Stories from your day job...

There are days when bread and butter is the order of the day. Where the writing is not so creative and at a desk in a mildly glib room you tend to the things that bring in the fun tickets. But there is music that makes using words like 'painful eruptions' and addressing someone on a forum as 'Princess' far more tolerable.

This little tune has has my office chair swerving from side to side today as I contemplated acneic cysts and such, dishing out advice of sorts. 



So listening to this and feeling a little inspired, I wondered about all the awesome photographers whose images have made my words better, and the writers I've mentioned and envied, what their day jobs are... What music gets them by and through and I wonder and how many stories we could all tell involving things like rubber gloves, kitchens and chinking glasses and computer screens and telephone calls and the funny things that happen and revolve around 'how may I help you?'; those things that happen in a day sandwiched by writing or artistic endeavour. Hmmm, what we could tell each other over a glass of red and some background music after a day of it all ...

I'm filling your glass now, tell me your stories...  I might write you something.

(Image: Venturi Scott)

Hush

Hush you angel, you're told.

And you can't,

you don't.

Because you've never understood how to quieten,
there is something growling within you that you like to feed,

and you can't hear the sound of how for your own sotto voice.

(Image D. Mark Andrews)

Carrot cake on Cardigan Street (a slice of my day)

Her hair is flame red, thrown into a careless and messy bun. In between head and toe are liquorish legs and pale white skin. She wears a white cap-sleeved tshirt, if it were not for the black bra beneath she would be almost doll like. Her skirt is candy-colour striped: blue and yellow. Her shoes are red and her feet are placed on the ground not far from his underneath the small glass top table on which he leans. His peach coloured t-shirt hangs carelessly over his modest frame, denim shorts lay level with his knees but short of his bottom which, in deep blue underpants, rests upon the wooden café seat. They wear white sunglasses to ward off the bright.

A jackhammer sounds as she fingers the clean ash tray on the table exploring its dimension then offhandedly picks up the metal sequin-encrusted container from which sugar sachets spill. Effortlessly two pairs of unfreckled hands collect them and the container is placed back. She moves her attention to the files on her lap embossed with words.

The boy notices, “Did you cut those out… Wow!”

The sound of a truck reversing drowns his voice but not his enthusiasm. She fingers the maroon felt words on her books that spell out each subject appropriate to the object.

“How fun was that?” he shoots.

“I cut the letters out of felt and I stuck them down,” she looks proudly at the characters. Each is the same size and a deep rich colour.

“You cut them out with scissors?” The jack hammer responds before she can.

“Yeah.”

A forklift squeals as they rise and leave.

(Image: Mia Nolting)

Fishing with Straws

You're fishing with straws, he says

and motions to the water.

You say

you say nothing

just stare into the surface like it don't matter that some old man wants to chatter

some crazy old geezer with his face all pock marked and wrinkles folding onto themselves

and he says you're fishing with straws, y'hear?

And somewhere you know he's right.

Somewhere you know there ain't no fish in this water

and the pock faced man leaves

and you keep on fishing.

(Image: Sally Mann)

untitled

The yellow bedspread in the room coerces like the sun.

The floral couch where I sit feels like home.

The hills hoist by the nectarine tree

has the smells of 'fresh' and 'gone'.


(Cropped image: Nirrimi Hakanson)

a how

I was recently asked to make a note of how I write. I liked that I had to think about this—that the heart of what drives the words, what it is that makes them shoot out there in the way they do, surfaced: little bits of flotsam bobbing there like small treasures from a forgotten wreck.

When words fail, when they dry up and disappear (or the motivation to play with them withers), sometimes knowing how they're important in a simple and unintellectual way—feeling it in your bones again—is the pleasure, the magic, one needs to then incant them without effort.

They don't always come easily, sometimes they do but there are days where everyone else seems to have written some slice of perfection; some long piece of comedy or grandeur or tragedy that leaves me awestruck, that seems utterly unattainable to me. And I forget how the words fit into my own small jigsaw. I'm too busy looking at the completed puzzle next to me, fully formed by the smart-arse kid that maybe I get to be on some days.

Yes, some days you win, some days are a massive long fart.

