Finland

 

Standing at Westgarth Station the anonymous author considers how clouds superimpose themselves on other clouds, cold as snow. The clouds are images in his mind, slowly ending up upon alpine plains. A high bridge arches across the sky in his mind. The anonymous writer wonders why Gerald Murnane never uses the name Gerald for the first-person narrators of his incremental fictions. But not for long, as he finds images in his mind are of white expanses of Finland. Snow footpaths and snow windows show at some unearthly hour and briefly the moon the same. There are ice rivers and ice rinks all day in daylight then candles in the windows when an unearthly sunset makes everywhere black and the winter sea. Westgarth platform is an arc. Large mirrors on sturdy stilts help the train driver see the back carriage exits and entrances. The anonymous author notices how superimposed clouds and a bridge in the sky are reflections in a large mirror on Platform 2. Surface glaze and white sprays of graffiti improve the superimpositions in his mind. He thinks it must be exciting for humans and wolves when the darkness breaks open with a red line that widens into pink and yellow, in Finland, in winter. Windows and exterior landscapes turn white, making space for memory. When a Hurstbridge express train hurtles through the arc of Westgarth, disappearing around the bend, the station is left feeling redundant. The anonymous author senses the loneliness experienced sometimes by characters in stories by Tove Jansson. A mirror on stilts temporarily reflects woodlands and cold lakes and pale blue skies. He sees the music of Jean Sibelius, chilly and austere sonatinas, proof, if only in his writing, that music is visible. The unnamed writer wonders why Tove rarely used the name Tove, though all the characters in her fictions were people in her life. Tove gave them special names, some of them look like clouds and the main ways to reach islands in Finland are by boat or bridge. The nameless composer in words considers it a great relief to know wolves were never introduced into Australia. He wonders if an academic living in Westgarth with nothing better to do will one day collate a who’s who key to all the people in the novels of Gerald Murnane, formerly of Macleod. He recollects images in his mind in a glass whitely on stilts of the frozen north, or is that the melting north, or the misty north, the slushy north, the pale blue north? A stopping-all-stations to Macleod rounds the bend, slows and halts along the arc, beneath the bridge in the sky. Five people get off and two people get onto the train, also the unidentified author into the second front carriage. The driver waits till all is clear then closes the long line of carriage doors.

Omnishambles

 

Omnishambles, a word that should be used more often to explain the bewildering array of evidence and opinion met in daily life, at macro and micro levels. Confronted with a situation that is beyond our immediate ability to process in all its complexity, most of us reach readily for the common expression: What a mess! A useful summation, but sometimes for truly unruly presentations of a mess, why not opt for its baroque synonym, omnishambles? This was the word used by the judge in the Bruce Lehrmann vs Network Ten and Lisa Wilkinson case this week in the Federal Court to describe the height, breadth, and depth of confusion (read, information) that met his senses during this court hearing. He was stating his task, which was to apply common sense and a knowledge of the law onto an omnishambles, the prefix omni- indicating that the shambles was everywhere and all-encompassing through several dimensions. At least from his perspective. And probably most of the jury’s, the jury consisting of a goodly proportion of the Australian population. Like us the judge, Justice Michael Lee, was being told lies and to his credit he showed great insight in calling out quite a number, especially from Lehrmann, using simple objectivity and knowledge of the type. This dispersed much omnipresent fog while gratifyingly showing none of us are omniscient. Weeks of hearings tiptoed around the certainty, because it was forever being denied, that sex occurred on the ministerial couch in Parliament. This shambling around the main subject was clearly irritating to the judge. He made clear with clinical analysis just what this discussion was really about. His verdict left none of the jury in any doubt, as the omnishambles exited stage right and a hundred cameras followed the actors in this strange farce down a busy Sydney street. His actual characterisation of the case went, “given its unexpected detours and the collateral damage, it might be more fitting to describe it as an omnishambles”, itself a fitting description of the messy night in question. That alcohol has its own verisimilitude was known to the judge. That there are any number of afterhours venue choices more private than Parliament House. That true confessions may happen years later in unanticipated places and with unlikely listeners. His every sentence spoke to a shared reality about people and life. Deliver us from subterfuge. Amen. Omnishambles started life as a British political word, apt thinks the jury given the events of the case transpired during the lifetime of the so-so ScoMo moment. Like the judge, the Oxford English Dictionary turned this mess into clear English, awarding omnishambles the Word of the Year in 2012. Its definition: “a situation, especially in politics, in which poor judgement results in disorder or chaos with potentially disastrous consequences.”   

Autumn

 

Spring forward, fall back. One hour. Rule of thumb. Autumn, typically, is indifferent to these time signatures. Sunrise is cooler, too cool most chances. Yellow leaves no larger than (thinks cent coins, cuticles no fingernails) hmmmmm speckle concrete footpaths. Cute icicles. Rain leaves them brighter awhile, softening. Bodies rest into the slowdown of heat, enjoy the enjoining beatitude. Puddles inch inwards to an outline. Streetscapes turn amber, burgundy, lime. Coughs in the air occur, distant phrases of tired machinery. Metal pings when hit, assorted wheels grind iron rail grooves. Impressively the omnipresent clouds are this time dark grey, bodying reminder of our world of bodies, boding more and darker. Autumn, prolifically, let’s go of the foregoing immensities, their spatial expansions, their aging colours, as usual. Walking around the wind, or headlong against the wind, but not ahead of the wind, walkers have never felt so alive. Or so they say. Utensils shine dull silver quietly, there in the moment. And buildings and clouds, likewise. Immensities of park and field, evaporation and photosynthesis, sun ray and creek bed are let go. One hour, no more, no less, let go. Jigsaw suburbs fit into jigsaw city and jigsaw outskirts, every piece touched with change, strange joins. Storm drains thunder after downpours lessen. Autumn prolifically sounds. Next day the regularities push their known designs, regardless of saving hours. Stone is washed of sunlight dust, revealing its hidden warmth, worn well. Fennel rallies and fountains, weeds find a place to stay, vines reach their magnitude and start to fray. Explorative, pages are turned that have not been turned for years and yes, years. Birds scatter raindrops on pages from upper branches, firm in their tendencies. Houses in line resume their human scale as the cool air shrinks expectations back to normality. Absurd ringtones interrupt tranquillity. Fallen eucalypts from the big storm have turned brown on brown where fallen. A lightbulb at a day window says someone is home. Succulents too big to manage loll over rocks in tired profusion. Laughing conversation picks up on a favourite theme as it fades around a nearby corner. A construction site is a nest of cranes in a field of mud, angles waiting for the next stage. Lucid thoughts join together again in some old-fashioned way. A moment of your time becomes an hour, more or less, attention rapt in the flow. A feather, no less, falls on the footpath, reminder of soft arrows everywhere, of all the time it actually takes. Tomorrow, which is already here, witnesses more than it can say or fit in the space. Instead, erects signs to confirm where it’s at. Wall cracks held with cement retell the sag of ground in redbrick zigzag, all the way down, to the ground, nearly. The red tree in the side garden barely flutters.