Take Me To The Beach

They have beaches in cities. Not only in cities. They have them in other places too. Like, you can go down to Costa Rica or fly up to Queensland or book a diving trip to the Philippines and find beaches there that aren't in cities. Those ones will most probably be an empty square of sand, hidden behind a wide stretch of moss-covered rocks holding up bent-over palms. They see no cars nor buildings nor Parking Inspectors nor small, fluffy white dogs on long leashes nor any of the General Public. You can sit on them and pretend your stories are someone else's. You can dream up new ones to tell in bed under the air-conditioner on a Sunday morning in the middle of a heatwave.

I grew up in a city that had beaches. Those are the ones I know best. The water is a little dirtier and the sand a little coarser. There are park benches, blue-stone walls, divided walking paths, wide-open spaces, manicured strips of grass and always a solid, tarred road running defiant along the outside. The sound of the rushing cars is similar to that of the crashing waves and you are left with a surround-sound effect.

I go to beaches to escape. I look out at the water and there is more distance than I can see. I like knowing that there is more than I can see. More out there than I can tell. It calms me in the moments I cannot imagine what there would be if there were no longer you. But on a city beach there is all that City Life going on around me and I'm never able to escape far enough. I'm tranquil and away and then I'm disturbed and I'm back.

Sometimes a Mouse....

"She left in the fall; That's her picture on the wall; She always had that little drop of poison"

That's from a Tom Waits song. Do you listen to Tom Waits?

Later on in the same song he sings:

'A rat always knows when he is in with weasels"

I'm not sure what that means. It sounds like it means something. I don't know enough about rats. I think I'd be able to tell the difference between a rat and a weasel. I think. Though I'm not sure I'd be able to tell the difference between rat and a mouse. I once saw a rat and thought it was a mouse. Or maybe it really was a mouse. Like I said, I just don't know enough about it.

I was living in England at the time. North London. There were drinks for a birthday in a pub in Angel. I knew some of the people there. Enough to enjoy about thirty minutes of drinks and small talk. About two and a half pints worth. One of the guys there used to serve drinks at the bar we hung out at after work and it was his girlfriend who had brought along her sister - The Hairdresser.

Back Down The Stairs

Sometimes, locals call Melbourne's downtown area The CBD - The Central Business District. I think this is when they wish to elite the feel of an afternoon they have to spend there.

"I've got an interview at my lawyer's office in The CBD."

"I'm gonna meet up with her in The CBD and I'll break up with her then."

"I gotta drive to The CBD to get a sandwich."

Something like that...

Mainly though, most everyone in that Southern city of trend, comfort, effort and caffeine calls it The City.

The City is laid out across a perfect, square grid of streets, laneways and tram-tracks. There was a time when most of that grid was a dangerous place to walk at night. There were a few open and well-lit boulevards with generously wide, slate-coloured sidewalks and they were a safer bet. As were the dim rooms behind doors cut out of the side of buildings which were filled with booze, pasta and heroin dealers. They felt particularly safe. But other than those few beacons, everything else was grey and foreboding.

This is how I remember it - recalling The City now and how it seemed to me then. It may not have been like that. It is however important to this story that you know it was like that. Before. That it was Dangerous and Criminal. And not in an exciting way. You should know, that at night The City was once a quiet and sinister grid made up of a heavy darkness and stillness that would only be broken on occasion by the screams of a desperate escape and the shining reflection of a street-light off a switchblade.

A Light On The Bridge

The first message came through as I was searching for new pictures of an old girlfriend. Facebook was new to me. New to most people at that time. Now it is something else. Back then - in its early days - for me it was a way to play with fantasies.  A thought or a feeling or a memory would rise into me as I lay back on the couch or whilst dipping a rice cracker into a tub of hummus and I'd bend open the laptop and search for an old name or face to add to my Friends List. Or send some vaguely provocative message to someone already on it.

Fantasy is so easily spoiled by action and I spoiled a lot of fantasies by rambling around Facebook with the taste of pureed chickpeas in my mouth.

This particular 'First Message' was from someone not on my Friends List. I didn't recognise her either. It was a girl and she was certainly a stranger to me.

"Hi. I'm ----. How's your Friday?"

That is what the message said.

Keep In Touch

Her parents named her after a writer I'd never heard of before. Neither the name nor the writer. I was behind the bar and had just made her and her Korean friend a Vesper. That's a gin and vodka drink that's shaken with a dash of Lillet. The white one - not the Lillet Rouge. 

She asked my name and at the same time her friend asked where I was from. It is polite to answer those questions directly and honestly and then ask them back in return. This is the way things are expected to go. Once, for about two months, I used to tell people in a posh part of Hollywood that I was from Mumbai.

"You know - the place with the bombs and the cricket and where they answer the phone when you call Verizon..."

That's different though - I was trying to be impolite and unexpected back then. 

A Letter: When I Was a Kid, I Was Really Young

I was eleven years old when I started 7th Grade. I think you're supposed to be twelve. Twelve turning thirteen. I think you're supposed to have your Bar Mitzvah in 7th Grade. But I was eleven, turning twelve.

