S@rdi 30/4/05 (Miller st. 4.

00pm) Ntrapt az lwaiz x karteezian dualzmz Simone Weil yernz 2 c th O

az it iz wen sh iz not thr (2/5. RrIeVnKeIN hoo kmitd suiside ystrdi had sed (2daiz Age p1) : “I could
never imagine the world without me” (3/5. th part of th univers whch woz ‘him-seein-th-O’ woz
uneek, iz gon, & knot b mgined x ny1)) so sh not dsterb th silens of hevn & erth x her breethn & th
beetn of her ♥. But no1 kan c th O az it iz wen sh iz not thr az w r orl joind (bkoz werdz r pkjz of
drkshnz 4 akshnz) & her prezns groze larjr bkoz sh woz a riter. W korz riplz whch ntrsekt. Th mpakt of
a singl 4ln leef rv-rbr8s → ndz of th O. It mai b th@ riterz hav spshl rspnsblteez bkoz they r louder so
I kntnue wth th ntholj of th titlz I hav h&d out a list of whch I startd kmpilin in ‘29/4/04 – 1/5/04’
(“Thursday 29/4/04. Its ppropria@ I giv a komplete nthlogy of the writing I h&d out whn I strtd th
ntrprize in th year 2000 in this piece of writing whch nchractristiclly I m doing in Melbourne (@ Miller
st, 12.15 arvo) as much of the m@erial in my 1st foldr was also writtn in the city. Though Zorca (c
‘3/4/04’ p 15) claims th mis4-tune of being my 1 readr I hope a few othrs r ntrstd eg (4 your info,
Zorca) : DsOhWaNrEoYn hoo works on me bike in th smallst bike shop (9/5/05. haz shiftd 2 larjr
prmsz) in Melbourne in Victoria st (@ 5.7 x E1 covr map) undr th watchful ey of MOODGE & hoo says
sh reads my stuff coz sh likes puzzls, & BROcUhGrHiTsON (9/5/05. haz chainjd jobz x 2 sins) @
Parkhill Cellars (10/5/05. I m 1 of thr best kustmrz) (@ 5.2 x D5) hoo may not hav blievd me ystrdy
whn I said th@ th search 4 IDEN-TITY is an @mpt 2 SIMPLIFY yrslf (th@s th price & I reckn its 2
hgh) hoo probbly also reads it, & K8 (jus back from the US) † th road (@ 5.7 x D) hoo thankd me (&
esp H) day b4 ystrdy 4 givng her our work. Im making ths list in th ordr the itms r in th foldr 2 O off,
complete a O x going back 2 the bgin-nng. Here it is : 1) ART (a 3-letter word) (c ‘16/2/04 – 27/2/04’
p19). 2) GULF TRIP (typed x SA&N-rIeGwA (wth hoom I had lunch in Lygon st. ystrdy) from ARTE
POSTALE items he rceivd @ Melb. U-ni. whch r now in th possssion of COaZdZrOiLaInNaI @
Florentina in Menton, France & Casa Tagg-lasco in Baiardo, Italie). 3) “They Know Not What They
Do” (jc) (writtn 4 a show KEdSaMnIiNuAsS & STEmViEkNeSON did in NEW YORK). 4) OPAL (writ x
Ben (4 an Age short story comp.) whch I dstributed). 5) MEDITATION ON LAKE GAIRDNER (an
album of ovr 200 fotos & 7 short writtn pie-ces : The Gift (poem); Sleep; Labels; Naming It; Ants;
Forgetting (wher I wrote “Remembering and forgetting are reverse sides of one coin” (4 mor on
revers sides of coins c ‘16/2/04 – 27/2/04’ p19-)); & Time). 6) 25/1/00. 7) 20/6/00. (wher the histricl
m@erial on the holocaust was takn from an rtcl x SUŽIEDELIS (an histrian hoo did rsearch 4 the SIU
(Special Investig8ion Unit) in th USA ) whch I do-n8d last sundy 2 th litho library in Errol st (@ 5.2 x
D5) (1/5/04. & wher I note wth srprise Hs contrib-ution (bside th typing) had lready bgun as th piece
strts wth a poem x her & its a good 1 : “in the beg-inning is the word / as the sperm meets the egg /
etching into every surface of the cell / replicating as the cell divides / unique grooves into which /
every experience of every second / of our threesc-ore years and ten / must run / and all our effort all
our lives / is only to find / its unknown shape and meaning ”). 8) 14/8/41 (wher I mntion th ‘Hidden
History of the Kovno Ghetto’ put out x the holocaust museum in Washington & ‘Last Walk in
Naryshkin Park’ x rZoWsIe (& so wth th rrival of EeWaErRlS @ litho hous (c ‘3/4/04 – 12/4/04’ p11 &
12) nothr O has bn joind) both of whch (2gethr wth ‘Stetl’ x Eva Hoffman as nothr xampl of how 2
write such a book) I also don8d 2 litho hous th@ day. 9) 14/8-/41 (I used th = title again bcoz I thght
th d8 so mportnt. Thes 4 poems (The Room, The House, The City, Masks) r them@clly linkd 2 no 7),
no 6), & no 5). I also used lines from thm in an ARTE POST-ALE projct I maild from Murrayville &
Burra b4 meetng up wth sVaAuRlNiAuS). 10) 7/9/00 –16/9/00 (alt title WRONG WAY GO BACK (strts
wth a poem whch is a favourit of mine (though I writ it) so I rpeat it : “ perhaps it is too pedantic / to
discuss // whether object causes motion / or the motion de-fines matter // is it the wind that shakes the
branch / or has the branch given life to air // is the flower beautiful / or did perfection form the flower /
can you see the dancer / or is the dancer hidden in the dance // does the dreamer dream / or has the
dream possessed the man // did the flute produce the tune / or has the tune been waiting for the flute
// I don’t really care about the answers / but the spirits that I talk to / all claim in their conceited way /
that it is they that speak to me ”. I keep the ROMAN COIN I wrote O in th pocket of the foldr th rtcl is
in.) 11) 2/10/00. 12) 17/9/00 & 18/9/00. (I was hyped up! This was the time H calld the shrinks & the
cops). 13) 4/10/00 – 5/10/00 (in whch H ncluded her h& writ lettr of pology & promsd not 2 do it again
1
(13/5/05. but c ‘16/2/04 – 27/2/04’ pp13-15).). 14) AN ESSAY (x ZIkZ8YS whch I dstrbuted. On the
back page I +d : “All pasts and all futures are on-ly reflections of the present.”) 15) 11/11/00 (a
set of 6 poems O language whch I wrote ovr 30 yea-rs ago & reused in an npublishd & unpublishbl
book lnth FACTION ( 2/5/04. mor fac than fic) titld IN TRANSIT whch I writ O 20 years ago & I reuse
th poems again here). 16) 10/1/01 (= applies 2 thes 6 poems O death ; I put thm out in 2000 but used
nxt years d8 coz I 1td th binary titl).”). But bkoz ‘29/4-/04 – 1/5/04’ woz lso th 1st h&out (th uthrz r :
‘30/11/04 – 9/12/04’ pp5-12; ‘10/2/05 – 18/2/05’ pp5-13; ‘21/3/05 – 25/3/05’ pp3-13; & ‘2/4/05 – 8/4/05’
pp3-13. (1/5. klkt th O set!)) in whch I nkluded n gzrpt (pp3-10) from my mastrpiece (kkordn 2 H & I
gree (1/5. Max Gilliesz wife ddnt)) ‘IN TRANSIT’ it iz pr-opri8 2 put in nuthr 1 here b4 I go on wth th
nthlj. So here iz a ferthr dose of th msdvnchrz of Jim Bro-wn, MM, & ‘I’ : “Meanwhile in a parallel
universe or alternatively at a different time in our own misera-ble world Jim Brown is or was on his
way north to Broken Hill. How different a journey that is or was or could be to my own.¶ We pick him
up about half way between Wentworth and the Ana-branch of the Darling river. He is standing by his
car swaying slightly in the breeze even though the evening is perfectly still. The stillness in the air is
attributable to the location, it being north of Mildura. Coming from the south it is at Mildura, more
precisely at the northern bank of the Murray, that the arid inland begins. Suddenly the humidity drops
to zero, the sun becomes harsh, colours brilliant, objects are clearly outlined, the air is full of the calls
of galahs, the breeze drops. Victorians know these things but I say it for the benefit of the Nips who
would do better to see a bit of the station country instead of congregating in controlled environments
