Lemongrab (January)

Conversation this January at dinner diverts to accounts of a woman’s recent visit to St. Petersburg where, at The Hermitage, she saw such works as Rembrandt’s ‘Prodigal Son’, “up the stairs and to the left, or was it right?” Father melts at the thought of Rembrandt’s ‘Prodigal Son’, such an extraordinary painting, the direction of the faces, red and gold and darkness. They called it Leningrad, he says. However, daughter, who has also completed by now her bowl of Risotto alla Sbirraglia, reacts, “Lemongrab?” For her, Lemongrab is only one thing, the antihero of the sweet realm of Adventure Time. 

Beemo (January)

There never was a television set I could call a friend. They were Cyclops in the corner, asleep most of the time. It was cute to think R2-D2 was like one of us, when really he was wish fulfilment: if only machines were a bit more human. January was once a time of no machines. Now can anyone get through Lent without them? Anthropomorphism turned a wealthy landowner into a Toad: what to make of Beemo. He’s a Game Boy AND a camera, super cute, sits with you and passes the time, while a true human voice is so reassuring.

Jandal (January)

Argument rages in New Zealand over who invented the jandal, preferred January footwear of undocumented myriads of the population. Was it Morris Yock, importer of the refashioned zori, or Japanese sandal? Or his colleague, Des Cowie of Taranaki? Representatives of both families fight wars of words over their place in the footnotes of history. Australia, meanwhile, is riven by the question: thongs or flip-flops? The thong crowd have the numbers historically, while flip-flops are a British, or worse American, import of the past forty years. That’s not a long time, given the ancient Egyptians wore them forty hundred years ago.

Oneiric (January)

“Writing is nothing more than a guided dream.” Not a saying applicable for ethicists, legislators, or bureaucrats. Not a happy saying for anyone hostile to ‘alternative facts’ and ‘fake news’. More a saying for those x-raying the nexus of personality, those making poetry of January. This state is oneiric, which sounds like Word for the Day and doubtless is if you are dreaming dreaminess, or trusting a vision. ‘Guiding’ is the operative word, taking risks, watching where you go next. It’s the saying of a blind librarian, someone who could find his way in the dark, not least through words.

Journal (January)

Each January 27^th I read some of Janet Campbell’s journals. Today she would have been 55. The early journals flow flowery, freely expressed, brim with post-university energy. The late journals are tiny-scripted, intensely shifting, packed with enough private codes and abbreviations to test Alan Turing. Egocentricity isn’t a criticism of diaries, but I notice how little I learn about everyone else peopling her pages. The insistent report that ‘I am here’ is offset by Janet’s perpetual quotation armoury: “I am riding the rollercoaster + not sure whether I am at the top or the bottom.” M[ark] K[ingsley] Himalayan Trinity (VII.II.04)  

Birthday (January)

Janet Campbell would have been 55 today. January I re-read her journal, quote: “3a.m.XXVIIIth.Jan.2004. Bloody hell…Birthdays! 27^th=ph.calls galore + 0/0JS = Utu.b’day…‘Man is basically a battlefield…a dark cellar in which a well-bred spinster lady + a sex-crazed monkey are forever engaged in mortal combat, the struggle being refereed by a rather nervous bank clerk.’ D.Bannister. Chanda. Kopi kman mousse baci Tiamo=chois T+U. ttkb bugs…small things get to me. Lotus b. asanas lagi ding mundi cyne.peptea.I.p.309 (tkb). You J…at 42…as above. Amen. Dum. Tut Twam asi. Jai Shree Ram Num Myoho Renge Kyo. Amen & for all. beake Lord t’you. Amen”

Bundoora (January)

This Australia Day (January 26) spent in Bundoora. Not the gerrymander-shaped suburb along the Plenty Road, but the region described as Bundoora on 19^th-century maps that, memory serves, includes Heidelberg (a German city when it isn’t Warringal), Macleod (after, imaginatively, Malcolm Macleod), Watsonia (after the very same Frank Watson) &c. Kelbundoora was a Wurundjeri tribesman. Observe that the locus of all his land is Mount Cooper (after Horatio Cooper), just over the hill and the highest point in metropolitan Melbourne outside the Dandenongs. We spend the day reading, gardening, and preparing a huge batch of Vietnamese paper rolls for dinner.

BBQ (January)

Orlando, a person meant to epitomise the English through history, has a deep dislike of tea (Mandarin for Camellia sinensis). Mischievous Virginia Woolf draws our attention to the absurdities nationalism appropriates for its own purposes. Orlando himself becomes herself half way through the novel. Patrick White was drawn to this subject, not tea, gender identity, and I wish he’d written an ‘Orlando’ of his own who has a decided dislike of the BBQ (Arawak via Spanish). Each January Australia (Latin via Matthew Flinders) Day (Anglo-Saxon), Australians of every description show their patriotism by drunkenly cooking meat in the blazing heat.

Afternoon (January)

Meanwhile, in the afternoon, light wears out glass in buildings assembled in the distances. Trains wriggle along viaducts above traffic fuming in gridlock. We’ve weaved onto suburb express: our worked-out heads lean on January windows, our thumbs play on iPhones ‘invisible marbles’. Holiday tomorrow lightens conversation. Mention of Mall killings tightens faces. Fly-by shadows of trees pattern faces. We thought someplace else is where it all happens, when here and now is where. News feeds update world resentment. Resend! Only why is everyone relaxed, going somewhere? Every kind of tree and house goes by, occasionally blocked by a cordial advertisement.

