Beautiful African woman, standing with her back to the street in a luscious canary-yellow dress. She is facing the vast windows of a display of swank cars, why? The windows rise away into the night above her head like an airport. Ah, I see. Beautiful African man, whom I didn’t see until he moved, in the dark, standing with his back to the car he has chosen for dreams, she has her phone up, he is posing. They are built like gods and light the night. I walk past with my head down, my hands full of posies of stolen plants roots and all gleaned from the gardens outside the shopping centre which I plan to propagate rather than just steal, beautiful in my way.
Tag: Australia
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dusk, dusk, dusk
The strange screeching of tropical birds spurling into midnight’s blue sky at 6 o’clock, as the night gathers like a dew, forms like a band, a marching band of strange and unaccountable, uncountable, nasty-beaked bird, weird big birds, glossy little birds, green birds and brown. Brisbanana. You are utterly the weirdest, my sweet suburban love.
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this most severe moon & I
A house nearby is small, wooden, and humble, a tiny workers’ cottage in the classic Queensland style. Only it’s been done up like an Ascot knot with a formal grey-and-dark-grey paint job, art-gallery landscaping (blades), and an unpleasant extension bigger and taller than the house that clamps onto its back side like some shuttered and illegal petrol station. It looks like a small, private jail for teenagers. It occurs to me that is perhaps what it is: the parents maybe have built this for their kids who were too big to leave sprawling round the living room and too small in the eyes of the world to take their chances under a beckoning dancing and quite shameless moon. As with beads, as with knucklebones, as with tealeaves: who can tell.
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Jack the Hammer
Fought the good fight, and won. The battle if not the war. We came home an hour ago to the sound of jackhammers ringing up and down our street. It was 10pm. I rang the police. They said, they can do nothing, I would have to ring the Council. So I got on my ugg boots and walked down to the guys who were carving up the roadside with their gigantic hammer-carrots.
There were two of them, young and decent. Two older guys who work for a different company – the ones who take charge of blocking off the road – sort of shrugged when I spoke to them first, nothing we can do. I went and tapped Jack the Hammer on the shoulder. “Hi!” I said over his mate’s continued noise. “Do you realise this is a residential area? And it’s 10 o’clock at night?”
He pulled his earplugs out to speak to me. After a while his mate stopped work and we all chatted. I said, when my brother was doing that work, he used to wake up with his hands locked in a gripping position. Yeah, he said, feelingly. I said, you know in some practices like yoga, they suggest you do the exercise that’s the opposite, so that you undo some of the damage. Like if you hunch over a desk all day, you can lie back over a ball, to stretch it out. You could maybe stretch your hands this way… He tried it. “So that you don’t feel like you’re 75 when you’re only 28,” he said.
The other guy was calling his boss. He came back. “Boss says he’s sorry. It’s actually not in his control. You would have to ring the utilities company.” I said, “Can you please give me their number?” He wrote it down on a pink post-it note for me. He said, most probably it’s the local businesses who wanted the water to not be shut off while they’re trading. He said, You should have got a notice through the letterbox, a noise notice. He said, Usually we do this work during the day.
I went back home and called the utilities number. The guy at the other end was unhelpful and bullshitty. His smooth corporate speak annoyed me. “Yes, there’s nothing I can do,” he said several times. He tried to tell me the guys on the road would have “just said whatever to get rid of you, not meaning to be rude.” He slid the responsibility smoothly equidistant from all parties like a bead floating on an abacus so there was no sum. I kept him on the line for quite a while before giving it up. Then I heard the truck pull up stakes and park outside our door.
I told them what the call-in guy had said. “He said we should just wait til business hours and then report it.” “Hah! How does that help you?” Jack the Hammer rang his boss again, then his bigger boss. He came back to our door and stood shyly, courteously on the path, until I noticed him and came back out to ask what gave. He showed me on his iPad all the hydrants up and down the streets of Brisbane that need work done. I said, Is that all the places where you have the pleasure of jackhammering in future? He said, “He shouldn’t have said we would tell you anything and that we were just bullshitting you.” I said, “I know! I thought that was rude. He was just trying to avoid taking responsibility.” He rang his boss again. “Yeah we’re hammering in the middle of all these houses, mate. This needs to be done during the day.” He so impressed me. Courteous, friendly, warm, pragmatic, and with humour. Stood up to his boss and to his boss’s boss. No soft soap, just genuine humanness. I felt like offering them a cup of tea. My eyes felt like they were peeling. He said, “I’ve got my big boss to come out here… he’ll be about a half an hour.” I said, “Well, if he needs to talk to me, can you get him to come knock? I’m going to try and get half an hour’s sleep.” He said, kindly, “Would you prefer he rang your mobile number? That way he doesn’t have to disturb you and that.” I said, “Yeah, that’d… No, wait. I reckon it’ll be harder for him to tell me, to my face, that you’re about to start jackhammering at 2 o’clock in the morning.” “True,” he said. We shook hands with great affection. I told him, “You did a good thing. You’re very very decent and I appreciate it. Thank you.” He said, “Well, you need your sleep.” And then they went away.