like Surfers, Ayers Rock and other tourist traps. Jim who is standing with his back to us is wearing a
pair of name brand jeans which he has bought for $2.00 at an opp-shop. The fly on the jeans keeps
unzipping of its own accord but Jim doesn’t mind because he has no self-esteem. He has always
been dressed from opp-shops even when he’d lived at home. His old man, that same worthy who had
worn the ‘Vote for Joh’ badge, had been as tight with money as a fish’s arse, and that’s watertight.
Jim is rocking backwards and forewards not from the breeze but from the effects of the enormous
quantity of grog he’d consumed to celebrate his release from jail. Let us now circle around, while still
remaining hidden from view, so that we can observe him from the front. I am taking you with me on
this exercise, priveleged reader, to give you an idea of an author’s exhilaration as he stalks his
quarry.¶ We see that Jim’s fly is indeed undone and that from it hangs his dick which is huge, or quite
small but very active, and which he is holding tilted slightly upwards between the index and third
finger so as to get a better view of the head. He has just had a leak and is examining with an abstract
interest the end of his prick. On it you should be able to read the words : YOUR NAME. But there is
nothing there. Amazing! Dear reader, I see your jaw drop, I see the stupi-fied expression on your
face. Do not despair. Like any politician I intend to treat you as an idiot and give a plausible
explanation. The truth is you can only read the words when Jim has an erection. The tattoo was done
by a lady tatooist. When his dick is in the relaxed state the words disappear into the wrinkles and all
that is left is an indecipherable bluish scrawl. ‘But ends of dicks don’t have wrinkles!’ I hear you
complain. Well, I can tell you, as an author, that Jim’s prick is covered in wrinkles. It has mo-re
wrinkles than John Cain’s forehead (10/5/05. or it kood hav bn (if u rmmbr thoz daiz) Don Chips fais).
It may well be one of the most wrinkled pricks in the universe. These are indeed his own thou-ghts as
he contemplates his prong. The sad truth is that his youthful looks are more than counterbal-anced
by the extremely aged appearance of his prick, a legacy no doubt of the kinds of uses it had
unavoidably been subjected to in prison. ¶ No wonder Jim has a poor self-image. As an example
earl-ier that day back down in windy Victoria just past Shepparton or was it Kerang or some other
godfor-saken arsehole of a place he had stood, swayed I suppose as he was doing now but gazing
into the distance while he was having a leak, when he felt an odd sensation in his foot. It was as if
one of his feet was in a swamp but at the same time under a waterfall. He looked down and saw that
he was ur-inating on his shoe. He had been pissing into the wind. But not to worry, he couldn’t have
cared less. That’s the sort of person he was. ¶ I am telling you these things as they were told to me
by none oth-er than Jim himself whom or who, depending on whether you went to a public or private
school, I had the pleasure of engaging in a long and rambling conversation in a small family hotel in
2
Balmain. Jim, who or whom was wearing an Akubra and was shod in a pair of R.M.Williams high
heeled ringer’s boots was drunk so I cannot be held responsible for the accuracy of the detail of the
events. What’s more even if I had felt inclined to go over the story with him I wouldn’t have been able
to because the boys made quite a mess of him in the toilet and I wasn’t going to hang around in case
I got the blame. ¶ Under the circumstances it may make sense for us to leave Jim for awhile, digress
if you like, to that much darker anally fixated character, Mallacoota Man, who implausible as it may
seem is at this very moment also having a leak on a remote beach in Gippsland, Victoria. ¶ A huge
question mark hangs over Mallacoota Man – will he ever achieve ecstasy? The irony of his life as you
know is that it is dog-ged by trivialities. ¶ ‘There he goes again’, I hear you thinking, ‘another one of
those pseudo-philoso-phical wanks. The Nature of Ecstasy’. Well I could do, but just for that I wont. I
could explain how in classical Greek the first meaning of the word was ‘displacement’. The idea was
that you could be be-side yourself with astonishment, fear, or passion. Later it was used to describe
states of trance whe-ther morbid or of religious rapture. The key element of this wonderful state,
according to the one and only Simone Weil, is transcendence i.e. going or being displaced beyond
your normal self. Notice that the meaning of the word has taken a full circle. By this definition eating
in restaurants, no matter how fancy or expensive, does not qualify as an ecstatic experience. Besides
surely ecstasy is related to an apprehension of beauty and only that is beautiful, according to the
inimitable Simone, which we desire without wishing to eat it. The same considerations exclude
orgasms. They happen too often, and when sexually aroused people are always trying to eat each
other. Drugs do not help as they do not engage all the faculties. Art and music have similar
limitations. But what’s the point of going on; I know the topic is boring you. I could more easily hold
your attention by expounding on my theory of how the length of a man’s prick is inversely proportional
to the amount he paid for his car. I was lucky enough to be able to check this out for myself in
Californian bath houses by comparing the attributes of the patrons to their cars parked outside. All of
this of course before aids took its terrible toll. Mea culpa. Just out of spite I’m not going to tell you
about that either. Instead I’ll go back to Jim or Malla-coota Man both of who or whom are having or
have just had or will spend a significant part of their life span having a leak. ¶ To be perfectly frank
with you I don’t know who or what or how I’m supposed to be writing about but if its Mallacoota Man,
that sinister denizen of east Gippsland, then let’s catch him early in the morning as he is packing
some gear in preparation for the end of the world. ¶ Mallacoota Man, or M.M., as I shall on occasions
call him is not by nature an early riser but on this as on each other morning during the current hot
spell he had been woken up at the crack of dawn by flies crawl-ing over his face and trying to force
their way into the corners of his mouth and eyes. You can tell that M.M.is not one of your modern
fashionable a la Paddy Pallin style of camper with a nifty little tent with sewn in floor and zips though
the tent he has just folded up and is stuffing into a huge sausage bag is just such a one. His own tent,
well hidden in spite of its size under a fantastically gnarled and twisted banksia (banksia serrata), is
actually a genuine army tent that weighs the best part of a ton, it seemed to him. Nearby, under
another old banksia is his peerless eight cylinder Falcon station-wagon, a vehi-cle with a tendency to
get rust spots but with an engine whose deep hum was still capable of giving a mechanic an orgasm.
