Sign-off

 Is ‘Kind regards’ the safest [sign-off]? Kind, with regards, yes. ‘Best wishes’ has become brusque. Don’t know you, still ‘Best wishes’. ‘Sincerely’? It’s a sound, at least. ‘Ciao!’ Too familiar. ‘Yours truly’- can there be ‘Yours untruly’? ‘Warm regards’, not sure, could be taken as an advance. ‘Very warm regards’, that’s virtually ‘Hot regards’. ‘Yours in anticipation’ could nowadays almost be coercion. ‘Yours ever’- it’s said without thinking; ‘ever’, or until the next tea break. While ‘Yours’ can sound like relinquishment of body, soul, and worldly possessions. Best to qualify with, say, ‘Yours faithfully’. When in doubt, old-fashioned is best.

Peregrine

 Peregrines can do ‘peregrinatio’ at 320 kmph, considerably faster than your average pilgrim. Peregrines are the fastest creatures in the world. Humans can be amongst the slowest. The word implies travelling into foreign parts, over medieval mountains. Even plodding our peregrinationes inside the 10 km radius surrounding our home opens up foreignness. Local looks new, alive, strange even. Home truths indeed. Home life is what we make it: options include inferno, purgatorio, paradiso. The garden path can be a heavenly pilgrimage. We are charmed by our Collins Street peregrines, described on earthquake day as “internet stars… gripping a housebound nation.”

Peregrin

 Note (2014) found in lockdown: “The word ‘peregrin’ (pilgrim) first appears in Canto 2 of Purgatorio.  For the first time in the Commedia we’re on pilgrimage, on the way to learning about ourselves. How do we describe Inferno? Not a pilgrimage. An endurance test, wakeup call, warning, a place of no exit. But an early sign the infernal state has been escaped is the use of [‘peregrin’]. It’s behind us. Pilgrimage is a medieval business, a way of finding the Way. It's what we do on earth in our allotted time. Hence Purgatorio, the most accessible of Dante’s three places.”

Bird

 The Magpies are set to win again this year. This is not another example of the delusional preoccupations of our times, the abject resilience of the Collingwood mind indifferent to any signs to the contrary. Not black-and-white denialism. Today they already have 730 votes in Australian [Bird] of the Year Poll, second behind the Gang-Gang Cockatoos on 801, which is a nice place to be. Pied Currawongs and Spotted Pardalotes are in the two hundreds, so still in there with a chance. I have until 7^th October to choose between forty-nine others, or else help the Magpies over the line.

Finals

 Pie stands closed. A cleaner at work along concrete decks. Cold wind through empty entrances. Bruisers in bronze. Ghosts of [finals] past framed on club walls. Dark oval of serried seats and shadows. Where’s the September streamer crowd crossing the park? Jolimont for members, punters, footy mums, one-eyed larrikins- all the fans bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, scarved for action. That first view coming up the ramp of green sward. Lift of stadium sky. Wild cheering cheerful anticipation. Your own team streaming onto the field. Heroes and heartbreakers. And the umpires, needing a visit to the optometrist. The overwhelming roar at the bounce.

A photograph of the Melbourne Cricket Ground from the Frankston train at 20 to seven on Monday morning the 26^th of April this year. At that point in time Collingwood still had a ghost of a chance.

Ambiguity

Seven types of [ambiguity]. Do you Like this because you like it, want to join in, it’s kneejerk, to close the dialogue? Do you Love it, just very very like it, or is this your default setting? Do you Care and in what way? Do you Laugh at it, with it, with me, at me, despite me, or maybe you’re tipsy? Isn’t Wow an overreaction, excess enthusiasm, or maybe sarcasm, an accidental keystroke? Are you Sad because it’s sad, out of empathy, or is this a guilt trip? Are you Angry at me, what I said, or do you agree?  

 

Number

Chasing numbers. On earthquake day we scour for the highest: 6.2 Bass Strait 1946. 5.9 is next so we’re history. The record for protests is 235 arrests. On earthquake day that was down to 66. Doughnut day imminent. NSW’s highest daily case [number]: 1599. Going below 1000 is made to sound an improvement. “Just 935 positive yesterday”. All going well it’s 6 weeks more lockdown. 12 if people don’t do the right thing. Jab numbers rise, but not without a vaccine. We wish these numbers added up. But there’s no 1 roadmap. We cannot count all the roadmaps out there.

