Anth 60 Melb2syd (final Instalment "in Transit")

Thrzdi 30/6/05. Melbourne (Miller st, West Melb. 11.30am) → E (raind orl th wai) → Sale (1 4 th rode) → Lakes Entrance (4.30 pm. I 8 n peese of Ling & 2 skolps & H had n filt of Royal Basa (mprtd frozn ← Burma) 4 $10 th lot) → Nungurner (c ‘16/2/04 – 27/2/04’ p7)(4 xtra t nxt 2 th darknn lake. I put 2 much chili (sum1 had givn H 2 whch r O like smorl tmatoze wth vry smorl hot blak seedz) ↓ my nstnt noodl soop. Lso had sum pkld mshroomz (Zorka (c ‘13/9/05’ p1) → me via Frank) whch I think wer Slipri Jaks & Safrn Milk Kaps) → Metung (wer I m ritin this ntri wth th help of a Tooheys OLD Black Ale; buv th bar thr iz a 9 ft Marlin; 2nite weel sleep eethr x th Tambo rvr (O 3kz wai)(c ‘16/2/04 – 27/2/04’ pp4-5) or ← Nungurner Jetty (O 6 kz wai). Th yung barmn korld H “darl” – I think it must b her br& new shorti hairkt. (You’ve got to be joking – he’s probably gay and/or says it to all the old ladies to give them a thrill). They hav giness n tap & Im drinkn 1 n frunt of th fier wth H.) Frdi 1/7/05. Nungurner (larst nite (2nite Il lisn 2 th pize vs port game) @ 8 pm wen most ozee-z setld ↓ 2 TV w went 2 bed 2 th muzik of chernn H2O @ ↓ of th c worl whr w wer parkt, l8r az th wind ↓ it bkame a lapn & x mornn it woz silnt but woz rplaist x th p@rin of rain & then sum mgpize worbld. W ddnt get wai til 9.45 am (ftr ‫ → ))ףצשئלצ‬Lakes Entrance (red ppr (The Age (lrjst fresh H2O fsh (a kind of k@fsh) evr rkrdd woz kort in th Mekong rvr & eetn x vljrz); Waleed Aly (29/9/05. Amir Butler haz su-m good •s n 2daez Herald Sun (‘Our security overkill’ p19) & n n rtkl (‘This is not the way to fight terror’ p15) n The Age DkAeVnInDeStOhN sez : “Surely the best way to deal with terrorism is to drain the swamp of injustice that the West has created in the Middle East in the interests of cheap oil and support for the continuing Is-raeli occupation of Palestine territory beyond the green line – in defiance of the UN. ¶ If Australia made it clear that it supported a staged withdrawal from Iraq behind a genuine UN (preferably Muslim) peacekeeping force, the return of Iraqi oil to Iraqi control and a decent agreement between Israel and the Palestinians based on the 1967 borders, this would do far more to prevent a terrorist bombing of an Australian city than the divisive legislation proposed by the Howard Government.”) rote a good rtkl O how muzlmz r bein nfairli hrast (iz thr a linkj btween ASIO lorz (22/9/05. ← The Age (28/9/05. ← The Age (letrs) p16 : “Australians all let us recoil / for we have no id-ea ./ We go to war for wealth and oil, / our home is girt by fear.” – Ben Pearson, Belgrave.) x Sushi Das: “Right now ASIO and the Federal Police can raid anyone’s home at any time and drag them away against their will, interrogate them, strip-search them and hold them for as long as they can get repeated warrants. The detained pers-on has no right to know why he or she is being questioned. Under the Government’s new proposals, measures are more draconian. ¶ Politicians have allowed these changes because too many people have been complacent. It seems most Australians have accepted the erosion of their civil liberties. When there is inertia of thought among people, freedom faces its greatest menace. ¶ As long ago as 1852, orator and columnist Wendell Phillips said : “Eternal vig-ilance is the price of liberty.’’ How vigilant are Australians? How much do they care about their liberty?”) & FASCISM (29/9/05. ← jrnl of William L. Shirer, 21 September 1940 (Berlin): “X came up to my room in the Adlon to-day, and after we had disconnected my telephone and made sure that no one was listening through the crack of the door to the next room, he told me a weird story. He says the Gestapo is now systematically bumping off the ment-ally deficient people of the Reich. The Nazis call them ‘mercy deaths’. He relates that Pastor Bodelschwingh, who runs a large hospital for various kinds of feeble-minded children at Bethel, was ordered arrested a few days ago be-cause he refused to deliver up some of his more serious mental cases to the secret police. Shortly after this, his hos-pital is bombed. By the ‘British’. Must look into this story.”)? btween BAXTER & CONCENTRATION CAM-PS? btween GUANTANAMO & GULAG? )) sloli in th pub then bort a peese of flake (Gummy Shark) eech @ th fsh shop; bort petrl) → Cann River (1 4 th rode (c ‘16/2/05 – 27/2/05’ pp 13-14); chekt mesj bank (K8 sor a Shrike-thrush & sum King parots)) → E then N → Eden in NSW (serv of fsh eech @ th koop (me – fl@hd (Tiger), H – flake (Pearl Shark aka Platypus Shark); m ritin in th pub (The Great Southern Hotel) & feel knfdnt Il cheev a stile whch iz dens n nfo & maib meenn but Oi uselss & nkmp1

rhsbl (1/10/05. & iem skseedn – KsAuBzAeItLtAe sed sh nli red th bit ← IN TRANSIT n ‘13/9/05’ az sh koodnt ndrst& th rest); l8r wl park @ th mouth of th Nullica rvr & Il drink n stubi of SHEAF STOUT & maib (if itz not 2 kold) wl → beech. S@rdi 2/7/05. 1.30 pm @ th Bermagui Beach Hotel-Motel (c ‘7/2/02 – 22/2/02’ p8) whch lso haz a normus stuft Marlin (az did th fsh ko-op whr I bort n peese of John Dory & H got flake (th boy ddnt no wot kind) 4 a O of $9.90) buv th vranda of th pub. Larst nite w wr in bed @ 7 pm & ths mornn ↑ @ 9 am → Tathra (red ppr (yes thei r hasln muzlmz 4 no betr reezn than th@ thei r rljs tradshnlsts – 0 whch kood leed 2 chrjz) & I 8 n fshbrgr in th Wharf Café 2 th sound of H2O growln gnst th pylns. A boi manjd 2 get hiz spinr hookt n me trowzrz & H had 2 get a wire snipr ← th kafé to kut th hook. → Bermagui (m drnkin a skoonr of Coopers Sparkling ) …. → Bawley Poi-nt (a … z tells me he wants me to do some entries “for your font”) where the waves are rolling evenly onto the beach at the end of the reserve where we will spend the night. Its obviously been raining a lot up here as there is water lying on the surface in the paddocks. Its green, quiet and muted, as befits winter by the sea. Three (30/9/05. 2) things a…z left out – there was a pod of about 10 dolphins at Eden in the distance from the wharf, Collingwood beat Port Adelaide on Fri-day night, and a kid with a fishing line caught his trousers on Tathra wharf, which necessitated an operation with some pliers. Is that what fly fishing is? (only kidding, it was actually near his knee). It gets dark quickly and early this time of year. It was deep dark last night at 5.15, which prevented a walk on the beach. Sunday 3/7/05. A slow start – watched the volunteer fire service version of “Dad’s Army” practicing putting out a fire in the toilet block – good fun was had by all & they were going to follow up with a snag sizzle & a few ales. They each get $63 a year and free entry to N.Ps for their efforts. Walked from Pretty Beach (30/9/05. Thr iz n br& nue parks meetr thr whch charjz u $7 just 2 park yor kar wiel u go 4 n →) for a couple of hours under a clear sunny sky. My thought for the day on the walk was that, though fundamentalist Muslims here should not be harrassed by ASIO or treated as terrorist suspects when there is no evidence of such activity, the fact is that all fundamentalist faiths have these things in common : the desire to impose their orthodoxy on others, contempt for other re-ligious groups, patriarchal and often negative attitudes to women and a belief that it is a morally righteous imperative to work actively to change the world to their own image of it. They are all (Islamic, Christian, Jewish, Hindu) dan-gerous & their spokesmen (Bush, Sharon (26/9/05. rljs?), the Ayatollahs, bin Lade-n (26/9/05. rljs?)) make me extremely uneasy. Though Western civilization has degenerated & is deeply flawed, it still upholds the theory (though certainly not the practice – the Hicks experience in Guantanamo proves that) of the rule of law, the rights of citizens, and the value of democracy, (16/9/05. Howard’s new proposals will destroy even the theory) as well as freedom of religion, and those are the values which the extremists of all persuasions find outrageous. We shouldn’t harrass the Muslims, but perhaps we do need to be always constantly aware of the fundamentalists and the lack of freedoms they stand for. A drink and view at Mollymook Golf Club with the paper. Now settling in for the night at Currurong, where the clear sky means a cold night. Mundi 4/7/05. Stayin here 4 th dai. → bed @ 7 pm larst nite & ↑ @ 10 am 2dai. Wv bn here b4. I did n majr ARTE POSTALE projkt ovr 1½ weeks yeerz go from wch rtklz → my own & my kidz +rsz wer held bak. On th@ kazion I → th shorz & snorkld (up 2 5 hourz in H2O in a dai), fotode rstrkshn (22/9/05. u r spoezd 2 wotch owt 4 ppl dooin stuf like th@ now & REPORT (28/9/05. sor a gie n th siti ystrdae carrying 2 full bakpaks, 1 n eech sholdr – but ie ddnt rport him) → HOTLINE (28/9/05. c ‘Port Germein’ p15-17)) sinez (sum kan b msntrprtd), bort n dtaeld topo sheet ← th shop, uzd mi bnokularz (•d x 2 Powerful Owl (Ninox strenua)). Sum yeerz l8r I red n n book x Helen Caldicott th@ thr iz a joint US/OZ THEATRE MISSILE DEFENCE PROGRAM bein tstd here. Givn my name (11/10/05. N th larst paej (136 r) of th 3rd koedks of n 13th snchri Hebrew Biebl n th Ambrosian Library n Milan z n pkchr (n th 4m of n wingd grifn) of th priemeevl berd Ziz.) haz a rabk ppeerns if it had bn post Sept 11 I wood hav bn serchd (maib terrrg8d & hens not bn abl 2 dfnd mislf or evn tel H) & probli framed & orl kindz of dfamtri stuf (I uzd n fotoe of 2