It is camouflaged with bracken fronds and forest floor litter. M.M. is terrified that he might be spotted
from the air by a zealous park ranger inspecting his domain by light aircraft. His campsite is behind
the dunes at the end of a disused track. At a point two ks away where it used to enter a larger track it
is marked by a rotting sign obscured by tall grass which reads : Do Not Go Bey-ond This Point. The
modern tent M.M. is stuffing into the sausage bag was stolen from a group of hoons who were
camped at the last designated campsite at the termination of a four wheel drive co-ast road
approaching from the east. M.M. had kept them, their two utes equipped with roll bars, their fishing
rods and their enormous supply of food and tinnies under surveillance for the previous four days.
Because they were at the end of the road the hoons imagined themselves to be at the end of the
world. They did not have the slightest interest in the wilderness stretching away to the west exc-ept in
so far as it freed them from inhibitions. They felt free to trash up their campsite in the knowled-ge that
no one would find out till after they were gone. They didn’t even notice the daily loss of stubb-ies,
3
tinnies and assorted tins of food and other items over the first three days. Nor is it surprising that they
didn’t. Mallacoota Man had long ago perfected techniques of pilfering small items from the most
outlying camps secure in the knowledge that even if they were noticed to be missing the suspicion
would fall on other campers or travellers in the direction of civilization. Who would suspect a burglar
from the opposite direction – from the brooding primeval forest. On the fourth day when the hoons
had driven off back along the road to shoot up some signs M.M. knocked off one of their tents making
sure to empty out the contents beforehand, including a wallet stuffed full of $50 notes, as he was no
thief. He needed the tent for a new more inaccessible camp to prepare himself for the end of the wor-
ld. ¶ He had hatched the plan only two nights ago as he was drinking a stubby of Vic Bitter courtesy
of the hoons. He had been toying for some time with the notion that as soon as he returned to Melb-
ourne he might volunteer to donate his body to a cryogenic company to be frozen, but before dying,
so he could come back in full health to a better future world. I know that all you middle-class Melbur-
nians, my readers, parents of future drug addicts and sperm donors think that this is a fanciful idea
but the technology is in place right now. What changed M.M’s mind was the realization that while he
was frozen solid the world, all worlds including parallel universes, could end. And he wouldn’t be able
to do anything about it. Not that he could do much now but at least he could prepare for the event by
setting up a camp further up the coast hidden among the honeymyrtle (melaleuca armillaris) where
no one could find him should his present hideout be sprung. The only problem was that the
honeymyrtle was infested with ticks which rained down like sawdust everytime the wind blew. He
needed a moder-n zip up tent for protection. If he was to get away from civilization, if he was to be
truly inaccessible, he was going to have to put up with some inconveniences. ¶ How did you like that?
How did you dag-s, mugs, drongos, dorks and perverts go for all that crap about the end of the
world? Am I coming across a bit strong? Should I tone it down a bit? All right I’ll rephrase that, here
goes : how did all you nincompoops, pollywaffles, gollywogs and woofters like that bit about the end
of the world? Did it sat-isfy your craving for the dramatic? Did it fill the void a little? ¶ The reality is
that M.M’s motives were hidden from him. Not surprising really as they’re hidden from me and I’m the
bloody author. How is a writer supposed to know the motives of a character of his own invention? ¶
Mallacoota Man’s move west may have been more to do with the sunsets. Every evening from a
vantage point on the dune M.M. observed one blindingly beautiful sunset after another, each
completely unlike the previous one. The sun sank behind a series of headlands stretching away into
the distance which changed their colours to different shades of grey, or black, or purple, or rose or
pink or gold according to the even-ing. M.M. wished that he’d been an artist. Such sunsets deserved
to be seen by more refined spirits than him. His own mind he realized was not tempered sufficiently
to contain intense beauty for any length of time. It was his fate to share it with no one. If sunsets like
this were the common property of mankind there would be no need for God. Christ would have done
better to stay home instead of ris-ing from the dead and hanging from the cross. One night after a
particularly beautiful sunset he notic-ed that his immediate surroundings were lit up by a faint but
clearly discernable light. To his utter am-azement he realized that the source of the light was his own
body which was glowing with an eerie phosphorescence. He had been transformed. From then on he
no longer needed to use a torch at night. He threw it away. He could read the directions on a can of
noodles or thread a needle by his own glow. As he gazed at the dissolving shafts night after night a
conviction grew in him that out there in the west he would find his El Dorado, or Chonda Za, or
Xanadu, or Castrovalva or even Camelot or Shangri-La. ¶ In the case of the last one I have to say he
was wrong. Shangri-La is not to be found in east Gippsland but, curiously enough, up north in the
land of the banana benders which when I went there was ruled by a giant peanut (13/5/05. woz
rspktfli berid a few weeks go) and where every cop was on the take. ¶ Oh to be in Shangri-La where
fish fly and oysters call out to you to pick them off the rocks, where barramundi cook themselves and
the only things you find in the water are frollicking maidens. Shangri-La, where mangoes and paw-
paws are free, where everyone eats prawn hamburg-ers and nobody worries about anything. Where
if you’re under seventy you wear thongs and board shorts and if you’re over seventy you wear styled
shorts, white leather shoes with knee high white socks, have a great tan, look smug, are fat and own
4
a boat. Where the Jap tourists are so rich they carry their money in huge pouches that hang over
their balls like kilts. Shangri-La where the girls wear g-strings and shave their pubes and where the
guys escort those girls when they are not work-ing out with weights. ¶ I didn’t quite get there but I
came awfully close. At Surfer’s I saw a boat called Shangri-La. Near Maroochydore I went past the
Shangri-La motel. But I wasn’t fooled, I knew the real thing was further north. I got as far as the ferry
that takes cars across to Frazer Island. As I stood th-ere in the evening light covered in dust the four-
wheel drives were roaring off the ferry and thundering down the road like the eighth army returning
