#124 - poem on your birthday

4.5.20

124

poem on your birthday

for Monica

(for Thursday I think)

thanks for the gecko on the garage wall

I hope yr getting through this covid plague time as well  as you can

we’re holed up on the farm, which I think is a pretty good place to sit things out

(glad I’m not still in China)

… a weird old world it’s come to be

it’s interesting how little handwriting changes through life

I had wanted to handwrite this to you but then I thought with the lockdown you might not get mail from work for a long time…

but there’s a connection that comes from these traces we leave like writing that show us to be who we were (or perhaps provide that illusion)

‘we are no longer young’, you wrote after 35 years

(longer pause in the conversation than many get altogether)

 and I’ve been thinking back to then

a period of great emotional intensity!

…so I hope you won’t mind me remembering

back to the very beginning…

a night on the train

and Ben introduced us

I remember you’d recently ended your promising cycling career

when some fuckwit opened a door without looking

was that St Leonards, on the highway?

you’d been in love with some gawky bass player

my short past no less inglorious

coincidence about the bass, though he was clearly much better than me

(at the bass, I mean)

your mother’s car

ancient corolla, so basic, not so ancient then

pre-beetle (pre-Odysseus) I liked driving it

early morning home from

come in through the garage along that glassed in corridor

and upstairs in the flash new wing where you had the darkroom

and that cat (Siamese?) with the unretractable claws… ouch…

but it meant well

your parents the model of acceptance, tolerance

and you were too

taught me feminism from scratch and while you were learning yourself

thanks for that

we were fierce with all sorts of indignation

and equally experiment

so much to express and still finding the words

the things we wanted to do to Malcolm Fraser

who turned out to be not such a bad bloke in the end

(though I guess he was making up for stuff)

this is all ’77, a drug hazed year but we all passed

and it wasn’t till ’78 you shifted to Sydney Uni from the Film School

after six years of state high school (St Ives) and its attendant limits in consciousness

it was so wonderful to be free

… but yd been free from an early age

(maybe a little lonely for parts to me it all seemed amazingly free… like yd won the parents lottery)

with West Head and the International School

having escaped Kuringai at an early age

funny what you remember and you don’t …

walking from Redfern Station is such a vivid memory for me

but getting to Gordon Station, I kind of remember as something of an earlier epoch

there was lots of waiting for dad for a lift of course

and I remember getting lifts back with your dad from his office in Glebe

…I can’t have been as bad a student as I like to remember

because I actually remember a lot of what we were taught

Portrait of a Lady and The Artist as a Young Man

and What is this thing called Science?

how nasty they were in Ancient History…

that idiot with the joke about the Persian messenger

being told to get out of Sparta by sundown

and sitting in Latin 1 for the Archaeology slide show

pictures of where I wanted to go

(still in touch with John Pap b t w)

actually specifically I remember falling asleep in Ancient History

then waking up in Philosophy (with John Bernheim)

which was okay because I was doing it

then falling asleep again and waking up in Pure Maths

or something equally terrifying

but I remember more of the music rooms

and coming up for cartoons

and John Hines living on wagon wheels and cokes

and setting fire to little things on those round tables

at one of which once you introduced me to your shy friend, Carol

which was in 78 of course

but back towards the end of 77

do you remember landing in Auckland ?

we were there ahead of you and yd flown by yrself for some reason

and I pretended we were having to hitch

and then the gang came along in the van – SURPRISE!

remember Eddy? – of the falling off passenger’s door

of the broomstick gear shift

front passenger needing to keep a foot on the plate that covered the engine

so you could hear yrself think

things that needed tying on underneath

and never started once not even in a petrol station

but there were eight of us to push it out

do you tell that story?

petrol 29 cents a litre and I was sure it would never cost that in Australia

that was quite an adventure for all of us

I often do think how lucky we were to survive some of these things  

for instance, I remember driving with Julie Rubessa Goulbourn to Canberra

having lost a windscreen midwinter rain

and I was wearing her prescription spec and she just had a sleeping bag over her head