Yallourn powr st8shn blchn smoke like n nukulr xplozion 4 1 of mi erli peesz) wood hav bn leekd x guvt jnseez 2 th pres. Th larst sntns waz ntruptd x a 1+ howr knvrs8shn wth n lokl. I wont giv n kkount of it xpt th@ he sez th fsh sold in thez parts az Pacific Dory iz kchrli a speeseez of k@fsh (24/9/05. (GR& FINAL (25/9/05. Cygnus atratus ↓d Aquila audax)) Ystrdi @ th NOVA w sor n dokoe korld ‘Darwin’s Nightmare’ O how Nile Perch (> Barramundi) → Coles sprmrkts & now ie 1t b aebl 2 x eni bkoz if ie eet it iel b rmiendd of th mzri of th ppl on th shorz of Lake Victoria (2nd lrgst (ftr Lake Baikal ie think) fresh H2O laek n th O) in Tanzania hoo k@ch it) mprtd ← Vietnam. He lso sez he herd n Powerful Owl larst nite neer here & thr iz probli n nest az thei r rglrli cn O th rzrv wch iz just bhind a beech korld ABRAHAMS (26/9/05. Th sors of DRUaMlMeOcNDZ stori (c ‘15/4/02 – 26/4/02’ p3) : “There are 12 Tzad-ikim (Righteous People) on earth – only 12. They maintain creation through their righteousness. If ever there’s less than 12, creation will end.” z shorli ← GENESIS ch 18.32 whr god spoek 2 abraham (n n dream? I kant rmmbr thoe I red it nli ystrdi n n kopi of th biebl lent 2 mi x Ross 2 dorz ↓ n Miller st hoo had bn givn it x th armenian paetriark n JERUZALEM) & sed: “I will not destroy it for ten’s sake.” (7/10-/05. giambVaItCtOista (1668-1744) (8/10/05. 1 of th moest ndr8d flosfrz) sed w shood wlkum dark tie-mz az thei prvied n nssri kndshn 4 th mrjns of th h&ful of gr8 men hoo saev mankiend & nisi8 th nue aej.)) BOSOM (12.25 pm) ….. Walked under and over Beecroft Head – first along the rock shelves at the bottom and then across the top via Mermaid Beach and Cos-lango Tunnel, where a fissure in the rocks passes under the headland out to a rock ledge high above the water. Off to Sydney tomorrow. A fishing boat let out a lengthy net but didn’t seem to catch anything, despite seeding the water with chook mash (a local fisherman said they were after garfish). Itz 5.05 & Iv got a botl of SHEAF STOUT waitn ….. Drinkn n botl of stout rapt in a brown ppr bag iz O az stylish az u kan get I rekn & H just rmrkt th@ I look th part. Chuesdi 5/7/05. Currarong → Nowra (shopn) → Camberwar-ra Lookout Café (red ppr; kleer day gave prfkt view of Nowra & Jervis Bay) → Mittagong (ptrl) → Sydney (@ 3 pm; mum iz in good shape 4 a 85 yeer old tho nxt chuesdi sh wil hav a k@rkt takn from 1 eye & in 2 munthz 1 from th uthr; itz 8 pm & sh & H r watchn teli while Im reedn ‘On Photography’ x Susan Sontag givn → mi x K8 (21/9/05. rternd it ystrdae); o yair (nota bene Zorka (hav fnshd th jar of pkld msheez & they wer good – thanx) I 8 BARAVYKAI @ t (3/10/05. th 1z Vaidas uezz 4 th soops hi maeks 4 us @ th galri n chuezdaez r mportd ← russia (hi biez thm n St Kilda)) & dskuvrd thei r th same mshroom th talianz korl PORCINI (ystrdi evnn I notst @ th shop thei sel Basa Dory so I rekn Royal Basa, Basa Dory & Pacific Dory r orl th same fsh). Wnzdi 6/7/05. Ystrdi @ t H dskuvrd th solt had bn pord → shoogr bowl so thr iz no shoogr in th haus. I drank most of a botl of red (Poet’s Corner). Mum sez Matty haz brokn hiz rm & hiz grlfrnd haz panik @ks. Louis duz n dspeern akt wenvr he duznt like sum1 whch iz ftn. I rang Egle & sh sed thei r havn a tuf time. Wr xpktd 4 dinr on frdai 6.30 (just dskvrd th kastr shoogr lso has solt n it). Then rang Rasa & wr @ thr place 4 lunch @ 12 on ☼di. H rang Ben n Ivanhoe hoo woz ← vztn Joe (30/9/05. haz n nfktd pndx) & K8i. He (25/9/05. had 13 stchz n hiz thum n kupl of daez go ftr n ksdnt wth n bush sor wile ktn up n tree) wl giv Joe n drvn lesn on s@rdi. Larst nite n owl hootd x3 klose 2 th haus. I ddnt rkgnize th species – srtainli not a boobook. L8r I dremt I woz bein cheetd x a paki tradezmn – wont go in2 th dtailz of wot woz a long dreem wch I rmmbr in nonsnskl dtail. W r → Balmain whr w wil find a vztrz parkn prmt hidn on th Garricks vranda & thn w r → 2 town x feri …. Epping → Balmain (pik up parkn prmt) → Darling St worf → ($10 1 wai) → Or (x The Age (8 pm bak @ Epping. Thr iz a ful paij rtlk O n xbshn of Diane Arbusz fotoze @ th jwsh muzium in Melb. I red Susan Sontagz ssai on Arbus (I woz n fan) n few daze go : sh kkuzez Diane of bein voyrstk(7/2/05 & itz ntruzif & it steelz a part of th sbjkt) but znt orl fotogrfi?)) → Sydney Dance Co Café (red Age (Rivkin (21/9/05. c ‘13/9/05’ p1) got jail 4 = az Vizard got 0 & I rmmbr th@ Herscu got jail 4 = az Hinze got 0) ovr kofi) → Palisade Hotel (H drank n lmn skwsh & I had n skoonr of James Squire Amber (grl nxt door @ Miller st in Melb iz korld Amber) Ale then it took O ½ nowr 2 get thru $1 on a pokie) → Sydney Observatory → † Sydney Harbour Bridge (8/7/05 1st time I noetst skuriti ga-rdz (both sidez)) → O Lavender Bay → McMahon’s Point worf 4 feri → (saved $10 x not xin tkt) → Thames st worf → van (chkt wth Louis th@ Egle ddnt want parkn prmt ←) → Epping (@ 5.30 mum iz bizee prpairn t (botl of red iz waitn on th tabl 4 mi 2 ↑ kork)). Therzdi 7/7/05. Epping → 3