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The Saturday Paper
Bought The Saturday Paper, the one not owned by a misanthrope sadist. Carried it into my favourite weekend cafe and sat down. They were playing the Rolling Stones: bloke music. The first sentence that caught my eye was: “Trying to explain why fiction matters, novelist Ian McEwan put it simply. ‘Cruelty,’ he said, ‘is a failure of imagination.’”
Common-sense headlines followed: “The real budget emergencies: households around the nation face genuine hardship, with terrible consequences.” “European austerity breeds far-Right support.”
The article titled Failure of Imagination was by Sean Kelly. He explored the reaction to Hockey’s budget and said, what he is hearing is not only individuals lamenting their own losses in this new deal, but a nation of people who worry about the impact on their fellow citizens, “imagining,” for example, “the everyday obstacle course imposed by disability.” He said, “There is harder work ahead, work many of us have still largely failed to do because what we are being asked to imagine is too far removed from our own experiences.”
A whole album of Mick Jagger’s plaintive lope later, paying for breakfast I joyfully brandished the new enterprise to the cafe owner, standing at his till. “Finally you can buy this locally!” I said. “What is it?” he said. He had not heard it’s happened. I showed him. Staff clustered round. “Can I take a photo of that?” “Can I too?” Careful pictures of the back-page subscription form disappeared into several phone cameras. They jostled behind him to leaf over pages, pointing, reading. The guy in the cap covered in little Lionel Ritchies levelled his finger at me, the bearer of better bad tidings. “This is genius!” he said. The owner said, it hurts to buy five copies of The Courier-Mail and five copies of The Australian every Saturday. I said, you will love this. It’s full of interesting points of view. Over his shoulder the tall barista said, “There’s no Sports!” The cafe owner flicked the paper open at the back. “Yes there is,” I told him. “You just didn’t recognise it because it has a photo of a woman athlete.”
Reading the paper had left me filled with an unholy rage, but without the sick feeling I get from Murdoch’s certainties, a deep fury empowered rather than overwhelmed. “This isn’t us,” I felt, “this isn’t right.” The cafe owner and I talked it over in a few despairing sentences. “Every morning this week it’s been all about the State of Origin,” he said. “Yeah,” I said, “cos nothing else is happening in the world. Nobody’s struggling, nobody’s suffering…” “People read it,” he said, “people buy it, but I can’t believe they like it.”
I said, “I just read this from end to end. Not one photo of an Indigenous person saying how their low income and premature death rate are really their own fault. They should work harder.” We both had tears in our eyes. “It’s really good to see you,” he said, “really good.” “Thanks for your halloumi,” I said. “Thanks for your hospitality.” Afterwards I cried all the way home. My Berlin companion, who his first weeks in Brisbane had worried he would not be able to live in a country where every morning this kind of crackling cruelty unfolded over the breakfast table and whispered from every headline its slimy innuendo, asked, What is it. I said, bursting, People don’t want this! This is not us! I can’t believe in their real hearts Australians are so racist and greedy and selfish and cruel. “Our country has fallen into the hands of thieves.” I remembered pelting across Berlin on my bicycle to vote at the Australian embassy, the sense of resolution and purpose in the room, mostly young people, filling the forms in, voting. I remembered keeping an appointment the next week with a shiatsu masseuse I had fallen in like with, who said when I showed up, “You look pale. What’s the matter, are you ok?” And I said, “Something terrible has happened in my c~, in my country,” my voice broke and I sat on her futon and sobbed. Who could have guessed then how terrible it was. The vengeance on anyone vulnerable and poor. The vindication of everyone landed and privileged. The silencing of anyone who is not white, in a country built on burnt rich black and red soil. My belief in life is that people are kind, it is only our damage and pain that makes us take out more damage and pain on each other. Tony Abbott’s government feeds to that a small, poison doubt, telling and insidious: Maybe not all people are only cruel because hurting. Maybe there are some, walking amongst us but psychopaths, who seem functional and believe in themselves but who gain satisfaction from inflicting suffering. Satisfaction, pleasure, and release.
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til the day I die
This morning carrying coffee I walked past the hostel where an old Aboriginal man, gold-chocolate skinned and with a round white beard, sometimes sits in a folding chair under the trees waking up slowly. He and I like each other and we often say g’day. “Might get some rain,” he said, and I said, “Feels like it, doesn’t it?” Above our heads the murky trees were cacophonous with bird squabble. These are the rainbow lorikeets who yesterday dumped a couple twigs on my head when I passed them by underneath. “Those birds’ve got something to say about it, too,” I said. Later in the day I was crying in the car, having had some unexpected news. It’s ok. The radio was spurling some country song I had never heard before, the lyrics masculine and earnest. That’s because I listen to Murri Country, 4AAA. Every time they replay their station tag, “Murri Country,” meaning, Aboriginal, Indigenous Country, I think: yeah, a good thing, too. I think of it like a drip drip on the stone that slowly might wear a hole. So the blood can come out, the more justice and kindness. The singer said something that made me laugh, a kind of watery giggle. “I’m not going to stop loving you,” he sang, “until the day I die.” Immediately I saw him in his death bed, primly folded in the neatly pressed hospital sheets, flapping his hand to get rid of the wife who has not realised this means, “but, girl – on that day you are on your own.” “You,” he says calmly, “get lost.” She says, “But we had a contract! You promised! You were gunna love me until the day…” He says, his voice gravelier now but the same voice still, “Yeah, love – actually you misread that.”
