Life and Lives Circa 1885/1985

In a past life I was a witch. In the recent past I worked in Little Bourke Street as a Rotation Decoy for an Introduction Agency. And today, I recline in a banana lounge reflecting on my newfound serenity and the journey that brought me here.

            There I am doing the daily city circuit. On the record, I’m running chores for the office, posting mail and buying supplies – A4 envelopes, a copy of the Truth newspaper, and a bottle of single malt whisky to whet the boss’s whistle. On the B-side, I give the eye to likely looking blokes and slip them a brochure. After a year in this job I’ve really got the hang of it. I catch his eye, pass it, then withdraw into the crowd while glancing over my shoulder. Yeah, I’m a pied piper for men with dormant willies.

           

The job was advertised as “An opportunity of a lifetime – no experience, no auditions necessary”. The Job Description was less discrete: “Reception duties, office errands, roll playing as generic single women, and general administrative tasks”. I’m curious by nature and enjoy an adventure. How hard could it be playing a seduction game that pays the bills?

I sit in the mall and watch South Yarra Blonde Mums, kids in childcare and voracious for a Myers special; a flock of awkwardly smoking truants with uniforms poking out of school bags; the greasy haired down and outers that I track and trap. The chaos and vulnerability of human flotsam disturbs and bemuses me.

            It’s Friday afternoon and I’ve one more hour of client contact back in the office. Malcolm, the boss, gives me the usual “you’re late!” look, with arched eyebrow. I return it with the “do I care?” look, chirp the same old excuse and turn to the adjacent change-room where I slip into ‘the girl next door’ costume; a knee length skirt, V-Neck tee with a glimpse of cleavage, a sandy-blond pony-tail and ‘natural’ make up. 

            He’s a rugby league player. Josh O’Donnell’s file note reports that he’s “Not smart enough for the girls in his social circles”. His mug shot boasts oversized head, nose, ears and belly. Muttering “No problem too big or too small,” I stride towards the Interview room.

We wenches lived in the forest, farming herbs, fruit-trees and rodents. We chanted to the full moon in our nightslips. When our skills were required we crept through tradesman’s entrances to pull out stuck babies. As a Wiccan I had learned as much about life and death as a homeless person out of sight in a city lane. A nomadic craftsperson from a clan of misfits, I fled persecution aboard a fine tall ship from the Cornwall coast in 1885, as is the colonial way.

            Josh is doing the scary on me. He has wet goggle eyes that tell me he is in love with something. It’s not me. It’s his idea that Kylie and Cyndi Lauper are within reach. My skin can’t keep him out, though he’s never going to touch me. I play it cool; head tilted the side, and no eye contact. He asks all the typical questions and my reply is short and sharp. It’s my job to keep him out of reach and wanting.

“Do you like football?” He asks.

“No,” I reply, “I don’t like crowds.”

“I like quiet nights in front of the TV, what about you?” he asks.

“I have an eye disease,” I say.

“What do you like to do?” he asks.

“I make armless cardigans for land-mine victims and I go to a feminist reading group on weekends,” I say.

“I’m really sorry,” he says almost in tears, “You seem like a really nice girl.” I shrug my shoulders and slam the door behind me. I know I’ll see him again. Next time I’ll have short dark hair, glasses and the personality of a shushing library monitor. Again, we’ll have nothing in common. His $200 has bought him 3 introductions, so he can look forward to meeting another classy woman, and next time it might be a perfect match.

It’s six minutes past five and time to bolt. I slam Josh’s file into its pocket in the filing cabinet, turn the lock and start whistling Dixie. I put my dirty coffee cup into the top desk drawer and stand to leave. Malcolm appears from his office. He clears his throat and approaches me, earnest and tipsy. Freeze-frame. What is it this time? What could it be at 5:07 on a Friday? I stop. I turn. I smile.

“Mary-Ann. You’ve done a fab’ job this week. You’ve given meaning and hope to our more desperate customers. You’ve done me proud.” He clears his throat. “I haven’t done this before, but you’ve been here a year and the time has come.” He hands me a lousy fifty.

“Wow,” I say, staring at the cash and wondering what he wants me to do.

“It’s a bonus for a job well done. Have a great weekend.” He shakes my hand and retreats like a man who’s given enough away.