home from war. The pace hadn’t slackened an hour late-r. Something told me it was time to turn
round and head back down the coast. ¶ On the way back I took in a lingerie parade at a pub in
Maryborough, was served by a topless barmaid at Gympie, droo-led over wet T-shirt contestants at
Nambour and barracked female mud wrestlers at a league’s club in Maroochydore. It’s not that I was
having trouble getting lifts but most of my lifts came from truckies and where they stopped so did I. It
was as if they were reluctant to go south knowing that each mile took them further away from
Shangri-La. From Maroochydore I walked along a windswept beach to Coloundra where I was
enticed to spend the whole evening drinking rum and cokes, which is their fa-vourite drink up there, at
an R.S.L. club by the prospect of a dwarf-throwing competition which didn’t start till midnight and
finished ten minutes later after only three throws. What a take! Luckily the next day I got a lift that
took me straight through Brisbane to Sea World at Southport. ¶ I didn’t see the per-forming dolphins
because you had to pay to get in but instead I got a whole afternoon for free at a Fat Lady Whale
competition held at the council swimming pool. The competition was to raise money for the local
Rotary Club. The fat ladies, none of whom weighed less than half a ton, had to float on their backs
and do imitations of whale spouts by blowing lemonade out of their mouths. They were helped out of
the pool by a swarm of male attendants, for they were not capable of climbing over the edge of the
pool by themselves, to be revealed in their full glory wearing bikinis. Then they had to lie quivering on
mats with sand sprinkled about pretending to be beached while the attendants would try to roll the-m
back into the pool. Later they staggered off, with many a helping hand again, to the changing shed-s
where they disappeared through an enlarged door opening to dry off. The next act consisted of the
ladies being helped in turn onto a dais where they proceeded to pull out various articles from
between the folds and layers of their blubber. From folds in their arms, legs, bellies they pulled out
dollar notes, boxes of matches, panties, tablecloths and so on. One lady pulled out a queen-sized
bedspread from underneath her boob. Another pulled a paperback novel out from a fold in her neck
and then having plonked down on a deck chair reinforced with a frame made from angle iron
proceeded to read it. One lady pulled a roast turkey from in between two rolls of fat on her belly and
immediately ate it. The winner pulled out from various clefts in her huge form an entire outfit of
clothes and then got dressed to the tumultuous applause of the spectators. ¶ As she held her
massive arms above her head in a victory salute I burst out in spontaneous cheering. How infinitely
superior this was to anything I had seen down south. How pathetic a spectacle the yabbie race at
Numurkah seemed by comparison. In case you havent seen it for yourself I am referring to an annual
event held, I suppose for the benefit of tourists, where about thirty yabbies numbered with vegetable
dye are put in a ring facing outwards around the edge of an inner circle of about three foot in
diameter and are expected to race to the per-imeter of another circle five yards wide which encloses
the first one. The yabbies which have been brought to the contest in buckets of water by their
respective owners invariably die of heat stroke be-fore they reach the outer circle. Most, in fact, don’t
even move from the inner one. They are then tos-sed into a cauldron of boiling water with a pile of
non-contestant yabbies and eaten by the tourists. Overcome by the euphoria of the big lady whale’s
triumph things southern appeared mean and ord-inary to me. The giant Merino of Goulburn and even
the Wunda from Down Unda – the giant earth-worm of Poowong, Gippsland – appeared inferior to
the giant Pineapple and the giant Banana. ¶ For their grand finale the ladies had to sit on cane toads
tied by their hind legs to the centres of stoutly constructed wicker chairs. Each lady was lowered by
her elbows until her behind was about a foot above the victim and then dropped screeching and
giggling onto the bug eyed toad. When she was lifted up the judges measured the toad to see how
5
flat it had been squashed. If the toad had been squeezed through the gaps in the cane so that it hung
like rags from the bottom of the seat extra points were awarded. One toad disappeared entirely
leaving behind only a tattered leg tied by the string to the bottom of the chair to be discovered after
much consternation up the cleft of the fat lady’s behind. Naturally she was awarded maximum points
for the event. The special relationship Queens-landers have with cane toads was further
demonstrated to me at a road house by a truckie who had given me a lift, when he found one in a
load of bananas he was taking south. To show me how har-mless it was he swallowed it live. I didn’t
hang around to see if it did him any harm, I can tell you. ¶ To tell you the truth I became a bit jaded by
the entertainments, emotionally spent if you like, and was grateful to get a lift straight through Surters
though the driver told me I was missing a Beer Belly cont-est at Jupiter’s Casino running
simultaneously and in competition with a Big Splash contest at the life-savers club. ¶ By the time I
was south of the N.S.W. border I was really homesick and lucky as it turn-ed out to have made it back
alive. ¶ A bit south of Smokey Cape (yes, the same one of Captain Cook fame), where the bait costs
more than the value of the fish you catch and where you can make more pulling beach worms than
cutting down drugs, I tried to sleep on the beach and nearly got run down by a fisherman in a four-
wheel drive. There was a run of whiting and the beach was busier than Bou-rke st. at peak hour. I am
talking about the middle of the night and in a national park too. That’s the way they do things there.
So I decided to sleep in the scrub behind the dunes. There I was in tick land, where paperbarks peel,
mosquitoes whine, and under every leaf there is a leech waiting to suck your blood. Everything was
soggy from five inches of rain that had fallen during the day and there was a subtle aroma of rotting
flesh all around me. No wonder everyone here is so keen on the beach – its too bloody horrible
anywhere else. So I went back to the beach and nearly got driven over again. The rest of the night I
spent hoofing it south. A few days later I was silly enough to repeat the effort at Myall Lakes, where
the entire beach is corrugated with wheel ruts, only to be hit with a half-full tinnie thrown by a yahoo
in a dune buggy returning from a beach party. ¶ I did make it back to Melbourne otherwise my
analyses of Mallacoota Man’s motives would remain incomplete. ¶ His most plausible reason for
establishing a remote outcamp was the necessity for a secure place where to hide stolen property.