Balmain (whr 1 of oz prmier bookshps, Pentimento, haz bn rplaist x a Starbucks kofi shop; in Darling st H herd a maitrn tel nuthr 1 th@ sh haz bn ntrstd in kwantum mkaniks 4 yeers) → Sydney Dance Co Café (red ppr; a O klas of vry hapi litl grl dansrz took th room ovr ftr their lesn fnsht) → O th siti ● (H bort n book (‘The Secret Life of Bees’ x Sue Monk Kidd (17/9/05. Highly recommended – if you liked ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ you would probably enjoy it) (8/9/05. I notd thei hav a kopi of n book x rZoWsIe (21/9/05. c ‘13/9/05’ p1) O South Africa & n kopi of ‘Memoirs of Hadrian’ x mYaOrUgRuCeErNiAtRe wch I red b4 leevn Melb ftr a rkmnd8shn x LfOrVaEnCkE (3/10/05. lunch wth him 2dae & then wth Andrea hoo haz big nuez))) 4 mum ) → Balmain (drank n midi of beer & spnt $1 on th pokeez in th William Wallace Hotel) → Epping (5.50) ….. LONDON BLASTS (2/10/05. BALI BOMB )(8.35) – seereez of xploshuns – WHO? (I kan heer it orl on teli in th nxt room az I fnsh rrdn th Susan Sontag book). S@rdi 9/7/05. W kame home l8 ← th Garricks so I ddnt put in a ntri ystrdi. Thrzdi nite slept poorli 1drn how u kood prvnt terrrsts from blowin ↑ trainz (30/9/05. th oz nswr z 2 hras, jael, & tag ppl hoo ASIO think miet doo it (1/10/05. Heer r sum of the peesz : th prmyrz noe w r n targt; HoWARd nshuerd w wood b; hi haz n nstnkt 4 polseez th@ keep nkreesn th chantzez of n vnt (esp sueisied BOMB); w r n targt 4 wot w doo not 4 wot w r; Kiwil& z probli not (….1/10/05. n n rtkl n The Age (‘Insight’ p9) n wch MAhCuKgAhY (3/10/05. nevr bn owt of OZ) •s owt th@ w hav knsntr8d ngzieteez, spshli knomk 1z wch hav bn bildn ↑ oevr meni yeerz b4 sept 11 → TERRRSTS hi fnishz off : “Underst-anding why Australians are likely to embrace these anti-terrorist measures – described even by their advocates as “d-raconian” – is one thing. ¶ Understanding why we see ourselves as a natural target for terrorists is another question altogether. Why us and not, say, Canada, Sweden, France or Germany? Perhaps the answer to that question is self-evident.”) n targt; Émile Durkheim (in 1897 n hiz klask studi ‘Suicide : A Study in Sociology’) roet : “At any given moment the moral constitution of society established the contingent of voluntary deaths. There is, there-fore, for each people a collective force of a definite amount of energy, impelling man to self-destruction. The vict-im’s acts, which at first seem to express only his personal temperament, are really the supplement and prolongation of a social condition which they express externally.”) b4 they doo it). U wood need mor 10sv srvayn than in th Soviet Union or Nazi germni or Saddamz iraq bkoz of th huge mount of moovmnt of goodz n ppl in modrn dmkrtk knomeez. Prhaps th big kmputr th yanx r putn 2gthr wil do th trik but I dont think so. Th nfo stil haz 2 b red x ppl & nfrnsz made from it. Snowd x nfo! Lso th terrrsts mite b 2 smart 4 th progr-mrz. Paranoia (30/9/05. thr z n skool n Melbourne (7/10/05. St Kilda rd woz kloezd ↓ 2dae (9/10/05. Ystrdi it woz n roed neer HoWARdz haus n Canberra & thr woz n fals larm n n airplaen 2 (10/10/05. wiet powdr). (11/10/05. Luenasi z n th air.)) koz n pakj laebld PEACE BOMB woz dlivrd → Nashnl Ga-lri.) whr thei hav 2 doo n mrjnsi vakueaeshn dril (rkwierd x lor) vri 2nd week koz sum1 Oz n saein n B-OMB haz bn plntd) wil work in th terrrst faivr. Th uthr reezn I slept poorli woz koz I eet 2 much wile th por of th O sleep bad koz thei r hungri. Then : Epping → Balmain (whr w bort a $15 eech orl dai tikt 4 fereez, trainz & busz; th oz & brjnl flagz (26/9/05. N 1895 Theodor Herzl roet n n letr : “You might ask mockingly : ‘A flag? What’s that? A stick with a rag on it?’ No sir, a flag is much more. With a flag you lead men … for a flag, men live and die. In fact it is the only thing for which they are ready to die in masses, if you train them for it.” (underlining mine – he forgot to mention that many more women, children and old people tend to do the dying for it (30/9/05. 4 mor n flagz c ‘3/4/04 – 12/4/04’ p8 & ‘→ (no 1)’ p10 (8/10/05. & ’21/3/05 – 25/3/05’ p14))) (27/9/05. hi woz th fownder of modrn zionzm (1/-10/05. & n dandi & n xslnt feuilletonst, n stiel (8/10/05. dspiezd x KkRaArUlS) wch haz nfluenst mi))) on th brj wer @ ½ marst (wer thei @ ½ marst wen th yanx dropt th BOMB (↓ hovrn helkptr) on th kro-wd on mrket dai in Fellujia? do thei get ↓d wen suiside bomrz blow ↑ bus loads of polees rkrutes or shiites @ prair in BAGHDAD?)) → Or (The Age) → Sydney Dance Company Café (reed it) → Rocks (sor a vri nststn xbshn of videoze of marjnl ppl in a shanti town korld Kϋba neer Istanbul x AkTuAtM-lAuNg (th lngwj th@ SsOuNsTaAnG ywzz (itz wot sh iz best @) 2 tork O AdRiBaUnSe iz prtklrli ywzfl 2 tork O ATAMAN xpt he iz a mor simpthtk voyerstk vewr but les voyerstk than w wer) → Muzeum of Contemporary Art (4 mor ATAMAN) → (feri)← Manly → Bal(11/9/05. & wiel w r heer, laedeez & jntlm4

n, lets porz 4 n wiel n th vri ● of Balmain so I kan prznt → u th FINAL psoed ← IN TRANSIT, werd 4 werd gzakli az it hapnd n th book, az this iz whr it gets srius : “Meanwhile, once upon a time or never, against all probability and nature, after being locked in battle with morons, androids and facsimilies and with metal plates and a transceiver embedded in my head I got off the train at Sydney Central. My situation was hopeless but not serious. My destination was Balmain where the greenies have taken over the council and the brownies have taken over the streets. ¶ I cant tell you about that either. Not right now. The old woman, the defacto’s, calling and she means business. ¶¶ ‘Hi sweetie. Put away the scribbling and let’s have a bit of action!’ ‘What do you mean, honey bun?’ ‘I want a screw.’ ‘Haven’t got one. How about a wing-nut or a packet of nails?’ ‘I mean a fuck, shithead.’ ‘Is that how they teach you at the centre? Not exactly the way I would have thought a lady social worker would talk.’ ‘They don’t teach me anything. I set up the place, bird brain.’ ‘Hey honey go easy, you’re coming on a bit strong. I’m a snag remember.’ ‘ Listen you little poof, are you going to give it to me or not?’ ‘ Hang on, hang on take it easy. How about tomorrow? I’m not sure if I’m ready. You’re scaring me honey.’ ‘That’s because female sexuality frightens you. Men can’t cope with a woman’s passion. Relax, toy boy. Drop your pants and show us your prick.’ ‘I don’t know if I want to honey. I’d really like to get back to the writing. I was about to do a bit about my childhood, I mean my youth.’ ‘What d’ya mean – ya don’t know if ya want to? You got one or haven’t you got one? Next you’ll be telling me you’ve got a headache.’ ‘I don’t think I can get an erection. You’re so aggressive.’ ‘It’s time you learnt a modern woman gets what she wants.’ ‘I think you’re a fruitcake.’ ¶¶ How can I write under that kind of duress? It had been my intention to describe my sojourn in Balmain, Sydney in some detail. Sure I was already O.T.S (on the skids) in the train and I.D.T. (in deep trouble) from the day I was born to a sanitary engineer and a woman in black. But it is in Balmain that I H.R.B. (hit rock bottom). Now that I have reached an age where my feet are the only part of me that are still alive I can tell you in all humility that I have never been I.T.F. (in top form) since and as for the reputedly euphoric experience of being O.A.R (on a roll) well …. I’m just a simple Greek boy of Armenian descent … suffering is my lot. It is no easier to describe my stay in Sydney than the train journey. And for the same reasons. On the train I crossed the Rubicon and in Sydney the pieces were rearranged. I mean the pieces of my personality. In that sense you could say that it is in Sydney that I T.T.C. (turn the corner); not that you would have thought it if you’d seen me. These rational insights have come to me with age and after considerable well meaning medical intervention. ¶ time reconciles / all futures and / all pasts // a broken spear / cinders in a cave / shadows in rock / show how // in time / the hunter and the hunted / will become alike ¶ I don’t know how long I was there. It could have been days, weeks or an eternity. There was no order to the events that took place. Order comes from the regular pattern waking and sleeping impose on time. During the time I spent in Sydney I never slept, not even once. Not even in that magnificent institution by the shores of Rozelle. I pretended I was asleep otherwise they would have pumped me full of drugs. For all I know I am still there now – staring into the dark, listening. ¶ Enough melodrama, let’s get to the facts. When I got Dick O’Toole to take me to the station it was because I intended to land on my aunt in Balmain. I had no particular liking for her or her family or for anyone come to think of it but they were the only relatives we had in the country and I had been there with my mother a couple of times before. There was an aura about them. They were a sophisticated branch of the family, according to my mother anyway. They had a little overweight black pug called Floyd who wandered about the house wheezing and farting. They were always fretting that it might find its way out into the backyard which was about 10ft x 15ft and get a heart attack from seeing a cat. Their shelves were full of ‘how to’ books: how to cook, how to love, how to make money, how to bring up children, how to stop worrying and start living, etc. Outside their front gate just off Darling Street in a side alley barely wide enough for two cars to pass each other stood their shiny Range Rover. You guessed it – they were mega yups. She worked for the government as a grief counsellor and he was a big wheel in PR. They had two daughters about my age who went to private school and had already learnt posh talk. You can understand how my mother and I held them in awe. Gilbert Rd. Coburg doesn’t stack up well against Darling St. Balmain. To my mother’s eternal shame everyone knew that her hubby, that old prick the sanitary engineer, was in fact a simple shitologist employed by 5

