“A drive to Bunnings”
is one way a friend described Adelaide
and I laughed and said
that was exactly the reason
why in a city obsessed with house
renovations, I’ll never call it home.
“Or you could live in Melbourne”
said another, sarcastically,
though the first six years
I did. And though it’s stupid,
nostalgic retrogression
perfumes every street corner.
Sydney’s out of the question.
Who wants to show their out-of-town
friends a coat hanger for the thrill
of living an hour from the centre
in order to save enough money
to get out of there?
While Brisbane and Perth seem
- at least on the surface –
prosperous and sunny, I get
the feeling I would only end up
questioning why the hell am I living
in Brisbane or Perth?
If home is where family
resides, then these days home
is a dry creek and best mates
with the Territory’s bomb squad
amid Sturt Desert Pea and
my parent’s second-hand caravan.
If home is where my heart
lies then I’d be lying if I said
it wasn’t in the house I keep my books in.
But that would also mean it’s
in several other states and countries and in that
sunset over the desert above the Nile.
If home is elusive to me
I’m glad it fuels a spirit of
adventure rather than fleet-footed
escape from my problems.
One thing I’ve learnt is no matter
where you are they’ll find you.
I can see ‘home’ on the top right
of the keyboard and I wonder
if I press it... will I find it?
The cursor shifts back a line.
© Sam Rodgers 2009
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Middled
Some guys push out their bellies after they’ve drunk too much water or beer and laugh at their superficial pregnancies.
Some guys dress in drag – long, flowing dresses, or kinky boots and stockings paired with a mini-dress, one casual market shopping, the other tarted up for a Friday night.
Some guys have their nails painted that one bored night by their girlfriends and keep the polish on until Monday morning, though they wear shoes.
Some guys don’t.
Some guys were their mother’s best friend, their mother’s little golden child growing up, dressed in pastel blue, but sometimes red when they wanted to pretend to put out fires. Some guys wanted to handle a gun and arrest someone; some guys dive-rolled and dreamt in camouflage khaki; others got into the nurses – as doctors – quite early; and others secretly liked hearts and flowers and stars and pink.
Some guys saw their fathers as much bigger dicks, literally, and consequentially stepped up to bat when the ball was thrown. Some guys went through sporting seasons in weeks, some slapped arses, and some did bicep curls before they’d reached puberty. Some guys wonder why they can’t keep up, and turn their attention elsewhere, like the piano or guitar, or chess, or even ballet. Some guys will end up hating dad; some will end up hating mum.
Some guys are the apple of the eyes of both, or grandpa or Nan, or the year eight P.E. teacher. Some guys try so hard to keep the peace, they do anything to satiate the appetites of others and lose themselves in the process. Some guys have girlfriends. Some guys have boyfriends. Some guys have both and confuse love with passing lust and some confuse boys with girls on business trips to Thailand.
Some guys know what they want, when they want it, and how, and will take it from the world, until it’s gone and move on to another planet. This is usually Venus, where some guys poke around, failing to find its riches. Some guys remain on Mars and wonder why no one comes to visit.
Some guys get jobs that require a scribbled note and nods; some guys get jobs that open up people and save hedge funds; others are good with their hands and build bigger dicks; and still others will become academics who can point this out to friends and snigger, whilst lighting cigars.
Some guys get jobs that require suits, and high fives, and cars that act like calendars. Some guys work alone and keep a far off look in their eye, crop dusting their horizons. Some guys run on stress and anxiety, and then pills on weekends so that they can numb the void they created living up to imagined expectations.
Some guys find themselves at water coolers surrounded by middle-aged women.
Some guys are the youngest slab of meat with a dick in a cubicle, pushing papers around, diligently keeping their mug separate in the staff room. Some guys go to Japan or China and go to heady heights of objectification and alpha-male status trips, while others do work placement in a primary school in the lower-class suburbs of home.
Some guys fall into teaching not because they weren’t talented enough for artistic endeavour, and not because they have a penchant for the beauty of youth, or clichés like shaping children’s minds. Some guys enjoy imparting knowledge to others; some guys were champions of quiz nights. Some have genuine empathy for people and want to have those exchanges on a less superficial level than as bartender or outfitter.
Some guys sit at their desk overhearing the conversations at the water cooler.
