PUTREFACTIO

PUTREFACTIO

There is a fragile warmth. The corpse cools from the bottom up, but the deeper organs retain the tinge of rubedo, the remembrance of a life lived.

It's unseasonal of course. Fully leaf fall now, the days mere flashes and the nights deepening, and yet the wind sets a song in my ears and reminds me of Summer.

After the killing comes the rotting. I tried to hasten the process. I looked at pictures of the seven stages of putrefaction. I watched videos of the terrible Aghori, who drag human bodies out of the Ganges and eat them. I ate the deadest thing I could find, a cheap mince pie from the freezer, and then chastised myself for being so half hearted. I put myself to bed, telling myself I had two days to kick my sorry ass.

I was restless, for a corpse.

This is the most organic of all the alchemical processes, and clearly it cannot be influenced.

But oh, I have lived a life of monstrous wonderment. I have lived uncountable moments replete with meaning, that the pain of them is almost too sharp to bear, that the wild stomp and bellow of them overwhelms me even in memory.

I think I will overwinter here. In the Spring, what sprouts from my cadaver may be truly malignant. But me, I hope for snowdrops.

The Earth pauses in her tilt towards the dark, and I must pause with her.

Still. Still. Rest now.


 

Zen in the art of the washing line

The grape vine has taken my washing line. Charming yet assertive, it began by twining itself around the line and shading the washing. I hung my clothes around its leaves, uncurling some of its vines gently, and sweeping them back onto the fence. By the next day, they had unfurled themselves and taken back what was theirs to start with. I humoured the vine, admired its wondrous need for sun and growth, and awaited grapes.

I was reminded of this my favourite Zen poem, written by a nun:

Ah, the chrysanthemum!
It has taken the well bucket.
I must look elsewhere for water. 

The grapes came. Birds shat grape shit on my sheets. I didn't mind much; it dried and it was just processed grape. By today, however, there was no room for washing, and so I cut the vine back.

It had its obscure revenge. I also cut the washing line.

While my flat mate stood around and sniggered, I attempted to fix it. I found a piece of good blind cord and attempted to tie it to each end of the stricken line. Now I should know about knots. I have a good friend who splices rope for a hobby, and I have had two lessons in Shibari, which is the ancient Japanese art of tying people up on battlefields. I also had a brief and inglorious career as a child in the Girls Brigade, whereby I managed to disgrace the whole of the 9th Company, by failing to brush my hair properly. I then went on to win the national Bible reading contest, which did not rehabilitate me at all, because I also failed to knit even one peggy square that was actually passably square. I don't remember knots at all in the Girls Brigade, but I am sure we did something of the sort. Moreover, I have books on the subject, particularly the New Zealand Scouting  Handbook from 1972. It teaches such useful things as what to do when you come upon a plane crash, and how to get on well with a lot of other chaps in a tent. It has a chapter on knots and one day I intend to stop laughing at the bit about the chaps in the tent and read it. Oh and, being a hipster, I have a knot tying app. This does not mean I can tie knots, but it does mean I have an app for it. Apps are great. I love apps. They are great for making me think I can do things, without actually having to do them. 

Out came the app and I tried to work out how to tie the appropriate knot. This meant peering at the instructions, peering at the cord and the line, and trying somehow to marry the two. I am pants at visual spatial thingie and when it comes to hand crafts, well see above about the dismal peggy square. However I eventually managed to attach the cord so that the line met the cord and there was now a rather weird saggy line that was part cord and part line and I can hang things off it, provided they have a sense of humour. Fortunately much of my washing is humorous (see above - those are not my underpants).

Just let me loose next time on an ancient Japanese battlefield. App in hand, knot tying skills newly honed, somewhere in this picture I am tying up my captives so they cannot escape, using blind cord and washing line and an improvised knot of my own fiendish design. If you look hard enough you may even find Wally.

SOME SORT OF SACRIFICE - ON VIOLENCE IN THE HOME

His violence distorted my thinking. I thought I was some sort of sacrifice, that if I resisted or left, the violence would spill over into the community at large, that I was responsible for protecting the whole citizenry of the town I lived in from what he might do. The voice, a literal voice in my head, said 'Run. Run. Run.' I argued with it. I told it I must stay and keep trying to help. I had no thought for even the immediate future; I knew I was in an untenable situation and that it would only worsen. I stayed a step and a kick from him, watched my exits, kept my eyes low, breathed. There was something almost grand about it - that I was singlehandedly preventing a one man crime wave and I was committed to do it for as long as it took. Meanwhile, my frontal lobe was shutting down.