“Wow, fifty bucks,” I say again. Fifty dollars for being a cold bitch, whose only talent is delaying men’s inevitable disappointment. Oh the things I could spend it on – the shoes on lay-by, or a mediocre night out?

Life holds certain things in store for us – it’s written in tealeaves and on the palm of your hand. As I’m walking towards my tram stop the matrix opens. On the footpath, a banana peel, mangled and brown entraps me. My left foot finds it, slurping forward in slow motion. Right foot is out of step and slow to the rescue. Naturally my hand splays out in readiness for a broken arm.

In moments of panic time loses pace. In this instance on Elizabeth Street it halts completely. My shoulders tighten, pull together and lift me up. (There’s always stuff underneath; it bubbles up like sulfur in a mud bath. What’s under must come up). I levitate high enough for my feet to reconvene their partnership. Then I float back to the ground, and recall a dream.

I’m a witch riding a broomstick at 150 metres. I’m giggling like a kid in a three-legged race, butting shoulders with a friend who simulates burnouts and bucking motions on her hotted up model. We’re travelling in tandem to a party-plan for spells.

When I get home I notice signs that my aunt has barricaded herself in the music room again. Charcoal is smoking in the toaster. A bucket of water and a bottle of window cleaner sit by the vacuum cleaner. The curtains are gone, presumably soaking in bleach. Bottles of grout cleaner, Gumption and disinfectant are littered about. The sink is brimming with used rubber gloves.

I sit outside the music room. She’s talking to herself.

“It’s alright, I’m safe in here. Nothing can get in.” It is absolutely true. Nothing can ever get into the music room.  I haven’t yet figured out how she and fresh air get in. It’s a bubble-wrapped chamber. Six years ago she employed an expert to hermetically seal it, to prevent all life forms from entering, and most importantly the most discrete of microbes.

The room has been bare since my grandparents died thirty years or so ago. In photos of its heyday there are chandeliers, red brocade curtains, French chaise-lounges, and my grandfather smugly ensconced at the grand piano, conjuring a tune for a rigid audience.

“Are you comfortable in there, Auntie Carrie? Would you like to come out and have a cup of tea?” I sit there for an hour saying things like that, though I know she’ll be there as for as long as it takes.

I stand, thinking about witches, twitching for release. I grill a chop and go to bed.

Before sunrise I go to the market and hand the fifty bucks over to a psychic. She’s had a big Friday night – her eyes are puffy and the crystal ball is cloudy. “Mary-Ann”, she says rolling the r. “Mary-Ann, I can see some turbulence. It’s unfinished business and its rupturing the firmament between your lives.”

Something strange is happening. My fingernails feel dry and itchy and my eyeballs prickle and flicker.

My ex-boyfriend, Tony, phones me. “No Tony, I am not up for the occasional root!”

My boss asks if I’m still single and if I’d like to go to his swingers’ club.

I’m 28 with no prospects. I drive my aunt to mass on Sundays, and I’m not in the touching game.

Josh comes in for his third introduction. After this one my boss will suggest he try something different, “Josh, my friend,” he’ll say, “I don’t think we’ve got the match for you this time around. We’ve introduced every woman who shares your interests, and I’m surprised that none of them suit you. You can try us again in six months, but the fee will be higher.”

 For the final meeting I’m a prim schoolteacher. Midway through his first question Josh looks confused, hesitates and then continues. For an instant, he doesn’t look so stupid. Has he recognised me? What can see?

Sitting on the tram, after work, I realise that I’m lonely and agitated. I let the shuffling and bumping of the tram carry me into a meditation. I’m wrapped in a bubble of white light, weightless and air-borne, floating above the city. A flock of penguins fly pass in formation. It’s damp and cool up here. I have an urge to look down but a guiding voice says, “No, Mary-ann, look within”. I see nothing but white, moist fluffiness. I snap out of it, knowing that the tram is nearing my stop.

I awake in sweat, with no memory of the dream. I hear the North Melbourne town hall clock chime mid-night, and I instinctively rise and dress. I cloak myself, lace my doc martens, and slip quietly out the front door. 