M.M. had not been a thief in the past, merely a pilferer or a borrower who felt no need to protect
himself from the long arm of the law. But as he watched the hoons with growing scorn from his hiding
place he decided that his activities were about to take a new direction. He saw them blun-dering
about their camp which looked more like a rubbish tip each day. He noted their beer bellies, their
bandanas, their stupid Australian army camouflage fatigues, the silly big knives they wore in imitation
of celluloid heroes, and he decided that he would become a thief. He would knock off every-thing he
could get his hands on belonging to the hoons – not just to these hoons, but all hoons. This
explanation suffers from a fatal flaw : M.M’s actions were never guided by logic. ¶ Let’s return to him
early on a morning already threateningly warm. Besides the tent and tinned food M.M. stuffed into the
bag any camp item that had found a place in his car but had not been used over the previous year :
two egg flippers, a blanket, a couple of packets of condoms, several lengths of rope, liquid detergent,
a sheet of plastic, a dozen plastic bags, a wheel brace and so on. The last item to be put in was a 6-
pack of tinnies. The finishing touches were supervised by an eight foot goanna with claws as big as a
mans hand which had climbed into the banksia above the car while you and I were on our excursion
up north checking out Shangri-La. The goanna regarded him with a look of primeval malevolence but
Mallacoota Man, with memories of his encounter with the possum still fresh, was disinclined to try to
chase it out of the tree. Finally just before setting out M.M. practiced his crow calls which he did on
most mornings as you or I would say our prayers. He started off with the easiest one, the little raven
(corvus mellori) with a gutteral, rapid, clipped ‘kar-kar-kar-kar’; followed up with the rich deep gravelly
baritone ‘korr-korr-korr-korr’ of the forest raven (corvus tasmanicus); he left his favourite, the Austral-
ian raven (corvus coronoides) to the last. This crow is a tenor and it’s high-pitched wailing with the
dying final note ‘aah-aah-aah-aaaaahh’ while deeply satisfying usually left M.M. spluttering in a fit of
coughing. He then swung the massive sausage bag over his shoulder gave a parting glare in the di-
rection of the goanna and staggered off towards the crest of the dune. ¶ By the time he reached the
6
crest, hunched over almost double, he knew from the weight of the bag that he had embarked on a
major undertaking. The beach stretched westwards until it disappeared in a sea haze. ¶ they watch
the white birds stoop through mist and spray / beautiful as a dream / it makes them think that /
they are near the sea // they wait / to soak their withered hands / in salty water / once again ¶
Beyond the haze as if floating on cloud lay several headlands superimposed on each other. M.M.
knew that between the headlands lay other empty beaches. It was behind one of these, a half kilo-
metre or so into an impenetrable coastal scrub through which he alone knew a path, that he intended
to set up an out-camp. He tottered down the dune propelled by the weight of the bag and set off
down the beach looking from a distance not unlike father christmas. ¶ don’t follow me / along that
gentle / gentle road // forget / the sweet and heady smell / of winds / along the coast // for I
think / on just such a day as this / I will catch / the afternoon sea breeze // and drift away / into
an aim-less sea ¶ Though he was laden down like a camel Mallacoota Man’s heart was beating with
the en-thusiasm of a dog. New beginnings always affected him that way. It may be that he is
dangerously nocturnal, it may be that he is repulsively anal, but on the positive side you have to
admit that he could be dauntingly energetic. So when his back was aching so much that he began to
think he ran a risk of not being able to straiten it again, instead of having a good long rest, he got a
stick and used one of the ropes in the bag to tie the two ends of the stick to the neck of the bag so he
could pull it like an ox pulling a plough. When his chest could not take the pressure of the stick any
longer he pul-led the bag walking backwards. The bag got swamped by waves. By nature secretive,
and after all this was meant to be a hidden camp, he was pulling it below the high water mark just
above the bre-aking waves so that the drag mark would be obliterated. So it was over two kilometres
down the bea-ch before Mallacoota Man finally fell face down exhausted into the wet sand. Nor did
he get up when the wash of a larger breaker foamed over him and his bag. He lifted up his head for
breath and then dropped it into the sand again. ¶ dreams are made of mist / you wake / and they
are gone // so too with plans / which like castles in the air / disappear in the sky ¶ it is said /
you can mould minds out of clay // you make bread / out of seed / brandy out of / water // yet /
when you make a figure out of sand / the next tide / will wash it away ¶ When he sat up he
noticed that the morn-ing was well advanced. A couple of march flies zeroed in, from which he could
tell that away from the water twenty or so yards up the beach it was already hot. He pulled the bag
onto the dry sand to dry it out hoping that it would become lighter. The side that had been dragging
was showing signs of wear. He was about to pull out the six pack from where it was wrapped in the
blanket in the neck of the bag when about fifty march flies attacked him simultaneously. By now
enough feeling had returned to his mind and body for him to know he was aching all over. The fifty
flies dug their spears in. He left the bag and walked into the foam, he kept going without even
bothering to undress till the waves broke over him: which was easy to do as he was naked. ¶ the
surfers come / to try their skill / they think / that they will test the waves // the wave / that
grinds away the rock / knows nothing / of the young or aged ¶ As his aching body luxuriated in
the swell clarity returned to his mind. He had for-gotten to put any clothes into the bag. He would
have to accomplish his mission stark naked. Unless he walked knee deep in water he would be eaten
alive by march flies which the north wind was blow-ing right up to the water’s edge. How he envied
the dingo whose footprints near the high water mark showed that it had completed its beat in the cool
of the night. He was briefly overcome by a hopeless-ness so profound that he let himself drift
dangerously, parallel to the beach. Holding his breath he allowed his face to sink into the water and
spread his arms out like a drowned man. ¶ there was / a man in the suburbs / who prayed that he
be / a sailor // and his mind became / an ocean / the shimmering fishes were / its cells // then
the knew that life was / governed / by the surging of the waves ¶ He lifted up his head, gasped
for air, and headed for the shore. He caught a wave that took him into the shallows and sprinted
through the foam towards the bag lifting his knees like a sur-fer heading for the finishing line. He had
been recharged : he would conquer the hoons, he would reach Zanadu and hold Olivia Newton John
(11/5/05. rmmbr her?) in his arms that very day, he would survive the end of the universe by his own
efforts; or his name wasn’t M.M. Mallacoota Man. He was going to give it his 120% Ron Barrassi
7
(11/5/05. rmmbr?) super best or bust : ¶ let me walk along / the restless shores // the stinging /
octopus / gives birth to fragile ships / of gleaming white // where from portugal / a man-of-war /
trails his tentacles / through twilight worlds // some are made to dream / others to explore ¶
Barely a hundred yards further he was dry to the delight of the march flies. The sun was burning into
his back and he thought of the dead blistered seals whose sha-peless peeling bodies dotted the
shoreline every kilometre or so. Another hundred yards and he knew he could not go on any longer.
