Thursday 23 April 2009

film & friend

I was watching a film in an old cinema, sitting toward the back. The film followed a young woman through the Queen Street Mall. She was performing, interacting with the crowd, on a busy shopping night. She was slim with shoulder length brown hair, and she wore unusual long wool gloves with long fingers that extended well past her own fingers so that the tips waved freely in the wind. Weaving her way through the people, she would target someone and appear behind them, touching them with the dangling fingers of her long gloves. People responded varyingly: some laughed, some ignored her, and others were irritated and embarrassed. Suddenly she saw a group of older businessmen sitting at a round table in the mall. They were talking with one another, drinking coffee and wine, and they were unaware of her presence. Her whole demeanor changed significantly, as though she was guided by a divine force. She walked directly up to one of the men, a man of about sixty with short grey hair, and said, "I choose you. I choose you." As she spoke, my perception of the film changed, my point of view, and I was now inside the girl's body, seeing everything through her eyes and feeling what she felt, though still a witness. The seated men were baffled by her words and the girl began to walk away. A young man emerged out of the thick of the crowd and grabbed the girl from behind. She (we) struggled but he was far too strong. He forced her across the mall and roughly pushed her toward a dark alley. She grabbed at a brick wall, protesting and doing her best to grip onto the wall, but again he overcame her. Now, she was defeated. She knew that this was the end of her and rather than experiencing the horrors ahead, she simply collapsed into herself, submitting. Her spirit was dying. From inside her body, I could feel that someone had just struck the man who held her trapped. I didn't know what was happening, but I could feel the impact of someone beating the man's body and I willed the young woman to stay alive. The young man fell backward and the young woman fell to the ground. I could see the older business man that she had chosen, standing above her - it was he who had beaten the young man and now he was watching over her. The film then skipped forward in time and, though the young woman had died, the older man was now father and guardian of her child.
The film finished and we were back in the cinema. I was weeping, having experienced the film so completely, and my friend was beside me, hugging me. He was surprised that I was so moved and did his best to comfort me. He told me that he didn't think I was the type to cry so much over a film. I couldn't explain that I had seen and felt everything from the young woman's perspective. We left the cinema and my other friend who had been sitting beside me, left without saying goodbye. I thought about following her to see what was wrong, but decided to let it be. We walked through the night streets, arms still around one another, and took a short cut across a vacant block with grass up to my waist. We saw a large peacock perched on the fence and watched as it flew the short distance down into the wild grass.
On the other side, at the mouth of a street, we stood for a moment, contemplating what to do. A young woman appeared and spoke to us, insulting me and very cavalier in attitude. I slapped her lightly across the face with the backs of my fingers and told her that if she was going to speak to people in their forties and fifties, she should speak with respect. My friend let go of me and I waited to see what he would do: if he would back me or if he would be embarrassed. He too slapped the young woman lightly across the face with the backs of his fingers and told her that she should respect us. The girl disappeared and I felt very pleased that my friend was loyal to me.

Saturday 18 April 2009

Valley

I was in Fortitude Valley, trying to cross from Anne Street to Wickham Street, one block down from the mall. It was early in the morning and not yet light. I ventured along the cross street but it was blocked off with roadworks. Regardless, I continued along the footpath and climbed the scaffolding that stood in my way. At the top, a disheveled council worker wearing a maroon shirt, sat in a fold-up chair, resting before starting the day's work. I attempted to pass him but he told me that I couldn't go that way, that it was out of bounds. I heard a noise and realised that I was standing atop the temporary dormitory of the council workers and that a second worker had woken and was emerging from the makeshift lodgings. I retreated hurriedly, concerned for my safety. As I walked back along the cross street, a group of police, men and women dressed in dark blue, ran after someone, pointing their guns but not shooting. At the corner, they retired their pursuit and headed back toward the mall. As they passed me, a policeman grabbed a handful of my hair and said, "What's this? Bristles?" I answered that that was my hair and he looked at me in disbelief as though my hair was not real, and then walked away. I walked up the road and down the mall, observing seedy characters idling along the way. I decided to catch a bus the short distance to the other side of the mall and hailed one down. I sat next to a Chinese woman with whom I struck up a conversation. She too disliked walking through the Valley for fear of danger. We visited a woman who lived in a tall terrace house on Wickham Street, a witch of sorts. There, she supplied us with various herbs and bottles necessary for our health.

