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// Filed under: Life on Tuesday August 30th 2005, 5:38 pm By which I of course refer to my neck. It’s a blinding column of pain. I don’t know whether it was the ten hours straight of standing up at work, the three hours after that helping Dad lift, prop, hoist and drag one big ass-fuck of a TV antenna up onto the roof, or the four hours of tragically uncomfortable sleep, or possibly all three, but I bent down to tie my shoelaces and my spine was afire with the pain of millennia. I don’t even know why we’ve got this antenna. Seriously. It’s about three metres long and two wide, with more spikes than a bondage collar. If this thing doesn’t pick up goddamn NASA signals I’ll be highly disappointed. However, we don’t need NASA signals. In fact we don’t really need better signals at all. The only problem with our TV signals exists soley in the head of my mother, whose exasperation at not being able to pick up SBS without furry static is unmatched in mortal realms. So really, we spend about three hours and risked catastrophic antenna collapse to sate my mother’s need for quirky documentaries and my father’s need to have a massive metal object protruding from the roof, interrupting the flight paths of birds. Anyway the real tragedy here is that this neck-pain forces me to sit up straight in order to stave it off. And I’m a slacker by nature. A sloucher. I can’t sit up straight. I don’t do straight (alright, I’ll let you have that one). Now I am forced to observe the world in a well-rounded, good-postured fashion, devoid of the rosy glow of slackness. And let me tell you, people, it ain’t pretty. // 2 Comments 
// Filed under: Verbiage on Thursday August 18th 2005, 10:50 pm The first thing I notice is the smell. The smell of the dust of ages - not so much a random collection of ancient, microsopic detritus, no; but a dusty, a musty smell that can only come from a house that has endured a lifetime of cleaning. A house where the dirt is so clean that it has been ground into the wall themselves. He lounges there like an extension of the chair, face wrinkled, but eyes afire as the flicker and glow of the television speckles the room in alternating light and shadow. Sunlight streams through the gaps around the edges of the curtains and picks the motes of dust out of thair. A whistle blows on the television as a goal is scored. His gnarled fingers curl into a fist and thump against the wooden armrest. I look up in surprise. “Bloody stupid Collingwood! Pack of bloody ratbags, the lot of them!” I laugh and nod, and he glowers in frustration as the ads come on. His fingers rap against the armrest for a moment, before he seems to come to a decision. “Dot! Dot, where’s my bloody cup of tea!?” he bawls, with a voice so drenched in cliche I can’t help but smile. Like a scene straight out of the 1950’s, my Nanna bustles in, bearing a tray adorned with tea and biscuits. You can almost see the dimples in the carpet, almost feel the collected weight of this weekly ritual as a thousand repititions breathe a sigh of collective relief that the requisite tea and biscuits have been delivered without incident. He raises the cups to his lips, hands trembling only ever-so-slightly. Only the barest fraction of a second later, a portal to the 1950’s opens up around us and his voice shrieks through it, barrelling and bellowing. “Bloody hell, Dot, it’s stone bloody cold! What the bloody hell do you call this?” She doesn’t even pause in her work, practiced hands deftly exorcising the tiniest amounts of imagined dust from their bookshelf. “Oh, shut up and drink your tea, Percy. The game’s on now, anyway.” The cup is at his lips, but begrudgingly, and even I can see his eyes tightening the barest fraction from the scalding heat of the tea. I know from experience Nanna makes a tea you could strip paint with. He gulps it down anyway, as he has done a thousand times, eyes riveted on the game. For a few minutes, there is nothing but the roar of the crowd, and the shuffle of Nanna’s feet around the room. The the Eagles score a goal, a hard-earned one from the looks of it, if Grandpa’s knuckles are any judge. White and taut, they release their grip on the armrests and he sinks back in the chair. A thousand practiced hands reach down to a thousand plates, grasp the same biscuit and pop it in the same mouth. He smiles a smile of satisfaction I have seen a thousand times before. I sip my lemonade, and taste the tang of the battered metal cup on my lips, marvelling to myself that outside these musty curtains, beyond this delightfully broken record of a living room, it is the real world. // 6 Comments
// Filed under: Verbiage on Friday August 12th 2005, 4:04 pm The choc milk is on the table before he is, plonked down with a stylish aplomb. He pulls out a chair and collapses into it, reminding me of a controlled freefall more than anything. He meets my eyes and smiles wryly, tearing open his choc milk with a practised hand, and slipping the straw inside. A comfortable silence settles on the table, as we both take in the surroundings. People bustle around us and the air is thick with noise. He mutters something about the price of choc milk these days, but I don’t quite catch it. The light of decision floods into his eyes. He reaches down into his ever-present black bag. Torn and tattered with age, he seems to wear it like a badge of honour. We’ve had this conversation before, I recall. “Surely a badge of honour should be distinctively marked?”, I quip. “You’ve just got a cheap, plain old backpack.” His lips twist into a knowing smile and he doesn’t say anything. We are back in the present, and he is handing me a book. It’s a unit textbook of some description. “It’s