That is all true. Here is what else is true.

His violence woke up my thinking. I knew from his history that he had done terrible things and was likely to do them again if he had no home and no financial support. I understood that he felt powerless and out of control, and he hated what he was doing to me. My fears for those around me were justified and based on real knowledge. I slipped quickly into an archaic mode of survival thinking, to enable me to survive. I stayed a step and a kick away from him, watched my exits, kept my eyes low, breathed. There was something very conscious about it - pulling myself through minutes, thinking wide and shallow rather than deep and long. Meanwhile, my amygdaloid system arose to protect me and those around me.

A wise friend told me recently that this is just everyday stuff. When she lived with her violent husband, she thought only of her children. She did extraordinary things in order to protect them, and she escaped in order that they may have a life free of violence and terror. Not for herself. Self care and self esteem came much, much later.

Somewhere in your world, if it is not happening to you, it is happening to someone else. A boy of  eight is hiding his little sister under the stairs. A woman is clawing at her husband trying to keep him away from her child. A woman is is cutting her girlfriend down from a hanging attempt, and then holding on to her to stop her taking a crow bar to the next door neighbour's windows. A man is talking to his friend about his own violent past. A woman is on the phone because her ex has taken the gun and headed off threatening to kill.

If you are safe in your bed tonight, it may well not be because of sterling work by the criminal justice system or social services, or thoughtful government policy. It may be because of many, many ordinary people who work in their own lives to do better than is being done to them. It may be because your dad got sober. Or because someone restrained the man who was going to drive off drunk and angry and smash into your car. Or because your mother did extraordinary things to protect you, maybe things you don't even remember. Or even because indigenous activists worked to heal the land so their grandchildren could have clean water. The violence in my life changed my thinking. Changed my brain. This happens all the time.

NEW WOUNDS

If nostalgia is considered to be the pain of an old wound, I contend there are no old wounds, or at least no old pains. Pain is always immediate. If it were not, it would be the memory of pain, and if that memory causes pain, then we are again in the present.

Nostalgia comes from the French word nostalgie. Doctors during the Napoleonic wars noted that conscripted peasants died of it. Slight injuries killed them. They would pine and die. Separation from the land killed them. Well, maybe stress and fear and hunger and cold and disease killed them, but the French doctors thought they pined for their land. 

It's a powerful concept. In this state of end stage capitalism we are mobile and casualised and atomised, and relentlessly forward looking. And so we long for simpler forms, and this feeds into our love of all sorts of things from Game of Thrones to the slow food movement. I am not disparaging it. I think it is a genuine need.

What happens when we long for our own past? After some quite extreme life changes, which have left me on my own and in a dire financial situation, I moved back to my home town. And slap bang into the terrible poignancy of running into my own past. I moved here six months ago, but even now the sight of a bus can reduce me briefly to tears, because I used to travel by bus to and from work and I enjoyed it. I liked the down time, waiting for the bus listening to Godflesh on headphones in the freezing morning, after a night shift, and I liked the slight unpredictability, and walking from bus stops, and being among strangers. I wish I took buses. I could make an excuse to take a bus, but it wouldn't be the same. Nothing, actually, is the same. I am left with the nostalgia, in a place that is not gone and not strange, but still present enough to cause me pain.

The best fun you can have standing up

Moshing is the best fun you can have standing up. For those who don't know what moshing is, it takes place in mosh pits at metal or punk concerts, or other concerts that are of the heavier sorts of music such as grindcore or crustpunk. You will see footage of people down the front near the stage, fighting and grappling and jostling and shoving and stage diving and dancing. Mostly they are young and male. There are pictures at the bottom of this post. It looks fierce because it is.

Earlier this year I went to see seminal death metal band Suffocation, from the US, and their excellent support band Decapitated from Poland. Also playing were local band Blindfolded and Led to the Woods. This was my first ever death metal concert. I was there in my borrowed Absu t shirt, black jeans and Docs, and prepared to rock out. The venue had a balcony at the back and I stood and watched the moshing below. Here are photos of the bands.

After a few minutes I figured it was governed by algorithms.