the Werribee Sewerage Farm with hundreds of others to sort out the straight turds from the bent ones. Compared to the Balmain super trendies we were just your ordinary garden variety of Greek. Curiously enough my brothers Con, Jim and Arthur, or whatever their names are, all became millionaires and lead lives of style I’m told. Con runs massage parlours, Arthur’s an embezzler and Jim the brain surgeon owns a string of funeral parlours. Meanwhile one of the posh cousins married a hairdresser and the other one works in a shop. Life is strange. ¶ I can’t remember how I got to my aunt’s place but I think I walked across the waters past pier one two and three directly to the Darling St. ferry stop. ¶ when the multitude had eaten / he was asked by one of the disciples / who would look after the people / when he was gone // Jesus / who had sought refuge by the lake / saw the crowd in the distance / and said // when I leave / brother will fall out against brother / son will disown father / bread will become stone / even the marriage wine / will turn into vinegar // and yet / if they are to enter the kingdom of my father / the restless will not find peace / and the starving will not be fed ¶ I too had developed strange powers which I attribute to lack of sleep, a method I recommend to all would be water walkers. Whether I got there the same night or a day or two later or never I don’t know but I did not feel welcome. The two daughters looked at me as if I belonged in a zoo. The husband kept whispering to my aunt behind his hand as if I couldn’t see what was going on. I suppose I was dishevelled and starey eyed. He looked constipated. My aunt took me sightseeing along the harbour because I was such an embarrassment to them in the house. In a park near Thames St. wharf she went into a loo and I just kept walking along the shore. Every now and then I’d step onto the water just to see if I could still do it. I never darkened her and her silly daughters’ doorstep again. ¶¶ ‘Hi shithead how about a root?’ ‘That has to mean that you’re a mathematician, a horticulturalist or a starving bush pig.’ ‘It means I am a woman who knows enough about herself to know what I like and am comfortable about expressing my desires. Give me the banana, I’m hungry.’ ‘Hang on while I nick down the fruit shop. Be back in a sec.’ ‘Forget it. Give me the zuchini, I wanna cook if for ya.’ ‘For chrissakes I’m trying to finish a book!’ ¶¶ Balmain citadel of yuppiedom! I paced your narrow winding streets day and night for an eternity or for three weeks. Each day I became more dishevelled and I hadn’t started out tidy. I walked up and down Mort St. (birth place of the A.L.P.) until the cops started taking an interest. I saw Neville Wran’s (who proved that hypocrisy is the vaseline of political intercourse) old primary school. I sat at the foot of the first world war memorial opposite the Unity Hall Hotel in the middle of the night. And most of the time I couldn’t even tell if it was day or night. ¶ the other day / I met / old father time himself // instead of wearing black / he dressed in shimmering white // I’ve always seen / the scythe before / but never seen / the hour-glass // he tipped it / back and forwards / like jewels / in a vase ¶ Once I walked smack bang into my two cousins in a small market in a converted church yard. The crowd hemmed us in so there was no way I could beat a retreat. I stood in front of them stuttering with embarrassment. I needn’t have worried – I had chang-ed so much they didn’t recognize me. Another time I walked past my aunt who didn’t recognize me either. I saw her hubby fleetingly driving past in his shiny car. I kept seeing my brothers in their exp-ensive automobiles and my father’s back as he disappeared around a corner ahead of me. On a cou-ple of occasions I died. ¶ In memory of my loved son / who died before his time / and on the gr-ave / the grass has grown to seed / the gravel path is / like a country scene // sleep well / my child / you’re in the company of friends ¶ Balmain, home of the 4-wheel drive, stomping ground for Ultimate Yuppy. It didn’t take long to learn, distressed and distracted though I might have been, that this was one suburb where you can’t afford to take your eyes off the ground. They don’t call it the Pa-ris of the south for nothing. And as for walking the streets at night well … As I say I didn’t sleep over this period. At first I didn’t eat either. After a week or so I was getting hungry and then ravenous. One night I saw a rich yup wearing a silk cravat totter out of an expensive restaurant in Darling St., lean against the bonnet of his sports car and regurgitate into the gutter. There were some sizeable chunks of food in that lot. I’ll leave the rest to your imagination. A few days later I was scraping a squashed seagull off the road when I put my hand into my back pocket to discover that I was rich. The $150 I had taken with me from home was still there. ¶ The lobster eats refuse / from the ocean floor / its flesh / is the purest of all // I ate the white flesh of a lobster / and my body 6

turned rank // the bat eats sweet fruit / in the tropical night / its flesh / is rank // I ate the bat / my body was sweet // so / thinking myself to be a wise man / I ate both bat and lobster / then ceased eating altogeth-er // as I sat in my room starving and poisoned / a healer came by / with a little bread / he took away the hunger / with a little wine / he took away the pain ¶ I got drunk and joined a gay and les-bian Pride Day parade. The brothers and sisters put their arms over my shoulders and for the first ti-me in my life I felt loved. With the exception of my relatives I had not spotted a moron, or oxymoron since I had begun the feral life although there was no shortage of midgets, hunchbacks, gnomes, go-blins, hobledehoys and mannikins in the parks along the waterfront after dark. The receivers in my head had fallen silent on account of the highly spiritual plane on which I was living. After the parade I bought some dope at a hookers and deviants ball and walked across the harbour to Lavender Bay in a state of deep peace. I shared a joint with a couple of old timers fishing off a little pier near Luna Par-k and they passed around a flagon consisting of plonk, dieseline and paint thinner. In the middle of the night when my companions had fallen into a profound slumber in the ferry shelter I suddenly exp-loded into a huge ball of flame that lit up the entire neighbourhood. I had burst into spontaneous com-bustion. There were no witnesses. ¶¶ ‘That’s a load of bull.’ ‘No really, it’s made of rubber. Grafting it on was the hardest part.’ ‘Keep the sex-change crap for your book. I’m interested in the real thing. Does it stretch?’ ‘Sure does. And it bounces.’ ‘Why is it black?’ ‘It’s dyed that way, with vegetable dye, makes it look bigger.’ ‘It’s humungous. Reminds me of a truncheon. I’m getting the hots already. I ho-pe it’s not toxic’. ‘You’re not masturbating again honey?’ ‘Of course not! I’m just exploring my sexual-ity. It’s my body I’m allowed to do what I want with it.’ ‘If I had a set of handcuffs I could put them on and hit you with it.’ ‘Ooooh …. ooh… sounds wonderful.’ ¶¶ Men and women of Australia, and I inclu-de gays and lesbians and perverts, bear with me if at times I adopt a farcical tone. Though these eve-nts took place before my death and subsequent rebirth if they never happen again it will be too soon. They were so intense that I continue to distance myself from them lest like phantoms from the past they rise to claim me. I am no longer the same person now as then. Not the man I used to be, as the defacto never tires of telling me, and I intend to make bloody sure it stays that way. ¶ When you walk / through the / shadow of death // you enter as a beast / and emerge / as a man ¶ When years later or never I told or had meant to tell my mother about my harbourside peregrinations she cried or would have pretended to. Nothing dries quicker than a woman’s tears but I don’t blame her. A family operating on the assumption that its members are generally rational and well disposed to it is extrem-ely vulnerable to any member who is irrational and irresponsible. ¶ I never told her about my meeting with God but she suspects anyhow. ¶ When the Lord knocked on my door / I said / sorry / I have-nt got the time // it is exactly twelve / he said / the last hour / and I assure you / my watch is right // Im sorry sir I said / I dont wish to seem impertinent / but I mean Im busy / Im in a hurry // dont worry / he said / it doesnt matter / I have all the time in the world :// you can take / as much as you please ¶ No no, that’s not how it went. ¶ ‘Welcome to the New World Order of sultans, emirs and cheap oil.’ The words were spoken by a black man in dreadlocks, hippy tunic and beads sitting under a street lamp outside a dilapidated stone toilet along the beach, somewhere north of Ma-nly. ¶ ‘What do I do to get in?’ ‘You got to have a limo, eat Kentucky Fried and watch Miami Vice.’ ‘I haven’t got a car. I walked here on the waters across the harbour.’ ‘Bad luck mate – you’re out.’ Doe-sn’t sound quite right does it? How about this? : ‘It is easier for a rich man to get into heaven than for a poor man to get rich.’ ‘You must be God then. How come you don’t look Italian?’ ¶ Now that’s clos-er. My religious education at Moreland High though strong on participation had left me with the distin-ct impression that Jesus was a blue eyed Italian tenor. How unprepared I was for the real thing. ¶ be-cause / in their cities of steel / and their factories, the people were / lost / and bewildered / they cried out for a leader // the king came / wearing a scarlet robe / a crown of thorns on his head / in his right hand he held / a reed // he walked among them / from city to city / telling them that he had been sent / to bring light / to make the blind see and / the deaf hear / he said they were blind / led by the blind // on his back / they put a wooden cross / and when they led him / to the top of the mountain called / the place of the skull / they gave him vinegar to drink and / cruci-fied him 7

¶ As I said all this happened before I was born. Time is a bastard like that. The toilet next to which the black Christ had sat is no longer there if it ever was. I know because every so often I go there on pilgrimage. In reality but without claiming to have a grip on it I remember or imagine that I do the black Christ who I realized was an aborigine following me into the toilet preaching. ¶ in the beginning was / the Word / in the womb of the word / was a seed / the seed was fertilized by God // the foetus grew till / it became a fish / and the seas were filled with fish / then it became a reptile / so that snakes and lizards / crawled over the land / then it became a bird / so that the skies were full of birds // in the mothers womb / the infants bones / grow silently but soon / the child was kicking at the walls / and finally / man was born // and perhaps / walking along some lone-ly shore / Jesus heard the Word / and the Word said :/ you are my beloved son // but Jesus went about / making the blind see and / the deaf hear / and they did not want to see or hear // they nailed him / to a cross / pierced him with a spear / and gave him vinegar to drink // his to-mb / was made from the echo / of the Word ¶ He must have detected a look of incredulity pass over my face for he drew himself up to his full height and fixing me with a meaningful stare claimed to have walked clear across the Tasman. Which of course would have made him a maori. Though alrea-dy suffering from the attention deficit disorder that afflicts me now I couldn’t help feeling he was simpl-y trying to better my effort of walking across the harbour. He promised to remove the metal plate from my head and to reverse the TV rays back to normal so that they couldn’t again be used as a method of surveillance. He said he would deliver me from my caprophagous existence. All that I had to do was believe in him. Easier said than done. Even with a mind out of sync. and out of touch with my own feelings I had reservations about his credentials. Which made him angry. Waving a petulant fing-er in my face he pronounced ‘I’ve already dug your grave.’ Words that continue to haunt me into my old age. As I leant forward to have a leak supporting myself with the top of my head against the wall above the urinal I heard a deep rumble as of an imminent earthquake followed immediately by a tor-rent pouring over my shoulder. The black Christ had vomited on me. God works in mysterious ways. ¶¶ ‘Grrr … grrr …’ ‘Jeezus, what’s that?’ ‘It’s me your little pussy tail.’ ‘You sound more like a bloody dog.’ ‘You’d know wouldn’t you. I am being a dog. Turn you on a bit.?’ ‘It does not. I make up all that stuff you dork.’ ‘Woof, woof … yap, yap, yap, yap …’ ‘Sit dog, sit …. heel to, heel!’ ‘There you are, whattid I say.’ ¶¶ Which inevitably returns us to Jim who is well settled in White Cliffs by now : a town prone to the vagaries of nature but where since each disaster provides another excuse for a drink ev-ery calamity is treated as a godsend. At this very moment Jim can be found stubby in hand seated at a solid wooden table in the centre of the only room that constitutes Shaky’s dugout. Hans, a miner re-cently arrived from Coober, and Freddy share the table. Shaky is leaning against the kero fridge by the wall. They too are holding stubbies. On the floor next to the fridge is a ‘Swallows’ biscuit tin with its lid open. Inside you can see what appears to be a jumble of candles and assorted plastic packets under a thick layer of grey dust. The packets contain fuses and the candles are sticks of gelignite. A small wooden box on top of the fridge is full of detonators. It and the roof of the fridge are also cover-ed in dust. The room is illuminated by the feeble flame of a lantern placed in the middle of the table. Occasionally the flame flickers casting shadows on the stone walls of the dugout. ¶ Jim, whose drink-ing habits have always been identical to the practices of the locals, is well accepted here and has a-chieved a modest notoriety by knocking off carved emu eggs from the darkies co-op at Wilcannia and selling them to the tourists passing through White Cliffs. The law which allows darkies to collect and sell emu eggs but does not extend the same privelege to the poverty stricken drinkers of White Cliffs is frequently the subject of derision at the pub. It is seen to be a sop to the consciences of townies who want to believe that aborigines still retain a special bond with the land and are itching for excuses to go wandering half naked about the bush. As any drinker will tell you no self respecting darkie from Wilcannia to the Hill would ever go further than a stubby throw from his government supplied landro-ver. The only reason they can find emu eggs at all is because emus are stupid enough to make their nests anywhere including by the sides of station tracks. Trained monkeys could do better. ¶ we are the / forgotten race / we are lost // look for us / in the forests / in the deserts / by the sea // we have no regrets // look for us / in the rainbow / 8