Those middle-aged women talking about human exchanges. Those women talking about their concerns, their husbands, their children, their family, their headaches. Those women talking about this and that and passive-aggressively putting themselves down to score a compliment; or siding with someone to provoke gossip with the best of intentions.
Some guys listen and learn and navigate their way around the female mind. Some guys end up every woman’s son.
Some guys watch those women and wonder who those women could have been. Those women who shone on stage, but once strayed too close to the spotlight of a particularly bad man and were burnt: rolled up their red carpet and spent the next phase of life shying from attention. Those women, yo-yoing through seasons, depressed in cake, elated in brown rice and vice versa. Those women, who knew at twelve that this is where they wanted to be, so don’t allow another thought to enter, and control every whiteboard marker sitting at the bottom of the whiteboard – all their caps facing west. Those women who speak, not just to the students, but to everyone, in a girly voice; those women who have dolls sitting on their beds still.
Then there are those women who, through an organic and gradual process came to the job when they felt ready for it. Those women who dress appropriately for their age, work part-time to support that other job based on passion, raise children with their soul mate partner – not necessarily married. Those women who wake up and laugh at wrinkles; those women who don’t take part in office slander, who just find a good friend among the fraying doilies and severe buns to share lunch with at that lovely, new patisserie with the real French baker, with whom she speaks French.
Some guys look at these particular women and see women.
They see: a body filled with enjoyment and contentment, stretch marks from children and growing up. They see: appearance taken care of, but not to the standards of paparazzi flash bulb, ‘just flicking through at the checkout’, fake-nails, fake-tan, fake-heart flake out. Some guys will see a sexually active being, aware of every goose bump on well-worn, but not breaking, skin. Some guys see these women and their hearts will not be reminded of their mothers. Some guys hear these women and they don’t feel like they’re being mothered. Some guys might fall in lust, others in love. Some guys will want to stand at the photocopier just to smell them and that would be enough. Some guys picture drizzling olive oil between these women’s legs.
Some guys don’t want to fuck these women. Some guys want to be these women.
Some guys imagine what it would be like to climb into their skin.
Some guys look down at their own bodies and see dicks and pubic hair and empty spaces where there would be muscle if they ever cared to do a push up. Some guys look at their bodies and see tan lines and vessels that carry no greater worth than their salary. Some guys feel frustrated that the blood to either head determines who to keep close and who to push away, though if they ever organised a conference they’d find two heads work better than one, somewhere midway, in that cobwebbed cavity called a cage. Some guys don’t want to be a woman; they just want to be those women.
Some guys push out their bellies after they’ve drunk too much water or beer and laugh at their superficial pregnancies: some guys push out their bellies and pretend that they’re carrying twin boys.
Some guys wonder what their cravings would be and start looking up baby names. Some guys lay off the alcohol and cigarettes and imagine life waking up to a man who still can’t believe his luck, and revel in a wardrobe filled with colours and cuts chosen with genuine personal taste – not limited to black and white, black and grey, black and navy, navy and grey.
Some guys want to know what rubbing creams and oils into their skin feels like to a person so connected to it. Some guys daydream what life as these women is like: raising teenaged boys to be men like their father, not pretending to like cricket, but giving them a window to the world that exists outside of what ‘boys prefer to do’.
Some guys want so desperately not to have to pretend all the time.
Some guys want to have acquired a well of empathy that is not frowned upon if it overflows.
Some guys want to feel cascading hair falling behind them as they’re lifted onto the laps of those that love them.
Some guys want to chat. Some guys want to smell ylang ylang and know what that means. Some guys want to sink into baths of milk and honey and eat whole boxes of chocolate without the distraction of video games or having to high five a mate and belching loudly.
Some guys forget themselves when these women show them where they keep the key to happiness. Some guys forget what happiness is. They see these women and want to know themselves like they do. To know that fucking is good, but to understand the context in which it is.
Some guys return home and turn on their electronic reasons for escape and distance themselves from their bodies – not female or male – just inconsequence, until the doctors tell them ‘it’s over’ because some guys ignore warning signs.
Some guys ignore warning signs like: pecs covering a fragile heart; jolliness compensating for races lost; sweeping emotional dust under the lungs, pancreas, prostate, liver, and brain. Some guys try to control it all, making supermen out of little boys, and get confused when time consumes even them.
Those women will never look at those boys.
