Melbourne en l'enfer.

He's all of six foot one.
Lean and distracted in this stupid heat, in those stupid drip dry slacks and button up shirt.
He called me and a couple at the ATM bastards. Unfortunately the couple got the last of the cash so I had to walk past him in the stupid heat to get to the next ATM.
You right, my friend?
Yeah.
He had great eyes. Clear and not wild. This surprised me.
I went and grabbed some money and when I came back he hadn't moved in the stupid heat.
Y'okay old timer? You need a feed or something?
NO, I'M JUST WAITING!
Cool.
You fucking cunt.
Be well old man.
It wasn't personal.
It seldom if ever is on days like this.
***
It's easy to make my day. Just be yourself.

Fuck you, buddy.

For H. on Australia Day.

A pair of brown eyes and a smile as bright as the sun
is what I remember most about you.
The smell of Hobbytex fabric paints and that strange crushed fabric you asked me to colour in.
"What are you doing?"
"Looking at the Big Jim catalogue that came with the van Mum bought me for Christmas."
"Come and help me colour in."
I came and helped, in spite of my selfishness.
Who knew that less than twenty years later I'd be holding your lifeless hand, my love.
Except, of course, every impotent onlooker - myself included.
You had a beautiful voice. 
By rights I know you must have gotten angry.
Less times, as I grow older, than I think you should have.
More times than was good for your health.
I wanted you to fight back for all the times I couldn't.
Your rich beautifully spoken voice that pushed the fears away,
at least until you finally succumbed to your own;
to those thrust upon you,
day in and married day out.
But I'll dwell no more upon that.
Decades later I'd inquire where you were originally from.  Where your people were from.
Up north, I would be told. The islands up north.
By my reckoning, that would make this day yours more than any soul I've known and loved in my life.
Just know, that for what it's worth, there are people who love you still and always.

Forever beautiful.

Fred Scuttle's dilemma

The corvid was trying to settle on the lamp post in the twenty seven degree heat. Feathers ruffling, shifting its rump first this way then that. It appeared to want to lose balance and tip one way and the other to ward off the tedium. *** There was a man; Allan Jones. Not the infamous not-so-crypto-fascist ageing shock jock, nor the all singing, all dancing actor of Marx Brothers fame, but another Allan Jones. I interviewed him for Networking Action For Actors up in Sydney long ago. He fitted the bill of the wandering rapscallion as he regaled the crowded room at the top of the Arthouse Hotel with tales of Hollywood union thuggery and life through the 1960s looking glass when the star system was not only alive and well, but also militantly exalted by patrician and pleb alike throughout the known world. *** The corvid saw the bug before I did and took off in pursuit. But the insect matched the corvid's every twist, every turn and avoided beak and claw with surprisingly alacrity. Avian ennui had given way to unmistakable agitation as the impudent little creature ran rings around the large bird in what should have been a dogfight with a foregone conclusion. *** For me, though, the tale that stood out the most was one event that occurred during Allan's tenure as set designer/stage manager for the Benny Hill show in the late sixties. Benny had wanted to do a slapstick sketch that he'd had in mind for some while with an old biplane. A pre-war De Havilland was sourced and Allan was tasked with playing chauffeur on what should have been a one day shoot. Benny was waiting outside his trendy Kensington home by the time Allan got there and they made their way in the early morning light to the airfield somewhere in Sussex. The plane took off, the cameras rolled, Fred Scuttle emerged from the make up van and everything, according to Allan, went smoothly and precisely to plan. Except it didn't. Take after take was recorded on film (Benny shunned the use of the cheaper, much more flexible format of video) and the costs of hiring the Gypsy Moth alone must have been extortionate even by the standards of the day. Benny wasn't happy; with the sound, with extraneous crew noises, with the lens flare on the playback, with the timing, with the height of the aircraft, with the costume, but mostly with his own flat performances. And so that day extended into a second day with identical results, which in turn gave way to a third day - again with nothing to show but frustration and dissatisfaction. The fourth day -a Thursday - was canned because of rain but Allan showed up on the Friday at the usual time for a day's work that was hopefully ("Dear God, please!!!") going to bear fruit. Benny, unusually, wasn't waiting on the footpath, so Allan alighted, walked up the steps and rapped on the door. Benny appeared, still in his pajamas, and offered Allan a cup of tea while he went up to get dressed. Allan was well aware that Benny invited no one into his rented house ever and now he came to see why. The only thing occupying the living room was an old fold out camp bed that seemingly doubled as a couch, and the only food in the cupboard besides a packet of loose leaf tea, were tins of potted meat and baked beans. One cup, one spoon, one knife, one fork on the drying rack. Allan was immediately reminded of the similar eccentricities of the composer Erik Satie. **** The corvid in its blind pursuit nearly swooped inadvertently into the windshield of a Toyota soft roader and a heartbeat later almost clipped its wing on the edge of the awning. I swear I could almost see the grim smile beneath the flying insect's proboscis as it bumbled off in the heat, free and none the worse for wear after the ordeal. **** Even after the final edit, Benny wasn't happy with any of it and the sketch died an ignominious and all but forgotten death on the cutting room floor.

GOOD EVENING, VIEWERS!!!

He's leaving home.