look for us / in the sun ¶ Jim’s line is that he is selling the eggs for a family of darkies who have returned to their ancestral home in the Goyder’s lagoon area. The money is for maintenance to their landcruisers and essential medical supplies he says with a wink and a leer at the other drinkers. The ends of the eggs are spiked with three-corner-jacks and left over an ant’s nest to be cleaned out. The belief that eggs can be cleaned out by ants is the second myth to have spread across the length and breadth of Australia for which Jim is personally accountable. Recently it has begun to crop up in places as far apart as Tokyo and Los Angeles, no doubt the result of well intended promotions by our diligent tourist industry. ¶ Jim is leaning an elbow on the table daydreaming that he is screwing the entire Swanette cheer squad. Since his arrival at White Cliffs he hasn’t had a sniff. His cheek is cupped in the palm of his hand to hide the tattoo, a ha-bit he developed to avoid the attention of the police, though unnecessary here in White Cliffs. Outside a timeless night has descended over the dugouts. ¶¶ ‘I liked that last bit. That was beautiful.’ ‘Well I’m going to go on to describe it in more detail. White Cliffs lay embraced by night as …’ ‘I didn’t mean that you dork. I meant the performance. The ol’ black magic. What else can it do?’ ‘It can nod, it can whistle, it can bow to Mecca, it can poke holes in the ground, and I can shove it up drainpipes.’ ‘ Wo-w! What a humdinger.’ ‘How did that mathematics ex of yours measure up by comparison?’ ‘He was orright before he put everything he had into shares.’ ‘Whats that got to do with it? I would have thou-ght sizes of heads and dicks are much of a muchness from one guy to the next.’ ‘He couldn’t keep it up on days when the allordinaries was down. I got bloody sick of having to read the financial pages to find out if I was going to score for the night. By the way all dicks arent the same. That black one of yours is a bit unusual. I reckon you dyed it to hide the tattoo.’ ‘There aint no tattoo sweety pie; that’s only in the book.’ ‘Don’t get yourself into knots little toy boy. I like it just the way it is.’ ¶¶ My partner, my co-defendant on the stage of life, is like that. Very cute really but since her abortive excursion into the marriage game a little hard and cynical on the surface. And I told her not to mess with the univer-sity types. One good thing is she doesn’t pick up the double strength texta marker nearly as often as before; I might be able to get somewhere with the writing. ¶ If I had a say in choosing the night that was to be the final night I would pick a night like the one that now lies over White Cliffs like a blanket. Normally nights here are clear huge and star studded – metaphysical, desert nights. I’ve described them to you before. Tonight is a soft close night. The stars are obscured by cloud from the north so that there is a hint of humidity in the air. It is an intimate night, almost claustrophobic and still. Imagine that the night is a mother and the town is an infant feeding at her sleeping breast. To the infant the mothers milk tastes as sweet as nectar. It is smiling as it sucks on the breast. The mother in her sleep rolls over onto the suckling child and suffocates it. The infant dies with a smile on its face. ¶ so it is / some have the peace to face death / others seek to be reborn ¶ Unlike other towns the White Clif-fs I am describing emits no light at night. The horrible solar dishes that trap the sun’s brilliance in ord-er to dole it out in pathetically measured doses through half a dozen street lamps have not been erected and probably not even invented yet. Deep inside the dugouts the candles of the troglodytes are too feeble to emit the faintest glow through door or window chiselled out of rock. After the pub generator is turned off at midnight the town becomes invisible. Had you flown over it at an altitude of a mere couple of hundred feet you would not have noticed it. In the dark the last drunk reels from mullock heap to mullock heap as he makes his solitary way towards his hole in the Blocks area. Magically he does not fall down a shaft along the way. He has trod the same erratic path countless times before. His journey is soundless as his tattered sandshoes are cushioned by a layer of dust. There is no one to hear him anyway. He does not notice the angel of death pass directly overhead on silent wings. The angel which is huge is jet black. If it had flown over in daytime the shadow from one wing would have covered the entire town. Its wing beat is silent because the feathers in the wings work on the same principle as the owl’s. Its domain is the whole world and neither the town nor the drunk hold any special significance for it. We must hope that it missed them in the dark. ¶ once again the suburbs are busy / but walk through the gate / in the high hedge / into the cemetery / and there is a hu-sh / of decay / under the slabs // the cars roar by / in the street outside // listen // in the silence / here, here / the dying are still alive ¶ We pick up the action much later. Freddy has 9

stood up and is waving his arms about emphatically. He is near the doorway at the opposite end of the table to Jim. He looks pretty excited but no one’s paying attention. Here is their conversation exactly as it would have been recorded had I left a tape recorder under the table. ¶¶ SHAKY : There’s nothing wrong with yellowbelly if you cook it right. FREDDY : I’m going to blow that cunt up. JIM : I cant remember what one looks like let alone how it feels. HANS : It’s not opal you’re divining for. It’s water. FREDDY : I’m going to blow him up AND the fucken pub. HANS : you don’t get water here except at fault lines. That’s where you’ve got the best chance with opal too. SHAKY : The most important thing is don’t leave the strip of fat along the backbone. Cut it away. HANS : No one’s pretending that it’s the opal that’s moving the rod. It’s the water, always. FREDDY : He thinks he can ban me. Fuck him. SHAKY : I always do em in crumbs. A lot of crumbs. Soaks up more of the fat. FREDDY : That fucken bastard thinks he owns this town. JIM : No one’s getting anything. You can tell by the way their eyes pop out when a bit of tourist fluff walks in the bar. FREDDY : Fuck the pub. Here, give me that dynamite. Wh-ere you keeping the detonators Shaky? SHAKY : Im telling you in this country it’s the bloody best fish. FREDDY : I’ll blow the lot of em up. Yabba dabba do! (three or four dogs stick their heads in the door-way to see whats going on) HANS : If it wasn’t for divining most of this country wouldn’t ave been op-ened up. Watch it with that Freddy. JIM : Only two decent charlies in the whole place and they wont look at anyone except the pipeline mob. Theyd be underage too. Not that anyone gives a shit. FRED-DY : Look at this. Boom. Yabba dabba do. German fuses. When they say ten seconds they mean ten. When they say twenty seconds they mean twenty. Yabba dabba do. SHAKY : The other secrets to cook em slow so as they dry out a bit. JIM : Jeezus Im not particular. They’ll do me just as they are. Beggars cant be choosers. HANS : A good diviner can name his own price at Coober. Wouldn’t count on it Freddy, they’re sometimes in the wrong packet. SHAKY : They’re even better cold. They dry out a bit more in the fridge. Want a piece? Ive still got some leftovers here. JIM : Do I want one? Look at me. Do I want one? Ill have em both. At the same time. FREDDY : Yabba dabba and bullshit. These are german fuses. I’ll show you. When they say twenty they mean twenty. Yabba dabba do! SHAKY : There’s plenty more where this came from. When that swamp at Clancy’s starts drying out you can pi-ck em out of the mud by hand. (Freddy lights the fuse). HANS : Watch it. FREDDY : Yabba dabba do. One, two, three …¶¶ What a temptation. For the second time an opportunity presents itself to write out one of my creations. Everyone’s time has to come sooner or later. Do you remember how cocky he was when he first came in? He knew I couldn’t write him out because Id hardly started the book. Well here we are 200 pages down the track and my friends … Yes friends, I meant that. Having stuck with me this long I think you deserve it. I could call you cock suckers, parents of future child molest-ers, coconuts, assorted shit sorters of Melbourne, dills, cucumbers, fruit loops, round heads … the list seems endless really, but I’m in a mellow mood : the book is drawing to a conclusion. ¶ The question is can I do it? The motive is simple enough: a straightforward thrill killing. You can’t help wondering what it would feel like. Mind you to murder your own character is like murdering your own son. Not that it stopped Suleiman or Peter the Great. They strangled theirs with their bare hands. What I like about it is that it would be a perfect murder with no consequences. You have to agree with Raskolnik-ov that the world would be a better place without Jim. His attitude to sheep and dogs has nothing to recommend it. Rather than a thrill killing we could treat it as an execution, on high moral grounds. I cordially invite my new Melbourne friends to be present at the execution of Jim Brown. The method of execution is by blowing up. It should be quite a spectacle. ¶ But can I go through with it or will it come back ot haunt me as it did the aforementioned Raskolnikov? I am speaking in real time now. Lets face it earlier in the book the temptation to drown M.M. Mallacoota Man was enormous yet in the end I couldn’t bring myself to do it. It wasn’t fate or good judgement or god that saved him that night. It was I that dragged him from the waters. And prior to that it was I that gave him back his sight after he tried to screw the possum. Though Jim and Mallacoota Man are similar I think you will agree that in balance M.M. is the more objectionable. ¶ Even now or never, depending on whether he is alive or dead, M.M. is trying to solve one of life’s trivial problems. As you know it is an irony of his fate that a life devoted to the search for ecstasy and preparation for the end of time is beset by banalities. I want to st10