I've often been overcome by the stench of foul moments of procrastination, where the natter in my head, gauche and mean, is the only source of words: things not worthy of the page. And in those moments it's easy to forget the how: the simple pleasure of making beautiful the things that are not so; to forget the simplicity in whispering things onto a page like no one might hear them properly. It's easy to curb your tongue for fear of being given ten 'Hail Mary's' for writing something less than polished, perhaps a little too delicate and revealing. (A topic soon to be a panel in the Emerging Writers Festival: the wee little reason I had to write my 'how') ...

'I write with great joy and great difficulty, in the window of a blog sometimes—a small cubby house to make it seem less scary. I write with the hope that small details might shift something or change someone. I write often and as though I am sitting in a confessional.'

(Image: Sergey Chilikov) 

Babble

I was a little excited when I heard Mr Sean M Whelan was going to dish up some Babble. Though I can't make it this Wednesday night, I'll certainly be there next month. Sean has been a grand supporter and delicious reader at Read You Bastards, his enthusiasm is infectious so I'm a little sad to be missing out on Wednesday Babble delights.

atonement

 

Now, however many years since we last met, we do meet, here.
Here, your words come in waves and drawn silences, we live by markers and measures.
In this place, however many streets away it is that we live, we enact.

So, for however many million years since we last shared breath;
however many blasts, however many hits and wounds and blows we shouldered;
however many lures we made, anchors cast to ground this ship;
however many times we grew ill and lived to tear our flag to pieces,

there is this now,


and I ask you this: how is it that we atone?

(Image: Michele Mobley)

room

; in this room
where we disappear
and might never have existed,
we wash away the falter,

in this room
where we have no name
limbs move like splinters,
a cause for something broken,

and you electrify your arm chair
and leave this lying here


; a favorite pasture

a favorite place

a favorite breath

a favorite brace,


in this room where souls disappear
sometimes we wander,
a place for more tomorrow,


scent fills the air


; favorite fingers

favorite face

favorite fervor

favorite space,


in this room
where we disappear
you electrify your arm chair
and leave this lying here;

Measurements: a joint affair. Poetry by Shane Jesse Christmass.

I recently posted a piece called 'Measurements', here on Jemima. Soon after, my phone beeped, an SMS. 'I just rewrote your poem!' Shane wrote.

'What? Like edited? Huh?'

'Like remixed it? Took your words as inspiration? Something like that.'

'Which of my poems was the origin?'

'Measurements'

'Send me yours.'

So the email arrived and I read Shane's poem; a 'remix' perhaps? In all honesty, it's a completely other piece (with a few moments in time shared with my original). His version remains true to his own rich and dense style that deserves several re-reads to digest the layers. I'm still consuming.

So, here is the outcome....


Measurements [A response] 
Shane Jesse Christmass

it was a box of flesh on the nightstand that ask to be reprieved
if it were or could not move, that’s the words
too small for a possibility than unrighteousness
& it enables humans more neatly
making notes & cases when we’re physically unresponsive to die

upon my back be your palms
that can’t hold scientists than that consciousness you keep
the walls are the portable alternatives but they’re portions only
but despite this you blow with the rich & them fashion-troubled & measured crowds
for there is nothing bound by being bound to the so-repeated help

able shall sometimes to see scrying terrors goodly
in with my environment there’s no room nor evidence
that one might respond to a latter brain or provide walking with a face evermore
there’s set places of salt water squeezed from presumed touchscreens
strapped to measure for the presence thereon of power

if today I can control the day with Thursday
then there’s nothing no one can do to presume there’s a gram of lump-in-throat
for the fascinating work chest, near the outside bin skip
is a moment of welcome panic & fear
but not here, not in the Fitzroy, here we should try whirling over what is
the hundred conscious of patient’s responses
the awareness & which this expresses their size

this measured man of mine
stars we want like the asbeels & their still reflections
like a synthesis to beg & drivel text to those that be warred
or act like just not to be lost in measures
with old stories & a wrist of a reminder
the person name is pressed into blankets
someplace to have absolutely the abyss

bound in the mirrors & plates are the days that hold you
reading the question that became dated fables
like moments from the dark you while with the box of flesh & you measure
half to a legal battle of teaspoons
of cold stars that communicate
with what they showed
active chance, me & fear…

Written by Shane Jesse Christmass
Written In Fitzroy.
18/02/2010.



(Image: Svea Kemper)