It wasn't that I was smarter or more advanced or anything like that. It was a time of the year thing. See, the people who decide such things have a cut off point -  a date on the calendar - and if you're born after that day they bump you in with the next intake. The next year. I was born just in time to ride just above that line. I snuck in by a matter of days.

All of that which is only to let you know that I was eleven when I started 7th Grade. It is important to be accurate. Even when telling fiction...... especially when telling fiction.

I was brand new to this Secondary School, but I did have some history with the place. It was part of a small private school that ran all the classes from Kindergarden to 12th Grade out of one asphalt, tanbark and orange brick campus. So signing up for the Secondary School simply meant rocking up at the same damn address, with the same damn tanbark and same damn asphalt. The only changes were the new teachers and a new principal to answer to.

But I had more history than just that with the place itself , I also had history with said 'new principal' - a man we shall call 'The Baker's Son'.

That history had been foisted upon me. I hadn't asked for it. Nor did I even know it was available to be asked for. It wasn't a history that I had made or participated in or been present for. It was a history that my uncles had cultivated through years of arrogant and pointless struggle against the stubborn and petty force that was The Baker's Son. He then turned those collections of running battles into a grudge to be played out with and upon me. Their history was now my history and with all that hanging around, I started Secondary School..

Years later, as an older and far more distant fellow, I'd come to understand The Baker's Son better. His way. His method. Why he acted the way he did. It was not due to some misguided romantic vision of providing us with that which we needed to face the world. It wasn't because he had an idealised notion that what he was doing was for our best. It was because he was - and I'm sure, still is - a Pathological Narcissist. A man without reproach. Who felt no empathy and was filled with the zeal of a predator who wanted nothing more than to inflict pain. Or something.

But back then, as an eleven year old, I simply thought he was an arsehole. Though, to be fair, that too was certainly accurate.

Mop and Repeat

For me, it is Bleach. The smell of Bleach. To be precise, it is the smell of Bleach, diluted with warm water and dragged over white tiles with a damp and clean sponge-mop. As the streaks evaporate and the smell of watered down Bleach lingers with only a hint at its potency - that smell. I like that smell.

It is not nostalgic nor evocative nor comforting nor escapist. It is just a smell. It is its own thing and I like it for what it is - without your judgment or need to explain it to or for me.

The time some waiter told me that he liked the smell of Gasoline, was the first time I realised that folks out there like some fucked-up smells. Gasoline? The smell that rises up off those few drop that drip out when you pull the nozzle back out of the tank at the gas station? That smell? Really? Why?

Because he did. Because I like Bleach. Because her neighbor likes a reed diffuser set (do you know what that is?) that pushes out a sickly sweet and thick odor, that can only be described as: a plastic cup of coconut bubble tea sweetened with a kilo each of icing sugar, sweet & low and stevia, so that it's almost glowing.

Because your Mum likes the smell of the ink and paper in the glossy magazines at her divorce lawyer's reception. That smell is also there at her personal trainer's, her realtor's and her osteopath's. Because his boyfriend likes the smell of nail polish remover. Because they said they like smell of wet dirt.

Because you like what you like. Whatever weird smell you like. You goddamn, fucking weirdo.

And A Plastic Warning

Farringdon is such a fun word to say.

Say it:

Farringdon.

It can also be a dramatic word to say, if you can pull together a partly hoarse voice filled with a jumble of recognition, remorse and wistfulness.

Farringdon.

It is after midnight and I'm not drinking nor drugging - neither myself nor someone else. So it is just me and the beige mist and the cotton touch of the sheets and the still, thick warmth trapped and left over in the room - even though the heat of a blazing afternoon has long set off and away. That balmy, floating atmosphere tangles and fights with the cool breeze entering in off the fly-screen door that opens out onto a timber-slat decked courtyard.

Except those slats ain't no timber.

They're plastic or resin or composite or something. I'm not exactly sure. I just know they are not timber. The landlord told me that. We were signing the lease and he hadn't said much and I'd asked even less. The questions usually come when one party doesn't pay the rent or another party doesn't fix the rusted hot water system. But I was just signing the lease and he was just giving me the keys. Neither of us had any need for questions. I just silently scribbled away and he spoke none.

Except for on his way out.

He picked up the papers and after putting a hand on the front door handle, he turned back around, pointed with his chin and said:

Minimalism

I live in an aluminum half boatshed. I eat panadols three at a time and drink sharp mineral water. I fall in love when I shouldn't and only take intimacy in ounce shots when I should. I report on places I'm not in and tell stories that you think are true. I find hope and lose guitar picks and take time and miss calls and respond out of order. And I'm lucky. Luckier than you. For sure.

I like accents. I like it when there is a disconnect between what is being said and the accent it is being delivered in. Like a French person dropping Australian slang, but slower and rounder and more romantic than we would spit out the same phrase or shortened word. If I didn't want to be the sort of writer that I now don't want to be, I would have written that I like it when there is a "dissonance to the delivery". But I don't want to be that sort of writer. And I don't want to put a baby in your guts. And I don't want to know what your dietary requirements are. And I don't want to pretend to care.

a hyphen is as good as a comma to a blind man

A few years back there, somewhere in the middle of England, I meet this guy. Actually, now that I think on it, I remember exactly where it was that I met him.