But he was not defeated. Mallacoota Man possessed a creative ingen-uity which he now put to good
effect. He pulled out the rug that had been wrapped around the six pa-ck and a steak knife that was
attached to the egg flippers and other cutlery by a rubber band deeper in the bag. Standing knee
deep in water he cut a slit in the centre of the rug to make a poncho. It was a brilliant idea. Though it
was heavy and the wet hem slapped awkwardly against his legs it protected him from the sun and the
flies and cushioned the stick against his chest. After awhile he established a steady rhythm like an ox
or a draught horse. Hiker’s manuals recommend in these situations that it is advisable to repeat a
phrase or a doggerel over and over. If it were possible for us to get up close en-ough you would hear
that M.M. was doing exactly that. Through gritted teeth he was mumbling, over and over, the words :
‘the most important day of a man’s life is the day his father dies.’ ¶ On that grim note, now that he’s
set on his way, let’s leave Mallacoota Man and rejoin the other pisser, Jim Brown. ¶ My wife (yes!
we’re together again) who proof reads everything I write so that she can edit out any-thing from which
inferences could be drawn about our sexual practices objects to the way I brought in the part about
Jim having a leak and then went on to write about Mallacoota Man. She claims it inter-feres with the
continuity of the story. What she fails to grasp is that the connections in this story are not supplied by
the flow of time or the historical line of a character’s life but by events. Putting it in an-other way, the
links that hold Jim and M.M. together are lateral not linear ones. The generally accep-ted notion,
under which biographies and autobiographies are written, that the passage of time gives unity to a life
is false. Most of these are a wank which so hugely exaggerate the importance of individ-uals that
their stories would be truer if not told at all. Time doesn’t unify a life – it disintegrates it. Eve-nts are
turned into memories which are garnished and lied about; the elements of a man’s life are first
separated and then the man himself is murdered – by time. People are kept alive in the human family
by what they do. ¶ On a late afternoon, in widely separate locations but in the slanting rays of the
same sun, Jim Brown and M.M. were having a leak. Jim, a victim of psychological, sexual, economic,
educational, domestic, political, gender, social and religious violence, in fact every kind of violence
except physical violence, has finished contemplating his prick and slipped it back into its den. That
morning he too had set out on a journey. ¶ Jim had woken up sitting slumped in a large dilapidated
lounge chair in the front room of a derelict boarding house in Yarraville. It was five in the morning and
Jim had slept for only two hours. His nightly blackout meant that he could remember nothing from
midnight onwards but experience told him that he would have finished his last can about three in the
morning. He had been celebrating his early release from jail a couple of months ago. It was his dev-
otion to study that had ensured he kept his full parole, earned all available remissions, and benefitted
from the automatic one third reduction of term that the new government brought in to solve the over-
crowding problem. Having started his term as a pastrycook he left the old bluestone pile with a string
of letters after his name, and totally unemployable. ¶ He had lived in the half-way house run by the
Salvos with a dozen other men. The high turnover meant that none of the blokes with him had been
there when he started so it was a tribute to his friendly nature that several of them insisted on giving
him going away presents. ¶ A pad of Roadworthy Certificates was a valuable item. When complete it
consisted of a hundred certificates in triplicate. With it you could buy an old rust bucket for a few hun-
dred dollars through the trading post and get it transferred and registered by filling in your own RWC.
You sent one copy to the rego branch and kept the owner’s and the garage copy yourself. The only
trick was to know the identification number of a garage that was accredited to do RWCs. No problem,
Jim was provided with a list of these, about three hundred from all around Australia. The book of RW-
Cs had one certificate missing : the one Jim had used to buy his own rusty Valiant station wagon, bet-
ter known among private school boys as the Wog Tank. The wagon had set him back three hundred
8
dollars, money he had saved by not paying rent to the Salvos. An equivalent Holden or Falcon would
have cost an extra eight hundred, which explained the school boys’ derision. The engine and the hea-
dlights worked, everything else either didn’t or worked only after a fashion. The pad of roadworthies
was given to him by a kid who’d got himself a printer’s qualification while doing time for forging cheq-
ues. His probation officer had got him a job with the government printer and the kid had put his qual-
ifications to good use straight away. The real value of the RWCs was that they could be used as hard
currency, each triplicate being valued at twenty to fifty dollars depending on the crowd you were with.
¶ Similar considerations were true for the pads of doctor’s certificates and doctor’s bills given him by
a Maori who’d been with him at Pentridge but was now working as a hospital orderly. These had far
more uses and more potential for financial gain than the roadworthies but they were more complica-
ted. Writing yourself a certificate for a sickie was easy, but only any good to you if you had a job. To
make money out of the system by making medibank claims or to get on Workcare or sickness benefit
you also needed a receipt book, medibank cards that had not been reported lost, doctors’ numbers
and a schedule of illness and charge numbers. He had all of these; and an education that gave him
the ability to use them. ¶ Another present from the same Maori was a boxfull of syringes of Depo Te-
stosterone. It could be worth a queen’s ransom at King’s Cross, or even more if the syringes were
sold one at a time. ¶ The most humble item he was given to start a new life was a second hand ele-
ctric hair clipper that could be run off batteries, and half a dozen attachable combs. As it turned out it
was to become his most useful possession. He charged two dollars, less than half the going rate, for
a straight no.2 comb convict cut which took three minutes; there was no end of custom. It gave him a
regular tax free and honest income to supplement his unemployment benefit. In the long run it proved
more useful than the doctor’s certificates, RWCs and medibank cards put together. ¶ What really
gets me about the way the wife goes about her editing is the absence of consultative processes. She
goes to the drawer without my permission, gets out the manuscript, gets her double strength black
texta marker, and proceeds to obliterate anything she objects to. When she’s finished she throws the
manuscript back in the drawer without comment. It can be a word or a sentence or a whole page, in
which case she crosses it corner to corner. She pays no attention to the context. A single sentence, if
it’s a key one can force me to rewrite a page; a crossed page can mean a week’s work. I can’t under-
stand what she’s so sensitive about. It’s not as if she’s shy or a prude. For our anniversary we had a
repeat honeymoon and did it in a different place and a different way every time. Anything sets her off.
We found a riding crop that had been dropped in some scrub near a horseriding farm. So we had to
do it like horses. And I’m lousy at neighing. When I pointed out after a week that there were still some
positions in the book that we hadn’t done she hired a contortionist so I could tell the guys in the pub
I’d done it everyway. People can be very strange about the printed word. ¶ Jim Brown had already
thrown his belongings, including a cardboard box whose contents I’m not going to reveal to you, into
the Wog Tank the previous night. The RWCs and the medical certificates were hidden in the panels.
He had already said his goodbyes. All that was left to do was stand up, sway back and forth, examine
his hands for tremble, and drift out the front door to the car. It took a while to fit the key into the ignit-
ion and a few splutters for the engine to start. Then he was off, north to Broken Hill, to start a new life.