… how we survived any kind of rain in Oddy the Beetle

with those six inch no speed wipers is remarkable

do you remember that open air south coast

chooks in the bed

first looking to go bush

Gormley and Steph friends of my brother’s

there was a place on the river called Coppers drop

because some cop had missed a bend once in the not too distant past  

fast fwd to the end of 78

the Eddie adventure having been such a success

we had to repeat it on home soil

in the ‘much better’ van (Ethel) … at least much newer

with the railway carriage seats in the back

and the speaker system we installed

who broke down at the slightest opportunity

including on Day 1 on the Hume Hwy

at … thinking … consulting the map

… somewhere clearly no longer on the highway

… Jugiong! that’s it

the Flinders Ranges flash flood

and we were in a tent in the dust

washed all the underwear away

we were collecting in bush and trees the next day

eleven of then … but no, two had disputed themselves away by then

and two had got busted by the Torrens River where we were camping

with that cop asking the classic questions

‘a walk from where to where?’

then ‘how much did you pay for this?’

and ‘you’ve been done already’

and when was Wytaliba?

did you think about that when the place burnt out last year?

I remember someone called Brook Nectar

I think we went with Ben and somebody else? I can’t remember

before that I think we’d looked for land at Mudgee? 

somewhere round there…

Oddy was already in circulation before Ethel

so it is hard to place some of these events in relation to each other

I remember we went to Nimbin – up to that commune … was it Tuntable Falls?

you had a friend there we were trying to visit

I remember getting out of the car, seeking directions and there was a naked hippy bloke

who wandered off when we called to him

but eventually we found someone who said yr mate was in heaven and pointed and then a little further on we found someone else who pointed across the gully and said she was in hell… it was all a bit otherworldly and I think it was meant to be …

actually all this reminds me of Bredbo – the Confest – the only time I ever saw Jim Cairns and he was naked with a bunch of naked blokes pushing a car out of the mud

am I right … we met up there?  or had we gone together … that could have been 77 .. I think it was end of 77… definitely pre Oddy… I remember seeing naked blokes wielding chainsaws there … and finding this strangely disquietening …

I think you were there and I came down and found you

and then in 79 – in Oddy – we drove to Berri to the confest there, where I managed to get a tropical ulcer (and so found out what a tropical ulcer was)

… I should actually probably have a look in punks travels … no doubt at least some of this is there… but I’m glad I’m doing this from memory now without any aids… I’ll have a look later

it is funny how memories lead to other memories … down unexpected tracks yd forgotten like trying to get back into a dream but the sun’s streaming in and everything beckons … and you have a waking life to lead

where were we?

then Fort Street – and our ill-fated moving in together … pre-gentrification Leichhardt … John Forbes living across the street … actually cusp of gentrification when you think about it

and the people who bought the house when we moved out

weird Vince in the spare room who was suited so well to the previous incarnation of the house as crappy flatettes… the house was called Everton – decadent times … the backyard a kind of concrete wreck …I think I wrote my first poem in Southerly there, which was a kind of epistle to Oddy

… Merry and Julie

and Kate was my unforgiveable sin

but I forgave myself

went on to greater and less forgiveable things

it occurs to me now that Vince was really a classic homeless person

he’d definitely be a rougher sleeper these days

we were naïve and

$18 a week the rent was

… it was a kinder world then …

I had a room full of venom for Malcolm Fraser which seems so overblown now

 remember that gas shower … a wonder it never blew up

a year of tears we made of that breaking up … yes and we were young …

what intensity … it really was like that Mental as Anything song

‘If you leave me can I come too’ … which wasn’t released until 81

… so it really was almost prophetic of us to have been the way we were

I couldn’t believe one could weep so much

never before and never again

your graffiti on Watkin St was

‘Possessive love is destructive self-delusion’

.. which was funny because I’d thought that was my line …

I remember there was a young dyke dying of cancer also I think just near there on Watkin Street … as if for perspective, just in case we didn’t know we were idiots

but we were pretty serious about it  

The Life of Brian  was midst of all this drama… light relief

then subsequent houses, incarnations –

the bath at Copeland Avenue, off the kitchen for conversation

 and later it was my place

you were in that tiny bedsit up the hill

the trouble we had to prise us apart!

and I wrote you that poem ‘Your Kisses’

my Macquarie time – a bizarre workaholism

and finally I got away to Europe

with Troll and a bit with Lyn

… coming back from Europe in 83 I remember feeling cheated that King St had changed without my permission

I was desperately (quite unreasonably) lonely for parts of that time and I think it was to do with having felt so useful and connected in Sydney to feeling so useless and disconnected in Europe, despite the experience being in other ways marvellous

and then it was you in Europe

and me back in Enmore

roles reversed

do you remember that Chat-kespeare card?