Some guys befriend those women because they are those men who meet them there – at the water cooler, talking about ideas and action; thought and feeling.
© Sam Rodgers 2009
Some guys dress in drag – long, flowing dresses, or kinky boots and stockings paired with a mini-dress, one casual market shopping, the other tarted up for a Friday night.
Some guys have their nails painted that one bored night by their girlfriends and keep the polish on until Monday morning, though they wear shoes.
Some guys don’t.
Some guys were their mother’s best friend, their mother’s little golden child growing up, dressed in pastel blue, but sometimes red when they wanted to pretend to put out fires. Some guys wanted to handle a gun and arrest someone; some guys dive-rolled and dreamt in camouflage khaki; others got into the nurses – as doctors – quite early; and others secretly liked hearts and flowers and stars and pink.
Some guys saw their fathers as much bigger dicks, literally, and consequentially stepped up to bat when the ball was thrown. Some guys went through sporting seasons in weeks, some slapped arses, and some did bicep curls before they’d reached puberty. Some guys wonder why they can’t keep up, and turn their attention elsewhere, like the piano or guitar, or chess, or even ballet. Some guys will end up hating dad; some will end up hating mum.
Some guys are the apple of the eyes of both, or grandpa or Nan, or the year eight P.E. teacher. Some guys try so hard to keep the peace, they do anything to satiate the appetites of others and lose themselves in the process. Some guys have girlfriends. Some guys have boyfriends. Some guys have both and confuse love with passing lust and some confuse boys with girls on business trips to Thailand.
Some guys know what they want, when they want it, and how, and will take it from the world, until it’s gone and move on to another planet. This is usually Venus, where some guys poke around, failing to find its riches. Some guys remain on Mars and wonder why no one comes to visit.
Some guys get jobs that require a scribbled note and nods; some guys get jobs that open up people and save hedge funds; others are good with their hands and build bigger dicks; and still others will become academics who can point this out to friends and snigger, whilst lighting cigars.
Some guys get jobs that require suits, and high fives, and cars that act like calendars. Some guys work alone and keep a far off look in their eye, crop dusting their horizons. Some guys run on stress and anxiety, and then pills on weekends so that they can numb the void they created living up to imagined expectations.
Some guys find themselves at water coolers surrounded by middle-aged women.
Some guys are the youngest slab of meat with a dick in a cubicle, pushing papers around, diligently keeping their mug separate in the staff room. Some guys go to Japan or China and go to heady heights of objectification and alpha-male status trips, while others do work placement in a primary school in the lower-class suburbs of home.
Some guys fall into teaching not because they weren’t talented enough for artistic endeavour, and not because they have a penchant for the beauty of youth, or clichés like shaping children’s minds. Some guys enjoy imparting knowledge to others; some guys were champions of quiz nights. Some have genuine empathy for people and want to have those exchanges on a less superficial level than as bartender or outfitter.
Some guys sit at their desk overhearing the conversations at the water cooler.
Those middle-aged women talking about human exchanges. Those women talking about their concerns, their husbands, their children, their family, their headaches. Those women talking about this and that and passive-aggressively putting themselves down to score a compliment; or siding with someone to provoke gossip with the best of intentions.
Some guys listen and learn and navigate their way around the female mind. Some guys end up every woman’s son.
Some guys watch those women and wonder who those women could have been. Those women who shone on stage, but once strayed too close to the spotlight of a particularly bad man and were burnt: rolled up their red carpet and spent the next phase of life shying from attention. Those women, yo-yoing through seasons, depressed in cake, elated in brown rice and vice versa. Those women, who knew at twelve that this is where they wanted to be, so don’t allow another thought to enter, and control every whiteboard marker sitting at the bottom of the whiteboard – all their caps facing west. Those women who speak, not just to the students, but to everyone, in a girly voice; those women who have dolls sitting on their beds still.
Then there are those women who, through an organic and gradual process came to the job when they felt ready for it. Those women who dress appropriately for their age, work part-time to support that other job based on passion, raise children with their soul mate partner – not necessarily married. Those women who wake up and laugh at wrinkles; those women who don’t take part in office slander, who just find a good friend among the fraying doilies and severe buns to share lunch with at that lovely, new patisserie with the real French baker, with whom she speaks French.
Some guys look at these particular women and see women.
