an overstretched tendon; a muscle built around scar tissue

 ficlets  Comments Off
May 152011
 
20110515-033646_250

The last knuckle on the little finger of my right hand is inexplicably fragile.

There's nothing visibly wrong, but then I can only see the surface of it, and the problem lies deeper, as it always does, as it always must. I can feel its weakness when I grip, especially in the cold: there's a sensation of bending in the joint, of negative flexion.

I amuse myself with explanations. There's a cavity in the joint, perhaps, a nest threaded into the ligaments between the intermediate and distal phalanges. It was carved out by some kind of blood-swimmer, a creature with bulbous black eyes that can see through the haemoglobin spectrum and bristling with cilia allowing it to taste, touch, and move, weaving its way past the corpuscles. They take their sustenance from the blood, the salts or the albumin, and excrete lassitude. And they find a pocket, when their time comes, some void in muscle tissue or hollow fold of bone, and there they lay their young and so crumple into death, their cilia drooping, their black eyes fading.

I wonder how many micro-hollows I sport, this nibbled-through body that is their universe.

I wonder how long until that day when I grip too hard and the distal phalanx snaps backwards. And I shall have to learn to touch-type all over again.

 Posted by at 3:36 pm

a city of derelicts, human and architectural

 ficlets, journal  Comments Off
May 122011
 
keepclear_300

As I may have mentioned, I've recently moved, and am currently rocking new digs in a new neighbourhood.

Mostly this is awesome, for so many reasons, not least of which is that the new neighbourhood is much funkier and edgier1 and is also — this bit is very exciting, in case you didn't realise it — a fifteen minute walk from work. Goodbye terrible dragging commute on Yarra Trams; no, I shan't miss you! I NEVER LOVED YOU. OR YOUR MOTHER.

It's a suburb of derelicts, my new neighbourhood, both human and architectural; a suburb of the monied living cheek by jowl with the not-monied; a suburb of laneways and factories crammed in and around once-stately now-subdivided homes. It's a liminal space, its shadows filled with graffiti and discarded dreams, and I can't wait to discover more of it. I'm planning lots of rambling impulse-driven walks in my (ha!) free time.

Now, I'm told the fact that I live near an (allegedly) famous cafe type place is also exciting, but I am a philistine and to me food is food is an interruption in my day to refuel that I don't dislike but do resent the inordinate quantities of time it consumes in turn, so that's not my favourite thing about the new digs. My favourite thing about the new digs is that it's such a cosy little place, with a heater (that works). And that the building has a cat! Yay building cat!

Her name is Abigail, and she loves (to run away from) me. So that's working out just fabulously. Uh huh.

  1. Although, to be fair, of the two neighbourhoods … it was the old "less edgy" neighbourhood which delivered the over-excitable naked man. So, yanno, judge for yourself. [↩]
 Posted by at 7:07 pm

the week that was, the week that will be

 ficlets, journal  2 Responses »
Oct 202010
 

I feel bereft, but I'm not sure precisely why.

I find myself standing in the centre of the room — the lounge room, the bedroom, the bathroom; my cubicle at work — and casting about me. As if, whatever it is I've lost, I must have dropped it somewhere nearby. But there's only the usual detritus of a time-poor monkey: a broken thread from a random sleeve; a hairband; two south korean coins, each worth one hundred won; the carcass of a clicky pen, done to death by too many commutes. There are notes to myself, on post-it notes and on torn scraps of paper; CDs pulled from their shelves; and a bemusing range of highlighters, including various shades of pink (or is one supposed to be purple?).

None of this looks like equanimity.

But what does equanimity look like? Maybe it's there, and I simply don't know to recognise it. I could ask Mr Balloons — I spotted him the other day, hanging over the edge of his balcony in his familiar glitter-eyed slump, smoking something sweet-smelling and chatting with great verve to, um, nobody visible. But his particular brand of calm is a little too brittle for my taste.

No, the equanimity I want is rooted in confidence, and is a far more robust thing. Not necessarily brawny, but at least resilient. A whippet might have the right form, all sleek and full of coiled power, but it has a gaze and gait too cautious, too unsettled. A snake, then, all elongate and elastic.