Tremor

 Carol thought it was me opening a window. I can be forceful, but not that forceful. The house felt unstable for twenty seconds. Stood up from the computer, just to make sure something different was happening. It kept on happening. Even detected a [tremor] rumble under the ground. Our first instinct was to go out into the street. There were indeed neighbours, some like me still in pyjamas, on footpaths doing neighbour checks. One is a geologist. He said the Heidelberg ridge has no faults. Interested knowing the epicentre. Went inside to follow others online. Addresses unfolded: Mansfield, Canberra, Launceston…  

Currawong

 All day, currawongs. Song broader than magpies. End whistles. At least ten in the cootamundra, ten out the back. Walls of white rain interrupt. Then they resume. Indecipherable group squabble. Reading Katherine Mansfield, I look up. A [currawong] on the branch outside. Bashes something against it. Bubble plastic, now supple, or dead. Abandons it. Lunch conversation: nesting or foraging? Corresponding shapely blackness our side of the glass. Obsidian staring pointedly at branches cats cannot reach. Currawongs can. Their call and return. What are they saying? What’s with the whistle? Another shower blindsides the window. Then return, and call. All day.     

Isolation

 All day I draw [isolation]. It’s the blank square I surround with pastels. Malevich has nothing to do with it. He left long ago. Delivery is a Goya, but for his mask and earpiece. I could make still-lifes of the groceries in his box. Isolation has Streeton consolations. Cherry blossom, for example, is not going anywhere, for now. The girls watch their afternoon movie. Hopper, Renoir, one of those. Meanwhile the cat walks Pollocks all over the property. Then sleeps in a Giotto-perfect circle. In our Rembrandt nights, wine’s the one daub of red pouring from the bottle. Kusama dreams.   

Freedom

 Freedom Day is a twinkle in someone’s eye. Give it the benefit of the doubt. Better late than never. What I’m saying here is it’s an interesting expression. Say it often enough and it will enter the language. Freedom Day is just another word for nothing left to lose. It sounds axiomatic. It could become idiomatic, if enough believers join in. Freedom Day twists your arm. It could be the last straw. Then again, it could be the best medicine. [Freedom] Day, but will it last? It could leave you under the weather. You wouldn’t want to be caught dead.   

Contradrinking

 Finnegans Wake reading group via zoom. We read pages 94-96 over three hours. Not for the first time we meet “the fourbottle men”, who are the gospel writers (“Mamalujo”) when they aren’t the four provinces of Ireland (“used her, mused her, licksed her and cuddled”) or other quadripartite manifestations. They’re the four judges who sit in the pub “[contradrinking] themselves” into the night telling stories about the owner and his family, until the parting glass. Reading this book, we agree, is a creative act with its own rewards, us inside the play of words, getting references, agreeing, conjecturing, contradicting ourselves…    

Question

 Cooking crimes: does anyone still make scalloped potato bake? Date yourself by your first car. Who is the most famous person you’ve ever met? This daily flood of infantile questions, designed to give some computer my profile, raises a [question]: should they be banned? Does anyone still use clothes pegs? Do you button up your shirt? Does anyone set their alarm for 7am anymore? Does anyone wake up in the morning? Fun is putting algorithms off the scent. Date yourself by your first concert. Premiere of ‘Firebird’. What was your top subject at school? Went to school in a treehouse.     

Collage

 Put a fresh coat on Day Four of Creation. The paint is Aalto Goliath, bought for a song at a Heide Gallery fire sale. Goliath is no longer in Aalto’s fandeck, but closely matches a shade of grey called Curfew. The four sides of our place are the seven days, reminder that we are surrounded by and held in Creation. “… he made stars also” says Genesis 1:16, which was an artistic challenge before I thought to do a Louise Nevelson and make a wooden [collage]. Obviously it’s a cloudy night, but the stars are back there somewhere. Nice job.

E

 My Father’s Day present arrived in the mail yesterday. Bridie ordered the reissue of Hiroshi Yoshimura’s ‘Green’ from Plug Seven Records in Smith Street, Collingwood. So far, I have played it five times. Yoshimura’s 1986 liner notes say ‘GREEN does not specifically refer to a colour. I like the word for its phonetic quality, and song titles were chosen for their similar linguistic characteristics.’  CREEK FEEL SHEEP SLEEP GREEN FEET STREET TEEVEE all have a double [e], a vowel sound (Bridie explained) not found in Japanese. This is the original Tokyo ambient version, not the US release infused with nature sounds.

