Panda Pissing Contest

During mating season male pandas take part in an elaborate pissing contest. 

They rest their vast weight on their front paws, assume a handstand position, their back legs walk up a tree until their bodies are as vertical as possible. The panda who can raise his cock to the highest level, urinate the highest high water mark on a tree, is considered the strongest and most skilful, therefore the most likely to be noticed by a female panda and to be permitted to mate with her.

Aw, so cute, just like people.

Parkstreet

Ko-fi

Two Autumn Leaves

 

Suddenly everything is sadness. Her notes on the kitchen table are sadness. His jokes are sadness. He hopes she will make it home before he leaves for work in the evening. He hopes she won't. 

By the time he gets home she has been asleep for hours, rolls away from him. They are two autumn leaves sharing a one bedroom apartment. 

She is accustomed to sadness, her family gave it to her at birth. He is unfamiliar with it, has no idea how he should respond. He gradually becomes aware of the source of this particular sadness, it is seeping back from the future, from a point in time when she is no longer being. As her body rolls back to his he knows he cannot tell her this, lies to himself that he is protecting her, that by saying the words out loud he may cause them to become true.

One autumn leaf is picked up by a light breeze, becomes dust. The other is placed between two sheets of plastic, slipped inside a heavy book, preserved, unchanging for years. 

He smiles, the only heavy book he ever talked her into reading was titled The Unbearable Lightness Of Being, they'd agreed the name of the lead character should be the name of their first son.

Ten years later he catches himself wondering if the author of that book might approve of his definition of sadness, two autumn leaves sharing a one bedroom apartment. He imagines her poking his ribs, laughing at his vanity. Just the same he has to get out of bed, find pen and paper, write it down before he can go back to sleep.

Parkstreet

Ko-fi 

She Was Paris

 

It's an orange colour, I can never remember if it's called burnt orange or burned orange, maybe both apply, I guess it's not important. It is important to know that the colour of the scarf wasn't Fanta orange or traffic light orange, it was burnt, or burned orange. It's essential that you understand the particular shade of orange was just right.

She wrapped herself in her scarf, the orange one, like she was wrapping herself in a lover's arms. Her eyes were the same colour as her faded denim jacket, at the same time they were darker blue, both colours at once. With curly yellow hair everything just worked. She beamed at me, her eyes, her scarf, everything just beamed at me, then she said the magic words, "let's go”.

All night she'd allowed the belief that I'd chosen her, that I'd led the conversation, she'd arranged some confusion over the bar tab so the drinks I'd gallantly bought her went on her account, knowing I was travelling on meagre musician's savings. I had never encountered class and style like that, she made me feel like I had some of both just being around her. 

I was a bum musician doing the Paris jaunt. She was an heiress, she knew which particular shade of orange coloured scarf worked for her, burnt or burned orange. She knew how to make me feel like a romantic. 

She was Paris.

Parkstreet

Ko-fi

Paris, Why Not?

 

We are friendly, but not friends. Men of a certain age, following our own paths, they intersect on occasion. 

A bump into meeting.

"Hi, how's it going?"

He gestures at the autumn leaves that made the pavement ankle deep that morning, the first time this year. We skip over the conversation about the weather, smile at the season and each other.

He says, "we can pretend we are somewhere interesting."

"Let's go with Paris."

"Paris, why not?"

"Bon soir."

"Bon soir."

I like it when our paths intersect.

Parkstreet

Ko-fi 

I Live In San Francisco

 

This rain is so fine, so delicate, when it lands in my mug of tea it hardly makes an impression, disappears as if it never existed. My tea is sitting on the wall of a balcony that looks out over a light industrial part of town, at four in the morning I am the only living soul in the world. I am disappearing, like the ancient bone china rain.

I've only felt rain like this in San Francisco. I can feel it on my face, yet my hair is dry. If this rain isn't even making me wet, perhaps I'm not here. Or maybe Richard Brautigan is writing this rain for me, reminding me that I don't really exist. 

When asked what he did, Brautigan once replied, “I live in San Francisco”. 

