There Was This Moment

 

There was this moment. 

On a coach trip between Adelaide and Melbourne, there was this moment. 

We didn't sleep much the night before, our Hindley Street hotel room was icy cold, but there was this moment. We had to get up too early to make the coach departure, skip breakfast. Then the coach was late, but, you see, there was this moment.

Just when we thought we were out of range of the city radio station the driver twiddled his dial and found the country syndication, ensuring three more hours of talk radio hate. But you have to understand, there was this moment. 

At the green plastic inflatable roadhouse the coach spewed us into the only flavour on the plate was salt. And I put the salt there. But do you see? None of it mattered, because there was this moment.

Heading east, eventually the sun set behind us. At a small town bypass, we turned north for a while. The sunset was in panorama through the bus windows. I was debating waking her up to show her, the light hitting her eyelids woke her anyway. She looked at me and smiled then gazed at the glorious horizon show. The red and yellow light showed off every colour in her eyes, every shade in her skin, every tint in her hair. The coach turned back to the shortest possible route. She looked back at me and realised I'd been staring at her the whole time, then she snuggled back in, small enough to sleep in those seats, if she lay on top of me a bit too.

I couldn't see her face, but I could see she was smiling.

Finally we alighted in Melbourne, tired, cranky, hungry, smelly. A twenty minute tram ride home to St. Kilda. Dump bags, kettle on, check answering machine, tea and cigarettes sitting on oversized cushions on the floor.

She leaned forward and clicked the button on the old three-bar radiator heater on the wall. As it warmed up, it glowed red and shone on her face. 

That was the moment.

Parkstreet

For Jacqueline 

Ko-fi

The Newsreader Is Crying

 

The newsreader is crying. 

Nothing on his autocue says anything about crying, but here he is, weeping, his body jerking with the sobs he can't control.

No one knows what to do.

The director is in two minds. Should she cut to an advertisement? Or let this extraordinary scene run, knowing it will be on YouTube within the hour, making her news service the most famous on Earth for a few hours. She can't decide.

The cameras roll on. Like everyone else, she is stunned by the depth of the pain the news reader is releasing. She knows there is more to this moment than a highlight for a bloopers show.

At home, the people in their lounge rooms know what is happening. They've all felt the same way, at least once. The news, so much news. The weight of all that information feels too heavy some days. It's not just the content of the news, the disasters, the violence, the horror, it's the constant avalanche of news.

Storm after storm.

Landslide after landslide of news. More and more news.

It's not that it's the common person like themselves who is always wearing the bullets and the bombs and the famine and the torture, it's that someone is shouting it in their ear, poking them in the chest and making them listen, like some mass media drunkard.

The newsreader has simply had enough.

His stiff upper lip wobbled.

His authoritative stare lost its nerve, glanced sideways, accidentally saw what his fellow human does to their fellows.

He just couldn't read another word. So here he is, head on the newsreader's desk, wailing, keening for humanity, a tear for every news story he has read, every night, for years.

Everyone feels the load lifted.

The newsreader is speaking for us all. Giving us redemption, offering his tears for all the world. We can all go on, now.

The newsreader has sacrificed himself, his all important career, shown us the way. 

The news will go on, and on, we know we can’t change that, but now we know that how we feel is normal.

The newsreader is crying so we don’t have to.

Parkstreet

Ko-fi

Leonard And Philomena, A 1970s Psychedelic Cartoon

 

Leonard is an esoteric leopard. 

Leonard once dyed his spots pink, then orange, then blue. Leonard has been known to dance in a tutu, sometimes two tutus.

One can never tell what Leonard will do.

Instead of eating a flamingo, Leonard is dating a flamingo. 

A flamboyant flamingo with flaming red lips, when she's all made up to trip the light fantastic. 

Philomena flamingo dances a mean fandango.

Together, booted and suited, pressed and dressed, Leonard and Philomena hit the town, spottiest coat, fluffiest gown. Together they dance and dance and dance, dance up and down, dance round and round. 

After one big night of cutting a rug, jitterbug, bunny hug, the debonair pair went home to their pied-à-terre.

As hungry as wild animals.

But the fridge was empty, the kitchen, mother Hubbard, not even a box of cereal at the back of a cupboard. 

Leonard was dangerously hungry, like a leopard.

He thought to himself, “I don't want to do anything hasty, but Philomena looks awfully tasty. I might have fabulous purple spots, but I am a leopard and, well, you know . . . ”

Watching her in the open plan kitchen, he wondered what she was doing, hanging around the refrigerator. 

“We've been too busy bar hopping to do any shopping”, she said to herself.

“How is that going to fix anything?”, thought Leonard, salivating, his tummy rumbling, his tummy grumbling.

Leonard had to eat. 

Then she was on the phone, having dialed the number on a magnet on the fridge. 

“Hey, Rocco, it's Philomena, you still open, hon? Yes, I know it's quarter past one, but we have no food, something needs to be done.” 

She called to Leonard, “large capricciosa, darling?”.

A shaking, sweating, ashamed, Leonard replied, “best make it two.”

Later, sated, yawning, cuddling Philomena in his paws, Leonard said, “tomorrow, my love, I will take you, for breakfast”. 

Parkstreet

Ko-fi

So Finely Honed

 

The Kings Cross I knew is gone now.

I miss it like a lost lover.

I miss our conversations.

I miss striking it like a tuning fork in the morning and feeling its frequency resonating in me until the early hours of the next morning. In tune. Sympatico. Aware of each other, human and location, resident and home.

I miss the kindred spirits who weren’t friends but were something better, something more honest, a fellowship of disorder. We knew chaos, we knew each other, we knew Kings Cross.

I miss the girl. Choosing my building was some kind of farewell.

I miss the architecture, the lunatics, the connections. I miss the little showbiz bar under the stairs, the seedy bar upstairs, the small cafe. I miss the hum, the buzz, the grit, the vibe, the sex, the edge. 

Most of all I miss the edge.

Because where else in Australia was the edge so finely honed?

So finely honed by the abrasive sands of the people who gave Kings Cross their art, their politics, their genius.

The King’s Cross I knew is gone now. 

I miss it like a lost lover.

Parkstreet

Ko-fi

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