I wander as if sleepwalking along Pin Oak Crescent, and soon find myself at the foot of a housing estate tower on Racecourse Road.  I see a cluster of people huddled in the children’s playground. I walk towards them. Now, I can hear them chanting. They’re gathered cross-legged between slides and swings. I take my place in the centre – my bum-cheeks comfortably nestled in the sand. They pass a terracotta mug from hand to hand, sniff its contents and continue to chant. I can’t see faces or body shapes but I know that there are women, children and men in this group. They’re all cloaked, as I am.

The chanting reverberates through my skull and I bow my head. My body churns. A scream forms in my throat, and I hear a voice pierce the night like a spear.

All is quiet.

I’m handed the clay vessel and cup it in both hands. I alternate sipping and inhaling the slippery fluid, savouring its potency. This life giving elixir, this antidote to my malaise – distilled banana – is as familiar to me as my own skin. The group closes in and releases my cloak and suddenly all hands are touching me. They whisper, “Relax Mary-Ann, let yourself go, open yourself up to the every present spirit.” They rub oil into my skin and I know I’m unpeeling, engorging, erupting.

I bow and give thanks to the gathering and according to custom I leave with haste and discretion.

Auntie Carrie has been gushing like a tapped spring ever since the resurgence of my gift, and today she’s skipping about the house sealing the last of the boxes and sweeping up the detritus of our former life. The removal van arrives. We climb into the EH Station-wagon and wind down the windows, saluting the ‘for sale’ sign that’s overshadowed by the old family home.   I’m humming like a bee.

            While driving, I mentally formulate the recipe for our first batch of Life Tincture – purified banana oil infused with honey essence. Like rap artists and their nursery rhymes I rehearse a spell and cackle with wry jubilation.

A bubble of excitement rises in my chest when the Big Banana comes into view. I prod Auntie Carrie on the shoulder, noticing the outline of evaporated dribble on the upholstery, and she awakes. “We’re here,” we say in unison. There’s the old building, the relics of a perfume distillery, soon to become Humming Bee Apothecary, our potion factory, (Aunt Carrie has insisted on cleaning products as a side business). Neighbours and passers-by – rainbow-patterned, north-coast hippies and nature lovers – have gathered to greet us.

We climb from the car and I throw open the bulging boot. We have a lot of unpacking to do and work to begin before the sun sets and the fun starts. Aunt Carrie proudly hands me her latest prototype for the cleaning ‘accessory’ range – a svelte spotted-gum handle with mungo bush broom, discretely fitted solar panels and a silent motor. I’m no longer a lost and lonely Girl Friday. I’m no longer the pied piper without a flute.

“Lives,” I say to Auntie Carrie, “are a many splendid and varied thing.”

If a tree stands in the forest

Otway ash

Erect mountain pole

Topped and cosied by

a crocheted limey hat.

A seemingly screaming rip from high

An eeling strip of bark headlong tail trailing

falls      …..    silence waits

It snags, now drapes

Otway tree is off the shoulder trimmed by a peasant shawl

Otway ash

Majestic mountain pole

Aquaduct rooted 

is to all seasons enthralled.

A puddled path twists past.

Fluoro scare-signs

alert humans to CATASTROPHE!

Snakes leap, stick figures trip off cliffs

and falling rocks smash heads

Otway pole

Tea cosied

Shawl wrapped

is home to Powerful Owls.

Archaic nature has made scenery

Shy mushrooms suckle

a lichen padded branch

Sneaky crevices surrender to a shifty shard of light.

These shoes leak

A fern frond shivers, drips

expires a mouldy sigh

Erect ash pole

is inured to time and reason

in a place where

person presence is pointlessly prosaic

The forest is still, unadorned

                        and no sounds exist but for ears.

Sililoquy

Poems seek a home

for reason.

When the bent mind has nowhere to go,

it begs a soliloquy.

Words, peripheral cacophany, hatched voices,

flaccid sentiments

I’ve never seen such beautiful eyes, he says.

You’ve never seen someone this sad, says she.

There's no inspiration formulae

The moon is paper boating at sea.

A silent annoyance.

Life forges a fist, servant to seasons.

These Climes, This Shore

Stuffed full

Of white privilege;

Brained by the Big Easy

And gorged on an ocean view

The great Aussie lifestyle

Humidifies, rotisseries ‘til your

Dermis is pork-crackling

Innards, a secret stew.

Pumped up

With insulation

To buffer the heat and spill

Of a bigger world.