My cigarette is parchment dry. It's possible I'm not here at all, that I am living in San Francisco and dreaming that I'm the only living soul in Melbourne.

One of us is a ghost, the rain or me.

I hope it’s me, that I’ll disappear and wake up living in San Francisco, standing on a Chinatown balcony, my soul connected to the city, the fine delicate rain creating tiny dimples in my tea.

Parkstreet

Ko-fi

Old Fish

 

The marina is still. I could walk across this water. It must be glass, it’s too still to be real water. 

A seabird flies low, fast, dips the very tip of its beak onto the surface, like a stylus on vinyl, leaves a long silver streak behind it, banks up, turns, gathers speed again, then plunges into the water where the fish have been attracted by the simple trap. A fraction of a second later the bird emerges, an equally silver fish flapping in its beak.

The bird flies off somewhere private and safe to eat in peace. The water is still again, the bird, the fish, memories.

“That bird exhibited more forward planning than I ever have”, I think to myself, naturally identifying with the cunning and victorious bird, not with the easily attracted and taken fish. 

I was attracted to this island by shiny glamour. Now I'm sneaking out, hiding down by the marina, waiting for my plane to land, to spew out tourists then take me away.

I'm headed to Sydney, the harbour city, where I will eat my fill of all the shiny things that come my way and forget the traps set by predators. And decades later, looking back, I will be pleased that I lived and swam to the surface to behold the wonders, because some fish survive and go on to become old fish, grey rather than silver, with the wealth of witnessed wonders stored away and unafraid of death.

Parkstreet

Ko-fi

Mug Shot

She'd brought him a mug of tea in bed. He'd been feeling pretty good about the world.

He'd leaned forward to adjust the plethora of pillows she'd pushed behind him, so many pillows, when one small sausage shaped pillow had fallen. He'd watched it as it fell, in slow motion, like a tree in a climate change awareness documentary.

He'd been surprised that the tiny pillow possessed the mass and velocity to knock the mug of tea over, to tip its contents onto her clock radio. He'd been surprised at the volume of the mug, there appeared to be more tea on her bedside table than could possibly have been contained by one small mug. 

Surprised or not, that's what had happened. 

He'd stared for a moment, then acted swiftly, righted the felled mug, pulled his t shirt over his head and begun soaking up the tea, all the time preparing his defence. 

Surely this was a natural disaster, an act of god?

He looked up, she was staring at him from the sliding doorway of her bedroom. A romantic crisis report was being filed, the full bench of her Court of Potential Boyfriend Suitability was being called to session.

He awaited judgement.

Parkstreet

Ko-Fi 

Detective Camembert

 

From a photograph by Kris Reichl

Directing its light into my eyes like a noir detective, the full moon is shining into my top floor apartment, glaring at me, a glowing white wheel, Detective Camembert. Demanding answers. Cold, flinty, remorseless. 

I muster enough resistance to ask what right he has to interrogate me, after all, he revolves around me, not me around him.

He accepts the truth of this, but adds that he will only be revolving around me for a little while longer. He suggests I should, perhaps, respect my elder. My brain struggles to conceive of four and a half billion years, so I ask what he wants to know.

He wants to know what I’ve been doing since he last looked in on me, a month or so ago. He wants to know if I’ve found any conciliation with my place in the universe. He seems to know that such thoughts trouble my mind.

We sit, and stare at each other icily as we drift away from each other so very slowly.

I have no answers for him.

As his light gradually eases from my eyes, I try to imagine what this wise old sleuth has seen, what he knows. I fail to comprehend such a vigil, a freezing vacuum, seeing everything, and all the time hiding his other face from us.

The full moon leaves the interview room silently, without judgement. There is nothing I can tell him.

I’m left staring out into the night, rotating, revolving, knowing that next month, the month after, every month until the moon no longer revolves around me, I will still have no answers. 

But I take comfort in knowing the good cop of the morning sun will soon be here. 

And I wonder if the moon is questioning me because he, too, is rotating, revolving, he, too, billions of years from now, will cease rotating and revolving, never knowing why. 

No wiser than me. 

Or you.

Parkstreet

Ko-Fi