For Angela

I hope,

As some things slow
    and pause at this time of year;

And as we focus, again,
On what matters most,
What we love,
And what we would do to keep it close,

That you find every star
That you've launched into the dark
Every hope
Every gift of love that you make
With such clear love and generosity —
I hope that each one shines back.

Shines back so brightly that
    each day when this 
Tiny place finds its space
In the grace of the sun,
That you have so many bright days this summer. 

Days that, despite the season 
    or the hours that follow,
Give you so much to return back to.

To remind you of all the great things you are;

All the great things you do;

And all the great things that you have made. 

Message with M. III

 It's not important. The barometer is when you start posting old records on Facebook and try to convince yourself or somebody, anybody that they were great. Once I start doing that, I want you to get your Dad's gun that's buried under the rose bushes and shoot me.

Your old records are great.  They’re greater than most can claim.  I’ll stand by that.  

My father did everything with his bare hands.  When I came here, I dug out four square metres of ivy that was half a metre deep.  I took out all their roots.  I planted roses, and underneath I put fertiliser.  I’m having what I love and what will prosper.  I keep it in check.  That’s what I did with my bare hands.

I'll just keep posting chapels.

Wait.  I remember knives.  Not pistols though that I knew. 

Too much loss.  Too much sorrow.  Too much distortion.  Too much hope.  Too much love that didn’t know how to express itself.  Too much hunger.  Too much fire.  When you write your own rules conscience doesn’t play any more.  That’s my line. 

Pictures of beauty is another way to grow it.   Knowing it and finding it is also the gift.

It's good to remember.

Some things are like blood in your mouth.  You swallow it, but you had to hold it and taste it.

She planted roses in Melbourne 

He sent her chapels from Spain

She wanted to forget all the bloodshed

He wanted to do it again. 

Last week I saw Furiosa.  

When art imitates life.  

When you are stolen and forced to play with the debauched and the sick and the needy you have to speak their language to survive.  

But it’s where you keep your roots.  And though the sewers try and drag you from your home, and you watch the compromise of people you know float in them with their sick tales of justification, it’s difficult to hold your ground.  There is a lot to lose.  

And when I watched the last frames and people questioned the meaning and metaphor of the peach tree, I knew.  Sometimes you have to walk out on people who don’t.  

Self-Bequest

He put himself in his own personal purgatory,

And its muscular arms of incest and greed. 

Of self-supporting nepotism,

Because, he knew

He couldn’t make it on his own. 

Not because he didn’t have the ability,

But because he didn’t have faith

In who he was. 

He eschewed people who bought him gifts,

Saying that neither were worthy,

And instead sought the empty promises of friends. 

Building his castle 

With ghosts

Around his table, 

And the town’s debauchery 

Hanging from his coat tails. 

He put himself in the purgatory of No Man’s Land.

He bought pubic hair by the metre

To sate his fetish.

Sucking on it and

Feeling it mingle with the 

Unshaven hairs above his lip

And calling it

Satisfaction.  

“I have friends …”

“Trust me, you have none.  

I have walked in all their dens

And found that none defend you. 

Their eyes, each, look far away

And try to case a fine word.  

Even your brother cites you in slander

To eager audiences 

Who want to believe the tale. 

You have to remember that

Some traits

Run down the line.” 

Chosen

My father came to me and whispered, “I was your father to show you what men can do, and so you could make your way through it.  I was not your father so you could chose me again.”

We serve roast chicken with paper frills on the ends of their legs. Decoration that covers dismemberment.  We serve roast pigs with apples in their mouths as we heap apple sauce onto their carved up flesh. 

The hateful treatment for what we love, and how we forget what the decorations mean.  

The men who treat their women like whores.  

Road Trip North

 It was a wild drive up with the rain flooding down, and pressed between the wind and my window in a stream down the side of my car.  

I hadn’t slept well because my last vaccination was reading me it’s symptomatic rights.  

At 110 km per hour, I was passing a road train. There had been twenty meters visibility for the last few kilometres.  It was pretty quiet out here, but I should have been wiser than to push the limit.  

I always give truckies enough visibility before I take over.   I have respect for people who know the roads and have clocked up more kilometres than most.  And they know how to negotiate a big rig.  

And he did.  He could see that the water on the side of the road was more than it seemed.   

I keep right in the lane when I overtake, and I was two wheels in the water.  

My car is a beauty.  She never lets me down.  But then orange lights were flashing on my dash that I’ve never seen before. The cruise tried to hold me but it cut, and I was ten then twenty kilometres short of what I had been making.  The truckie knew it, and I pulled back.  I waited for a stretch with less water and tried it again.  Again, I lost traction and I worked with the car to hold steady.  I was between the road train and the safety wires.  The truckie pulled left.  His weight was keeping him safe.  Third time lucky.  

Eight hours and 700km later I pulled in, more tired than I expected.  

This morning is a different day.  My immunisation symptoms were literally sickening last night, so I’m playing it safe.  My stomach this morning raged between ravenous and reluctant. 