The music was provided by an orchestra of Yarraville blackbirds assembled for the occasion. ¶ Now
that I think of it, it was near Tooboorac that Jim pissed on his shoe. A short time later he stopped at a
garage washroom to brush his teeth. He carried a toothbrush (10/5/05. last week in Rochester on th
wai home from our fshn trip V woz spotd wth hiz toothbrsh stikn out of th top pokt of hiz jakt) in the
glove box. Brushing teeth was one of the good habits that remained with him from jail. As his petrol
gauge wasn’t working and he couldn’t remember when he had last filled up he got some petrol. Near
Echuca he stopped at another garage to wash his face, slick down his hair, and have his breakfast
which consisted of two cups of black coffee and a giant size packet of potato chips, to be eaten back
in the car. Eating breakfast and washing by stages while on the move was typical of Jim’s mornings
since his release. ¶ Half way to Gunbower he realized he had to have a crap and anxiously scanned
the roadway ahead for pepper trees. It so happened that the road was bare of any cover and he was
lucky to make it into Gunbower without an accident. He screeched to a halt outside a council toilet
9
next to the footy ground hoping he hadn’t attracted the interest of the local cop. The doors and
bonnet of the Wog Tank, all of different colours, attracted enough attention as it was. He only made it
in the nick of time pulling down his pants and releasing a torrent of turd all in one action. It was an
impres-sive performance and it occurred to him that he’d better take care or one day he’d cough out
his en-tire gut. Then he thought about the elderly lady who’d been disembowled as she sat on one of
those aeroplane toilets that work by vacuum suction. Then he discovered there was no toilet paper.
Most of us have lived through the same experience without too much inconvenience. The usual
solution is to use your underpants and flush them down the toilet. But Jim was not in the habit of
wearing underp-ants. Together with wearing ties, peeling spuds, washing hands after a leak, wearing
underpants was on his list of useless activities. His practice instead was to buy a new pair of daks
when needed for a couple of bucks at an op shop and throw the old ones away. Nor was he wearing
a singlet or socks. So he cleaned his behind with his finger and his finger in the washbasin. What’s
more it didn’t bother him a bit because he had no self esteem. His journey to Broken Hill took place
before self esteem had become important. Nevertheless you have to admit coming as it did so soon
after he’d pissed on his shoe it was not a great beginning to the day. If it had happened today Jim’s
self esteem would have hit rock bottom and he would have turned around and headed back to
Melbourne. ¶ The impor-tance of self esteem is the discovery of the age. Kids do lousy at school
because they have no self esteem. Old men molest little children because they had no self esteem
when they themselves were little. Lack of self esteem causes girls to become anorexic, men to pump
iron and consume anabolic steroids. It’s the main cause of drug addiction, suicide, divorce, incest,
alcoholism, wife beating, un-employment, teenage pregnancies, depression, obesity, impotence,
frigidity, stuttering and almost everything else you can botch up. No wonder the main helping strategy
by the do-gooders industry is to give people plenty of self esteem. All over the country from drug
clinic to psychiatric ward the ug-liest and meanest people in Australia sit about in groups telling each
other how good and beautiful they are. The process starts in the junior grades in schools when
teachers pin up on the board at the back of the class the most boring bits of drivel without any
redeeming feature with comments such as : ‘wonderful work Drago’, ‘this is really good Marika’, ‘very
interesting Aphrodite’ and so on. If you’re an aborigine the process continues on right through college
where they get degrees by quota no mat-ter how many of them are dummies. At the Gippsland
Institute in Sale there is a subject in Aboriginal Studies course called Walkabout where no one has
ever failed without even turning up. If you’re an aborigine you can get into an engineering course in
Canberra without passing maths at high school by getting special consideration. Then you get
through the course by getting more special consider-ation. Then you get a highly paid job as a
facilitator in the Aboriginal Affairs department with still more consideration. This is what you call
getting self esteem through achievement by avoiding achieve-ment. What gets me is that some of
these aboriginals are less aboriginal than my defacto and she’s jewish. Look, I don’t want you to think
I’m bigoted, it’s not just the abos that are on the gravy train. In the mallee there are (10/5/05. uzed 2
b) towns where everyone works for the rail and they only get one train a week ; it sure is good for
their self esteem. Nor is my defacto any kind of example : when they brought in the equal
opportunityies act she got quicker promotion by getting a sex change oper-ation. The extra pay does
a ton of good for her self esteem. ¶ Jim Brown was of a different breed, from a different age. He
predated self esteem. His example showed that you haven’t grown up till you’ve lost your self
esteem. Instead of giving in, he washed his finger, bought a couple of stubbies and continued on. The
beer flowed cool, like an angel crying on his tongue, his heart was light. In this benevolent mood he
pulled up for a family of darkies thumbing a lift. ¶ I use the term ‘darkies’ over the protests of my
publisher who reckons he might get sued. He wants me to call them ‘kooris’. I re-fuse to dilute the
historical accuracy of the story. To Jim they were known as darkies. These events took place before
the powers that be saw it as their legitimate task to control our language by legis-lation. Jim went
north before 1984. I have these little tiffs with my publisher. He is also trying to make me spell
Mallacootta the same way every time. Bugger him! A famous author does what he pleases. ¶ The
darkies wanted a lift a little way up the road. It transpired they were cousins of Lionel Rose and were
10
visiting some more of Lionel’s cousins in Cohuna. The male darkie, who every now and then would
pick his nose or scratch his arse, showed the final signs of kikapoo juice poisoning. His eyes were
watery, his skin puffy, and there was a sullen expression on his face. The juice in that area con-sisted
of a mixture of metho, flagon sherry, beer, brasso and bootpolish. His speech was so slurred that Jim
had to ask him to repeat everything two or three times. He handed him the other stubby and pointed
to the opener hanging under the dashboard. The darkie’s wife, who was built and looked like a
dugong, wore a floral cotton print dress in imitation of the Queen of England. She was prematurely
aged from being screwed under too many peppercorn trees. The kids were dull eyed and their hands
shook from sniffing petrol. ¶ our hearts are stone / our love / sand / our dream an opal / our
spirit air // our search is food / we are rain / we are flowers / we are seed // we stared at the
night / till our skin turned black // we are night ¶ At Cohuna the male darkie whos name was
Jackie directed Jim to a group of shanties on the edge of town and disappeared into one of them
while indicating to his family to remain in the car. He was back almost immediately mumbling
something about the cous-ins having gone. Jacky got in and sat down next to Jim as if they were all
members of the same fam-ily. Amazing what a shared beer will do. A garbled conversation
established that the cousins, it was not clear whether they were Lionel’s or Jacky’s, would probably
be at Lake Boga. You’ve guessed it! They werent at Lake Boga , nor were they at Swan Hill. Nor did
either Jacky or his woman give a hint of wanting to part company with Jim. As they entered Ouyen
Jacky’s face lit up, he slapped his thigh and called for Jim to pull up. He was going to shout everyone
a beer. This was a development that Jim could handle; except when they arranged themselves
around a couple of tin tables in the beer garden Jacky, after ostentatiously rummaging in his pockets,
turned his eyes up with the wondrous discovery that he had forgotten to put any money in them. The
shout was on Jim, and a couple more after that. Back at the tank there was only small change to add
to the rest of his kitty in the ash tray. By the time they crossed the New South border Jim knew that
he had achieved full membership of the family. At Wentworth he pulled up of his own accord. He
would shout Jackie and the dugong a beer. He gave the kids a few coins to go and buy themselves
some petrol to sniff and the three of them went into the pub. He brought a set of glasses and a jug as
if he meant to settle down for a wh-ile. Jackie and the dugong brightened up so they almost looked
human. Jim could tell they were mi-ghtily pleased. But he had to go to the dyke first. No sooner was
he out of sight than he headed for the door. It was his usual way of parting company with
undesirables. As the Tank accelerated from the kerb he caught sight of the two kids returning from
the milkbar. He didn’t relax till he was right out of town. Another thirty miles closer to Broken Hill he
heaved a sigh of relief and pulled up for a leak. That’s where we first waylaid him, remember,
examining the end of his prick. ¶ Meanwhile, Mallac-oota Man is struggling to make it to first base.”
