Walking Bear

And so at work I changed the packaged wallpaper to Arctic animals. I don't see the wallpaper often, being in various text-screens all day. But one photo -

A plain leading back to low, snow-bearing hills under uncertain, parting, pale grey cloud. The foreground a young polar bear upright, walking, appearing to have walked to this spot on clouds, to spend a life walking on clouds, torn snow on ice on sea the colour of a deeper sky. The bear's hands hang, & would be human except for their thickness and stiffness, their lack of suppleness; a vulnerable open chest and belly, curious steady gaze, the dark centres of the ears a second, subsidiary set of eyes also watching, parsing the invisible camera & photographer, and also gazing past them, directly through the screen.

And so we play this fantasy game, the bear and I, & gaze into each others' worlds.

Bear on torn snow, on ice the colour of a deep sea of sky; me on a chair, surrounded by nothing real: screens, walls; movable walls, wobbly, pretend. Bear walking, famed for walking; me still, constrained & still, the last point of an old curved spine supporting health-life-household. Our paths are clouds and razors.

Shadow of the Silk Road

I've been reading Shadow of the Silk Road by Colin Thubron, an astonishing work of travel and history, a gritty, informed description of the present and past of Central Asia.

The section dealing with the surrounding of Afghanistan describe the utter destruction of Islamic culture of those regions. They never recovered from the Mongol invasion. When the Mongols had conquered the city / town / village, they would take all the inhabitants outside the walls, and there they would kill them all, even the dogs and cats.

I tried to imagine that. I can get as far as a fence, the colour and shape of weathered Adelaide palings, and the ground, yellow dirt and a few white stones (the colour and composition of my primary school playground). I can imagine the head of a dead dog, one that has been euthanized. And there my imagination stops.

I can't imagine ruthlessness on that scale. The Mongols eventually abandoned their drive west to deal with the succession after the death of Genghis Khan.

I can't take in the pointlessness. I can't accommodate the idea that military genius is the boundary and canopy of human existence, that everything disappears into it and under it, that Aries is the greatest of the gods and will always defeat Hephaestus, Hestia, Hermes, Demeter.

Animals

I hate the way animals are in our power. They have no defence against our intentions.

The Sum Of My Parts

i – Waiting for the Tram, 1960

Waiting for the tram and the old rust-coloured asphalt cracked, open mouths perpendicular to the track. Waiting for the tram to go to the Bay and out of the corner of your eye a woman with a boy and a girl, dark brown eyes, dark skin. Your mother doesn't say anything, except at other times. You look away. You don't look at your mother. The others are badly dressed, from a Mission. (You've heard, you haven't heard.) The woman is a good woman (better than you) doing good works. (You're selfish.)

You don't look at them again (except they're next to you. Your skin looks at them, your skin shouts them to your mind, their colour.) The dirt mouths are on the ground, jags of dark.

Because of that woman (better than you) (better than your mother) you can go to the beach and your nature (shortcomings, failures) won't be mentioned (during the tramride) this time.

You're lucky. We're all lucky (said at other times). Lucky means your father's job, our house. Lucky means (not a servant) (not raped) (a long way away) (money).

(you've heard, you haven't heard)
(money)
(not a servant) (a long way away)
(next to you) (during the tramride)
(their colour)

(your skin looks)

(shortcomings, failures) (said at other times)

(the colour of their skin)

(money)

ii – My father and –

The Current Affairs Bulletin was partially funded by the CIA. My father used to subscribe to that… I can still see it on his night-table –

My father, the good-natured, the secret sympathizer with women, children, animals, birds, rivers; the hard-working, the honest, the lacker of guile; the man whose father abandoned him; who'd been a clerk and an accountant; who always did his best, who gardened and painted and roofed; who knew the names of birds and their calls, who buried my cat when she died –

Who'd been a drover and seen the hard light of the gibber plain and the dependence of cattle –

He had no idea where the funding for his magazine – the Catholic magazine he relied on for geopolitical information, for the shape of the world he lived in, for the truth, because he believed in truth and thought the thinkers of the Church would give it to him – was coming from.

The Current Affairs Bulletin always on his night-stand. CIA propaganda always on his night-stand.

Such an intimate assault.

Frances Stonor Connor's Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters mentions Australia very briefly.

We are such small beer, to them.

iii – how do i cut

how do i cut
down

open

the skin
the fat the bone the strings
let them out
the lies
the shadows
the lies
the long chains, the strung-together
chains –

how
open
the marrow
the shadow
open
irrigating canals

light on blood like light on water

how do i cut
v-shaped culverts

cut
the hypocrisy, cronyism, the nest-feathering parasitism,
the sanctimonious brazen mealy-mouthed thieving,
the murderous, blame-shifting, self-serving

lies from everywhere

from
my
veins?

iv – Untitled

What do you want to wear?
– Nothing. Nothing.
Where do you want to go?
– Into the rain. Nowhere.

v – Stroking the Cat

Stroking the cat
on the stairs to the garden.
The stairs go to sleep.

Nothing matters:

The dirt is here
the air is here
the leaves are here

The cat is here,
the hand.

The world is air.

The world drifts
the stairs go to sleep.
Nothing matters.

The air
is asleep,
the world
is asleep,

is warm
is fur
is
content.