Morning (January)

However, in the morning there is light on little leaves high above where we walk. A bicyclist strays by and turns a corner. The mournful cars, symbol of where we have got to, stand pleasantly silent in driveways and gutters. The noise is lorikeets high above, scarlet gumflowers scattered on pavement where we walk. Children have sleep-in, in anticipation of next week, when they won’t sleep in. On cool slopes there are the hundred shapes of gardens and their corresponding greens. Bedraggled agapanthus lean every which way when it’s end of January. A topical cat sits at a typical gate.

Again (January)

Make Antarctica frozen again. Make China far again. Make Iran Persia again. Make Bohemia Bohemia again. Make Italy Rome again. Make Memphis blues again. Make Russia quagmire again. Make Tuvalu visible again. Make Australia ancient again. Make America think again. Make Egypt central again. Make Mexico pay again. Make England pleasant again. Make Britain rule again. Make Rhodesia Zimbabwe again. Make Chile Communist again. Make Falklands Argentine again. Make Syria habitable again. Make Turkey Byzantium again. Make Japan mysterious again. Make Nepal high again. Make Carthage desert again. Make India Mughal again. Make Portugal great again. Make January Eden again. 

Spectacles (January)

Spectacles are made of bread. They look like gingerbread. Or almond crust. They are dropped in water. They inflate or disintegrate. They make figure eights, flat and ornate. Spectacles are taken out of fresh water. They are pulverized but keep their shape. Mouth is a mouth, opens but no words. Mouth hungers for air. I wake from my dream. Spectacles are metal. They are glass and blue metal. Or tortoise-shell. I keep leaving them places I can’t find them. Spectacles make words bigger. January looks normal again. All of January, the bedroom, the garden, the kitchen. I start making breakfast.

Great (January)

Wouldn’t it be great to make a film detailing every slow colour of the spectrum in objects? To devise a play that heals the wound? To construct symphonies using 100 iphones as instruments? To invent new artforms that only work using solar? To blow glass flowers of all Australian species? To draw such drawings as would distract people, permanently, from their pompous inclination to destroy? To sing a song so amazing everyone forgets to applaud, the silence at the end is so big? To tie together the garden with Sze wool? To complete the universally agreed definitive text on January?

Good (January)

Wouldn’t it be good to make a painting that covered every wall and ceiling of a house? To create a sculpture emerged from the sea that defeated all council regulations? To write a novel that described the reader’s life in precise detail? To make a poem that is frontpage news? To design clothing that puts an end to the fashion industry? To build a church that everyone wants to go into? To plant tree gardens on all available vacant lots? To produce letter graffiti that emulates seedpod galaxies, not city blocks of squareness? To compose music that eloquently explains January?

Pine (January)

The streets are alive with the sight of hacked pines. Sharp and resinous forms, glossy as gossip, turn inward and auburn in January heat. They lounge on the lawn between footpath and gutter, nowhere to go. Their pinnacle hosted an angel, their base was once well-rooted. Leaving behind needled neutralised soil, they have little to celebrate now, shook out as Binsey poplars, their moment of incarnation used-by, their core interest destined for the woodheap. What did their buyers see in them that wasn’t glistered with tinsel? Dead, as said, will someone come to end their disintegration? Their soon-to-be swift drift.

The remains of the Christmas tree at St Paul's Cathedral, Melbourne. Photograph: Amanda Witt

Yorkshire (January)

Not Yorkshire: green clouds, magenta lanes, vermilion creeper, azure mud, pink pasture, purple saplings, yellow shadows. But yet Yorkshire: spindled treetops, jumping raindrops, daffodil parties, horse crossings, white birdcalls, parked cars, red-bluff buildings, glass ashtrays. Yorkshire via California: LSD buses, orange groves, coasting freeways, surf sunlight, technology plug-ins, loudest cactus, mass deluxe production seduction, silicon schmilicon Spike Milligan! Yorkshire of desire: that lane travelled so often through woods, where now you sit down by, old man, to paint and contemplate. Yorkshire in memoriam: ipad drawing printed on sheets of paper mounted by Dibond Hockney circa after January sometime twenty eleven.

Zoom (January)

Zoom in to hedgerow muzzy birch stripe sky tip-bucket foliage froth road wash before dot leaves rib shadows insert overleaf intersperse collective recognition each branch crosshatch puddle roadside grasses innuendo become statement heaped hemmed zigzag incidental ipad action eye blurred heights cloud-like ground selected bright palette scribble blink press gauze. Then zoom out paintbox crush push blossoms past January white snow botanical entertainment poised plush scarlet ribbons of lightsome purple reflections of raincloud focus faithful feigning energy undiminished Hockney’s earlybird weeds tossing outlining bursting hooded weeds starjump butterfly weeds old man’s weeds laughing day-old weeds touch the screen save send.

Dent (January)

Crumpled buckled roadside guard shaped by truck is an incident. The bent 80 speed sign sun-bleached at roar corner, pendent. The crushed wrinkled drink cans on ring road tarmac, improvident. Overturned van surrounded by ambulance and firetruck means an accident. January Mitsubishi diamond glass brushed into storm gutter shines resplendent. ‘Tis but a scratch’ sticker patches rear door damage evident. Dints and duco-dashes head and tail tell of speeds imprudent. Weather-peeled, the Geelong freeway sign clatters when rain threatens, corrodent. Temporary fencing wards off rapid traffic at a rollover precedent. Faces of drivers, natural alone attentive, glide by, almost transcendent.

Fake (January)

This January the readership looks with dismay upon fake news. Not so much fake news itself, how would they know if it was fake or not, but upon the legitimising of fake news as a fact of life. This will happen when everything 24-hours a day is being sent out into cyberspace as news. The generation of unauthenticated unauthoritative fake news is easy when a million computers share the fakery without recourse to sources. The readership here means all of us, trying to make head and tail of any number of phishy beasts; of untruths, the secret origins of violence.