Buoyant, you

Jog that petite arse off

On a freeway of

Earplugged mime artists.

This is everyday.

Your feet on the path

Where you left them,

Your mind set loose on a wave.

But the same remains;

The same abyss-mal fact always

Remains.

Off a flat earth country

Of wide insouciant days

You will fall.

By choice and fate

You were shored up

And will be

Dumped by the sure.

Life Long Malaise or a Passing Phase?

        Hello and welcome. Come in and take a seat. No one's sitting on that island sized pudding shaped, pillow topped lounge. Throw yourself down. It's set to an almost imperceptible vibration, exuding an obscure aromatherapeutic sea scent subtly suffused with sandalwood. It won't bite. Nor will I.
        What's brought you here tonight? Bad TV? Family tension? An addiction to trolling, a compulsion about an allure of the thing that will ignite you.
I have nothing like it to offer, besides a simply waxed lyric about my ordinary life.
        Yesterday I had lunch with a human who is wise and whose brain I like to pick over like a bower bird. Let's call her Barbara. We discussed others who've lead exciting lives, have degrees of fame and stories worthy of at least three kilos of limes under a decent spot light, unlike we lady luncheonettes, at least as yet.
        This segue, having no other purpose but transition, leads to this blog's central theme, story telling.
What is a story's life well led? What comes first the person or the situation?
Dear blog reader, you are reading something that isn't a story at all. You might have desisted after the first paragraphs and yet I still address you. This reflecting the import and nature of stories. Am I toying with you or myself?
        What constitutes a story worth reading? Certainly not a chain of exciting, adventurous events, if there is no moral or heroic attainment. Surely a message explicitly rendered or inwardly launched by the reader. Maybe a toyed with desire activated by the protagonist desperate but constantly thwarted, terribly beguiling efforts, promised, lost, reignited, foiled and finally redeemed. But what about stories infused with erroneous social discourses that draw us up and away, like an alien abduction that we'd rather resist if it wasn't happening in our dreams, but yet it did.
        Today I attended a 'telling your story' forum for people who have an experience of mental illness. Dunno if you've noticed, but most stories about people with this type of illness are characters who are necessarily equipped with axes, have substituted words for screaming, laughter, gibberish, who smell like urine and are drenched by their own drool. My daughter noticed once, when we were travelling to Sydney that I had dribbled on the pillow propped against the window. I guess that explains everything.    
I have a diagnosis of Major Depression and Anxiety. I couldn't be violent to stand up for myself. Some of my work colleagues have diagnoses for illnesses that sometimes cause psychosis, and they wouldn't know an axe handle from a broom stick.
        Today's workshop was about telling stories, our stories, so that people hear a new perspective. Here's one:
"After two months of treatment in an acute psychiatric ward, I was a last well enough to have my small children visit. I'd missed them terribly and was very excited. The nurse thoughtfully organised a comfortable and neatly furnished room. She asked if I would like soft toys, paper and crayons so that my kids would feel welcome. It was a wonderful visit; the kids were obviously relieved to know that I was getting better. I was so buoyed up and hopeful that I'd be going home soon.  After this I kept getting better, and my kids visited often. .............NOW. I will tell you what really happened. ........ After two months of treatment for bipolar disorder in an acute psychiatric ward, I was at last well enough to have my small children visit. I had missed them so terribly much, and was very excited. The psyche nurse came to see me, an hour before their visit and told me that my mood was 'heightened'. Of course it is, I said, I'm in a great mood because I'm seeing my kids today. The nurse insisted that my heightened mood was dangerous and that I should take a sedative. I knew that sedation would render me incapable of being present with my kids and that this odd state would be confusing and upsetting for them. I said no. I refused to take the sedative. My refusal was seen as non-compliance. The visit was called off. I was put in isolation and forcibly given a sedative. I was kept there for seven days and during this time my mood plummeted into a dreadful life obscuring depression. The progress I'd made in recent weeks was undone. I spent another awful month in the psychiatric ward, worrying about my children whether life could ever improve."