Wait. I know what equanimity rooted in confidence looks like. Or what it used to look like, when last I saw it.

It's small, too young to be made ugly by the fur-ification of adulthood, and black, and it has fangs that can pierce a human toenail. Should it sense your presence, it will turn to face you, and rear up to present those fangs and — despite the alarming disparity in size between you, the time-poor monkey, and it — it will charge. Because you and it both know one irrefutable fact: its venom puts it above you on the food chain.

It's a baby funnel web spider.

And it's not native to my flat, or my cubicle at work, or any of my new haunts.

No wonder I haven't been able to find it.

This is new territory. Everything has a new shape now. Even me. Especially me.

it was something to behold

 ficlets, journal  Comments Off
Oct 132010
 

Today I saw an old man walking an old dog.

The dog was a golden retriever, his long coat still clean and glossy, but his head hung low and his mouth hung open and his eyes had more of a droop than his heavy, plodding paws. The dog wasn't walking fast, but he was still at the end of his leash because the man was walking even slower.

The man's head hung to his right shoulder. Above his pale grey pants with the crisply-ironed crease falling out and his pale blue shirt, he wore an imploring look and a pout.

Combined, I think they were averaging about a kilometre an hour, but still the man held the leash as if the dog was pulling him along.

Every now and then the dog would pause, laboriously cock his leg, and fail to produce enough scent to trouble even the most assiduous of his neighbourhood rivals. The man would suffer through this ritual with a mute roll of his eyes.

I wonder how long they've known each other? Long enough to accept that even the things they loathe about each other make them perfect for each other.

 Posted by at 6:59 pm

no one gets out alive

 ficlets  2 Responses »
Aug 012010
 

Chemically speaking, a catalyst is a substance that initiates or accelerates a reaction without itself being affected.

Which is correct, as far as it goes, but it's also a reductionist view.

The catalyst may appear unchanged from its initial state, but nevertheless it participates in the reaction. The reactants adhere to its surface, and squirm inside its pores. They shed an electron here, two there, dropping the detritus of their old form and using the catalyst to re-shape themselves into a new incarnation. They borrow the catalyst's stability and strength, plundering its interior as a means to an end.

Then they jump. Tearing themselves from the catalyst, dropping into the freedom of their shiny new form, they are butterflies climbing free of their caterpillar cocoons. They leave nothing behind, physically at least.

But the catalyst remembers. She lost some of herself, however briefly, to fund that transformation. They squirmed across the surface of her and burrowed into her capillaries, those caterpillars turned butterflies, those atoms in search of a new molecular pairing. It was by her power they were granted their new direction, and the strength and energy to pursue it.

They changed her, too, however briefly.

there are consequences

 ficlets, journal  5 Responses »
Jun 202010
 

I could tell you that I have amazing friends, one of whom staged a stealth pickup at the airport yesterday, and didn't flinch from hugging me even though I hadn't showered since May.

I could tell you that Mongolia is Big Sky Country. Or that I am currently sporting the darkest tan I have achieved in the past twenty years. That I came home to a gloriously pretty copy of Shadow Bound. That the temperatures in early-summer Mongolia are colder than those I've so far found in Melbourne winter.

All these things — and more — are true.

But instead I will tell you that Mongolia has a quietening effect. It stills the heart, robs the throat of words, and fills it with song.

This is precisely why I travel.

and the mome raths outgrabe

 ficlets, journal  4 Responses »
May 162010
 

Sometime last year, my bank (in a fit of promotional madness) sent me a couple of free movie tickets. I can't remember why — I think I answered a survey or some such inanity. Anyway, not the point. The point is that the free movie tickets were for Greater Union cinemas, of which Melbourne has exactly … one. Which I simply never get to.

Yesterday, determined not to waste a free movie ticket, and being near town, and having wanted vaguely to see Iron Man 2, I redeemed one of the free tickets.

Which is how I found myself in a darkened room with a blank cinema screen, alone but for one other man.

Said man was eating popcorn, ostensibly. Well, in fact, he was eating it quite frantically. I have never in my life seen anyone attack a bucket of popcorn with such frenzy. I soon figured out why.