Just below the dawdling canal running through Startford-upon-Avon, winds a road heading east out to Wellesbourne - or some town just as equally dull. It was on that road that I met that Welsh-born, Midlands-raised, Red-head. Let's call him 'Welsh-Red'.

If you head the other way on that road - towards Bidford - you'd find yourself along a stretch of tar flanked by houses of the very rich and the very poor. No pattern to their procedure - they just all jumble in all together. A few mansions, then a shack, then a twisted metal garage door, then a tiny yellow car, then some more large houses, then a council flat. Another council flat and then a bald, high-price lawyer leaving the sprawling, low-slung house he bought for his bride some twelve years earlier. He was just dropping off the kids.  He doesn't live there anymore. That same bride done tossed him out months ago. She had been OK with his late night fraternising at the office, but once the gaggle of single mums in that line-up of cars outside school learned that he had unzipped his trousers with one of their very own in that very same line-up, well, you know...disloyalty, shame, embarrassment, betrayal, rage... it all leads to the same place - late Saturday nights at that grey-toned house with the kids and the estranged husband replaced by young men, strong drugs and un-eaten take-away. Only way to treat that particular pain....

But all that is on the road to Bidford. I met Welsh-Red on the road to Wellesbourne - whole different set-up on that side.

I Don't Remember

I can never remember which stripes are meant to be the slimming ones. Is it vertical or horizontal? I've been told that this is the stuff that matters, but I can never remember which ones are which. So I don't wear stripes. Not the vertical nor the the horizontal ones. Because I can't remember.

There is so much I don't do simply because I don't remember.

Always a Train

Elizabeth Cotten.

I have her story in my mind. A story about her. It might be true. It might not be. She is a real person. Was one anyway. You can see how real she is in the photo above. Photos don't never lie. So she definitely had a story. I'm just saying that I might have confused myself by borrowing a few different parts from other people's stories and then brought those pieces together into one story and then gone and attached all of that to her. That is certainly something I've done before.

Make It Stop!

Time for a rant. It's been a while. I'll get back to the more lyrical stuff in a minute, but today I’m gonna get my Grumpy Old Jewish Man on.

First let me identify my target: Food Bloggers.

So Food Bloggers are those clowns that maintain personal sites that cover things like:

• over pictorialised restaurant reviews, complete with contrived metaphors and over anxious emotional descriptors;
• essays that unnecessarily (and failingly) attempt to use the depth of narrative and style required for a first hand account of a Spanish Civil War battle for a recounting of a Wednesday night spent following Grandma's chocolate cake recipe;
• breathless stories of some food-stuff that an old sorority sister found in a tiny store with the tag 'Gourmet' or 'Artisanal' or 'Overpriced Nonsense' plastered across it;
• and other vapid topics and posts that, to be frank, I just couldn't be bothered to Google, check and then describe to you.

Of Paragraphs and Choices

The Fork in the Road.

We've all been there. Several times. Maybe you're not out on The Road as often or much as I, but you've certainly seen a Fork or two. Even if your Google Maps works better than mine and you felt you thought you knew what was coming over the next rise, you still have to take and make decisions on whether to turn right or left. Most often I only realise that I had come up to a Fork after the fact. This is when a route I take perhaps doesn't work out as I expected it to and after mentally retracing my steps, I become aware of the singular, fateful choice that is that one 'wrong-turn'.

But there are times when I know I'm facing a Fork at the very moment I come up to it. It is so clear, that in my mind I see it as a real scene. I am wearing a faded brown suit and an emerald green button-up-vest that are both laced with thick markings of dust that have risen up off the road and clung to the parts of the material that are most moist with sweat. My right shoulder is slumped down due the stiff, red leather suitcase that hangs from my right hand. Across my left forearm and cradled into my stomach, lies a bouquet of wildflowers, wrapped in a light, tracing paper. I don't know exactly how long I’ve been carrying this spirited melange of purples, yellows and whites and neither do I know whom they are meant for, but they seem as fresh and as lively as the ones still growing and attached to the ground around my feet.

Um, What's Your Number

If you could quote Tex Perkins, Gillian Welch and Lester Bangs. If you could recite the entire lyrics to 'Isis'. If you read Doctor Gonzo's letters. If you got the desert in your toenails and hid the speed inside your shoes. If you had wet hair, black trousers and smooth, bare heels. If you cooked linguine with saffron and cream and fresh crab and diced sea bass and barely sauteed scallops. If you ate New York Strip steak, that had been brutally char-grilled just past rare.

If you danced for me and let me sing for you. If you sat, stayed and cheered for a fourth quarter comeback. If you had seen Melbourne in the rain, Nafplio in the chill and Prague in the snow – and you still wanted more. If you have dug a hole in the sand, filled it with hunks of dried Red Gum wood and lit a searing, midnight bonfire, that made nearly as much noise as the crashing surf in the distance. If country music had saved your life.