of-Spices, Christopher Arse. Standing squarely on the cobbles he declares, we are the first, we were the greatest, we are the best. ‘Portugal gave them Brazil and in exchange Spain gave us Cape Verde,’ or was it Indonesia and Madeira, Sri Lanka and Japan. Bravely my companion speaks up. As an African man it doesn’t feel good to hear this. You should find a more sensitive way to talk about it. ‘Oh, I’m not proud of it,’ says the proud guide who has described as an innovation Portugal’s decision ‘not to work the slaves, only to sell them.’ ‘You are proud,’ I say. ‘And you should be ashamed. Shame is the only way we can tell this story honestly.’

    When a black man tries to speak, white people eagerly talk over him. I point this out. ‘You didn’t let him finish one sentence.’ ‘Ernesto is telling this story in his second language,’ the Canadian guest says, excusing the bristling little guide, and I say, indicating my companion, ‘It’s his sixth.’

    Africans often have more courtesy. Racism relies on that gap between our entitlement and their courtesy. But later he tells me in private, I could have punched him. After the tour I say to the guide very quietly, Ernesto we like you. Your tour was great. I have a little suggestion. Next time you describe how Columbus ‘discovered’ the Americas, you can put air quotes. There were plenty of people already living there with rich and complex civilizations. ‘But it’s just history.’ cries Ernesto, ‘it’s fact! We didn’t have America in our maps! We didn’t know!’ We didn’t know, I say — but they did. Put it in air quotes and that way you get to keep the same text, but it’s more accurate. My companion has picked up a feather from the ground and he tucks it in my hair. Above our heads two storks in their stork nest are making more storks, she will lay an egg shaped like a zero, like the old town. The nun at the Franciscan chapel shows us a donation box marked Pao, bread, for every Tuesday they make a soup and serve it to ‘the drug people.’ A restaurant tout promises a garden ‘in the backside’ and then thanks me over and over after I explain why he could consider saying merely, ‘in the back.’ We are laughing with joy. He’s not an arse. Our guide Ernesto has pointed out how the church and the government built their roofs next to each other and it seems to me if churches had been better governed in the first place, if governments had been more pious, there would not exist so many Drug People and so many displaced and struggling people who work three jobs and can’t afford health care, who always need feeding.

  • happy birthday from afar

    Tomorrow is my Mum’s birthday, she’s eighty. Tomorrow is already today in Brisbane because Australia is tomorrowland. I rang her on the videophone we used to so dread in my youth. She looks pretty in her top and skirt. I had a red ‘H’ and a purple ‘B’ from the cafe table where I sat in the rare sun last week, where the cups had not been cleared and someone else had opened presents and left the wrapping and these lettered candles behind. The two letters fit in the bright orange persimmon I had halved and set on a blue plate. I lit the candles and sang her happy birthday. Then she blew and I blew the candles out. I opened the tiny bottle of champagne I have saved in my fridge ever since summer. That special occasion had arrived. Mum had to rush off to meet her two sons and I have not yet told her about the deep massage I plan to enact by long-distance, now she’s had two hips and both knees replaced and requires some tender and gentle loving care. Imagine to be 80 and to have outlived your husband. That’s something hard and good, I think.

  • mothy

    Moth drowning in the shower. Poor fluttering little guy. Even if his whole life flashed before his eyes, it’s only gonna be like 24 hours or so, right? ‘Flew up against this invisible wall. And again. And again. Changed course & met the Sun in person, hanging from a wire from the ceiling. Ate some wool.’

  • Ghanagain

    The grandiose way of telling this would be to say, I am flying back to Ghana for the premiere of a film in which I played a small role. The truth is, I fell in love. This happened before I ever went there, and on the first night of my first visit, in January, we met. He picked me up at the airport and I thought, how terrible if I couldn’t find him among all the brown faces whose country was new to me. We had talked so much by email and had spoken of our whole lives. He said he loved me. I said, you can’t say that until we meet.

    He sent me flowers and chocolates and wine, which arrived at my door in Berlin while I was in Morocco, and died. The florist lady was so touched by our story she allowed me to visit and pick out a fresh bouquet, choosing out all the blossoms I liked best. By video I showed him. “I love orchids and I love roses.” I showed him the field flowers I had chosen from her big vases: valueless to some people, but beautiful.

    We lay down together. We’d still not kissed. I looked at him and he looked at me. Three nights later when he texted to say, I’ve come home, I ran barefoot down the alleyway to unlock the big security gate and flung myself against its bars. And he grabbed me and dragged me to him and we kissed passionately between the curls of steel, and I felt as though I had come home.

    My first morning in Africa, because Morocco is different, he said I don’t want you to go out on your own. Wait for me. No fear, I said, no way: I’ve been travelling independently since I was fifteen. This was further back for me than for him. I went walking and at the end of the day and after furious adventures I came home, finding my way and proud to find it. Outside a two-storey building which stood out, a woman said, “Are you American?”

    I crossed the road to shake her hand. “No, I’m Australian, this is my first day, it’s so beautiful!”

    “Do you think you could fake an American accent?”

    “I dunno,” I said, “quite likely not well.”

    “Would you like to screen test for a film we’re making? We’ve hunted all round Accra for the right white lady.”

    I went in and she took me through a room full of people in headphones. I can’t act, so I just tried to imagine how this character might feel. The director came down, who had written the film, and spoke to me about what he wanted. “It’s an American woman, a bit older, and she’s flirting with a Ghanaian man online. And she knows that he’s scamming her but she doesn’t care, she’s bored or… maybe a bit lonely.”

    I stuck out my foot. “My sandal and your microphone – they look like they’re cousins.”

    My hairy goatskin sandals from Morocco and the furry windsock on a big boom mic made them laugh. “So what brings you to Ghana?”

    I said, “You’re not going to believe this…”

  • the Nazi airfield in summer

    I will tell you what Berlin is like in the summer. As I cycle home from a far-distant errand I cross over an overgrown field. Near the hangars, part of the largest manmade structure outside the Great Wall of China, a thicket of neatly rowed white demountable houses has bicycles parked and pot plants blooming. These are some of the one in two hundred Germans who are now Syrians escaping the war.

    Six police officers in flak jackets are guarding the asylum seekers, lounging in the afternoon sun. The other side of the wire fence a summer circus has set up its tents; then a rippled concrete path runs past and on the other side of that, a fake beach is lined with volleyball games.

    Behind the volleyball courts people have built themselves a tumble of pallet gardens. All of this takes place in the old Nazi airport, which also hosts Berlin’s emerging designer festival in its cavernous and sombre hangars.

    On an obsolete airplane bumper of concrete with fading scarlet stripes a woman in a beehive and three-inch stack silver heels is picnicking, with her shirtless golden boyfriend, silver-chested, with his skateboard lying by them. They are both in their sixties. Further into the field two young women are learning to kite surf on vast sails. The runways divide meadows filled with wild flowers and dredged by butterflies, because half the local taxes are paid by artists and the city can’t afford to mow.