dogs

A black dog with a terrible skin condition lay at my feet. I gave him a rub with my booted foot, not wanting to touch his hair or skin, yet not wanting to deprive him of affection. Later, when I was sitting down, he came to stand by my side. I looked carefully at his greying muzzle and coat and I knew that he was dying. Two more dogs appeared, both tawny and healthy looking. The bigger dog, although quite ferocious looking, was immediately friendly and demonstrative. I asked her to sit and she obeyed. We repeated the command a few times and each time she delighted in sitting. She was easily trained and very smart. The other tawny dog, a much quieter character, happily sat to one side. The tawny dogs were respectful of the black dog but gave him a wide berth. I hoped that the dying process would be swift and painless for the old dog.

Tuesday 14 April 2009

driving & injured foot

I was waiting for my sister to come home from work. I waited all night, sometimes sleeping, sometimes reading or rearranging the items of clothing strewn across the bed, but to no avail. In the morning, I woke to find that she was still out, missing from her bed. I went out looking for her and didn't go far before I saw her, walking back home with a few other women who obviously worked with her. They said goodbye and I went to talk with her, to find out where she had been. I didn't want to be angry as I could see that she was happy, but I told her that she had missed our date to travel north. We were due to leave last night. Next she, several members of her family and my brother, prepared to drive through the streets of Newcastle. We packed a ute with what we needed, including various bunches of herbs that we threaded through the metal cages that filled the ute tray. My brother had hurt his foot but insisted that he was alright, that he would tend to it when we arrived at our destination. We began our drive but soon I realised that my sister was napping in the back seat and nobody drove - the ute was freewheeling along the streets. I yelled, asking someone who knew how to drive the ute, and my nephew responded, only he stood on the passenger side and steered a little, not taking full control of the vehicle. I decided to give it a go. I sat down in the driver's seat and adjusted the seat so that I could reach the pedals. I steered the great ute up the road in peak hour traffic, learning quickly how to touch it to get the best response. I asked the others where we were meant to be going but was answered with vague replies. I then realised that we needed to get my brother to a hospital, that he was more critically injured than he originally let on. The traffic was thick so I pulled over into the entrance of a church to ring an ambulance and to look at his foot. He handed his foot to me - it was no longer attached to his leg, and it was sliced in two horizontally across the entire foot, from toes to heel. I opened the foot out and could see that lots of grass and foliage was stuck to the flesh from when we had been packing the ute. Tiny herb leaves were also plastered against the raw, pink foot. I began to carefully pluck the leaves and grass bits from the flesh, doing my best to clean it up before the ambulance arrived. I wished that we had attended to it earlier, and was terribly anxious about the likelihood of saving the foot. As I pulled the foliage from the foot, I simultaneously removed the herbs from the ute, pulling them out of the cages and discarding them.

hard walk home

I needed to go somewhere so I packed a bag, dressed appropriately and walked out the door. The sky was grey and the wind whistled up the West End street. I carried books and papers in my arms and I walked about a couple of blocks before it began to rain and my feet hurt too much to continue as I was wearing high black heels. I decided to go back, change my shoes and find an umbrella, and venture back out again. Though I knew I would be late, I felt that this was the only option. I turned and started to hobble toward home; I could barely walk with the pain. A gust of wind blew up under the books and papers in my arms and pages scattered across the footpath. I squatted, balancing awkwardly so as not to lose the rest of the papers or my bag off my shoulder, and attempted to collect the sodden pages. A group of young people swaggered down the street and invaded my personal space. One of them reached into my bag for my wallet and I talked him out of it, telling him that he would be disappointed.