The flocking of birds (called, so beautifully, a murmuration in the case of crows) is governed by algorithms. There is no bird in charge, no bird says 'Hey guys., let's take to the skies'. Mathematical energy builds, and then the flock takes off. The mathematics governing steam arising from a cup of coffee is called Brownian Motion (a name which amused me greatly when I was about 11) and it is also an algorithm. The maths eludes me, and I wonder at times if the appeal of algorithms is just that it is so incredibly groovy and explains things in a manner that allows for heaps of fuzz and imagination. Like I don't know what fractals are, really, but they sure are pretty.

Regardless, it struck me that I could make sense of the mosh pit if I saw it as an entity in itself, rather than just a mass of individuals behaving strangely. I watched as it pooled and flowed, and grew and dispersed, and there seemed to be a core of people who were there all the time, and others who came and went around them like the arms of a whirlpool. Hold my bag, I said to my friends, I am going in.

Because I have a low centre of gravity (i.e. I am very short) I was able to work my way into the pit easily, basically by knocking out people's legs. All those sweaty young black clad bodies. The atmosphere was dense and wild. Soon I was in the thick of it, right up at the stage, in the jostling throng.At least, I jostled, and the young men jostled back, and then they looked down at me, and being decent fellows, decided they could not really knock me around any. That meant that I effectively shut down the mosh every time I shoved someone, so I stopped. Kind young men made way for me and I found myself jammed up against the stage. If you see footage of these gigs, there is always a row of people right up against the stage, throwing the Horns and head banging. That was me. I was flung right onto the amp, bashed by a tide of bodies; the tide would crash against me and I would shove it back in order to keep standing.

Now, my other reason for going in, apart from to investigate the notion of algorithms, was to consider the possibility that moshing could alter my state of consciousness. Rock gigs are magic. The energy created is literal magic and could be used by someone who knows their shit, I suspect. It certainly was a wonderfully visceral way of understanding the music, especially that of Decapitated, who just hurl forth into the ether this powerful grinding background bass reminiscent of Sibelius. I really like Decapitated! I enjoyed myself immensely. There was a highlight for me when the vocalist from Suffocation bent all the way down and shook my hand. But the coolest thing was when there was a bit of a quiet patch, and one of the young men next to me shouted to me that I was 'metal as fuck', which under the circumstances I take to be a compliment.

So much more POWER!

 I am longer be a style magnet, no longer adopting the cool repose and casual sang froid of a person who drives a Holden Statesman. I an ordinary driver again.

It was Arctic white, and looked clean even when it wasn't. It was so big you could accommodate a family of refugees in the boot, and I felt like I was piloting the Starship Enterprise when I was up front. It had so much torque I could pull out into tight traffic despite its size. It probably cost me $20 just to start it. It had leather seats and a Blaupunkt stereo and under the hood was .... well, who knows? It was all encased in boxes and big and clean and techy looking. And big. Like, big.

On the open road it was a dream. It was so elegant and so understated and yet so powerful it was like Coco Chanel meets Godz Fucking Zilla.  It would do 130 without even noticing. Actually at 115 a little bell would ring, and tell me I was over speed, but very politely, in the manner of a butler calling me to dinner. That was easily dealt with by turning the music up. It barely condescended to take corners at all, it just made the road in front of it as it travelled along, out of the wastes of nothingness, like God. It levelled hills and raised up valleys just as it pleased.

The only problem on the open road was the grinding frustration of everybody else. Why was everyone going so slowly? What the hell was wrong with them? Were they new? Were they stoned? Were they carrying the eggs of the incredibly rare short tailed bat, and therefor must not travel over 87 kms an hour or the eggs would explode? Were they trying to piss me off? It's only a bit of snow, for fuck's sake! Whaddya mean road works? Why do they call them road works when the road doesn't work? Ridiculous! The speed limit is 100. That means you have to do 100. Slow driving is not a virtue, it's just annoying. I will pass you. I will so pass you and you will not even notice until I totally own you. And so on and so on.

Meanwhile the Statesman would just calmly drive over them all, and leave them sweating, while I fulminated needlessly and played Deathcrush at full noise.

Mind you, for such a civilised car, the Statesman had one fault. It hated sports cars. Especially red ones and yellow ones with number plates like SAURON. When it saw one, a red film of fury would cloud its headlights and it would want to feel veins between its teeth. Once I parked it next to a little red convertible and when I got back it was snarling and frothing and I had to speak firmly to it. And one night, I pulled up a the lights beside a red Mazda thingie, and I was playing Finntroll loud of course, and I looked at him and he looked at me and I was like, I can so take you. We took off and were doing I don't know some mad speed and I really was all over him and then the lanes converged and I chickened out. But I could have had him. I could have! He was more agile but I had so much more POWER.