my Creative Writing textbook”, he explains as I thumb through it. My eyebrow arches in unspoken query. “I need to do an autobiographical piece,” he says, “and I’m looking for a fresh approach.” He leans back in the chair, and takes a long drag on his choc milk. The blue straw floods with brown liquid and his eyes half-close in pleasure. I realise he’s waiting for an answer. “Well?” I say, confused. “Interview me.” “What? I can’t interview you. I’m you.” He leans forward, eyes bright, fingers intertwined. “That’s what makes it perfect. Who better to take such quality material and refine it to perfection?” “Now that’s certainly true”, I say, finding my grin rising to match his own. “Of course, it won’t be easy,” he remarks, stretching his arms, almost hitting someone as they hurry by. “You’ll have to strike the right balance. I don’t want to come across as arrogant, you know.” I uncap my fine, felt-tip pen, setting it against a fresh page in my sketchbook, noting the approval in his eyes. You can always tell a person by their pens. “That’ll be easy enough,” I say, jotting down some ideas, forever transforming the white mundanity of the paper into something more, something greater. “After all, you’re not arrogant, just… misunderstood.” “Hah! I’ll drink to that,” he says, raising the carton of choc milk in mock salute. I study him, thinking. As long as I’ve known him, he’s always been devoid of brand names, and even in a hypothetical meeting with his own self, he’s no different. Plain, neutral shades. Not messy, but aimed to give an impression of neat apathy. Standards, I think to myself. This is a man of standards. It is then I notice that he has spilled some choc milk on his shirt, and is guiltily trying to cover it up. “Tim, I’m you,” I explain. “You know I don’t care about a little food-stain here and there.” “Oh please,” he says dryly. “We both know I’m my own biggest critic. Now, make with the questioning. I grow bored of your witty, yet insightful observations about my character.” “Have you always been such a bad liar?” I remark, tongue planted firmly in cheek. “But of course, my dear sir. That’s what a lifetime of bluntly telling the truth will do to you.” Oh God, I think to myself. Not the principles. Don’t start on your goddamn principles. But it is too late. He is already talking, and I scramble to keep up, noting with displeasure how my handwriting gets messier when I’m in a hurry. Maybe if I’m lucky, I might be able to get a word in edgewise in an hour or two. // 2 Comments
Creative Writing, A Misnomer Of Proportions Large // Filed under: Life on Saturday August 06th 2005, 6:13 pm So. I’ve taken up Creative Writing this semester. Why, you ask? I’ll tell you, anonymous internet fiends! It’s because I’ve completely run out of units to take. I could easily finish my Games Technology degree this semester, but I and my colleagues-in-game wish to pursue this unit on its own, that we may give it the full attention it deserves. This accordingly means I was also left with only one unit to do this semester, so I decided “I know! I like writing. And if I do say so myself, I have quite a flair with these here word-things. I’ll take up Creative Writing!” So far the word meh is the only thing that springs to mind. Of course I had expectations that it would be liberally sprinkled with works of literary filth, ensconced within their own writhing search for meaning and understanding in a cold and lonely universe - and yes, of course I expected that. I would expect nothing less from my experience in literary courses both in high school and at university. But it’s still annoying, still jarring to realise that the literary world is still, still, despite my absence, obsessed with literature being about clarity and depth in a purposeless void of existence, rather than just telling a good story. I’m assured that eventually we will get to this point, and that we are free to pursue our own literary paths through this course, which is good - I guess - but I’ll still be forced to live under the ever-present gaze of a faculty and a culture which treats any piece of literature that doesn’t explore the dark meanderings of a human soul’s search for a foothold in an ever-changing modern world, etc, etc as filth suitable only for the dank realms of enjoyable fiction. Did that even make any sense? Who knows. Speaking of high school, I was actually surprised to learn that many of the people in my class are self-confessed non-writers. I’ve been cloistered so long in my little Games Technology clique of the same nine people that I’d forgotten there was actually a university beyond the smelly, artitificially-lit computer laboratories. Now I am back in the real world of university, and let me tell you it’s just as disconcerting as when I began to consciously avoid it. Gibbering first-year students. Mature-age students with grandchildren and a retirement village looming at the horizon. Foreign exchange students for whom English would be a second language, were they not already fluent also in Dutch, Polish AND German. I’m almost certain I’ll find a Marxist lesbian if I look hard enough. There’s always one. And this strangely intriguing girl with eyes that, were I given to romantic flourish with words, I would describe as eyes that one could drown in. Imagine Elijah-Wood-as-Frodo-Baggins-eyes, right? Only these eyes don’t make me want to rip them out with a fork, and then shove a replacement pair of eyes in so the bastard can see his own watery pools of despair before he bleeds to death (I also amputated his legs, but I censored that part). Like those eyes. Only somehow good. Anyway, she kept looking at me. With her eyes. // 6 Comments
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