There be Dragons

From Zoology of the Voyage of H.M.S. Erebus & Terror
under the command of Captain Sir James Clark Ross, R.N., F.R.S.,
during the years 1839 - 1843.

The Poet

I met a poet from Tipperary. A man in his fifties; his frailty, humour, his wisps of hair and pale, elfin face made him a different creature from anyone I’d ever met. I wanted to tell him that, despite his bemoaning the status of poetry in Australia, clandestine visitors to my isolated bush shack had stolen nothing but a copy of Phillip Larkin’s Collected Poems. They could have shot holes in the rainwater tank or taken my gas bottle or generator. But no ...  a book of poetry.

He nodded slowly. “Larkin. They showed good taste.”

“I thought so too.”

“I heard that you are a fisherwoman,” he said.

“Yes. We work the estuaries with nets, in a little boat.”

He took his time during the conversation. He looked distracted and stared across the table at something or someone. “You look like you are strong.”

“I am.”

“And how did you begin this fishing life?”

“I grew up here. Then there were tuna fishermen and whalers, hard men, and it was a woman’s job to serve them beer or shovel the fish in the factories. I did that for a while but I wanted to work on a boat. One day I started working for Old Salt.”

“Do you argue on the boat? It must be hard, sometimes ...”

“We fight, often. It’s a small boat.”

“But you work for this man, because ... you must feel some affection for him.”

“Yes. Yes. I do feel affection for him.”

Later, he shook my hand goodbye and said, “I would like to read your book and I shall tell my wimpy friends in Ireland all about you.”

Rip Van Winkle

He fell asleep sitting on a school chair in the hot shed, pin holes of light shining through the corrugated iron and spearing his body, his head dropping so that his whitened chin bristles touched his chest.
He dreamed he gave six men his clothes in the desert and the sun shone right through his body and the heat drove him to the sea. He was young then and lying on the beach with the sun beating down on his shoulders. Beautiful girls, screams of babies, chatter, salt water and seagulls. His body was supple, lithe and the warmth of the girl beside him thrilled him. Her hip touched his as she rolled over on the towel. His life, as seen between the crook of his arm and striped towel, was like the flowering red, yellow and green of a psychedelic movie and full of sex, that is all he was.
He woke with a start in the workshop, saw the tools lying against the forge, his boots; the leather worn off the toes and steel shining through. He woke in the middle of a stinking hot day, in a shed in Fremantle, an old man.

Dogs of the Sea

From Zoology of the Voyage of H.M.S. Erebus & Terror
under the command of Captain Sir James Clark Ross, R.N., F.R.S.,
during the years 1839 - 1843.

On Kalishnikovs, Pirates and Other Flotsam

"Kalashnikov told Hodges that he thought his invention had become a golem. (The figure from Jewish mythology that grows too powerful for its creator and wreaks destruction.)
He wished that instead he had created a lawnmower."
Review of  Michael Hodges' AK47: The Story of a People's Gun.

"The rise of the novel coincided with the emergence of the nation state." Orhan Pamuk.

"My old and grubby gods," Freud on his collection of antiquities.

"The following program of Foreign Correspondent contains scenes of whaling that may distress some viewers."
ABC Oct. 9th. 2007.

The Pirate
He boarded her
he set her alight
he burned her to the waterline.

"It's all about the vision,
about the pleasure
and the trouble of it all."
John Kinsella, Fast Loose Beginnings.

"A tremendous thing happened when Dean met Carlo Marx. Two keen minds that they are, they took to each other at the drop at a hat. Two piercing eyes glanced into two piercing eyes - the holy con-man with the shining mind, and the sorrowful poetic con-man with the dark mind that is Carlo Marx."
When Neal Cassady met Allan Ginsberg, as recounted by Jack Kerouac in On the Road.

East and West

Some more of Cathy's paintings from her next exhibition ... Hay River East and Hay River West.
She's got her own tag now on this blog. Click on 'Catherine Gordon' for her most recent work and some retrospectives.

The Club

The son looked around the house. “Just take whatever food you want. Whatever you think is going to go off.” Then he went into his bedroom and started digging out his school uniforms.

The mother looked in the fridge. Four packets of sliced cheese, a new knob of salami, yoghurt, a crisper full of apples and carrots. A plastic bag of dog bones.

“What is dog food doing here? I thought all the dogs have gone?”

“Dad’s dogs have gone,” he said. “But she went and got another one.”

He started lugging tool boxes, stereo, his electric guitars and amplifier out of his bedroom and packing them onto the back of his mother’s ute.

“What about the laptop? We can’t leave it here, not if we can’t lock the house.”

“Yeah. Um. Yeah. It’s Dad’s. Take that.”

They looked around. There were still dishes on the dining table with streaks of gravy and cutlery and a forest of sauce bottles. Last dinner. The wine rack included two anonymous reds with the club’s 40^th anniversary label stuck to it. Household bills, tinny holders and bank statements were scattered over the kitchen bench. Shopping lists.
She thought; he had no idea he was not coming back when he left this morning.

“Is she coming back?”

Her son shook his head and rubbed his hair. “Dunno.”

“Look. We should go down to Nails’ and Lynn and see what’s going on with the house. And we need to tell them we’ve taken the laptop and the tools, so they don’t freak out and think someone’s broken in. Can you show me where they live?"

They drove down the hill, past the hobby farms with their new houses and fences. He directed her to the end of the road and a huge, pale brick house in a green paddock, flanked by a brand new machinery shed. They unshackled the farm gates, walked up the drive, past the garden bed of wintery, pruned roses, and knocked on the front door.

Lynn answered, three or four kids standing behind her in their pyjamas.

“We just dropped in to say we’ve picked up some of his gear,” said the mother. “Just so you don’t get worried that it was nicked.”

She’d met Nails and Lynn again, yesterday, after ten years of the club members and their wives not speaking to her.

“Come in,” Lynn said. “Please, come in. Do you want a cuppa?”

In the kitchen, Nails sat with his arms spread over the table while Lynn made coffee.

“I’m really sorry to hear what happened, Son.”

Lynn brought a mug of coffee back to him.

“Thanks love.”
He was a big bearish man. His kids sat all around him. He leaned into his mug and then looked straight at the mother’s son. “Firstly, I need to know. Are there any of his club colours, t shirts, patches, buckles left in the house?”