ress that I am not indebted for the following vignette of M.M.’s degraded existence to Jim Brown or whoever it is that is spreading stories about Mallacoota Man in the backblocks of New South. Jim or his namesake has taken to making the preposterous claim not only that he has known the hermit personally but that he is the hermit’s natural son. He is aided and abetted in the pathetic deception by an alcoholic pensioner living in a boarding house in Edward St. Reservoir who it seems herself hails from Mallacoota. She claims to have been the wife of the tightarse shopkeeper, long since dead, Jim had once believed to be his real father. It transpires according to Jim or his namesake that the old mole if she exists was or believes herself to have been already pregnant to the hermit at the time of her bet-rothal to the shopkeeper. We must believe the shopkeeper a respected business man in the area ei-ther thought he was the real father of the unborn child or felt honour bound to legitimize his betroth-ed’s condition to protect her from public shame. If you go into any pet shop in Australia the resident galah can tell you that virgin births are impossible in the modern materialistic world. Consequently I dismiss the above claims with derision. ¶ Freddy is prancing about like a dervish waving the primed stick of dynamite above his head. Shaky, Hans and Jim are transfixed. Their faces betray no sign of concern but not a single muscle moves or twitches. They realize in a split instant that one word could provide the distraction that makes Freddy trip over himself and drop the dynamite. One, two, three, four ….¶ a tombstone on a cliff / says / here lies a man / crushed by a wave // a cairn in the de-sert / says / this man / was betrayed by the sun // in a cemetery / in a suburb there is / a large tombstone / with the words // here lies the body / of a dearly departed and / distinguished cit-izen / deeply mourned by his / loving wife, children / and grieving relatives // may his soul / re-st in peace ¶ I describe this moment as a split instant but in reality Jim has been catapulted into a di-mension without time. He reviews at leisure his entire past from his days as a small child in his fath-ers shop in Mallacoota to the present moment. He says his goodbyes to his mother and his girlfrien-ds; he says goodby to each of his prison friends in turn; for the last time he surveys with a calm inter-nal smile their ‘wedding’ present to him. He wonders what happens when a charge of dynamite explo-des inside a dugout. The walls of a dugout being stone have no give to absorb a pressure wave. Wo-uld the open door directly behind Freddy make a difference? Would their eardrums burst? What if the roof falls in? Should he dive under the table? ¶ Freddy is prancing about counting – one, two, three, four, five …. ¶ Mallacoota Man is wallking along a crashing surf on his way back to his camp deep in thought as usual. You may be wondering if he’s undergone a sea change since we were last in East Gippsland. ¶ in the womb of a wave / dead men float / waiting / to be reborn as sand ¶ I am plea-sed to report that he has remained true to himself and continues to be essentially the same M.M. Ma-llacoota Man we have come to detest. Here are some of the profound questions he has already grap-pled with today : why are eels, which have been frozen solid, alive after they’ve been thawed out? how do you extract a tick that has attached itself inside your ear, nostril, or up your arse? Why don’t ants die when theyre microwaved? The last has bothered him ever since a series of experiments he performed at a backpacker’s hostel back in Melbourne. ¶ The immediate problem he has to solve however is how to give the slip to the cloud of flies hovering around his head and shoulders and a bigger contingent parked snuggly on the back of his shirt before he gets back to base. If he does no-thing they will follow him all the way home to join the growing numbers already sharing the camp with him. No matter where he makes a camp by the third day it swarms with flies. On one occasion in des-peration he pitched it on the seaward side of a dune and was swamped in the middle of the night by a southerly change. Some of them find their way to his camp unassisted but most, he has come to real-ise, arrive with him when he returns from his daily prowls in the bush. You cant avoid collecting flies in the bush and M.M. spends entire days there. He is too restless to loll about in camp preferring to roa-m the hinterland startling bandicoots, pestering goannas, peering down wombat holes and scratching trees. The flies follow him back right onto the beach and into camp. Once in the camp there is no way of shifting them. Even in a storm they’ll hide under the flap of the tent or under the car to reappear in clouds on the next warm day. ¶ He has tried to give them the slip by a sudden sprint up the beach but flies follow a runner effortlessly. You can get rid of a few if you run into a very strong head wind after first stirring up 11

the ones sitting on your back. When you’re walking into the wind flies always con-gregate on your back for shelter. Another partially successful method which also requires a strongish wind is turning round and round on the spot. As the flies on your back are brought into the wind they rise in a cloud and try to settle on your leeward side, having to repeat the performance over and over. After a while they get sick of this and settle on the sand around you. With a bit of practice you can slo-wly edge away from them while still turning, and then run like hell. Both methods work better if youre naked but on this day M.M. is wearing a shirt because he is sunburnt, and there is no wind either. He is also wearing trousers and a little zip up day pack which he knocked off from an elderly couple cam-ped in a national park half a day’s walk up the beach. ¶ A method that works quite well, though by no means perfectly, and only if you’re naked is to walk into the sea. The flies will follow you out onto the water and hang around in a cloud above your head even when you’re neck deep. But if you swim about for a while so that you get rid of the sweat on your face and in your hair and do a couple of dives and then a long underwater swim you can shake them, as long as you come out of the water well away from where you first went in. Those that leave you over the water after a few dives go back to wait for you where you first went in. This is not a method working for M.M. today because he has to leave his clothes and pack on the shore. He doesn’t want to wear his flannel shirt and jeans into the water in case it gets cool before they dry out. The trouble is that if you leave your gear some of the flies will stay with it from the start and the ones you shake off in the water will head back to it too. When you go to pick it up they’re all there waiting for you. Still it doesn’t do any harm to have a dip. ¶ their hot and bothered faces / cooled by / seaside spray // the tethered people / look towards / the distant boundaries of the sea // their tired minds / are filled with clamourous / seagulls / screeching overhead ¶ After the black Christ finished puking over me in the toilet at Manly I stood in front of the urinal for a long time. I noticed that I had pissed myself. The episode in retrospect has come to represent to me the lowest point of my spiritual anguish. ¶ I told you about the man / who gave all kinds of charming reasons / for carrying a caged bird slung around his neck // actually when I last saw him / he was prancing and leaping about / like a madman doing a rain-dance // the bird (and it wasn’t a song bird) / seemed used to the buffetting / half its feathers were missing / the rest ruffled / and it had a wicked glint in its eye // we were glad to see the last / of both of them ¶ ‘When winter comes can spring be far behind?’ I don’t know if Shakespeare or a stockbroker said that. Either way its not as good as ‘you never tell the frogs that you’re about to drain the swamp’ by our very own Jo B’Jelky, the banana bender from the north. I am getting a bit confused here. I think Ive just had an attack of the old attention deficit disorder. Where was I? … ah yes … in the toilet. When I came out the black Jesus was sitting on the retaining wall as if nothing had happened. I walked towards the shoreline with my arm extended above my head just as the rim of a brilliant morning sun was edging over the horizon. I heard the words of the Jesus behind me saying : ‘If you shake it more than twice you’re pulling yourself you know.’ I kept on going till I was neck deep in water. The waves were breaking over me. I was washing away my past and my sins in preparation for a new and glorious awakening. ¶ finally the eye of day / has risen // the prowlers night / has ended ¶ When I came out they put me in a van and took me to a lunatic asylum in Rozelle. The black Jesus shook his dreadlocks. ¶ Mallacoota Man has been in and out of the water like a yo-yo all day and still hasn’t shaken off the flies. ¶ Freddy is counting. One, two, three, four, five, six … ¶ Jim is preparing to die. ¶¶ ‘It’s not working . You’re not getting anywhere.’ ‘Tell me what I’m supposed to be doing wrong. I’m a willing learner.’ ‘There’s nothing you can do. I just don’t like your style. It’s too late now anyway.’ ‘What’s that supposed to mean? Do you mind being a bit more specific. Maybe I can change something. Try me.’ ‘I‘ve never liked the way you’ve been doing it.’ ‘Now you tell me. I’ve been slaving away all this time and after all that you tell me you don’t like my style.’ ‘ You’ll have to start over again.’ ‘I‘ve put too much into it already honey. I can’t start all over again. My tongue’s tired.’ ‘Try doing it differen-tly.’ ‘Okay. I’ll start again. Here goes.’ ¶¶ Freddy is counting. One, two, three, four, five, six … ¶ Jim is preparing to die. On the count of five or thereabouts it dawns on him that he is saying goodbye to no one but figments of his own imagination : dream figures that have momentarily inserted themselves into his consciousness from someone elses past. The night, this night, has been going on forever; as 12