Here's another one. "Once upon a time, there was a girl who suffered for twenty-five years with the most awful bouts of depression and social anxiety. Those who noticed ignored her, assuming she that was annoyingly aloof. When she asked doctors for help, they told her she should try harder, even though she was striving every day just to stay alive. They were happy to prescribe antibiotics for her brother, an asthma treatment for her sister, and a plaster cast for her friend's broken arm. And yet nobody responded to obvious signs as she hung on through critically unwell, life threatening periods. Until one day, by fluke, a clever doctor showed an interest in the girl's humanity and simply inquired about what she was experiencing. This doctor bestowed a diagnosis and a tablet. That little tablet provided a perfect synthetic substitute for the chemical her brain neglected to produce. At long last, the girl could express herself socially, pursue a career and discover that life was worth living. She is living mostly happily ever after.
THE END

Homelands

Guilt rightly stirs under the surface, in tension with the spiritual connection I have to the land I grew from. It never was mine, nor my ancestors' land. People lurking in my past stole it, and the fate of its owners has been tragically obscured by a whitewashed history. But part of me is firmly rooted in Muckatah and the region where, after famine and centuries of dispossession in Ireland my family set their sights on hope for a future. It's dug deep inside me.
    In dreams I try to climb Murray River Pines, I pick around in the dead animal pit, searching for real 'jacks' that I'll paint and show off at school, I scoop out a handful of frogspawn from a lichen topped swamp. Mostly in my dreams I'm visiting Grandma in her little house, and climbing onto her bench so I can reach the biscuit tin.
    Last weekend I was invited to what I imaged was a hokey, daggy literary awards' presentation in Shepparton, a small city where as kids, Mum would twice yearly take us to buy our seasonal garments (from Target and Venture). I was shortlisted for the short story category and Rob encouraged me to attend - so I split my indifference by suggesting that we make a weekend of it, visiting my parents in Cobram, only 40 minutes north of Shepp'.
    My yearning for the homelands resounded in doppler as we drove past our old farm, Pinedale, on the road to Cobram.  In 2000 - after the farm being handed from father to son for 125 years -  Mum and Dad sold up and retired to town. I've never been back.
 
    On Saturday it just so happened that my dear deceased Grandma's brother, Great Uncle Peter Lawless, was celebrating his 90th birthday. So Rob and I went along with Mum and Dad. The party was held at the farm first settled by my grandmother's mother's parents - Kennedys - whose many decedents still dwell close by. The Lawless farm is only 20 kilometres from Pinedale but I'd never been there. Dad said he hadn't been there since he was five years old.
   The landscaped changed as we drove. The lush irrigated pastures vanished, and enormous tracts of wheat crops extended out to the horizon. Tumble weeds and old abandoned buildings set the scene of a bygone era, and then an enormous bank of silos appeared, and behind them football sized sheds full of cropping machinery and vehicles came into view.
    Crossing verdant buffalo grass lawns and a lavish rose-garden we followed the chimera of voices, finding the afternoon party in a converted garage, next to a cheaply built modern house.
    We sipped bubbles and beer and chatted with blue-eyed obviously Lawless cousins, proffering anachronistic updates. Uncle Peter, like his sister, shared snared me with his perverse sense of humour.  Unlike her, being a non-smoker, and still alive, he's fit enough to play three rounds of golf every week.
    In the loo out the back, a Murphy's Law poster hung in pride of place. I thought about the odd twists and turns of fortune and circumstance; and the wee refrain my own luck and misadventures was drowned out by a cacophony of history swelling up from the very soil.
    I imagined my grandma, frolicking through the crops with pigtails flying, on the first weekend of summer.

   On Sunday morning we headed south again, to Shepparton. This time Mum and Dad tagged along, with expectant pride. My Shepp' based aunt and uncle also joined us for literary feastings.  Low and behold, I was bestowed with First Prize for my story 'To The Light', (my first win since Grade 2 at the Cobram show). Surprise and an awkward speech betrayed my subplot of confused guilt.
   The annual award has been funded for almost 20 years by the good old Furphy family foundry, another family with a history and passion for farming, engineering and writing, bringing resolve to a wonky but near perfect weekend narrative highlighting the constancy and curiosity of Irish settlers in country Victoria. Such is life.

Karma poos

Summoned mythical figures conspire

M

O

N

E

Y

auspiciously offered can pay the cat's vet bill

At home proud

Lovingly patting feeding and coquetting

the cat my foot finds

poo

vomit

on my best rug

Numbers so divinely

            +

 are absurdly

            -