puddlesofun

"Iggy Pop could talk this way because there was a gap to bridge, a desperate chasm, a vacuum of understanding. The gap is still there, but there’s no hope of crossing it anymore because people think they already understand. They do understand, but they understand wrong. There isn’t a chasm anymore, it’s worse than that. There’s an impermeable plastic barrier. We are all encased in tupperware."

- last recorded words of music critic Least Smith, before his spontaneous transmutation into light and sound was caught on national television 13 December, 2012.

It seemed simple enough at the outset. Apply to an educational institution, enroll in some subjects. Some beauracratic running around was expected, of course. What he didn't expect was being sent on a quest to retrieve the four lost pieces of the amulet of Zaxo'or so that its mystical powers could be absorbed into the hereditary sword of the arts/languages faculty and defeat the Dragonbeast that had been menacing the villagers.

After endless travels and trevails, he returned, covered in mud and blood. An hour of queueing later, he presented the completed amulet to the heirarchs of the Arts/Languages Faculty.

“Thanks a lot, we'll let you know when it's ready.”

“You aren't going to use it on the sword now?”

“Oh, it will probably be at least a month before that happens.”

“It takes that long?”

“It only takes a couple of minutes, but we don't have a lot of staff on at the moment.”

“But the villagers are dying! One of them got dismembered on the way in, I had to watch her widower pick up all the pieces in a basket!”

“I appreciate that, but we just don't have any staff on at the moment. If I went and did your little sword thing, there wouldn't be anyone at the front desk, and we couldn't have that, could we?”

“The dragonbeast can't be harmed by normal weapons.”

She sighed. “Look. If you want to stop the monster from eating people, take this treaty form...”

“For the dragon to sign?”

“I'm not finished. Take this treaty form to the foothills of F'thnor – that's behind the holme building – and barter with the dwarves there to translate it into dragonbeast and provide you with a mount. THEN take it to the dragonbeast. Try not to get fried. Good luck.”

“...thanks?”

(etc)

Did you know that in Summer Hill, where this building now stands, there used to be a Cinema? Grosvenor Theatre. A fantastical art deco/arabesque confabulation, it was the biggest in NSW. Once, people streamed in, families, couples, children, to commune with something flickering and magical. Once, naughty children would piss off the audience by rolling jaffas loudly along the sloped wooden floorboards of the aisles, which would land several times with a “crack!” as they plopped down the steps.

Is it just me or were the suburbs of this town packed full of far more interesting stuff in the past than they are now? Hurlstone Park had, in my youth, an abandoned (haunted!) sugar mill, which had also for a time been an abattoir. Now? You guessed it. Flats. Earlier than my time, the suburb also had tennis courts (now a block of red-brick flats), and what was first a movie theatre and then an ice rink, but is now just boring shops. The milk bar that had been next to that building was still there long after it was gone, but it too closed eventually. I went in there a few times as a kid. It wasn’t run down like the Olympia, but it was old-school. The lady that worked there was nice.

The Olympia Milk Bar! Stanmore’s mystery! You know the one. Once of the windows is boarded up, it’s almost always empty, and the owner is always in there. Speculation on this constitutes a full-blown inner city sport.

On the route in Summer Hill that I walk the kids down, as part of my work, there is a house that has one of those 6ft brick walls around its garden, and a door in that, with a largish old-fashioned knocker in the middle of it. Because of that knocker, younger children are convinced that a giant lives there. The door is only normal sized, and the house itself is quite small. Similarly, there is another house on the route that has been denoted that of a witch, for even less substantial reasons. Which brings us to Mr Olympia Milk Bar, who my housemate is convinced is actually Dracula.

Children, those lucky souls in that part of life where the creative urge is seen as cute rather than inappropriate, see something even slightly different and make up an explanation. Adults have been forced to repress that urge a little, but it still bubbles to the surface the second it is permitted to. Children, of course, are used to their own explanations not working out, so they just accept it and move on. Adults however are not used to being wrong. They hold onto their “truth” and seek confirmation. There is no evidence that the ideas adults have are wrong any less often than children’s, it’s just that they tend to invest themselves in nebulous concepts (also known as “opinions”) that are hard to either prove or disprove. Which is perhaps why of all the opinions I’ve heard regarding Mr Olympia (vampire, drug dealer, doomed lover), nobody has ever found out the truth. That, and that while he is happy to serve you tea or a milkshake, he steadfastly refuses to engage with the curious. What business is it of yours, after all? At least that lends credence to my own opinion – which in the end is worth no more than any of the others, and for the same reasons – that he is just a guy doing what he has always done, and that nowadays people think that odd isn’t about to stop him from doing it. Go him, I say.

******

(More has been said about the Olympia than I could say, and more touchingly and eloquently, by Vanessa Berry in her post-zine memoir “Strawberry Hills Forever”.)