(the cat with the goatee and the bared bodkin)… v cute

I’ve still got that card on my shelf … let me take a pic for you

…

getting me to witness yr marriage cert – that was a way of breaking the news!

I’ve still got the rings in the boxes, you know … deep in a filing cabinet … they will eventually go on to mean nothing to anyone…

we never get over anything

that’s the whole point of life, perhaps?

except that in the orphan age, I mean once parents are gone, it is like life’s a little greyed out and you have to move the cursor over to bring some life back to the screen … I guess it’s an ontological challenge to be so completely missing persons who were/are essential to the world, and without whom the world is less…

with dad it was a long time ago and with mum last year

they both got to 91

dad was crook for quite a while and mum actually died of dementia

so she’d been gone for quite a while

a lot of time to get used to it but not the way to go in my view

I suppose retiring and repatriating get you thinking about all this kind of stuff

(not that we’re idle up here … never seem to catch up with myself… and I suppose the current covid plague probably makes less difference to us than just about anyone… we just shop a little less often and haven’t got to Sydney for a few months… otherwise, business as usual)

…

Carol and I built this house 27 years ago… and as it falls down we keep adding… but writing and art do keep one from what ought to be done in the garden…

the corona capers put everything in perspective

I’m giving you a bit of a catch-up because it’s all a long time ago

I mean just in case you wanted to know

I don’t know why you decided to cut yourself off so completely but I guess it was what you had to do for your own wellbeing … fair enough

isn’t it wonderful though that the conversation’s still open after all these years? 

to me it is

met on a train and you were Ben’s friend

Ben’s doing well b t w – was going to be in Germany for the next year but I’m guessing that will be delayed now … still as obsessed with bees and such as is his partner who’s in the same research field or just about

remember the rumpus room

mum coming over

mum who could hear a joint a suburb away

it’s less than a year since the house went

the garage was truly decrepit

the clearing out thing was quite an ordeal

and they mcmansioned the house after we sold it … actually not as horribly as it sounds

and I like in a way that the place we knew no longer exists… there’s nowhere and no need to go back and mourn

at the moment – and maybe this puts me in the mode as well – I’m reading dad’s (unpublished) autobiography…mighty tome! … November 38 we’re up to … in Sao Paolo playing ping pong … a real boys own adventure … and of course he’s 26 years old then (though writing it in his 80s, in the 90s)… so you see how I’m into the time travel right now

my father – the luckiest refugee of all time!

and my existence predicated on that luck  

and hey I’ve still got that ping pong table … it’s here at Markwell in the dairy (our original wreck of a dwelling)… it’s had quite a life, that table

I do like that I’m writing into not-quite-a-void… I mean that there’s some chance that yr there at the other end of the e-mail and reading this …

you could send me a sign!

this all seems somehow weirdly appropriate in a plague year

time seems to be telescopic now

or maybe microscopic

or we are

it’s stood still

and somehow being in this story is strangely like being in dad’s … because his story ends at the beginning of the war when he joins the AIF – so it’s really the story – from childhood – of a Hungarian becoming an Australian

and once he’s an Australian it’s like there’s no more story to tell

a kind of a negative Nirvana – having escaped for all time the evils that might have befallen

… it’s certainly true that after Stephen and I came on the scene his life was certainly less interesting … though I don’t suppose you can keep it up forever

who knows if yr reading this but

I thought I’d close –

with one day I’ll send you this poem

when we are young again

and as

courtesy of time travel

that just happens to be now

I send you these tidings of love  

I wish I could send you a pumpkin

here, have a virtual one

(please see the picture attached)