Monday 6 April 2009

lake of fish

B and I were driving along a wide dirt road. A great lake stretched as far as we could see on the left of the road, and a scrubby forest lined the right. We passed a couple of people standing in the shallows of the lake and B, who was driving, spun the car around to go back and help them. In the short span of time between seeing them and arriving where they had been, they were gone. We hopped out of the car and walked into the water, up to our knees. B scooped her hands through the water and picked up a transparent jellyfish. She held out a pair of nail scissors to me and asked me to cut the jellyfish open. I refused as I didn't want to hurt it, but a hand (from seemingly nowhere) reached across and made a neat incision in the jellyfish's flesh, snipping it along a fine seam and opening it out. B put the jellyfish back in the water and hundreds of tiny silver-grey fish came to feed on the jellyfish. I could see that B was doing something essential for the good of the fish. I looked around and saw that there were many jellyfish swimming around the shallow water. Each one had thousands of tiny luminous blue lights shining inside its nebulous form. Schools of the tiny fish, hundreds of fish in each school, swam around the jellyfish, waiting for parts of it to break away so that they could eat it. As I walked through the water, wanting to stand on the shore, my legs brushed against the jellyfish and parts of their bodies stuck to my legs. The schools of tiny fish immediately came to eat the chunks of jelly, particularly after the miniature blue lights. I continued walking slowly toward the shore, each step tentative as there were now many other fish swimming through the water. Strange sand fish appeared through the sand, short spikes jutting out of their scaly bodies, before disappearing back down under the sandy lake bed. I called to B to show her the strange fish creatures but she was further out and could not see. Now the water teamed with fish and other odd creatures, all strangely macabre. I found the skin of a big grey octopus lying flaccid at the edge of the water, as though completely deflated, and a second black octopus' skin lying beside it, similarly collapsed upon itself. A few steps further on, a shark carcass appeared from under the sand; again, there seemed to be no substantial flesh, just the loose skin left lying on the bottom of the lake.

Saturday 4 April 2009

bird storm

I was sitting at an enormous outdoor table, designed to seat about forty people. The table was made of old grey wood and either side was flanked by a long wooden bench. Most of the guests had already departed or were no longer seated at the table. I had a sense that I had shifted from my seat on one side toward the middle of the table, to where I was now seated, at the far end on the other side. I was deep in conversation with a few others, surrounded by the leftover food and remains of our lunch. As we talked, I noticed that one of my companions was distracted by something on the horizon. I followed her gaze and saw a dark cloud approaching with alarming speed. As the cloud advanced, we could see that it was not actually a cloud of vapour or dust; rather, it was a vast flock of birds, so thick with feathers, clawed feet and beaks, that the sky blackened and the air resounded with screeching, flapping and twittering. Those of us remaining at the table quickly slid underneath, sheltering from the passing storm. We could hear the birds at the bottom of the cloud flying so low that parts of their bodies scraped and scratched against the old wooden table, and scattered the glasses, cutlery, paper plates and food scraps. Everything in the path of the birds was destroyed but we were safe under the table.

whale

I was a young male whale, swimming in the protected shallows off one side of a coastal point. The other side of the point faced the ocean. The older and bigger male whales had gathered and I was among them, excited as this was to be my first swim out in the deeper and wilder waters of the ocean. We swam around the point and into the sea, and then headed straight out into the tumultuous ocean. The waves were enormous, rising and swelling before cresting and crashing. I bravely ventured further out and found myself slightly ahead of the pod. Suddenly I could see a vast cliff ahead with tall terraced houses perched on top - a city towering above the ocean. The cliff was crumbling and the houses and buildings were falling into the ocean, shooting debris down into the water, which ricocheted and tumbled through the waves dangerously. The other male whales headed back to the coast but I was too far ahead to retreat. I dived down as far under the water as I could go, swimming hard and avoiding the rocks, bricks and rubble that shot like bullets through the dark. I knew that the other whales would be concerned and, when I could wait no longer, I swam directly up and up, not sure if the danger had subsided or at least calmed. I burst through the surface of the water and launched into the air, triumphant that I had survived such a disastrous first swim. I could sense the great relief of the other whales who waited for me some distance away.