Who would have thought, in this tiny town, there would be a cafe with the ethics I admire.  I sat down a table across from three locals.  Listening to them talk about the land, cooking, their families and connections.  They are softly spoken, with a deep knowledge that connects theory with practice.  The subtleties that show thoughtfulness, care and that combination of colloquialism and good vocabulary.  Personal comments that explain facts, rather than protect ego.  

“You haven’t had a dog, have you?”  

“I had a dingo.”

I think that’s what I miss.  That authenticity that goes beyond bombast; the lack of augmented thrill. 

Today, the forecast is clear.  I can hear the truck’s air brakes on the highway twenty kilometres from here.  

When you reach that time when people don’t call you as often, so you set your own distance.  Sometimes there is nothing that is as great as your own terms.  Although almost everything conditions us otherwise. 

Tomorrow

 You were great companions, but you had to leave.  So then, did she.  

You called her and you sang her song, and you walked long to find her.  Sometimes, when things get lost, they are farther than we could know.

The Gambler

Those beautiful beasts run away with your money.

You keep putting your bet through the machine without watching them race.  

You don’t see their form.  You pick them based on a name, or something it meant. That is disconnected from what you are really doing, what everyone is doing in this race.  

The syndicate who takes your money does not give it to the horse, nor its owner.  None of them know you or who you are. 

They do not see your form.  They know you as a name attached to a donor. 

You turn aspirations into cash, with the conviction that the transaction makes them valid or real. 

You think you’re living your dream.  

But you’re not. 

Some things you cannot pay for.  

Some things you cannot buy.  

The thrill is your own pound of flesh. 

From My IG Message with A.

(About finding swimming in the ocean affirming in difficult times.)

To find something to give you a personal balance, especially in these times when emotions and problems run deeply and threaten to pull you under, is important.   It also reflects the strategies you’ve learned and applied to pull you through challenging features in your lifetime.  I wonder about coincidence, and love metaphor.  That in the metaphoric depth and undertow you swim and stay afloat - that metaphor and where we find balance and solace - where we intertwine our life and our art.

(About changes to my life and career next year.)

It is a long story about my dedication to my work and my choice for next year.  It again proves that life is not a fairy tale.  But maybe that tells us that we have to write our own story, where we are our own morals.  Sometimes standing alone in that reminds us of that adage, of so many, about strength in solitude, about how we have to care for ourselves outside the normative parameters that serve to moderate, but not always to meet or heal or give us what we need to be fulfilled.  

I read, just yesterday, that the greatest loss that we can suffer is to not give ourselves the opportunity to reach the potential of who we are.  We give that and want that for our children, but we can forget that for ourselves as busy adults trying to turn up for social expectations.  

Next year I’m going to try to find out what my next steps will be to be fulfilled.

Road Trip

 I’m taking two days because I needed to see my good sister and my old friend needed someone to talk to.  

One of the benefits of travelling alone is you choose your own adventure.  So to speak.  Part of that is soundtracked.  The hum of the wheels, the changing tarmac under the tyres, visually in the sky and country, all those thoughts you don’t have time for back at home.  All of this needs a driver - something to pull it out and unravel it.  That’s when music becomes your co-pilot. 

Some of those tracks have been in my stacker for six years straight.  This flickering fickle culture of valorised newness forgets rather than begets old friends.  Even those artists who write it have said that it is something they made in the past, that they don’t want to know it anymore.  Is that what they say to old friends? 

We have to be careful with the soft things, the subtle things. Because they’re not quantified, they’re not counted.  But they’re qualified.  They’re what knows you; what sees you.  Sometimes they’re the hardest to hold because they’re precious and vital, potent and visceral and without form.  They’re the light that falls on you.  

When you travel alone, no-one tells you what to do.  I played you over as many times as it pleased me to do.  Old friends.  In the song Of the Clay, every line has strong vocabulary; each stanza delivers clever imagery. Then beneath that you write the story. 

How could you ever doubt what you do?  Just as you should never forsake the gift of a friend. 

I don’t exist.  I’m persona non grata. But people know me.  Most people steal from me.  You said, “Theft is the only crime”.   You know, you’re right. 

I’ve left a tiny trail.  Parts of it are missing. I was going to give you my story, but you’re too far away.  Besides, you probably don’t need it. 

I’ve left a tiny trail.  There are some codes locked in a box.  The quietest person will find it after I go, but they may not want to open all the places with the keys. 

I’ve made a place without my name.  It has one of the other names.  I’ve put this there before I send it to you.   It’s a public place.  You only need to know these words. 

I didn’t know if I could trust you with everything.  

Full Circle in the Runout Groove

 That time coming full circle. 

You don’t know what has been stolen

Until you find the time

To make it home. 

There’s no-one standing beside you. 

No-one to see what you’re missing

Or what you’re missed. 

The hold in the contract

And the contraction. 

You hold those precious things

But memory isn’t a record.  

It’s a runout groove.  

Skipping across lines that wear the needle. 

What you need you can’t replay.  

One thing I’ve learnt is the good thing you have right now isn’t going to stay.  

Making the most of time isn’t easy when it’s slipping out of your hands.  

Every precious moment

Is too difficult to recognise

Because you have to let it go. 

You’ll always lose what you love.