Player

 Those slap-happy record racks. Rustling album sleeve scrunches. Vinyl lowered up/on turntabletop. Needle puffed off lint. Click-click moulded lift button. And the [player] moved. Flattened undulating pitchblack grooves. Touch traced silent start. The 1960s come alive. Psychedelic sitar spiral nostalgia. Monteverdi played like Beethoven. Debussy in a swirl. Afternoons were like this. The carousel of time. Part of the furniture. The 1970s same different. Miles on the corner. Glam turned to scratch. Punk returning into funk. Music of the sphericals. Till its disc slipped. Incurably too much bass. Twist again last summer. Nature strip windblown graveyard. Softest sounds hard rubbish.

Anatidaephobia

 In my regular transit through Urban Dictionary I encounter Word for the Day: ‘[anatidaephobia] is a pervasive, irrational fear that one is being watched by a duck. The anatidaephobic individual fears that no matter where they are or what they are doing, a duck watches.’ I suppose it’s a change from being watched night and day by the intelligence services, or my algorithm. Greek ‘anatidae’ includes geese and swans, and though I’m sure I’m not being watched by a swan, maybe I have pardalotephobia, as they visit our windows daily, watching me as if I am a person of interest.  

It is only after finishing these 100-words that I later googled ‘anatidaephobia’, only to find that the word was invented by Gary Larson of ‘The Far Side’. It helps explain the Larson duck in his cartoons, who is very different indeed from the Leunig duck. This also reveals a weakness of the Urban Dictionary, which is invaluable for definitions of every kind of new word, but not good at editorial sourcing. An example of where innocent ‘anatidaephobia’ can take you next is found here: https://www.verywellmind.com/is-anatidaephobia-a-real-condition-4767076

Bondi

 Your honour, the man on the [Bondi] tram was infected. He was on the Highway to Hell. ‘Is that a Sydney street?’ No your honour, it’s a metaphor. It’s a song by AC/DC. ‘I see. Continue.’ He arrived at the beach with the intention of crashing some crystal cylinders. ‘Is that a legal substance?’ Surf, your honour. He proceeded past the Beach Closed signs to mingle with hundreds of others who also ignored the signs. His mask was down under his chin. He took Instagram images as proof. ‘A case of leading with the chin’. If you will, your honour.

 

Square

 Finding I am making images of a blank uncoloured [square] surrounded on all sides by detailed colour. This has been going on the last couple of days. Then I think, it’s our place in fortnight iso. Our house and garden is the square and, of course, as we cannot leave the square for fourteen days, the rest of our little world, and the big world, goes on in imagination. What can we do but colour in the familiar places outside our classic Australian square? Suddenly we self-teach home delivery. The gaps in our experience of online ordering are blankly apparent.  

Deckchair

 “I have some complain everyday deckchair conferences is too much wasn’t sure how people would react to me not fronting up to deckchair announcements anyhow case numbers any old way whatevs I will turn up when I need to but to expect the leader of the deckchairs indefinitely to do this every day means that I’m not doing my job the people of this state can judge me on my 2000+ [deckchair] record whenever I need to speak directly to the public even when I don’t which is from next Monday I must normalise this the new normal everyday properly”

Zeitgeist

 The [zeitgeist], so yesterday. Gone in a trice. Plans put into effect, deselected too soon, unelected. Fashions mincing up the runway, fey done away. Let out to play, dated come what may june. Favourite hits, the same old song. But with a different meaning since new hits come along. There’s nothing wrong. Take planes, remembering life in the fast lane. Touched down in the exotic. It was tinglish just to minglish. Who needs to know demotic, when you’ve English. Recycling zeitgeists, it’s not the same, a shifting mirage, a phase. That yellow was gold once. That blues, a purple haze.

Noticeable

 Work permit Thursday. Driven to work outside the radius. Noticeable weeds along fences. Peak-hour train at level crossing: three passengers per carriage. Masks in parks. Schools closed. Noticeable blossom on street trees. More shops boarded along Heidelberg Road. Clifton Hill cafés huddling penguin queues. Drop off Bridie. Brunswick Street ‘For Lease’. Phonecall from Bridie. Her workplace is an exposure site, not sure which tier. Town Hall Pfizer queue. Spencer Street no one. Yarra noticeably clean and sparkling. Car mirror photo-op at Southbank: ‘Melbourne Black’. Clarendon Street no one. More phonecalls. Turn around for home. First, get tested. Symptoms: not [noticeable].