They see: a body filled with enjoyment and contentment, stretch marks from children and growing up. They see: appearance taken care of, but not to the standards of paparazzi flash bulb, ‘just flicking through at the checkout’, fake-nails, fake-tan, fake-heart flake out. Some guys will see a sexually active being, aware of every goose bump on well-worn, but not breaking, skin. Some guys see these women and their hearts will not be reminded of their mothers. Some guys hear these women and they don’t feel like they’re being mothered. Some guys might fall in lust, others in love. Some guys will want to stand at the photocopier just to smell them and that would be enough. Some guys picture drizzling olive oil between these women’s legs.
Some guys don’t want to fuck these women. Some guys want to be these women.
Some guys imagine what it would be like to climb into their skin.
Some guys look down at their own bodies and see dicks and pubic hair and empty spaces where there would be muscle if they ever cared to do a push up. Some guys look at their bodies and see tan lines and vessels that carry no greater worth than their salary. Some guys feel frustrated that the blood to either head determines who to keep close and who to push away, though if they ever organised a conference they’d find two heads work better than one, somewhere midway, in that cobwebbed cavity called a cage. Some guys don’t want to be a woman; they just want to be those women.
Some guys push out their bellies after they’ve drunk too much water or beer and laugh at their superficial pregnancies: some guys push out their bellies and pretend that they’re carrying twin boys.
Some guys wonder what their cravings would be and start looking up baby names. Some guys lay off the alcohol and cigarettes and imagine life waking up to a man who still can’t believe his luck, and revel in a wardrobe filled with colours and cuts chosen with genuine personal taste – not limited to black and white, black and grey, black and navy, navy and grey.
Some guys want to know what rubbing creams and oils into their skin feels like to a person so connected to it. Some guys daydream what life as these women is like: raising teenaged boys to be men like their father, not pretending to like cricket, but giving them a window to the world that exists outside of what ‘boys prefer to do’.
Some guys want so desperately not to have to pretend all the time.
Some guys want to have acquired a well of empathy that is not frowned upon if it overflows.
Some guys want to feel cascading hair falling behind them as they’re lifted onto the laps of those that love them.
Some guys want to chat. Some guys want to smell ylang ylang and know what that means. Some guys want to sink into baths of milk and honey and eat whole boxes of chocolate without the distraction of video games or having to high five a mate and belching loudly.
Some guys forget themselves when these women show them where they keep the key to happiness. Some guys forget what happiness is. They see these women and want to know themselves like they do. To know that fucking is good, but to understand the context in which it is.
Some guys return home and turn on their electronic reasons for escape and distance themselves from their bodies – not female or male – just inconsequence, until the doctors tell them ‘it’s over’ because some guys ignore warning signs.
Some guys ignore warning signs like: pecs covering a fragile heart; jolliness compensating for races lost; sweeping emotional dust under the lungs, pancreas, prostate, liver, and brain. Some guys try to control it all, making supermen out of little boys, and get confused when time consumes even them.
Those women will never look at those boys.
Some guys befriend those women because they are those men who meet them there – at the water cooler, talking about ideas and action; thought and feeling.
© Sam Rodgers 2009
Monday, January 18, 2010
Intro-Outro
This is the first day, sloping up before you like a whale:
takes a while to start trekking, takes a whale to put
you in perspective.
How reflective, how self-reflexive: me I walk, to you I talk;
and the day becomes the moments you’re told will stay
with you.
This is the moment where you say you want it:
take off the claws and use the giant padded paws,
soft and dextrous grab.
Start the plait: make strong the ties that will lie
underneath you; the roots of the ropes you use to
hold you.
© Sam Rodgers 2009
takes a while to start trekking, takes a whale to put
you in perspective.
How reflective, how self-reflexive: me I walk, to you I talk;
and the day becomes the moments you’re told will stay
with you.
This is the moment where you say you want it:
take off the claws and use the giant padded paws,
soft and dextrous grab.
Start the plait: make strong the ties that will lie
underneath you; the roots of the ropes you use to
hold you.
© Sam Rodgers 2009
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Another String To Your Bow
You know you don’t care about this arrangement, or who the composer was or is. You are here for the culture, you are here to get out of the house, you are here to get dressed up once this week.
