You and me against the world

Last week I found a little dog and I took him into my care and gave him a home and gave him a name. The geek inside me called him Jean-Luc.

But let me say this:

He’s not a real dog. He’s a soft toy. Small. Not much bigger than my thumb.

I found him under my foot. On the ground. Just as I got out of my car at a Westfield’s carpark. I’ve been having a lot of bad luck at carparks lately. Scratches and stuff. Another story I suppose. And not one particularly worth telling.

But on this day, I found a little dog. And he had a bead for his left eye and a long thread where his right eye must have once been.

And so I picked him up and I took him home. I had saved him from the dirty car-oil-soaked concrete floor that would certainly have been his last stop before the garbage bin.

And at home I cut off the thread in his right eye so that from some distance he would look like he has both eyes intact. And as I was cutting, his mouth got stuck to my scissors.

He’s magnetic, you see. I remember now. I’ve seen him before on TV. Well not him him, but you know what I mean. The ads. I’d seem others like him before. They have a magnet about where their mouths should be. And they come with little metal toys that stick to them and you can pretend like you’re kinda playing tug-o-war with them.

Cute.

But Jean-Luc has no metallic toys. So he just sticks to my scissors. He even sticks to the fridge. It looks pretty ridiculous actually. A little dog holding on with his teeth on a smooth white surface. In this position, Jean-Luc looks every bit the toy that he is.

But I’ve given him a name. And I’ve given him a home.

Literally.

I made him a little dog house out of left-over cardboard. It even comes complete with a corrugated cardboard roof. And now he sits in my car, under which I had found him, in his little doggy house and he looks as happy as an inanimate object can be. And as I look into his cute puppy dog eye, I can’t help but smile a little.

eh… so I’m an idiot.

But I can make the world safe for you, Jean Luc.

A portrait

My friend is down in the basement of his father’s house. It’s cold and damp down there. He sits on a creaky wooden chair, at a creaky wooden desk and writes by the light of a candle. Of course there is also an electric bulb swinging from the ceiling. It is the twentieth century after all.

Actually no, it’s the twenty-first…

…but he still hasn’t gotten used to that.

And indeed when the draft blows out the candle, he can still see. He can still write. In fact, he doesn’t even notice the difference. But he is a romantic after all. And romantics write by candlelight. Romantics wear scarves and stare off blankly into the distance. Romantics write on parchment with feathered quills.

Brain to the hand. Hand to the quill. Quill to the parchment.

He is writing a poem to her. And it’s all bleeding out of his heart.

My friend loves and wants to be loved. He writes and wants to be written about. There are songs that touch his heart that he wishes had been written about him. Or by him. Or something like that. He just wants to be a part of it all.

But he knows it’s just a song. And even mouthing the words won’t make them his.

‘It’s about you’ he whispers.

And he writes.

And he writes.

And then the words become a blur. As the hand begins to ache. As the songs begin to deafen. And the bottle of gin becomes a bottle of air.

But there’s still a long way to go. There’s still a few hours left before daylight. And we haven’t even gotten to the tears yet.

* * *

‘Is this really what I am?’ he might say to me.

‘Probably not’ may be my reply.

But I doubt that his version would be any closer to the truth. He is a romantic after all. And romantics tend to paint when they could have just sketched. Skip when they could have just walked. Romantics sing when they could have just said ‘hello’.

And frankly, I think I just happen to like my version better.

Bloggaversary

I missed my one year anniversary of blogging. It was earlier this month. I can’t believe I missed it. Especially since I never even expected to last longer than a month before becoming bored with the medium.

But here I am. One year older. And one year bloggier.

I suppose I’ll go for a drink with Sleepwalker or something. Or I’ll buy myself a present. Maybe create a new banner for this site. I don’t know. Maybe.

It went quite quickly. The year I mean. Even though I did struggle towards the end there. I hope I get to write more in year two.

All the comments that I have for my old blog entries have disappeared. They said that it’s not gone. It’s just been put in storage. So I go look up what I have in storage and there’s nothing there. Oh well. I guess it’s gone.

On Sunday night, I sat riveted, glued to the TV screen, watching the Eurovision song contest. What makes this worse than it already sounds is that I didn’t even get to see the performances. All I saw was the points tally and the final performance by Turkey. But I saw the T.A.T.U. girls hugging each other everytime someone gave them 12 points so I had to stick around.

They really do live in a different world, those Europeans…

Finally, before I go on to write a useless year-end awards thing, Riss wanted a mention if I was to write about blogging for one year. So here you go. Riss. You got yourself a mention ; )
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A useless year-end awards thing (xtn, season one, 2002/03)

All my favourite things from the past year.

Favourite CD - Ben Kweller (Sha Sha). This is an example of when random purchases work. I went to HMV, tried this CD by some geeky-looking guy I’ve never heard of, bought it and now it’s my favourite CD of the year. Trust me. It’s really good.

