Colosseum (February)

The Colosseum, end of February 2018

This February all roads lead to Rome for the Winter Olympics. Ice hockey on the Tiber has drawn complaints of a Russian advantage, even a new cold war. In Nordic Combined some competitors mistake statues for snowmen. The Vatican claims a public relations coup by opening St Peter’s Square for curling and toboggan. Corridors are crowded for skeleton. Seven Hills have proven adequate for downhill, with random blizzard interruptions. Leonardo da Vinci-Fiumcino closed for 24 hours. Giorgio Armani balaclavas and Prada ugg boots are favoured this year. The talk is all Melbourne in 2022, a city with all the facilities.

Ageing (February)

Trinity College Squash Courts: knocked down. St Moritz Ice Rink: arson. The CRA in Collins Street: once Melbourne’s tallest building, now cute nostalgia. Carlton Brewery: downed. Allen’s Lolly Factory: swallowed up. Festival Hall: slated for flattening. Lost buildings teach us ageing. Same wherever. It’s a salutary game, this February, remembering them, moving spaciously through them, even as they are gone, while living with others one never expected. Federation Square: as a critic wrote, a stack of crumpled Gucci bags. The apartment tower rising above the hospitals on Heidelberg, like those in Caulfield, Doncaster, South Yarra: sign of things to come. 

Fweet (February)

I open at random and read until exhausted, usually about two-plus pages. I read auxiliary literature. I return to favourite passages, yielding fresh meanings. This has been going on since I was 17, reading this book. This February I attend, for the first time, a reading group that meets one Saturday afternoon per month in Multi-Purpose Room 2 of a Carlton library. Seventeen or so readers read aloud paragraphs, then bring their knowledge, and that of auxiliary literature, to bear on words heard and seen. In two-plus hours that’s about two-plus pages. Now there’s Fweet: Finnegans Wake Extensible Elucidation Treasury...

Small (February)

In my dream Melania has grown to twenty foot tall. Her expression remains conventional expressionless. Either she’s Alice in Wonderland, or it’s me. It must be me. Her husband’s the height of Melania’s shoe. He yells loudly the whole time but all that’s heard is a squeak. He’s really small. Melania asks is this February? She’s grown as tall as the Empire State Building. Soon she will be a rocket to Mars. When she reclines she’s the Mexican wall. Melania’s husband gets smaller. He’s a bullet without a thought. He’s an atom splitting over the Korean Peninsula, a Microsoft microdot.

Escalator (February)

Queuing for the step feed, footstep slides onto steel grooves, clunk music. Our illusion of ascent is perpetuated, perpetuated. Moving stare cases hold the left rail, seamless screen readers, loose change managers. Tourists with trunk-bags heave on-board the obstacle course of ease. Don’t Walk, Walk. Right-siders tip-toe sole groves to the mezzanine, unless daydreamers stop the flow, or an arrogant standabout doesn’t care less, affronted by excuse me politeness. Out-of-towners learn procedure, dressed in their February best. An informal feeling resumes as the top approaches, we stationaries testing for the step off, our childhood fear of being sucked under, transitory.

Not (February)

The Tasmanian Tiger is not a cat, a dog; is not a football team or brand of beer; is not a vintage image from lengths of film; is not a book, a myth, a dream. The Tasmanian Tiger’s not a fire burning bright, a tooth, a paw, claw, tapering hairline, spine; is not an opera, an heirloom teacup. The Tiger’s not tiger DNA, or lion; not a lampshade, not a hat for a five iron; not paradox, pathos; not a stripe, a type February spotters spot; not a breath, growl, splash in the bush; is not female, male; is not.

Punctuation (February)

Grammarians spot the comma that found its way into the wrong gap. Their exclamation marks are unforgiving. Semi-colons can be breathless: wait till you hear this! Colons forewarn of the facts. Thanks be for the full-stop, dashes just don’t cut it. Though poets are sensitive. Is this full-stop angry, ironic? They would dispense with them, believing poetry’s like making love: please don’t stop. Ellipsis keeps things private, elides too much information. Lawyers avoid the ambiguous slash and tendentious quote-mark; they decide what governs what. February again, school’s in, learning anew when to judge where to make one long sentence two.

Bridge (February)

Julius Caesar, when not crossing the Rubicon, was burning bridges behind him. General Montgomery planned a capture of wartime bridges that overreached itself, “a bridge too far” being a favourite expression of Kevin Rudd: “John Howard has gone a bridge too far by not going far enough.” Neither man exactly pontifex maximus. This February, scandals involving a Deputy Prime Minister threaten government stability: “There will be bridges that need to be built between colleagues after this is over and I don’t want to burn them before we start,” one Liberal said, fortunately wearing the garment called the cloak of anonymity.

Song (February)

Toby Cresswell reviews Elvis Costello: “He writes too many words to his songs.” When James Brown sings “Get on up!” do we need more words to get what he’s saying? Bob Dylan reduced the verses of ‘Like a Rolling Stone’, but can we imagine that storyline working in less than six minutes? “I went through all the months of January…” It’s how Bernard Sumner sings the words, that matters. How soon is February? Some psalms go two lines, others several pages. Choristers through time have known all the words by heart. How much time have we  got? How many words?

Appalled (February)

Apparently Barnaby and Vikki have “appalled us all” with their office romance. Malcolm speaks for all of us on this matter. It must stop, now, this February! We think of Harold and his Portsea girlfriend. Dame Zara peered through the bedroom door. “I couldn’t believe what I saw!” she told reporters. The whole Press Gallery knew about Blanche. Were they all appalled? Would they bring down Bob’s government? Gough made no comment. He remembered Jim and Junie. It must stop now, all of this getting caught in the act! Sir Robert would wish things seemingly seemly: “We are not appalled.”

Flowerbed (February)

Carnation, that survived heatwave, breathes in for the next push. Cosmos floats on long stalks, small round clouds in a February sky. And dark-red cosmos, black at first sight. Grevillea, soon to calligraph curls the Middle Ages could only imagine. Russian Sage brushes aside the open spaces provided for its expansion. Salvia, their rain threads of flowerets, sway above cities of leaves, storey on storey as if fixated. Red Yarrow sets up ladders, praying mantis green to ensure surprise. Incidental flags of green are the geranium cutting that struck in the mud. Quietly Lime Balm collects every item of moisture.

Cockroach (February)

Whole suburbs awake to kafkas scuttling away from the light. Open the scrumptious pages, their bedsit, and they scrabble rapidly towards no-words-land. They are overgrown full-stops, made monstrous on a menu of German thought. But to us a fright, slight in flight, self-serving gourmets of decay. February is a good month for landscape architecture. We are capabilitybrowns of our own postage stamp, kick over picturesque boulders to find carparks of them, driving in all directions. Their livery is so 2018, metallic black, impersonal. How easily we crush them under heel: them all feeler, us no feeling at all. Full-stop. Period.