Dream

 Dream goes in vapours. Or rises in rivers. There’s an occasional avalanche. Wetsuit chainmail sarong optional. The ocean is coming. Dream rolls steadily downhill. Emerges into an orchestra. Everyone playing at once. Studies the program notes. Written by a child. Dream comes to order. Stands for the judge. Listens to the evidence. Sneaks out for cigarettes. Walks into a mirror. Her name is Memory.  Sometimes dream is square. Immerses azure with vermilion. As you were will. Means what [dream] means. Goes meets the zeitgeist. Gets the gear off. Walks along the shore. Only you and me. Wakens like a birdcall.

Stroll

 Not across it, he tries at strolling the photo opportunity, casual with a chancellor, easy with presidents. Autocues assist elocution. Sexual enquiry, refugee intake, words stroll from his mouth like it’s nothing at all. Steamroller the cabinet, baby-stroller the presser’s questions. Climate, it’s no [stroll] in the park. Still, it’s not a race, not a competition, it’s a strollout. A strollcall of intensive care sounds as if he cares at all. He strolls from the podium: look relaxed, glass of water, phone the wife. He tabulates marginals, strolls with truth to question time. Trolls turn into strolls, bloggers into flaneurs.

Wombat

In 2008 I wrote 11-line riddles on the tribes at Fitzroy Community School: dingo, echidna, kangaroo, koala, platypus. Reading these aloud at Poetry Meeting this year I was told there is now Wombats. Okay, wombats. Here is the result: emerges from round hole to round whole/ a waddle a lurch a buffet/ gentle giant on four paws/ breakfasts on moonlit tussocks/ shapeless shape of hairy cloud/ stubborn bundle it avoids the crowd/ yet warms to its own kind one on one/ oh on what slopes come snow/ or shine it will incline to/ bumble rumble tumble humble home/ the wombat

Pardalote

Can be forgiven for not instantly identifying the finch or wren at the side window ledge, hopping from the magnolias to the teapot handles and back again. Websites were tunnelled, bird books flurried, but then I remembered the local Sustainable FB page reporting recent sightings: “We are being visited by a pair of spotted [pardalote]s which I have not seen for years.”  Signs include red rump feathers, white eyebrows, and markings that explain why it’s also called the diamondbird. Problem, but. This is the male who is trying to warn off another male, but actually warning off his own reflection.

 

Preparation

 “I’ll put the road map out so people know exactly what life’ll be like in a week or two because if you hear about something done differently I don’t want you to be concerned the highest number of people in intensive care why we’ll be able to present in very good detail next week all the [preparation] work only if you feel like it that’s been happening to make sure everyone can feel confident if they need those services the best on the planet but we hope it doesn’t get to that the Prime Minister I speak to him regularly.”

Delete

 Minutes of our day spent on the key/icon DELETE. Blog Comments, for example. “Therе's ԁefinitely а great deal to find out about thіs issue. Ι reallу like all the poіnts you’ve made. Also visit my blog: nosey.parker” DELETE “Just wish to say your article is as amazing. The clarity in your submit is simply cool. I could assume you are knowledgeable in this subject. Allow me to take hold of your RSS feed to stay-up-to-date. Visit my blog: ranking.engine” DELETE “Do you have spam problem on your blog. I was wondering your situation. Shoot me e-mail. My webpage: cactus.blob” [DELETE]

Hakea

 Nature strips were unknown to the hermit Saint Clare, a mystery. Our street is a crescent with a Scots corruption of his name. We don’t know who chose Sinclair, only that all streets are Scottish in this locality. Nor the names of the mysterious council workers who planted the hakea francisiana in our nature strip. Or verge, an interstate import; likewise, hakeas. We selected [‘hakea’] from the council’s street tree guide and mysteriously two years later they planted it. Nor do we see the rainbow lorikeets at sunrise in one minute displace half the blooms everywhere in a cacophonous frenzy.

   

Sleep

 “There is no greater enjoyment in life than sleep when one is sleepy,” writes Anton Chekhov in a letter. Siesta in lockdown is like that. One reads a little then one is sleepy and the afternoon recedes. Cares go into quarantine, likely to emerge later remote and careless. One may go down deeper than a dream. Day restored has its lists, further liabilities and limits. Lockdown orders its own routines, which seem to include sleeping more. Then comes night again. Never was the city so quiet as during these moon-soft curfew hours. [Sleep], free from the intense outlines of day.