You shift in your seat: that violinist is shifting in hers too, as if playing that instrument requires every muscle to sing. And it probably does – that’s as much as you know about classical music. Her bottom rises off her chair and when she slides her bow upwards. Such a lithe, taut body she has, like she exists on rose petals, wine and the music. Every muscle tightly pulled violin strings.
This is not your body.
Your body: not quite the fun park that detractors of the body/temple faction celebrate. Your body, half toned from self-hate, half lumpy from self-hate. At least you have the gym membership, another status card, next to the platinum credit and that expensive Swiss restaurant.
You look around and are disappointed to see that most other women here are with a man, or that the men your age that can dress in something unpredictable are probably gay. The men musicians probably aren’t but you hate a man with a limp handshake.
You’re here with a couple of friends, one of which is the one who would be able to read the sheet music. You look at her and she is making that face people make when they want to convey to others that they can, actually, really understand what’s going on. You dated that guy once – though his thing was ‘the cinema’.
It wasn’t a surprise to see your boss, Helen, in the foyer on the way in. Her hair left naturally grey and she seems just so OK with being the age she’s at – what is it, at least 54 – with the Oxfam colourful and exotic dress sense. Your boss of that job you find yourself in ten years later without knowing why. Your job: paperwork for an essential oils company, just expanded, big in the States, maybe exciting job opportunities there... one day.
You wonder what it’s like to be a musician, travelling the world, garnering respect from every town hall you fill. You imagine what it’s like to carry your cello case through customs, with your back straight and serene composition, flitting between English and French, drinking champagne not to get drunk, but because, well, you do.
You wonder what it’s like to do something you love for a living, and whether these musicians actually do. Of course they do, you think, or they wouldn’t have put in hours and hours of practice, surely. Though you’ve put in hours and hours of overtime, it doesn’t make you love your job any more. But look at their smiles in between pieces, and when that applause washes over them, cleanses their whys, makes it all worth while. You’re lucky to get a card and chocolates at Christmas, but then, everyone does. Even Kylie.
You won’t think of Kylie. Not anymore. It’s such a waste of time to get consumed by jealousy with such a hack. You glance at your other friend, the one who’s just as supportive, yet clueless, like you. She has her head bowed; you’re not sure whether in boredom or whether she’s concentrating on listening, making mental notes of certain parts of the compositions that she can relay back to musician friend to show she’s interested. You used to think that was important but now you have no idea what you could be interested in.
You think of the apartment you’ve bought and the mortgage that makes you feel as impoverished as a university student again, and boy, wasn’t that degree worth it? You think of the empty apartment waiting for you, the failed attempts at taking care of plants, because that’s what the other women at work do, and you sure know taking care of a baby is not a task soon on the horizon. You think of the women at work who Helen organises baby showers for, and all that money you could have happily spent on boutique muesli instead of another pastel stork mobile. You think about the men in your phone you could have sex with as soon as you gave the green flag to and wonder if having a fuck buddy is like having a gym membership.
You try not to, oh how you try not to think of that last failed relationship. You were almost getting engaged and he always seemed to say the right thing even though he had that far off look in his eye. You told yourself that at least that look wasn’t falling on other women, but in the end it didn’t matter, because it wasn’t falling on you. The selfish prick.
You realise the music is now melancholic – was it like that before or after you started thinking of Brian? That big piece of shit. Oh, it’s so hard not to feel like he made you feel loved to spite you. You rearrange your facial muscles into a frown; it’s easy to get away with, if your friends saw you now they’d think you were responding to the music. This always happens, and it was almost six months ago, but now you’re grinding your teeth replaying the fights and the romantic moments, each a lie and a truth and you’re not sure which was what anymore, or if you ever were sure. You just found out he had moved away, and though that helps you walk around the city without stressing about coincidental crashes, it makes you angry. You are angry that he moved on, that he had the guts to take that work in Dubai, that you’re still here, you’re still here in your empty apartment
with the same job,
the same friends,
the same haircut...
You get distracted by your hair, and this daydream calms you down. You are ready to get the chop, and your friends have recommended the perfect place where they serve you coffee and give manicures if it so takes your fancy. You just haven’t made the appointment, but you will. You will when you really want to pamper yourself. When you have the money. When you’ve found the perfect style:
though you can
never find
your face
in the celebrities
in those
magazines they keep
in reception
at work.
The notes are now staccato, like Jaws:
so insistent – or is it incessant? Maybe both.
Insistent,
incessant,
insistent,
incessant.