But 4 now lets leev him thr & rtern 2 th nthlj. Theez r th titlz of th mastrkopeez I hav in my 2nd foldr of
th ritin I h&d out in 2001 ndr th logo a…z @ O: 17) 27/-11/00 – 7/12/00 (ksplorn th meenn of th werd
‘god’); 18) 13/2/01 – 26/2/01 (th longst piece Iv dstrbut-ed & th 1st whr th pajez r nmbrd (H lernt how
2)); 19) 7/4/01 – 18/4/01 (1 of th Lake Gairdner trips); 2-0) 13/5/01 (7 poemz; 1 of thm iz a fvort of
mine : the local alley cat / one eyed prowler in the night / was killed this evening / by the
headlight of a car // with the silent instinct / of generations of his kind / he writhed and
cartwheeled / into a neighbours yard // to die / or to enter another one / of his nine lives //
perhaps / the curtain of night has / been rent / to admit him finally // into the paradise / of
prowlers); 21) 19 berd poemz (no titl uthr than a pkchr of a ‘berd man’ on th kuvr; pos-td th 1z on th
mailn list on sept 10); 22) 21 poemz (kuvr is a pkchr of me havn a leek nkst 2 a COM-MIT NO
NUISANCE sine;1 of th poemz (lso uzed in ‘IN TRANSIT ‘) mai b th nly linez I mite b rmmbrd (1/5. koz
probli no1 (5/5. (Murray rivr on Gunbower Island) ystrdi I told V (w wer on th Loddon rivr O 15ks ↑ of
Serpentine) hardli ny1 reedz my ritin & hiz rply woz Iv probli got fewr reedrz than I think) nd-rstood my
kspln8nz (0 mistkl O thm) of how w r joind (2/5. bkoz werdz r praktst 2gthr x mt8shn & rpt-shn til they
r bedd in our neurlj (3/5 w do not elekt known liarz 2 b our leedrz (Bush, Blair, Howard (5/5. th most
sinikl in hiz nolej th@ we knot bair 2 much realti)) 2 rword thm 4 their past lize but bkoz w r prpairn 2
akt dspkbli in th future & w want 2 make sure they wil tel us w aktd rluktntli wth honor & deesnsi 4 th
11
good of hmanti.)) in lngwj & how w r spr8d x th dffrnsz btween th sensz) 4 : my wife / tells me that
her cunt / is getting old // but as / my cock / has only one eye / it hasnt noticed / the
difference); 23) 13/8/01 – 25/8/01 (whch kntainz 1 of th most butefl poemz I hav ritn : I am a flea in
the fold of a camels ear. I listen to the talk of merchants & camel hands. We travel by
night guided by stars. We have stopped at a caravanserai called earth. The merchants
ex-change fine carpets for jade, worked silver for gunpowder, incense for silks. They
have been travelling so long that some of them no longer remember the cities of their
birth or the wives & children they left behind. Rumour has it that the cities are buried in
sand & the wives have aged or left. Some say that if we were to return even if the cities
were still there & the wives were washing at the same fountains the merchants wouldnt
recognize them because they themselves have changed. They have become used to
dancing girls with seductive glances, the soft music of eunuchs, plush carpets in
sumptuous halls. One of their number overcome by nostalgia turned around his camels
laden with the rewards of his enterprise determined to return to the hanging gardens of
his youth. We never saw him again but a beggar at the gate tells a story that he says he
heard from the mouth of one of the brigands that caught up with him in a bleak desert &
cut him down. He says (some say the beggar was one of the ones standing around) that
as the merchant sat on the ground leaning forward among the rolls of silk & spices
scattered about from a fallen camel, supporting himself with a jewelled hand in the sand
while the other clutched his neck to staunch the blood gushing through his fingers, his
last words were : “In this desolation these silks & these jewelled hands look strange-ly
beautiful.”. I woz hapi wth th kmpnion poem on p16 2 : I am a flea in the fold of a camels ear. I
listen to the talk of merchants & camel hands. I ask questions. We travel at night guided
by stars. We have stopped at a caravanserai called earth. I ask what is language? why
death? who? I dont receive answers. We have been travelling forever. The merchants
have retired to the seraglios with girls that wear ringlets & laugh. The camel hands are
standing about fires cooking & arguing. They are boastful & tell lies. Everything seems as
it always is but this time I sense that we are nearing the end of the journey. That we are
about to turn around. I sense it through my feet in the camels sweat. I note the twitch in
its ear. I dont know if we will find our way back. The gods who hide their faces from me in
the questions that I ask know that I ser-ve their obscure purpose. I am loyal. I am ready. I
know that they love me. (1/5. lso on p16 thr iz a gr8 poem x H : words / are swords and shields
/ hessian and velvet / acid and balm / but tr-uth is / in glance / and touch / small movements of
body / yea or nay / and the shouting sing-ing / silences between / words)); 24) 22/9/01 – 1/10/01
(my reakshn 2 sept 11; 1st piece I put out ritn jointli x H (1/5. duz th typin of em orl & I thank u huni) &
me); 25) 10/11/01 (7 poemz; note the pal-indrome); 26) 22/10/01 – 2/11/01 (I think th kuvr foto of th
sine END HOTEL (th WEST @ th top had faidd out) woz taikn @ Gulnare in SA (btween Burra & Port
Germein) & th sine iz prbli stil thr).

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