long as he can remember. ¶ It was on this night he and Freddy had been playing poker with Clarky and the boys. Poker as played in White Cliffs was not a glamourous game and the stakes were pitifully low. They had sat around a blanket cross legged on the floor of his dugout. The room was lit by four candles placed in crevices in the wall. The candles flickered. ¶ Clarky & Co also lived in the Blocks area round the corner. They were the acknowledged alkies of the town. They were called the ‘boys’ but looked more like very ancient shrivelled husks of men, or scarecrows. Their faces were leathery and you would have guessed them to be in their seventies. In fact no one knew how old they were but Freddy reckoned that none of them was over fifty which is how old Freddy was. Jim had never seen any of the boys eat a meal or anything for that matter which explained why they were so thin. Unless they were shouted a can they were not seen to drink either but it was said that secretly in their dugout they had flagons of firewater which they made up by mixing boot polish with metho and other additives. There was a gentleness about them as happens with men in the grip of powers too huge to be resisted. They were not great talkers and avoided looking into people’s faces. When you did chan-ce to catch their glance it had a forlorn distant look like the eyes of prisoners peering out through bar-s. They were frail. Yet sometimes you could find one of them asleep on the concrete under the bench on the pub verandah or even out in the gibber plain. On the occasion when Jim had helped one or an-other of them up when he had stumbled he noted how light they were, like skeletons, and that their wrists were as thin as a child’s. They were all dying of course. ¶ The poker game had barely started when there was a smell. It came from the direction of Clarky. He had shat himself. Jim and Freddy heaved him up with a hand under each armpit and walked him slowly in the darkness to his dugout. When they got there they laid him on his back on the ground beside a forty four gallon drum of water. Freddy took off Clarky’s shoes and pulled off his trousers. Jeezus, what a pong! They tilted the drum and emptied half the contents over the lower half of his body. Then they walked him into his dugout and laid him on his cot. Freddy threw a blanket over him. Clarky said ‘thanks’. It was the only word he said from the time they had lifted him up at the poker game. ¶ I clutch / my bottle of whiskey / close against my chest // I dream of bootleggers / I dream of moonshine // I see / bottles bubbling / in the quiet, moonlight // I build a little still / in a valley / by a river // I sleep ¶¶ ‘I’m sick of this. Mi-ght as well tell you the truth. Why not? The fact is I’ve been faking it for ten years.’ ‘We’ve only been together five.’ ‘I was faking it with the others too.’ ‘What’s wrong honey? Is the noise of the video cam-era upsetting you. I thought you liked me to see us in action. I’ll switch it off if you want. ‘ ‘Don’t both-er. There’s nothing you can do about it. It’s everything. The same old routine over and over.’ ‘Thanks a lot. I wish you’d told me before I had the mirror installed. You’d have saved me a packet. You shou-ld’ve seen the look on the tradesman’s face when I told him I wanted it in the ceiling.’ ‘It’s a bore. All I see is your arsehole staring down at me.’ ‘That’s about all I see of you too, honey.’ ‘And I’m sick of that black prick of yours and that ugly scar on your cheek.’ ‘So all that talk about the ol’ black magic, how it reminded you of a policeman’s truncheon or a horse’s dong, meant nothing.’ ‘I was lying.’ ‘Wh-at am I supposed to do now pussy tail?’ ‘Just get on with it. Get it over and done with, will you. I’m try-ing to read a book.’ ‘I’m trying to write one.’ ¶¶ I was awake the entire time I was in the asylum. No one visited me. The imperfect Jesus never visited me. My aunt who somehow got wind of where I was and telephoned my parents, never came once, though her place in Balmain is practically next door. As soon as my parents found out they never visited me either. That’s how I knew I was already dead. Which made it that much harder to solve the deep philosophical problems that were presenting themselves to me at the time. ¶ Perhaps it is too pedantic / to discus // whether object causes motion / or the motion defines matter // is it the wind that shakes the branch / or has the bran-ch given life to air // is the flower beautiful / or did perfection form the flower // can you see the dancer / or is the dancer hidden in the dance // does the dreamer dream / or has the dream po-ssessed the man // did the flute produce the tune / or has the tune been waiting for the flute // I don’t really care about the answers / but the spirits that I talk to / all claim in their conceited way / that it is they that speak to me ¶ Loonies are like that. ¶ Mallacoota Man, no mean cogitator himself, is better described as a morbid eclectic thinker than your standard philosopher. Time honour-ed undergraduate brain teasers such as ‘what 13

are the boundaries of knowledge?’ will not hold his att-ention. Anatomy, nature study and genetics are his province. ¶ We spot him in the distance on a des-erted beach squatting hunched over studying something intently in the sand between his feet. Let us zoom in a little. He is naked and leaning well forward, elbows resting on knees. Shirt and trousers are on the backpack by his side. He emits a deep groan as if assuming personal responsibility for the sh-ortcomings of humanity… oops … sorry … we are intruding. We have caught him in the act of either defecating or defalcating, hard to tell without a dictionary. The agitated buzz of a cloud of flies rises a full pitch higher. He is oblivious to their excited hum as he is thinking as he strains. He is pondering what you get when a man mates with a bunyip, something he has unsuccessfully attempted to do several times. Having completed the job he rises gingerly and absently surveys the gathering swarm, still deep in thought. A stray doggerel set to a formless tune drifts lazily through his now unfocussed mind : ‘I’m the famous Mallacoota Man – the living legend. I’ve been all over the country – you name it I’ve shat there.’ Humming quietly he lifts up the pack with the clothes on it. In doing so he disturbs some remaining flies which buzz excitedly and hover over the rest of their companions. Very slowly, one step at a time like a stork, he walks towards the waves. Over the next hundred yards his pace quickens as he trots knee deep through the foam parallel to the shore. Finally he puts the bundle down on the sand and dives into a wave for a proper wash. When he comes out of the water to pick up his gear he notes with satisfaction that only a couple of flies are there to greet him. He has made a momentous discovery. ¶ Let’s analyse what happened here for it sheds light not only on how a partic-ular discovery was made but on the creative process itself – indeed on the very nature of genius. Nor-mally M.M.’s practice would have been to bury the turd with a few energetic backward kicks of his foot like a chook scratching. This is how he had dug the hole in the first place; a praiseworthy practice not motivated by aesthetic considerations but by a primitive instinct which made him reluctant to soil his own turf. In kicking sand over the evidence he had been stirring the gathered flies most of which depr-ived of their preferred option would resume following him. ¶ The first consideration I want to draw to your attention is that in the same way that his earlier practices were the result of unconsidered habit his brilliant solution was not achieved by conscious analysis either. Remember that as he started ed-ging away from the exposed turd his mind, as far as we could tell, was not in focus. In fact he was thinking about bunyips and humming an idiotic little tune at the same time. The lesson to be drawn could be that great ideas are not hostage to effort as schoolmasters and technocrats would have us believe. They arrive unbidden. Perhaps the belief that only diligence and drudgery get results is a reflect-ion of the pedestrian nature and limited intelligence of educators. Another educationally revolutionary possibility, one which Winnie the Pooh would agree with, is that people think better when they are hu-mming. ¶ Bird watchers, or twitchers as they are called nowadays, will tell you the most important ti-me to have your binoculars handy in the bush is when you’re having a crap. No one has yet worked out why it should be so. Which leads me by a process of lateral thinking to the following proposition : I put it to you that the key to the inspired idea is not how you think or how learned you are but the posit-ion you are in at the time. The average person is so baffled by the extraordinary achievements of ge-nius that he has been inclined to throw up his hands in wonder and allow that genius is comprehen-sible only to itself. The answer may be surprisingly simple. Mallacoota Man is a kind of genius, and he’s a big shitter. ¶ Freddy is still counting : One, two, three, four, five, six, seven …. ¶¶ ‘Hey toy boy. ’ ‘Yes pussy tail.’ ‘Put the biro away, stick it up your nostril or something. I’ve got a serious question. As an author do you think that sex should be described in gynacological detail?’ ‘Only if you’re writing a medical text.’ ‘That’s a pity.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Well, it could’ve been interesting. Something different. The tho-ught of thousands of strangers reading about us.’ ‘Jeezus honey aren’t the videos and mirror good enough?’ ‘We’re the only ones who see that. Put it away and it might as well never have happened. If it were recorded in print, thattid be different. I remember when I was little how great it was behind the shelter sheds, everyone watching. I think I don’t really feel I’ve done it unless someone’s seen me do it.’ ‘You’re in a bad way pussy. You’re really off.’ ‘I suppose ittid be too late now you’ve nearly finish-ed.’ ‘No, not necessarily. It’s all on disk. Not hard to put bits in.’ ‘Wow, why don’t you get back to your writing then, little toy boy.’ ‘Don’t have to 14

