Wild Sovereign Development Site

Tag: guitar

  • hand to hand

    I went to a new physiotherapist today for my injured hand, and experienced all the Germanness. Me and the therapist, who is 23, have to call each other Mrs So and So, Mrs So. Her first name is not vouchsafed on her nametag and the surname was very German and unfamiliar to me. I thought of the writer friend whose multilingual office reverts from “Tom,” “Iris,” “Nancy” etc in English to “Herr Geltrausch, Frau Petersilie, Fräulein Kartoffelpuder” when they switch to German again.

    I am learning, with reluctance, the kinds of boring German words which mean “cancellation fee” and “referral” and “health insurance.” She measured the ring finger whose persistent swelling since it was ‘ausgekugelt’, that is, the marble popped out – dislocated – in Brisbane in July, makes it difficult to bend and refrained from making the insensitive joke other hand therapists have made, which is that if I want to marry I will have to wear the ring on my thumb.

    She asked what do I do, and I told her, I used to play guitar, and we both looked down at the swollen sore knuckle and I started to cry. Germans are often so compassionate. But they’re formal. In the waiting room a special chair for children was piled with comical stuffed animals, each in its own way an expressive beast. The sun shone through the window like the first day of Spring. It is cold but the ice cream shops have opened and as I walked home I passed junk shops which have laid out their junk for the first time since September. In the waiting room of the physiotherapist practice numerous framed notices began, formally, “Very Honoured Patients and Patientesses…” then invited us to help ourselves to coffee and tea, therapeutic toys and basins of lentils to sift through, heat pads and cold pads, filtered water, and biscuits.

  • apple a day

    Saturday night, home with the one I love. We cycled over to the Korean grocers’ in the freezing cold mist to get ingredients and I made soto ayam, my favourite Javanese chicken soup from childhood. He is nutting something out for himself on the guitar. I read him something I had written earlier, while he was shredding the chicken. Then we lay down for a while in silence and after a long time I said, want to hear the song I wrote on my phone the other day? I can’t remember how it goes. And he listened to it and then said, Cathoel just drop the ‘& the New Government’ and publish your songs as Cathoel. I said, but why? It’s my favourite band name of all time! And so then he told me why, mentioning some features of what he hears in my voice that made me curl my toes with delight.

    The song, I tell him, reading off the tiny screen, is called In the Human Senses of the Word. He closes his eyes. Outside the window it is silent and completely dark. I can see a few lights on in a few other houses. What’s your day like right now? Catch me up.

  • golden lion

    golden lion

    I went upriver two nights ago with a box of matches in my pocket. It was overcast and just beginning to get dark. Went down a green gladed path that I know and found the place I’d found before. I’ve never seen anybody there but once there was a girl playing her guitar on the next promontory, sitting on a fallen tree with her hair falling over her face.

    As I went I collected twigs and dried stalks and small fallen branches. I made a bristling bundle with each hand, I stretched my palm to carry more. At the place I built a fire. Last week someone had played a game there: twelve squares deep and ten squares wide, etched into the dirt, it had three teams: one playing with smooth stones, one with dandelion flowers, one with short sticks each piercing a leaf.

    In front of the fire I sat down to rest my back against a tree. The water rushed behind me, rushing rushing. It had begun to rain, not too heavily, I put on my coat and let the tree shelter me. A blue egg had fallen from the nest, egg-blue and speckled. On the inside its broken shell was white as teeth. Last night I took a different way and when I came to the clearing downstream where a bench and firepit have been built, in front of the bench someone had made a heart with stones. The stones said: “I <3 ..." The inner body of the stone heart had been filled with clumps of moss, and every few inches the green dense moss was punctuated by a golden dandelion flower. Again it grew dark, and again it rained, and I sat and watched by the water. H2O HoL red egg breakfast

  • the man with bare fingers

    The man with bare fingers playing guitar at the riverside markets, in the snow. He is playing a languid, spooling version of “I’ve Done All the Dumb Things” by Paul Kelly. In his hands it sounds musing rather than regretful. The two Australians drifting in front of me hatless, talking about parties. The boy who writes in the same cafe as me and who gives a shy smile as he passes on the street. The candlelit cafe playing Echo and the Bunnymen: “The Killing Moon.” The shivering persons who have to go outside for cigarettes. The lovely guitarfurl at the end of the song. The manuscript with biro marks all over it.