Favourite song - Curbside prophet (Jason Mraz). This guy is like Eminem with a guitar and without the violence… or the swearing… well maybe he’s not much like Eminem at all. But I’d rate these two as the most clever lyricists I’ve heard in a long time, if not ever. And I’m going to his concert! Yay!

Favourite concert – The Bens. I got Riss to thank for bringing me back to watching concerts (see, you got another mention). Although at the time I thought the Counting Crows concert was better (and in some ways it was), thinking back on it now… Kweller’s drugged out charisma, Lee’s um… well he sang well… and Folds’ sheer brilliance on that piano… not to mention the excellent rapport they had with the audience and each other… the way they were bumbling around the stage… and Jimmy Barnes’ surprise appearance… now I’m thinking, man, I’m never gonna see a concert that good ever again!

Favourite movie – Brotherhood of the wolf. Yeah, it’s a weird-arse French martial arts horror period piece. One of those. And I know it probably isn’t the best movie released in the past year. But it stands out as the most memorable. 8 mile gets an honourable mention. So does LOTR: The two towers. Matrix Reloaded gets a thumbs down from me.

Favourite purchase - My car. My fully-sick-mobile. Yeah I’ve been driving this Lancer MR for the past five years anyway… but it feels different when it becomes my car. Especially with the personalised plates and all.

Favourite piece of politics – The war with Iraq changing from being about weapons of mass destruction to being about freeing the Iraqi people. I don’t care much for politics but I found this… um… entertaining. And if anyone happens to read this and thinks I’ve misunderstood something or whatnot, please don’t bother saying anything. I won’t care enough to listen.

Favourite TV moment – When David Letterman decided to drop all this stuff from on top of his building onto an empty alleyway. What did he drop? Gallons and gallons of bottled water, a few buckets of superballs (really bouncy rubber balls), 25 cans of paint, hundreds of packets of playing cards, 20 bowling balls on a used car and my favourite, a giant bowl of chocolate pudding! This was on par with the time he wanted to see how many guys in bunny suits can go into a café before the owners complained.

Favourite new TV show – How old is Always Greener? Because other than that, I can’t think of anything else. I still watch old shows. How about Enterprise? Did that come on during the past year?

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That’s enough time wasted.

Thanks for reading.

Hope you’ll be sticking around…

Christian Harimanow
Sydney 2003

Staring blankly at the sky

TEA MAKES ME PEE

Should be on a bumper sticker. Or a t-shirt or something.

TEA MAKES ME PEE

I was thinking this last night as I got out of my bed for the fourth time in an hour to go relieve myself. I don’t have to explain that I had a mug of tea before I went to bed, do I? Otherwise this would all make very little sense.

I was trying to get back into my reading. But I had to have a toilet break after every chapter and it was late and I was tired and I had Dave Matthews singing ‘can’t buy me love, love, love…’ in my head, except in my head it might have been me singing rather than him but just with his vocal range instead of my own pathetic range so I’m sure that I’ve forgotten everything about the book already.

This is really bad.

I haven’t been reading much. And I haven’t been writing much. Or playing the piano. Or even trying to play the piano. I feel like my creative mojo has been sucked out of me. I’m distracted. I have nothing to write. Even though there is so much I could write about. But the words won’t come out. I’m choking. Hey everybody’s joking now. The clock’s run out. Time’s up, over… oh shut up Em!

Fine. So I have nothing to write. I guess I’ll just have to write about nothing if nothing is all I have left.

I will de-chronicle my life. Right here. Right now. For now. I will specifically not write about things that have happened to me. I may end up forgetting a few memories but I probably won’t. And if I do forget then I wouldn’t remember that I used to remember anyway. So I lose nothing. It’s all the same. It’s all about where I am right now.

My arse hurts after all that.

So now I finish off with a thought. One I had last night. Somewhere in between the book and the toilet and Dave Matthews. It goes something like this:

I think I will buy a small plot of land somewhere up the coast. I don’t know. Somewhere like Port Stephens perhaps. It could be on the side of the road. Somewhere convenient. Maybe near a petrol station. On it I will build a small shack. It will be made out of glow in the dark bricks so people driving past at night won’t miss it. I will be sitting on a nice comfy chair inside the shack and on the roof will be a giant inflatable doll of myself (or if I can’t afford that, I’ll just buy a McDonald’s one and place a likeness of my face on top of Ronald’s) holding a sign saying:

THE WORLD’S MOST PHOTOGRAPHED MAN

And there will be other signs on the streets and highways pointing to my shack. And all the signs will say:

THE WORLD’S MOST PHOTOGRAPHED MAN

And people will come from all over to take a photograph of the world’s most photographed man. And they will even be taking photographs of photographs of the world’s most photographed man. And next to the shack where I sit will be a small panel van with a TEA MAKES ME PEE bumper sticker on it and the back will be open and that will be where you can buy all the merchandise. You can buy stickers, autographed polaroids, postcards, coasters, t-shirts with ‘My friends went to see the world’s most photographed man and all I got was this lousy t-shirt’ printed on. There will also be mugs, pens and all sorts of other stuff. Even a cardboard cut-out of me that you can take a picture with.