pussy tail. It’s on cassette already. Have a look under the bed. Us authors have our tricks of the trade you know.’ ‘So that’s where the noise was coming from! You sneaky little prick.’ ¶¶ As I was saying she’s matured a lot recently. I wish the same could be sai-d for me. By the time I left the asylum I was properly unravelled. Years of past lives therapy and futu-re shock treatment have only partially succeeded in putting me together. I remain a poorly formed juv-enile personality with a tendency to regress into infantile behaviour under stress. But don’t worry, it doesn’t matter. The book is drawing to a close. Life goes on. ¶ Freddy is counting : One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight …¶ There has never been anything else except the night. ¶ On the way back after putting Clarky to bed Freddy and Jim passed the rest of the ‘boys’ coming home from the card game. They had loomed up in the night like wraiths. A nod and a grunt were the only signs they had noticed them. The ‘boys’ were being drawn to their dugout, like men in thrall, by the flagons of firewater waiting for them in the dark. Jim and Freddy called in at Shaky’s where Freddy had left a ha-lf full bottle of white rum. Hans was there explaining his plans for using water divining to find opal. When he finished the rum Freddy left for the pub to ‘beat shit’ out of Merle. It was a ritual he went thr-ough at least once a week and always after he’d drunk a bottle of white rum. Merle was the town’s postmaster, philanderer and altar boy. He served as an altar boy once a year when a priest from Wil-cannia performed a service in a tiny stone church unlocked for the occasion. The fight that ensued was never more than token. Merle, who was twice as big as Freddy, would frogmarch him to the door of the pub and ceremoniously throw him out onto the verandah. George, the publican, would go over and yell after Freddy that he was banned from the pub for a week. Of course he didn’t mean it. Fred-dy then went back to his dugout nursing a minor bruise or cut which he would proudly show off, brag-ging how this time he’d really taught Merle a lesson. ¶ It was Freddy returning from the pub who was reeling from mullock heap to mullock heap earlier in the night when the black angel flew over White Cliffs. ¶ Later on again, long after the generator had been turned off, they ran out of beer. Shaky, Ha-ns and Jim drove down to the pub while Freddy stayed behind to nurse his dignity. They parked the bomb across the road by the general store. George would be upset if they drove into the backyard of the pub. He had to keep up pretences. They walked through the backyard to the back of the bar and Shaky knocked very quietly on the door. After a while it opened a little. Inside it was pitch black. Then slowly George’s head and shoulders and a hand holding a stubby appeared in the entrance : ‘What can I do for you boys?’ It was his practice after he’d cleaned up and turned off the generator to sit be-hind the bar of his own hotel alone in total darkness and drink till sunrise. His wife who drank all day in her room and slept it off overnight was responsible for opening the bar in the mornings. Not every-one in White Cliffs knew that. ¶ The conversation between Shaky, Jim, Hans and Freddy on which we are eavesdropping is taking place after the return from George’s with the beer. ¶ for awhile I behav-ed / as if I was an expert / on death // as if in my arms / I had long carried a dead child / through swamp and desert / forest and valley // till finally / after many years / following a winding river / and grown weary now with the burden / I reached a village by the sea / or perhaps more accur-ately / a tourist resort // there I laid the dead child / at his mothers feet / and as I looked at it / I realized that it was no longer a child / but had grown into an old old man ¶ Freddy is counting : One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine …. ¶¶ THE END ¶¶ ”)main (Birchgr-ove; drank nuthr midi & lost nuthr $1 on th poki @ th William Wallace; bort botl of red 2 take 2 th Gar-ricks) → Garricks (CEPELINAI (c ‘→ (no 2)’ p4) 4 t; Eglė gave mi a ½ botl of ČEPKELIU (21/9/05. Va-idas (hoom I sor @ hiz Southgate storl larst ☼di) hoo iz ← lithol& sez hi haz 1 (25/9/05. gaev mi 2! H-im & VšAaIrTūKnUaSs (c ‘10/2/05 – 18/2/05’ p2) kort 10 jient ybeez (3/10/05. Marron – ntrjuest ← W-A. W r goen n wnzdi (6/10/05. w kort 1 eel & 7 marron. 3 marron x thmslvz (wth wien or beer) maek n good siez meel 4 2 ppl. Boil 4 5 mins n solti H2O then ↓ kold H2O 4 20 seks. Th shel z vri tuff & spieki & u need n nut krakr 2 braek th huej klorz) 4 mor (4/10/05. Ben sez kraefsh r so ntrk@li buetful hi kant c how ni1 kan braek 1 up n2 bits & eet it so hi woent (7/10/05. but hi did & wth rlsh).). Ie prmst 1 4 AmLeThUmReAtN.) n South Gippsl& larst week) 4 mi 2) sh had brort ← th knfrns in lithol&; H, mi, Eglė, John & Louis wer @ th tabl) → Epping (@ 10.30 & off 2 bed). ☼di 10/7/05. Larst nite w got home from Eglėz (I got her kard so az 2 no her job dskrpshn : “GAeRgRlIeCK Executive Director, Busin15

ess & Financial Services SYDNEY HARBOUR FORESHORE AUTHORITY” (1dr if sh woz rsponsbl 4 th rplasemnt of th borjnl (mum sez KArBiAmIaLsA haz pblshd nuthr book O thm) flag @ ½ marst x th brtsh 1 @ th top of th brdj wch I noetd wen w went → town on th feri ths mornn. In th rvo th 2 flagz (TERRA NULLIUS (30/9/05. sum1 korld it TERROR AUSTRALIS n 2daez The Age p14)) wer @ full marst wch ment thr woz 1¼ brit flagz & ¾ of n oz 1 (it ternz out my famli knekshn wth th harbour goze evn ferthr az BLANjSoJeAAR haz left th navee 4 th 2nd time & iz now an publk srvnt werkn 4 th DEF-ENCE DEPARTMNT @ Garden Island manjn larj sumz of muni (he sez) nshurin th@ it iz prudntli sp-nt. Il get hiz kard wen w → their place 4 t 2nite. I m nevr jaded x th beauti of th harbr & m rathr chuft 2 hav fmlial knzshnz wth it))) ftr midnite (H drove) & I slept poorli if @ orl havn vreetn x 3 : 1st on savour-eez pstairz bcoz I ddnt realize thr woz a mjr meel (Egle made x 3 2 much) waitn 4 us ↓stairz, then ftr pign out gain Rasaz kakes (sh makes th best but esp good iz her spshlti : NAPOLEONAS (Napoleon (I red (3/10/05. bort n kopi 4 mum) ‘1812 (Napoleon’s Fatal March on Moscow)’ x Adam Zamoyski © Harper Perennial 2005 in th week b4 w left on th trip. Iv stood on Napoleonz Hill buv th Nemunas rvr in KAUNAS sevrl timez (c ‘Melbourne → Kaunas’ p5) & lookt ↓ @ th vew just az he had dun @ a ● n-eer whr I livd th 1st 3 yeerz of me life. The 1812 kmpane bgan wth th †n of th rvr & th shatrd rmi rternd (← Moscow) 2 Vilnius (c ‘Vilnius (no 1)’, ‘Vilnius (no 2), & ‘Vilnius → Melbourne’) whr 30,000 of its rm-ainn soljrz died n a few daiz wile NAPOLEON sped off x coach → Paris. Thr iz a pkchr in th book whr I rkgnizd th ‫ ٱ‬neer whr I woz stayin on my trip 2 lithol& (c kuvr of ‘Vilnius (no 1)’ no 16) larst yeer. Ns-dntli my godfthrz name iz Napoleonas.))) wer brort out bkoz w wer selbr8n mumz 85th berthdai wch I hadnt ntsp8d az sh had nsstd 2 mi ovr th fone rlier this yeer sh woznt havn 1 koz it woz th 10th yeer n-ivrseri of th deth of IZIDORIUS & niwai sh woz born on th 4th of June (USA INDIPENDENCE DAY) so I pigd out 4 th 3rd time. Az I lai in bed sleeplss from vreetn I woz ovrkum x gloom (lso H had kmitd us 2 vztn Elyte & Luis 2 c their new haus 2dai on th uthr side of Sydney in a sberb w probli wont b abl 2 find wthout evn arskn mi & Im not th slitest bit nsrstd in th reel st8 kwzishnz of Rasaz kidz whch nli m-fasizis how ndpndnt slfsfshnt & rich thei r kmpaird 2 our kidz & her not knsultn mi ftr 40+ yeerz of mar-ij made mi feel az if I dont xst koz I wood hav prferd 2 do lmost nythn els nkludn 0) thinkn I woz prvid-in a livn met4 4 th st8 of WESTERN CIVILIZ8SHN (1/10/05. Read in the paper yesterday that someone once asked Gandhi what he thought about western civilization and he responded that he thought it would be a good idea.) (26/9/05. N poem H ro-et ystrdae : my computer / has begun to warn that / me and the world are going / crazy together / in terms succinct / and easily understood : // “This program has made a fatal error and will be / shut down.// File not found. // You have entered an incorrect password. // Pressing control + alt + delete again // will cause all unsaved information / to be lost. // Shutting down now.” // there is no argument / or action that will / prevent it all ending / in tears. / the inevitab-le can only be delayed / by evasive action / and armageddon / will come. ) I woz feeln of no use 2 nobodi & rmindd meslf gain th@ nythn of value th@ I hav 2 sai (8/10/05. KkRaArUlS : “Why does many a man write? Because he does not possess enough character not to write.”) Iv sed long go (m-um haz just (12 mdai) h&d mi a botl of BAROSSA Cabernet Sauvignon Shiraz 2001 4 mi brthdai (1-/10/05. Hz brthdae 2dae – u hav mie ♥) on th 19th orgust (2 + 2 th ČEPKELIU from Egle)) but our rglar mornin dalians dssp8d my gloomi thorts ….→ Annandale (nspktd Elytez & Luisz haus whch they got 4 $600,000 – a gr8 x) ← Ryde (wen H rlized shd left her dai pak (21/9/05. doo it gain & u miet b put in jael) @ Annandale) → (not torkn) → Annandale (pik up pak) ← Epping (itz 5.05 & w r → Blansjaarz (-got Joze kard & it sez : “AUSTRALIAN GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENT OF DEFENCE. Defe-nce Material Organization. Joseph Blansjaar DIRECTOR Amphibious and Afloat S-ystem. Support Program Office.”) 4 dinr) …. (8.30) → Epping ftr n dlshuz meel az nli Rasa kn maek. Th 1st chptr of our trip iz ndn, 2morrw w r leevn Sydney & ↑ (N).

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