Driving the Statesman was like having sex wearing nothing but a fur coat. Yes, it was wildly indulgent and bad for the environment and a bit out of character, but OHHHHH!!!! Now I am back to the driving equivalent of a flannelette nightie. I miss it of course. I say things like, if I was driving the Statesman I would have been all over that bastard in that Land Rover sort of thing that cut me off, just because he drives a Land Rover, I would have so been all over him! ALL OVER HIM! Yes, says my passenger, soothingly, it's all right, I completely believe you.

Anyway, although my driving has not improved, I was probably more lethal behind the wheel of the Statesman than anything else I have driven. So the world is now a little safer, and has me to thank for it. You're welcome!

DEPENDING ON THE KINDNESS OF STRANGERS

Since like poor Blanch DuBois I am now depending on the kindness of strangers, I am currently living in Stepford. As in wives. Here the elderly man across the road inspects his lawn for hours. I have always been opposed to lawns. Monoculture, environmentally disastrous, two dimensional. Don't get me started. The houses are all different and yet so thematically similar it is hard to distinguish them and I find myself consciously finding points of identification. Wild things, or even wildish things, do not survive here. It was days before I saw a cat. The hawk flying overhead finds itself mysteriously turned into a Maltese terrier and crashing to the ground.. Here the garages are huge and the dogs are tiny. I am the worst thing around. What is it about me that lowers property values by my mere presence?

It was about 11 am on a Sunday when my neighbour crossed the road approached me. He was wearing a dark blue suit and a yellow spotted bow tie, possibly home from church, so his dress sense was perhaps forgivable.* He introduced himself by name and said he had 'just a friendly request'. What is it about friendly requests? There is always some incipient threat. This is the friendly request. The next request might not be so friendly. It might not even be a request, but more of a demand. This, motherfuckers, is how wars start. So naturally I did not shake his proffered hand, nor did I give him my name, in case it may be used as evidence against me.

This was his friendly request. I park my very ordinary non cop magnet in fact painfully nondescript car outside the house on the street, as you do. He wanted me to move it. He said that when his wife brings her four wheel drive out of the garage the turn into the street is too tight for her, because my car is in the way. He suggested he park my car a little further up the street, and waved his arm to indicate this. Just up there a bit, you know, not so far really.

There were several things I did not say. I did not say, your wife's vehicle is not a real four wheel drive, it is a shiny red wankmobile incapable of genuine off roading. If she cannot turn into the street because there is something of reasonable size parked on the other side of it, perhaps she should drive something a little less ostentatious like, say, a fricken Lexus. I did not say that perhaps she could raise the issue with me herself, because if I said that I might undermine his sense of manhood and being in control of all the shit. And because perhaps the poor woman is scared of me. Or scared of him. Heaven knows, despite their immaculate lawn and the fact that he can spend ten minutes wiping a speck off the eponymous vehicle, they NEVER OPEN THEIR CURTAINS. So their poor kiddywinks are raised in darkness, and presumably they have something terrible to hide. So having compassion,  I pointedly, so pointedly, did not comment on his truly desperate tie. I did not offer to spit on his Beamer, because I know he loves it so and I am not cruel. Instead, I said I would consider it.

Well, I did consider it, and I now park a little further up so I am out of the way. As you can see above, I had many uncharitable and unworthy thoughts and I am afraid I could easily find this man risible and pathetic. I am not here long and probably will not get to know him. I resort to the broadest stereotypes in order to manage my annoyance. I am in my way as high handed as he is.

There is a lot to be said about developing the softer virtues such as mercy and love for the sake of ourselves, not for the sakes of the people around us who may or may not deserve it. I am beginning to work on a strange idea about equality here. I am not this man's equal. I am below him. In terms of social class I am certainly below him. I have also put myself below him by serving his purpose, and by offering him consideration freely. I am also potentially above him, because I have not engaged in a pissing contest, and I have stopped judging and stereotyping him.

The picture above, by the way, is from the movie Edward Scissorhands. Of course the suburb in that movie was a parody, and the suburb I live in is not like that. It has more beige.



*But not really.