You wonder if this was the eighteenth century version of heavy metal, man, it’s really getting under your skin. And when you think it’s ebbing, they start that Psycho shower scene again and again. Whatever point the composer wanted to make, he sure is making it.
You wonder why there aren’t many female composers, or why there aren’t any you’re familiar with. Surely they’d never have written this aggravating din. And what makes it worse is a smugness to it, that you’re sure you can’t comment on or criticise.
God, it’s making you angry again.
What are you doing here? You don’t even know who blahdeeblah is. You don’t care, and you have a block of chocolate at home and the box set of Sex and the City to get through. You try to identify with those women, but none of your friends fit the archetypes and there are months where you never randomly bump into Mr. Wrong, let alone Mr. Right. Fucking Brian. You know he’s not a bad person and that makes things worse, and you just don’t like this music. That fucking cellist looks like she’s crying and about what? The long, deep notes? It’s just sound, bitch, and it is making you infuriated. You now focus your anger on the musicians who look rapturous in their playing, and you can’t help but feel every movement and flourish mocks the very core of who you are. You grip your chair until your knuckles turn white. You feel claustrophobic. You feel hemmed in by people who just don’t get it – they’re just pretending and they have no idea why they’re here.
You stand up quickly and scream.
Your friends are shocked and shout at you as you make your way to the stage, climbing over the people and chairs in front of you. You are bowling over everyone in your path and you continue screaming until you notice the musicians have come to a stop. You climb up onto the stage and stomp up to the cellist and rip her bow out of her hand. Your foot smashes through the f-holes and you turn your rage onto the violinist with the cello attached to the end of your leg. You push down the men musicians as they try to manhandle you off the stage and run at the pretty violinist who shrieks as you snap her bow in half.
You are nudged out of a daze by your friends. You feel your eyes are hot and there’s salt water encrusted on the edge of your mouth. Your friends ask if you’re OK and you say that you are. Your head fills with the sound of the end of a round of applause and chairs being pushed back and the sound of people’s conversation rising like someone turning the volume down, then up. You see the cellist’s dress flick out from behind the wings of the stage. Your friend says, “I found that really moving.” And you nod. You nod and say, “Me too.”
©Sam Rodgers 2009
You shift in your seat: that violinist is shifting in hers too, as if playing that instrument requires every muscle to sing. And it probably does – that’s as much as you know about classical music. Her bottom rises off her chair and when she slides her bow upwards. Such a lithe, taut body she has, like she exists on rose petals, wine and the music. Every muscle tightly pulled violin strings.
This is not your body.
Your body: not quite the fun park that detractors of the body/temple faction celebrate. Your body, half toned from self-hate, half lumpy from self-hate. At least you have the gym membership, another status card, next to the platinum credit and that expensive Swiss restaurant.
You look around and are disappointed to see that most other women here are with a man, or that the men your age that can dress in something unpredictable are probably gay. The men musicians probably aren’t but you hate a man with a limp handshake.
You’re here with a couple of friends, one of which is the one who would be able to read the sheet music. You look at her and she is making that face people make when they want to convey to others that they can, actually, really understand what’s going on. You dated that guy once – though his thing was ‘the cinema’.
It wasn’t a surprise to see your boss, Helen, in the foyer on the way in. Her hair left naturally grey and she seems just so OK with being the age she’s at – what is it, at least 54 – with the Oxfam colourful and exotic dress sense. Your boss of that job you find yourself in ten years later without knowing why. Your job: paperwork for an essential oils company, just expanded, big in the States, maybe exciting job opportunities there... one day.
You wonder what it’s like to be a musician, travelling the world, garnering respect from every town hall you fill. You imagine what it’s like to carry your cello case through customs, with your back straight and serene composition, flitting between English and French, drinking champagne not to get drunk, but because, well, you do.
You wonder what it’s like to do something you love for a living, and whether these musicians actually do. Of course they do, you think, or they wouldn’t have put in hours and hours of practice, surely. Though you’ve put in hours and hours of overtime, it doesn’t make you love your job any more. But look at their smiles in between pieces, and when that applause washes over them, cleanses their whys, makes it all worth while. You’re lucky to get a card and chocolates at Christmas, but then, everyone does. Even Kylie.