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we want our country back
Most joyous demo/march I’ve ever been involved in. There was a sense of colourful exultation, a kind of rejoicing, a feeling of laughing at each others’ placards and of coming together to ridicule the ridiculous. So many intelligent, open facial expressions, so many cool handmade signs. Someone had made extra signs, proper ones on poles, and left them leaning on the corner of the old Treasury building for people to pick up: one of those said: YOU WORK FOR US. There was HOW DARE YOU, ABBOTT, HANDS OFF OUR WORLD HERITAGE. There was a family of three solemnly crossing the road every time the traffic stopped, holding high their placards so the waiting drivers could read them. Before the march, joyous reefs of cheers rose up during the distant speeches. The square was teeming and people stood thickly on the sidewalks on all sides, holding their signs. When we set off, an upper storey of more drunken Australians leaned over from the balcony of the Irish pub, cheering and clapping and unfurling huge flags. My friend dropped out to get a bit of shade and when we ran into each other again, she was exultant: there were people going past me for ten minutes!
I fell back, attracted by the band. They had struck up a spurling tumultuous din and I boogied and jittered my way down shady Adelaide Street and back into the sun. I’ve never seen so many people lining the route of a march holding up their own signs: LET THEM LAND, LET THEM STAY, and HANDS OFF OUR COUNTRY. A guy up a tree rattled his sign and whistled and waved. A man propped against a light post held: WHAT HAPPENED TO THE CARING, SHARING AUSTRALIA? I ARRIVED AS A REFUGEE 26 YEARS BACK.
Everywhere evidence of people’s sincerity and generosity. Four girls in front of us had on boat hats folded from newspaper. A bikie with a creamy white beard stood in front of his motorbike on his head and his big boots did the splits up in the air – his friends either side held up placards and everybody hooted and hollered. An eight year old boy had made his own fiercely vehement, illegibly penciled sign on a folded piece of paper studded with exclamation points and was wearing it paperclipped to his visor.
Now, I hate marches. I’m shy and I don’t enjoy crowds. I find it mildly traumatic to be around mobs of angry people, even when I agree with them. But this was delicious from start to end. We rounded the corner back into the shade, there were colourful people filling the street as far forward and as far back as I could see. A man marched on crutches. A plump guy held a gigantic placard saying YOU KNOW THINGS ARE BAD WHEN EVEN I GET OFF THE COUCH. The feeling that ran through the whole gathering, for me, was that reasonable, kind, humane, open, curious-minded people have mobilized and sat up and said, man, this is an outrage, we’re putting a stop to it. Before all the dancing I was marching in hot aching tears: for my country, beloved and troubled occupation that has yet to face its own history. For the goodness and generosity in our hearts. For the inexplicable bold kind tyranny that fearless truth-telling and balanced perspective have over shady dealings, and dire manipulations, and all the kinds of politics that sink us into the stupidest and most destructive, dangerous kind of animal.
“If this was in Germany,” my companion pointed out, “the entire route would be thickly lined with riot police in riot gear.” Instead, our friend told him, the Queensland police have been really supportive of this gathering. I could feel joy and celebration in the air and I felt we were all on the same page, same rambunctious rampage. A bewilderness of thrumming democracy, an entire array of people, a luscious diversity, a beautiful thing.
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stop stopping the boats
Could our fear of brown-skinned asylum seekers with unfamiliar cultural origins actually be self-hatred? Years ago it was embarrassing in Australia to confess to “the taint” of convict ancestors. Then it came to carry a cachet. It’s true we would undoubtedly respond with more compassion as a nation if boatloads of stricken Finns, Belgians and Scots were finding their way to our shores. But I also think we are not a confident nation and this reflects in a kind of arrogance-paired-with-self-loa
thing. It is sad to hate boat people when we are boat people. More than 90% of us are descended from recent migrants – that is, arrived within the last two centuries. And the waxy hysteria over a few hundred vessels reminds me of the hatred of sexuality which infests certain fundamentalist churches: the Catholic Church, for example. No hatred is more personal, more poisonous, than the mother of them all: self-loathing. -
tilt a world
Finally, bodysurfing. It must be a decade since I have surfed, maybe since before moving to South Australia where terror of sharks somewhat put me off. That feeling, you know that feeling? Carried by water, gasping for green. You invite the water to take you. The water picks you up and takes you. Rushing with the thousand million bubbles carrying me along. Making myself lean and long like an arrow, like a board. Glances from the other surfers, that joy at the wet dark head surfacing from the spent wave, way up close to the shore. I can see why dolphins do it, I can see why people learn to ride boards. It’s been so long since I surfed I forgot to take a breath before the first wave and had to pull out of it in order to gasp for air. There is that ineffable serenity when the whole world is tilting and green.