(Also, I am not entirely sure what prompted me to rant in such a fashion, or whether it will make any sense to me when I read it tomorrow. I should probably have spent that time writing cards...)

*I'

I am a pale human being living in an environment that my ancestors never evolved for. The sunlight hurts me. It's a half hour walk to work, and in summer, I scurry nosferatu-like from shadow to shadow. I know the routes that expose me to the least sunlight in the afternoon (term time), and the mornings (school holidays). When I am waiting to cross the road at traffic lights I position myself so that I am in the shadow of the traffic light itself.
On my way home I stop and wait on a traffic island on the corner of new and old Canterbury Roads. There is very little shade there, and at that time of the day, at this time of the year the only source of it is from diagonally across the road. McDonald's. If I crouch on the corner of the island, the sun comes from directly behind the elevated golden arches, and the shadow of the pole that holds it up reaches across the carbon-monoxide concrete expanse like some sort of sinister finger that sprouts at the end into a blurred and distorted facsimile of the urban icon, shrouding me where I kneel.
So if you drive past me on Canterbury Rd and it looks as if I am subjugating myself in worship of the suburban temple of lard and multinational ubiquity, just know that all I'm really doing is leeching off of their shade.

Prologue

There is a house near the edge of a small town
inside, a man walks up the stairs
in a pair of old battered shoes
calling his daughter's name, impatient

His face is weathered.
He is a tough man and he works hard
It frustrates him when other people, his daughter included,
fail to recognise that this is what life is made of

Hardship.
But he loves his daughter
He opens the door to her room
why does she never answer?

There, in front of him
black doc martin boots swinging side to side
creaking rope
all the hardness in his face collapses

The Day

The sun is rising in the sky over the town
it is still early. There are a few tiny white clouds in the sky
It will be a beautiful day, if you are not a farmer.
most of the people in this town are farmers

The sun slips between curtains and assaults the face
of a sixteen year old boy waking up in his single bed
his hair is dyed black and blue
Across from his bed, blu tacked to the wall and in a cheap frame on his desk:

Are dozens of photos of him and the girl together
in all of them they are wearing gothic clothes and makeup
Friends, all gothed up
they both look happy, after a sixteen year old fashion

(in a sixteen year old sort of way)

Her hair is many colours in the photos
but mostly it is black
He drags himself from from his bed as if he is weighted down
Tries to avoid looking at the photos

In the morgue, her body is lain down upon the slab
she is still wearing
her boots; her piercings; her netting
her makeup; her velvet skirt

her boots are taken off and placed side by side.
they carefully cut off all of her clothes with scissors
until she is naked

He eats his cornflakes, oblivious
as his family rush around the house
lost in himself
his mother puts a rented suit over the seat next to him

In the morgue, her piercings are taken out
and placed in a small tray
her makeup is removed and her body washed
her dark nail polish removed

In the house, he is standing in the hallway arguing with his mother
his father takes command and sends him to his room
with the suit

In the morgue, gloved hands are carefully dying her hair back
to its original blond
like her parents wanted

He follows his family out of the house
His father in an old business suit;
his mother in a brown formal dress
(she had no black)

and his little sister in pigtails,
just old enough to know that she shouldn't be happy
even with her new dress, but maybe too young
to really understand the loss

He closes the door behind him
he is wearing the suit now
and they all pile into the old ford
without speaking

He knows that something
is not right, shouldn't be like this
when they stop at the intersection
he jumps out and runs away

In the morgue, she is being dressed in "nice" conservative clothes
so she looks just like her parents would like
they are putting on special make up
to make it look like she is alive
It doesn't work

The ford pulls up outside the old sandstone church
one short
people mill around outside of the building
not sure of themselves

the sun casts sharp shadows
puts everything in relief
the priest signals
and the crowd files in out of the heat

The boy is back in his house, in his room
standing still panicking. what now?
he locks his gaze with her image in a photo
and begins to undo his tie

In the main street of town, a group of local boys
hang about outside the chippies, joking around
but they stop to stare silently as someone walks past,
eyeshadowed eyes fixed ahead

high black boots and a heavy black trench coat
in the middle of summer
Nine Inch Nails T shirt, an ankh and a spiked collar around his neck
All gothed up

It is cool and it is dark and it echoes
although it is almost silent
In the church the priest is speaking
and her father, the hard man, is crying

He walks in halfway through the service
strides right up the middle aisle while the priest talks

while people watch
he never thought he could do this
but it's easy
he gets to the open casket

sees her
sees her dull blond hair
sees her cardigan
sees what they've done to her

he stops, unbelieving
he backs away
he can't look, wishes he hadn't seen
he has to leave

a walk becomes a run
back down the middle of the church
the determination falls away from his face
leaving only anger and sorrow and tears and hurt

not the sort of hurt that you can write songs and poems about
The type of hurt that you just want to go away
and you're afraid that it never will

He flees into the sunlight