You won’t think of Kylie. Not anymore. It’s such a waste of time to get consumed by jealousy with such a hack. You glance at your other friend, the one who’s just as supportive, yet clueless, like you. She has her head bowed; you’re not sure whether in boredom or whether she’s concentrating on listening, making mental notes of certain parts of the compositions that she can relay back to musician friend to show she’s interested. You used to think that was important but now you have no idea what you could be interested in.
You think of the apartment you’ve bought and the mortgage that makes you feel as impoverished as a university student again, and boy, wasn’t that degree worth it? You think of the empty apartment waiting for you, the failed attempts at taking care of plants, because that’s what the other women at work do, and you sure know taking care of a baby is not a task soon on the horizon. You think of the women at work who Helen organises baby showers for, and all that money you could have happily spent on boutique muesli instead of another pastel stork mobile. You think about the men in your phone you could have sex with as soon as you gave the green flag to and wonder if having a fuck buddy is like having a gym membership.
You try not to, oh how you try not to think of that last failed relationship. You were almost getting engaged and he always seemed to say the right thing even though he had that far off look in his eye. You told yourself that at least that look wasn’t falling on other women, but in the end it didn’t matter, because it wasn’t falling on you. The selfish prick.
You realise the music is now melancholic – was it like that before or after you started thinking of Brian? That big piece of shit. Oh, it’s so hard not to feel like he made you feel loved to spite you. You rearrange your facial muscles into a frown; it’s easy to get away with, if your friends saw you now they’d think you were responding to the music. This always happens, and it was almost six months ago, but now you’re grinding your teeth replaying the fights and the romantic moments, each a lie and a truth and you’re not sure which was what anymore, or if you ever were sure. You just found out he had moved away, and though that helps you walk around the city without stressing about coincidental crashes, it makes you angry. You are angry that he moved on, that he had the guts to take that work in Dubai, that you’re still here, you’re still here in your empty apartment
with the same job,
the same friends,
the same haircut...
You get distracted by your hair, and this daydream calms you down. You are ready to get the chop, and your friends have recommended the perfect place where they serve you coffee and give manicures if it so takes your fancy. You just haven’t made the appointment, but you will. You will when you really want to pamper yourself. When you have the money. When you’ve found the perfect style:
though you can
never find
your face
in the celebrities
in those
magazines they keep
in reception
at work.
The notes are now staccato, like Jaws:
so insistent – or is it incessant? Maybe both.
Insistent,
incessant,
insistent,
incessant.
You wonder if this was the eighteenth century version of heavy metal, man, it’s really getting under your skin. And when you think it’s ebbing, they start that Psycho shower scene again and again. Whatever point the composer wanted to make, he sure is making it.
You wonder why there aren’t many female composers, or why there aren’t any you’re familiar with. Surely they’d never have written this aggravating din. And what makes it worse is a smugness to it, that you’re sure you can’t comment on or criticise.
God, it’s making you angry again.
What are you doing here? You don’t even know who blahdeeblah is. You don’t care, and you have a block of chocolate at home and the box set of Sex and the City to get through. You try to identify with those women, but none of your friends fit the archetypes and there are months where you never randomly bump into Mr. Wrong, let alone Mr. Right. Fucking Brian. You know he’s not a bad person and that makes things worse, and you just don’t like this music. That fucking cellist looks like she’s crying and about what? The long, deep notes? It’s just sound, bitch, and it is making you infuriated. You now focus your anger on the musicians who look rapturous in their playing, and you can’t help but feel every movement and flourish mocks the very core of who you are. You grip your chair until your knuckles turn white. You feel claustrophobic. You feel hemmed in by people who just don’t get it – they’re just pretending and they have no idea why they’re here.
You stand up quickly and scream.
Your friends are shocked and shout at you as you make your way to the stage, climbing over the people and chairs in front of you. You are bowling over everyone in your path and you continue screaming until you notice the musicians have come to a stop. You climb up onto the stage and stomp up to the cellist and rip her bow out of her hand. Your foot smashes through the f-holes and you turn your rage onto the violinist with the cello attached to the end of your leg. You push down the men musicians as they try to manhandle you off the stage and run at the pretty violinist who shrieks as you snap her bow in half.