We set off earlier than expected.
Not to get him out of the house at last but for a far more important reason; I wanted to catch the ten past six session for Three Billboards Outside etc.
So we quickly put this in a bag, that in the car, and took about the same amount of time again checking that he/we hadn't forgotten anything.
On the way to his new freedoms, we spoke of all manner of things starting with the idea of hubris as it relates to protecting lesser living entities, right through to the binomial hours of the shadow in Chinese astrology.
We arrived at his new freedom and quickly unpacked everything into the,
me: tiny room,
him: new adventure
and hopped back in the car hoping to avoid the beginning of the year peak hour traffic up around Carlton (I figured it would be a great send off to see a good movie with him for the last time in god knows how long).
And we almost made it too!
About two blocks from the cinema we hit bumper to bumper but even then we did not despair because we found pay parking in the next block and me out of shape and him out of shape ran and made it to the cinema smack on ten past six
Only to find two queues to the box office - both extending almost all the way out the main entrance.
We weren't alone in the idea of catching the flick.
I must confess it cost long moments in profound remorse and self flagellation to have to make do with the consolation prize of French Vanilla flans and Tiramisu at Brunetti's
but years from now, I think we'll both agree that no matter how great the movie may or may not be and no matter how many awards it may or may not garner, nothing and no one could touch those brilliant and precious minutes of Brunetti's heavenly morsels.
"Yes, can you put me through to the dentist please?
Two for bridgework with a side of sugar rushes."
Fly well and fair play, young man.

The adventure begins...

Perth 2017

Melbourne
Heading out to the airport in the early morning light. The whole city, the suburban weatherboards to the steel and glass skyscrapers, bathed in rose. Gracias a la vida, desde mi corazon.
Landing
Ah, Perth. Seems it was always destined to be a complicated relationship, wasn't it.
Fremantle
I'll tell you what's cool. What's cool is two old men in a beaten, though not defeated, Hyundai hooning through the wide roads and avenues and highways of Fremantle, belting out Seven and Seven Is, Psychotic Reaction, I Had Too Much To Dream Last Night, Alone Again Or.
And laughing till they're hoarse.
Yeah.
That
Is
Really
Fucking
Cool.
Kewdale
The names: Abernathy, Arthur, Belmont, Oaks, Stockdale, Acton, Towers, Scott, Kew... All and always leading back to Knutsford Avenue.
The middle aged European couple over the back on Arthur Street, slouching about their summer soaked front yard in matching his and hers fake tiger skin underwear.
Hey! You the kid who's always taking our almonds?
I dunno, maybe.
Well don't.
And after that I'd have to keep watch from the window of the caravan parked around the back of the house in which I lived, to make sure they'd gone out before stealing any more if their bitter, nearly ripe
almonds.
And Tomato Lake defying all conventional wisdom by actually being a lot larger and more scum covered than ever it was when we played there as kids.
These strange and stupid shards that keep sticking out, still cutting deep.
Yeah, Perth.
Like I said before. It's complicated.
Leaving.
Another double decker, another magnificent view. Pete, Jeannie, Rache, Jay, kids, and Helen and Brett for good measure: I love you. Thank you for every countless ordinary miracle and for teaching me that if you can adult with a modicum of dignity and a heartful of courage, then one day I too might succeed.

Lay Down.

Today's portrait of the landscape.

You're out walking, driving. Sitting. Unfamiliar places or familiar but seen at last. Bus stops, train stations, the inevitable eatery.
It dawns on you that you're bleeding, diminished
yet you feel stronger than you can ever recall feeling. A new delirium.
Everyone around you. Everyone.
Everyone you see.
The swaddled newborn next to you looking unfocused in your direction, at the mother, at the others.
The care lines. The mottled hands. The pink hands. All colours. Everyone. All sexes and predilections and convictions. All proclivities. All of them.
Everyone.
For this little forever you are the least interesting thing to have existed. They are all so much more important and intriguing than you will ever be.
Everyone
else.
Smiling, laughing. The inaudible conversations. The too audible ones. They walk dogs. They push strollers. At least one happy, indeterminate creature they had on a leash had only three legs.
Crows feet. Gestures, sullen and wild. Serious eyes. Wetted lips and rising and falling throats. Skin rough and smooth, receding hairlines, loose skin and taut through times of abundance and otherwise. Unconscious scratching and unwarranted and nervous hahaing. All this and everything else besides.
Never mind that these are days of thin money. Never mind the decided lack of exuberance flowing over everything. Never mind the lousy weather.
Or the vagaries of life rising slowly up from within, or around the corner the phone calls filled with hobbling and heartbreaking news.
All the terrors and triumphs of your life have leached away because of every person you see until you are left
with nothing.
And slowly it dawns on the small part of you remaining, that you have pulled off history's greatest disappearance
yet again.

Fade into you.

Concert

I was reminiscing with my brother and I recalled the first concert he ever took me to.
There was Copperwine, the La Di Das (who would later play in the assembly hall at my high school, around the same time as the unknown outfit AC/DC), Billy Thorpe and the Aztecs, Johnny Farnham, Spectrum (or the Indelible Murcteps as they were then known, I think), and Johnny Farnham among others. My brother doesn't remember any of it but I distinctly recall someone pegging a bottle of beer at Johnny Farnham halfway through his version of Glen Campbell's Visions of Sugarplums and young Johnny F, ever the polite one, stopped only to gently chide, "That's not very nice!" before continuing.
Who knows. Maybe after all these years it was wishful thinking on my part (although looking back, I'd never consider Johnny Farnham to be high on my list of remembrances, nice though he's known to be) but I remember that damned missile and I remember the afternoon light and the noise. St Leonards Park 1971, maybe? Or possibly one of those bigger freeby gigs further west. Or maybe, as previously stated, I've been bullshitting so long, I can no longer sort truth from fantasy.

Sugarplums