Eating the popcorn was covering (or, in point of fact, significantly failing to cover)1 the sounds of his real purpose in sitting in the back of a darkened, ill-frequented cinema. Namely a little bit of quality time with Mrs Palmer and her five daughters, as it were.

I wish I was kidding at this point. But alas, there is a distinct and unmistakable quality to the breathing of a person who is, shall we say, rather focussed on achieving an imminent outcome. And that grunting and groaning was not about clearing his throat of popcorn kernels.

Thankfully, I was out of the splatter zone, and he didn't stay to watch (and ruin) the movie.2 Here's hoping that redeeming the second free ticket is not quite so eventful, eh?

  1. But hey, I appreciate the effort. I think. [↩]
  2. Although why he would choose to masturbate to a blank screen and vapid advertising when he could have waited for Scarlett Johansson's lycra-clad gyrations I do not know. [↩]

the old man is snoring

 ficlets, journal  4 Responses »
Mar 292010
 

Today it rained, and Melbourne forgot to wake up.

I ventured out into the darkness and the hissing rain, giving the trench coat it's first outing (even though it's not cold enough for a coat of any description yet), and found myself utterly alone.

No cars, no pedestrians, just me and the rain and the dark and islands of damp glare glancing off the wet bitumen under the streetlights.

For the entire walk to the tram stop, I seriously considered the possibility that my night's dreams of the paddle pop lion1 had presaged the apocalypse. There were no lights on in any of the neighbouring houses, and the main street was deserted.

But the tram turned up on time — no apocalypse, then. Perhaps instead my clock was running early? But the dawn turned up on time as well, spattering the eastern horizon as the rain kept hissing down and the air turned from dark to gloom and then slowly to overcast as the tram dropped me off a mile from work.

And still I was alone. That walk is normally filled with pedestrians, dog-walkers and gym-goers and road crew grabbing a bite of breakfast alongside office workers too hurried and harried to eat at home. This morning the windows of the open cafes were as brightly-lit and abandoned as those of the closed furniture stores.

The whole of Melbourne hit the snooze button this morning, and the streets were mine.

It was lovely.

  1. Don't ask me. I just live with my subconscious; I have no insight into its vagaries. [↩]
 Posted by at 6:38 pm

but i kill plants!

 ficlets, journal  2 Responses »
Nov 092009
 

Good writing day on Saturday, dreadful one yesterday. So it goes. (Here's hoping this afternoon's words are a little less stubborn.)

I blame IKEA.

I have not been inside an IKEA store since, well, I'm not sure I've ever been inside one. If I have, it was many, many years ago. And by that I mean at least one decade, if not two. Which, given my memory archives are labelled "Today," and "ALLLLLLL other times" (and both drawers are equally empty) I'm sure you'll agree may as well count as never.

I have been in the Helsinki airport, during my increasingly bemused exploration of which I recall wondering if the plane hadn't perhaps made an unscheduled landing in an IKEA store instead of the airport it promised me, but that's another story.

Although that other story also features the same complete inability to find an exit. At one point, I genuinely considered sending a text to my fellow Melbournites: in IKEA. Doors suddenly all fake! Cannot even find door I entered by! Real exit an urban myth! Beset by sentient furniture or delusions, can't tell which. Send search & rescue, stat!

And the people! So many arguments about the choice of bookshelves and bathroom cabinets! My favourite was the woman berating her mother: "We're here to get rid of stuff, Mum! Not clutter the house up more!" :shock: Oh! And the woman berating a poor salesboy after learning that the furniture did not come pre-assembled. "What? It's ALL flatpack? Even the rollers have to be put on by hand? But that's ridiculous!"

I mean, seriously. Where has she been living this past, what, forty years? Even I know IKEA's selling point is THE JOYS OF FLATPACK!

In an experience I suspect is common to many first-time and even veteran shoppers of this behemoth of a store, I managed to acquire exactly none of the items I wanted, and a handful of items I…didn't know I wanted. Including a peace lily. Of COURSE I wanted a peace lily, right?

 Older Entries