You are nudged out of a daze by your friends. You feel your eyes are hot and there’s salt water encrusted on the edge of your mouth. Your friends ask if you’re OK and you say that you are. Your head fills with the sound of the end of a round of applause and chairs being pushed back and the sound of people’s conversation rising like someone turning the volume down, then up. You see the cellist’s dress flick out from behind the wings of the stage. Your friend says, “I found that really moving.” And you nod. You nod and say, “Me too.”
©Sam Rodgers 2009
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
The Note Pad
Once there was a squiggle on a page.
He felt blue - in fact he was blue.
He compared himself to the perfectly formed star in the top right hand corner.
"Why can't I be like you?" he asked the star.
"Because I am beautiful and symmetrical and you are a mess," said the star. "Look at you; you don't even know where you begin and where you end."
The squiggle frowned. It was true; once upon a time there was a logical beginning, but there wasn't one he could see anymore.
He sighed and looked up at the straight, ruled lines at the top of the page.
"Why can't I be like you?" he asked the lines.
"We are the result of a lot of care and attention," the lines replied. "You had little thought put into you."
The squiggle held back tears. It was obvious that the lines had had a lot of thought put into them. They served a function. They were straight and true - not like his own deviances.
Along the edge of the page were some curlicues forming a nice pattern.
"Why can't I be like you?" the squiggle lamented.
"Our lines go somewhere to form a pretty border. We're not all random like you," the curlicues said.
"Oh it's true!" the squiggle exclaimed. "I don't even know what I'm supposed to look like. Not like the frog, or the cat, or the sewing machine, or the flower." The squiggle looked around him and tears welled in his eyes as all the other drawings on the page just made sense to him.
"Don't worry," came several voices from below him. "We are just tiny circles of no consequence, but we know that we are all made from the same stuff."
"I don't get you," said the squiggle wiping his tears.
"Look around you," continued the circles. "The star, the lines, everything on the page was drawn in ink. We might have all been conceived with different intentions but we are all the same."
The squiggle now saw the truth. That no matter what he looked like he was from the same pen as everyone else around him. His irregular form became what set him apart and he was happy that he wasn't just another circle, curlicue, star or line. He finally felt like he could just be himself.
"I'm not like everyone else," mumbled a smudge of lead pencil.
"Yeah, but you were a mistake," said the squiggle, and he and the star and the lines and the curlicues and the circles, and the frog and the cat and the sewing machine and the flower, all laughed at the unfortunate stain upon their existence.
The end.
© Sam Rodgers, 2006
He felt blue - in fact he was blue.
He compared himself to the perfectly formed star in the top right hand corner.
"Why can't I be like you?" he asked the star.
"Because I am beautiful and symmetrical and you are a mess," said the star. "Look at you; you don't even know where you begin and where you end."
The squiggle frowned. It was true; once upon a time there was a logical beginning, but there wasn't one he could see anymore.
He sighed and looked up at the straight, ruled lines at the top of the page.
"Why can't I be like you?" he asked the lines.
"We are the result of a lot of care and attention," the lines replied. "You had little thought put into you."
The squiggle held back tears. It was obvious that the lines had had a lot of thought put into them. They served a function. They were straight and true - not like his own deviances.
Along the edge of the page were some curlicues forming a nice pattern.
"Why can't I be like you?" the squiggle lamented.
"Our lines go somewhere to form a pretty border. We're not all random like you," the curlicues said.
"Oh it's true!" the squiggle exclaimed. "I don't even know what I'm supposed to look like. Not like the frog, or the cat, or the sewing machine, or the flower." The squiggle looked around him and tears welled in his eyes as all the other drawings on the page just made sense to him.
"Don't worry," came several voices from below him. "We are just tiny circles of no consequence, but we know that we are all made from the same stuff."
"I don't get you," said the squiggle wiping his tears.
"Look around you," continued the circles. "The star, the lines, everything on the page was drawn in ink. We might have all been conceived with different intentions but we are all the same."
The squiggle now saw the truth. That no matter what he looked like he was from the same pen as everyone else around him. His irregular form became what set him apart and he was happy that he wasn't just another circle, curlicue, star or line. He finally felt like he could just be himself.
"I'm not like everyone else," mumbled a smudge of lead pencil.
"Yeah, but you were a mistake," said the squiggle, and he and the star and the lines and the curlicues and the circles, and the frog and the cat and the sewing machine and the flower, all laughed at the unfortunate stain upon their existence.
The end.
© Sam Rodgers, 2006
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