A couple of hundred metres away, exactly the same junk will be available from authentic dodgy-looking Indian peddlers, at a 25% markdown.

Japanese tourists will come and take pictures of me before even thinking to ask who I am. And this will of course perpetuate the myth and more will come.

A smart middle-aged American couple will take eight pictures of me from several different angles.

‘Look Ned, it’s the world’s most photographed man.’
‘Well what do you know.’

Snap! Snap! Snap! Snap!

‘I wonder who he is Ned.’
‘Why, he’s the world’s most photographed man, Blanche. It says so on the sign.’

Snap! Snap! Snap! Snap!

‘But who is he Ned? What does he do?’
‘I suppose peoples takes photographs of him blanche.’

That was my thought.

It was an interesting thought.

I thought it was interesting anyway.

I need to pee.

40 days in the wilderness

She spins me around and I’m going nuts. She spins me around on this thing. It spins. It’s making me dizzy. It’s giving me a headache and when she finally stops me, the world decides to spin without me. I’m still feeling nuts.

This comes a little after the kiddie horsey rides and watching the fat white kid bossing around the skinny Asian kid with his toy gun. But a bit before the movie. It comes after the dinner and the blown out candle and the dirty spoons and the summer roll that she wanted banged around to see if it was still moist.

It looked so lonely by itself.

And this on a rainy night that didn’t rain. A gloomy patch of sky that God cleared up for a few hours just for me.

This is of course long after the 40 days began. When I decided to switch from eating dead animals to dead plants and fungal growths, and unfertilised potential foetuses for the duration of that period.

Well if you really want to be technical, I could go back further to when this Dude (with a capital D) died on a cross on a hill on the other side of this rock around 2000 years ago. But that would just be stupid.

At this stage I also had a home. Well I have a home now too, of course, but not my home. Then I had my home. Or maybe more the bank’s home but it would’ve still been mine. Then my lawyer called and I talked to him and then I called the agent and spoke to him and then the bank manager and then both my lawyer and the agent called again. No. I had to call the agent. And by the end of it I had no home. Well not my home anyway.

This was before, during (well not during during) and after all the spinning and the dirty spoons and so on. And ended around the same time as when I put in my mouth the first piece of dead animal that I’d had in 40 days. There were tears. Perhaps some were tears of joy but most probably they were tears of chilli.

And in between the beginning and the end, but long after the Dude died on the cross, there were the inane emails and the mango beers and the church where a man thanked me for giving him my piece of paper when he didn’t have one of his own and the café that didn’t have what she said they should have had. There were the writing classes and that English guy that I don’t like so much, and how I reduced a man’s masculinity by turning him into a ballet dancer. Sorry about that. And somewhere in there was the fracturing of my poor old Grandma’s brittle arm. God bless her

I supposed I’ve had very little to write about.

But in the end the home (my home) was gone, along with many other things of varying significances. And I feel like I am back at square one. Back where I was a day before the 40 days. Around Tuesday, I suppose.

For everything that was in the beginning is now gone and everything that was new is now old again.

But don’t worry, she says. You’ll bounce back. Remember, this is your year.

So… maybe she just said that to shut me up.

But my year?

Yeah!

Thanks Lil, I needed that…

Stupid real estate agents. Stupid Honkie owners. I feel like strangling someone.

I cannae take much more o' this kaptin!

Almost a month in between

My dad came home. Well I suppose he did. I suppose he must have on countless occasions. But I can’t remember a single time he did. It’s escaped my memory. These things always do and I can never write down anything about them.

But at my writing class, it’s all that anyone seems to want to know. What’s the fascination with childhood?

I workshopped my ‘Falling in love on trains’ story from a blog a long time ago and one woman asks: ‘You mentioned your dad in the second paragraph. Then he disappears. I wanted to hear about your dad!’

But it wasn’t about my dad! It was about me! Me! Me!

I can’t remember details. We do exercises in class where we have to describe something vivid from our childhood. The best I can do is remember that my Year 2 teacher looked somewhere between Arnie in Kindergarten Cop and Troy McClure from the Simpsons. And that he made me pick up 1000 papers for talking in classes.

Yep, I can remember events, dialogue. At least the significant ones. But images, smells, colours, sounds and the mundane. They’re like water through my hands. Too elusive. Not concrete like words. And even if I could remember, I can’t write them down. I never know how to represent them properly. Without loss of essence. And this is what we’re told a writer does. I should be able to do all this.

Does this mean I have no hope as a real writer?

Sorry my Return blog wasn't more exciting.