Short Things

Internal Notes on the Theme and Dual Timeline of Lane Boy

Now stand back and see what the thing, the blob, has to offer you. This is where you can't avoid images presenting themselves from your civilised mind. What’s in your in your consciousness and subconscious will now start to try to wrestle the blobs into identifiable forms. This is not new, as it’s the same as any exercise of imagination, but there is a particular nuance that has to be pointed out that will make all the difference between your intellect taking over and ‘making it all right’ and trusting the baroque chaotic genius of nature. This is the fine line. This is where all of your will power is challenged. The fight will start now. If you do what the rational says, the thing will become ‘a thing’, and you will make it so. The thing that appears will be a man who will resemble a cripple perhaps or a bird in a strange position you could not imagine but which rings true. Strange creatures might peer back at you for no logical reason. Don’t think you know better. Do you have the courage to accept them, or even more so to see them?

Peter knew the stink of warm, stale flat beer well. Now and again, he helped his mother clean out the drain trays at the cricket club pavilion. That same sour stagnant slop had frothed and bubbled like miracle juice the night before when it squirted out of the beer gun into the big pint glasses. The men at the cricket club, were rewarded with ritual beer, after practice two times a week and of course to celebrate or commiserate following the Saturday game. The club was not a hobby. It was a commitment, a loyalty; a devotion of sorts. Stan had created it and was a man of his word, Stan the Man. No one was left behind, including loyal Joy and of course the kids who had to tag along compulsorily. If you did not like it, your life was made into hell, and you would be dragged along anyway. There was no ticket out. It was not a choice. The best thing to do - was to embrace it and accept the fate along with its rewards, which included guaranteed fitness and good batting scores. These two things gave the best chance of gaining Stans favour. It was a fair playing field, whether you were a player or a son of Stan. North Caulfield Cricket Club was a country, a nation, an army of faithfulness. It was a brotherhood, (with wives and daughters included) built by Stan to, inspire, coach and of course catch any one who fell down on the battle field inside or outside of it. Men of every race, fitness level, and occupation were hypnotised by the warm glow radiating out of the ugly bessa block fortress on the hill - the Pavilion.

As soon as I slabbed it onto the canvas in the background, the nothing colour was like a note of perfect music. I was shocked at its instant rightness. I was totally taken by surprise that I could see it, and at that moment, I knew this is what I had been longing for. The ‘feeling’ of this. That grey thing, that is not really anything, but is everything. It is like the love in a loveless marriage. The warm body of an affectionate dog on a cold day when everything else seems bleak. Trying to place value on a vast landscape view without being there. The deadness of that is replaced with the electrocution of standing on the top of a mountain with it all around you.

Stan fiddled with the transistor radio trying to get a station. Dean Martin’s voice came through perfectly clear, ‘Send me the pillow, that you dream on, so darlin’ I can dream on it too.’ Music always put Stan in a good mood. It was a game changer, like the sun. Going by the colour of his skin, it was clear he was trying to change the game, allot. In his view, kids shouldn’t be inside when they could be out here in this.

Even though he was listening to the old smoozer Dean, he was also listening to the boys.

“She’ll stab it to death and then we’re done,” moaned Peter to Alan.

This caught Stan’s attention, “Whats that old bitch been doing?”

Peter didn’t want to make a fuss. He whispered to Alan, “Come on, let’s just do something else.” But Alan was happy to make a fuss. He could see this was going to be good. He knew when his dad was in the mood for a bit of a tussle and it always proved productive if not at the very least lots of fun.

Snowy the neighbour on the right, was a bitter old woman and not only disliked the children; she demonstrated her maliciousness by stabbing their plastic footballs with a ten inch long butchers knife when they went over the fence into her yard. Her murderous behaviour was mostly a puzzle to Peter, as she herself was a grandma. And once in a blue moon she was visited by a carload of well behaved grandchildren on a Sunday, who did not seem to make much noise. Perhaps what she really hated was that she could not control the visits of the footballs or the kids launching them. Therefore by stabbing them to a deflated death, she not only slowed down the missives into her pristine backyard, she sent a gaping wound as a message back. The lightweight plastic footies, once punctured, became useless.

The old baker’s van door slid open at 11.35 PM. An elfin-like four-year-old stood in the frame. Crumpled grey shorts ballooned and hovered over stick legs. A Picasso boy. Scruffy white hair radiated around his head like a harrowed halo, backlit by the streetlamp shining through the driver’s seat window behind him. His face like a rabbit, coming out of its warren, anxious but driven by a force beyond his fear - survival.

When there are batches of people who come into her wildernesses, she is wary and stiff. If miners want to go in there and drill holes in her belly, and then scrap out all of her insides, and then pour all their dirty water and crap back into her again, she will not scream or yell. She will deliver to those who did this, the result. You will go there and see your own filthy work, your own mess, your defamation of her body. How you think or feel about that, she does not even care. We are a collective in light of Mother Nature. You might be sad and cry, but the miner does not give a fig. Therefore any justice must be fought by the factions. If we are offended, then we have to ‘adjust’ the dirty part of our collective. We can’t save her. We can only rout out the cancers in our collective that harm the earth that nurtures us. People must regulate people. We do not tolerate murderers, so why do we tolerate those who make our world filthy and dark?

The guy is under a 'stay at home order'... banned from using any device that connects to the internet. So he is allowed to use a 'landline telephone'… I was thinking this through. Our work is in our computers. They would have seized everything but could have been left with his computer but no 'modem'? The creepiness of this sends shivers. Thought police.

… A terrible thing happens to us at the gates and the hardest part of this journey. We cannot enter this place, we cannot enter this place, it is actually impossible – you cannot fit or enter this place, cannot cross the bridge unless you remove your crown willingly, your servants, your groupies, your accolades, and everything you have built your identity around consciously or unconsciously. Everything you think of as your self-identity must be left behind on the rock. Naked and alone, unidentifiable with no title – you can slip into the underworld…